Endless Night Part 29

She just cowered on the ground, crying and begging, while we ripped her clothes off.

Man.

She was a pig, but she was naked. For me and Ranch and Minnow, it was all brand new. (No telling what Tommy'd been up to before Hester, but I have the feeling that he was pretty experienced.) Anyway, we were so excited we hardly knew what to do.

We were all over her.

After just studying her and feeling her up for a while, we took turns f.u.c.king her.

She didn't move at all while we did it. Just sobbed and stayed limp and still.

Sort of by accident, we found out that it made things better if we hurt her. She'd flinch and jerk and tighten up. So we started pinching her and biting her and poking her with our knives. The worse we hurt her, the better it got.

Then we found out it felt great to hurt her even when we weren't f.u.c.king her.

When it got really rough, we stuffed her panties in her mouth to m.u.f.fle her screams and we had to hold her down.

I think we were at her for about three hours before she died. What gave it away was when she just stayed limp when any normal person jabbed the way Ranch had just jabbed her would've jumped and shrieked.

"What's the matter with her?" Minnow whispered.

"You want a list?" I asked him. I can sometimes be a real wit.

"She's dead, you dorks," Ranch said.

"Maybe not," Tommy said. "Let's see if her heart's still beating."

Things got very messy.

Pretty soon, Tommy was holding her heart in his cupped hands. "Is it beating?" he asked, grinning at it.

"Beats me," I said.

He laughed and threw it at me. It bounced off my shoulder. I went after it and threw it back at him. He s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of the air with a neat, one-handed grab. Then we all kind of played catch with it for a while. Made sort of an odd picture, four naked guys, drenched with blood, standing in a circle around Hester, tossing her heart around while Ranch whistled "Sweet Georgia Brown," the Harlem Globetrotters' song.

Anyway, that's how our first kill happened.

We figured that Hester's body was hidden just fine where it was. It couldn't be seen from the air because of the trees, and it was a good, safe distance away from the driveway and house. Also, the property was walled in. Tommy never allowed his mother to hire any workers, so there was no chance of a landscape guy stumbling onto her.

The upshot was, we didn't cover her or bury her or anything. Just left her sprawled on her back on the ground.

We hiked the rest of the way to Tommy's house. On the front lawn, we hosed ourselves down. (Tommy's mother watched us from an upstairs window-which seemed weird, and also kind of excited me. Tommy wasn't worried. He laughed and waved at her.) The water was horribly cold. I still remember how it made me flinch and shudder, and gave me goose b.u.mps.

After was.h.i.+ng off all the blood and stuff, we went around to the back of the house and fooled around in the swimming pool. We raced and played tag. Then we climbed out and sprawled on lounges, s.h.i.+vering until the sun warmed us up.

"Your mom won't tell on us, will she?" Minnow asked.

"You've gotta be kidding."

"What if she finds the body?" I asked.

"She won't. But even if she does, she won't do anything about it. She knows what'd happen to her."

After the sun had dried us, we walked back through the woods and found our clothes. We didn't say anything while we were getting dressed. We all kept glancing over at the body, which was about twenty feet away. Some flies had found it.

Minnow handed the pistol to Tommy. "You'd better keep it. If I took it home, my mom'd find it. Then I'd be in for some real trouble."

Tommy stuck the gun into his front pocket.

He's the one who wanted a closer look at Hester.

When we were all dressed, we walked over to her.

"I guess that's what she gets," Minnow said. He didn't sound very cheerful.

"I sure do wish we could bring her back to life," Tommy said.

"What?" I asked. I couldn't believe my ears. "Bring her back to life?"

"Yeah. So we could do it to her all over again."

We all laughed at that one.

Later on, Tommy drove us home. Mom and Dad were out back, having c.o.c.ktails. I helped myself to a handful of peanuts. "Did you have a good time over at Tommy's?" Mom asked.

"Yeah! We played catch, swam in the pool ... It was great!"

Later, Dad did s.h.i.+sh kebabs on the barbecue.

Speaking of s.h.i.+sh kebabs, I'm starving. Haven't had a bite since the sandwich I ate while I was unloading the fridge for Benedict, and it wasn't much.

Problem is, I can't go out bald and I really don't feel like sticking Hillary's clammy old scalp on my head right now. I've got to get my hands on a decent wig.

But first I've gotta eat.

Ah ha! I'll phone in for something and have it delivered right here to my room.

It'll mean touching that grimy phone, of course.

Guess I'll clean it first.

Anyway, that's it for right now. We'll continue my adventures after I've put some chow inside me.

Chapter Twenty-one.

Okay. All set. I ordered Chinese, by the way. Sweet and sour pork.

Hester was such a pig. Maybe all that talking about her is what made me hanker for pork.

It was very tasty, by the way.

Before the delivery boy arrived, I wrapped a bath towel around my head-the way some gals do when their hair is still wet. Seemed to work fine.

Anyway, back to my history of our nefarious deeds.

What we did to Hester pretty much changed everything. For starters, it was just incredibly exciting, s.e.xually and every other way. Doing her that way was the biggest thrill I'd ever had. The rest of the guys felt that way, too. I know because we talked about it. A lot. h.e.l.l, we couldn't stop talking about it.

Mixed in with how great it had been, there was a kind of sick feeling. We all had the sick feeling. It was partly fear that we might get caught and convicted of murder. Being only thirteen years old, though, we wouldn't have had much to worry about from the California legal system. A couple of years in juvenile hall, maybe. But the notion that everybody would find out about what we'd done to Hester was enough to give me a yucky stomach. Mom and Dad, for instance. Talk about embarra.s.sing.

I mean, this wasn't like we'd shoplifted an alb.u.m or smoked dope. This was serious stuff that could basically ruin our futures.

Nothing about Hester showed up in the newspaper or on the television news. Around school, rumor had it that she'd run away from home. She'd run away before, a year earlier, and had actually disappeared for a whole month. So n.o.body suspected foul play.

That was good news. But we figured it would all change if her body got found. Each day for the first week after the murder, Tommy checked to make sure her body was still where we'd left it. He tried to calm us down by saying it would never be found, impossible.

"And even if it is," he said that Thursday, "the cops won't have any reason to think we had anything to do with it."

"She's on your property," I pointed out. "And what if we left fingerprints on her."

"You can't leave fingerprints on skin," he said.

"Are you sure?"

"Well ... I don't know for sure, but ..."

The next day, at lunch, Tommy had news for us. "I went to the library after school and checked out some books on criminal investigation techniques." He wrinkled his nose. "Man, I had no idea. It's a lot worse than I figured. There's no telling what sort of stuff the cops might get on us if they find Hester: how many of us were there, our blood types, hair color, height and weight, not even to mention what they might find out about our clothes and shoes."

"Just from her body?" Ranch asked, his nose wrinkled.

"Yeah, from her body, plus everything they'll figure out when they study the crime scene."

I suddenly felt like I might throw up.

Ranch and Minnow looked sick.

"What'll we do?" Minnow asked.

"It's no big problem," Tommy said.

The big problem was waiting twenty-four hours without going nuts. On Sat.u.r.day morning, Dad gave me a ride to Tommy's house. He identified himself into a speaker on the gate, the gate swung open and we went up the driveway to the house. Dad mussed my hair. "Have a good one, pal," he said. "If you won't be home for dinner, give us a call."

After everyone was there, Tommy equipped us with a couple of shovels, a pick, and a rake. Then he led us straight through the trees to Hester.

Man, what a mess. And what a stink.

I won't go into that, though. Don't want to make anybody sick.

Our job was to bury the body.

And what a job it was. Even with four of us taking turns at it, the digging was brutal.

Tommy did his fair share. He was still annoying, though. It seemed like all he could say was, "Not deep enough. It's gotta be deeper. Deeper. Deeper."

I was standing at the bottom of the grave when Tommy finally decided it was deep enough. "Just even out the bottom a little," he told me.

So I bent over with my shovel to put in the final touches, and those sons of b.i.t.c.hes tossed Hester down on me.

Hilarious. They thought so, anyhow.

She dropped onto my back and knocked me flat, and the stink! And she was slippery, like her skin had turned to goo. For better or for worse, I was naked (because of the heat, and so my clothes wouldn't get filthy from the digging). That saved my clothes from being wrecked by Hester. But it meant there was nothing between her and me. Talk about revolting!

I guess it was pretty funny, throwing her on me like that. At the time, though, I was anything but amused. I had an awful time getting out from under her. The way her arms and legs wrapped around me, it was like she wanted to keep me down there with her. When I finally managed to squirm free, she rolled onto her back and her knees flopped apart till the sides of the hole stopped them. "f.u.c.k me again." That's what I heard, and it d.a.m.n near turned my bones to ice before I realized Tommy was the one who'd said it. He was up above with Ranch and Minnow staring down at us.

So then I boosted myself out of the grave. "You guys are a riot," I said. "Somebody else can fill in the ..." Then I attacked, pretty much taking them by surprise. Before they had time to react, I shoved Minnow into the grave. Tommy dodged away from me and ran. Ranch stayed to fight. We wrestled, but I wasn't any match for him. He pinned me down. Even though I couldn't throw him into the grave, he ended up nicely slimed from squirming around with me.

Only Tommy got away unscathed.

He always does.

Anyway, Minnow finally climbed out of the grave. He looked gory, but he was grinning. We gathered up Hester's clothes and tossed them in with her. After that, we filled in the hole, then scattered leaves and twigs over the dirt until it looked the same as everywhere else.

Tommy reminded us of the .22 sh.e.l.l from the bullet Minnow had fired at her. He said we shouldn't leave it behind. So we spent about half an hour searching, and I finally found it.

Tommy put it in his shoe. "I'll get rid of it later. The important thing is that it doesn't get found near the body. Maybe I'll throw it in the trash at school, or something."

When we started picking up the tools to leave, he said, "Wait. We've gotta take care of one more thing. Come here." He held his hands out away from his sides, the way people do when they want you to form a circle and join hands.

We did it.

He said, "As long as Hester stays here where we put her, n.o.body can ever touch us."

"The cops, you mean?" Minnow asked.

"Yeah, the cops. The thing is, n.o.body will ever find her unless they know where to look. And they won't know where to look unless one of us blabs."

We all pretty much at once promised we'd never blab.

"We've gotta make a pledge," Tommy said.

n.o.body had any objection to that.

"Repeat after me," he said. "I, Thomas Baxter ..."