I closed my eyes and thought back to the time I’d lived with Chuck, remembered how he swore I was useless, a stain on his life, even though I was only his stepson. He’d made me listen to him belittle my mom, tell me what a whore she was and how he’d kill her one day, and then he’d forced me outside to play catch with him, which ended up being him throwing the ball at my face and seeing if I could duck fast enough.
He was a horrible person.
“Tyler?” Ari poked me on the shoulder, and I dragged myself out of the memories. “Are we doing this? We can leave his ass here to freeze to death if you want.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Let’s drown the fucker.”
The scary grin returned to his face.
He pointed at the door on the side. It didn’t look quite right. Someone had probably used a torch to cut the hole, and the door was a piece of sheet metal. Not a pro job at all.
Ari looked very proud of himself. “Cut the lock off with bolt cutters the last time I was here. All we gotta do now is throw him in.”
“What you’re saying is you were going to put someone in here, so it might as well be Chuck?”
He snickered and nodded.
“Let’s do it.” I grabbed Chuck under the armpits again as Ari opened the door. We lifted him through the entrance and onto a rickety narrow platform that creaked under our feet. Someone had welded it to the side of the tower, and like the door, it was definitely an amateur attempt.
“What was this platform for?” I asked, looking around.
Ari turned on his phone flashlight and set it near our feet so that strange shadows danced around the dome surrounding us. My heart froze for a moment, expecting to fall as the platform broke under our weight, but nothing happened. The water gleamed about twenty feet below us.
Ari released his hold on Chuck, and I cursed as Chuck’s entire weight fell to me. He stepped back and waved his hand toward the water. “The final choice is yours, Tyler. These are your demons.”
It was oddly...empathetic of Ari. Maybe it was better to assume the thing he understood was revenge.
Another calming breath later, the decision solidified.
I shoved Chuck off the platform.
His body sailed through the air. Athudthat rang around the dome had Ari and I sharing a confused look.
“What was that?” he asked, taking off his beanie. He ran a hand through his hair.
“Uh, no clue.”
He grabbed his phone, and we rushed to the edge of the platform.
For a second, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. Chuck had landed on his back and blood leaked out of his ears. Red spread around his head like a bizarre halo, and his eyes fluttered as he coughed.
Ari gasped.
“Oh, shit. It froze. The water froze. How did we not think about that?” I nudged his side.
Ari started to chuckle, which led to me snorting, and then we were both howling, despite the carnage below. My heartbeat settled somewhere near normal by the time we wound down.
“Shit, we’re dumb,” I said.
That just kicked off another round of amused laughter.
“Let’s go,” I said.
“You don’t want to wait and see if he?—”
“No.” All at once, the seriousness of what we’d done closed in around me, making the shadows seems strange and dangerous. I didn’t wait for an answer from Ari. I left through the door and ran to the ladder, slipping a little on snow. The cold air whipped my face, but I ignored it as I grabbed the rungs and made my way down, one step at a time until my feet hit solid ground.
Ari wasn’t following, but I ignored where he was to rush to his car and jump into the passenger’s side. I was right. This wasn’t my thing. Chuck was dead and I should be happy—Iwashappy—but that didn’t stop my heart from racing and a flush of fear from creeping up my neck. I glanced around the car, but no one was around.
