Helltown - Jeremy Bates Page 0,77

her hair, or who in her grade was developing breasts first, or who was cool and who was uncool.

Nevertheless, the real world didn’t kick in until her mother’s death. Tragedy matures you, ages you, makes you wiser, and thus more cynical. At least it does when it strikes at such an early age.

All of Mandy’s priorities went out the window. Her wardrobe became a triviality, boys a nuisance, popularity—she couldn’t care less. In fact, she stopped caring about everything. She became petty, self-centered, and bitter. She was miserable, and she wanted everyone else to be miserable too.

But I changed, she told herself defiantly. I got over all that. I’m a different person now.

But was she? Was she really?

Because if she had changed, why was she still not speaking to her father? Why was she still angry at him for kicking her out of the house, out of his life—when she had known for some time now that while he had indeed kicked her out of the house, she had deserved it, and he had certainly not kicked her out of his life. It was the other way around. She had kicked him out of her life. After all, he was the one making the effort to get back in touch. He sent her a letter every month, asking her how she was doing, telling her what he was up to. She kept them all in a folder beneath her bras in her dresser drawer. But she never replied to any…because she was still that selfish little girl who after all these years still wanted someone to blame for her mother’s death, something to which no blame could be attributed.

“I’m sorry, Daddy,” she mumbled softly to herself, and now the tears came. They flooded her eyes and streaked her cheeks. Yet they were good tears. She had wanted to say those words for a long time, but she always told herself there would be time enough in the future, naively believing there would always be a future.

As Mandy wiped the wetness from her cheeks, the despair inside her withered into a profound loneliness, and she wanted nothing more than to see her father again, to tell him the words she had just spoken, to ask forgiveness for being a terrible daughter, for rebelling against him when she should have been mourning with him.

Mandy closed her eyes, steepled her hands together, and for the first time in memory, she began to pray.

CHAPTER 24

“You gotta be fucking kidding.”

The Thing (1982)

Beetle thought he heard knocking and opened his eyes. He was right. Someone was at the door to his motel room. Wrap, wrap, wrap. Pause. Wrap, wrap, wrap.

Shylock and his sons? he wondered groggily. Would they be stupid enough to return? Or had they called the police? Shit, the cops were the last thing he needed. They’d run his name, he’d come up AWOL. He’d be shipped back to Hunter Army Airfield where he’d face a court-marshal and likely get tossed in the brig.

Beetle sat up on the bed and swooned with lightheadedness. A dull pulse thumped inside his left temple. The Beretta, he was surprised to find, was gripped in his sweaty hand. The last thing he remembered was thumbing off the safety, pressing the barrel beneath his chin, and counting to ten. Apparently, however, he never reached ten. Or if he did, he wasn’t willing to squeeze the trigger. And despite feeling sick and shitty, like he’d just woken up the morning after the bender to end all benders, he was relieved this was the case, otherwise he wouldn’t have woken up at all.

But that’s what you want, my friend. That’s the point. Goodbye, goodnight sweet world. You’re a coward, that’s all. You don’t have the balls to do what you know needs to be done—

“Hey!” a woman’s voice called. Wrap wrap, wrapwrapwrap. “It’s me! Beetle? Are you sleeping?”

Beetle frowned. Me? Who was “me?”

The girl from next door. The tall German with the lidded eyes and the long face who was backpacking through the country to LA.

What the hell did she want?

Beetle stuffed the pistol beneath a pillow and stood, grimacing as the dull pulse in his head became a wicked pounding. For a moment his stomach turned and he thought he might be sick. The queasy sensation passed.

Breathing deeply, he unlocked and opened the door and squinted into the bright light of the hallway. The German—Gertrude? Greta?—stood two feet away from him. Her face appeared flushed, her eyes as wide and