The Family Tree: a psychological thriller Read online

  “They dropped me off at my house and I drove straight to the police station and asked to speak to a female officer. I started telling my story, but once I realized I’d have to do a rape kit and that people would find out what happened… well, I retracted my statement.”

  “Does that mean they have the rape on record?”

  Annette shook her head. “The police lady, I don’t remember her name, but she told me that she was retiring in a couple of days, and that someone else was going to take over the case. That’s when I started to panic. I didn’t want the word to get out about what had happened to me, especially to my mom. So, I told her that I’d changed my mind—that I didn’t want to press charges. That I was drunk and had gone with Mike willingly. She seemed disappointed with me withdrawing my statement, but promised that since no charges were filed, there would be no record of the rape.”

  “Did you ever tell your mom?”

  Color drained from her face. “No. And you can’t tell her. I don’t want her to know. Especially now. After this. She couldn’t handle this…I can’t hurt her this way.” Sweat dripped down the side of her face. She looked around the staircase rail at Mike’s lifeless body. “Ever since that night, I wanted to kill him.”

  “He’s dead. He can’t hurt anyone. Not anymore.”

  “We’re not calling the cops, Jolene.” Her tone was as serious as the expression on her face. “That policewoman was nice, but she’d taken notes, you know. This could look like premeditated murder.”

  “Don’t say that—”

  “And think about it, do you really want to deal with glaring lights and police while we’re tripping?”

  Fuck. I’d forgotten we’d taken acid. Besides a bit of weed, the only drug I’d ever had in my body had been the mind-numbing injections at the hospital. Never had a hallucinogenic and had no idea what to expect. Heaviness pressed on my shoulders. It just didn’t feel right to not report what happened. “It was self-defense. It’s not hard to see what happened here.”

  Annette groaned. “Try explaining that to the police when they show up and you’re busy talking to John Lennon in a Tibetan temple. ’Cause that’s what’s about to happen. And when they see you acting crazy, we’ll both face a murder rap. Premeditated murder. You’ll get sent back to the psych ward and I’ll be shipped off to prison.”

  Murder. Psych ward. Prison. We didn’t need more trouble. “Okay. Calling the police while we’re high on acid isn’t the best option. But we’ll have to call in the morning.”

  “Don’t be so naïve. Even if we report this tomorrow, do you think they’ll believe anything we say?”

  “We’ll tell them it was self-defense. W-we were scared.”

  Annette glared at me. “And you really think they’ll believe us?”

  “There’s a good chance they will.”

  “A better one they won’t.”

  “Better to tell the truth.”

  “The truth could get us into trouble.”

  My throat constricted so tight that my words came out in a whisper. “So, what the hell are we supposed to do?”

  She turned toward me. Our knees touching, she squeezed my hands. “We need to stick together. Like a family.” Her voice was soft, but desperation undercut her every word. “You know the hole we have in the backyard… the one where Mom was going to put a koi pond?”

  I remembered. Annette and I had helped dig the damn thing two Summers ago. Patsy had wanted it exactly five feet deep so the fish could stay low and live during the cold winters. The pile of dirt we’d unearthed was still next to the hole. Another one of Patsy’s many unfinished projects around the property. “What are you thinking…?”

  “We bury him in the pit.”

  I dropped her hands. “You want to what?” I almost laughed, but she kept a straight face.

  “We don’t have time to think about this.” She glanced at the clock on the fireplace mantel. “It’s 9:35. Only twenty minutes since we took the blotter. We can get this over with, and then everything will be back to normal.”

  “There is nothing normal about burying Mike in your backyard. You need to calm down…think—”

  “I am calm. I know exactly what I’m doing.” Her words were stone hard, calculated. “We’ll bury him right now. It’ll be done in no time. Then, tomorrow morning, we’ll go to the nursery and buy a small tree. We’ll plant it on top of him. Mom’s been talking about putting an oak tree there for the past six months. It’s perfect.”

  I blinked several times and tried to make sense of what Annette was saying. She’d always had a risky and wild streak but never a violent or morbid one. She acted like there were no consequences to be considered. I glared at her. “What’s happened to you? I’ve never seen you like this.”

  “I want to protect us. I don’t trust the police in this small-minded town to believe two college girls high on acid.”

  An ache swelled in my throat. The authorities at the hospital hadn’t believed me, either. And it’d taken years to get over the teasing I’d endured at our middle school after word had gotten out that I’d been in a psychiatric hospital. Psycho Girl, they’d called me. Now, at nineteen, I’d overcome that derisive label, and I’d do anything to keep from getting locked up again. I gritted my teeth. What an idiot I was for taking that acid. I couldn’t change it now, but this—burying a body—it wasn’t right. There had to be another way. I rubbed her arm. “Maybe we should tell your mom what happened. She can help.”

  Annette’s eyes widened, and she pressed her hands together in a beggar’s prayer. “No. Please. I want to keep my mom out of this. She’d tell the police. For certain.” She grabbed my hands and squeezed and pulled like she was climbing a rope on a sheer wall, afraid of plunging to her death. “I’m protecting us. All of us. If Mom finds out what happened, she’ll want to sell the house. We’ll move out of state. I’m sure of it. Do you want to do that to her? To us?”

  I breathed deeply. The strain in Annette’s voice reminded me how desperate I’d been to get out of the psych hospital. How Patsy had come to my rescue. How Annette hadn’t been embarrassed to be my best friend, even though the other kids had teased me. I owed her and her mother so much.

  Being part of this family had always been important. Patsy, Annette, and me. The Three Musketeers. We’d been together for the past twelve years. My formative years. I was close to them—closer than to my own father, who preferred beer and football over anything to do with me.

  If I betrayed Annette, our bond would be forever broken.

  And there was vengeance. Annette deserved vengeance. I deserved vengeance. I couldn’t blame her for backing out on pressing rape charges against Mike. Life had taught me to avoid situations where I might be shamed or humiliated. If I could help Annette avoid the pain as well, all the better. It was more important for me to support the closest person to me in the world than to take the moral high ground for the sake of someone like Mike.

  Burying Mike was the simplest, most logical thing to do. The hole was there. Open and ready like the hand of a hungry child. Above all, I couldn’t risk being locked up, and neither could Annette. This was about saving our skins.

  “Please,” Annette said. “Do this for me. I don’t want anyone else to know. Just you and me.”

  My moral compass had lost direction, but I had to make a choice. Be loyal to my dearest friend or loyal to the law. I felt no obligation to authority, but Annette was different. We were like sisters. My only family. And if I helped her bury Mike, we’d be forever bound by our secret. “How are you going to live in this house knowing he’s buried in the backyard?”

  Annette jumped to her feet, her face beaming like she’d discovered a cancer vaccine. “I’m going to forget he ever existed. You can do the same.”

  I turned to Mike’s lifeless body crumpled on the floor. Struggling to catch a breath, I wanted to cry out but had no voice. My heart raced. Could I make this happen without ever looking back?

  This isn’t real.
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br />   Annette stood over his body. “Please, Jolene. We need to do this. Now.” Urgency threaded her words. She plucked the knife off the floor, then shoved it down the front of Mike’s board shorts. She clutched onto one of his wrists. “Grab an arm. We’ll drag him to the back.”

  A twist in my gut made me hesitate. Could I bear holding a dead body? I’d managed to block out unpleasantness before. I’d make sure I did it better this time. I took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”

  A tingling sensation rose from my core to my scalp, and my mind switched into a fixed gear. I mentally disconnected from what I was doing. Pretended this wasn’t happening. Bury the memory of this night along with the body. I blocked any emotion which tried to invade my thoughts.

  Swallowing what felt like my last drop of saliva, I stayed focused on what needed doing. I grabbed Mike’s other wrist. The warmth of his skin shocked me, and I almost let go. But I’d made my decision, so I tightened my grip.

  We dragged his deadweight through the kitchen, out the back door, and across the redwood deck. His sneaker-covered feet thumped down the two back stairs.

  “One, two, three, four, five…” I counted each step under my breath as we dragged his body across the freshly cut lawn, deep into the darkness of the backyard. Counting had always been my way of coping with stress. After my mother had died, I’d used counting to soothe my fears. It was imperative to keep a precise beat and sequence in order to keep out the dark thoughts.

  Thirty steps, I’d counted from the bottom of the deck to the edge of the pit. Twenty-nine, actually, but round numbers fit my mindset.

  I dropped his arm.

  Sweat rolled down the back of my neck. I lifted my long hair to cool off in the breeze. I took a moment to catch my breath and let my eyes adjust to the dark. Only a sliver of the moon and a sprinkle of stars gave us light.

  “Let’s roll him in.” Annette dropped to her knees and pressed her hands into his back. “Come on! Help me!”

  I kneeled next to her, hating what we were doing. Hating even more the risk of getting arrested for murder and going back to the looney bin. Not becoming a teacher. Not getting the hell out of this godforsaken provincial town.

  Block it out.

  I wrapped my hand around his waist then heaved him into the hole. Gravelly soil rolled over him, and his body hit the earth in a heap, like a crumpled bag of bones.

  Feel nothing.

  Annette hopped up and wiped her hands on her shorts. “I’m going to the shed for a couple of shovels.”

  I lifted the hem of my cotton tank top and wiped the sweat from my face. Silhouettes of the hundred-year-old pines surrounding the property swayed against the charcoal sky. My breath kept rhythm with the gentle movement of the forest, slow and steady. I floated outside my body.

  “Here you go.” Annette handed me a shovel.

  My skin tingled as I took myself out of the moment. It was important to feel nothing, to see nothing. I jabbed the shovel downward and loosened a chunk of soil, sending an avalanche of dirt into the pit. Void of emotion, I went into robot mode, tossing shovelful after shovelful of dirt into the pit.

  The breeze picked up, rustling the leaves in the overgrown forest surrounding the sides and back of the property. A symphony of sounds—wind and leaves, creaking old trees, the song of crickets and cicadas, each its own ensemble.

  Then something else. I stopped shoveling.

  Squish, squish, squish. A sound that wouldn’t stop. Squish, squish, squish.

  Running feet on the lawn. I gasped and peered deep into the darkness. Was someone there with us?

  Random flickers of light came from the last of the evening’s fireflies. In my side vision, a black figure ran from the forest behind us, across the lawn and toward the front of the house. My heart jumped, and the reality of what we were doing jerked me back into myself. “I just saw someone.”

  Annette jabbed her shovel in the soil and looked around. “No one’s here.” Her voice was low and raspy. “Come on. We’re almost finished.”

  I shook my head hard, thinking the acid must have kicked in—that I must be hallucinating. Annette had said it would take forty-five minutes to an hour. Had that much time passed?

  Didn’t matter. I moved back into auto-mode, my head down, counting shovelfuls in sets of five. The numbers were all that mattered. Not the sweat dripping down my back.

  The noise again. The squishing footsteps. Something. Someone.

  I looked up. My equilibrium was off, my vision skewed. A black shadow along the forest’s edge. Or was it a black mist? Air sucked out of my lungs. No. This figure was human-shaped, solid and swift.

  Nothing seemed normal.

  A strange weightiness came over me. My feet were like concrete blocks and my body grew heavy. The pile of dirt was almost gone now, but the earth became soft as a pillow. I sank down down down into the soft ground, the power of the drug being so unexpected that I lost focus.

  Red-and-white tail lights of a passing car filtered through the trees. I marveled at the beauty of the streaming ribbons of lights, then remembered what we were doing. “Shit, look.”

  “Don’t worry,” Annette said, her tone full of assurance. “That’s the Nichols. They go out every Saturday night. I recognize their old-fashioned tail-lights.”

  She’d know, having lived in this house her entire life. And we’d both known since childhood that this part of the backyard wasn’t visible from the street. Especially at night. “This is good.” Annette dropped her shovel. “Let’s get cleaned up, and we’ll deal with the final stage tomorrow.”

  I slapped my hands together. Final stage. She made it sound like we were building a clubhouse.

  I walked across the lawn behind Annette who was headed for the hose at the deck. The breeze and the buzzing…the buzzing. I rubbed both my ears. What was that? Cicadas singing so loudly, I floated on the notes.

  I stood next to Annette on the deck steps and reached for the spigot. She took my hand and squeezed. “Wait a minute, Joley.”

  Joley. A tingly rush of euphoria spread from my toes to my scalp, warming my body. My mom had called me Joley. Once in a while, Patsy called me Joley. But hearing Annette use my endearing name deepened my sense of our belonging and connection.

  She looked me straight in the face. “What you did for me tonight….” She sighed deeply. “You’re like the sister I’ve always wanted. We’re bonded forever. You know that, right?”

  A warm rush burst in my heart then spread out to my limbs. My bond with her was more than sisterly, because never had our connection been on a higher, more spiritual level than at this moment. “I’ve always felt that way.”

  She nodded an understanding and then turned on the spigot. “Time to get back to where we started an hour ago.”

  An hour ago? What had we been doing an hour ago? I used the hose to rinse off the dirt, the whoosh of warm water tickling my hands and feet.

  I found myself back in the living room, holding a beach towel. I looked at myself, dry and clean except for some specks of dirt under my fingernails. What had I done to get so dirty in the first place? Had anything really happened?

  “Now,” Annette said in a chirpy tone, “time to get back to business.” She picked up our wine glasses and handed me one.

  I tossed the towel on an armchair and gleefully took my wine. My vision sharpened. Was it possible we’d never left the house?

  Everything looked as it had before. Almost. The walls and furniture were distorted and out of proportion. Had time even passed? I looked at the clock on the mantel, melting like an image in a Salvador Dali painting.

  Annette stacked CDs in the player and hummed a bebop tune. Betty Boop. Ha! Annette was Betty Boop in a red flapper dress and short black hair with pin curls. I burst out laughing.

  Annette laughed too, like she was in on the joke.

  Utter joy flowed through me, and I turned in a circle, enchanted by the dollhouse room with pink curtains and a leopard-print chair. Annette’s liv
ing room—I knew that—but everything had changed into an animation. And the colors! A kaleidoscope of vibrant magenta, orange, and sunshine yellow.

  The space around me luminated, my body becoming light as cotton candy. I swigged a mouthful of wine, and sweet bubblegum burst on my tongue.

  Music. The Red Hot Chili Peppers sang “The Zepher Song.” I floated a few feet in the air while Annette, now dressed in a white robe, danced a whirling dervish around the room.

  Was this a dream?

  A breeze brushed over me, and tiny hairs rose on my skin. I tasted the scent of sweet gardenias, and then suddenly, I wore a long, white, flowy dress, like the angels in storybooks my mother had once read to me.

  I was so light that I could fly, and I leaped forward, away on the scented breeze, carried by a chorus of cicadas.

  Chapter Two

  At seven forty-three the next morning, I sat in the passenger side of Annette’s blue Ford pick-up. My head was as hazy as the mist hanging over the passing farmlands and oyster shacks on the way to the garden center. Though my feet were back on terra firma, my brain was still edging its way back to reality.

  No more light and floaty body. Two hours ago, I’d fallen from my high hard and fast, like a drop off a cliff. Bam. Slammed back to reality. Now, just lifting an arm took effort.

  Annette and I had spoken few words, each digesting what happened in our own way.

  I looked at my hands. I’d scrubbed them hard this morning. Used a nail brush to get deep into the crevices. Still, grains of dirt stayed stuck under my nails. Remorse gnawed at my stomach in small, nagging bites.

  Block it out.

  The weight of my body sank into the seat. I’d forgotten so many details of last night, but not everything. The sweet, earthy smell of dirt. The hissing cicadas. Someone running across the lawn.

  “Jolene.” Annette’s hard tone broke through the silence. She stared straight ahead, eyes on the road. “We can’t change what happened last night. We have to forget about it. Pretend it never happened.”