Misfits, page 8
That’s when the first tears fell from Marnie’s bruised eyes.
Mick lowered his voice and said, “Look at her. See what that dirtbag did to her?”
To his surprise, Dredd did just that. All was silent for a moment that felt like weeks.
“You sure you want to do this?”
“Totally,” Mick replied.
Marnie nodded.
Chuck stared back at Dredd, uncommitted. “You’re still joking around, right?”
Dredd sucked on his teeth. “Afraid not, big man. I’m not too keen on Mickster opening his big mouth about it, but from what I can see, this can be considered a special exception. Plus, times have been tough lately. Summer was lean and things are getting restless. It’s hard to keep the natives calm when they’re starving.” His gaze danced again toward Marnie and he winced. “This isn’t going to be pretty, but it looks to me like your man over there earned it. I may look like a scumbag and, hell, I may be a scumbag, but you don’t hit women. Ever.” To Mick, he said, “Go inside and under the bench by the door you’ll find some rope. Bring it out here and let’s get to work.”
Chapter Eight
The business of tying Dunwoody up had made Chuck nauseous. What with all the struggling and crying and screaming, which brought swift kicks and punches from Dredd and Mick, it was all getting to be too much. Each time Chuck was about to intervene and call for cooler heads, Marnie, who must have been able to sense his distress, would do something as simple as touch him, forcing him to look at her, and he would sigh and shut his mouth.
The question of whether Dunwoody would tell the cops if and when they released him sent icy bolts of panic down his spine. Chuck’s entire life was now going to be decided by this moment, a moment that had spiraled out of his control by their collective emotions over what had been done to Marnie. He finally understood the true nature of a crime of passion, and while he couldn’t use it to excuse some of the more heinous atrocities committed in the name of love or betrayal or hate, he did feel a measure of sympathy for those who had simply been caught in the throes of letting their hearts overtake their brains.
Dunwoody had been gagged and tossed in the back of Dredd’s Ford pickup, which he kept under a green-and-brown-painted tarp behind the cabin. He’d been tied up good, so there was no worry about him leaping out of the back and running for help. It was small comfort.
Dredd, who had to be in his mid-twenties, but at some angles looked to be far older, had given them each a cold can of Piels. Some of the suds remained in his wild mustache. They sat on stumps of wood he’d cut from a fallen tree. Mick had been growing more and more restless, his hands and legs fidgeting. Chuck felt like he could sleep for days, while Marnie probably needed a hospital bed. She sipped at her beer, each swallow looking as if it hurt going down.
“So, how long do we have to wait?” Mick asked, crumpling his can.
Dredd checked the sky, which was barely visible through the trees. The small patch of sunlight was starting to turn a darker shade of blue. “Give it another thirty minutes or so. If it’s still light, they’ll stay away.”
“Why?”
Dredd scratched the back of his neck, snorted and spit out a wad of phlegm. “Because they live in the shadows. They know it’s what keeps them alive.”
Snickering, Mick said, “They tell you that?”
Dredd shot him a withering glance. “I don’t need to talk to them to understand. And vice versa.”
Silence settled over them. Mick turned away like a scolded child. Chuck had never seen his friend defer to an adult like this before, not even to his own mother. That meant he either looked up to Dredd, which seemed a stretch, or, more likely, he was scared of him. The alarm bells in Chuck’s head had been ringing like it was New Year’s ever since Dredd came out of the cabin wielding his shotgun. And what kind of a name was Dredd? The kind of nickname a person earns when they instill actual dread in people.
Taking his chances, Chuck broke the uneasy hush with, “I’m still finding it hard to believe that the Melon Heads exist. No offense, Dredd. We’re just going to dump Dunwoody in the woods, right? And when he gets out, then what?”
Instead of getting the ire he expected from Dredd, the older man nodded, looking at the ground between his own feet but seeing something far, far away. “I hear you, man. I hear you. I was the same way, or at least I’d talked myself into thinking they didn’t exist when I was a kid. I could have stayed that way for the rest of my life if it wasn’t for that Christmas morning.”
He paused, finished his beer, and tossed it into the trees.
“What happened on Christmas?” Marnie asked, her voice weak and broken and a tinge scared.
Dredd took a deep breath and said, “That’s when I lost my brother. I had just gotten this new bike, a sweet three-speed that all us kids wanted at the time. I was being a pain in the ass because I wanted to ride it and my older brother, Dylan, he convinced my parents to let me go with him for a quick spin. I was shocked because he was a lot older than me and never wanted me around.”
A bird flapped its wings above them. Pine needles rained down on Mick, who flicked them away.
“He insisted we ride down Dracula Drive. Said him and his friends hung out here all the time. I thought he was trying to make it so I wasn’t scared of the Melon Heads anymore. So I followed him. But I was wrong. He’d set me up. He wanted to leave me out here for them. I found out later he’d gotten this girl pregnant. He was in real trouble and didn’t know what to do. He said to me, ‘This is the only way.’ I didn’t know what the hell that meant. I was so damn scared. Dylan took off, leaving me there. And then they took him instead.”
He took a crumpled pack of Backwoods cigars from his pocket and shook out a slightly bent, narrow cigar. It had been intentionally made to look roughly hand-rolled and smelled sweet as candy for the first few puffs. Only after he’d smoked it down to the halfway point did he continue. Chuck heard Dunwoody’s muffled pleas in the distance, each mumble or shout putting him closer to thinking he’d just thrown his life away. There had to be a way to get out of this with minimal repercussions. Unfortunately, anything close to a solution was evading him.
“I learned later when I tracked down Dylan’s friends what my brother was talking about and why he did it. I’ve just never been certain why they turned on him. Maybe because I was faster. Maybe not. I expect I’ll never know.”
Mick batted a rock into the trees with a random stick he’d picked up. “Tell him why.” He pointed the stick at Chuck.
Dredd’s eyes slid over to Chuck, veiled behind a cloud of smoke. “If you take care of the Melon Heads, they’ll take care of you. Life isn’t easy out here, especially for them. Lean times happen more often than you think. Now don’t get me wrong, they don’t like people coming out here. I don’t know whether it’s fear or hate, probably both. But sometimes, they let someone in, and as long as that someone figures out the rules, well, they’ll do things for you.”
Chuck thought Dredd was full of shit, but he needed to play along, if only to allow him time to figure out a safer endgame. “What would they have done for your brother?”
He took a very long drag on the cigar. “I think he was going to have them kill that girl and the baby inside her. Problem was, her parents wouldn’t let her go near Dylan. So he had to get the Melon Heads to go to her. They don’t do that for nothing. Part of the rules.”
“Jesus,” Marnie whispered, wrapping her arms around herself as if she’d caught a sudden chill.
“You really think your brother would have done that?” Chuck asked.
“I once saw him push a shopping cart into I-95 during rush hour. He said it would be cool to watch a car crash. Luckily, the drivers were quick enough to swerve around it and not hit each other in the process. The cart rolled over three lanes and hit the guardrail on the opposite shoulder. He told me he would stomp my head in while I slept if I ever squealed to my parents. I didn’t think he would, but I was never a hundred percent sure. So yeah, I think he was capable of it. Just like I’m capable of helping you all out now because Mick is a friend and no woman deserves what happened to Margie. Plus, this is one of those lean times. The Melon Heads’ll appreciate the help.”
“Marnie,” Chuck said.
“Yeah, Marnie.”
Marnie didn’t bother looking up. She was either lost in pain or thoughts, with neither being a happy place.
Dredd ground the cigar out with his boot, slapped his knees and stood up. “Time’s about right. Let’s get this over with.”
* * *
They all piled into Dredd’s truck and headed for some serious off-roading. Dunwoody thumped his feet against the tailgate. Twice, Dredd stopped the truck to threaten him. “He better not dent my truck.” The truck was riddled with dents and dings and rust. His promises to beat Dunwoody senseless only quieted the captive man for a minute or so before he started up again. Marnie figured Dunwoody knew he was in for worse than a beating, so why not make a scene? It wasn’t as if anyone was going to hear him way out here. She remembered what Mick had said about even the bugs and animals being scared off by the Melon Heads. If Dredd stopped his truck and they sat still for a moment, would there be birdsong in the air? Or crickets chirping? Or even the crunch of deadfall from skittering chipmunks?
They wove around thick-trunked trees bathed in almost total darkness. The thick canopy above was like a dome, keeping the real world out.
And the Melon Heads in.
She curled into herself, the icy touch of a finger slowly running up and down her spine. This was a bad place. You didn’t need to know the legend of the Melon Heads to sense that something was very wrong here. If they thought she was going to get out of the truck, they were sadly mistaken.
With his head out of the window, Dredd said, “All that banging around is only sounding the dinner bell, moron. But hey, it’s your funeral.”
Mick had another beer in his lap, holding on to Dredd’s because the wheel kept jumping out of his hands when the truck dipped and swayed. Marnie felt Chuck’s body heat. At one point, when Dredd was outside yelling at Dunwoody, Chuck touched the back of her hand as if to say, We can just get out of here and run.
She understood he was scared. She was terrified.
But he hadn’t been raped. He hadn’t had his insides pounded and scrambled by a sloppy, violent drunk. He hadn’t had something vital carved out of him, a whittling of his personality and soul and maybe even his future. Maybe he could empathize – he was here, after all, part of their foolhardy, quite possibly dangerous plan – but he could never, would never, fully understand.
The truck’s headlights lit upon a wooden structure smack dab in the middle of a clearing that could be no more than fifteen feet around. The decaying trunks of fallen trees draped in thick carpets of moss lay at the circumference of the clearing, almost as if they had been put there intentionally as a kind of wraparound bench. In the center of the rough circle stood the gutted remains of a tree. It was no taller than Chuck. All of its bark had been stripped away. Thick, arthritic-looking branches were tied around the tattered trunk by frayed cord so it looked like it was thrusting out of a crude teepee. There was even a triangular entrance, the threshold jammed by a jumble of something that Marnie couldn’t make out.
Dredd hit the brakes and the truck rocked for a moment. “This is it.”
Mick, Chuck and Marnie stared at the wooden teepee. It was not a random creation of nature, that was for sure. This time, it was Marnie who took Chuck’s hand.
“What the hell is that?” Chuck said.
Even Dredd had taken on a kind of quiet reverence. “That’s where they come.”
A voice inside Marnie’s head began to scream. “I don’t want to do this anymore! Please get out of here! Please, dear god, take me home!”
Her burst of internal panic made her cringe. The act of cringing elicited a bolt of pain from her core that drowned out that frantic voice.
For a long moment, no one moved or spoke. Even Dunwoody had fallen silent. Looking out the back window, she saw him trying to lift his head up to see where they had stopped, but the ropes binding his legs and arms made it difficult. When his watery eyes lit upon the teepee, he sagged into the bed of the truck.
She listened hard. There was nothing out there. Even the wind refused to wend its way this deep into the forbidden woods.
“They’re watching us, aren’t they?” she whispered.
Dredd gnawed on the corner of his lower lip. His eyes roamed the surrounding trees. “They’ve been watching us since the moment we got in the truck.”
Mick leaned forward until his forehead touched the windshield. “I don’t see them.” Marnie could tell he was scared, but he was also curious.
“That’s a good thing,” Dredd said. He opened his door, hesitating before setting one foot out. He looked all around, took a deep breath, and swung completely out. Mick slid over to Dredd’s vacated seat.
“You’re not really going out there,” Chuck said.
“Like hell I’m not.”
Chuck tried to grab his shirt sleeve, but Mick was too quick.
“Just take it slow and stick close to me,” Dredd said to him. “They don’t know you. They don’t like strangers, especially out here.”
“I gotcha,” Mick said, standing just beside the open door, his eyes as wide as ping-pong balls.
“I’m serious. You do anything stupid and there’s nothing I can do to help you.” Dredd walked slowly to the back of the truck and opened the tailgate.
“You okay?” Chuck asked.
“Yeah, I guess,” Marnie said.
They both knew it was too late to turn back. Part of Marnie wanted this to all be a big joke, like Dredd’s pretending he didn’t know Mick and threatening to kill them. But the ghost of the parts of her that Dunwoody had forever ruined or taken away hoped to hell everything everyone had ever said about the Melon Heads was true.
“Hey, big guy, help me get this asshole out of the truck. But do it slow as molasses in winter.”
Chuck didn’t move, his gaze locked on the foreboding teepee. Marnie squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to do it. I’ll do it. All of this is because of me, anyway.”
He shook his head. “No way.” He looked at her and she almost didn’t recognize him. Chuck had always stood head and shoulders above everyone and carried himself like a benevolent giant, unafraid because there was no one to be afraid of. What she saw now was unadulterated fear. It twisted his features and made him look like a little boy scared of the dark corners inside his closet.
He opened the door, the squeak of the hinge sounding like feedback at a Nirvana concert.
“You stay in here. And don’t you ever think you’re the cause of this. Whatever happens today, you’re never able to blame yourself. Promise me that.”
Marnie wanted to cry for more reasons than she could count. “I promise.”
Chuck got his wind and stood tall. “Let’s get this over with.”
He’d only taken three steps out of the car when Dredd hissed, “Slow the fuck down, man.”
“I am going slow.”
There was real fear in Dredd’s eyes. “Then go slower.”
Dunwoody thumped his feet against the side of the truck bed. Dredd raised a fist high. “Do that one more time and it’ll be the last.”
Marnie was on her knees looking out the back window. She caught Dunwoody’s tear-filled gaze and felt nothing. Mick swayed from side to side, anxious, she was sure, to see what would come next. He saw her and settled down, giving a simple nod. Chuck walked like he was on the moon, but his large strides had him behind the truck quickly.
“Mick, you take that cord of rope,” Dredd said. Mick looped the rope over his shoulder. “All right, you rapist pig, time to meet my friends.”
If Dunwoody hadn’t been gagged, his scream would have echoed for miles. Marnie saw a fresh wave of sweat break out on his exposed flesh. He squirmed mightily as Dredd, Mick and Chuck reached in to grab hold of him. Chuck wrapped his arms around Dunwoody’s legs while Dredd and Mick each took an arm. They carried him over to the eerie trunk and branch-woven teepee. He flailed in their arms like a giant catfish brought to land. This time, Dredd didn’t say anything. He just kept looking around worriedly, his jaw set, straining against Dunwoody’s protestations. Marnie swiveled in her seat, watching the slow, grim procession. A knifing ripple of pain went from between her legs to her chest. She really did need to see a doctor. Maybe Heidi could take her to one in another town, miles away. How much had Dunwoody ruined her? Would she ever be able to have kids? Did she need surgery? There sure had been plenty of bleeding the past few days. Just thinking that she might never be a mother restarted her rage.. She knew they were here. A couple of times, she thought she caught shadows shifting behind the trees. She’d seen the one before when she was with Mick and Dredd last year. It – she hated thinking of the Melon Head as an it, but she really couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman – had been behind Dredd’s cabin, collecting a sack of turtledoves he’d shot for them. It had been going on dusk so she couldn’t make out any features, but even the meager light was enough for her to notice the outline of a large, bulbous head as it dipped low and then, upon sensing them, darted into the forest clutching its bag of birds.
When she got back home that night, she’d convinced herself that the Melon Head had actually been one of Dredd’s friends who’d dressed up to scare them. But the more she thought about it, the more she came to realize Dredd had no friends. That’s why he’d stuck himself way out where no one else would dare to go. Well, no one but Mick, who wasn’t afraid to take a beating from his stepfather when he was six.
Mick and Chuck were using their body weight to peg Dunwoody against the severed tree in the center of the teepee while Dredd tied him up. Dredd had broken his rule about moving slowly. Sweat dripped from his nose as he worked the ropes. Once Dunwoody was secured, Dredd leaned into Mick and then Chuck, whispering something in their ears. Her friends started to walk backward very slowly, their heads swiveling in every direction. Dredd stood before Dunwoody with his hands on his hips as if admiring his handiwork. He stayed there until Mick and Chuck were back in the truck. They both stunk to high heaven.
