Twisted Fate (Tales of Horror) Page 5

  “What?” He crawled away fast and bumped into the wall. “How? Why?”

  His body shuddered.

  “How could this be?” he asked.

  “It just is.”

  He spun around so fast he lost his balance and rolled onto his shoulder. When he looked up, no one was there.

  The candle still burned by the door. It was the only light source in the cabin, and the light it gave off was so dim he could barely see, but it was enough to know he was alone with his dead wife.

  Is someone here? Did they kill my Tera? Did I kill my Tera?

  He looked back at her. She was still dead.

  “No, no, no, no …”

  He looked down at his leg. The pain had increased to the point where he wondered if he could walk on it.

  Blood seeped through a hole in his jeans.

  “What is that? What the hell is going on?”

  He inspected his injury. He’d never seen a bullet wound before, but as far as he could tell, he had one in his leg.

  “Who shot me?”

  “Don’t.”

  This time the word was more of a plea. Like someone begging.

  He didn’t bother to look for the source. Even if he spun around, he wouldn’t see anything. Whoever walked through his cabin could hide too fast for him to bother looking.

  He attempted to get to his feet.

  If Tera is here and I’m here, who is taking care of our girls?

  He made it to his knees, but the leg with the bullet wound wouldn’t support his weight.

  “When did I get shot? Nothing is making sense.” He shook his head, frustrated without answers.

  Up on his knees, he stared at the inert form of his wife and saw a small revolver in her left hand.

  “You shot me? Why, honey?”

  Something flashed through his mind.

  He shook his head to dislodge the memory.

  “No way. I did not kill my daughters. Not me. I could never do that.”

  “Don’t, please Daddy, don’t.”

  He couldn’t help himself. He spun around. The speaker was his mother again. She stood in the corner of the cabin, a soft light coming from somewhere inside her body.

  “Don’t,” she repeated.

  “Why are you here? Get out. This is my family. You’re dead.”

  “You’re dead, too.”

  “Not yet.”

  John used the couch to stand up. He leaned heavily on his good leg and hopped toward the bathroom. He needed bandages as his leg was still bleeding.

  “Don’t,” the thing behind him said.

  He realized it was taunting him, trying to bait him to lose his mind.

  He hit the bathroom door and half fell, half ran in, using the sink to catch himself. He saw his face in the mirror and didn’t recognize it.

  “Hello, pretty,” he said. “Aren’t you in some kind of trouble now.”

  He smiled and turned for the medicine cabinet, slipping on the carpet and falling before he could catch himself. John hit the floor awkwardly and bent his wrist back on the sore hand.

  “Fuck,” he swore at the intense pain. “What else can go wrong here? My wife is dead and I don’t know if that’s real or if I’m seeing things. I need a break here.”

  Something sticky and cold covered his back. He leaned up and turned to look at what made him slip and fall.

  Blood.

  “Whose blood is this?”

  He followed the blood to its source. It appeared to be coming from the bathtub.

  His leg was completely numb now. Yet he had to see what was in the tub. He dragged himself across the bathroom floor, the small mat coming along under his weight. He got to the edge of the tub and lifted himself up.

  “Don’t do it.”

  “Fuck you,” he shouted back at the thing in his cabin.

  He lifted up and looked in the tub. His daughters appeared to be sleeping.

  In a flash it all came back to him. The fight. The axe and the gun. Everyone screaming. His wife yelling the word don’t over and over.

  He eased back to the bathroom floor and dragged himself out and across the cabin. As he neared the door, he saw the woman and the man standing on either side. The woman was wagging a finger at him like he’d been a naughty boy.

  He kept dragging himself, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. When he got to his wife’s body, he pushed her aside, and pulled himself out onto the snow.

  John crawled and dragged himself away from the cabin. The cabin where his family had spent many seasons together, laughing and playing games. Watching late-night movies, and making popcorn.

  He dragged himself further into the forest, away from the memories, away from the pain.

  He dragged himself until he couldn’t anymore.

  The last thought his brain processed was how the elements of schizophrenia were similar to a winter storm.

  Or was it the other way around?

  His mother stood over him at the end.

  She cried for him as his soul was ripped away and taken to a place where pain was the price of entry.

  John would never be cold again.

  Vengeance

  I had no idea that I would die that day, along with so many other people. It’s been ten years and I still look back and wonder how that day got so fucked up.

  I had been looking forward to that holiday all summer long. Four of us had rented a cabin for Labor Day weekend, early September. It was our last party before University started for another year. We wanted to finish summer with a bang.

  Boy, did we ever. I blamed a lot of people during those ten years, but never myself. It’s so hard to own something that tragic.

  It’s all my fault. Everyone’s death, everyone’s blood is on my hands.

  I still kill to avenge their deaths.

  Tabitha and I stopped at the last liquor store before the cabin to load up on alcohol. Scott and Allison pulled in behind us in their Jeep Cherokee. The sun was high, the air on fire, and we were sweating like crazy. My old Buick didn’t have an air conditioner, so Tabby and I had driven for the past three hours with the windows down.

  “Scott, how about this heat?” I asked.

  He looked at me, raised his sunglasses to his forehead and winked. “It’s great. The inside of my Cherokee is like sitting in an igloo.”

  I jabbed at his arm. “And you’d know how it is to be in an igloo because you’re a hard-boiled Canadian boy.”

  We laughed, wrestled around and tried to get our girls to smirk. Tabby and Allison were both prepared for the heat. They looked great in their jean shorts and halter tops. I used to swear that these two girls called each other in the morning to coordinate their clothes for that day, making sure everything matched.

  They hung back as Scott and I stepped into the small LCBO on the side of the highway. The Liquor Control Board of Ontario usually had larger stores, but this far north and in such a small tourist town, the store was small, the selection smaller.

  I looked at Scott. “Grab what you want and I’ll meet you outside.”

  He nodded and we parted.

  When I got to the till with my loot, I glanced outside at Tabitha. Three men, wearing a crazy-looking combination of leather jackets and green pants, were standing in a semi-circle around her and Allison. From where I was standing, it looked like they were blocking the girls’ way.

  “Forty-three, twenty,” the clerk said.

  I handed her a fifty-dollar bill, got my change, grabbed my bag, and headed for the door. It slid open and I stepped into the hot sunshine.

  “Everything cool here?” I asked, looking at Tabby. Her facial expression told me it wasn’t.

  Two of the men turned toward me, acting tough and showing off, no doubt, for the third member of their trio, who didn’t look at me. One of them had a goatee that dangled below his chin, the whiskers tied in a hair elastic. The other guy had no hair on his head at all, only a tattoo of a tear drop on each cheek. Under other circumstances, I woul
d’ve laughed at how funny it looked. But today, the tension in the air gave me a good idea that laughing wouldn’t be prudent.

  “You know who we are?” the one with the stupid goatee asked.

  I shook my head in the negative.

  “I didn’t think so,” he said, and turned around to show me the back of his leather jacket. I don’t know much about biker logos, but it looked to me like a caricature of Satan with his hands out, and the name Vago’s with an “M” and a “C” on either side.

  Goatee turned back around. “Recognize it?”

  I shook my head and bent over to set my bag of alcohol on the cement as it was getting heavy. A car pulled into the parking area. I looked over. An old man in a Chrysler parked and opened his door. If only it was a police officer.

  “We’re the Vago’s Motorcycle Club. The symbol is Loki, the Norse God of mischief.”

  “Tabby, Allison, step over here,” I said as I looked at the third member of their group. “We’ll be leaving now.”

  Tabitha went to move off the wall, but the three men inched closer together, completely blocking her path.

  “What is this?” I asked. “You’re breaking the law. That’s forcible confinement. Step away and let them go, or I’ll call the cops.”

  Goatee and Tear Drop moved closer to me. The door to the liquor store opened and Scott walked out. In my peripheral vision, I saw the old guy from the Chrysler slow his step.

  “You’ll do what?” Tear Drop asked, his voice sounded like sandpaper grating on steel wool.

  “I’ll call the police. You can’t walk around acting like you own the world because you ride motorcycles. We have rights. Now, step back and leave us alone.”

  I didn’t think my message was getting through to them. Their smiles, and the fact that they weren’t stepping off, told me they didn’t respect the same laws I had just mentioned.

  “Do you know that the FBI, along with California’s Attorney General have all named us an outlaw motorcycle club? They say we’re involved in drugs, assault, extortion, money laundering, murder, vehicle theft, witness intimidation, and weapons violations. Can you believe that?” He stepped closer to me, our noses almost touching. I could smell his last cigarette. “What I’m trying to illustrate here is that we’ve decided these two ladies are going to join us for the weekend and then you can have them back, unharmed. How does that sound to you?”

  “What the fuck is this?” Scott asked. He set his bag down beside mine and reached for Allison’s arm.

  The gang member closest to her shot his hand in the air. A knife appeared out of nowhere.

  “Touch her and you lose your hand.”

  Scott hesitated. He looked at me. The old man to my right, who had nothing to do with this, moved away and ran for his car. I heard the lock click on the liquor store’s door as they were barricading themselves inside. We were on our own in a small town, where police response times would probably be too long to defuse our current problem.

  In all my years of studying Shotokan karate, I never thought I’d have to use it for real.

  Scott eased back further, his face a mask of fear. Tabitha was trying to stay calm, but Allison cried quietly now.

  Tear Drop was looking away from me. Only Goatee would see me move.

  I dropped to my knees, grabbed the neck of a bottle of coconut rum, and as I stood, drove my open palm into the chin of Goatee. I heard his teeth snap together, along with his cry of pain. I only hoped I caught his tongue.

  The bottle was already in full swing by the time Tear Drop turned to address me. It hit him in the right cheek, breaking it upon contact, blood shooting from the split skin.

  At the second he bent over and fell to the ground, I lunged past him and ran for the guy who was clearly the leader. He had turned toward me, his hands up, the knife shining in the sun.

  I feigned left and spun to the right. He bought it, lunging with the knife. My left hand grabbed the wrist that held the knife and locked it down, while my right hand formed a fist. I drove everything I had into that punch, hitting him squarely on the jaw, spinning his head sideways. He brought his head back and smiled at me.

  I knew it would take more to hurt this guy, and I didn’t have the time as Goatee would be attacking my rear at any second.

  I twisted his wrist as far as I could, and drove my next punch into his throat. He tried to move out of the way, but wasn’t fast enough. His Adam’s apple was my target, and I hit it hard enough to affect his trachea.

  He dropped the knife, staggered back, and fell to his knees, his hands clinging to his throat, gasping for air.

  I turned around just as Scott was kicking Goatee.

  “Scott, that’s enough.”

  I later learned that Goatee had stayed on his feet and was about to deal me a double-fisted sandwich when Scott surprised him with a kick to the stomach. I had no idea Scott was a fighter.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said, my stomach turning, my nerves feeling like I’d been tased.

  Tabby ran for our Buick. After scooping up our alcohol, I followed, got in, started it up, and drove to the exit with Scott and Allison close behind. As I pulled out, I looked over my shoulder and saw Tear Drop pointing his arm at me. His hand was empty, but he was holding it in a mock interpretation of a gun. He dropped his thumb and lifted his finger as if his gun had gone off.

  The message was clear: you’re dead.

  When we arrived at the cabin, I asked if we could avoid talking about it, so as not to ruin our weekend. Everyone agreed, except Scott suggested that we at least contact the local police and tell them what had happened.

  We called North Bay Police and they drove out to the cabin on our second day. After we gave them our full statement, they said they’d be on the lookout. They also said that what we did was a brave thing, but to be careful in the future. We could’ve gotten killed.

  On Sunday, our moods were lighter. Everything was back to normal and we were having a blast. The weather had been awesome and the water in the lake, warm.

  I stood on a large rock with Tabitha, and together we both stared out at the view of Lake Nippissing. As the sun set it cast stunning colors across the sky. A few boats raced over its surface on a journey to their docks before full dark. But it wasn’t the beauty that stopped me, it was the tragedy. The real reason we had come to spend the four days here was because of my parents.

  My insides twisted as I thought of them and how they had died one year ago today, on Lake Nippissing, in a boating accident. The autopsy confirmed death by drowning. I hadn’t been on the lake since. I used to Jet Ski all the time. The lake had been a second home for my family. I’d talked about it at length with Tabitha and I had decided that this weekend I would go out on a boat, but we hadn’t yet. It’d be hard to look into the depths and know that this water took my family from me, but it was something I had to do.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Good, then you can help Scott and Allison with the rest of their bags. They’re leaving early to get back to the city.”

  I headed over to their vehicle to lend a hand. When I was close to Scott’s Jeep, he scrunched up a brown paper bag that he’d taken from Allison’s hand.

  “You guys having an early evening snack?” I asked.

  Scott looked at me. “We’ve finished it, otherwise I would have offered you some.”

  His manner seemed forced, somehow acting over-nice. What the hell is that all about?

  I stepped up to him and grabbed his can of Pepsi. “The least you could do is give me a swig of your drink.”

  I only had the can on my lips long enough for one full swallow. Then Scott reached out and pushed me hard. I lost my balance, fell to the pine-needle littered dirt, and dropped the Pepsi can.

  “Don’t swallow, spit it out!” Scott shouted at me.

  I leaned on my elbow and made to stand. “What’s going on?”

  “Allison doesn’t know how severe your peanut al
lergy is. She had packed lunches for the road. Two peanut butter sandwiches. That’s what you saw us eating as you walked up a moment ago. I didn’t tell you because you didn’t have to worry since they were gone now and we were leaving anyway.”

  The symptoms for me can come on as quick as the speed of sound.