Chapter Twenty-Three

The pain radiating up and down Chuck’s arm and into his shoulder was excruciating. It wasn’t close to enough to overpower the agony of seeing his parents murdered by the Melon Heads. He supposed they trashed his house just as they’d done to Dredd’s, robbing him of his family and home.

They were huddled in a tool shed in a strange yard. It reeked of old grass and gasoline. They’d listened to sirens blaring off and on for several hours, way off in the distance. Things had settled down some time ago, the night ringing with cricket song. At one point, Chuck just broke down and cried. Heidi and Vent wrapped their arms around him. He was surprised at how little he cared that his friends had to watch him bawl like a baby. Then again, he’d never known loss so complete that adolescent cool meant less than nothing.

Now he had his head in Heidi’s lap, his good arm hurting from lying on the hard, cold floor. Vent had somehow managed to fall asleep. Chuck was too focused on listening for anyone snooping around the shed to close his eyes for even a moment.

“I’m so sorry, Chuck,” Heidi said.

“It’s not your fault.” He would have felt completely cored out if he hadn’t had anger and despair to fill the void.

“I wonder if they’re at my house now.” She sounded afraid, but also as if her mind were somewhere else. It might have been shock settling in.

“I don’t think so. Believe it or not, I think they’re too smart to stick around this long. They know when to strike and when to retreat. They’ve done their damage for now.”

“We have to warn my parents. I can’t just let them sit there not knowing they’re a target.”

“We will. In the morning. I’m sure what happened to my parents will be in the news.”

“But who do we tell them did it?”

Chuck thought on that a moment. “If we say it was the wilding kids, they’ll ask us how we know. We’ll be right back before the cops. That will get us nowhere. As crazy as it sounds, maybe we just tell the truth.”

“They’ll never believe us.”

“We didn’t think Melon Heads were real. Anything’s possible now.”

“Even if they did believe us, and it would take a long time to convince them, we’d have to go to Vent’s parents and Marnie’s, too. And even Mick’s. How could we get all of that done in one day? We can’t count on the Melon Heads to sit and wait for the next attack. We have to assume they’ll come out every night until they get us.”

“If they did that, they run the risk of getting caught. The cops will be out and on high alert.”

Heidi clucked her tongue. “They’ll just kill them, too. You think the Milbury PD is equipped to handle a killer horde of Melon Heads? They’d piss themselves before they ever drew their weapons.”

Chuck had to sit up before his arm went to sleep. Heidi helped him, accidentally brushing against his arm and sending sparks shooting across his vision. “You know what we need?”

“The army? A tank?”

He looked over at Vent, sleeping against the lawnmower. “We need one of them.”

“One of who?” He couldn’t see her expression in the gloom, but he could imagine the perplexed look on her face.

“A Melon Head. If we can get hold of one, people will have to believe.”

Heidi’s sneakers scraped across the cement floor. “They’ll just think we kidnapped some handicapped kid. It’s not like they have a test to confirm someone is a Melon Head.”

“So maybe we need two.”

“If we came across two of them, we’d be the ones in trouble.”

“I don’t know. We took care of two tonight.”

“And look what happened.” She drew in a sharp breath, and then said, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Chuck felt like crying all over again but managed to keep the tears at bay. He wasn’t mad at Heidi. She was right. He was being foolish. But when you were suddenly orphaned and homeless, you got to be as foolish as you wanted. “It’s okay. I just can’t run anymore. Shit, I don’t have anywhere to run to. I’m sure the police are looking for me by now. I can’t let them find me, either. If they stick me in some shelter or foster home, the Melon Heads will get me for sure. Maybe I’ll be safe in prison if the police think I killed my parents.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “Things are going real good when prison is your safest bet.”

Heidi rubbed his thigh and sniffled. “This is all so fucked. How are we supposed to save everybody, much less ourselves?”

“We try your way first. It’s a long shot. What do we have to lose…besides everything?”

He wished he could sound less pessimistic, but at the moment, optimism was in short supply and dwindling more by the minute. Another idea came to him, one so horrible he didn’t dare bring it up to Heidi. There may come a time when he’d have to revisit it as a last resort. He prayed to god that moment never came.

* * *

They woke Vent up around dawn and crept out of the shed. Keeping their heads low, they snuck out of the yard and checked the street signs.

“Wow, we made it all the way to Wakefield,” Vent said, scratching his head and stretching in the middle of the street. A squirrel spotted them and scampered across the road. It wound its way up the nearest tree, where it chittered angrily at them for disturbing its morning amble. Birds sang all around them. Chuck wanted to shout at them to shut the hell up. This was not a normal day and their normal routine was desecrating the memory of his family.

His muscles cried out for a good stretch, too, but he knew that if he tried, the pain would drop him to his knees. His shoulder throbbed to the beat of his heart, the hand on his bad arm tingling with pins and needles.

“Where do we go now?” Vent asked.

“You and Heidi are going to her place.”

Heidi raised an eyebrow. “You’re not coming with us?”

“I can’t. If your parents see me, they’ll want the police to come.”

She leaned against a green Chevy, shivering from the morning cold. “Where are you going to go?”

“I need to get my car keys.”

Vent chuffed. “You can forget that, dude. The cops will be all over your place for days, if not a week, especially if they don’t find you. The place is a crime scene. You’ll never get in without them seeing you.”

“Don’t underestimate me,” Chuck said. He’d only gotten an hour or so of sleep, but he felt full of energy. Funny how a purpose will get a person going when they should be passed out somewhere.

“I don’t like the idea of you being alone,” Heidi said. She checked her pockets and found a bent cigarette in her shirt pocket. “Gimme your lighter,” she said to Vent. He handed it over and she lit up, taking a deep drag. A quarter of the cigarette burned down in seconds.

“Got anything stronger in another pocket?” Vent asked.

“You have to keep your head straight,” Chuck said. He hadn’t clued Vent in to his and Heidi’s conversation about their families being in danger. Vent wasn’t one to put two and two together without a little prodding. He knew Heidi would tell him everything on their long walk to her place. Her parents were probably worried witless by now. Chuck wouldn’t be shocked if they were demanding the police add her to the missing persons list, even though it hadn’t been a full twenty-four hours yet. Who knows, after what happened to Chuck’s family, the police might forego the regular waiting period. “And keep your eyes open. You don’t want to get picked up by the cops before you get to your house.”

“I will.” Her eyes were glassy, either from exhaustion or a fresh sheen of unshed tears.

Chuck took Vent’s lighter from her and jammed it in his pocket. “You better go,” he said.

Heidi didn’t move. Vent looked from one to the other.

“Seriously. We have a lot to do today. We need to get started.”

“I’m worried about you,” Heidi said.

“I’ll be fine. It’s daytime. They prefer the dark.”

Heidi surprised him by pushing off the Chevy and wrapping her arms around him, burying her head in his chest. There was no way he was going to let on how much it hurt. He put one arm around her and touched his nose to the top of her head. Despite being in a shed all night and sweating like pigs when they ran, her hair still smelled like flowers.

“You better take care of her,” he said to Vent.

“Why do I think you left off an ‘or else’?”

“Or else,” Chuck said, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He didn’t think it would be possible to ever smile again. Guilt overwhelmed him and the smile died before it could blossom.

“Call me if you can,” Heidi said.

He tried to think of the nearest pay phone if he couldn’t get in the house. It would be a long way to go. “I will,” he replied, unsure if he was lying or not.

“Come on,” Vent said. He tugged at her arm. Heidi reluctantly pulled herself away, tears streaking her cheeks.

Chuck watched them turn down Wakefield and onto Horner and out of sight. If he’d counted, he would have tallied seven times Heidi looked back to check on him. Once they were gone, he headed in the other direction, figuring it was about a fifteen-block walk until he got to his place. His stomach rumbled. Lord, he was hungry. Pain and fear must absorb a shit ton of calories, he thought. He would kill for a stack of pancakes drenched in butter and hot syrup, bacon, fried eggs and hash browns. He even knew exactly who – or what – he’d kill for that breakfast.

It was a bitter pill to swallow, settling for a mouthful of stale spit instead. Anxious to see what remained of his home, he started to jog to his street. The pain of moving too fast winded him quickly. He had to settle for an improvised power walk, listing to his bad side. A few cars passed, as did a bread delivery truck. He kept to the sidewalk, ready to hide behind a tree or duck behind a car if he spotted a cop car or any car that looked like it was an undercover unit. They’d been chased by quite a few over the past year and had never been caught when they were smoking or drinking in the park or a vacant lot. Chuck was pretty sure he knew all the local undercover cars, though they might have called in others from the surrounding towns.

He was slightly winded by the time he turned down his street. His house was at the end of the block on the right-hand side. The street and driveway were clogged with cop cars and news vans.

“Fuck me sideways.” He slumped against a minivan. He’d been so fixated on the police, he hadn’t even considered the news. A huge satellite dish sat atop a black van. A reporter bathed in artificial light was talking to a camera at the end of his driveway.

You got this. Don’t pussy out now.

The front door was missing. As was the glass in most of the downstairs windows. His stomach filled with ice as he stared at the ruin of his house…his home. Were his parents still inside, or had they been carted away in black bags by the medical examiner? He thought he was going to be sick. He took a few gulps of air to calm himself.

Getting strength back in his legs, he cut across Dolan Avenue, went two blocks and made a right down Ramapo. The abandoned house greeted him with its weary and worn façade. The metal fence had long ago turned to rust, the gutters hanging from the roof. When he was a kid, he bought the story that an old witch used to live there hook, line and sinker. Kids gave the crumbling wreck a wide berth. If a ball or Frisbee accidentally landed in the front yard, there it stayed for eternity. It looked like a perfect place for a witch with its dirty turret, dark, deep porch and shuttered windows. Who knew what kind of horrible black magic went on inside those walls before the witch died?

Chuck was sure a whole new generation of kids were equally terrified of the place, judging by the graveyard of newish looking Spalding and Wiffle balls in the tall grass. He was tempted to find the yellow Duncan light-up yo-yo that Mick had thrown over the fence when he was mad at Chuck for being better than him at walking the dog. It was most likely still there, weathered by the elements and swallowed by the uncut grass.

The witch house seemed to leer at him. He easily dismissed his childhood fear of the place. He was about to murder a nightmare, a local legend and an eyesore.

He took a quick glance around, saw no one was looking, and kicked the door in. The wood gave way like it was made of wet cardboard. A heady stench of mold and mildew blasted him in the face. He turned away and coughed, which only hurt him more. Once he settled down, he stepped inside. The interior was dry as a matchstick. Miraculously, there were no holes in the roof. Maybe magic had kept the place intact. Chuck shivered.

There was a chair in the living room, covered in an off-white sheet.

“That’ll do.”

Chuck struck the striker wheel on Vent’s lighter and touched the yellow flame to the end of the sheet. It went up with a soft whup! Once the flames started to engulf the outline of the chair, Chuck kicked it over and sent it skittering to the end of the room. It bounced against the wall. The fire licked the exposed lathing and settled in. It didn’t take long for noxious, black smoke to fill the room. He was wondering if he should light another part of the house when the ceiling took the flames like a sponge starved for water. He ducked out of the room and ran outside, coughing again and seeing not just stars but entire galaxies.

He stumbled down the rotten steps and jumped into the grass when he felt one of them starting to give way. Jogging as best he could, he made it to the end of the block, where he sat on the curb and waited. It took five minutes for the first licks of fire to poke outside the boards on the windows. Soon after that, the bottom floor of the witch’s house became fully engulfed. Ten minutes later, he heard the approach of sirens. Not long after that, those cop cars and news vans came tearing ass down the street. He got up and walked casually down Ramapo so as not to elicit any unwanted attention. By the time he got to his house, it looked like a ghost town. Even the neighbor looky-loos had run off to witness the latest tragedy. There was only one cop car left in the drive. His house was virtually surrounded in yellow crime-scene tape.

Feeling slightly reckless as time was not on his side, he strode up the steps and walked right in. Nobody was in the house. In fact, he could see out the open back door. Two cops were taking a smoke break, outside the perimeter of flags stuck in the lawn. His stomach lurched when he saw the outline of his parents’ bodies in tape, the linoleum tacky with blood. He was woozy for a moment and had to lean against his father’s lounge chair. Catching his breath, he took in the mass destruction done to his home. Anything that was glass had been broken. An end table was sticking out of the shattered television screen. The couch cushions had been ripped open. Blinds were torn off the windows, pictures ripped off the walls. He spotted the one of him and his parents at Gettysburg, standing beside a cannon. They had taken him there for his ninth birthday. It was the year he was obsessed with the Civil War. Three smiling faces beamed up at him from behind shards of glass.

Vomit hit the back of his teeth, forcing his mouth open. He threw up on the chair, instantly angry with himself for being so weak. That chair always smelled like his father, a mix of Old Spice aftershave and cigars. Now he’d lost that, too.

Being inside the house was too much for him to take. He scanned the floor and found the bowl where they kept their keys. Chuck snatched his car keys and left, checking on the cops to make sure they hadn’t heard him. He put the car in neutral, let it glide out of the driveway and keyed the ignition. He was gone before anyone noticed, crying as he sped toward Heidi’s house.