Hag Night (51 page)

ONE

The road bumped, rattled, and bit through Doreen’s stomach.  She could feel the car’s shocks failing at every dirt pothole, the wheels groaning as dust kicked up in its tail-wind like the ghosts of the river men her mother had warned her about as a child. Each bump felt like a fresh punch in the kidney.

Breathe ... breathe ...

She closed her eyes, hunched over, bit her lip.

It would have been bad enough being driven along a dirt road if she were stone sober, Doreen thought. Drunk, it was outright torture.

“Where are we going?”

“This girl Jessie’s house in South Lyon,” Katy answered.

Doreen wrinkled her nose. “South Lyon?  What the hell is in South Lyon?”

“Jessie’s house.”

She groaned and forced out a sharp burp that made her wince. Her stomach was on the verge of letting loose.

“Blake, slow down. Seriously.”

Blake shrugged his shoulders and lifted his hand to check the speedometer.

“Dude, I’m going five under.”

“I don’t care ... I feel like I’m gonna puke ... ”

“Don’t!  Seriously!  This is my mom’s car!”

“Just pull over ... ”

Katy patted her shoulder. “No, we’re almost there. You can make it.”

“I want to go home. Why are we going to fucking South Lyon?”

“We won’t stay long.”

“You assholes should’ve left me at Razor.”

Katy snarled. “You called us to come get you.”

They hit another pothole and Doreen almost lost control of her stomach. The scare gave her a moment of frantic agreeability. She accepted it as clarity.

“I know. Sorry. How far away are we?”

“About five minutes.”

“Where’s Drew?”

She wasn’t too far gone to notice the look Katy gave Blake, Blake gave Vic, and Vic gave Lindsey, no matter how smoothly it had been executed.

“We’ll figure everything out when we get there and you feel better.”

That wouldn’t do at all. It wasn’t any good leaving Drew with single girls, or really any girls at all.

She’d lost track of him on their way out of the club and that made her exceedingly nervous. She couldn’t protest, though, because just then she was feeling like all the legions of Hell were storming through her esophagus with blazing torches of undigested burrito and unsettled alcohol. Besides, Drew would figure out where she was on his own if he wanted to. He seemed to always find her when he needed her, no matter the obstacles or distractions. He was good that way ... and sometimes bad that way, depending on who Doreen asked. She liked it well enough, though, and the thought made her want to smile. She could still feel the burn of his kiss on her lips and in her nose, the press of his hips against her thighs.

It had been a long night. A good, long night.

There were two ways for Doreen to leave Razor in the early hours of a Saturday morning. She either left with a lover on her arm (Drew for the time being) and a few grams of coke in her system, or she left relatively sober and supremely disappointed.  A little closer to death, either way. And so long as dying was inevitable, she preferred the former to the latter.

Likewise, being a creature of polarity rather than habit, Doreen also had two types of friends in her life. They were easy enough to differentiate. There were her friends who doped and the ones who didn’t. The ones who doped hadn’t been around nearly as long but they were exactly seven times more fun to go out with on a Friday night and they were always very generous when it came to portioning out ‘little doctors’: the new drug of choice within their circle.

That was how she’d met Drew, or part of it anyway. The little doctors.

He was great. He was the best she’d ever had. Tall, thin, fair hair, white teeth, always smiling, always wanting to have a good time. And he always had a good time, regardless of the circumstances. He never let anyone kill his buzz. When you brought Drew out with you, you were guaranteed a night you would hardly remember and never forget. 

Doreen did the best she could to keep Drew from her other friends (her old friends from high school like Katy and Lindsey and Vic and Blake), who’d gone away to other colleges and hadn’t run awash in the sweeping wave of debauchery that was a university campus. Not like her. They didn’t understand what she saw in Drew and probably never would. She’d only offered his presence a couple of times to her girlfriends when they were all back home for winter break, and their frowns were enough to dissuade her from ever bringing him up around them again ... except, of course, when she was thoroughly wasted. Like in Blake’s mother’s car just then. But they could sense his grip on her all the time.

She didn’t blame Katy and the rest of them for being irritated with her. She would have felt the same way if she’d been called for a ride at one forty-five in the morning. The bar closed at two and she was too inebriated on a mixture of coke and vodka to drive herself home. On top of that, she was too poor a judge of character to hitch a ride (and part of her knew it).  Drew, of course, was out of the question because he never came through when she really needed him.  It was part of the game he played, and she didn’t blame him for it.  She hated needy people.  That was why she forgave Katy’s sharp tongue and even felt the smallest tingle of regret beneath the vomit threatening her lips.

She would make amends tomorrow, she decided.  She would be feeling much better in the morning.  All she had to do was hold out for the rest of the dirt road, suffer through the detour to Jessie’s house because she had no right to dictate their plans now that she’d essentially ruined their night, and curl into her bed for about ten hours praying she wouldn’t get the hangover hammer too hard in the meantime.

Then everything will be fine.  I’ve only been back a week.  We can patch things up.  I’ll settle down for a while to make it up to them.

That seemed to settle it.

So she accepted the weave and wobble of the tires, which sometimes narrowly avoided the potholes but often struck them full force, and closed her eyes.  She tried to remember the second verse of “Creep” to keep herself from thinking about dying friendships and undercooked burrito while the dark country roads passed by, but wound up wondering just what the hell she was doing with her life and how long it would take for her soul to leave her body.

Did she have to be dead?

TWO

It was a large house. Brand new, too. No more than six months old. Three floors, a sizable, finished basement (big screens and billiards included), lots of windows with flowing white curtains, and classic leather furniture staged in welcoming postures throughout. Five bedrooms, three and a half baths, somewhere in the neighborhood of three and four thousand square feet. The landscaping around the winding front walk was immaculate. Bright flowers were everywhere. Half of the home’s exterior was made of sensible brick, half of equally sensible aluminum siding in dull tones to make it seem older than it really was.

Inside, the floors were hardwood in the halls and kitchen, carpeted in the living room, family room, dining room, study, and upper floors. Cream carpeting, too, because that was non-offensive and the absence of real color drew attention to the colorful walls, which were adorned with equal measures of abstract artwork from local festivals and generic black and white photography. The kitchen counters were pristine and marble. The appliances were dark gray steel. The bed in the master suite had a silk canopy like the ones in sexy ‘80s music videos. There was no dust to be found anywhere.

In other words, it was one of the cookie-cutter types that had been breeding subdivisions across the farmland for well over a decade.  Doreen knew them well. South Lyon and Northville were little more than testaments to the triumph of a new wave of Suburban Manifest Destiny over forests and farmland. Jessie’s house was the crowning achievement of millions of years of evolution.

Doreen had plenty of time to study the exterior on their approach because there was nothing else to look at. There weren’t any other houses on the street (though she doubted it would stay that way much longer) and she needed something to focus on to distract her from nausea.

At first, the only aspect of the home that struck her as strange was the driveway. It was at least fifty yards long and another twenty wide. There didn’t seem to be any reason for it to be so big, unless the owners were expecting to throw a lot of parties. Big parties. Governor’s Balls and what not. Maybe that would explain the garage, too, which was almost twice as big as the three car monstrosities in the Northville McMansions. What else could they use it for?  It looked more like a good-sized warehouse and docking area than a traditional Mercedes stable.

Any further thoughts on the matter were driven away when a fresh sting of indigestion burned up her throat.

Deep breaths, she told herself. Almost there.

She turned her attention back to the house.

It was alone in its cul-de-sac, the grim foreboding of a whole new set of McMansions that would soon overtake the surrounding forests, making the earth a barren wasteland of discarded construction equipment and fast food wrappers.

In that sense, it was a wasteland already.

From the entrance to the subdivision all the way to the front of the house, there was nothing but the stumps of neutered trees and varied chunks of clay, presumably from the basement excavation. After the girl’s house,

(What was her name?  Jackie?  Jamie?

Jessie.

Right.)

the woods still stood as proud as ever, though the trees mourned their sudden exposure to suburbia. It was easy to imagine those branches bending down to pluck a startled victim or two to exorcise their grief. And by the look of it, there were plenty of candidates during the day. All the CAT tractors scattered across the adjacent properties couldn’t have been for show. Any unfortunate worker wandering into the woods to take a shit while the port-o-johns were full or calling his wife to tell her he’d be home late could be a target.

Or Doreen could be next.

She looked at those branches and shivered, hoping the night wouldn’t take her out their way.

Jessie’s house was an oasis of grass amid mounds of clay, but the sod was as dark and healthy as any Doreen had ever seen. Rather than warming the scenery, it made the house seem isolated. Frightening. For some reason, it reminded her of the Addams family house, the way it glared. Even with the modern accents. As much as she’d loved the show and the movies as a kid, it wasn’t endearing in the least.

“We’re here.”

Blake guided the SUV into the driveway next to a blue Ford sedan and stopped.

The last shift into park nearly broke Doreen’s self-control completely. She could feel vomit rising in her throat again.

Blake and Vic shot each other a look while Katy and Lindsey helped her out of the car.

“Come on.  We won’t stay long.  You look like you’re gonna be sick, anyway.  You should lie down for a while.”

Doreen didn’t like the way they were pulling on her.  She shrugged off both of their arms.

“I’ll be fine.”

Lindsey backed away and put her arm around Vic’s waist. Katy put a guiding hand against the small of Doreen’s back.

She could feel how they were all watching her or making a point not to. They couldn’t even muster awkward chatter, and though Doreen would have been the first to admit she was a little more paranoid than usual in her current state, the observation afforded her only one possible conclusion: They were planning something. She didn’t know what it was, but she’d known them long enough to know they were trying to hide it. Probably just another good talking-to. Those came frequently enough lately.

The four of them, the two super couples, were fairly straight-laced and always had been. Other than some underage drinking once they were in college (and it seemed everybody from the valedictorians to the burnouts did that and considered it part of the ‘college experience’), they had nothing more than a high-school detention between them. They were jocks, cheerleaders, members of the youth group and the National Honor Society. Deceit didn’t come easy to them nor did they wear it well.

But being that they were so straight-laced, why did Doreen have the sense that they were trapping her somehow?  Trying to jam something down her throat?

It couldn’t be too bad. She wasn’t about to be kidnapped and sold as a sex slave or anything. There was just no way they were capable of something like that. She’d known them too long.

So why did she still feel like that was exactly what was about to happen?

Not all kidnappers, rapists, and serial killers are the kinds of people you avoid on the sidewalk, she reminded herself, allowing Katy’s grip on her back to tighten the slightest bit so as not to cause any alarm.  She couldn’t overwhelm the lot of them and no one was around to hear her scream. 

Most victims know their attackers, otherwise they wouldn’t be caught so off guard.

Stop it. You’ve seen too many horror movies.

True, but it didn’t hurt to be careful.

Better to be safe than sorry.