The Summer of Winters Read online

  The Summer of Winters

  Mark Allan Gunnells

  Evil Jester Press

  New York

  To James Newman, not only one hell of a writer but also a true gentleman. You’re a great friend and inspiration.

  The Summer of Winters

  Copyright © 2013 by Mark Allan Gunnells

  First Edition

  No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any electronic system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher and author. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Edited by Peter Giglio

  ISBN: 978-0615750361

  First Digital Edition

  Prologue: Home Again

  September 24, 2010

  “I had some of the best times of my life in that house…and some of the worst,” Mike Guthrie said, staring out the car window.

  In the passenger’s seat, Justin Keller shifted position, the leather upholstery creaking beneath him. “So are we going to actually get out of the car or just stare at the place from across the street all day?”

  Mike glanced over at his partner and laughed. “I’m working up to it.”

  “You know, we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. We can just go back to the hotel and hang out until time for your reunion. For that matter, we can skip the whole reunion and just head back to Atlanta tonight.”

  Mike took a deep breath and said, “No, this is what I came here for.”

  “Facing up to the ghosts of your past?”

  “Something like that.”

  Another minute passed in silence then Mike finally opened the door and stepped out of the car. Justin followed. The day was cool, but not unpleasantly so. The leaves of the trees on Jefferies Street were just starting to turn, giving a hint of the full autumnal beauty that would be in evidence a month from now. The street was quiet this Friday morning as the two men crossed over toward the house where Mike had grown up.

  Even as a child, he’d known the place was no mansion, but he didn’t remember it being quite so small. It was a perfect gray cube, as if it had been built from Lego blocks, with a black-shingled roof. When he’d lived here as a child, there had been a white awning over the front door and matching awnings over the windows to either side, but sometime in the intervening years these had been removed. Mike thought the house’s façade looked strange without the awnings, like a face with the eyebrows and nose missing. The place looked even shabbier than he recalled, and it had been pretty shabby back when he was a kid. Several shingles were missing from the roof, and the white shutters were in desperate need of painting. The lawn was overgrown and brown, the For Sale sign planted out front faded as if it had been there for quite some time.

  “We could call the realtor,” Justin said, indicating the number on the sign. “I bet they would get someone out here to let us look around the place.”

  Mike shook his head. “I don’t really want to go in. I just feel like I’d see my mother everywhere I turned, you know?”

  “I understand. We’ll just take a look around the outside.”

  Justin started around the side of the house, the steep hill down which Mike used to recklessly careen on his bike when he was young. “Hey,” Mike called, “where are you going?”

  “Backyard. Didn’t you say when you were a kid you spent most of your time playing with yourself in the backyard?”

  “Playing by myself, not with myself.”

  “Either way,” Justin said with a smile, “I want to see the place where the great Mike Guthrie’s imagination was born.”

  Still Mike hesitated. “I don’t know if we should just wander around the property like that.”

  “Why not? The place is obviously empty.”

  “Yeah, but if the neighbors see, they might call the cops.”

  “And what are they going to do? Arrest you for excessive nostalgia? Trespassing on Memory Lane?”

  Without waiting for a response, Justin continued down the hill. After a glance around the neighborhood, Mike trailed along behind. Even though he hadn’t walked this path in more years than he liked to contemplate, it felt as if he’d just been this way yesterday. Every dip in the ground, every rock, every exposed root—it was all achingly familiar to him. He wouldn’t have been surprised to pass his eleven-year-old self walking in the opposite direction; that was how little distance seemed to separate the past from the present at the moment.

  Being back here created a lot of conflicting emotions that Mike had to try to sort through. Pain and regret, yes, but there was also a sense of joy and childhood abandon. Here in this backyard he had spent so many hours, just him and his imagination, weaving elaborate fantasies that had undoubtedly helped make him the semi-successful novelist he was today. He owed a lot to this place, especially the—

  “Shit,” he said, stopping abruptly. “It’s gone.”

  Justin followed his gaze out across the back lawn. “What’s gone?”

  “The forest. It’s gone.”

  “There was a forest here?” Justin said, eying the small parcel of land skeptically.

  “Not a real forest, but separating this property from the one behind it used to be a strand of bamboo trees. Probably wasn’t much, but as a kid it had seemed like some kind of enchanted woods. I used to love to pretend I was Robin Hood and this was my Sherwood Forest.”

  Justin laughed.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, just visualizing you in a pair of tights.”

  “I don’t think Robin Hood wore tights; maybe you’re thinking of Robin the Boy Wonder, Batman’s sidekick.”

  “Sidekick…right. Might as well call him Batman’s ‘roommate.’ In any case, I bet you were cute as hell, running around here playing make-believe.”

  Mike shrugged. “Well, when you grow up without any real friends, you sort of have no choice but to get creative. I just can’t believe the forest is gone.”

  “Guess the Sheriff of Nottingham finally bulldozed it over.”

  Mike didn’t laugh at his partner’s joke, just continued staring at the place that no longer was. It left him with a slightly hollow feeling, as if someone had removed a piece of him.

  “It’s been a lot of years,” Justin said, placing a hand on Mike’s shoulder. “You had to expect there would be changes.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Like that, for instance.”

  Mike pointed at the side yard, where a white wooden post fence separated this house from the one next door.

  “That wasn’t there when you were a kid?” Justin asked.

  “No, there was this huge tangled mess of bushes that ran between the properties. Actually created all these cool little tunnels I used to play in. At least until—”

  Suddenly Mike got very quiet and his posture stiffened. He shook off Justin’s hand and walked over to the back steps. Justin stared off at the house next door, a slightly larger box painted a faded shade of green. “So that’s where Paige lived?”

  A slight smile touched Mike’s lips. “Yeah, Paige Moore. Her family moved in the summer I was eleven.”

  “So you did have a friend after all.”

  “Yeah, for one whole summer. Didn’t last much beyond that.”

  “She must have made a hell of an impression, considering you still talk about her all these years later.”

  “Well, for those three months we were pretty tight. Damn near inseparable really. We must have biked all over this town, and I think I was over at her house more than my own. And her older brother was my first crush.”

  “Really? I
didn’t know that. I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned that Paige had a brother.”

  Mike felt agitated, wringing his hands, crossing his arms, uncrossing them, sitting down on the steps, standing up again, sitting back down. “Well, he died near the end of that summer.”

  “Oh man, that sucks. How did it happen?”

  Mike tried to speak, but his voice cracked. He swallowed, cleared his throat, then said in a hoarse whisper, “It was my fault.”

  And suddenly Mike was in tears, sobbing like Justin had never seen before. Justin knelt next to him, reached out for him but then hesitated, not sure what to do. “What’s wrong?”

  Mike seemed to get control of himself for a moment then started laughing. Laughter turned into crying again. He wiped his eyes with the back of a hand and said, “Wow, it just all really hit me like a cannonball to the gut.”

  “What hit you?”

  Mike didn’t answer right away, just sniffled and stared down at his lap. Then he turned his red eyes to Justin, and his stare was intense, a bit unnerving. “A lot of stuff happened that summer that I’ve never talked about, and I mean not to anyone. The only two people who know the full story are me and Paige, and we never really talked to each other about it, not after it was all over. I’ve just kept it bottled inside all these years, and I thought I was fine with that, but now that I’m here…it’s almost like it’s happening all over again.”

  “Like what’s happening all over again?” Justin asked.

  Mike remained silent.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you’re not ready, but I’m here to listen if you need me.”

  Mike smiled through his tears, reaching out and running the backs of his fingers lightly down Justin’s stubbly cheek. “I think that’s why I really came back here. Certainly not for my twentyyear high school reunion. I mean, hell, I didn’t go to the ten year. But I think part of me knew it was time, time to get this off my chest.”

  “Do you want to go back to the hotel?”

  “No, it seems somehow appropriate to tell the story here.”

  Justin nodded but said nothing more, just held his partner’s hand.

  Mike took a deep, shaky breath and stared off into the distance, not really seeing the yard around him. Although that wasn’t entirely true. He was seeing the same where, just not the same when.

  “I told you a lot of stuff happened the year I was eleven, but if you ask the older folks here in town what they remember most from that summer, I’d wager they’d all give you the same answer. The rape and murder of nine year old Sarah Winters…”

  Chapter One

  The year was 1983. Doesn’t seem like all that long ago until I remind myself that it’s now nearly three decades in the past. Which means kids growing up today view the ’80s the way I viewed the 1950s when I was young. Kind of boggles the mind to think of it like that.

  At the time, we felt we were living in an era of technological marvels, but compared to what we have now, things were virtually pre-historic then. We grew up without microwaves or VCRs (at least I did); DVD and BluRay players were unheard of. No one had cell phones. There were three major networks, and to change the channel we had to walk over to the TV and turn the knob ourselves. We listened to our music on cassette tapes and vinyl records. There was no Internet, and the idea of having a computer compact enough to carry around wherever we went seemed something out of science-fiction; in fact, even in our futuristic sci-fi movies computers were usually the size of a small Buick with a bunch of flashing lights that seemed to serve no purpose.

  So you see, throw in a pair of pigtails and a little blonde bitch and 1983 was practically Little House on the Prairie.

  I was eleven that summer, and very much looking forward to three blessed months out of school. Not that I minded school itself all that much; I wasn’t exactly an honor roll student, but I managed to pull in Bs and Cs without excessive strain. The only problem with school, as far as I was concerned, was all the other kids that went there.

  I was scrawny and awkward, my arms too long and my legs too short. Adolescent acne had come early for me, and genetically poor eyesight necessitated I wear a pair of thick glasses that made my eyes appear bigger than they really were, as if I were staring through two magnifying lenses. And considering my family’s low financial standing, most of my clothes came from thrift stores and Goodwill, ill-fitting and faded. So as you can imagine, I wasn’t exactly Mr. Popularity at school.

  I won’t waste too much time on that. It’s nothing new; the same stuff that has been happening in schools for ages and will continue happening for ages to come. Name-calling, bullying, spitballs thrown at the back of my head, no one wanting to sit with me in the cafeteria at lunch, always picked last when choosing teams for P.E. You’ve heard it all before—maybe experienced it yourself—and that isn’t really what this story is about. Suffice it to say, all I wanted that summer was to spend as much time alone in the backyard as possible, making up games to entertain myself, or riding the bike my mother had just bought me used out of the classifieds.

  That was also the first summer after my father had walked out on us. The previous winter, just before Christmas, he’d taken up with a younger woman who worked as a cashier at the Fast Fare convenience store down the street from our house and moved to Florida with her. We hadn’t heard from him since. Not even a letter. Not that it bothered me all that much. My father was a drinker with a mean streak, and he always looked at me as if I were a disappointment. My home life was a lot more tolerable without him around.

  However, it did leave my mother to support me and my seven-year-old brother Ray all by herself. This wasn’t easy for a woman with no education and little work experience beyond being a housewife and mother. She’d gotten a janitorial job at a local textile plant, which looking back must have barely covered the bills, but at the time I don’t think I appreciated how much she had to juggle to make ends meet. We may not have had the very best, but there was always food on the table and clothes on our backs and even the occasional toys to play with.

  My mother worked a lot of twelve hour shifts that summer. I didn’t know why at the time, but I now know it was to save up money so my brother and I would have a decent Christmas. The one the year before had been lousy. All I knew then was she wasn’t around much. She still considered me too young to watch after Ray on my own so she had her friend Julie sit with us while she worked. Of course, Julie’s idea of “babysitting” consisting of watching TV and reading magazines all day while scarfing down potato chips and shushing us if we got too loud. I didn’t mind. That left me the freedom to pretty much do what I wanted.

  After I got rid of my kid brother, that was.

  Ever since Dad left, Ray attached himself to me, follow me around wherever I went, and I found it more annoying than anything else. All he ever wanted to play was cowboys and Indians, which I thought was excruciatingly boring, and when I tried to get him to play some of the games I’d made up, he always refused to follow the rules. Luckily I had recently found the prefect way to get him out of my hair. One night just before the end of the school year, as we were getting ready for bed, he’d stubbed his toe on the corner of the dresser and said “Shit!” I’d been blackmailing him ever since, threatening to tell Mom—who I’d heard use much fouler language—if he didn’t leave me alone. I figured that threat would lose its power eventually, but I certainly made the most of it while I still could.

  So Ray spent most of his time that summer in the house playing with his toy cars and action figures while I played make-believe in the backyard. In fact, that was what I was doing the day I first met Paige Moore.

  ***

  The green house next to us had been empty for nearly a year. The Haverson family had last occupied it, a real white-trash clan with a mother and father who weren’t married and five dirty kids who looked and smelled like they’d never heard of soap. They only lived there for four months, and it was four of the worst months of my life. The Haverson kids were
mean and not afraid to beat up on a weaker kid, even the girls, so I actually avoided going out of the house if at all possible during their brief stay at 405 Jefferies Street. Apparently, and lucky for me, they weren’t able to pay their rent, and the landlord, Mr. Mahaffey (who also owned our house), gave them the boot. I was as happy to see them go as I was my father.

  Off and on over the next year, I’d seen Mr. Mahaffey showing the house, but apparently he couldn’t get anyone interested in renting. It was bigger than our house but seemed in even worse shape, and Mr. Mahaffey wasn’t really one for repairs. I’d sort of come to believe that the house would remain empty indefinitely.

  And then around ten that Wednesday morning, early in June about two weeks after school had let out for the summer, I saw a big yellow moving truck back into the front yard next door. It was drizzling that morning, so I was stuck inside, sitting by the one window of the bedroom I shared with Ray. He was up on top of the bunk-beds, rolling his cars along the coverlet and sending them careening over the edge to crash on the floor. I was trying to tune him out, staring out the window and doing my best to will the rain to stop so I could go out back and play. Being cooped up in the house on a summer day was like a nightmare.

  The moving truck briefly distracted me from my rainy day blues. I hadn’t seen Mr. Mahaffey showing the house in the past couple of weeks, and I hadn’t heard Julie say anything about it. She usually knew all the town gossip. I leaned forward until my face pressed against the glass and tried to get a glimpse of our new neighbors, but our room was at the back of the house which didn’t give me a good angle to see the front yard of the house next door. I could see the very front of the truck but that was it; no sign of who was moving in. I just hoped they didn’t have any mean kids like the Haversons. I got picked on enough at school; I didn’t need it at home, too.