“Listen,” Officer Clapton said. He took a step inside the house. Jeff and Naomi stepped back to allow him entry and Tim found himself huddling near them to listen. “I understand your frustration. Believe me, I do. If it was my kid I’d be furious. I hope you can see my position, though. I can’t play favorites. I have to play by the rules. I know you, and I know you’re good people. Tim’s a good kid.” He nodded at Tim and smiled and Tim instantly felt better. Gone was the cautious semi-accusing tone and stance. “And I know you’ve had problems with certain kids at the school, specifically Scott Bradfield, David Bruce, and Steve Downing.”
“And that Smith brat,” Naomi muttered.
“Have you had problems with Gordon before?” Officer Clapton asked Tim.
Tim sighed. “Back in, like, ninth and tenth grade. He’s friends with Scott Bradfield, David Bruce, and Steve Downing.”
Officer Clapton nodded. “I see. They run around together, right?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Well, they don’t have criminal records,” Officer Clapton said. “They’ve been clean since the day they beat you up after school. I will follow up with Gordon Smith, though.”
“Do you think there’s a possibility Gordon was cozying up with Tim to perhaps frame him for something?” Jeff asked.
“It’s possible,” Officer Clapton said. He took a step back so that he was on the front stoop again. “Best thing I can do is bring Gordon in for questioning.” He nodded at them. “Thank you Jeff, Naomi. Tim.” He held his gaze with Tim a bit longer than normal, as if silently communicating that he was on his side, then stepped off the porch and headed back to his squad car.
Naomi closed the front door. Tim felt relieved that the focus of attention was now finally on one of his tormentors rather than him.
“You have one more week of school, Tim,” Naomi said. “I suggest you avoid Gordon Smith as much as possible. Do you understand me?”
“Loud and clear,” Tim said. Mom was right. There was no question about it. Trying to be friendly with Gordon, trying to be civil with him and meet him halfway, had blown up in his face.
Chapter Nine
All four boys were standing around the bum, peering down at him when Rebecca Watkins showed up.
“Okay, what happened?” she asked. She shouldered her way into the circle of guys and gasped when she saw the bum’s condition. “Oh my God, what have you guys been beating him with?”
It was the following afternoon and they’d set on the bum shortly after arriving at Scott’s house directly from school. They’d headed straight to the guest house, flipped a quarter, then started the game. Steve first, then Scott.
“What the hell do you think?” Steve said. There was blood spattered on his face and chest. He was rubbing his swollen, bruised knuckles. “No weapons, just our fists and feet. That’s the rules.”
Gordon and Steve had headed to Scott’s house straight from school and gotten into the game the minute they entered the guest house. Two minutes later, Scott placed a panicked phone call to Rebecca, telling her to get the hell over to the house now. He wouldn’t have called her if he didn’t trust her; she’d known about the past wilding incidents in Philly and Harrisburg and he’d told her about their abduction of the homeless man a few days ago. Her only concern was that she didn’t want him to get caught.
Rebecca knelt on the floor near the bum’s cracked and bleeding head. The man was in worse shape than ever. Not only was his face a swollen, bleeding mass, his right eye was ruptured and there appeared to be a crack in his forehead. Scott could see the white of shattered bone and the thick jelly-like substance of brain matter filling the cavity of the wound. “Well, if you guys wanted to keep him alive all week, I think you’re going to be out of luck.”
“What do you mean?” Scott barked.
“He’s fucking dying, you nitwit!” Rebecca stood up.
“What the hell do you mean he’s dying!” Scott grabbed Rebecca by the arms and was about to shove her against the wall when Gordon and Steve intervened. Gordon grabbed Scott and held him back.
“Get your fucking hands off me!” Rebecca shouted.
“Come on, man,” Gordon said, holding Scott back. After some shuffling around, in which Gordon and Steve kept Scott and Rebecca separated, Gordon and David continued talking Scott down from his anger. “She knows what she’s talking about, man, she’s done all the First Aid courses at the Rec Center and shit. Come on, chill out.”
Scott let go of Rebecca. They glared at each other. “Sorry,” Scott muttered.
“Fuck!” Rebecca rubbed her upper arms where Scott had grabbed her.
Steve motioned to the bum lying on the floor. The bum was unconscious but breathing. His breath came in slow, bubbling rasps. “You said he’s dying. There’s no way to save him?”
“Not without taking him to a hospital, and they’re probably not going to be able to save him either,” Rebecca said. She looked at the dying bum. “His head is bashed up. You sure you didn’t hit him with a rock or something?”
“No,” Scott said. No use in telling Rebecca that the guy had been slammed in the face repeatedly by fists and feet for the past few days. She knew that. “I didn’t realize that if you hit somebody repeatedly and hard enough, you’ll eventually break their skull.”
“Well no shit! Welcome to Human Anatomy 101!”
There was awkward silence for a moment as Rebecca crouched down and visually examined the bum again. She picked up his left wrist and took his pulse.
“Well?” Scott asked.
“Pulse is weak. His breathing is shallow. See how he’s breathing? Hear that bubbly sound?”
The boys nodded. Rebecca continued. “The bones in his face are so broken they’re creating a problem for his nasal cavities. He’s probably bleeding down into his esophagus. Also, see that purple stuff there in that cut? Looks like jelly?”
Steve answered; he sounded hesitant. “Is that his brains?”
“That’s singular. And yes, it’s his brain. It’s swelling. It’ll probably fill the wound and then he’ll be dead in an hour, maybe less.”
“Damn.” Scott turned away from the group, clearly mad at this latest turn of events.
Rebecca stood up. “You asked me on the phone if I could help him. I can’t. He’s dying. You should finish him off as soon as possible.”
Gordon traded a glance with Scott. “We could do it now.”
“One more blow to the head should do it,” Rebecca said.
Scott exchanged a look with Gordon, then all three boys looked at her. The grim realization of what had to be done seemed to be evident in their faces. “Okay,” Scott said. He moved forward to escort Rebecca toward the door. “Thanks. And listen,” he said as he ushered her outside. “I’m sorry for blowing up at you like that.”
They were standing outside the guest house now. Rebecca lowered her guard slightly. “Okay, but don’t wig out on me like that again.”
“I won’t. Scout’s honor.” Scott began to walk Rebecca down the stone path that carved its way through his immense back yard to the back deck of the house. “And listen, I appreciate you coming out here so quick. We just…I guess we never thought it would…”
“End so quickly?” She stopped and looked at him. There was something in her face that was so damned sexy to Scott. He kissed her once then hung back, waiting for a reaction. Her mouth turned up in a slight smile. “Bastard.”
Scott grinned.
Rebecca’s features became serious again. “Seriously, Scott. You still going to do what you talked about? You’re gonna bury him in the woods, right?”
“We’ve got that all figured out, just like we talked about it.” He’d told Rebecca about burying the bum in Zuck’s Woods. He didn’t tell her about their plans to try resurrecting him via black magic and bringing him back to the guesthouse so they could beat on him some more. She’d really think they were seriously deranged.
“Yeah?”
“Oh yeah.�
� Scott put his arm around Rebecca’s shoulders and led her to the back deck. “Trust me, we got it all figured out.”
“Okay, just remember,” she said as they mounted the steps of the porch. “I have no knowledge of what you guys are doing here.”
“Of course not. You and I were in my car cruising around in York County the night that bum disappeared.”
“Exactly.”
“And Gord and Steve were at the Reading outlets.”
“Damn right they were.”
They looked at each other again and then Rebecca turned to look at the guest house. She looked grim. “Seriously though, Scott…if that guy wasn’t such a…you know — ”
“A worthless no nothing homeless nigger?”
Rebecca gasped, then looked at him in irritation. Scott grinned.
“I can’t believe you said that!” Rebecca said.
“Okay, I’m sorry.” Scott put his arm around her and ushered her gently across the deck and into the kitchen. He closed the sliding glass doors behind them.
* * *
When Scott stepped outside fifteen minutes later, Steve, David, and Gordon were on the deck sitting in the lawn chairs. They looked over at Scott as he came outside.
“Well?” Gordon asked.
“Rebecca’s still cool,” Scott said. He sat down at the bar his parents had erected on the deck. “She thinks he might live another day at the most, probably not much longer than that. He’ll most likely die tonight, though.”
“So we’re still going to do it?” Gordon asked.
“Yeah,” Scott said. “I must be crazy for going along with this, but…” He shook his head. “What can it hurt?”
Last night and today at lunch, they’d talked about the burial site. Steve was convinced Gordon’s spell hadn’t worked on the rabbit because animals had no souls. Gordon asked him to explain that and Scott did the honors. “God made man in His image and breathed life into him, giving him a soul,” he’d explained. “The Bible doesn’t say anything about God giving animals souls. That’s why it didn’t work.”
It made sense. By the end of lunch they’d convinced Gordon that it was at least worth a try to bury the bum at the spot. Steve asked how long they would have to wait. Gordon answered, relying on his dim memory of his scant read of that passage in the book Count Gaines had given him. “It should happen overnight,” he said. “If we bury him at nightfall he should come back the following morning.”
“So we’ll have to camp out there at night,” Steve suggested.
“Or get there real early in the morning,” Scott ventured.
Now Gordon got to his feet. A nervous twinge of dread coursed through him. Might as well get this over with. “I say we do it. We can have him in the ground and be back here by midnight.”
The boys eyed each other warily. Scott nodded. He turned to Gordon. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”
The boys stood up and then slowly headed to the guest house. Before they stepped inside, however, each boy headed to the utility shed that sat catty-corner from the guest house. Scott unlocked the padlock with a key on his key ring. The boys reached inside and each of them grabbed a different gardening tool — shovel, spade, hoe, pick. Then, as if they had a singular purpose, they headed toward the guest house and stepped inside.
Chapter Ten
Burying the bum was no problem.
They waited until nightfall to do it. With the homeless man’s very battered body wrapped in plastic garbage bags and stowed in the back of David’s SUV, they drove to the spot well after ten-thirty P.M. Once they were fifty feet down the trail, David popped the headlights back on again; he’d turned them off shortly before he made the turn to head down the rutted dirt road. They were deep enough in the woods now that they wouldn’t be seen. Besides, the other night it had been so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face when you were this far in the woods.
All four of them were silent as David piloted the vehicle through the narrow, twisting road until they reached the small clearing where they’d parked the other evening. Then, like they’d rehearsed this scene a million times, they got out of the vehicle and stepped into motion.
They hauled the plastic-wrapped corpse out of the rear of the SUV and, with David leading the way with a small flashlight, and Steve carrying a pair of shovels, the four threaded their way through brambles and weeds and trees to the clearing. To the sacred spot.
“Here we are,” Gordon said as they stopped in the clearing. Steve handed Gordon a shovel and the boys got to work. Within ten minutes they had a two foot hole dug in the ground, about six feet long and three across. Plenty of room to lay the body in, but not too deep. The guy still had to claw his way out, right?
When they were finished they rolled him into the grave, shoveled the dirt back over him, stomped it down. Then they gathered around and Gordon pulled out the book. Using the illumination of the flashlight provided by Steve, he concluded the ritual by making a hand motion in the air — the sign of the pentagram and the inverted cross. “Abbadon, Damballah, Pazuzu, Azathoth, Hanbi! I beseech thee! Bring what lies dead in this hallowed ground alive!”
Gordon rushed through the ritual, not really caring that he was fumbling it, just wanting to get the hell out of there. It was a still night, and a slight breeze rustled the leaves of the trees. When he was finished, Gordon turned to the group. “It’s done. Let’s go.”
He led them through the darkness to the SUV. When they piled in, Gordon tried not to let his nervousness show. Scott could tell, however. “Fuckin’ pussy,” Scott said, playfully punching his shoulder.
“Let’s just get out of here,” Gordon said. They don’t feel it, he thought. They honestly don’t feel it!
What Gordon felt was that same sense of eerie…presence was the only word he could think of. He’d felt a presence in that clearing, as if something had come alive. It was something unseen and silent. He’d felt it the night he’d come out here a few nights ago to consecrate the ground when those crickets had been jolted out of their rhythm. And he’d felt it again yesterday when David and Scott came with him.
And he felt it now.
David started the vehicle. He was snickering, too. “Count Gaines got you scared of this shit now, huh Gordon?”
“Let’s just go!”
David backed the vehicle around in a clumsy three point turn and piloted it down the dirt path. A moment later they were creeping out onto the secondary road. When there was no signs of cars, David popped the headlights and eased onto the road.
Five minutes later they were speeding east down Newport Road.
“Me and Scott will head out here first thing in the morning,” David said, his features smug. Confident. “We got weight lifting first thing in the morning, so we’ll get here at six. Sound good to you, Scott?”
“Fine with me, man,” Scott said.
“And if he’s clawing his way out, we’ll nab him and get him back to the guest house,” David said.
“What if he’s hostile?” Steve asked. “You know…like in Dawn of the Dead? What if he tries to eat you?”
“Then I’ll shoot him in the head with my.38,” David said. “I’ll have it with me.” He looked at Gordon and Steve in the rearview mirror. “We’ll be fine. This is going to work out. And if it doesn’t…I mean, if the guy doesn’t come back from the dead, no skin off our butts. We’ll just bury him deeper so the animals don’t get him. Right?”
“Yeah,” Steve said.
Gordon nodded. Despite the calm assurances of his friends, he had a hard time believing everything was going to turn out okay.
Chapter Eleven
Early morning. Six-fifteen A.M.
Scott Bradfield and David Bruce made their way through the thick woods to the spot where they’d buried the bum last night. Scott had picked David up at a quarter till six and they’d made the twenty minute ride in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Scott was pretty sure that when they arrived at the clearing they were go
ing to find it in the state they’d left it in and they came prepared: both boys were carrying shovels and a burlap bag with a change of clothes for school. The burlap bag also contained two coils of rope in case they struck pay dirt and had to tie the dead bum up.
But if the spell didn’t work? “We’ll bury him deeper when we get there,” Scott had said during the few words they exchanged in conversation. “It shouldn’t take long.”
As they rounded the corner of the bend that took them to the clearing, David was a few feet ahead of him. Scott almost bumped into him as David stopped suddenly and said, “Holy shit!”
Scott reached the clearing and felt his stomach plunge into his bowels.
The grave was dug up. Torn pieces of plastic from the garbage bags they’d wrapped the bum in lay discarded in the shallow grave.
The bum was nowhere in sight.
Scott and David ran to the edge of the hole. They looked around, their faces panic-stricken. “What the fuck?” David began.
“It’s an animal,” Scott said, already trying to rationalize it. “It’s gotta be an animal that got him.”
“Then where the hell is he?” David asked. When Scott looked at him he saw a mirror image of how he felt: he was scared shitless.
“We’ll find him. Come on.” Gripping his shovel, Scott headed north, into the woods. Surely an animal wouldn’t have dragged him that far.
“Hold on, look at this,” David called out behind him. Scott stopped, turned back to the clearing. David was standing at the other side of the grave, inspecting the side of the hole. “It looks like he went this way.” David pointed in a direction to Scott’s left.
“What do you mean he went that way?” Scott said. He headed back to the clearing, trying to see what David was pointing at.
“Look at the ground,” David said, motioning toward impressions in the muddy soil. “See how the grass and those weeds are flattened down? He crawled over this way and — ”
Back From The Dead Page 7