Bad Games

76



After a few months, the Lamberts were finally ready to entertain. Nothing big—just a few friends over for dinner and drinks.

The “subject” was carefully avoided at first, almost to an awkward degree, making conversation hollow and generic. But as the drinks continued, and the mood lightened, it was all but impossible for someone not to take that first plunge.

Long-time friends, Jamie and Alexis Brown, were those first two.

“So how are you two coping?” Jamie asked. “I mean really.”

The remaining couple, Tom and Jane Jenkins, shared an uncertain glance.

“I think we’ve crossed the last big hurdle,” Patrick said after he and Amy shared their own uncertain glance.

With the exception of police and close family, the couple had not shared any details about their ordeal at Crescent Lake to anyone, yet knew it would ultimately surface one day and need to be addressed. They had even rehearsed what should and should not be divulged. The gist of the tragedy had already been learned (how could it not after the media coverage it had received), but it was the details that were shaky ground. A vague synopsis of the goings-on could be discussed, but gruesome particulars (Patrick biting off a nose; Amy jamming a nail file into a man’s balls; et al) were better left locked away in a vault that even the Lamberts struggled to open.

“How so?” Alexis prodded.

Taking a healthy pull from her chardonnay, Amy said, “Patrick and I have been seeing a therapist who has helped us a great deal. He helps us try to place the incident in the same category as a bad dream. It will surely haunt us, likely forever, but time will hopefully be our ally. The more we can distance ourselves from everything and remove all traces of the affair, the less impact it will have over time. At least that’s what we’re being fed.” Amy ended with an awkward laugh. The table’s placating laugh that followed was even more awkward.

“What about the trial?” Jamie asked.

“Of course we’ll eventually have to revisit some unpleasant memories at the trial, but we’re not even thinking about that right now. Right now is all about healing immediate wounds.” She took another decent swallow from her glass. “Like I said; lessen the impact…”

“Speaking of wounds, how are…?” Tom motioned his hand over his own torso, hinting at the physical wounds Amy and Patrick had endured.

Patrick touched the scar on his stomach; the wounds on his face had long been healed. “Well, they’re a reminder of course.” He looked at Amy who rubbed the spot above her right breast. “Something that has unfortunately tattooed us with the memory of everything, but…as Amy said, we’re hoping time will be our ally.”

“Any pain?” Jane asked.

“Not too bad anymore,” Amy said, rubbing her chest again. “It was pretty bad at first. God bless Codeine and wine.”

Another placating laugh from the table, though less awkward than before.

The six adults sat in silence for a beat. Some took sips from their drinks, others poked at the remains on their plates. It was only a matter of time before the next question was carefully measured and delivered.

“How about the kids?” Jamie asked. “How are they holding up?”

Patrick said, “The psychologists we’ve worked with said they have youth on their side. Said that at their age, their resiliency can prove surprisingly strong.”

Alexis said, “You seem as if you don’t agree.”

Patrick gave a partial shrug. “I’d have to agree as far as Caleb is concerned, but Carrie…” He glanced at Amy. His look asked his wife if she felt comfortable with continuing, and it asked if this was indeed one of those details that was better left alone. She answered him by answering the table.

“Carrie’s been struggling ever since we got home,” she said. “She was sleeping with us up until a couple of weeks ago. She still wakes up screaming and crying from nightmares.”

Alexis put a hand to her chest. “Oh, the poor thing.”

Tom wrinkled his brow. “Wait…so Caleb’s okay?”

“We don’t know,” Patrick said. “He seems okay. In fact, he seems a little too okay. And to be honest, that has us a bit worried. We asked the doctor about it; we were worried that he was in shock, or so traumatized by everything that he had somehow suppressed it. But one of the doctors told us that if he hasn’t exhibited any distressing behavior thus far, then he should be fine. I’m not sure I agree with all that, but hey, what the hell do I know?”

“I’m not sure I agree either,” Tom said. “How could it not affect him?”

“The doctor said it most assuredly did, but that because of Caleb’s age, he likely couldn’t comprehend what the hell was going on. Again, it goes back to the whole resiliency thing with kids—the younger they are, the more resilient, I guess. Perhaps he’s already done what Amy and I are hoping to do, and chalked the whole thing up to a bad dream.”

Tom’s frowned remained. “Strange that he hasn’t even shown the slightest signs of post-traumatic stress.”

Amy shrugged. “Both kids slept with us when we got home. We insisted on it. But after a few days Caleb wanted to go back to his own bed. He’s been fine ever since; he putters around here as though nothing happened.”

“Which is fine by us,” Patrick said. “Carrie’s been struggling so much, it helps us devote a little more attention towards soothing her without having to worry if Caleb is receiving equal care.”

“As odd as it may sound,” Amy began, “I suppose their reactions mimic their personalities. Carrie has always been the high-strung, extroverted one. Caleb could be sitting next to you on the sofa and sometimes you’ll forget he’s even there.”

“He’s a tough little bugger—just like his old man,” Jamie said with a smile.

Patrick returned the gesture, but it was labored.

Jamie played with something on his plate, his attention obviously elsewhere. Patrick sensed something coming he wouldn’t like.

“How did you do it, Patrick?” Jamie asked. He then looked at Amy. “How did you both do it?”

Patrick ate a mouthful of food as a means to buy time. After swallowing, he feigned ignorance. “Do what?”

“How did you manage…to do what it was that you did…to come out alive?”

“Jamie,” Alexis said.

Patrick and Amy shared what seemed like their one-hundredth glance before Patrick fixed on Jamie. “Like I said, Jamie—we’re trying to forget it.”

Jamie held up a hand. “Okay, I’m sorry. I was just…no, I’m sorry.”

Patrick smiled genuinely. These were his friends; they had been drinking; they were curious. Likely, he’d be the same way. “It’s okay, man. Maybe some day.”

A whine emerged from beneath the table. All six adults leaned to one side and looked below them. Oscar stood by Patrick’s feet, wagging the stump that used to be his tail.

“Now here’s someone we could all take a lesson from,” Patrick said. “The poor thing had his tail sliced off, and all he cares about is getting some leftovers.”

The table laughed—a good laugh this time; no placating; nothing awkward.

“I guess if you can find one good thing to come from all of this…” Alexis said.

Amy snorted. “Speak for yourself. He eats more than all four of us combined. I don’t know where he puts it in that little body of his. That mangy mutt is going to eat us out of house and home.”

Another good laugh from the table.

When it faded, Tom asked, “You don’t think he’s a reminder? The dog?”

It was a good question, one that Patrick had never really considered. He looked at Amy for help. She looked mildly annoyed at the query.

“He makes Carrie happy. We’re not about to take that away from her,” was all she said.

Tom smiled and nodded fast, seemingly realizing that he too had just joined Jamie Brown on the Inappropriate Dinner Conversation Team. “Good, good, I’m glad,” he said.



* * *



Dessert and coffee were done, and a brief silence returned once again. Clinks and tinks from glasses, plates, and silverware played a broken tune.

Carrie’s sudden scream from upstairs broke the silence.

Both Patrick and Amy leapt from the table, the squeak of their chairs on the wooden floor like sneakers on a basketball court.

The couple bounded upstairs, the dinner guests leaving their seats and forming a group at the base of the stairs.

Carrie was upright in bed, sobbing, her sheets soaked with sweat. Amy wiped her daughter’s matted hair from her eyes and flashed on Carrie’s insistence to have her bangs cut when they first arrived at Crescent Lake. She began to cry with her daughter as she held her tight. Patrick sat at the foot of the bed, rubbing his daughter’s shaking legs. He lowered his head and fought back his own tears.



* * *



Patrick returned to the group at the base of the stairs alone. He explained that Carrie had a nightmare and that Amy was consoling her. He did not have to ask everyone to leave. They took the cue.



* * *



Hugging his final guest before shutting the door behind them, Patrick returned upstairs to Carrie’s room where she had managed to fall back to sleep in Amy’s arms.

“Are you going to stay in here with her tonight?” he whispered.

She shook her head, then slowly slid her way out from beneath her daughter, gently lowering her head back down to the pillow.

They checked Caleb’s room next. He was fast asleep; Carrie’s screams hadn’t woken him.

“He could sleep through an earthquake,” Patrick whispered as he shut his son’s door.

The two walked into their bedroom where Amy sat on the bed and put her face in both hands.

“You okay?” Patrick asked.

She looked up, sighed. “Yeah. I just want it all to be over. I want the bad dream to end.”

He sat beside her. “I do too, baby.” She leaned in and rested her head on his chest. He kissed the top of her head and started running his fingers over her back. “Tell you what, why don’t you go get ready for bed. I’ll go downstairs and clean up.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll come down and help.”

He pulled her in, squeezed, and kissed the top of her head again. “I insist.”

She took her head off his chest and kissed him. “I love you.”



* * *



Patrick had cleared the dining room table, and was now elbow deep in suds at the kitchen sink. He thought about Jamie’s question:

“How did you do it? How did you manage to…do what it was that you did…to come out alive?”

He set the plate he’d been holding back into the sink and shut the water off. How had they done it? How had he done it? That man who did those things. That man who shot, stabbed, and mauled like a savage beast. Was that him? Standing here now, safe in his suburban kitchen, knowing Jim was dead and that Arty was locked away, he felt as though he hadn’t done those things—that someone else had. He felt a vague connection to it as though it were a scene in a film he had seen more than once. Now, in retrospect, he felt removed from the blood lust that had surged through his veins during that horrific moment.

A tingle began at the base of his spine, and then tickled ice cold all the way to the top of his head…because he had done those things. My God. He had.

And to answer your question, Jamie, I have no f*cking idea how we managed to do it. No f*cking idea at all. I guess when it comes to family…

Patrick thought of the nose he’d bitten off Jim Fannelli’s face and immediately filled a glass of water. He gargled with it then spat. He repeated the process, and then set the empty glass to one side. He placed both hands on the sink’s ledge to steady himself, his head down.

“This is going to take awhile, isn’t it?” he said quietly to the sink full of dishes and water and soap. “A hell of a lot longer than Amy and I think it—”

A second scream that night cut him off. It was not Carrie’s this time, it was Amy’s: a short, painful cry.

Again Patrick found himself sprinting up the stairs. In his bedroom he found Amy sitting on the floor, clutching her right foot with both hands. Her left foot was covered in a bedroom slipper; her right was bloodied and dotted with silver thumbtacks.

“What the hell?” Patrick said.

Amy continued clutching her foot with both hands, rocking back and forth in pain.

Patrick dropped to his knees and began examining her foot. “What the hell happened?”

Amy kept a tight grip on her ankle with her left, and began slowly plucking the tacks free with her right, wincing after each withdrawal. “My slipper,” she said.

Patrick spun on both knees and spotted the solitary slipper. He picked it up and turned it over. A dozen silver thumbtacks spilled out. “What the f*ck? Who did this?”

Amy continued working on her foot. “How the hell should I know?”

Patrick hopped to his feet and immediately went to Carrie’s room. She was in the same position they had left her earlier, fast asleep. He closed the door and went to Caleb’s room. His son was turned on his side away from him, lying still. Patrick called his name. Caleb didn’t answer. His tiny torso beneath the blankets rose and fell with each breath. He was asleep.

A wave of panic swept through Patrick’s head. Had one of their friends done it? No. No way. Even the hardest of practical jokers would have found such a gag awful even under normal circumstances.

Jim was dead. He was sure of it. He was dead. Dead. He saw it. Dead.

Arty was locked away. Locked far away from them. Had he gotten out? Tracked them down? No. Impossible. It was absolutely impossible. But Patrick did know one thing: he would call right now. He would call and check. Call right f*cking now and check to make sure that bastard was still locked up tight.

Patrick thought of serial killer Ted Bundy; he remembered reading how Bundy had managed to escape the police twice after capture.

My God, what if he escaped, Patrick? That means he was here. God Almighty he was HERE.

“No,” he said. Insisted. Pleaded. “No, no, no.”

Patrick locked Caleb’s door and pulled it tight, then did the same for Carrie’s. He sprinted back to his bedroom, his eyes wide and wild. He began going through their closets, pushing and shoving clothes out of the way, ripping them off their hangers and tossing them over his shoulder, checking every conceivable hiding spot.

Amy was still on the floor attending to her foot. Her own eyes grew wild from her husband’s frenzy. “What? What?”

Patrick ignored her; he just continued with his frantic search. The bathroom next.

“Patrick!”

He emerged from the bathroom a minute later. Satisfied their entire bedroom was empty save for him and his wife, Patrick turned to Amy, his eyes still lidless. “Stay here and keep this door locked.”

He flipped the lock, pulled the door tight, and checked the handle to ensure it didn’t budge. He heard Amy call after him one last time as he bolted downstairs to make the call.

Curled over on one side, his back to the bedroom door, four-year-old Caleb was desperately holding in a giggle, wishing he could have seen the look on his Mommy’s face after playing his funny joke on her.


THE END