The dirt was wet and cold under David's palms. He felt dizzy and sick as he knelt on the ground and stared at the hand that was attached to the arm of the girl who was smashed underneath Ian's ruined truck.
It wasn't really all that small of a hand, for a girl. Fat palms and thick, meaty fingers. Light brown skin that was turning colors and swelling as he watched. Little half-moon nails that had been painted teal and silver and then chewed to a quick. Silver and teal were the colors for Possum Creek Middle School. He'd seen Gracie paint her nails the same way. One finger silver, the next teal and the one after that silver again and so on with the pattern until all the fingers and toes matched. David absently wondered if this girl had painted her toes to match or if she'd stopped with her fingers. He bet she'd painted her toes. Gracie always painted her toes.
The hand had a tarnished steel ring on her left hand ring finger. A cheap thing set with three glass stones. The stone on the right had sprung loose of its prongs. David wondered if the stone had been lost before or after she'd been crushed to death by Ian's truck.
Ian had been telling the truth. He'd seen a girl. He'd seen a girl and he'd tried to stop.
“Move,” Addison said to him brusquely. He'd finished attaching the chains to the flipped truck. He intended to roll the truck off of the girl. David had doubts about whether or not the plan would work. The Dodge was resting with its tires in the trees and the roof of its cab facing the trail. In order to bring the truck back over onto its wheels, Addison was going to have to completely flip the vehicle back over, first onto its roof and then onto its wheels.
“She's dead,” David said flatly as he stood up on shaking legs. He walked around to the rear of the truck.
Addison hesitated midway between the Dodge and his Jeep. He swallowed once, rubbing one hand down through his woolly blonde beard. “I know, but we have to try.”
He and David exchanged a silent look of perfect understanding. Ian's phantom girl, the girl who owned the hand, was dead underneath the Dodge. But they had to try to save her anyway. If anyone asked later, they would have to be able to say they had tried to save her.
Addison got back behind the wheel of the Jeep. He put it in reverse and slowly began to ease the Jeep backwards. The chain that connected the two vehicles tightened but nothing happened. Addison gave the Jeep more gas. As its tires began to spin, the Dodge began to grudgingly lift, pulled backwards by the angle of the chain and the momentum of the Jeep.
The sheet metal side of the truck screamed as the chain bit into it. The smell of burned engine fluids hung heavy in the air. He could see a slick black puddle absorbing into the dirt underneath the engine compartment. Engine oil mixed with antifreeze.
The Jeep's engine was whining unhappily. The smaller SUV was struggling to bring the truck up and over. David could just barely see a bloody leg on the ground underneath the cab of the pick-up.
“Help me,” Cal said from beside him.
David turned and watched numbly as Cal grabbed the Dodge by the underside of the frame and began pushing upwards on the vehicle. It was a stupid thing to do. He'd be crushed if the chain broke.
“David!” Cal snapped at him.
David's trance broke and he stepped up beside Cal. Together, they strained along with the Jeep until the Dodge grudgingly tipped back over and crashed down onto its roof, freeing the girl.
Addison continued pulling the Dodge backwards until it was resting on its roof, several yards away from the girl.
“Is she alive?” Cal had his eyes squished shut. His skin was a ghastly shade of green. “Please tell me she's alive?”
David forced himself to look down at the girl.
Dead people were supposed to look peaceful. That was the one lesson David had learned after attending an even dozen funerals. Dead people looked like happy wax statutes. Happy, sleeping wax statues.
This girl didn't look peaceful. She didn't look happy. She sure as hell didn't look like she was sleeping.
She actually looked a lot like the overgrown wood spider that Gracie had made him kill yesterday. Much like the spider he'd crushed with his boot, the girl been flattened by the sudden impact of the truck hitting her. Her legs and arms were splayed out in all directions. Her left leg had a jagged hunk of bone sticking up through the knee. Tendons hung limply outside the skin. Ian had said her hair had been dark, but David really couldn't tell. It was long and thick with blood. Her skull had crushed like a split melon when the weight of the truck had smashed her into the hard packed ground that existed just below the loose dirt of the trail. David was pretty sure the bloody gray chunks in her hair were bits of brain and skull.
“I think I'm going to be sick,” he told Cal.
Cal's eyes popped open in surprise as David turned to the side and threw up all over a palmetto bush on the side of the trail.
Two seconds later, Cal was on his knees beside him throwing up on the same plant.