Brian Freeman: The Bone House

He wanted to quit. He wanted to hike to the main road and call his buddy Keith, who would pick him up and smuggle him on to the ferry in the morning. They could spend the night in Keith's basement, drinking beer and playing pool and surfing porn. Forget about Mark Bradley. Forget about the gun in his hand.

He thought: Glory's laughing at me.

Maybe she was the one watching him; she was the spirit he felt. Her ghost. If he listened, he could hear her voice. You can't do anything right.

He was angry at Glory. Angry at himself. All of that anger still had a focus that made him stay where he was, rooted to the ground. Mark Bradley. He wasn't going to give up while Bradley was alive.

'Where are you, you bastard?' he murmured aloud.

Like the answer to a prayer, Bradley revealed his location. No more than two hundred yards away, Troy saw a stream of light splash through the woods. It was deep in the trees in the campground between the beach and the cemetery. He stayed on the road and hustled, eating up the space between them. Based on the direction of the light, Bradley was heading toward the graveyard, and Troy realized he could get there ahead of him and be waiting for him when he emerged into the open ground.

Troy splashed through huge puddles in the road, sprinting south. A quarter-mile further, he broke from the trees and found himself in the sprawling grass of the cemetery. He had enough light under the open sky to see rows of stones poking out of the earth. He bent low, moving from tomb to tomb, eyeing the woods. The telltale light came and went, flashing on and off, and Troy was directly in its path. Mark Bradley was heading straight for him.

He stopped behind a grave marked with black marble only fifteen yards from the brush where the forest ended. It was slick with rain, and the grass was sodden as he crouched near the tomb. He clutched his gun, smelling burnt powder on his hands. He watched the trees, hunting for the shadow of a man arriving at the long carpet of headstones. His heart thumped so fast he thought he would die before he sprang up and pulled the trigger.

Troy took a deep breath. He lifted the gun.

Mark couldn't find Tresa. She'd been swallowed up by the night. After the boom of the gunshot rose above the rain, he knew that Troy was out there, firing blindly at anything that moved. The boy was a menace, and if he wasn't stopped, someone was going to get killed. Mark picked his way through the forest, breaking branches, not caring about the noise he made. If Troy was here, he wanted the boy to hear him and follow him. He wanted to draw him away from Tresa.

His ankle was swollen where he had twisted it. Each time his heel landed on the uneven ground, he grimaced. He headed south, but it was nearly impossible to keep a sense of direction inside the trees. He wished he had a flashlight to guide his path. Where the forest ended, he planned to cut across the cemetery ground to the main road. He had little hope of flagging down a car on a deserted night, but he could follow the road toward the center of town until he reached the house of one of the year-round residents, and then he could finally use a phone.

Call the police. Call Hilary.

To his left, he spied a beam of light in the maze of trees. It came and went, on and off, as someone maneuvered through the forest. It had to be Troy. They were on parallel paths, both heading toward the cemetery.

Mark pushed past the trees at the border of the graveyard, and a moment later, he was free of the dense, grasping grip of the woods. The sky opened up over his head. Rain swooped down in sheets, and he wiped his eyes with his sleeve so that he could see. Triangle-shaped pines and skeletal oaks dotted the land. He looked for the warning glow of the light he'd seen before, but the forest was dark. He eyed the trees and graves for a moving silhouette, but as far as he could tell, he was alone.

'Troy!' he shouted.

His voice fought with the storm.

'Troy, it's Mark Bradley. I know you're here. I want to talk to you.'

He wandered deeper into the cemetery land. He looked down, but he couldn't see the names on the stones.

'Troy, listen to me. Tresa's here too. Neither one of us wants her to get hurt.'

Forty yards away, not far from the woods, Mark saw a headstone grow into a large shadow, as if a ghost were rising from the earth. The silhouette detached itself from the grave and walked toward him. Mark recognized the bulky outline of Troy Geier, and he saw that the boy had a gun in his outstretched hand. Troy marched closer until he was no more than ten feet away. The gun was pointed at Mark's heart.

'I'm here,' Troy said.

'So am I,' Mark replied.

'Where's Tresa?'

'I don't know. She ran. I didn't want you shooting her accidentally.'

'I wouldn't hurt her. This is between you and me.'

'I understand.'

Troy was silent. Mark could see his gun arm shivering.

'Listen, Troy,' he went on, 'Tresa knows you're here. If you kill me, you'll go to jail. You'll be throwing away your life.'

'I don't care.'

'I know you think you're doing this for Glory.'

'That's right. I'm doing it for her and for Mrs Fischer and for Peter

Hoffman and for Tresa, too. You're going to pay the price. I'm not letting you get away with everything you did.'

'What did I do?' Mark asked.

'You killed Glory.'

'No.'

'You killed Peter Hoffman.'

'No.'

'You think I believe you?' Troy demanded loudly. 'You're a liar trying to save his skin.'

'Troy, listen to me. I didn't do those things.'

'Bullshit. Everybody knows you did.'

Mark spread his arms wide. If Troy wanted to be a man, then Mark would treat him like one. 'OK, you better shoot me. If I really killed them, I'm a monster, and I have to be stopped.'

Troy hesitated. 'You don't think I can do it, do you?' he asked, his voice puffed up with nervous bravado.

'I know you can,' Mark told him. 'If you really believe that I could do those things — that I could strangle your girlfriend on a beach in Florida, that I could take a shotgun and blow off an old man's head — then you need to shoot me now.'

Mark could barely see the boy's face in the darkness. He couldn't see if he was reaching him. He watched the gun, which was still aimed at his chest at point-blank range. One pulse, one twitch of Troy's finger, and the bullet would sear through Mark's body.

'I–I don't know,' Troy murmured.

'This is what men do, Troy. We do what's right. We take responsibility. You need to look into my eyes and tell me you know that I'm guilty. After that, it's easy. After that, you won't have any doubts.'

'Mrs Fischer, she said—'

'I don't want to know what Delia thinks,' Mark told him firmly. 'This is between you and me. What do you think?'

'It had to be you. It had to be.'

'If that's true, then pull the trigger.'

Troy's arm fluttered as if he couldn't hold it steady in the wind. He took a step toward Mark. 'I'm going to do this.'

'I know.'

Mark couldn't take his eyes off the barrel of the gun. He wondered if he would see the flame or if he would hear the explosion, or if it would all happen in silence and darkness before his brain could process the shot. He would simply be standing here in one instant and lying on his back in the next instant, unable to draw a breath, feeling the warmth of blood on his chest.

Troy was crying. Mark could see the boy's chest heave.

'I have to do this,' Troy said.

'I'm not going to stop you.'

There were no easy choices. If Mark moved, he died. If he stayed where he was, he died. Troy tightened his grip on the slippery butt of the gun. As he hesitated, poised to fire, a bright beam of light speared through the night and caught the two of them in its glare like deer on the highway. Mark instinctively shielded his eyes with his palm. Troy spun in shock, taking the gun with him.