Dirty Secrets

Part 24

Through the murky woods, Jack lugged the corpse by its wrists. Lyla gripped Keenan's ankles above his scuffed boots. Her shoulders ached, her lungs burned. Her gray and white striped top, moist with perspiration, clung to her arms and back. 

The darkness was impenetrable. She lost her cargo when her foot skid on a carpet of wet leaves. Dead legs slapped the mossy ground."I don't think... I can go... much further," she wheezed. She slouched forward, stomach cramping, dirty hands on her knees.

"I don't think... I can go... much further," she wheezed. She slouched forward, stomach cramping, dirty hands on her knees.

A few yards away, hazy moonlight filtered through the trees illuminating what appeared to be the crest of a hill.

"Come on," Jack urged. "Just a little farther." He offered an encouraging half-smile. "You got this."

She barely had the energy to nod. With a grunt, she seized Keenan's cold ankles and lifted. Jack's handsome features constricted as he strained. They dragged the body to the edge of the cliff, which overlooked a ravine. Jack planted his foot on Keenan's ribcage and gave the corpse a hard shove. The body thrashed through the dark thicket and stopped abruptly in the shadows thirty feet below.

They stood in the black quiet of the moment holding their breaths, neither uttering a word.

"Let's get out of here," she whispered. She stumbled with her first step and went down on her knee. He took her arm and lifted Lyla to her feet. She dreaded the difficult climb back to Jack's car.

As they hiked up the steep hillside Jack seemed to be second-guessing the impulsive decision, carrying the weight of the irreversible act on his broad shoulders.

Lyla said, "You can never say anything. Ever."

He didn't respond.

"Jack." She gulped the moist forest air. "This needs to be our secret."

"And what if they find him?"

"Look around. We're in the middle of nowhere. Nobody is ever gonna find him out here."

He didn't seem convinced. He helped her scale the sheer grade onto the road, then got behind the wheel of his car parked on the shoulder of the narrow mountain road.  

Gasping, Lyla collapsed into the passenger seat and pulled the door closed.

He hung his head, exhausted. Dark thoughts appeared to be churning behind his brown eyes. "I don't know if I can pretend like none of this happened," he muttered. "I mean--"

"We have to. My God, if his mother ever finds out..."

He examined his bruised knuckles and lacerated hands.

"Jack. She went to prison for stabbing some lady. Fact."

"He told you that?" he asked wearing a disbelieving smirk.

"Is she crazy? Yes. Is their whole family insane? Also yes."

He turned away, peering out the side window.

Lyla pressed her case. "We can't be stupid about this. If we keep this super lowkey and never say a word about what happened, eventually, we can put it all behind us."

"Eventually." He shook his head slowly. "You mean like in a hundred years? " He looked at her with wounded eyes.

"Promise me, Jack. Promise me," she pleaded. "No one can ever know."

He raised his head and squinted through the windshield into the darkness.

"What is that?"

Before Lyla could turn, an explosion rocked the vehicle. She opened her eyes to a gruesome discovery. The windshield had been shattered by the head of an enormous buck that had penetrated the car's passenger cabin, its twisted body splayed on the hood. The deer convulsed, exhaled its final breath, snot dripping from its leathery black nose, its wide eyes staring at her.

Covered with broken shards of glass, clumps of animal fur, and spatters of blood, she was horrified to find Jack impaled by the deer's antlers, puncturing his throat and pulverizing his jaw.

Emergency sirens rang in her ears.

With his chest cavity crushed, Jack's eyes were frozen in shock. His hand twitched with the final impulses of life.

A bell chimed.

She bunched her blankets into a ball and stifled her scream. She was back in her room, heart pounding, eyes wet. From her vantage point in bed, in the broken vanity mirror, Lyla could see the reflection of the frightened, trembling animal she'd become.

The doorbell chimed once more then she heard her dad answer the door.

Lyla pushed the Chemistry book from her thighs and sat up in bed, wiping the nightmarish image of Jack from her eyes.

She heard her dad speaking to someone in the entryway. She couldn't hear the visitor's voice but her father sounded stern and uninviting. She crept to her bedroom door and poked her head into the hall just as her dad said, "No. Don't come back." He closed the door forcefully.

Had the police returned?

She tiptoed across the room to her window, parted the curtains, and peered outside.

A lone figure walked slowly down the sidewalk, a woman in a long coat. When she looked back over her shoulder Lyla recognized the woman as the psychic from Darcy's party.