The Deadenders

by Bruce Jones

  “So the four of you, the four Deadenders wrote down your wishes on scraps of paper and put them in the Pyx and buried it. So the wishes would come true, right?”

  “We never really believed it. It was just…I think the whole thing was Maser’s idea because he loved to tease Scroogie, knew he’d get freaked out walking through the woods.”

  Laurie chewed at her lip. “The other boys, what did they write?”

  Richard shook his head. “No idea. Part of the ceremony. You were bound not to reveal what you’d written for fear all the wishes would be forfeit, wouldn’t come true. Also never to speak of the ceremony again.”

  He turned to her. She was giving him a funny look. “What is it?”

  “You remember all that, but you can’t remember what wish you wrote down and put in the box, the Pyx.”

  Richard shrugged. “Like I said, I think I’ve blocked it. I didn’t like the whole idea of it anyway. Thought it was stupid.”

  “Why? You were a kid. I’d have thought it was fun, adventurous, even if I didn’t believe it would make my wishes come true.”

  Richard shook his head. “Not me. I remember thinking the whole thing was a waste of time.” He sighed. “But I thought a lot of stuff we did was a waste of time in those days.”

  “But they were your best friends! Being with your best friends was a waste of time? You told me once a guy never has friends like that again, like the kind he has when he’s a kid.”

  Richard conceded a grin. “You think that when you grow up, not when you’re a kid. I was different then. Consumed with guilt.”

  Laurie was amazed. “Guilt? As a pre-adolescent? Over what, for God sake?”

  He shook his head in self deprecation. “Something I read in the fifth grade somewhere. If you’re going to be a great writer, you have to work at it constantly, every minute of every day. You have to be a slave to it.”

  “Little excessive for a twelve-year-old to shoulder, wasn’t it?”

  He laughed. “What the hell did I know? Did any of us know? The Deadenders. Pretty stupid, pretty naïve. There was nothing that special about us. We weren’t even that clever.”

  “Except Maser.”

  Richard’s face darkened.

  “Richard? What is it?”

  Richard turned toward the big white rock. “I remember something…something Maser said…”

  Laurie waited, holding her breath, praying he wouldn’t drift away again in that eerie way.

  “We were standing…” he took a step toward moss thickened log at the edge of the clearing, “…we were all standing over there. Scroogie…no, Shivers was sitting on the log. We were all worked up about something…tired and scared and pissed at each other because it was getting dark and we couldn’t decide…” he trailed off.

  “’Couldn’t decide,’” Laurie urged, “go on!”

  “…couldn’t decide where to bury the damn cigar box. That’s when—“

  “What did you just say?”

  Richard pointed. “Shivers was sitting on the log and we couldn’t decide where to bury the Pyx. That’s when—“

  “No, you said cigar box! Richard, I heard you!”

  He looked at her a quiet moment, something moving behind his eyes. “Cigar box…yes…that’s where they were…the wishes were written down on separate pieces of notebook paper and put in the cigar box from Shivers’ old man’s cellar…an empty Muriel box, I can see it now!”

  “Go on! Don’t stop!”

  Richard took another step toward the log. “That’s when Bobby Maser surprised everyone and pushed away from his tree and said--

  “Oh screw it! Just screw it! I mean what the hell difference does it mean anyway, am I right? It’s all bullshit, the whole thing! Nothing’s gonna happen whether we bury the damn cigar box or not! Because we never completed the most important part of the damn ceremony! Right?”

  The breeze of certain defeat drifted through the group, trailed by a waft of chagrin. All at once nobody wanted to look at anybody else. Because everyone else was feeling real stupid suddenly. And tired.

  And childish.

  Shivers heaved a big Shivers sigh in that way only he could, and looked down at the Pyx in his hands as if seeing for the first time that it was not a Pyx at all, not an arcane vessel, just a plain, slightly used, dime store, cheap-ass cigar box from his old man’s cellar. Let’s go home, guys—

  --and he almost said it. Almost got it out, couldn’t have been more than a fraction of a second from having the words leave his lips…when the sound came behind him.

  “What kind of sound?” Richard said.

  Laurie stared at the woods behind them. “Brush rubbing together. The occasional snap of a twig. A kind of…rustling….like…like—“

  “Something is following us?”

  Her eyes darted defensively to him; but defensive of what? “It could have been just, I don’t know, maybe—“

  “The wind?” Richard smiled at her, not a nice smile. “Isn’t that what they always say in the old horror movies? ‘Could have been the wind’? But it wasn’t, was it, Laurie?”

  She turned back to the scrim of trees. “I don’t know.”

  Silence.

  Richard watched the ring of saplings another moment, then picked up the shovel again. “A cigar box,” he said. “It’s down there.”

  And this time the silence was broken by the sharp blade of his shovel.

  Laurie jerked, certain she’d heard the sound from the woods again. But she said nothing. Richard--

  Denning and Pete Chevalier turned in tandem to look at the thing with the terrible eyes and drooling lips coming out of the woods behind them and into the clearing.

  That changed their lives forever.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Shivers was screaming.

  Scroogie was crying, bawling like a four-year-old.

  Richard just stood there trembling, the acrid smell of cordite still fresh in his nostrils, left ear throbbing, shovel still clutched in his hands.

  Maser was barking at him, red-faced and sweating. Red-faced and somehow white-faced at the same time. “Dig!” he yelled. Not more than a couple of yards from Richard, from the big white rock beside him, but yelling at the top of his lungs in a voice Richard had never heard before. “Dig! Dig, goddamn you, dig the fucking hole! Now!”

  Richard put steel to earth, threw up shovelsful. Slowly at first, then faster and faster in time with Scroogie’s wailing until the cordite smell was swallowed by the odor of rich black earth. “Faster!” Maser ordered and Richard dug faster, dug until his palms held welts and then started bleeding and Maser shoved the mewling Scroogie aside and stepped up before the quaking Shivers, stepped up huge and overbearing even though Shivers was an inch taller than he, and shouted, “Okay, your turn! Replace him!” and yanked the Pyx from Shivers’ nerveless fingers and grabbed the shovel and thrust it at him. And Shivers, also white, also sweating and stinking of fear, got down in the hole and began throwing dirt up to them, throwing it everywhere so some of it hit Scroogie and he choked a moment on it and then bawled louder, bawled like a stepped-on calf.

  Maser swung the rifle at him. “And you shut up! You hear me, Scruge, shut the fuck up now or so help me you’ll be lying beside that damn dog!”

  Shivers clutched white knuckles to his teeth, bit hard to curb the wailing, eyes like poached eggs as they stared down at the dead animal, at the red hole in its chest still wafting a thin thread of smoke from the round. He turned pleading eyes on Maser. “I-It won’t work, Maze…i-it won’t work!”

  “Shut up,” Maser spat, “it’ll work! It was just a useless yellow dog that nobody wanted, nobody wanted to claim. And nobody will miss, believe me. It’ll work. And nobody will think to look here, ain’t that right, Rich?”

  Richard stood staring at the back of Maser’s head quietly, then turned away quickly to look down at his bloody hands as if concerned about them, when really he could scarcely feel them, wasn’t thinking about them at a
ll, was still thinking what he’d been thinking a second ago staring at the back of Maser’s sweating, crew cut trimmed neck, gnats beginning to circle there now hungrily, thinking it’s not just to hide the dog, it’s not just fear of being found out, he wants to complete the ceremony, Maser wants to complete the ceremony so his wish will come true, he actually believes in the damn thing…

  “Right, Rich?”

  Richard looked up and saw the rifle aimed at him now.

  “Right?”

  Richard stared at the black bore of the barrel. It looked round and wide and as deep as a well. A wishing well. Richard imagined cool waters at the bottom of it, wished he could fall through it like Alice down the rabbit hole, fall through and sleep in the cool dark waters.

  He turned and looked at Scroogie’s white, trembling face, laced with tears. “It was just a skinny old yellow dog, Scrooge,” he heard himself say, “it probably wouldn’t have lived that long anyway. Just a dumb animal that wandered around not knowing what it was doing, peeing itself half the time, scratchin’ on doors, bothering people. Didn’t have a friend in the world. Isn’t that right, Maze?”

  Maser lowered the gun, stared down at the long black barrel, then over at the dead dog. For the first time something like sorrow might have passed across his eyes. “That’s right. He’s better off dead.” He turned to Scroogie’s tortured face. “I’m sorry, Scrooge, but it’s true. You gotta believe that, tell me you believe that, I have to know.”

  Scroogie twitched at the word have and maybe it was just the light but the gun might have twitched a moment in Maser’s hands. Scroogie lowered his head, nodded a sob. “It’s true,” he groaned.

  Maser came over to him then, put an arm around him, patted his shoulder. Then turned to the grimy, sweat-dripping Shivers in the hole before the big rock. “That’s deep enough.”

  Shivers climbed out of the hole. He was filthy.

  “We all go swimming up to Sutter’s Pond afterwards, right?” Maser said, more an order than a statement.

  Everyone agreed.

  Maser looked at Richard.

  Richard didn’t look back. He looked at Shivers instead. They each took hold of one end of the limp carcass and dragged it into the hole. Richard reached for the shovel then but Scroogie pulled it from his hands, almost yanked it away. There was a strange look on his face, strange enough to make Richard step out of his way as Scroogie started throwing back the dirt.

  After a few minutes Maser held up his hand.

  Scroogie stopped shoveling dirt.

  Maser patted him on the arm again, then got down and placed the Pyx in the hole.

  When he got back out again, he dusted his jeans and hands, then stood solemnly beside the filled-in hole next to the big white rock and folded his hands together and lowered his head. The other boys gathered ‘round and did likewise, each expecting some kind of prayer from Maser though none had ever heard him give one.

  Maser said: “The ceremony is concluded.”

  On the long walk back through the woods to the cleansing waters of Sutter’s Pond, no one spoke.

  Richard was surprised to find he’d already forgotten what he’d wished for…

  * * *

  He had to dig further down than he’d have thought before he felt it, the slightest alien bump of it in the soft black earth.

  For a time Richard was beginning to think he wouldn’t find it at all; it had, after all, been forty years and it was just a wooden cigar box. But they made them in cedar in those days, the good ones anyway, and cedar doesn’t rot in soil.

  He paused when the nose of the shovel struck it and looked up at Laurie and could tell from her expression she knew it too, had maybe even heard it if not felt the small vibration.

  With no less eagerness but a might more caution, Richard pried the clinging lumps of dirt from the weathered, stained object in the hole beside the white rock, finally laying the shovel down; he got down on his knees and carefully worked it free with his fingers. It was weathered and stained but still largely intact. Richard blew at the top, saw the colorful Muriel log and the curvy blonde. Edie Adams winked. “Why don’t you pick one up and smoke it sometime!”

  Richard turned, pulled himself up, sat on the lip of the hole and looked up at Laurie. He had a sad, wistful half-smile on his face.

  Laurie hunkered beside him. “You were right, Richard. You were right all the time.”

  He looked down at the Pyx in his hands. “Maybe. We’ll know in a minute,” and he fingered aside a length of crumbling, dirt-browned string and pulled up the cedar lid.

  An empty box. Empty even of dirt. So clean and well preserved Richard had a mental flash that the whole thing was an absurd childhood joke, some pre-adolescent game that had nonetheless festered and writhed in his subconscious through most of his life. Then he saw that one corner of the cigar box was lighter than the other and that the neatly folded notes had all slid together into that corner. And then, in dim, just discernable pencil, wrought in youthful scrawl a name: Scruge.

  Richard hesitated. Not because he really wanted to but because—even aware he had to know for sure—he was even now mindful that this was, after all, a great pledge they were breaking, a promise, a trust…even if a childish one. Maybe those were the most important promises to keep of all. The promises of children. And there was one other reason.

  He held the box up to Laurie. “You do it, sweetheart.”

  She looked at him, touched his shoulder. “Richard, no. This is your moment. It has to be a Deadender.”

  He looked back at the cigar box. “What if it breaks the spell?” he said half-seriously.

  She smiled, nudged him. “I think, my darling, it’s a spell whose breaking is long overdue.”

  Richard nodded, sighed agreement and reached for the topmost piece of aged, folded paper. Big Chief tablet paper, just like his. They’d all used them then.

  He gazed a Scroogie’s immature scrawl a moment longer, then thumbed open the note. He read:

  I wish my father would be proud of me when I grow up.

  J. Scruge

  Richard grinned, shook his head, grinned wider and nodded. “That’s Scroogie, all right! I know that tone if it was embossed in marble at the United Nations.” Something caught in his throat then, and he lowered the note, looked out across the clearing. “Dear Scroogie…”

  Laurie leaned to him again, pulled him to her and kissed his cheek. “I’m sure his father was very proud of him. He did so well in life, earned a fortune.”

  Richard tossed his head. “Until his father died. Lost every cent of it at the very end.”

  Laurie rubbed at his back, squeezed his shoulder. “Sweetie, we all lose it in the very end. Read the next note.”

  Richard placed Scroogie’s scribbling reverently in an opposite corner of the box and reached for the next piece of folded paper in the pile.

  Richard squinted at the faded pencil cursive.

  I wish my dumb brother would disappear!

  Laurie sputtered a laugh. “Pretty profound for a twelve-year-old, I guess!”

  Then she saw the look on Richard’s face. “Oh. Oh, shit. It isn’t--?”

  “Shivers,” Richard nodded, lowering the note, “and his retarded brother was kidnapped. And never found.”

  Laurie made a quick intake of breath, placed the tips of her fine long fingers over her mouth as if trying to force back what refused to go back. “Oh, I’m sorry! I’m sorry I said that, Richard! Oh, what a terrible thing to say!”

  “You didn’t know it was Shivers’ note.”

  But she was rocking to and fro now, arms clamped around her. “He must never see this! Do you think—“ she jerked toward Richard wide-eyed, “—do you think he’s…oh God, he’s lived with this all his life?”

  Richard sighed. “Maybe not. I actually forgot my wish almost as soon as I’d written it. Maybe Pete’s forgotten his too.” But he didn’t really believe this.

  Richard gazed reproachfully at the cigar box. “Ma
ybe we should stop.”

  “No,” Laurie said and stopped rocking. She kept her arms clamped about her but nodded at the Pyx. “Read the next one. Name first, this time.”

  Richard reached into the box. “Maser,” he said, and folded open the paper.

  I wish I had power over life and death.

  Robert Maser

  “Huh,” Laurie said and her brows went up a bit, “I guess you could say—“ she was looking at Richard, at his expression again. “Hey! What is it? Richard?”

  Richard folded the note in his hands thoughtfully. “You were about to say, ‘I guess you could say he really got his wish.’” He turned and looked into her eyes. “Because he became a doctor, right?”

  Laurie searched his face, shrugged. “Yes, sure. I mean, it’s really not surprising that if you wish and think hard enough about something long enough, young enough, that the something will come true, right? Right, Richard? Hello--?”

  He was still looking right at her. He said nothing.

  Laurie frowned, then smiled and sat back. She made a wry face. “Oh, come on now! That’s stretching credulity, Richard! The three other boys made three different wishes and they all came true?”

  He still said nothing. But he didn’t look good. And he was visibly shaking.

  Laurie scooted over to him there at the edge of the pit. “Honey!” She gripped his wrist. “Richard, you’re cold as ice! You’re not seriously….you don’t really believe what you’re thinking! Tell me you don’t! The gold book is a genuine ancient artifact? The wishes worked?”

  Richard said nothing.

  “Hey! Look at me! Do you hear yourself? Richard? Listen to me. By that logic then the whole thing is true! Then the picture in the book—the demon—is real! I know you’re a wild-eyed, crazy-as-shit writer, but are you honestly telling me you believe in witchcraft and demons? Honey—“ she took the piece of paper from his hands—“this could be interpreted in a million different ways, they all could!” She looked at the note. “ ‘I wish I had power over life and death.’ Fine. What twelve year old boy who watches Superman on TV every week doesn’t wish something like that? Tell me you didn’t ever think about it! Hey, I’m a girl and I thought about it!” She made a chagrinned expression. “Not so long ago, as a matter of fact.” And she smiled, hoping he’d start smiling too, and he did, maybe just a little.