Spilled Blood

printed on ordinary copier paper, and he’d used a low-pixel camera on his phone. Most of the pictures were blurry. He handed them to her, and the rain began to soak into the colors immediately. The photos ran. The paper became flimsy mush.

She stared at each one, and as she did, she crushed it and threw it on the ground in anger. He’d been everywhere, hiding, watching. It wasn’t just outside. He’d spied on her when she was in her bedroom, from a tree near the river. She saw herself sprawled on her bed, reading. Drinking pop from a can as she did homework on her computer. Some were at night, as she got ready to sleep. Her in a towel, coming out of the shower. Her in her shorty nightgown. One, so blurry his hands must have been shaking, showed her nude in profile.

Olivia slapped his face, leaving a pink palm print on his cheek. Lenny didn’t say anything. He just stood there and took it.

She dropped the photos to the ground and began obliterating them under her shoe, but she stopped as she spotted a moonlit scene, so dark it was almost indistinguishable. Something about it screamed at her. She grabbed the pictures from the ground again. Frantically, she flipped through at least ten more photos, all apparently taken the same night. Most were too black or out of focus to see, but she found two that were bright enough to identify. In these pictures, she wasn’t alone. Tanya was with her. When she looked closer, she saw someone else, too.

It was Ashlynn.

The photos were taken in the ghost town.

‘You were there!’ she shouted. ‘You saw us!’

Lenny tugged at his flannel shirt, which he’d mis-buttoned in haste. ‘I was on the other side of the railroad tracks.’

‘Did you see everything?’

‘Yeah. I thought you were going to shoot her.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘I know. I saw you leave.’

Olivia took him by the shoulders and shouted in his face. ‘You didn’t say anything? You let them arrest me? You let Kirk and those bastards come after me? You knew I didn’t kill her. How could you do that to me?’

‘I – I don’t know. I thought, like, if they tried you or something, I could be a hero, you know? I could come forward and save you.’

‘You bastard.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ he moaned.

‘Did you see who killed Ashlynn?’

‘No, no, I got the hell out of there. I left right after you did.’

Olivia tried to decide if she believed him. She struggled to rein in her emotions. Everything she’d been through, everything she’d suffered, it all could have been avoided if Lenny had opened his mouth. ‘Was it you?’ she asked. ‘Did you shoot her?’

‘No!’

She folded the wet photographs and shoved them in her pocket. ‘You’re going to talk to the police tomorrow, Lenny. You’re going to tell them what you saw.’

‘Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say.’

‘You’re going to tell them what Kirk did to me, too.’

Lenny shook his head. ‘Oh, fuck, Olivia, you know I can’t do that. He’s my brother!’

Olivia stared closely at Lenny’s face and saw for the first time that he had fresh bruises and dried blood on his skin. ‘Did Kirk do that to you? Is that how your brother treats you?’

‘I deserved it. I’m a loser.’

‘You’re a loser if you don’t help me.’

‘Kirk’s done everything for me. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.’

Olivia knew she was on the losing end. Even if Lenny loved her, he loved his brother more. Or feared him more. ‘Where is he?’

‘I don’t know. Why are you here? What’s going on?’

‘I’m trying to stop something bad from happening.’

‘Like what?’

‘Someone getting killed. Where is Kirk, Lenny? His truck is still here. If he didn’t leave, where did he go?’

‘I told you, I don’t know.’

‘You said something woke you up,’ Olivia said. ‘What was it?’

‘I think I dreamed it. It sounded like gunshots.’

‘Gunshots? From where?’

‘In the woods near the river.’ Lenny covered his mouth with both fists. ‘Oh, fuck.’

‘Come on, we need to check it out. Do you have a flashlight?’

‘Yeah.’

Lenny slithered back inside the window to his room and emerged with a red Maglite. Olivia grabbed it from him and shot the beam toward the river. The light lit up the streams of rain. She took his dirty hand and dragged him with her toward the woods. Where the trail dove into the trees, she spotted deep boot prints filling with water. She listened, but the spattering rain covered up every other noise. The river shouldered in front of them like a fat snake.

‘What’s down here?’ she asked Lenny.

‘Nothing.’

She heard it in his voice. He was lying. She stopped and turned the light into his face. He put up a hand, covering his eyes. Rain poured through his acne and his cuts.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘I don’t know. Kirk says he’s got something big down here. He doesn’t let me come with him.’

Olivia led them through the mud. The river slapped against the bank beside them. She had no sense of how far they’d gone. She didn’t like the idea that Kirk was out here somewhere or that she might run into him alone. She thought about switching off the light, because it was a beacon for anyone else in the woods, but without it, she might as well have closed her eyes.

Snap.

She stopped so quickly that Lenny bumped into her. A twig broke under someone’s foot. She swung the light off the trail, and she stifled a scream as the beam lit up a boy’s face, no more than ten feet away.

There he was, frozen between the flaky trunks of two birch trees.

‘Johan,’ she whispered.

His face was shock white. ‘Olivia! What are you doing here?’

He crashed toward her through the weeds. They felt like lovers as they embraced, the way they’d been in the summer. The light of the flashlight danced crazily. Behind them, Lenny was almost invisible in the night.

She read the terror in his eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’

When he didn’t answer, she studied him from head to toe with a flick of the light. His wet sneakers were splashed in red. So were the cuffs of his jeans. ‘Oh my God, Johan, what did you do?’

Lenny saw the blood, too. ‘Kirk.’

Johan took her hand. ‘We have to get out of here right now. It’s not safe.’

‘Kirk!’ Lenny screamed again. He grabbed the flashlight out of Olivia’s hand and dove off the trail, swallowed up by the darkness. He shouted his brother’s name over and over.

‘Quick,’ Johan said. He had his own flashlight, and he switched it on. ‘We have to hurry.’

Olivia felt a strange calm. ‘I have a car. We can’t take yours, they’re looking for it. Let’s go.’

They hadn’t traveled twenty yards before she heard an anguished cry. It was Lenny, somewhere in the woods behind them. She didn’t stop. She didn’t ask Johan what Lenny had found, and she didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was that they were together.

They kept on running.