Chapter Thirty-Seven

Milbury, CT – 2000

“You sure you want to do this?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

Chuck turned the enormous pickup truck onto the old Dracula Drive. The sign demarking it as Wainscott Road was gone, but they all knew what this place was.

Marnie chewed on her fingernail and looked out the window. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this nervous.

No, she could. It was that last time they’d been out here.

Since then, she and Chuck had gone through hell together, growing close enough to marry but not to truly love one another like a traditional husband and wife. The scars were too deep to heal, their true love for those they left behind trapped underneath the wounded tissue.

“That’s it, I think.” She pointed at the overgrown turn to Dredd’s old cabin. The truck was scraped by branches. It sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

The cabin was gone now, though there were some planks of wood still visible. Nature had reclaimed the land.

The stumps where they’d sat to hatch out their plan to get rid of Harold Dunwoody were still there, though. Chuck parked the truck, grabbed the assault rifle he kept in the cab and got out.

“Come,” she said, holding his hand and leading him to a stump.

It was still so quiet out here. She bet if she pushed the leaves from the ground, she wouldn’t even find a single ant.

They sat and they waited. Chuck thrummed his fingers on the weapon. Marnie folded one leg over the other and bounced it in a heavy metal rhythm.

“He may be gone by now,” Chuck said after an hour.

“Maybe.”

“Any time you want to go.”

She patted his thigh. “I know. I also know you want to wait a little longer, too.”

“I do.”

They waited some more, and the sun started to head westward.

Marnie was about to go to the truck for some water when she heard rustling. Chuck jumped to his feet with the rifle at the ready. Her heart trip-hammered until she felt dizzy.

Low-lying branches of a tree parted.

Mick emerged, older, his hair down to his waist, deep wrinkles around his eyes and mouth that made him look as if he’d aged twenty years. He was very skinny now, to the point of emaciation.

But he was smiling.

“You came,” he said.

“We knew there would be eyes everywhere,” Chuck said. “Figured you might want this.” He handed his old friend a box of Slim Jims. Mick’s eyes shimmered at the sight of the salty beef sticks.

“You remembered.”

“I remember everything, bro. Everything.”

Mick turned to Marnie with a beatific look in his eyes. “You’re so beautiful.”

“Hello, Mick,” she said, choking on his name. Her vision blurred with tears. “How have you been?”

“Busy. Very busy. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

More rustling, and then several small children gathered around him. They all had his hair and they were beautiful. Their faces, the shapes of their eyes, gave them away as being special, different. Marnie’s heart shattered. She barely registered the adult Melon Heads that had come out to witness the reunion.

One of the children, a little girl of about four, came bounding to her and wrapped her little arms around Marnie’s leg. Marnie ran her fingers through her coarse, dirty hair. Her tears fell into her hair.

“She’s beautiful,” Chuck said.

Mick stared in wonder at Marnie and the girl. “She should be. Her name’s Marnie.”