The Last of the Twenty: Broken Pawns

Chapter 6

Raymond pulled into his driveway slowly, nervously glancing in the rearview mirror every minute or two at the silent girl starring out the window. The more time he had to think about all this the less he was convinced he should be trying to help the girl out. What was she? He knew for a fact that she had died. The word kept ringing through his head like a bad song that wouldn't go away. Died. Yet here she was, seemingly alive and well in the back seat of his car. Hell, he had even watched her heal herself like some sort of superhero out of one of the comic books he had obsessed over as a kid.

Keith hadn't said a word the entire trip. Even when it became obvious that Raymond had no intention of driving him home, instead driving them all to his own small house. At least he didn't have any close neighbors, bringing an unrelated teenage girl home at his age might raise a few questions he really didn't want to come up with an answer to.  

The silence was almost unbearable, finally broken as they waited for the garage door to slowly open up enough to let Raymond's banged up car in. The headlights reflected off the opposing wall long enough for Raymond to see Keith's face was still pale. Couldn't blame the kid, the way he felt Raymond was sure if he looked in the mirror himself he would share Keith's ghost-like complexion.

"Are you sure this is alright?" Kelly asked, her voice small and unsure, as if she was waiting to be kicked out and sent home at any second.

Keith's head jerked over in Raymond's direction. It didn't take a genius to read the look on his face, he was asking the same question. Raymond looked into his mirror and met Kelly's eyes in the reflection, the look of fear and desperation was obvious even in the low light. At that moment Raymond knew he was fully in, consequences be damned. There was no way he could let someone with that look out on their own, regardless of the situation or how scared it made him.

"Yes it's OK," he said quietly into the mirror, "let's just go inside and see if we can't figure this all out." He gave her his best attempt at a smile in the mirror, but she had dropped her eyes to her hands and missed his attempt to comfort her.

"Sorry about your car." she whispered still looking down.

Raymond turned the car off without responding, grateful for the noise of the garage door closing and giving him a fee seconds to think. His car was honestly the last thing that was on his mind at the moment, but she did bring the minor concern of explaining the damage to the front of his thoughts. As much as the thought of lying made him sick to his stomach, Raymond knew telling the truth would be out of the question. "Ah, don't worry about that," he said chuckling nervously, "I'll just call up my insurance and say I hit a deer and that it took off, won't cost me a thing to fix."

With obvious effort on her part Kelly smiled meekly and shook her head, unable to think of anything to say to chase away the uncomfortable silence that hung thickly in the air. After a moment the small light in the garage shut itself off and everything darkened, breaking their eye contact and giving her the chance to open the back door and slip out of the car.

Raymond motioned to the entrance of the house and watched Kelly let herself in, taking the extra moment to calm his own nerves before stepping out of the car himself. He had one foot out the door when Keith suddenly grabbed his arm and pulled him back behind the wheel. "Ray are you really sure about this? I mean, you saw what she did in the road. I must have forty or fifty pounds on her and I couldn't push her off me if my life depended on it, and I'm telling you, I really think it did.What are we going to do with her if she flips out again? I don't think either you or I could do a thing to stop her."

Raymond glanced at the darkened entryway of the house, almost laughing at the fact that he was more concerned about Kelly finding her way down the darkened hallway without tripping on anything than Keith's question. Was Keith right? Raymond knew for a fact that he was. Would either of them be able to stop the girl if she did become aggressive again? Probably not. Did Raymond think that was likely to happen? After years of trusting his gut instincts Raymond liked to think he had a pretty good read on people, and his gut instincts told him the likelihood of Kelly turning on them was slim to none.