Finally I could stand the silence no longer. “He was dead, Barrett. No doubt about that. We all saw it.”
“Maybe he wasn’t,” he said. “We didn’t check for a pulse. He could have still been alive.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Barrett. He was dead. His neck was broken and his head was bleeding like crazy. You could tell from his eyes, he was dead.”
He waved toward the jacket. “Then how do you explain that? And my car? Someone beat the shit out of my car and wiped blood everywhere and threw a dead man’s jacket in there.”
“The only explanation I can think of is that there was someone else there and they saw what happened and they’re screwing with us.” I shook my head. “That’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Barrett laughed bitterly. “That doesn’t make sense. If someone had seen us they’d have called the cops. Not gone to all the trouble to strip a body down, come all the way over here and do this and then throw the jacket in my back seat. Hell, one of the arms is inside out like Mason took it off himself.”
I looked at him, suddenly feeling much older than my 16 years. I could feel the vise of the trailer park closing in around me. I’d never get out of this place.
“Then what’s your suggestion, Barrett? How’d this happen?”
“I don’t know,” he shook his head. “But it’s three in the morning and any ideas I can think of are too scary to even think about.”
I scoffed. “You’ve watched too many horrors movies.”
He leaned forward and looked me in the eye. “Yeah. Exactly.”
A scraping of slow footsteps on gravel reached us. It was coming from the direction of my neighbor’s trailer. We both whipped our heads around to look, but of course couldn’t see anything. It was dark, after all. I flipped on the flashlight and shone it in the general direction of the footsteps and both Barrett and I screamed and fell out of our chairs, scrambling backward.
“Ha, ha,” said Fannie Mae. “Very funny.”
My heart beat wildly in my chest. I looked wide-eyed at Barrett and saw the same look in his eyes. I’m not sure what either one of us were expecting but it was obvious that for a moment when I’d turned the flashlight on that we’d both seen something completely different standing in front of us.
I forced myself to control my breathing, pushing the air out of my lungs. I rose shakily to my feet, leaning heavily on the lawn chair. Barrett was still on the ground looking like he was in the middle of a massive coronary.
Fannie Mae stood there about 10 feet in front of us, in the middle of the road. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a little tank top. She had a hoodie on, but it wasn’t zipped up, and a pair of flip-flops. Her hair hung in wet strings down her back. She had a shit-eating grin on her face. I’m guessing it was because she’d scared the living crap out of us.
“Dammit, Fannie Mae,” Barrett wheezed. “Was that really necessary?”
“What?” She smiled sweetly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Why are you so jumpy?”
She looked at me, a twinkle in her eye. I could tell through her white tank top that she wasn’t wearing a bra and it was either a little cold or that she was glad to see me. I rolled my eyes.
“Because of that,” I said. I flashed the light on Barrett’s car.
“Oh my God!” She ran over to me and put her hand on my arm, gripping me hard. “What happened to the car?”
“We don’t know. I woke up during the thunder and looked out the window and saw it. We came out to get a better look.”
She took a step toward it, letting go of my arm. I sighed and grabbed her hand to keep her from going closer. “Is that blood on it? Oh my God,” she gasped.
“Yeah, that’s blood,” Barrett said. He’d finally regained his feet.
I flashed the light on the jacket where it lay on the ground. I squeezed Fannie Mae’s hand. “Look.”
She let out a little scream and buried her head in my chest. “What… what is that? Where’d it come from?”
I pulled her off me. “That’s Mason Smith’s letterman’s jacket. He was wearing it tonight. We found it in the car.”
She looked back at the car, gripping my hand so hard it hurt. “Is, is he in there?”
“No. Just the jacket was. In the backseat.”
“He was dead, Dukey.”
Barrett came over to us. “Yeah, we’ve been over that part already.”
She stepped away from me, still holding my hand. Tried to look at the car and then finally sighed and let me my hand go. She had more courage than Barrett and I combined as she just walked up to the car and inspected both the front and back seat. She didn’t say anything as she looked over the car completely. Barrett and I let her have at it. She was smarter than the both of us combined and we all knew it.
She finally came back over to us and looked at me with a critical eye. “Are you guys screwing with me?”
“No,” I said, taking her seriously.
She pointed, “That’s Mason’s jacket?”
“Yes.”
She pointed behind her, “You found the car this way? Broken into? Blood smeared everywhere? And the jacket was in the back seat?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
Fannie Mae bit her lower lip in concentration. “Then what the hell happened?”
Barrett broke in, “That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out. I told you.”
She completely ignored him. “Is someone playing a prank on us, Dukey?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “It’s pretty elaborate if they are. They stripped the jacket off his body, got a bunch of blood from somewhere, smeared it everywhere, and then broke into Barrett’s car and smeared it some more. It doesn’t make sense as a joke. Or a prank.”
She nodded. “You’re right. And I know he was dead. I could tell. Should we go back and see if the body is still there?”
I looked around the Acres, noting the quietness of the night. Not even the usual troublemakers were up and about. The power was still out and I could taste the rain we’d missed on the air. We weren’t done with that storm yet if my nose had anything to say about it. A cool breeze rustled the air and swayed the swing in my neighbor’s yard. The sky was heavy with the mostly full moon that still struggled to free itself from the clouds. It was more than a mile walk each way to the graveyard but I knew they’d do it if I asked them to. Even under the best of circumstances I wouldn’t want to do it, but at three in the morning on a crazy night like this?
“No way,” I said. “It’s too far and it doesn’t add up. Regardless of if he’s still there or not, someone is still screwing with us here. We should stay together here and wait things out.”
Barrett was looking at Fannie Mae with a new look in his eye. It wasn’t often that he had a flash of intuition but I could tell by his face that he’d just thought of something. Fannie Mae could tell, too.