In the House of Spite Ch. 20

It was best if Darren and Mr. Booker weren't there to clean it up, but their personal beast forms could have free reign with limited consequences. They could even damage footprints and tire tracks, well, the ones they didn't want to be seen.

At the end of it all, if the plan went smoothly, any police investigation would end up cold. The farmer that owned the land would say, "Oh, another trespasser on my hunting grounds? He's lucky I wasn't around to shoot him." The cops wouldn't think that was strange. People sometimes trespassed, especially in lands with lots of trees and stuff. Hunting grounds were neat places for drug use and ... well ... other crimes.

Shawn's bear mauled body would imply that he showed up with absolutely no good intentions. He might've even been doing weird drugs, which would explain why he was naked. Even Pearl thought he probably did some drugs at some points. His behavior was just too messed up.

The death would be called a bear attack, and it technically was.

The most underwhelming, emotionally unsatisfying, most boring death Pearl could've imagined, all things considered. It must've been a true insult to Shawn. He'd wanted something grand to happen, something poetic and awesome.

This wasn't poetic, nor awesome, nor even particularly interesting.

***

Heavy tapping on the truck's windows woke Pearl up. It was dark.

She rubbed her eye and looked to the window. There was a flashlight being held by a great form. A dark hand pressed to the glass. A combination of the light outside and Pearl's own flashlight showed that even on the padded palm there was a yellow tattoo, the question. She loudly asked, "What's wrong?"

The flashlight was taken to the hand with the question. Then the other hand was put to the glass. The urn picture. She heard the growling voice say, "Wrong year!" Digit's off!" That was when Pearl unlocked the doors.

Reese was wet when he got in. He smelled wet too. He'd probably had to wash himself up. Pearl watched Reese fade away into a slippery, cold Darren. Thankfully, the heat was on low, and Pearl put a blanket around him. When he was mostly dry and pretty warm, Pearl helped him get dressed. That was when he muttered something about how he'd found her cell phone. He dropped it in her lap. The screen was broken and the device couldn't be turned on.

Then, it was time for them to go home.

Actually, no. Darren had shocked Pearl to her core. He told her he wanted to put the house up for sale.

Her whole body lurched like she'd had a bit of whiplash.

And the way he'd told her, his voice, it was quiet and hopeless. When she looked at his face, she was reminded of ... well ...

It wasn't a good comparison. Darren paled almost literally.

J. Robert Oppenheimer in a certain interview, haunted, broken.

It wasn't a good comparison at all, could never be close. This wasn't a "Death Destroyer of Worlds" situation.

But Pearl thought of that sort of expression, that sort of tone. And the more she looked at Darren, the more her belly quivered and her heart broke. It got to the point where she thought she was looking at a horror based exaggeration. She had to look away, but she did find the courage to ask, "Did you find him?"

"Yeah," Darren said, "but I think he got the bear to run off."

"So he's alive?"

"No, too much blood got out of him, and I don't think anybody could sew him back up."

Pearl took a very cold breath and hugged herself with shaking arms. Her head lowered. "He was too hurt to keep going?"

She heard Darren clear his throat. "Ah. Yeah, but I think he made it worse. There's a blood trail. He was so pissed he just ran to try to find us. That didn't help him at all."

Pearl didn't know if that made the death more or less embarrassing.

***

Mr. Booker Senior and his wife, Mrs. Booker, lived in a recently built, but purposefully old fashioned looking, single story house. They had a separate room for Pearl and Darren to stay in until they could get a new house to live in. Pearl noted, as she ate a late dinner with the family, nervously observing how both Darren and his old father were miserably lethargic and barely spoke, that Mrs. Booker didn't seem to know anything had happened to Shawn.

"I'm so glad you got him to leave," she'd said at one point, grinning and scooping up some food with her fork. "He's more trouble than he's worth."

Was that what she'd been told? Had Crystal, Darren's sister, been told the same thing?

Pearl had been told beforehand not to speak of it all. If asked, she was supposed to say, "I don't want to talk about it."

Mrs. Booker wasn't completely fooled, though. She pointed out that the men looked like someone had drained all the life out of them. She was almost angry as she did it, an arm on her hip and her dark eyes narrowing. But when Mr. Booker put a hand on his wife's shoulder, squeezing, and gave her the most pained and pitiful expression Pearl had seen yet, Mrs. Booker seemed to understand that she shouldn't keep asking questions. Her eyes did pop a bit, but she calmed down and changed the subject.

In the guest bedroom, Darren sat on the edge of the mattress while Pearl knelt behind him, rubbing his shoulders and back with lotion. He felt tight, not sexy tight. He felt like he'd never again know what relaxing felt like. The scene was horribly quiet. Pearl couldn't think of anything to say until she was almost done kneading Darren's body.

"You want to sell the house, right?"

There were spare clothes and stuff in suitcases, stacked in a closet. The rest of their stuff was in storage. As for the dogs, they weren't in the bedroom. They were sleeping in a corner of the house's living room.

Darren's shoulders and back swelled with his deep inhale. Then there was the exhale. It sounded like he had a sandpaper filter in his voice. "Yep. It's been tainted."

"The house is tainted?" Pearl shuffled back to wipe excess lotion on her arms. "You mean, all this mess we went through?"

Another deep breath. His back was shiny under the lamp's yellow light. "I just want to start over. Whole new house. Whole new life." He reached over to rub at one of his shoulder blades. Right hand over the left shoulder. The long fingernails gleamed almost as much as his back.

"You really ... uhm?" Pearl sighed and shifted her weight a bit on the mattress. "You aren't acting like yourself."

The long nails scraped against the flesh, leaving mild lines, as the hand moved away. The man's messy head lowered. The spine curled. "That ... that piece of shit ... I used to love him."

Pearl closed her eyes and tried not to hiss through her teeth. When her voice came out, her throat felt like fireworks was going off in it. "Family ... a sibling ... a twin. I can't imagine it. There had to be a time when you hugged each other, when your hearts were full of love."

"The scariest ... agh! The scariest thing in the world," Darren said with an odd cough, "is that we don't know when or why he went crazy."

Pearl opened her eyes, leaned in, reached up, and patted his lightly scratched skin. "The scariest thing in the world is that some people turn out like that no matter what you do. Life can't be perfect."

She blinked a few times as she watched his neck straighten and his fingers rub at the nape.

Then she thought of something.

The mattress did its expected bouncing as she crawled off and went to the closet. She nearly tore some of the zippers in the luggage. When she found what she wanted, she hurried over to sit right beside Darren.

He turned his head to stare down at her with only a sliver of curiosity. The miserable stiffness in his face was a very powerful thing. An eyebrow flickered only a smidgen. The eyes only held a pinch of focus.

Pearl held it up to that face.

The little urn shaped like a shoe. Cold. Smooth.

"We just need to wait for the pain to dull down," she said.

Sudden panic in his face. So harsh. A startling change.

He coughed hard. Multiple times. Hands on his mouth. He fell back on the bed.

Pearl leaned over to put her fingers in his hair.

He stopped coughing.

He was crying instead.

***

The pain did dull down.

The couple did find a new house.

They even married.

On the day of the wedding, those hastily made (Darren admitted he'd done it himself after looking up prisoner techniques) tattoos had been covered by professionally made, gold and black flowers. A perfect cover up tattoo.

When it was time for the kiss, Pearl had someone set up a folding chair for her to stand on, even with her fancy dress flopping and bouncing about. Most of the guests laughed at it. Darren held his laughter in.

A short kiss. A peck.

It reminded them both of the time Pearl had stood on a dining chair and screamed at him.

But they couldn't remember the last time she'd lost her temper. If anything, Darren was now the hot-headed one. But he was a lot happier. Reese was too.

Even though the sad things, and the traumatic things, all lingered in their hearts. Even though secrets tingled in their brains. They were happy. They were a family.

***