'Hey, I said I loved you. It's okay to do it if I love you.'
'I'm scared.'
Riley stopped rubbing her. He spoke so low that Dexter barely heard. 'Pretend you’re a princess and I’m a prince, and we’re in a fairy tale. Don't you love me?'
Tammy Lynn lowered her eyes. Riley cupped her chin and tilted her face up. Her cheeks were pink from shame or fear.
'Don't you love me?' Riley repeated, and this time he was wearing his jack-o'-lantern face. Tammy Lynn nodded slowly. Dexter's stomach felt as if he'd swallowed a handful of hot worms.
'If you love me, then you owe me,' Riley said. She shook her head from side to side, her hair swaying against her shoulders.
Riley suddenly drove his hand deeper under her dress. Tammy Lynn gave a squeal of surprise and tried to twist away. Riley grabbed her sweater and pulled her towards the ground. Bits of bark clung to her back.
'No,' she moaned, flailing at his hands as he wrestled her to the ground. One of her silver-polished nails raked across Riley's nose. He drew back his arm and slapped her. She cried out in pain.
Dexter hadn't counted on it being like this. He almost ran out from under the bushes to help her. But he thought of Riley and the gun. Dexter could barely breathe, his gut clenching like he was going to throw up, but he couldn't look away.
Riley pinned her down with one arm and moved between her legs. He covered her mouth and Tammy Lynn screamed into his palm. They struggled for a few seconds more before Riley shoved away from her. He stood and fastened his pants. Tammy Lynn was crying.
'I told you I loved you,' Riley said, as if he were disgusted at some cheap toy that had broken. Then he looked at the laurels and winked, but Dexter saw that his hands were shaking. Dexter hoped they couldn't see him. The shiver in his stomach turned into a drumroll of tiny ice punches.
Tammy Lynn was wailing now. Her dress was bunched around her waist. Scraps of leaves stuck to her ankle socks. One of her shoes had fallen off.
'Works like magic,' Riley said, too loudly, his voice a hoarse blend of triumph and fear. “I told you I loved you, didn’t I?”
He kicked some loose leaves toward her and walked down the trail. He would want Dexter to follow so he could crow about the conquest. But Dexter's muscles were jelly. He couldn't take his eyes away from Tammy Lynn.
She sat up, her sobs less forceful now. She slowly pushed her dress hem down to her knees, moving like one of those movie zombies. She stared at her fingers as if some tiny treasure had been ripped out of her hands. Tears streamed down her face, and a strand of blood creased one side of her chin. Her lower lip was swollen.
She stood on her skinny legs, wobbling like a foal. Her dress hung unevenly. She looked around the clearing with eyes that were too wide. Dexter shrank back under the laurels, afraid to be seen, afraid that he was supposed to help her and couldn’t.
Blood ran down her legs, the bright red streaks of it vivid against her skin. Drops spattered onto the leaves between her feet. She looked down and saw the blood and made a choking sound in her throat. She waved her hands in the air for a moment, then ran into the woods, not down the trail but in the direction of the road that bordered one side of the forest. She'd forgotten her shoe.
Dexter lifted himself from the ground and stared at the dark drops of blood. Rain began to fall, slightly thicker than the mist. He parted the waxy laurel leaves and stepped into the clearing.
Blood. Blood sacrifice. On Halloween, when anything could happen. The clearing was alive again, the sky waiting and the trees watching, the ground hungry.
Dexter felt dizzy, as if his head was packed with soggy cotton. He knelt suddenly and vomited. When his stomach was empty, he leaned back and let the rain run down his face. That way, Riley wouldn't be able to tell that he had been crying.
He looked down at the shoe for a moment, then stumbled down the trail toward home. He expected Riley to be waiting by the porch, the sleeves rolled up on his denim jacket, arms folded. But Riley was gone. Dexter went in the house.
'Hey, honey,' Mom said, not looking up as the screen door slammed. She was watching a rerun of 'Highway To Heaven.'
'Find your rabbit?' she asked.
'No.'
'Dinner will be ready soon.'
'I'm not hungry. I'm going to my room.'
“ You ain’t going trick-or-treat?”
“ I don’t want to.”
'You sick?' She glanced away from the television and looked at him suspiciously. The smell of old beer and the food scraps on the counter brought back Dexter's nausea.
'No. Just got some homework,' he managed to lie through quivering lips.
'Homework, like hell. When you ever done homework? Your clothes are dirty. What have you been up to?'
'I fell at school. You know it was raining?'
'And me with laundry on the line,' she said. As if it were the sky's fault, and there was nothing a body could do when the whole damned sky was against them. She looked back to the television, took two swallows of beer, and belched. He wondered what she would give out if any trick-or-treaters dared come down their dangerous street and knock on the door.
On the television screen, Michael Landon was sticking his nose into somebody else's business again. Dexter looked at the actor's smug close-up for a moment, then tiptoed to his room. His thoughts suffocated him in the coffin of his bed.
Maybe he should have picked up Tammy Lynn's shoe. Then he could give it back to her, even if he couldn't give back the other things. Like in Cinderella, sort of. But then she would know. And that was like fairy tale love, and Dexter didn’t ever want to love anything as long as he lived.
Anyway, Riley had a gun. He thought of Riley pointing the gun at him, that moment in the woods when he thought the tip of Riley’s boot would be the last thing he ever saw. The boot, the shoe, the blood. Dexter finally fell asleep to the sound of whatever movie Mom was using for a drinking buddy that night.
He dreamed of Tammy Lynn. She was splayed out beneath him in the clearing, the collar tight around her neck, the leash wrapped around his left fist. She was naked, but her features were formless, milky abstractions. He was holding his knife against her cheek. Her eyes were twin beggars, pools of scream, wet horror. He woke up sweating, his stomach shivery, his eyes moist. He’d wet the bed again.
Rain drummed off the roof. He thought of the blood, watered down and spreading now, soaking into the soil. Her blood sacrifice, the price she paid for love. He didn't get back to sleep.
He dressed just as the rain dwindled. By the time he went outside, the sun was fighting through a smudge of clouds. The air was as thick as syrup, and nobody stirred in the houses along the street. The whole world had a hangover.
Dexter went down the trail. He wasn't sure why. Maybe he wanted to relive the day before, the struggle, the tears, the drops of blood. Maybe he wanted to get the shoe.
Water fell off the green leaves overhead as he wound his way into the woods. His shirt was soaked by the time he reached the clearing. The forest was alive with dripping, flexing limbs, trees drinking and growing, the creek fat and muddy. A fungal, earthy stench hung in the air. He stepped into the clearing.
The ground was scarred with gashes of upturned soil. Brown holes. Empty. Where Dexter had buried the pets.
Blood sacrifice. Works like magic. Especially on Halloween.
Dexter tried to breathe. The shivering in his belly turned into a wooden knot.
Twigs snapped damply behind the stand of laurels where he had hid the day before.
No. Dead things didn't come back to life. That only happened in stupid movies.
Tammy Lynn’s shoe was gone. No way would she come back here. It had to be Riley, playing a trick. But how did Riley know where he had buried the animals?
