Stay Away

by Ike Hamill

“He hasn’t traded with you yet. Tell him what you are,” she said.

  Lueck examined Brett, sizing him up.

  “Perhaps we could trade,” Lueck said.

  “No way,” Eric said. “This is a bad idea.”

  Brett looked at Lily. It was the same way that he had looked at her when she told him that they were breaking up. At least it was the helpless look he had tried on before he showed his anger.

  “Lily, I don’t think I should trade with him.”

  “We all have, Brett. You’re the only one left,” she said. “We’re going to make this count though. What do we want to know? Where’s Wendell? Also, what is this guy, a demon? And how do we get rid of him—is that all we need to know?”

  She heard a murmur from Jessie and his friends. She was almost afraid to look over there.

  Nicky spoke up—“Does it matter what he is? As long as we can find out how to get rid of him, does it matter?”

  “What if something like him comes back?” Eric asked.

  “Yeah, okay,” Nicky said. “I just don’t want to trade for anything more than we need to.”

  “Does it matter?” Frank Libby asked.

  Lily knew what he meant—regardless of how many questions were answered, the Trader had a very short lifespan ahead of him. They were going to find a way to get rid of him one way or another. Jessie’s friend had made a good point—it seemed that Lueck was somehow connected to the trees. There were ways to get rid of trees. Burning might be a perfect solution.

  “Maybe we should take a vote?” Lily asked. “Who thinks it’s a bad idea to trade for information?”

  Brett turned and looked at her.

  “Are you kidding? This is my decision. Just tell me what answers we need. You want to know about your brother and what this piece of shit is made of, right?”

  She saw the look in his eyes and realized that he hadn’t changed at all. The best way of getting him to do anything was to make the assertion that he shouldn’t.

  Brett turned back to the Trader.

  “What do you want?” Brett asked. “For information about Wendell and yourself, what do you want?”

  Lueck licked his lips and tilted his chin down. If his hands hadn’t been shackled to the bars, Lily had no doubt that he would be rubbing them together like a fly getting ready to vomit on a meal.

  “I want your eyes,” Lueck said.

  “What the fuck?” Brett had time to ask.

  Lily was already turning at the sound from the far corner of the barn. There was a small door there—no taller than waist-high. It might have been intended to herd sheep through. The thing lifting the door wasn’t a sheep. She saw a hand blocking the sunlight and fingers curl around the panel. A moment later, the wood was being jerked and splintered.

  She saw Frank Libby’s hand go inside his jacket. This time, his hand came out empty. The knife was still on the floor, after Eddie had kicked it.

  Frank’s eyes scanned the floor to find the knife, but Eric was already stooping to pick it up.

  # # #

  “Who is that?” Frank Libby called. “Who’s there?”

  The hands had already pulled one of the boards from the door and they were working on the next one. It wouldn’t be too long before they would be able to see the person for themselves. Frank was moving cautiously in that direction. Just behind him, Eric and Nicky filled out the triangle.

  Brett seemed to be ignoring the commotion.

  “Tell me what that’s supposed to mean, old man,” Brett said, getting right up in the Trader’s face.

  Lueck was as fast as a snake. His head darted forward and his jaw opened, exposing rows of teeth. Lily wondered if all those teeth were his own, or if he had traded for some of them. Maybe a few even belonged to Frank Libby and his sister.

  Brett jerked back from the gnashing teeth and put a hand to his own face to make sure that the old man hadn’t gotten a chunk.

  Eddie laughed and went to his friend. “Man, he almost got a free lunch.” Eddie kicked at Lueck’s knee. The joint went sideways and the Trader was hanging from his shackles until he got his legs under him again.

  Jessie and his two friends seemed torn about which confrontation to get involved with.

  Lily pointed at the rear of the barn. “Forget about the Trader, go help them.” Not to be a hypocrite, she went too, following Frank Libby to see who was trying to break into the barn. She nearly ran into Eric when he began to back up. Frank started backing up as well.

  “Stop right there,” Frank Libby said. When he wanted to, he could sound quite commanding. It didn’t work on the person coming through the small door. “I said stop.”

  Frank reached back and Eric handed him the knife.

  “Hold on, buddy. Stop right there.”

  Nicky and Eric fanned out to either side of Frank. Lily joined the group and regretted it when she saw the guy. His stringy hair was plastered to his forehead and covering his eyes. His clothes were soaked through and rotted away in big patches. From what she could see of his gray skin, it hung in loose sheets from his bones.

  “Oh, fuck,” Jessie said as he came up behind her.

  “Don’t come any closer, Tyler,” Frank Libby said. He slashed the air with the knife, but it was halfhearted. He didn’t look like he had any intention of touching the lumbering man with the knife or anything else. Frank Libby was backing up faster than the other man was approaching.

  Charlie Holdt had a different idea. Approaching from Nicky’s side, Charlie Holdt led with a long stick that looked like it had been the handle to a rake at one point. The end of the pole was splintered and sharp. Holdty put it to the man’s chest, and pushed, probably trying to unbalance him.

  The pole easily pushed through the rotted shirt and then punched into the gray flesh. The man’s sternum did little to slow the progress. When the pole stuck in his chest, the rotting man reached up with a boney hand and grabbed the sick. Holdty quickly surrendered his grip. Lily couldn’t blame him. She wanted to run from the sight.

  When he opened his mouth, water flowed out of the rotting man’s face. It was thick and dirty and it splattered to the barn’s floor. Pulling the stake from his chest, it made a sloppy, wet slurp. His talon cast it aside. Frank Libby waved his knife around again. The man’s plodding stride didn’t slow. He used a boney finger to push the hair from his eyes and Lily saw that they were milky gray marbles in his head.

  She wanted to gag, or run, or maybe both. Instead, she backed up as Eric did. Her feet were mired in molasses, but she desperately wanted to get something between her and the man.

  “Stay back, Tyler,” Frank said.

  It occurred to Lily that Frank Libby knew this man. The idea that he might be reasoned with flared and then faded. There was no recognition or humanity in those milky eyes. This thing was animated by something other than a human soul.

  Nicky was the next to act. Instead of simply shuffling backwards, like the rest of them, she had picked up the jagged pole that the man had tossed aside. Instead of using it like a spear, she did something more crafty—she thrust the stick between the man’s shuffling legs. The jagged tip pierced the man’s rotted pants. Halfway through, the stake tangled in his legs and he started to go down. Another splash of water spilled from his mouth with a drowning gag as the man tumbled to the floor. He fell forward, hands reaching out and nearly grabbing Frank Libby on his way down. With another weak swipe of the knife, Frank skittered back.

  Behind them, Lily heard a painful cry.

  Eddie and Brett had ignored the approach of the waterlogged man and instead had gone to work on Lueck. They were taking turns kicking at his legs until he went down and then kicking the softer parts of his body until he struggled back upright.

  Eddie was smiling and laughing at the assault. Brett looked serious about it.

  The cry had come from the Trader. There was still no blood flowing, but his shirt was untucked and the rip in his coat was growing. His eyes looked sad—almost pitiful. In any
other circumstance, she would have been compelled to go to his defense. He was just a helpless old man, chained to the gate and being assaulted by two brutes. Eddie’s hand lashed out to slap him. Once more, the Trader’s jaw was fast. The rows of teeth caught Eddie’s hand before he could pull back.

  Blood flew and Eddie jerked backwards. An instant later, Eddie retaliated with a vicious punch to the Trader’s nose.

  The Trader’s face was mangled, but blood oozed out from his smile.

  “Fuck!” Frank Libby yelled.

  Lily looked back and saw that one of the drowned man’s boney hands was grabbing onto his shoe. When Frank tried to pull back, the grip stayed firm and Frank began to lose his balance. Nicky stomped first, hitting the wet man’s wrist. Fish and Jessie came next, plowing their heels down on his arm and hand until it was too broken to hold onto Frank’s foot any longer.

  Eric caught Frank before he could go down.

  They were being herded together—the drowned man on one side was crawling forward and pressing them back towards the manacled biting machine.

  “Everyone, stop!” Lily yelled. “Over here.”

  She retreated back towards the double doors where they had come in. It took two more yells, but they began to follow her. Even Brett came to attention and pulled Eddie towards the group. Eddie had one hand clamped around the other, trying to stop the blood flow, but he came.

  “They’re calling the shots, making us react,” Lily said. The drowned man was still trying to crawl towards them but the stake was caught on his pants leg and wedged between a pillar and a loose board. I say we finish this right now.

  “What about information?” Brett asked.

  “He’s never going to talk,” Lily said. “He was trying to stall us until that other guy got to us. Neither one of them can be reasoned with.”

  Frank Libby looked like he was slowly waking up from a bad dream.

  “That’s… That’s Tyler Cunningham. He drowned thirty years ago.”

  “Fine,” Lily said. “Whatever. Let’s see if he burns.”

  She meant it, too. Still, when the words came out of her mouth, they made her feel cold inside. They were monsters and they were turning her into one as well.

  “Yes,” Frank Libby said. “Yeah. You’re right. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  “Fuck yeah,” Eddie said.

  Jessie was already moving towards the door.

  # # #

  Jessie and Holdty came back with a red metal can of gasoline and a lighter.

  Eddie was standing guard over the Trader. Nicky and Eric were making sure that the drowned man didn’t wriggle free from the pole.

  “Wait,” Frank Libby said. “This whole place is going to go up. We should move them.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Lily said. “They’re too dangerous to move.”

  “Yeah,” Eddie said. “This one has teeth.”

  Frank Libby looked between the Trader and the drowned man for a few seconds.

  “Frank, there could be more on the way. We don’t know what else he has called,” Lily said.

  “Like the Lady,” Jessie said. Fish shot him a strange look.

  “Fine, but hold on for two seconds,” he said. When he went for the door, he was limping.

  “Get the straw away from him,” Brett said, pointing at the floor around the drowned man. Nicky and Eric scraped their feet on the dirt floor, following orders but keeping away from his reach. The Trader tried to bite at Eddie as he cleared that area.

  “There’s a pump outside,” Fish said.

  “I saw a bucket,” Holdty said.

  The two of them disappeared through the doors and Lily had the idea that she would never see them again. If they were smart, as soon as they got outside they would run. In a few minutes, they might get out to the road and flag down a passing car. Then, with a little luck, they could be hitching down to Boston or maybe even New York. None of this was worth dying for. The only thing keeping them together was an unspoken pact. She imagined that they might have feared Frank Libby’s threats. He had said that they were all in it together and he would burn them if they tried to back out. But Frank was gone too. He had told them to wait two seconds and now he was gone.

  She was astonished when he ran back in. His hands were full of blankets.

  “These will snuff out the fire if it starts to get out of control,” Frank Libby said. “Now douse those assholes.”

  Jessie was holding the can. He unscrewed the cap and flipped around the gooseneck nozzle. Climbing on the gate, he drizzled the Trader carefully, testing the weight of the can so he only spent half of his fuel on the shackled old man.

  Looking up with sad eyes, the Trader seemed oblivious to the gasoline flowing into his eyes and mouth. His expression begged Jessie for mercy.

  “Just get it done, kid,” Frank Libby said.

  Jessie slipped climbing down from the gate. The Trader’s teeth closed on the air an inch from Jessie’s arm. The old man’s eyes transformed to feral rage and then back to innocence in a fraction of a second. Lily couldn’t decide which one was the mask. She was starting to believe that all of the Trader’s faces were nothing but mimicry.

  Fish and Holdty came back with the buckets while Jessie was dumping the rest of the can on the drowned man.

  “He’s gonna smoke like wet leaves,” Eddie said.

  “Okay. Stand back,” Frank Libby said. From his pocket, he produced a box of matches and moved towards the soggy man on the floor. The drowned man looked like he had to be already dead. Burning him would be both merciful and impossible.

  Holdty had a lighter and tried to hand it to Jessie.

  “I have gas all over my hands,” Jessie said. He stepped back towards the door, still holding the red can. That left Holdty with the lighter, looking at the Trader and his sad eyes.

  “Wait! Wait!” Nicky said. “Are we sure about this?”

  Frank Libby didn’t respond. He flicked a match, let it flare and then dropped it on the drowned man. The match burned for a second and then extinguished with a curl of smoke.

  Over at the gate, Eddie took the lighter from Holdty. Everyone else took a step back as Eddie crouched. It was easy to see where the gasoline had soaked into the Trader’s suit. There were dark splotches that took away the sheen of the old fabric. Just above the Trader’s knee, Eddie put the lighter to one of those spots and the suit caught immediately.

  Eddie was actually smiling as he straightened up. Fish, Holdty, and even Brett appeared horrified as the flames raced up the Trader’s pants and caught his jacket. The Trader still wore a sad, helpless expression, begging them for mercy with his eyes. He could have been a lonely grandfather, widowed and struggling to survive, caught up in bad circumstances and wrongly accused.

  In a burst of clarity, Lily couldn’t imagine why they had thought that it was okay to handcuff this man, torture him, and then set him ablaze. Their accusations were ridiculous and they had no real evidence. Then, an image floated up out of her memory. Her mother’s face, washed clean by the river, had been practically shredded by jagged cuts. The torn edges of her skin had been white and puffy, waterlogged before her body had been recovered. Her father had almost looked normal, perhaps deep asleep except for the purple patches under his chin and eyes. The Trader had been responsible for both of their deaths. Lily couldn’t explain why, and she certainly couldn’t prove it. Regardless, it was true. His punishment was fire.

  The Trader didn’t react to the flames until they reached his face. The surprise that registered in his open mouth seemed to be the first real emotion he had demonstrated.

  As the Trader started to really burn, Frank Libby was squatting next to the drowned man, getting ready to light another match. Before he could, the match must have rekindled. Flame erupted from the shape on the floor. The wet clothes and flesh immediately began to spit and crackle.

  Lily whipped her head back around to the Trader when Eddie yelled out. All she could think was that he
had tried to hit Lueck again because his hand was on fire. In his panic, he was waving it frantically, doing nothing more than fanning the flames. Brett grabbed one of the blankets that Frank Libby had brought in and was trying to catch Eddie, but he was already running away. Eddie dunked his hand in one of the buckets.

  That’s when Eric yelled for help.

  Beyond the drowned man, now shrinking as the flames consumed his wet shape, Eric was stomping on the floor, putting out another stray flame.

  Eddie moaned in pain as he pulled his burned hand from the bucket. Pinching the handle between his fingers, Eric returned the knife that Officer Libby had dropped earlier.

  The bodies burned.

  # # #

  When the skin of his face began to bubble and peel, the Trader finally started to scream. The sounds made no sense at first. Then they started to take shape into words.

  “I can offer you anything,” the Trader wailed.

  Cradling his burned hand against his chest, Eddie leaned forward and spat at the Trader.

  Holdty emptied one of the buckets at the burning man’s feet to stop the wood from catching. Holdty went out to fetch more water and again Lily thought he would disappear forever if he was smart. Again, he came back.

  Frank Libby was crouching next to the burning shape that used to be the drowned man. He didn’t seem to be talking to anyone in particular.

  “They aren’t human. People don’t burn like this. It doesn’t take all that much to kill a man with fire, but it takes a tremendous amount of fuel to burn up a corpse.”

  After a moment, still addressing nobody but himself, he said, “And that match went out. He caught just because the other one caught.”

  Lily wanted to tell him that he was wrong, at least about how much fire it takes to kill. The Trader’s suit was gone and big patches of his body had nearly burned through. They could see the bones of one of his arms. She imagined that if he tried he might easily slip from the handcuffs. But she realized that it all just proved Frank’s point—the things weren’t human. A person wouldn’t still be talking as the fire consumed them.

  At one point, Eddie screamed again, cutting through the monotony of the snaps and pops of the fire. The smile was erased from his face as he plunged his hand into the bucket. Steam rose from the water, like his hand was still burning. When he wiped his hand dry on his pants, Lily saw black rows of puncture wounds that were bubbling even after he wiped them off a second time.