The Deadenders

by Bruce Jones

  He reached for the last note. His own.

  Laurie caught at his wrist. “No!”

  He held onto the note, turned to look up at her.

  She let go of his wrist but pulled up her legs like she wanted to stand. “Richard, let’s get out of here.”

  “Why?”

  She drew a shaky breath, glanced around the woods. “I thought this whole trip out here was silly at first, okay, I admit it. Then I thought it might be helpful, some kind of therapy or something, I don’t know. But now…”

  “Now what?”

  “It only seems to be adding to your…”

  “My what?”

  Laurie stood, pulled at him pleadingly. “Richard, can’t we just go—“

  He yanked away from her. “My what? Can’t you finish your damn sentence?”

  She drew back even as he turned and glared at her. “Richard, please—“

  “My obsessiveness? Is that what you were going to say? Well, is it?”

  “Richard…your face…”

  He turned his back to her, ignoring her now, lifted the final scrap of paper and cast the dirt-clinging cigar box aside. He stared down at his own name: Richard Denning.

  And thumbed back the folded paper.

  I wish we’d all just forget this stupid hocus pocus and

  I could get back to writing the great American novel.

  Rich Denning

  He sat there quietly a moment.

  Then he turned to her, all anger fled from his eyes. He looked like a scared little boy.

  “It was me!”

  Laurie stood above him, watched him.

  “Don’t you see? It was me! That’s why I couldn’t remember! That’s why none of us could remember!” He held up the scrap of school lined paper to her. “’I wish we’d all just forget this stupid hocus pocus…” and we did! I wiped it from our minds!”

  She stared down at him.

  Richard looked off across the clearing, eyes shifting, as if he could see them all again, the Deadenders, grouped around the big white rock. “…our minds,” he whispered, “but not our subconscious…”

  Laurie knelt, took his shoulders, turned his face to hers. “Richard, listen to me.” She took the paper from his hands, held it up, read “ ‘…so I could write the great American novel.’” She placed a tender hand to his cheek. “But you haven’t, sweetheart. Someday, but not yet. But you’ve uncovered the Pyx, the secret wishes, broken any spell that might have been there.”

  He searched her face.

  “You don’t need a magic spell to write a great book, Richard. The magic’s already in you! I knew that when we were kids. And I know it now. You’ve just got to convince yourself of it.”

  She took his face in both hands. “It was just a childhood game, sweetie, just four bored boys having an adventure on a Friday afternoon. Four kids trying to stave off the shackles of adulthood for one more summer…with the inadvertent help of a crazy hippie lady named Zelda. That’s all it was, Richard, nothing more.”

  He took the scrap from her, lay it in the box with the others, closed the lid. “All right.”

  He dropped the box back in the pit, picked up the shovel. Lifted it. Hesitated.

  Turned to look at her again. “Zelda…”

  “What about her? She was nuts, Richard.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Eccentric. Mildly senile at this age, maybe, but lucid all right. He came home with his shirt smeared with blood, she said. He killed that dog.”

  “Maser?”

  Richard nodded.

  They stared at each other.

  Then Laurie handed him back the shovel and he began digging down deeper into the pit.

  It didn’t take long.

  The shovel’s steel caromed off something. Something not dirt and not rock, not vegetable or mineral. Something both solid and hollow that from Richard’s fingers all the way up his shoulders said organic.

  He threw the shovel aside and knelt. Dug and scraped with his bare fingers, gently at first, then with rapidity, then a kind of near-fever. Until enough was cleared away and dusted aside. So the yellow skull shown through.

  There came an unearthly moan behind him that turned out to be Laurie.

  “Oh, Jesus…oh sweet Jesus…”

  She gagged once quickly, turned sharply and flung herself away from the edge of the pit, giving up the contents of her stomach to the damp grass and twisted leaves. She coughed, bent double, and staggered several feet away. “….please…” she said. Not sure herself whom she was addressing.

  Richard remained in the pit.

  Remained crouched and laboring, fingers like white spiders now clawing at the remaining earth around the ochre-colored cranium. Until, finding the single dark bullet hole, they froze.

  Richard stood up then, tall and straight, and --

  --stared silently at the ‘monster’ stumbling from the woods toward them.

  Scroogie was the first to laugh.

  Then Shivers.

  Then Richard.

  All of them laughing until their sides ached and their breath went short. Laughing and pointing and shaking their collective heads at the ‘monster’ from the woods.

  Only Maser remained mute.

  “Jesus Christ, Andy!” Shivers found voice to scold with at last, but not very effectively as he kept laughing through it. “You scared the fruggin’ shit out of us!”

  Scroogie, still bent over, hands on his knees, chest laboring, looked up at last, face beet red from laughter. “What the hell’s your moron brother doing out here anyway, Shiv?”

  Shivers finally got himself under control and walked over to the skinny blonde sack of bones that was his retarded sibling. “I told you to stay home, Andy! Does mom know you’re out here?”

  Andy looked at his brother the way he always looked at him, the way he always looked at everybody, like he was meeting them for the first time. A nice look, a sweet look, but one that always announced he was not long in the memory department.

  “Uh,” Andy answered.

  It could have meant uh-huh or it could have meant uh-uh, Scroogie and Richard really didn’t know, weren’t even sure if Shivers himself understood the poor, stupidly grinning kid, but he went over to him anyway and put a hand on his shoulder like he always did and then went to grooming him. Grooming Andy was the first and last thing Shivers did whenever and wherever his gangly, gawky, sad-eyed but smiling brother turned up; tucking in his loosely flapping shirt front, dusting off his jeans, knees and ass, pulling up his socks if Andy had remembered to wear any that day, and combing his fingers through Andy’s tangled shock of straw-colored hair. Standing back to access his work, Shivers would shake his head hopelessly and maybe drag his own sleeve across the drool sliming Andy’s chin. “Thought you was a demon,” he said now.

  “He is a demon!” Scroogie snickered, and Richard gave his chubby friend an even look. “Leave him be, Scrooge.”

  “Why? He doesn’t know what I’m talking about! Hasn’t a clue what a demon is, right Shiv?”

  Shivers didn’t bother answering, as bored by the unkind sentiments by now as he was used to the fact of Andy. He wiped a streak of dirt from his brother’s left cheek and swatted a dead leaf from his hair. “You’re a mess, kiddo. Mom’s gonna skin you. Then me.”

  “I don’t see how she can expect you to watch him every minute,” Scroogie put in. “Job like that would drive me even crazier than he is.”

  “You got a big fuckin’ mouth!” Richard spat at him.

  Scroogie waved him off. “Chill, Denning, I ain’t hurtin’ the poor kid’s feelings or nothing. You can’t hurt what ain’t there.”

  Richard turned away, kicked at a rock. “How do you know what’s there, fat ass?”

  Shivers said nothing. He’d been through it all before. Was inured to it.

  But Scroogie, in the absence of fear, was becoming bored. “Are we gonna finish this stupid ceremony or not? It’s my birthday and I’m hungry!”

&
nbsp; Shivers brushed brambles from Andy’s shirt. “I’m going to have to take him home…”

  “Like hell!” from Scroogie. “Not before we finish this thing! I didn’t drag my tired ass through all them woods just so your retard brother could screw it up at the last second!”

  “I told you not to talk that way about him!” Richard growled, a little angry at Shivers too for not speaking up for his own brother.

  “He didn’t screw it up.”

  Everybody turned to look, even Andy.

  It was Maser. Who hadn’t spoken since the straw-haired boy had shown up.

  He stood there now, a little apart from the others, still holding the rifle. Holding it, or so it appeared from his angle, on Scroogie. “Dig,” Maser told him.

  Scroogie started to smile but it died halfway there. He looked at Maser and then down at the bore of the deer rifle, and then back at Maser. “Hey…”

  “Dig. Now.”

  “Hey. I was just funnin’ with the poor kid. Didn’t mean to cause any harm, Maze.”

  “And you wouldn’t cause any harm by getting off your fat ass and digging under that big rock.”

  Scroogie picked up the shovel obediently. He didn’t like the sound of Maser’s voice.

  Richard didn’t like it either. “Hey. Who made you boss?”

  And to Richard’s surprise—to all their surprise—Maser swung the barrel toward him. “Why don’t you help him, Mr. High and Mighty Writer?”

  Richard exchanged glances with Shivers.

  Scroogie started throwing dirt.

  Andy just stood there, gazing at the treetops. Three large grackles scolded the proceedings below from up there.

  “The hell’s crawlin’ up your ass, Maser?” Richard said, but his voice may have shook just the slightest.

  “I said help Scroogie. Let’s get this over with.”

  “I’ll help him when you take that goddamn gun away from me. Or would you like me to shove it up your ass first?”

  Maser didn’t exactly smile. Didn’t exactly do anything to his face. But it didn’t look right. And it spoke volumes. Nobody was just sure what it was saying. Or maybe they were. Maybe they were.

  “The hell you up to, Maze?” It was Shivers this time and he took hold of Andy’s hand for no apparent reason. Andy just smiled at the treetops.

  Maser swung the rifle toward Shivers. “You know what,” he said, a terrible resolve in his voice, “you all know what so quit acting like you don’t.”

  Nobody said anything for a moment and Shivers didn’t move from his brother.

  “You’re crazy,” finally, from Scroogie, but he kept digging, never even broke the rhythm of it, holding the big shovel tight like a shield.

  “Step away from him,” Maser said tonelessly, and lifted the barrel another inch.

  “I’m going to slap the shit out of you,” Richard said, fists doubled white at his sides, but the quiver audible in his voice. Something was wrong, he thought, something is very wrong and I don’t know why, I don’t know how we got here. Let’s all go to Bo-Bo’s for a float he wanted to say to bring everything back again make everything right again but he didn’t say it because he knew it wouldn’t that nothing would that they’d gone too far this time and something terrible was happening something almost elemental in force that none of them maybe even Maser had the strength to stop.

  “You want to do it, Richard?”

  And Richard found he couldn’t speak at all now.

  “You want to do it, Shiv?”

  Shiver held Andy’s hand. Andy watched the treetops. “Put the gun down,” Shivers said.

  Maser nodded, gun still leveled, finger tight on the trigger, and moved the barrel two inches to the left in line with Andy’s head. “Tell me you don’t want it,” he said.

  Say something! Richard screamed at himself but he could not and Scroogie threw dirt like an automaton, not looking up, and Andy stared at the treetops, at the birds squabbling there.

  “Please,” Shivers said and Richard had to look to make sure it was him, his voice sounded so unfamiliar.”

  “Just tell me, Shiv. Tell me you don’t want it.”

  Shivers said nothing.

  “Tell me.” And Maser cocked back the hammer.

  Something rumbled behind Shiv and Andy. Something growled and snapped its teeth. Maser and Richard averted their eyes and saw the old yellow dog standing there at the edge of the woods bearing its teeth at Maser. It might have been standing there all along. It growled again and started forward slowly.

  Everything happened very fast then. Very fast and strangely slow.

  Shivers grabbed his brother by the back of the neck and pushed hard. “Run, Andy, run!”

  Andy ran.

  The yellow dog took off after him.

  Maser swung the barrel around.

  Richard leapt forward, found his voice in a near girlish scream. “No!”

  Drowned by the roar of the gun.

  The birds started as one from the treetops.

  * * *

  Maser stood there at--

  --the edge of the clearing and looked down at Richard in the pit. He held the old deer rifle in his hands. The same one he’d used here as a kid.

  Richard held up Andy’s skull. A small black beetle crawled out of the weathered bullet hole and trundled across Andy’s sockets. The woods were absolutely still except for the sibilant rush of Laurie’s labored breathing nearby. She was still on her hands and knees from throwing up at the sight of the retarded boy’s remains. Still down on all fours, but she looked up now and saw Maser standing above Richard with the rifle and she thought I did hear something following us I knew I did and I should have warned Richard earlier, much earlier and now it’s too late and kept thinking that over and over, unable to stop it, like a broken record that wouldn’t turn off.

  Richard lifted the boy’s skull higher, a final clod of earth dripping from it.

  He looked deep into Maser’s eyes. “Why?” spoken gently and without malice as if he’d somehow known it all along and still didn’t really believe it, wanted only some sensible answer for such a heinous thing, and that Maser was the only one who could give it.

  Richard might have anticipated a lot of reactions from his childhood friend, but certainly not the one he got. Maser smiled. A smile that was beyond wistful, a smile that was forty years older. A smile without a trace of mirth behind it. “Because,” he said, and Richard thought, he isn’t really here…he hasn’t been here in a long, long time…I never knew this person at all… “because I wanted so much to be a doctor.”

  Richard stood there in the dirt pit with the moldy skull of a little retarded boy in his hands and found to his dismay that he had absolutely nothing to answer that with.

  But Laurie did.

  “A doctor, Pete? You mean, someone who heals people?”

  Maser twitched as though just realizing she was nearby. He turned those sad, tired eyes on her. “To heal, yes. To heal.”

  Richard saw Laurie pointing at his hands from the corner of his eye. “Like that?”

  Maser looked back at the skull with the little black hole in it.

  He stood there looking at it a long time. So long Richard began to think he would never speak, might never speak again. Then, eyes moist, throat dry, he said, “Why did you have to come back?”

  Said this still looking at the yellowed skull so that Richard didn’t know who Maser was talking to, Richard or Andy.

  Then Maser, still hardly looking, lifted the bore of the rifle.

  Laurie screamed. Very loud. A terrible, piercing scream so sharp and all-consuming that it seemed to turn the sky white, to turn the clock off in Richard’s mind so the roar of the gun might have only been distant thunder or might have been something else or might not have come at all, so purifyingly white was that scream, blanking out for just an instant all his senses at once.

  Then Maser was leaping at him from atop the pit, leaping with hands stretched out like claws and because
Richard still felt no pain from the roar he had the craziest notion in that small space of time that Maser wasn’t satisfied just to shoot him, that he was coming down there to tear out Richard’s throat, so desperately afraid of him was he. And then he saw Maser’s eyes and there was no hatred in them and no fear but a desperation that was real enough, the desperation of a scream of mercy but most of all a plea that said—reflecting Richard’s own startled face in both wide pupils—forgive me.

  Then Dr. Peter Maser crashed to the bottom of the pit at Richard’s feet and became a crumpled and still face, turned just so against Richard’s shoe to reveal the peaceful innocence of a sleeping child.

  There were running feet then that might have been Laurie’s and a pair of hands that took the skull from Richard and they might have belonged to Shivers. He was there, Richard could tell Shivers was there with a still-smoking handgun of his own and that someone’s hands helped him out of the pit and that there was a lot of talking, some of which might have come from him but he wasn’t sure, really, wasn’t sure about anything much just now except that, even walking away from there, even long after he’d left the clearing itself he had the strongest compulsion to turn back, to run back, to return to the pit and say good-bye because he was certain just so certain it would be his final chance only the funny thing was he wasn’t sure who it was he was supposed to say good-bye to…

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Topeka Capitol Journal, Saturday, August 23, 2009:

  The Topeka Sheriff’s Department has issued report of the death of a local man, fifty-nine year old Dr. Robert Maser (MD) in a small clearing in a northeast section of Myers Woods early Saturday. Officials said there were indications of foul play. The body was reported to police by cell phone by Mr. Peter Chevalier of Brookstone. Two other witnesses, former Hollywood TV writer Richard Denning and Ms. Laurie Seasons, were also reported at the scene. All three witnesses are purported acquaintances of Dr. Maser, a highly respected physician with a private practice in the Brush Creek area. Dr. Maser was attending a comatose patient at St. Joseph Memorial Hospital when last seen late Friday night. Detective Sgt. Harold Shull of Topeka Homicide says further details will follow pending further investigation--