Bottle Toss

By Howard Odentz

A beer bottle thrown carelessly at the windshield of a passing car sends the vehicle careening off the road, and the lives of high school seniors Denny Ford, his foster sister Jen McKnatt, and her sometimes boyfriend Brody Erwin, spinning out of control.

Over the next several days as the three experience increasingly bizarre, frightening, and seemingly unrelated events, they are forced to examine the ramifications of their actions and how their lives have been irrevocably altered.

What they've done can never be undone.

After all, it only takes one bottle toss to turn their world cockeyed forever.

Praise for Howard Odentz:

"A simmering psychological thriller bolstered by a dynamic narrative voice and a few unexpected twists." --Kirkus Reviews on What We Kill

"This author has a real knack for the weird and the wonderful."--TheMostSublime.com

About the Author:

Author and playwright Howard Odentz is a lifelong resident of the gray area between Western Massachusetts and North Central Connecticut. His love of the region is evident in his writing as he often incorporates the foothills of the Berkshires and the small towns of the Bay and Nutmeg states into his work.

In addition to The Dead (A Lot) Series, he has written the horror novel Bloody Bloody Apple, the short story collection Little Killers A to Z, and a couple of horror-themed, musical comedies produced for the stage.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BelleBooks
• Release date: Oct 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781611949681

Howard Odentz

Howard Odentz is a life-long resident of Western Massachusetts, where he divides his time between writing and tending a small farm. His love of animals, along with the lore of the region, often finds its way into his stories. The supernatural plays a major role in Mr. Odentz's writing. He is endlessly fascinated by the psychological aspects of those who are thrown into otherworldly circumstances. In addition to Dead (A Lot), his first novel, he has penned two full length musical comedies. "In Good Spirits" is inspired by the real-life ghostly experiences of a community theatre group and their haunted stage. "Piecemeal" tells the backstory of Victor Frankenstein's Hollywood-created protégé, Igor. Visit the author at HowardOdentz.com.

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Bottle Toss

by

Howard Odentz

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Bell Bridge Books

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events or locations is entirely coincidental.

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Bell Bridge Books

PO BOX 300921

Memphis, TN 38130

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-968-1

Print ISBN: 978-1-61194-958-2

Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.

Copyright © 2019 by Howard Odentz

Published in the United States of America.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

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Cover design: Debra Dixon

Interior design: Hank Smith

Photo/Art credits:

Glass (manipulated) © Izonda | Dreamstime.com

Bottle (manipulated) © Pogonici | Dreamstime.com

:Etnm:01:

Dedication

For David

1

THE SKY FADES from burnt orange to black, and there is a refreshing chill in the air.

This is the time of year when Sumneytown, Connecticut is checkered with pumpkins and pimpled gourds. Corn stalks are tied to mailbox posts and homemade cemeteries dot rural lawns.

Death is a spectator sport here. Leaf peepers come from far and wide to watch our town die. It doesn’t matter that we are resurrected in the spring. Next year we die all over again. That’s how it’s always been. That’s how it will always be.

I am sitting with Jen McKnatt and Brody Erwin on the neat, white, fence just outside the entrance to Autumn Village, the elite retirement community that has recently sprung out of the tobacco fields and woods that dominate Sumneytown.

Kids used to party in the forest here. Now, the forest is gone.

Brody is drinking a beer. His wild hair and scruffy beard make him look twenty-seven instead of seventeen, but we all know that his mom is dead and his dad doesn’t know the first thing about teaching hygiene.

Mr. Erwin’s a pig.

Jen has dyed her hair blue. I don’t know if I think her new look is pretty or not. I don’t even know if I think Jen is pretty or not. We’ve both been in the same foster home for the past few years so I guess she’s sort of like my sister. At the end of the school year we’ll both be eighteen and age out of the system. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me then. Jen wants to go to culinary school, but she’ll need cash for that.

Brody will probably go to jail.

As the black night envelopes us, a dark sedan turns into the Village entrance from Sumneytown Road. The headlights hit us for a split second.

Screw you, says Brody and shoves his middle finger in the air, but whatever cataract-stricken resident of the Village is driving probably doesn’t see us. As the car passes by Brody mutters, Ass-wipe, and throws his bottle at the windshield.

I don’t know why. He’s impulsive. Twenty years ago his dirt-bag father would have most likely done the same thing.

Brody, Jen blurts out before the world turns cockeyed forever. The car swerves and heads for the tiny bridge that crosses over Peep Meadow Brook where kids used to catch painted turtles but can’t anymore because Autumn Village is here now.

In slow motion, we watch the driver miss the bridge entirely then disappear down the steep rock-lined embankment.

Jen and I both flinch.

Wicked, says Brody.

Jen says Oh my God, but God doesn’t have anything to do with what just happened.

The rear end of the black car is sticking straight up. She turns to Brody. What did you go and do that for? Jen holds her palms face up as though she thinks he’s going to drop an answer into them.

His satanic smile is all the answer she’s ever going to get.

What do we do now? I eke out. I’m not asking Brody. I’m asking Jen, but she has nothing to say. We’re not even supposed to be near Autumn Village. Everybody knows that. There is a huge notice hanging on a post next to the big, oval ‘Autumn Village’ entry sign that says:

PRIVATE PROPERTY.

FOR USE BY RESIDENTS AND INVITED GUESTS ONLY.

Brody licks his lips and stares down the road at the upended car. Reality sets in. He shifts from foot to foot and drags his fingers through his tangle of hair. My dad’s going to beat the shit out of me.

Ya think? Jen growls even though Brody getting the shit beaten out of him by Mr. Erwin is a regular occurrence. He whips his head around and stares at the two of us but mostly at me. In a second, he’s right in my face and curling his fingers around the collar of my shirt. A soupy mixture of anxiety and fear that I always carry around in the pit of my stomach begins to froth.

Listen, foster-boy, he snarls. Say one word, and I’ll kill you.

Get off him, barks Jen and physically squirms between Brody and me. She pushes him away. Don’t be a douche.

I mean it, Brody snarls with one finger pointing at me. Then he says, I’m outta here, and takes off into the empty tobacco field to the left of the Village entrance. He heads toward the old barn that sits up against Sumneytown Road because that’s where he’s stashed the rest of his bottles.

As for me, I begin to sweat and my skin starts to prickle.

Someone is in that car. There are so many names that come to mind but they aren’t real names. They’re the names that we’ve made up to describe the people we sometimes see outside the retirement community, shopping at Grafton’s Grocery in the center of town or picking up pizza at DiNapoli’s. Names like Rat Face, or Captain Zoom Zoom, or Queer Eye, because everyone assumes that the tall guy who dyes his hair an unnatural shade of orange to match the color of his dog, is queer.

Denny, Jen says to me because I haven’t moved. I have an image in my head of someone’s face buried into the blown out airbag, with blood oozing everywhere. We should go.

My legs are rooted to the spot.

She pulls at the sleeve of my shirt and I flinch. But . . . but . . . we can’t just leave, I whisper.

Yes, she says. Yes, we can.

I want to believe her. I want to follow her, but I can’t. In about the most heroic gesture someone like me can muster, I bite my lip and say, No.

Jen puts her hands on her hips and stares at the ground. She knows she can make me leave. She’s bigger and stronger than I am.

She’s everything better than me, and I’m nothing.

Fucking Brody, she finally hisses and turns toward the upended car a few hundred feet down the road.

Somehow I make my feet follow hers. I don’t want to look, but I’m going to have to look. I’m going to have to take whatever horrible image we discover and find an out-of-the-way spot in my brain to dig a hole and bury it.

Oh no, Jen says as we reach the edge of the embankment leading the ten feet down to Peep Meadow Brook. My eyes start to well up.

The car door is open and there is a man lying face down on the rocks. At least I think it’s a man because sometimes older women wear man-pants and cut their hair short because they don’t care anymore.

I don’t know if the body is ever going to move again.

Jen swears—a couple times.

We should call the police. That’s the right thing to do. Unfortunately, that simple thought ushers in a whole host of others.

If we call the police, we’ll get in trouble.

If we get into trouble, we might lose our spots in our foster home.

If we lose our spots in our foster home, we’ll end up back in the system.

If we end up back in the system, I’ll be sent to one of the group homes for older boys where someone even grosser and hairier than Brody will make me his bitch because I’m small, and quiet, and don’t know how to fight.

My head is reeling with the worst thoughts imaginable while Jen keeps telling me that we can’t do anything and we have to leave. Then above her words I hear something that sounds a million miles away but right next to me at the same time.

Help me, a muffled voice begs. Help.

There’s somebody in the passenger seat of the black car. Whoever is there is probably caught in the seatbelt unable to move, trussed up like a turkey for Thanksgiving.

In a move that is wildly out of character for me, I hurry down the rocks, trying not to look at the body splayed out there. Still, I can’t avoid seeing the moon reflected in a little puddle of black growing around its head.

Owwwwww, I hear a mournful cry from inside the car. My heart is beating out of my chest. I want to run away, but I can’t. Instead, I go to the open door and bend down to look.

I don’t know what I’m seeing. The driver’s deployed air bag is limp and lifeless. It’s smeared with red because the light in the car is on, and I can see colors. The person in the passenger’s seat is tiny and mostly swaddled in a patchwork quilt that is painted in red, too. The windshield on that side has a bullseye crack.

The passenger’s face is broken and bloody. It must be kid, but I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl. I can barely even tell it’s human.

The thing sputters as it fixes one eye on me because the other one looks as though it has been mashed into a pulp. A string of blood and saliva falls from its ruined mouth. Don’t tell Daddy I ate yummies, it gurgles.

Don’t tell Daddy I ate yummies.

I stand up straight, turn around and scramble up the rocks and back onto the road.

Who is it? Jen asks, but I don’t know how to answer her. Instead, I grab her hand and start running, just like Brody did.

In some warped way, I feel like we are running for our lives.

2

WE CATCH UP TO Brody in the back of the tobacco drying barn, sitting in the gloom, drinking another beer. He keeps flicking his lighter on and off, which is about as safe as playing with a loaded gun because we are surrounded by browning and brittle tobacco leaves.

Besides, fire isn’t the most hazardous thing in the barn right now.

Brody is.

I can’t shake the dual images of the person on the rocks and the kid in the passenger seat of the black car. I can’t stop thinking about what it said.

Don’t tell Daddy I ate yummies.

I don’t understand. Autumn Village is a retirement community. There are no kids there. All their kids are grown.

With every flick of his lighter, Brody’s face brightens then winks into shadow. Jen shakes her head and starts pacing back and forth. As my stomach ties itself into knots, I can tell that she understands that we can’t be involved with something like what just happened. We have it okay at our foster home. Nothing’s perfect but at least things are okay.

This could change all that.

Give me a cigarette, Brody tells Jen.

What? she says in mid pace. Suddenly she stops and curls her fingers into claws and rakes the air in front of Brody’s face. You might have just killed someone. I can’t believe you.

Bitch, Brody mutters then turns his misguided gaze in my direction. You, he says to me as he keeps flicking his lighter. I don’t suppose you gotta fag?

I know he says ‘fag’ on purpose. I’m not gay.

Leave him alone, says Jen, and I feel my cheeks bloom because I don’t know how to fight my own battles.

Brody is sitting on an old bale of straw. Above us, tied to the rafters, are rows of huge tobacco leaves gathered in bunches. Along both sides of the old building, the wooden drying slats are open making the whole barn look like a giant fish gasping for air. I feel the cool evening all around, and moonlight is shining in through the openings. The weird shadows stripe the three of us.

Brody stares at his tattered sneakers while he continues to abuse his lighter.

Flick.

Flick.

Flick.

Finally, he takes a deep breath and says, I need a cigarette.

Slowly, I reach into my pocket for the pack that I got from Elmo’s Gas and Snacks two days ago. I had to loiter in the parking lot for almost twenty minutes before one of the seasonal tobacco workers agreed to buy it for me. Brody snatches it out of my hand so quickly you would think I am giving him something he can use to tie off a vein.

He smacks the end of the box against his palm.

Don’t light the place on fire, says Jen.

Shut up, he snaps back.

My insides are doing acrobatics. I turn to my foster sister. Why did he do that with the bottle? I ask her. I can’t ask Brody. He’ll punch me in the face.

Denny, says Jen. Just let it go.

How can she tell me that? Someone is bleeding out on the rocks. A little kid is trapped in the passenger seat of that car. They need help. Who can let something like that go?

Brody answers for her. I wanted to, he says and leans back against one of the splits in the barn like he’s just jerked off and he’s satisfied. I hate them all.

I don’t have to guess who he’s talking about. Ever since Autumn Village was built, a sense of animosity has hung in the air between the townies whose homes surround the woods and the people who live inside the retirement community. That animosity is as pervasive as the smell of manure that covers everything in Sumneytown, either from the cow farms or the big horse breeders.

With no words in my mouth I watch Brody smoke. Every time he flicks his cigarette, Jen steps forward and grounds out the ash to make sure nothing will spark.

No one knows we were there, she reasons.

Got that right. Brody shrugs and takes another drag on his cigarette. As for me, I don’t do confrontation. I can’t handle drama. Out of sheer desperation I wrap my arms around myself and start bobbing—an anxious habit I thought was long gone.

Chillax, Brody tells me, then reaches behind him and pulls out a bottle. Have a drink or something. You’re making me nervous.

I’m making him nervous? I feel like I’m back at one of my other foster homes before this one. Mr. Armitage would clean his gun at the kitchen table while forcing me to sit on the couch and watch. He used to tell me not to say anything because noise made him nervous, and I wouldn’t want to make him nervous.

I shake my head. I don’t want a drink. I don’t want anything other than to turn back time to before Brody’s bottle left his thick fingers.

Give me one, says Jen as she eyes his beer.

Don’t, I say, then immediately shrink because who am I to tell Jen what she can and can’t do? I just hope she doesn’t fall back into bad habits. Last year she was a mess with the alcohol.

I guess not, she says, then reaches two fingers out for Brody’s cigarette. He takes one more puff then hands it to her.

You’re going to be nice to me later for that, he says to Jen then mildly brushes his hand against his crotch.

I hate Brody Erwin.

Suddenly we hear something like a soft scraping against wood. The air around me grows cold.

For some reason, I take a step back and look up.

What the hell? says Brody. He looks up, too.

"What is that?" whispers Jen.

The noise stops for a moment, and the inside of the barn becomes so silent that I can swear the only sound is my own heart thumping in my chest. Then, from the front of the barn, where Jen and I slipped inside and pulled the double doors closed behind us, we hear something else.

Scratching.

Coyotes? says Jen.

Shit, Brody hisses.

I know nothing of coyotes or darker things that lurk in the woods. I used to be fostered in the city. We didn’t have tobacco barns in the city. We didn’t have animals that scratch at our doors.

We all stare at the front of the barn. The scratching is long and drawn-out. I can almost imagine little slivers of barn wood peeling away underneath vicious claws.

A shiver runs down my back.

Brody swears again, and the scratching abruptly stops.

At the far end of the barn, one of the drying slats that goes from floor to ceiling, where moonlight is shining in from outside, grows dark.

Jen gasps.

There’s someone standing there blotting out the moonlight. Shit. Whoever it is knows we’re here—maybe even knows we caused the accident.

Immediately, I back into the shadows next to a rusted tractor and slowly crouch down by one of the wheels, hoping the puddle of darkness there will keep me safe.

The shadow up against the barn starts moving alongside the building, darkening slat after slat.

I take a ragged breath and start to shake.

Brody says, What the . . . but the words catch in his throat as we all hear a low, feral growl, threatening and guttural.

Then a car stereo rips apart the night from out on Sumneytown Road, not far from where the tobacco barn sits in the tobacco field. The noise is quick but brutal. I know the song. It’s the one where no one ever gets the words right. Something about being ‘wrapped up like a douche while rumors fill the night.’

As the music wails, the shadow sliding between the open slats stops.

Then it melts away.

I’ve never been more grateful for that music. I’m so grateful, in fact, that I barely even feel the pee leave my bladder.

Honestly, I don’t even realize I’ve wet myself until later.

3

TEN MINUTES PASS in total silence. We have all been rendered speechless. We’re even afraid to move. Finally, I let out a deep breath that I don’t even know I’m holding.

I want to go home, I whisper so softly that the field mice that live in the barn probably can’t hear me.

Brody and Jen don’t say anything. She’s biting her nails. He’s standing by the bale of hay he was sitting on, studying the walls of the barn, listening for scratching sounds—looking for any kind of movement.

Nothing.

Gone, Jen says.

Whatever, he shoots back at her. He is holding a bottle of beer in one hand with only backwash swirling around the bottom. He downs it anyway and drops the bottle to the ground. All I can think about is every teacher I’ve ever had in every school I’ve ever been in that has lectured us about littering.

People aren’t supposed to litter anymore. Brody does a lot of things that people aren’t supposed to do.

He roughly grabs Jen’s hand.

What the hell? she snaps at him but doesn’t pull away. She’ll never pull away from Brody Erwin.

You said whatever was there is gone. Let’s go see.

He rudely drags her along with him to the front of the barn. I follow in their shadow. Slowly he pushes open one of the two huge double doors. Part of me thinks that there are going to be coyotes waiting outside, ready to take one of us down. They’ll go for the weakest, which is me, unless they single out the mentally ill. That would be Brody.

Jen will be safe. She’s tough like that.

The world outside is blue because that’s how moonlight colors everything. The field is empty.

Far above our heads, a flock of Canadian geese honk in the cool night air. I always thought that geese didn’t fly at night, but they do. Besides, since the weather has been so weird the past few years between October snows, tornados and heat waves, the geese probably don’t know which end is up.

Brody drops Jen’s hand as though it’s something dirty he doesn’t want to touch. Immediately, she clamps onto my thin arm and a chill races down my spine. Denny, she says. Let’s go.

Brody has already started heading toward the road. He has a long walk. Mr. Erwin’s doublewide is on the complete other side of Autumn Village on LaPierre Street. Before the Village was here, he could cut through the woods on well-worn dirt-bike paths. Now, he can’t set foot inside the Village. The people there are vigilant about trespassers.

Bye, says Jen as she watches him stomp away. Even though my foster sister is tough as nails, I can hear the hurt in her voice. I know they’re screwing. Last year, when she spent the majority of her days pickled, but not pickled enough to get caught, she probably let Brody do whatever he wanted to her.

I wish I didn’t know anything about that, but I do. I might be shy. I might be quiet. Most people at school probably don’t even know my name.

But I’m not stupid.

Brody doesn’t say anything as he leaves us. He just shoves both of his hands deep into his pockets, pulls his head down between his shoulders and disappears. It’s only then that I realize that my jeans are wet. Thankfully, Jen can’t see my darkened crotch through the night.

As the two of us start following Brody’s path over to Sumneytown Road, Jen glances back toward the entrance to Autumn Village and where the car went into Peep Meadow Brook. She shakes her head. Unbelievable.

She’s right. The last hour has been totally unbelievable.

Something slimy drips down the back of my throat, and I swallow. Do you think that person is really dead?

How should I know? she snaps at me, but she starts to slow down.

What? I whisper, but I already know what. Now, instead of me, it’s Jen who has to look again—just one last time, and I think I want to die.

My foster sister stops walking and stares across the field at the white fence and beyond to where the car missed the bridge. Come on, she says.

Wait. What? I don’t want to, I tell her. I can feel roots sprouting out of the bottom of my feet and sinking deep into the earth.

Just come on, she says again and starts pulling me across