John shivered in the night, his silhouette glowing in the dim, yellow light of the street lamp. “The darkness…” he muttered. “I can’t… I just can’t.”
“John, please.” She took another step.
He tilted forward.
Brad gasped and lunged toward him, but it was too late. John plummeted, head first.
He hit the ground with an audible thump. The girl screamed.
Brad hurried to the edge and looked over, saw John lying in a motionless heap on the lawn. Two kids ran out from the front porch and crouched next to him. “He doesn’t have a pulse,” one yelled. “Call 911.”
Brad panicked, his face gone white as the drugs churned his thoughts into a screeching typhoon of horror. He scrambled through the window, his breathing rapid and shallow.
Gabe and Casey were standing inside with the other dumbstruck onlookers. “Holy shit,” Gabe said as Brad pushed by. “Did I really just see that?”
Brad ignored him and rushed to the stairs.
“Brad?”
Gabe and Casey followed him down the steps. Brad looked back, saw them, and started running, through the kitchen and out the back door.
“Brad, where are you going?” Gabe called. “You can’t just take off, man! Hey!” Drunk, afraid, and unsure what to do, he chased Brad across the backyard. Casey followed.
Brad led them down alleys, across streets, and through yards, refusing to slow down or respond to their shouts. When he made it to the university golf course, he dashed across the green like an escaped mental patient, disappearing into the woods on the other side.
Gabe and Casey stopped on the fairway, out of breath. He looked at her, his intoxicated brain struggling to process everything that had just happened. The alcohol gave his shock a sick, whirling intensity.
“Did you see that?” Gabe said through gasps of air. “How that guy just…”
“I know,” she said, shaking her head. “Crazy.”
He stood up straight and put his hands on his face. His eyes felt like the empty sockets of a skull. “He fell head-first. He could be dead, Casey. Oh, God.”
She inhaled deeply. “It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay.”
“Seriously, what are we going to do?” he said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. Let’s just chill for a minute.” She sat down on the carpet-like green and so did Gabe.
“Shouldn’t we get back to the house?” Gabe babbled. “Aren’t the police going to want to talk to us?”
Her voice dropped down to a near whisper in the perfect calm of the golf course. “Shhh. Let’s just think for a second.” For a moment, she held the silence.
“We don’t have to go back right now, Gabe,” she said finally. “We can talk to them later. Birdman should still be there, and a bunch of other people saw what happened, too. I’ll bet there’s already an ambulance. He’ll be okay. I’m sure he’ll be okay.”
“We’re in such deep shit, Casey,” Gabe moaned, running his hands through his hair. “It’s going to be in the paper, for sure. They’ll want to hit us hard. Everything they can possibly charge us for.”
“Did you hear what that girl told Brad, though? She said the guy hadn’t even been drinking.”
“That’s what she said?”
“Yes, I heard her, Gabe. Seriously,” Casey put a hand on Gabe’s knee, “it’s not our fault.” She released a sigh. “It’s not our fault.”
Gabe lay back. The world spun around him like a cruel amusement park ride.
Casey glanced over her shoulder at the growing light on the horizon. “Oh, look!” she gasped, standing up and turning around.
Gabe sat up. There, on the glistening stage of dewy grass, the dawn broke through the drifting fog. It spilled an amber tide down the rolling slope and bronzed the wispy clouds above. Casey kicked off her flip-flops and skipped out to the center of the putting green. As the warmth of the morning sun settled onto his skin, Gabe watched her twirl.
In perfect silence, she continued the performance through the full unfurling of morning, dancing with total abandon — as much for herself as for him.
Gabe’s adrenaline finally ebbed, and the fatigue broke through. He put his elbows on his crossed legs and his head in his hands, letting his eyelids slowly close to the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
From the stillness and quiet, he awoke to a light touch on his face. The softest skin, gliding against his, made its way from his right cheekbone, across his lips, to his other cheekbone, and back again.
He opened his eyes. Casey knelt before him, leaning in, her eyes closed.
Gabe froze, paralyzed with sudden hesitation as a wave of tingles cascaded from his scalp down the back of his neck.
She passed her lips across his face once more. This was it — for so long, he had loved her from his stifling cocoon of self-doubt, and now it would finally happen. There, on the immaculate grass, with nothing but the gentle scents and sounds of September around them, he would embrace her glancing touch and ignite a rapturous starburst of passion.
“Holy crap, you guys are still here?” Brad blurted from out of nowhere.
Gabe’s eyes stuttered open. Casey pulled away. She looked at Gabe with astonishment, then sadness.
Gabe reached out to her. She stood up.
“Brad, what the hell?” she said, brushing loose blades of grass from her pants. She winced in the full morning sun. “Where did you come from?”
Brad watched Gabe. “I was over in those trees the whole time,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder. “I just had to be alone for a bit to come down, you know?”
Gabe glared at him. The slightest trace of a smirk twitched in the corner of Brad’s mouth.
Brad turned to Casey, his expression instantly switching to an attempt at solemnity. “I kept thinking about what that guy did. Think he’ll be okay?”
Casey and Gabe said nothing.
“Well, we’d better get back,” Brad said. “We’re in deep enough shit already.”
Casey sighed. She looked exhausted. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
Brad started walking, and she turned to follow. Gabe remained sitting on the grass.
“Coming, Gabe?” Casey asked.
“Going to stay here a little while,” he mumbled.
“Sure?”
“Yeah.”
Gabe watched them cross the green together. Every dozen steps or so, Casey looked back at him. As the two crossed the street at the edge of the golf course, Gabe saw Brad put his arm around her, laughing.
* * *
As expected, the police returned to the house later that morning. John, they told the roommates, had died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. His girlfriend had told the cops the same thing she had told Brad, that John hadn’t been drinking. The other witnesses had confirmed he never drank from the keg, just seemed to enjoy serving beer to others.
Most of the attendees — especially anyone underage or in possession of illegal drugs — had fled by the time the police got there. Unable to do much else, the cops scolded the roommates and told them they would be keeping a close eye on the house in the future.
Morning slumped into the murky hangover of an overcast afternoon. Casey and Brad had disappeared into their rooms. Birdman lay passed out on the living room couch, his long legs up on the arm.
About Chris W. Martinez
One Comment
I take it the gist of the story is that there is a prescence in the house taking over people and making them do things they nornally wouldn’t. At the end you are left with the spirit taking over the one friend and then taking over the other to cause him to hang himself. I like the concept. I wasn’t too particular taken by the beginning which moved slowly but once it got going it was good. I didn’t care too much about the golf seen and thought it was a good scene outside if this is building on something else for the future. That is my take on it. Otherwise I like the concept behind the story. Nice State College reference.