Brian Freeman - Spilled Blood

What the hell?

Olivia backed away and retraced her steps off the porch. At each window, she saw more signs of a frantic search, but she saw no one alive. Not Kirk. Not Johan. She reached the rear corner of the house backing up to the wilderness and the river. The window on the corner looked in on a small bedroom, ten feet by twelve. She saw the high-school textbooks on the laminate desk and figured that the room belonged to Kirk’s brother, Lenny. He had a lava lamp, glowing with floating orange clouds. Dirty clothes covered the floor. There were posters tacked on the wall, all of naked porn stars. Front. Back. On their knees. It was disgusting.

On his bed, immediately below the window, she saw other photographs, too. Photographs of her.

Olivia felt violated all over again. She saw herself in the swimming pool at school. On the street outside her mother’s clinic. On her front lawn in St. Croix with Tanya. Wherever she’d gone, he’d been there with her. Spying. Lenny had been following her for weeks.

She recoiled from the window, and as she did, a hand clapped over her mouth from behind. Another hand snaked around her waist, and she felt dirty fingers on her bare stomach.

The touch of a boy’s hand set her off like a bomb. She drove her elbow backward into her attacker’s kidney, landing the blow so hard she thought the fleshy organ would squish out onto the mushy ground. She heard a yelp of pain and felt the hands loosen on her body. Free now, she spun, throwing her left fist, colliding with hard bone. It was the side of his skull. Another gasp. His hands flew in front of his face in self-defense. She shoved violently on his bare chest, and his legs spilled out underneath him, and he dropped flat on his back. His body was a mucky stretch of skin; he was naked. She swung her leg to punt his groin like a football kicker, but he squirmed away and covered himself, screaming, ‘No!’

She focused on his face for the first time. It was Lenny. She looked around, expecting Kirk and the other Barron boys to charge her. No one did. The two of them were alone.

‘Lenny, you bastard!’

On the ground at her feet, the boy wailed. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Olivia, I didn’t know it was you.’ There was a dirty wool blanket near him on the ground, and he scrambled to cover himself. ‘Honest, I didn’t know.’

‘Where’s Kirk?’

‘I don’t know. He kicked me out. I fell asleep in the truck.’

‘Have you seen anybody else?’

‘No, nobody. I told you, I was sleeping. Something woke me up.’

Lenny struggled to his feet, clutching the blanket at his waist. His chest was scrawny, his arms like toothpicks. His eyes darted up and down Olivia’s body, and she realized that her nipples were pointy and visible through the soaked fabric of her shirt. She folded her arms over her chest.

‘How long have you been following me?’

His eyes widened. ‘What?’

‘You’ve been stalking me, you creep. I saw the pictures on your bed.’

‘It’s not what you think. I just like to see you.’

‘You’re repulsive.’

‘I’m sorry. Really.’

She watched him adjust the blanket around his waist and knew he was becoming aroused. She felt another urge to kick him between his legs. ‘Go put some clothes on.’

‘Yeah. Okay.’

Lenny brushed past her. The touch of his shoulder made her fists clench. He squeezed his fingers under the sash and pushed open the window to his bedroom. He climbed inside, and she looked away, not wanting to see his naked body. She heard him opening drawers, tugging out clothes. When he climbed outside again, he wore a flannel shirt and blue corduroys. He’d combed his wet, greasy hair back over his head.

Before he closed the window, she ordered him, ‘Show me the pictures.’

‘Huh?’

‘The pictures you took. I want to see them.’

He looked as if he wanted to run.

‘Reach in and get them, Lenny. Now.’

Lenny bent over the ledge, and he pushed together the photos on the bed into a messy pile. They were printed on ordinary copier paper, and he’d used a low-pixel camera on his phone. Most of the pictures were blurry. He handed them to her, and the rain began to soak into the colors immediately. The photos ran. The paper became flimsy mush.

She stared at each one, and as she did, she crushed it and threw it on the ground in anger. He’d been everywhere, hiding, watching. It wasn’t just outside. He’d spied on her when she was in her bedroom, from a tree near the river. She saw herself sprawled on her bed, reading. Drinking pop from a can as she did homework on her computer. Some were at night, as she got ready to sleep. Her in a towel, coming out of the shower. Her in her shorty nightgown. One, so blurry his hands must have been shaking, showed her nude in profile.

Olivia slapped his face, leaving a pink palm print on his cheek. Lenny didn’t say anything. He just stood there and took it.

She dropped the photos to the ground and began obliterating them under her shoe, but she stopped as she spotted a moonlit scene, so dark it was almost indistinguishable. Something about it screamed at her. She grabbed the pictures from the ground again. Frantically, she flipped through at least ten more photos, all apparently taken the same night. Most were too black or out of focus to see, but she found two that were bright enough to identify. In these pictures, she wasn’t alone. Tanya was with her. When she looked closer, she saw someone else, too.

It was Ashlynn.

The photos were taken in the ghost town.

‘You were there!’ she shouted. ‘You saw us!’

Lenny tugged at his flannel shirt, which he’d mis-buttoned in haste. ‘I was on the other side of the railroad tracks.’

‘Did you see everything?’

‘Yeah. I thought you were going to shoot her.’

‘I didn’t .’

‘I know. I saw you leave.’

Olivia took him by the shoulders and shouted in his face. ‘You didn’t say anything? You let them arrest me? You let Kirk and those bastards come after me? You knew I didn’t kill her. How could you do that to me?’

‘I – I don’t know. I thought, like, if they tried you or something, I could be a hero, you know? I could come forward and save you.’

‘You bastard .’

‘I’m really sorry,’ he moaned.

‘Did you see who killed Ashlynn?’

‘No, no, I got the hell out of there. I left right after you did.’

Olivia tried to decide if she believed him. She struggled to rein in her emotions. Everything she’d been through, everything she’d suffered, it all could have been avoided if Lenny had opened his mouth. ‘Was it you?’ she asked. ‘Did you shoot her?’

‘No!’

She folded the wet photographs and shoved them in her pocket. ‘You’re going to talk to the police tomorrow, Lenny. You’re going to tell them what you saw.’

‘Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say.’

‘You’re going to tell them what Kirk did to me, too.’

Lenny shook his head. ‘Oh, fuck, Olivia, you know I can’t do that. He’s my brother!’

Olivia stared closely at Lenny’s face and saw for the first time that he had fresh bruises and dried blood on his skin. ‘Did Kirk do that to you? Is that how your brother treats you?’

‘I deserved it. I’m a loser.’

‘You’re a loser if you don’t help me.’

‘Kirk’s done everything for me. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for him.’

Olivia knew she was on the losing end. Even if Lenny loved her, he loved his brother more. Or feared him more. ‘Where is he?’

‘I don’t know. Why are you here? What’s going on?’

‘I’m trying to stop something bad from happening.’

‘Like what?’

‘Someone getting killed. Where is Kirk, Lenny? His truck is still here. If he didn’t leave, where did he go?’