Shadow of the Past (23 page)

He reached up with his uninjured wrist
to take off his helmet when there was a rustle of movement from
behind him. Before he could turn to see what it was, something
crashed into the back of his helmet, knocking him forward and onto
his injured wrist. He rolled over, trying to get to his feet when
he was kicked in the side, knocking out his breath and rolling him
over onto his back.

Through the dirt on the helmet’s
plastic faceplate he saw Jack standing over him, a baseball bat in
hand and sanity or restraint nowhere to be found.

Mark scrambled backwards, moving out of
the way just in time to watch the bat swing past so close he could
see the pattern of the wood grain on its tip. He tried to move
faster, but his feet were losing traction on the wet leaves and
grass. When the next swing came he had just enough time to roll
with the impact. It flipped him back over onto his stomach and
impact on the helmet echoed through his skull.

Mark couldn’t see anything and for a
second he thought he’d been struck blind, but realized the blow had
been so hard that the plastic in the visor and cracked almost
completely, reducing everything to out of focus spider webs. There
was wetness all over the side of his face and he couldn’t tell if
what was rattling around in the helmet was shattered plastic or
skull.

He crawled forward with one hand,
holding the injured one up to his chest. He couldn’t see where he
was going, but before he could make any long-term plans another
blow from the bat fell straight across his back, driving him into
to the ground.

All his air was gone, and he
was gasping for breath so hard it felt like he was going to vomit
up dinner in order to make more breathing room.
It’ll choke you to death. You’ll die re-tasting some steak
and mushroom thing you didn’t like the first time and couldn’t even
pronounce
.

Jack kicked him again, rolling him onto
his back. Standing over him, Jack was a cracked, blurry phantom and
for a second he was Justin Corwin’s smoke covered form, eyes on
fire and darkness around him writhing with life.

But then the second was gone, and Jack
swung the bat down again, smashed squarely down on top of the
helmet. Mark’s entire body jerked uncontrollably for a moment, as
he felt shards of plastic dig down into his skull. The wetness on
the side of his face spread over his whole head. Mark flopped flat
onto his back, unable and unwilling to move. It was over, and if
Jack was going to keep swinging there wasn’t much helmet left for
him to beat his way through.

Over the ringing in his ears, Mark
thought he heard voices yelling, but he couldn’t be sure. A glob of
spit landed on the shattered visor, and then Jack backed away.
There was a squeal of tires and an engine revved away into the
night. After three ragged breaths, Mark convinced himself that Jack
was gone. After a dozen more he actually believed it.

This was fine, though. Mark resigned
himself to never moving again. He knew he should try, that he
needed to get the helmet off and see what kind of damage Jack had
done, but the shame and pain and fear were coiled around his body
like weights, tighter and heavier than they had ever had been
before.

All he wanted to do was lie there and
wait for someone to finish the job Jack had started.

“That looks like it hurts.”

The bored resident stitching up Mark’s
scalp didn’t even glance over at Detective Prescott, who had poked
his head around the ER’s totally misnamed privacy curtain. “My
patient will be ready in a few minutes, Detective.”

“Of course,” the Detective said, waving
an apology but holding his ground.

At the park, when Mark had finally
gotten to his feet and managed to get the helmet-remains off his
head, he staggered towards the stalled out V, having decided if he
was going to bleed to death he was going to do it in his own bed.
He made it about five feet before he toppled back to the ground.
Thankfully, it was just in time for a college girl coming home from
a date to see him. She pulled over, and after a sudden freak out at
Mark’s blood covered face, she insisted that she was going to take
him to the hospital.

The hospital wait was minimal, but Mark
had time enough to call the house and leave a message for Joe about
what happened. Clearly, he realized later, he had sustained massive
amounts of head trauma.

They were cleaning Mark up when Joe
arrived, not nearly drunk as Mark had feared but drunk enough for
him to be a raging dick to the girl that picked him up. Mark could
only sit in the exam room listening in embarrassment as they
checked him over. Despite what Mark thought was a spot-on
diagnosis, his skull was not crushed and he was far from bleeding
to death. In fact, all he had was a mild concussion, a sprained
wrist and a single cut that would require stitches.

Four of them even.

Way to go, drama queen. “Oh,
oh, I’m dying! I give up, the bad men win!”

When the resident finished his
stitching, he droned a lecture to Mark about not exerting himself,
keeping the stitches clean and how they would dissolve out when the
healing was done. For once, Mark hoped Joe had been there but he'd
disappeared from earshot after his shouting match with Mark’s good
Samaritan, probably to arrange the pickup of Mark’s abandoned
scooter.

“So what’s the deal?” the Detective
asked as the resident passed him on the way out of the
faux-cubicle.

“I got into an accident. What’s the
deal with you? You like hanging out in hospitals?”

“One of the uniforms settled down your
Uncle earlier, and he knew I had an interest in what’s going on
with you so he gave me a buzz.”

“That’s good to know. I’ve got some
papers due soon, my teachers going to send you my
grades?”

“C’mon, Mark,” Detective Prescott said.
“You’re a smart kid. You know I’ve got to keep an eye on what’s
happening with you. Plus, I actually detect things for a living,
and that tells me this was more than just some accident. Unless
you’ve got some nitrous stowed away in that scooter of
yours.”

“No, I don’t. I just got unlucky.
Spoiler alert: It’s kind of my specialty.”

“Let me help you, Mark. I think you’re
not telling me something. Nothing really bad, but something that
you might know that can help me find out who hurt Clara and Ms.
Kennedy. Maybe even stop who’s trying to hurt you.”

“
Jesus, will you let it go!”
Mark got up and stuck his head out the curtain, desperate for Joe’s
bellowing interference. “Can I go? The guy didn’t say if I can go.
Do I stay here or what?”

“Mark, c’mon,” David said, putting a
hand n his shoulder. “Let me help, before something else happens to
you. Or someone else.”

Mark shrugged the hand off, forcefully
enough that it made him dizzy for a second. “No! Fuck, this was
nothing, okay? I got unlucky, I made a mistake, and then WHAM! It
has nothing to do with Clara or Ms. Kennedy or Cor--”

“What the hell is this?”

Drunken aggression to the
rescue!

“Mr. Nelson, I just wanted to ask your
nephew a questions about his accident, and--”

“What the hell for? He was screwing
around and he got into an accident. End of story. I don’t know why
he has to have you pestering him over it.”

“I just want to make sure he’s
safe.”

“Oh, and I don’t? C’mon, Mark. Let’s
get out of here.”

Mark tried leaning his head against the
glass of the window on the way home, but every bump of the road
rattled his brain so much it made him want to throw up. After the
sexual high, the savage beating that came after and interminable
hospital wait and exam, he was thoroughly spent.

Hey, maybe if we’re lucky
you’ll turn into one of those weird sex perverts that can only get
sexual satisfaction if he gets the shit kicked out of him after
fooling around. That’d make life pretty interesting, at
least.

When the car stopped in the driveway,
Joe just sat staring out at the garage. Mark waited a few moments,
but when no explanation came, he went to leave. Joe’s hand clamped
down on his arm, holding him in place.

“I know I give you a hard time,” Joe
said still looking straight ahead. His voice was something Mark had
never heard from him before: calm. “I do it because I have to look
out for you. Because no one else will. But I’m also not dumb enough
to think that this was from some accident.”

Mark opened his mouth to say something,
but Joe gave his arm a squeeze that let Mark know that he wasn’t
interested in what he had to say.

“I know you never wanted to be here,
especially after your Aunt died, but we’re all each other has. It’s
a pain in the ass, but that’s the way it is. And right now,
whatever is going on with you, you just need to settle it down,
okay? I’m at the end of my rope with you.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Mark
said. “I was just driving, and there was a--”

Joe slammed a fist down on
the steering wheel. “Goddamnit! I am trying my damnedest not to
think about the fact that that is a hospital bill we
cannot
afford, or the
fact you’re going to be bugging me for money to fix the damage to
your little scooter, or even the fact that you could have been
killed, so don’t fucking lie to me! You give me this attitude all
the time, you start spending time with this girl, you start getting
into fights, I have to talk to the police, and now this? I don’t
expect you to tell me what’s going on, but I want it to stop! You
better just stop it, because the one way I know how to make you I
promised your Aunt I wouldn’t use. I swear to God, Mark, she’d be
begging me to smack you around by now if she were still with
us.”

Joe’s hand was still on his arm, but
all Mark wanted to do was shake it off and run as fast as he could.
Finally Joe spoke, his voice going back down to normal.

“You need to fix it, get rid of it, and
get it done, because I am tired of this shit. You wanna act like
Mr. Tough Guy? Fine, you solve your own messes, okay? I’m telling
you right now, I’m not bailing you out of jail and I’m sure as hell
not going to let you throw your life away. You’re going to
graduate, get a job, and start acting like a responsible fucking
adult. Anything else is just unacceptable, okay? I’m not going to
deal with it anymore.”

“Like you’ve dealt with it at all,”
Mark muttered, slipping out of his grasp and heading for the back
door. Mark made it halfway before Joe grabbed him and spun him
around.

“I mean it,” Joe hissed at him. “I am
not going to go through some crazy rebellious teen bullshit. You
fix this. You make it through, or there are going to be some broken
promises in this house. Clear?”

Mark did his best to screw up a mask of
defiance, but all it did was make his face throb even more.
“Clear?” Joe said again, louder, and giving Mark a
shake.

“Clear,” Mark said, just letting
go.

“Good,” Joe said, letting Mark’s arms
go. “Now go to bed. It’s fuckin’ late.”

Chapter
Twenty-Two

Mark didn’t go to school for the next
couple of days. He and Joe only spoke of it that Monday morning
when Joe poked his head in the door to the attic room and yelled,
“You going to school?”

“No,” Mark called down. He’d been
sleeping off and on as the emergency room doctors directed him too,
although he was more exhausted than he was tired. “Fair enough,”
Joe called up closing the door.

His head still throbbed, but did with
less intensity when he was lying down, so he had stayed that way
for most of the day. He flipped channels for some of the time but
mostly just stared up at the ceiling, the TV just droning
background noise. He thought about getting up and getting something
to eat, but decided against it. He drifted off to sleep a couple of
times, but thankfully, he didn’t dream.

Exactly when he thought it would, the
phone rang. Mark thought about letting the machine downstairs get
it, but then decided against it.

“Hello?” His voice was dry and
cracked.

“Mark? Is that you?” Christine
said.

“Yeah, it’s me. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” she said, obviously
confused. “I was wondering what was up with you. I missed you
today.”

“Yeah,” Mark said, turning his
attention to the far window.

“So . . .” she said a few moments
passed. “Were you just ditching or what?”

“No, I . . . I got into an
accident.”

“Oh my god! Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I just didn’t feel like being in
school, and my Uncle was cool with it, so . . . y’know.”

“Mark, what happened?” she
said.

“I had an accident on the V on the way
home last night. Nothing major. I just sprained my wrist, and got a
little bit of a concussion. I’m okay, just not really school
material right now.”

“Oh my God, why didn’t you call me last
night? Or this morning?”

“I didn’t want to bother you,” he said,
twisting the phone cord around his fingers. This was going exactly
as he thought it would, but it still made him nauseous.