The Deadenders

by Bruce Jones

  “We were scared.”

  He could barely make out Scroogie’s nodding head. “But not of the Pyx, not of The Order or the Gold Book or any of that crap. You know what I think we were scared of? Growing up. And standing there in the woods that day I think we all had the private precognition.”

  “Precognition?”

  “That despite what we wanted, we were growing up anyway. That some of us had grown up more than others already. And that the whole silly ceremony was childish and stupid. But most of all, that the Deadenders were coming to an end. I’m not saying we knew exactly how or why yet. Only that it was going to happen. That maybe we didn’t want to stop being kids but something was about to make us anyway. Make all of us. Make us grow up real fast.”

  Richard had to swallow hard to get it out. “What something?”

  “You know.”

  “You just said I didn’t know, that my book was a pack of lies.”

  “’Half truths’ is what I said.”

  “Tell me the whole of it, then.”

  There was a soft defeated sigh from the lake that might have been the night breeze or might have been Scroogie or both. “You tell it, Rich. You. Don’t you see, it has to come from you.”

  “I already told it in the book—“

  “No. The book is fiction. One of those fucking Capote non-fiction novels. Which is an oxymoron, of course, and total bullshit.”

  Richard felt himself diminishing suddenly. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth and dug his nails into his palms, knotting his fists rigidly at his sides to stop himself from diminishing into nothing, like The Incredible Shrinking Man. “How, Scrooge….how do I do it?”

  “The truth, Rich. The truth will set you free.”

  In his darkness, Richard felt the cool lake wind on his face and heard someone speak. And the someone turned out to be him.

  “We were …we were all standing there by the big rock. Shivers had the Pyx. He was sitting on a log. We were arguing like you said, about whether to bury the box under the big white stone. It was getting dark and everyone wanted to go home, you could feel it. You and Maze were yelling at each other. The whole thing was in danger of falling apart and we all knew it. You could cut the tension with a knife. Then somebody said—“

  --“C’mon you guys,” and the sun, darkened by a sudden cloud, seemed to underscore the statement; more a fearful warning than a threat.

  Everybody chilled out for a few minutes.

  Finally Rich Denning stood up and walked to Shivers’ log, bent and picked up The Pyx. He turned to the group. “I go with Shivers. Nobody’s gonna to dig a campfire as deep as we’re gonna bury this.”

  “An animal might,” Scroogie informed him.

  Everybody thought about that for a second.

  Finally, Richard—maybe because he felt foolish standing there holding the cigar box after his dramatic gesture of retrieving it—countered with: “Animals only dig down for food, or something with an odor.” He shook The Box to underscore his point. “Nobody’s put anything edible in here.” Feeling good about himself, mainly because the others—not writers—probably would have said ‘eatable.’

  “How do you know that?” Maser challenged again.

  And Richard was already forming the word ‘Because’ on his lips—when he came up short. Realizing, suddenly, that he didn’t know that. None of them knew that, because none of them knew what the other guy had put into the cigar box.

  He heaved a theatrical sigh, turned and handed the Muriel cigar box back to Shivers. “Fine! Great! Let’s go find another fucking hiding place! Why don’t we get a fucking plumb bob and backhoe while we’re fucking at it!” And a second ago he was priding himself on his vocabulary.

  That’s when Bobby Masers surprised everybody by throwing up his hands and pushing away from his tree. “Oh, screw it! Just screw it! I mean, what the hell difference does it make 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?”

  And everybody just sat there or stood there and stared quietly at him. It was growing darker by degrees and anyone who wasn’t sick of all this was at least beginning to think of dinner and familiar surroundings.

  The certain breeze of defeat drifted through the group, followed quickly 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 the way only he could, and looked down at the 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, dim 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.

  And Shivers and Denning looked up at the others at the same time—the others who were facing toward them, and looking beyond them with the same stupefied expression.

  “I’ll be frugged,” Bobby Maser whispered.

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

  That changed all their lives forever.

  Richard 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 laugher. “What the hell’s your moron brother doing out here anyway, Shiv?”

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

  And 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 mean 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 whenever 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 fingers through Andy’s tangle 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.

  “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 casual, unkind sentiments as he was used to them. 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 driv
e 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 feeling 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 and danger now, was becoming bored. “Are we gonna finish this stupid ceremony or not? It’s my birthday and I’m hungry!”

  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.

  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. Andy pulled away suddenly from his brother, bent beside the old dog and threw his arms around its scrawny neck. “Nah! Bah dug!” And he held the dog close to his thin chest, eyes looking up imploringly into the faces of the four Deadenders.

  “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 on the old yellow dog.

  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 looked down fearfully at the old yellow dog.

  Maser kept the rifle on the animal. “You know what,” he said, a terrible resolve in his voice, “you all know what so quit acting like you don’t. Look at that dog. Look at his eyes. He’s in the first stages of rabies.”

  Nobody said anything for a moment and Shivers didn’t move, just turned his head slightly to the right and looked down at his brother holding fast to the old, rheumy-eyed hound.

  “You’re crazy,” finally from Scroogie. “Put the gun down, Maze.”

  Maser did not. “He’s got rabies! Step away from him, Andy,” Maser said tonelessly and lifted the barrel another inch. The old dog growled deep in his throat, a line of ropey spittle hanging from its gray muzzle.

  Shivers looked down at his brother. “Andy?“

  Andy held fast to the dog, squeezed it harder until it growled louder.

  “Tell him to get away from it!” Maser ordered.

  “The dog ain’t rabid!” Richard said, fists doubled white at his sides, “you don’t know that for a fact!” But the quiver was 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 kept staring at the top of his little brother’s head, both the boy’s arms still wrapped tight about the crippled old dog. “Andy--?”

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

  “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.

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

  Andy slapped the emaciated haunches of the old dog as hard as he could. “Ruh!” he cried, “ruh!”

  The dog ran.

  Maser swung the rifle around.

  The gun roared.

  The old dog jinked right suddenly as the earth exploded next to him. He ran faster.

  Maser lifted the gun again. Felt it jerked from his hands.

  “Couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn,” Richard snarled and lifted the weapon. He took perfect aim. “Dreamy writer, huh? Watch this.” He squeezed.

  Shivers leapt forward, his voice a near girlish scream. “No!”

  Drowned by the roar of the gun.

  At the last instant something had moved into Richard’s line of vision above the dark gun sight…something straw-colored and gangly…

  * * *

  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, rifle still clutched in his hands.

  The old yellow dog was long gone.

  Maser was barking at Richard, red faced and sweating. He grabbed the rifle away and thrust the shovel at him. “Dig!” Maser 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!”

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

  Shivers clutched white knuckles to his teeth, bit hard to curb the wailing, eyes like poached eggs as they stared down at his dead brother, at the red hole in the boy’s staring head. He turned pleading eyes on Maser. “I-It won’t work, Maze…i-it won’t work!”

  “It’ll work,’ Maser spat. “He was just a useless retarded kid that nobody wanted, and nobody will miss! Believe me, it’ll work. And nobody will think to look here!”

  He looked over at Richard suddenly as if for confirmation. “Ain’t that right, Rich? Tell him that’s right, Rich!”

  Richard stood staring at the back of Maser’s head quietly, then turned away quickly to look down at his hands, at the retarded boy’s blood still shining there.

  He turned and looked at Shivers’ white, trembling face, laced with tears. “He was just a skinny retarded kid, Shiv,” he heard himself say, “that probably wouldn’t have lived that long anyway. Just a dumb animal that wandered around not knowing what he was doing, peeing himself half the time, scratchin’ on doors, bothering people. Didn’t have a friend in the world except that ole dog. Right, Maze?”

  Maser lowered the gun, stared down at the long black barrel, then over at Richard, then at the dead boy beside the grave. He said nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Shiv,” Richard pleaded, “but it’s true. You gotta believe that. Tell me you believe that! I have to know!”

  Shivers said nothing.

  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…

  * * *

  “It was an accident,” Richard said.

  The knoll of grass was cloaked in night now, the stars were out, their pinpoints distorted like wobbly diamonds across the black lake.

  “What was?” Scroogie said from his wheelchair.

  Richard was sitting in the grass, legs pulled up, hands on his knees, head bu
ried in them. He was soaked with sweat and utterly drained. The bullfrogs down by the shore were very loud in his ears. He wanted to go down there and tell them to be still out of respect to Andy.

  He lifted his head now. “What did you say?”

  “What was an accident?” Scroogie repeated. He sounded far away, tired.

  “I didn’t see Andy going after the dog.”

  “Ah. That. And what about Maser, was that an accident too?”

  Richard lifted his head higher. “Maser?”

  “He’s dead. Was that an accident, Richard?”

  “I know he’s dead, Scroogie! Shivers shot him. To protect me.”

  “To protect you.”

  “Maser had already tried to kill you, Scroogie, to cut your throat! Yes! He injected you so you’d go into a coma! Haven’t—didn’t you hear about any of this?”

  Scroogie was quiet for awhile in the darkness. Richard could hear the lapping at the lakeshore between notes of the frogs’ love songs.

  “And now Shivers is dead.”

  Richard put his head in his hands again. “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Richard found himself fighting back a headache. When had he eaten last? “I don’t know, Scrooge…he left no note. Depressed, I suppose.”

  “For shooting The Maze.”

  “I guess.”

  “Yes. For shooting Maser. Depressed, yes. And angry too.”

  “Angry? At Maser?”

  “What do you think, Rich?”

  Richard sat up straight again, let the cool breeze have the headache. “I don’t know. Carla—his old girlfriend—said Maser could be a jerk at times. That he was a pretty cold fish. Maybe Bobby Maser did something to hurt Pete, I don’t know.”

  “Because Carla said he was a prick?”