Scraping the Bone: Ten Dark Tales

by William Malmborg

  Crying and a separate voice of reassurance came through the closed door. Ron heard Kim. Frequent coughing pierced her sobs.

  Ron entered the room.

  Kim was sitting in the chair, her IV pole next to her, a portable breathing tank on the table delivering oxygen to her nose. A hospital consoler named Nancy that spoke with Kim often was consoling her.

  “All the -- “ coughing “ -- blood -- “ coughing “ -- it was coming -- “ coughing “ -- everywhere -- “ Kim couldn’t finish due to a mouthful of mucus that came up and stuck in the back of her throat, and tried to force the glob from her mouth into a small cup she always carried.

  “It’s okay,” Nancy said, her eyes trying not to concentrate on the mucus coming out. “He’s going to be okay. They’re working on him this very moment.”

  The man pulled Ron from the room. The two passed through the door rather than opening it, which, Ron hadn’t noticed until then, was how he had been going through all the doors since waking up.

  Fear tangled throughout his system. What was going on?

  The man walked down the hall and took a right turn into the elevator area. Ron followed. They did not wait for an elevator. Instead the man led him through the doorway to the stairs and down two floors to the emergency surgery level.

  Chaos rained.

  His wasn’t the only body being worked on. Illnesses and injuries didn’t go by daytime work hours and kept the staff busy twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  Ron didn’t care about the other patients, nor did he need the mystery man to lead him any longer and walked himself to his own body.

  Doctors had his lower abdomen opened, his digestive organs exposed to all. Blood and fecal matter was everywhere. Had Ron the capability of throwing up he would have.

  “Massive bowel blockage -- ” someone started.

  “Looks like scar tissue built up between the large and small until nothing could pass through,” someone else said.

  “What’s his medical history?” someone else asked.

  “Could be Crohn’s Disease,” someone suggested.

  Amid the panicked shouting there was a professionalism not many would be able to display in such a situation.

  “They have control of everything,” the man who had been leading Ron around suddenly said. His voice held no emotion, and spoke as if reciting something from a dictionary or encyclopedia.

  “What?” Ron asked.

  “Your body will go on living if you climb back in,” the man said. “Or you can let it fade away and come with me back to the elevator and move on.”

  “Why wouldn’t I want to live?” Ron asked, his mind a giant ball of confusion.

  “Because it just so happens that your lungs would be a perfect fit for someone upstairs.”

  Startled, Ron stepped back. “What do you mean?”

  The man didn’t say anything.

  “Are you saying she’ll live if I walk away?”

  The man shook his head. “That’s not my call. Your lungs are healthy though, and I know they will be a match, but that’s all I can say. I’ve already broken rules as it is.”

  Ron stood over his body and watched as doctors and surgeons went back and forth trying to repair him, knowing that their efforts would not be a success if he simply walked away.

  His mind went back to Kim, the girl he loved, the girl he had asked to marry him. He had always said he would do anything to help her live longer, but the thought of sacrificing himself to save her wasn’t an area his mind had explored.

  He looked from his body to the man and then back to his body. A decision entered his mind. He didn’t like it, but then again he wouldn’t like either one.

  * * *

  Ron stood back as they lowered Kim’s casket into the ground, the falling rain failing to land on his spiritual body. All her family was there, along with most of his and several friends of hers from the Cystic Fibrosis ward.

  The seventeen-year-old girl named Gina that had gotten his lungs stood silently amongst the Cystic Fibrosis group. Five months had passed since her surgery and she was doing well.

  Her father, the man who had led him around the hospital, stood behind her, his unnoticed hands on her shoulders. Ron had failed to recognize him that night even though he had seen pictures after the suicide.

  “I’m not ashamed of what I did,” the father said once the funeral was over. “You would have done the same if you could.”

  “You lied to me,” Ron replied, five months of anger wanting to lash out.

  “I didn’t. I never said her name was Kim. Gina was ahead of her in every category on the list. You should have known that.”

  Ron shook his head and walked away.

  Kim came up to him and took his hand. She had been with him ever since her body had given up the fight a week earlier.

  Ron turned and looked into her eyes.

  “You ready now?” he asked.

  “Why wait,” she said back.

  He nodded.

  Together they walked toward the light.

  Wrong Turn

  The girl seemed to appear out of nowhere around the blind turn and caused Glen to crash his bike into a mailbox, which, naturally, threw him head over heels into a prickly pine bush. The landing was not bad, but the needles that pierced and poisoned his skin with an irritating itchiness ruined his good fortune.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Glen demanded while fighting his way from the bush. At three o’clock in the morning one did not expect to find a young girl standing in the middle of the road. In fact, seeing a kid standing in the middle of the road, especially a blind turn like this, was always reason for concern.

  The girl did not answer, nor did she look in his direction.

  Free from the bush, Glen approached the girl. Had he still been a betting man, Glen would have put money on the girl being no more than ten. The t-shirt, overalls and red ribbon were a big clue, but also there was a strange familiarity surrounding the girl, which allowed him to know the age was actually nine. It was weird.

  “You okay?” Glen asked, concern replacing his anger.

  Again, the girl did not answer.

  “Come on, let’s get you out of -- “ he reached for her while speaking and watched as his hand went through her flesh as if nothing were there.

  The girl turned her head and looked at him with big bright eyes. “Glen, don’t leave us again,” she said.

  Glen shouted while backing up, nearly tripping over his bike. A second later he was pedaling down the calm Naperville streets, his adrenaline laced fear allowed him to reach speeds he had never before achieved.

  * * *

  “You’ve got a week. If you don’t have a job by then you’re out,” Glen’s father said the next night at dinner.

  “Robert,” Glen’s mother scolded.

  “No,” his father replied. “I’m sick of this. It’s the last time. He can’t keep running back whenever he has a problem.”

  Glen sat back and listened to the two bicker about him. Normally he would be amused. This time thoughts about the strange girl from the night before and the fear that his father would make good on his threat of kicking him out after a week disturbed him.

  “It’s not his fault they fired him,” his mother said. “Right, Glen?”

  “Of course it isn’t his fault,” Robert snapped. “Nothing ever is. The ‘F’s on his report cards, the speeding tickets, the mean bosses, that night in jail -- nothing’s ever his fault.”

  Getting fired had been his fault, but Glen wasn’t about to admit it. He also wasn’t sorry to see the job go. Washing dishes sucked. Now he just wished there was something else he could do so he could go back to living in his own apartment.

  * * *

  Thoughts of the girl got him riding again that night. Years earlier, when he had still been in grade school, Glen would sneak out of the house almost every night to ride his new bike. Now that he was back home, doing so again at night seemed important, almost
as a way of capturing something he had long ago lost. It also helped take his mind off the fact that he couldn’t keep a job to save his life.

  The girl was waiting for him again. One moment the road was clear, the next she was there. This time he did not crash his bike. Instead he skidded to a halt and climbed down.

  Her eyes followed him.

  She was wearing the same outfit as the previous night. It was the same outfit she had been wearing years earlier when Glen had first met her, though the circumstances of such a meeting were still beyond him.

  “What do you want?” Glen asked.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “What do you -- “ Glen stopped, his eyes focusing on the house tucked into the trees behind the little girl. Terror filled and chilled him to the core.

  “Don’t leave us again,” the girl said.

  * * *

  Glen had tried college after high school, but failed most of his classes. After that he had started working. Back then his father had made the rule that if he was in school he could still stay at home, but if not he had to support himself like a real man.

  Several years later he was back at home, living in his old room, which his mother had left alone for some reason, almost as if she had known he would fail in the working world and need a place to stay.

  This time around his father did not want that room staying the same. He wanted it cleaned out. Anything Glen didn’t want could go into the garbage truck that Friday.

  That was why he was in his old closet the next morning separating everything into two piles. Halfway through the task he saw the girl again, the image of her on the flimsy piece of cardboard. He shouted, which drew his mother into the room.

  “Glen, is everything okay?” she asked.

  Glen scooted himself out of the closet, the HAVE YOU SEEN ME postcard in his hands. Sweat was dripping down his face, though most of that was from the work he had been doing.

  “Glen -- ” she started again.

  “I’m fine.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  Glen held up the postcard. “Do you know who she is?” he asked.

  His mother examined the card. “It’s from twelve years ago. It’s -- “ she stopped.

  “What?” Glen asked.

  “She’s one of those kids that went missing that summer, back when you were, what, ten?”

  Glen thought back. He had no recollection of a summer when kids had gone missing.

  “Where did you get this?” she asked.

  “It was in that box,” he said while pointing into the closet. He then scooted back inside and pulled it out. Eight other postcards sat within, all of them showing a picture of a kid that went missing twelve years earlier from the Naperville area.

  * * *

  Glen waited until his parents went to sleep and then went for a bike ride again. As before the girl was waiting for him.

  The two did not speak. Instead Glen stared at the house tucked into the dark trees. Terrible memories surfaced. He remembered himself kicking and screaming while a fat greasy man pulled him from the passenger seat of a car in the garage and into the house. He remembered being thrown into a bedroom with several other kids in it, all of them silent. He remembered the man coming for him later that day and taking him into another room where he eventually threw up because of the awful things the man did. He then remembered realizing the door to that room hadn’t latched and sneaking out while the man was getting some paper towels to clean up the vomit.

  Tears fell from Glen’s eyes as he stared at the house. He had left all the other kids to fend for themselves and never told a soul. Several times he had ridden his bike back to the house with his father’s gun, ready to go in and rescue everyone, but each time he had chickened out. On TV and in the movies kids could be brave, but in real life they were often cowards.

  Glen looked back at the girl.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She looked at him.

  “I was only ten,” he said. “I was scared.”

  She continued staring at him.

  “What? I can’t change the past.”

  She pointed at the house. “Don’t leave us, Glen.”

  Glen looked at the house. A light was on in one of the windows. It hadn’t been earlier. Someone was still inside.

  * * *

  A high pitched scream echoed from within the house as Glen approached the front door. Several more screams followed, all of them from what sounded like a grown man.

  Glen tried the door. It was locked.

  He looked back. The road was difficult to see from the front door because of the bushes and trees, though the girl’s sudden brightness seemed to shine through all of it.

  The screaming faded.

  “I’m gonna rip your head off you little bastard!”

  It was the fat man. Glen had heard his voice twelve years earlier and even though his mind had blocked everything for so long, there was something about the voice that he would never forget.

  “You hear me!”

  Glen kicked the door.

  It didn’t bust open like he had seen so often in the movies. Two more kicks loosened the hinges and caused some splintering. Two more broke a hinge, and another broke the door from the frame.

  The house went silent.

  Glen headed inside.

  Almost instantly he came upon the fat man who was standing in the hallway. One hand covered his right eye, blood and puss dripping down; the other held a wicked looking Buck knife.

  “What the fuck!” the man said. He raised the knife.

  Glen wished he had brought his father’s gun.

  Enraged, both from the pain and Glen’s sudden intrusion, the man charged.

  Sheer luck caused Glen to twist out of the way at the last second and avoid being sliced by the razor edge. He then tackled the man from behind, his courage rising up from nowhere.

  The man shouted while falling to the ground, his fat body cushioning the fall. A little more fat and the man might not have been wounded so badly by his own knife, but some recent dieting worked against him.

  Impaled, the man squirmed on the ground. He then managed to roll over and pull the knife from his body. Blood gushed. An acidic smell struck. His stomach had been punctured.

  Glen looked up at the man’s face. One of his eyes was missing. Despite this Glen could tell it was the same man from his past, the same one who had ruined his life all those years ago.

  He couldn’t help himself. He kicked the man as hard as he could, first in the balls and then in the face. He continued kicking him until all movement ceased.

  Exhaustion hit.

  The surge of adrenalin faded.

  Glen started to leave the house, but then stopped and walked back in. The door to the bedroom was closed. He started at it for several seconds before twisting the knob.

  The lock popped.

  The door opened.

  Panicked, a young boy of about eleven stood in the corner of the room, a small pocketknife in his hands. The blade was tiny, but had been enough to pierce the eye of the fat man.

  “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you,” Glen said.

  The boy didn’t say anything.

  Glen came forward and reached out a hand to the boy. The boy sliced at it with the knife. “Don’t touch me!”

  Glen backed up, hands in the air. He realized he didn’t have to escort the kid out. The fat man was dead and all the doors between the kid and the street were either broken down or unlocked. Nothing would prevent him from escaping.

  Outside the girl was gone.

  Glen wondered if she had truly ever been there.

  Table of Contents

  Redstone Lake

  Rest Stop

  Jacob’s Gift

  The Phone Call

  The Other Side

  Sunburn

  Red Pickup

  The Bone Yard

  Code Blue

  Wrong Turn

   

  William Malmborg, Scraping the Bone: Ten Dark Tales