TITLE: Dry Kind of Love 4/?
AUTHOR: tanith
RATING: PG-13, just to be safe.
ARCHIVE: It's all yours, just let me know.
FEEDBACK: Bring it on. akirgo@yahoo.com
SPOILERS: Probably some minor ones here and there.
DISCLAIMER: See previous chapters.
SUMMARY: You can run, but you can't hide. Future fic.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Finally, stuff's happening! If you're still with me, I think you're great! You deserve a Spike clone. But not the original. He's mine.
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After class, Zoe and her friends hang around the room while William collects his papers so they can get a ride. Zoe is the only one who lives in town; Roger had moved to Bristol when he was nine, and Sarah lives "off in the boonies," as she likes to put it, in Shoreham. Therefore, they often stay at Zoe's house after school until their parents can pick them up after work.
William slides the rest of his stuff into his black messenger bag, and throwing his jean jacket over his shoulder, heads for the door. "Come on, kiddies," he says, jovially. "We depart."
The others push past him as he turns to lock the door, and then they walk down the hall and out the side entrance to the parking lot. They clamor into William's old Cabrio, Zoe up front with her dad and Roger and Sarah in the back.
"Straight home, or stops?" William asks.
"Uh, I don't know about you," Roger says, "but I could really use a Coke."
Sarah nods. "Me, too."
"I hear an iced tea calling my name," Zoe, who is strictly anti-soda, admits.
"All right then. Beverage break." William pulls out of the parking lot, eerily emptied in just the few minutes they stayed behind so he could pack up. The sky has turned dark, rolling with deep, thick clouds, and as they leave the campus, it begins to rain, the little drops spattering messily on the windshield. William drives a couple of blocks to the Champlain Farms and parks in front of one of the gas pumps even though he isn't planning on getting any gas. The three teenagers pile out of the car and disappear into the dryness of the convenience store. William follows, not bothering to lock the car behind him.
Roger and Sarah both grab Cokes, but Sarah pauses with her hand still half in the freezer, looks down at herself critically, and selects a Diet Coke instead. Roger watches this disapprovingly, but doesn't say anything. Zoe scours the various brands of iced tea, grumbling, "Why must everything be sweetened or flavored?" before finally choosing the most basic kind she can find. All three return to the front of the store, beverages in hand, to find William standing at the counter, trying to order a slurpee.
"We're all out of strawberry," the clerk is saying. Zoe recognizes him from school: his name is Arnold, and he likes to yell, "Run, Zoe, run!" at her when she speeds down the hall in fear of being late for class. She hates him.
"Well, how about raspberry?" William asks patiently. Zoe can see that his patience is waning, however. His fingers are gripping the counter so hard that his knuckled have turned white. They must have been at this for a while.
"We're out of that, too," Arnold says, sounding bored.
"So you're out of lemon, blueberry, strawberry, and raspberry." William grits his teeth. "What flavors do you have?"
Arnold shrugs, picking an issue of "Guns and Ammo" back up off the counter and leafing through it.
William sighs. "Look," he says, "just give me whatever you have, okay?" He hands Arnold some money, and the clerk turns reluctantly to the slurpee machine and begins to do his job.
"Wanker," William mutters as soon as Arnold's back is turned. Sarah giggles, sounding not unlike Kelly and Emily.
Arnold comes back with the slurpee and slaps it down on the counter. Over Roger's protests, William pays for the rest of the drinks, and as he waits for Arnold to bring him his change, takes a sip of his slurpee.
"This is strawberry," William says pointedly when Arnold returns with a fist full of grubby quarters.
Arnold shrugs again, the master of indifference. "I guess we weren't out after all."
"Right." William has his lip firmly between his teeth. "Well, have a nice day," he says as he walks out the door. Once outside, he adds, "You great bloody pillock."
Sarah giggles some more, and Zoe fixes her with a harsh stare. They all climb into the car again. William is still seething, but doing a good job of controlling it. "Charming lad," he says as he pulls his seatbelt across his chest. He starts the car and pulls out onto the street. "He goes to our school, doesn't he?" Zoe nods. "Pity he's not in my class so I could flunk him."
Roger laughs nervously. "Which is not something you'd ever do to anyone present, right?"
William turns around and smiles at Roger a little too broadly. "Just as long as no one present ever does anything to hurt my daughter."
They ride the rest of the way in companionable silence. Zoe's house is actually right across the river from the school, but due to the location of the town's only automobile bridge, William has to wind through the town to get there. He drives past the Middlebury Inn, whose big brick facade is always decked out in ostentatious holiday decorations, currently mother's day themed; around the curve of the town green with its old white gazebo; past the Congregational Church, its tall spire scraping the clouds; and down Main Street. They drive by dada, the housewares store where Zoe works on weekends, and cross the Battel Bridge to their side of town. The Barnets live on South Street, just off Main and a mere three blocks away from the library and movie theater. The street is lined with trees and big, old houses, all of which are painted white, save for the Barnet's three story behemoth, which is bright yellow with blue trim. Their unconventional paint job got them a lot of hate mail when they first moved in.
William pulls his car into the driveway behind Anne's and puts it into park. Everyone spends a good minute heaving backpacks onto shoulders, and then they all stumble up the steps to the front porch, laughing because the inevitable has happened, and they are getting soaked. The big wood door is unlocked, but it is always unlocked. This is Vermont, after all - no one locks their doors. William pushes the door open with his shoulder and walks into a room of blood.
Blood on the floor, blood on the furniture, messages scrawled in blood on the walls. William falters for a moment, even though his first instinct tells him to get his daughter and her friends out of there. But his instant of shock and indecision is enough for the three teens to enter the room behind him. Zoe has the mail between her teeth, and it slips to the floor as her mouth falls open in an expression of mute horror. Sarah murmurs, "Oh my God," before bursting into hysterical tears. "I'll call the police," Roger sputters, reaching for his cell phone. His wrist is caught, mid-motion, in William's firm grasp.
"No," William says, his voice brittle. "No police."
Roger looks up at the man who holds his arm, a man who he has known almost his entire life, and who he has thought of as many things, but never as threatening. And for the first time, Roger is afraid.
William doesn't even look at him; his eyes are fixed on the writing on the wall. He realizes that the words to "Helter Skelter" are running through his head, but these are no song lyrics written here. COME HOME TO MUMMY. The letters still drip. I WANT MY SPIKE.
"Dad." Zoe's voice is barely audible, and her hand is fumbling about for his. "What does it mean, Dad?"
He swallows. "Nothing. It means nothing."
"Dad." He almost can't hear her anymore. "Where's mom?"
William shakes himself. "Zoe, Roger, Sarah, go next door to the Kieran's house and stay there until I come and get you. Don't talk to anyone."
"But they're in India," Zoe says. She sounds as if she has gone away.
"Use the key that they gave you so you could feed the dogs. Go! Now!"
They go, leaving him alone in a room he knows to be covered in his wife's blood.
The first thing he does is shut the door and lock it. Then he walks over to the piano and picks up the note he saw, just as he was meant to, when he first came in. He is relieved to see that it is not written in blood, but rather in pencil. In fact, the offending pencil is still resting by the note. It is one of Zoe's, with her name embossed on the side and her teeth marks covering the end, and William feels his small taste of relief drifting away. They could easily know about Zoe.
He forces his hands to stop shaking as he reads the note.
You have been running from us for a long time, but we grow weary of hide and seek. We've been watching for some time, just waiting for a cloudy day. She is ours now, as you are ours. Come home to us and maybe we'll let her live. Maybe we'll even let you keep her.
Come home. You can't hide what you are.
He crumples the note in his hand and tosses it to the floor. His eyes drift over the bloody mess that was his home, his gaze coming to rest on the big old mirror next to the piano. Anne found it at a junk shop when they first moved in, and she sponge painted the wooden border sage green to match the bookcases. William stares at his own reflection, at his mess of brown hair and lightly tanned skin and blue eyes hidden by wire rimmed glasses.
"Lies," he whispers. And then he walks slowly into the kitchen and fills a bucket with water, readying himself to scrub his wife's blood from the walls.
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TBC