Savage Lane (20 page)

Weirdly, he could hear her now, saying, “It’s so romantic here.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t bury you anywhere else, baby,” he said out loud as he got out.

Lots of cricket noises, fireflies, an almost full moon—the rain had totally passed—but not much else. He went to the storage shed and, using the flashlight app on his phone, found what he needed—a wheelbarrow and the biggest, strongest looking shovel he could find. Then he returned to the car and looked around, not worried at all—he was so cool under pressure it was crazy. He didn’t see anyone or hear anything except crickets, so he popped open the trunk. He yanked Deb up and out by her feet and then grabbed her hair and propped her up next to him. Holding her like that, face to face, they could’ve been dancing. He maneuvered her on top of the wheelbarrow, centering her the best he could, and, taking her purse with him, carrying it over his shoulder, he went into the woods.

The flashlight app wasn’t bad—it made a long stream of whitish light and Owen had no problem seeing where he was going. The issue was that Deb’s head was hanging off to the side, dragging in the dirt and mud and, once in a while, bouncing on rocks. He didn’t care if her face got fucked up, it was just the CSI shit he was worried about. He knew that if the cops looked around here they would definitely find some blood or hair. But then he thought,
Yeah, but they won’t look here
. He was proud of himself for not getting caught up in bullshit worrying, for sticking to the plan. It showed him again how strong he really was.

Once Deb had said to him, “I didn’t think I’d ever feel this way again.”

“You were right about that, baby,” Owen said, out loud, pushing the wheelbarrow. Then he laughed—he didn’t care, because no one was around to hear, so why not laugh, why not
enjoy
this? He didn’t know if he believed in all that life after death bullshit, but he knew that if Deb was up there somewhere looking down she’d probably be getting a kick out of this too. Who knows? She was so kinky, she might think that being dead and wheeled out to their spot in the woods was the hottest thing ever.

Then something weird happened. Along with the crickets there was another noise—it sounded like a woman giggling. Naturally Owen freaked. He stopped, aiming the light from his phone in every direction, expecting to see a woman. He had no idea what he’d do when he saw her, but he wouldn’t be able to just let her get away.

Then he heard the giggling again. It sounded the same as before—not very loud, at the level of a whisper, but there wasn’t anyone here—at least there didn’t seem to be. At the same time, he knew he was hearing it, that he wasn’t just imagining it. There it was again. It sounded familiar; he’d definitely heard it before. Was it Deb? He shined the light at her face and she was dead, with those wide-open teddy bear eyes, no doubt about it. Then where was the giggling coming from?

He just wanted her gone, buried, as fast as possible. At the spot in the woods where they’d hooked up that time, he started digging a hole with the shovel. Like last time, it was hard work. There was enough moonlight through the trees to see what he was doing, but it would take a long time before the hole was big enough to fit a body. In the movies they always made it look so easy—a guy goes into the woods with a shovel and boom, a few minutes later there’s a big grave there. Not the case in real life. The dirt was heavy, maybe heavier because of the rain before, and after digging for like ten minutes it was maybe a couple of feet deep and, worse, he seemed to be hitting something hard, like a root of a tree—you never see that happen in movies either; in the make believe world, nothing ever gets in the way.

He kept working, digging in a different spot, away from the root and finally, after like a half hour, he was exhausted and sweating like crazy, but at least it was starting to look like a grave. He knew it wasn’t deep enough yet, though, so he kept digging, sweating his ass off, getting blisters on his hands for maybe another half hour, and then he dragged the body off the wheelbarrow and then kind of rolled it into the hole. It fit and there seemed to be about two feet of space on top. Deeper would have been better, but this was deep enough to cover a body and he didn’t want to spend any more time out here.

He took her cell phones out of her purse and tossed them into the hole, smashing them with the shovel until they were crushed. Then he took her cash out of her purse—seventy-three bucks—and then dumped the purse and everything else in it into the hole. He wanted to take off the jewelry she’d been wearing—a wedding ring, bracelets, a necklace—and try to sell the stuff at some point, but he knew that would be too dangerous. He wanted to do this right, have zero chance of getting caught.

He dumped dirt onto her face, covering all of her head. The rest of her body was easier to cover and soon her whole body was buried. There was a lot of leftover dirt so he spent some time flinging it away in different directions, and then he covered the gravesite with some leaves and twigs and, he had to fucking admit, he’d done a damn good job, at least as good as the other time. He didn’t leave so fast, though; he added a few twigs here, a few more leaves there, like he was doing the finishing touches to a painting. When he knew there was nothing else he could do, and sticking around was only torturing himself, he headed along the path, pushing the empty wheelbarrow, hating that he was starting to cry.

W
HEN HE
got home he was through crying; he just hoped he didn’t have to deal with any bullshit from Raymond. Though it was almost one in the morning, Raymond was sometimes up late, drinking beer and stuffing his face with whatever food he could get his hands on. The TV was on in the den, which got Owen nervous, but then he peeked in and saw Raymond passed out on the couch, the TV on to some black-and-white movie. The whole downstairs reeked of beer farts.

Owen went up to his room and took off all his dirty, muddied clothes and put them in the hamper. He’d do laundry in the morning, but he wasn’t worried about the dirt because his clothes were always dirty from the country club. He was more worried about CSI shit, like if Deb’s hairs were on the clothes, or in the trunk of his car. There was no big rush now, though; he had plenty of time to clean up and make sure everything was perfect.

In the hot shower, Owen was thinking about Karen looking so sexy in her yoga pants. He wished he’d kissed her, just gone for it, what the hell? He knew she’d wanted him to, that she definitely would have been into it. Going with the fantasy, he pictured them making out in the hallway, getting her so turned on she was practically panting. Then they somehow wound up in the kitchen, and she was bent over the table, and he was pulling down those yoga pants, and then they were doing it from behind, and he was grabbing onto her hair, pulling on it, the way Deb used to like it pulled.

It was weird—now he felt like Deb was in the shower with him. He didn’t see her there—he wasn’t totally schizo—but he could
hear
her. She was giggling, like in the woods. Why wouldn’t she leave him alone? Was she jealous of Karen? Yeah, probably. After all, she wasn’t exactly happy with Karen when she was alive, screaming at her at the country club, so it figured she wouldn’t be thrilled with her when she was dead either. Owen didn’t like this sudden change in the giggling though. It reminded him of how she had changed in real life—loving him in the morning when they were playing student-teacher at the school and then turning and becoming so cold and distant in the car. It was like that game his mother used to play with him when he was a kid—moving her hand over her face, her expression turning from a smile to a sad face. He loved it when his mother had a happy face, but hated it when her expression changed, and it was the same way with Deb. He wanted her angry giggling to stop, he wanted to shut her up the way he had when he’d strangled her, but he couldn’t strangle her again.

He still heard the giggling when he got out of the shower and later in bed when he was trying to sleep it was still there. It wasn’t loud, he could barely hear it actually, but it was just loud enough to annoy the hell out of him, like a dripping faucet. It was worse than a dripping faucet though, because you can fix a dripping faucet, or put in ear plugs, but even with two pillows over his ears, he couldn’t make this stop.

I
N THE
morning, he still heard it. It wasn’t as loud as last night, but it still bothered him when he focused on it; maybe that was the key—to not focus on it. If he just ignored it, didn’t give it any attention, hopefully she’d give up and leave him alone.

Luckily he had a lot to do this morning so he had plenty of distractions. He figured Deb’s husband Mark had probably called the cops by now and soon they’d look for Deb, find her car in the parking lot, and then start searching everywhere for her. He put in a load of laundry along with his clothes from last night. Raymond wasn’t on the couch anymore—the fat fuck had probably crawled into bed with Owen’s mother in the middle of the night—but the whole downstairs still smelled like beer farts. After a quick bowl of Frosted Flakes, Owen went out back and vacuumed the inside of his mother’s car, especially the backseat, and then he vacuumed the trunk. He could still hear the giggling—the noise of the vacuum didn’t help block it out much—but it was okay; he could deal. When he didn’t think there could possibly be any hairs or fibers left, he was about to go back into the house, through the garage, when Kyle came out with his jacket on, looking angry.

“Where you goin’?” Owen asked.

“Out,” Kyle said.

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

Owen remembered when he was Kyle’s age, eleven years old, and realizing how shitty life at home was. Back then he’d wanted to get out of the house all the time, get as far away from Raymond and all the bullshit as he could. Then one day he decided he had to get out permanently, and he packed his backpack with everything he thought he needed for the rest of his life—a few pairs of jeans, some T-shirts, his toothbrush, and a bunch of comic books—and he took a shuttle bus to the Metro North train station in Katonah and bought a one way ticket into the city and planned to never see his mom, his little brother, or his asshole stepdad again. It was November, maybe December, and sunny when he left, but when he got out at Grand Central it was cloudy and much colder and he didn’t have a jacket. He walked to Times Square because he didn’t know the city that well and it was the only place he knew how to get to. Using some of the money he’d brought—his life savings, about forty bucks—he bought a hot dog and knish. When he finished it he couldn’t think of anything else to do so he just walked around, back and forth along the crowded streets, until it got dark and colder. He was tired and realized he had nowhere to sleep. He went down to the subway, figuring he’d sleep on a train, but the station smelled like piss, and he saw a couple of rats on the tracks. He decided that it sucked big time, and he went back to Grand Central and took a train back to Katonah. He called his mom to come pick him up. She was worried and crying, and he told her he was sorry, but he really wasn’t; he just said he was sorry because he knew that was what he was supposed to say. He knew Raymond was going to give him hell for running away, and he did. Later, Raymond came into his room and beat the shit out of him and even though his mom was right across the hall and heard him screaming for help, she didn’t do anything about it. Owen was used to it, though, and he’d learned an important lesson that day. He’d learned that, yeah, life at home sucked, but life in the rest of the world sucked too, so he might as well stick it out at home for as long as he could stand it.

“Hey, wait a sec,” Owen said to Kyle.

Kyle, half on his bike, about to leave the garage, looked back.

“You okay, bro?” Owen asked.

Kyle looked down, toward his Nikes. “Mom and Raymond are fighting again,” he said.

Owen knew this was why Kyle was taking off; he didn’t know why he’d bothered asking.

“So just ignore ’em,” Owen said.

“It’s really bad,” Kyle said.

Owen could tell Kyle was scared, just wanted to get away. He knew how that felt.

“Did Raymond say something to you?”

“No,” Kyle said.

“Did he
do
something to you?” Owen’s fists clenched, his fingernails digging into his palms.

“No.” Kyle was looking at his Nikes again.

Owen knew Kyle was lying about something, but he didn’t know what.

“Okay, but you remember what I told you,” Owen said. “If he ever does anything to you, if he ever lays a hand on you, you come to me, okay?”

Kyle got fully onto his bike and rode away.

Owen knew that Kyle needed him, and he was always there for his little bro, looking out for him. He took him to swimming practice, play dates, and brought him to the country club on weekends. He liked Kyle, thought he was the coolest kid in the world, and wanted to keep him away from Raymond. It was one of the main reasons why Owen had stayed living at home the past couple of years. Owen was afraid if he left, Raymond would start picking on Kyle, and Owen would rather take the hit himself than see Kyle get hurt. The way Owen saw it, it was his job to take care of his little brother; it was his main reason for living.

Back in the house, Owen heard his mother and Raymond fighting—yeah, they were really going at it, but it was no worse than usual. He was yelling like a lunatic—maybe cause he
was
a lunatic—calling her a cunt and a whore and, like always, she was just taking it, not saying anything back. It always amazed Owen how his mother could be that way, how she could take so much shit. Meanwhile, Owen was trying to figure out if there was anything else he needed to get rid of. He’d put the laundry in the dryer soon, so he didn’t have to worry about that anymore. He’d do some more cleaning up later, then he’d be able to chill.