Free Pray To Stay Dead by Mason James Cole Page B

and rattled to the floor behind the television, and the blizzard returned.
    “ Eh,” Sam said, turning off the television. The circle of snow shrank to a small wavering point of light. “We’ll get it working later, come on.”
    They followed him out of the house and up the trail.
    “ He’s got a few hundred unfinished doors in there,” Sam said, indicating one of the sheds. “Some of them are good, but most of them are no good for anything but a nice big bonfire. We do that sometimes.”
    They passed another shed, and Sam droned on about his father’s doors and windows, but Colleen tuned him out. Daniel moved close and tugged her shirt once.
    “ What?”
    “ How are you?” He asked, giving her his best puppy dog face.
    “ I’m fine.”
    “ Still mad at me?”
    “ What do you think?”
    “ I’m sorry, okay,” he said, and she rolled his words over in her mind a few times. Not the words themselves, but the tone in which they were uttered. He sounded like he meant it.
    “ Okay,” she said.
    “ So what are you going to do?”
    “ I already did it.”
    “ Did what?”
    She nodded toward Sam. “Stole a few facecloths from his bathroom.”
    Daniel laughed, and things were okay between them again. Maybe things wouldn’t stay okay between them for long, but they were okay between them for now, and that made her happy. Guy looked back with confusion on his face, and she stepped away from her brother.
    “ What’s funny?”
    “ Just patching things up with my idiot brother, is all.”
    “ He is an idiot,” Guy said. “But that’s good.”
    They walked a bit more, and Colleen’s thighs and calves burned. The incline was gradual, but it was taking its toll on her underused leg muscles.
    “ Where the hell are we going?” Richard asked, stopping to reach down and massage his right calf. Colleen wasn’t the only one feeling it.
    “ Just a little more. I want to show you something.”
    A little further along, they came across the first of the doors: thick metal beasts with small glass windows inlaid with wire mesh, rust-spotted and stacked three or four thick and leaning against several of the young redwoods that made up this part of the forest.
    “ What’s this about?” Daniel said, stepping up to one of the doors and touching the small window placed into the door at head height. Beneath the window, the number 17, now faded from exposure to the elements, had been painted. “These come from a prison or something?”
    “ You’d think so,” Sam said. “I thought the same thing, too, but they’re just from a school. Dad got them cheap, but now they’re rotting out here.”
    “ This what you wanted to show us, man?” Daniel said. “Some doors leaning against trees?”
    “ No, no,” Sam said. “I mean, yeah, I wanted to show you this, but I really want to show you where I live.”
    “ How far is it?”
    “ Not much. And when we get there, we’ll tighten our wigs, okay? All of us.”
    “ Okay,” Daniel said, sounding less annoyed.
    Kimberly looked back at Colleen and, eyebrows raised, mouthed the words: “Tighten our wigs?”
    Colleen pinched her thumb and forefinger together before her lips, sucking in her cheeks.
    “ Oh, yeah,” Kimberly said. “Good.”
    The ground leveled out again, and three small cabins came into view, one in the center, at the end of the road, and one on either side of the path. There was a pick-up truck parked next to the cabin on the left.
    Colleen took Guy’s hand and stopped. Kimberly looked back at them, and Colleen waved them on.
    “ We’ll catch up.”
    “ What’s on your mind?” Guy asked, stroking her cheek.
    “ I miss you,” she said, trying to gather together everything that was on her mind and say it in some way that made sense.
    “ You want to rest here a little while and then hit the road?” Guy said.
    Colleen was momentarily confused, unsure if he meant here, in the middle of the road, or here, at Sam’s father’s place.
    “ I don’t