Callis Rose by Mark Tufo
Frankie ran up the stairs first. She was hoping Levitt would forget she existed. Levitt pushed Sam up the stairs when he realized his further torment of Callis would have to wait.
Callis was sitting on the floor in Joshua’s bedroom as the baby crawled around mostly drooling on a wide assortment of toys as he sampled each one in his mouth. She kept a close watch on him, making sure to remove any object that could potentially cause harm. She could not, however, stop thinking about how quickly her life’s fortune had taken a turn. Just a few days ago she was the happy kid of two loving parents, and through the use of a power she did not understand, she had accidently gotten her father killed and then her mother was shot down by the police while trying to kill her. She had been ripped from her house, her parents, her friends, and deposited into a system that cared very little for her well-being. The home she was in now was nothing more than a glorified youth prison, and there was a hostile inmate that for some reason wanted to do her harm.
“I see you two are getting along fabulously,” Mrs. Templeton said from the doorway.
Callis was thankful she had her back to the door or Mrs. Templeton would have seen how far removed Callis was from the present.
“Yes, ma’am,” Callis said turning.
“I know you’re new, so I won’t punish you for it. One of those other little brats should have told you, but I’m going to need your shoes.”
“My shoes, Mrs. Templeton?”
“I know I don’t have a speech impediment, Callis. Yes, I said your shoes. I lock them up at night so that if any of you little darlings get the bright idea to run away, I know you won’t get far. Lost two kids that way…that’s a grand a month just up and took off. I can’t let that happen again, so give me your shoes and don’t play dumb with me.”
Callis immediately scrambled over to under the crib and grabbed her sneakers, handing them to Mrs. Templeton.
“Maybe there’s hope for you yet.” Mrs. Templeton turned to leave. “Make sure you keep that baby quiet. There’s some good shows on tonight I don’t want to miss.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A couple of hours later, Mrs. Templeton came into the room with a large purple bundle under one arm and a baby bottle in the other. “This sleeping bag will have to do until I can get to Goodwill and get you a cot. How’s he doing? He’s usually fussy around this time.”
“He’s doing great,” Callis said. She had the baby in her arms and she was rocking back and forth in the small rocking chair.
“Hmm, that means he’s going to be up all night tonight, he’s colicky. Glad I won’t have to get up. Ten minutes to lights out.” With that she turned and left.
“You’re not clocky are you? I don’t even know what that means,” Callis said as she stared at the baby in her lap.
He babbled incoherently as he played with her tresses.
“Lights out, you little brats,” Mrs. Templeton shouted up the stairs. “And if I hear anything like I did a couple of weeks ago, every single one of you little miscreants will be digging a new tunnel to China. You got that!”
“Yes, Mrs. Templeton,” came the half-hearted reply from the trio upstairs.
Josh burped and his eyes were half closed as Callis placed him in his crib. She personally was washed and wrung out; the events of the last couple of days had happened so fast that she had barely enough time to catch up and now that she was, her body was telling her to rest.
She had been asleep for a few hours when something woke her. She looked over towards the baby, the nightlight shone on his cherub face. He was resting peacefully. No there it was again! Her heartbeats began to pick up pace, adrenaline began to fuel her muscles, pinpricks of ill feeling ran up her arms. She could hear someone on the stairs and the ‘someone’ was trying to be quiet about it – too quiet. Her heart was in overdrive, the walls of her ventricles slamming together as blood was being force-fed through her system at terminal velocity.
She could almost feel the malevolence reverberate off of each footfall. Levitt was coming for her to make good on the threats he had been giving her all day. She sat up quickly; the cheap vinyl fabric of the sleeping bag was extraordinarily loud in the small room as she did so. She pushed completely out and got against the far wall. The creaking on the stairs stopped. Her stomach churned as nerves began to fray. Panic made her weak at the knees as she tried to push up and through the wall – hoping that maybe she could blend in and become one with it.
She could hear the fibers on the carpet being crushed down as he came down the small hallway. And then there he was, framed in the doorway, a look of consternation on his face as he looked down at the empty sleeping bag and then his face lit up into a wicked smile as he peered to the far end of the room and the wall that Callis was plastered up against.
“Make a noise and I’ll cut that baby in two,” he hissed, brandishing a wicked looking switchblade.
“Please,” Callis begged.
He took two strides into the room and was within knife-wielding range to her or the baby. “I said not a noise.” The force with which he said the words left no doubt in Callis’ mind he would hold true to his original threat. “How easy it would be to just stick my knife right through that little shit,” Levitt said as he peered into the crib.
“What do you want?” Callis asked, hoping to keep the monster away from the baby.
“I think you know what I want,” he told her, her ruse working, as he pulled his head away to leer at her. And now that it had worked she almost wished it hadn’t. His eyes were so flat; they held no emotion.
“I don’t,” Callis hitched.
“Take off your clothes,” he said and held the knife up as if he needed the added threat. The mere sight of him had Callis in a near hysteria.
“Please, Levitt,” she begged.
“Listen, you stupid bitch, take off your clothes or I’m just going to reach over in this crib and stick my knife right through this little shit machine. Am I making myself clear?”
Tears began to stream down Callis’ face.
“Yes, that’s what I like,” he said. “Now the clothes.”
Callis pushed her pajama pants down and stepped out of them, long ragged hitches of breath coming through her mouth. Her chest was heaving with the exertion, fright, and embarrassment of what she was doing.
“Now the pink Pixar panties,” Levitt said, ogling her thin legs.
Callis was convinced her heart was going to break through her rib cage as she put her fingers on the waistband. Her face flushed as she began to move them down, Levitt stepped closer. “Stop!” she said forcibly.
Levitt still wore the same gawking look and the knife was roughly pointed at her, his right leg was a few inches ahead of the left as he stepped in, but he was now completely motionless.
Callis waited long moments for him to say or do something; he didn’t so much as blink. She quickly grabbed her pants and pulled them back up. “What...what are you doing?” she asked, hoping that maybe he had some goodness left in him. Still nothing.
“Leave,” Callis finally found the nerve to tell him. He woodenly turned and began to head out of the room. Callis followed him a few paces behind to see if he was actually going. Levitt headed for the front door. Callis wanted to tell him he couldn’t go because Mrs. Templeton would be angry, but she thought better of it. If he was gone she would be safe, they all would be safe.
Levitt turned the knob to the front door and was walking out. Callis nearly squealed when someone touched her back.
“You alright?” Sam asked.
Callis nodded.
“When I realized Levitt had gotten up, I knew he was coming down here. I couldn’t let him,” Sam said. It was then that she noticed he was carrying a bat. “What’s he doing?”
“I...I told him to leave.”
“And he did?” Sam questioned.
The screen door closed as Levitt was through, Sam and Callis went to the window to watch. Levitt crossed the yard and had reached the s
“What happened?” Sam asked, not taking his eyes off of Levitt; he was secretly hoping the boy would just keep going.
“He came into my room and threatened me and Josh.” Callis couldn’t bring herself to tell Sam that he made her take her pants off. “And then I just told him to ‘Stop’ and he did.”
Sam noticed Levitt at that exact moment had taken the most inopportune of times to stop. He was now dead center in the roadway. “What is that idiot doing?” he asked.
Callis turned. Levitt was once again motionless.
“He’s going to get himself killed. I need to get Mrs. Templeton.” He said the words, but there was no conviction behind them. He knew the world would be a better place without Levitt Ventine. “Callis, what if we both just went back to our beds?”
Callis stared at him for a moment as she grasped the realization of what he was saying.
“Let’s just pretend we never saw him. He never came to your room…I never knew he got up. As far as we know, he was just running away. Can you do that? Callis, if he stays here he’ll hurt you eventually,” Sam added as he witnessed the internal struggle within the girl.
“Headlights,” Callis said. “A car is coming.”
“Callis?”
She was looking from the approaching headlights back to Sam’s kind face and back to the headlights. “I’m scared.”
“You saw nothing, Callis. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Now go get back in bed, anything that happens tonight is going to be as big a surprise for you as it is for everyone else.” He gently nudged her back towards her room. “Go.”
She started slowly at first, but was almost at a full run by the time she made the turn into the room. Sam waited a heartbeat longer, the lights of the approaching car getting brighter before he bounded up the stairs.
Austin Benford had just got his driver’s license that day; he was twenty years old. It wasn’t that he couldn’t drive; it’s just that he hadn’t wanted to. It had never before interested him. Everything he wanted was within walking distance, a friend’s car, or his parents would still shuttle him around, which was easy enough considering he still lived in their basement. But all that changed when he met Jill Ford. She had pushed him to get his license and a car so that they could stop double dating or being dependent on his parents for rides. She had lost her license the previous summer due to multiple speeding violations.
She had promised all sorts of wicked things they could do if they were alone and parked. They had just eaten a dinner he could hardly afford and were heading to a new housing development. There was a dirt road leading up to where the planned community was being raised, but was nothing more than a couple of poured cement foundations and an empty lot at the moment.
“You like what you see?” she asked Austin as she lifted her skirt a little higher.
Austin’s attention was split fifty-fifty between the roadway and her increasingly exposed creamy white thigh. Blood was pouring from one part of his body to another and he was losing the ability for higher reasoning. Lust was dilating his pupils and making his palms sweat. Jill was laughing as she watched the effect she was having on him.
“Hurry,” she rasped breathlessly.
Austin’s foot pressed down on the accelerator, he was still watching her as she pulled her skirt up. He almost swerved off the road when he caught sight of her lace panties.
She was pulling her skirt up higher as she glanced out the window, a scream formed in her throat. “Watch out!” she shrieked, placing her hands against the dashboard.
Austin was confused as he watched her hands retreat from her skirt and brace for impact. He turned to look through the windshield, all he registered as he plowed into the person was the glint of steel as the body slammed into the front end, up onto the hood, cracking into the windshield. The car began to screech to a halt as he tried to shove the brake pedal two-footed through the floorboards.
“What the hell, Austin? What did you hit!” Jill was screaming.
Porch lights began to go on all along the street, Austin was able to see the smear of blood that ran down the length of the front window. When the car came to a halt, he got out, praying to whatever god would listen. “Please be a deer, please be a deer.”
Revulsion immediately took hold of him as he looked at the crumpled form of the boy in the roadway. The boy was on his back, his legs at an odd angle to the rest of him. A knife was still clutched in his hand and pointed up, but it was the look upon the boy’s face that would forever be etched in his memory. It was the look of lascivious lust that he himself had been wearing only moments before.
Callis screamed involuntarily as she heard the crunch of metal on bone, the shattering of glass was punctuated with the squeal of tires as they left behind a thick layer of rubber on the roadway.
“What the hell!” Mrs. Templeton yelled from her bedroom.
Joshua had picked his head up and was now yelling vociferously. Callis was frozen, guilt beginning to take root. She picked up the baby hoping to allay some of her feelings.
“Who is screeching their goddamn tires this late at night?” Mrs. Templeton was screaming as she yanked her bedroom door open. “Why is my front door open!” she was bellowing, but pieces of the puzzle were beginning to align themselves. Callis!” she screamed.
Callis could hear the woman’s footfalls coming quickly and met her at the doorway holding the baby.
“Yes, Mrs. Templeton?” Callis asked, her eyes wide with fright.
“Who’s outside?” Mrs. Templeton questioned.
“I don’t know,” Callis answered unconvincingly.
“And what the hell is wrong with your eyes?”
“Ma’am?” Callis questioned.
“They look like they’re bleeding. Did something happen? For God’s sake, go get cleaned up before the cops get here. They’re going to think I beat you guys.” Mrs. Templeton turned to go act like she was concerned about what happened outside, and she was, although only in so much as it affected her pocket book.
Distant sirens could be heard as Jodie opened the weather door. Neighbors were pouring out of their homes, most congregated around the crumpled front end of a late model Dodge.
“Who is it?” Mrs. Templeton was asking everyone she encountered on the way. They all shook their heads. A rising dread beginning to form in the pit of her stomach, the mountain of paperwork she would have to do, the investigations she would be put through if it were one of her charges. She could very well lose her right to foster anymore; if that happened she would have to work just like all the other slobbery nine-to-fivers and she just couldn’t handle that. The state PAID her, PAID her to keep free labor at her house and she couldn’t afford to lose this gravy train. Sure, fostering had cost her marriage, but even that asshole had wanted her to work, to get off her ass, stop watching television and get to work. She had been happy to see him go. What would she do if she lost all that?
“Damn, damn, damn.” she muttered as she caught sight of Levitt. Blood was trickling from his mouth. She noticed that a stupid, shit-eating grin was plastered on his face. When she realized that the eyes of her neighbors were upon her she quickly flew into the role of hysterical den mother. “Oh my GOD!” she cried entirely too loudly.
She immediately got down on her knees by his body. She weighed the thought of cradling his head in her lap but couldn’t bring herself to do it, so she kept her hands on the side of her head as she wailed theatrically. I hope they’re buying this shit, she thought as she rocked back and forth. She was thankful when the police and ambulance finally showed as they moved her to the side so they could check on the status of the boy.
The blood that had been spilling forth from Levitt’s mouth abruptly stopped, as did his life. The technicians carefully, but without haste, loaded his remains onto their gurney and into the back of the ambulance.
“Hello, ma’am, my name is Officer Tynes with the Denver Police Department. I’m so sorry for your loss, but I have a few questi
Mrs. Templeton was standing up now glaring past Officer Tynes and into the back of his cruiser where Austin Benford was crying in anguish, partly for wrecking his car, partly for killing the boy; but ashamedly, the biggest reason was for the piece of ass he was missing out on. Jill was on her cell phone seeking alternate means of transportation away from the scene of devastation.
“Ma’am?” Officer Tynes gently prodded.
She tore her gaze away.
“Is the boy your son?” he asked gently.
“Him? No,” she said much too glibly. The officer looked at her strangely. Get it together, Jodie, she admonished herself. “He was my foster son,” she said, laying it on a little too thickly to compensate for her earlier slip.
“Can I get both of your names please?”
“I’m Jodie Templeton, his foster mom, and that dear saint of a boy was Levitt Ventine.” A large crocodile tear doing its best to form and fall.
Officer Tynes hoped she used some of her foster money for acting classes because she needed it. He could not yet understand why the dramatics, but he’d figure it out eventually. “Can you tell me what happened here?”
“He was hit by a car…that menace!” she said, pointing an accusatory finger at Austin. “He killed my boy!” she said shrilly.
Austin, who had been staring at Jill, ducked down when he realized what was happening.
“Other than that, do you know what he was doing out here in the first place?” Officer Tynes asked. He was curious about the knife and the smirk that was splayed across the deceased boy’s face.
“I run a tight ship here,” she said, going into defensive mode.
“I’m sure you do. I’m just trying to find out why he was in the middle of the road holding a knife.”
“A knife you say? I don’t allow my kids to have knives,” she said as she placed her hand on her chest.
“I’m sure you don’t.”
“Listen, officer, my kids are sent to bed at nine. I was in bed asleep myself when I heard the screeching of the tires and...” she hitched convincingly, or so she thought. “...and then my foster boy was laying on the ground d-d-dead.” Too much, Jodie, less is more. She wiped away a non-existent tear.