David Morrell: The naked edge

"Awake, Aaron?" Carl whispered.

Cavanaugh felt breath against his ear. He didn't respond.

"Sure, you are," Carl said. "I feel your heart beating faster."

Cavanaugh didn't see a point in pretending any longer. "Where are we?" The words stung his irritated throat.

"Home, sweet home. Check out the expert workmanship. Feel the fine wood."

Cavanaugh's arms were pinned along his side. The narrow space, which increasingly reminded him of a coffin, made it impossible for him to touch what he now identified as wood against his cheek (a floor) and against his forehead (a wall).

Carl's right arm was free. In the absolute darkness, he reached over Cavanaugh and tapped the wood, causing a muffled echo. "The best plywood available on the junk heap of a construction site. A sheet of plastic's above the roof so water can't seep in. Comfy, huh? Just the thing for spending a couple of days and nights. Of course, I didn't plan for company. When I was the only occupant, I had room to drink from a water bottle and eat beef jerky. Not too much, of course, because I didn't want to foul my dream house with more piss and crap than was necessary."

Cavanaugh almost threw up.

"So relax. We'll find out if I win my bet. But I'm sorry to say, this is going to be a one-sided conversation from now on. You might try to shout and attract your friends. There's an air hole above my head. I can't take the chance they'd hear you. Open your mouth."

Cavanaugh didn't. In the darkness, he felt something sting his neck. The point of a blade.

"I picked up my knife before I carried you here. Open your mouth, or else I'll slice the artery in your neck."

Cavanaugh obeyed. He felt a gritty, musty rag being shoved into his mouth.

"I hope you don't have asthma," Carl whispered. "I wouldn't want you to suffocate. So here we are, snug as two bugs in a rug. How do you suppose we should pass the time?"

Behind him, Carl's voice was so soft that Cavanaugh could barely hear it. His hushed breath drifted past Cavanaugh's ear.

"Why don't I give you a little lesson? You know the old saying, 'You can't pick your family, but you can pick your friends.' Isn't that the truth? If only Lance had been my father. Wouldn't that have been great? Me and the old man making knives. As for friends, well, most people throw that word around. What they really mean is 'acquaintances'. They mean people they spend time with because they happen to live next to each other or work together or play sports with each other or belong to the same club or whatever. People who don't make trouble. People who don't ask for much, who don't inconvenience them.

"But a true friend, Aaron. That's rare and special. A friend is somebody who accepts your faults, who's there for you always, even when you're not your best, somebody who'll do anything for you, somebody you can count on totally, just as a friend can count on you. It's the most powerful relationship there is. Most marriages don't come close, because in a lot of marriages the partners aren't really friends.

"I chose you as my friend, Aaron. My only friend. I never felt closer to anyone. There isn't anything I wouldn't have done for you. Imagine how I felt when I realized that you weren't my friend, that you were just another self-centered asshole who said adios when the going got rough."

In the pitch-blackness, the gag absorbed moisture in Cavanaugh's mouth. It made his throat dry. It made the fetid air he breathed tickle his bronchial passages. He feared he would cough. He feared he would choke.

"When you think about it, we've never been closer than we are right now," Carl said. "It's not a bad way to die. Pressed against the person we love."

Fighting not to panic, Cavanaugh held his breath in the hopes of stifling his impulse to gag. He failed. His stomach heaved. Bile soared up his throat.

Where? Jamie mentally yelled, not daring to speak and make herself a target. Where are they?

Rutherford moved next to her, aiming to the right while she aimed to the left. They continued slowly, warily, into the fog. As much as she could estimate in the darkness, the screams had come from straight ahead. With her attention focused there, the ground beneath her suddenly collapsed. She fell, sliding downward, tumbling into water. Rutherford splashed next to her, sprawling, the creek flowing over them.

They scrambled upright, but any element of surprise was now lost, and Jamie's stomach seemed filled with sharp heavy stones as she peered over the top of the opposite bank. More darkness and fog awaited them. She aimed to the left, listening intensely for any indication of where Cavanaugh might be. But what caught her attention wasn't a sound.

It was a glow so faint that it might have been marsh light. Climbing from the creek, aiming, she crept toward the pale illumination, Rutherford moving next to her.

They reached trees. The glow was stronger. On the ground. Among bushes. A flashlight. When Jamie picked it up, she did what Cavanaugh had taught her to do, keeping it away from her center of mass so that a bullet aimed toward the light wouldn't hit her chest.

She scanned the trees and bushes. Rutherford pointed, crimson attracting her attention: blood on a stake tied to a branch. Her mouth sour, she aimed the flashlight toward the ground, seeing more blood. Following it, they left the trees. The blood went in two directions. Some of it formed a trail on the left, where the flashlight revealed a dead Labrador retriever, a knife sticking into it.

"What the hell happened here?" Jamie murmured.

"Hell," Rutherford said. "Exactly."

The blood trail on the right led to a picnic table, and here Jamie found an astonishing amount of blood, a spray of it everywhere. The sharp stones in her stomach now felt like cold barbed wire twisting inside her. Rutherford pointed again. The blood led toward the creek. They peered down at the water, where the blood was no longer in sight.

"Take it easy," Carl whispered, pulling the rag from Cavanaugh's mouth as bile rushed into his mouth. "We don't want you to choke to death. Especially when you've got the alternative of the dreaminess of bleeding to death."

Cavanaugh spit acid and gasped for air. He understood. Carl had spoken about the plastic sheet above the roof, the barrier that kept water out. But the floor was now wet, the fluid rising, and the only explanation for that was blood-from Cavanaugh's wounded side, punctured chest, and sliced back as well as from Carl's stabbed thigh and bleeding eye socket.

"Aren't we a pair?" Carl said. "Just like being in a womb. From the cradle to the grave. Drifting away. On the path to dreamland. What's the best time we ever had together. No. Don't answer that. Instead of whispering, you might scream. I'm afraid I need to gag you again."

Carl crammed the rag into Cavanaugh's mouth, then nestled against him. "Blood sure smells like copper."

But Cavanaugh couldn't smell anything. Indeed, he had trouble feeling the wet, slippery wood beneath him. His mind again swirled.

"The best time we ever had was when we went camping in Colorado and…"

Screaming inwardly, Jamie shifted along the creek, scanning each side of it while Rutherford aimed toward the top of the bank in case a dark figure attacked them. Where? she kept demanding. Where's the blood? She almost did scream when it occurred to her that they might be heading in the wrong direction. Rather than searching deeper into the park, perhaps they should have gone in the opposite direction. Her trembling hand made the flashlight waver, its beam flicking this way and that. Time seemed suspended, yet she felt that ten minutes went by in an instant. The blood! Where's the damned…

There! She saw it, the crimson rising from the creek, blending with deep footprints that struggled up the bank on the right. She and Rutherford hurried to the top, and now Jamie felt the barbed wire in her stomach become molten. It expanded, threatening to burn through her belly. The blood formed a pool in the grass in front of her.