by Sergio Gomez
“What did she want?” she asked, her voice a sing-song as she dumped the dishes into the kitchen sink.
“Wanted to see me,” Jamie told her. “Think Bob will give me the keys to the truck?”
She glanced in the general direction, where Bob Harper had his head back on the couch, snoring. “Just go ahead and take it. I’ll let him know I OK’d it.”
Jamie nodded. “He’s in good spirits because of my return?”
“Of course. The whole family is.”
“I hope that means he doesn’t hit my brother while I’m here,” Jamie said. Before she could answer, he bolted out of the backdoor.
“Yo, Twist.”
Twist looked up from the comic book. “What’s up?”
“You in the mood to get your butt whooped in Street Fighter?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I’m heading to Lou’s arcade, you wanna come?”
He’d already been there earlier in the day with his friends, but it would be a different experience with Jamie. “Heck yeah.”
Oliver jumped to his feet and closed the comic book.
Chapter 14
Across the street, Jack was on the couch with his dad and Maria with snacks, ready to enjoy a family night. Scott was surfing the television, and occasionally glancing down at the TV guide on his lap in case something from the pages jumped out at him. It was one of those nights where no one could settle on what to watch.
Jack sat next to him, munching on Dorito’s. Between each handful of chips, he’d take a bite out of his KitKat, then grab more chips. His stomach would hate him later, but for right now the combination was hitting the spot.
Maria was on the other side of Scott, waiting for him to find something.
He grunted and angled the remote to her. “You want to try to find something?”
“No,” Maria said. “Why don’t we try one of those videos you got?”
She was referring to the Blockbuster VHS cases sitting on the coffee table. Scott glanced over at Jack.
“Should we do it to her?” he asked.
“Are they all horror movies?” Maria groaned.
Scott nodded. “They’re not that bad, though. We can pop in Leprechaun 3. Jack hasn’t seen it.”
Maria shook her head.
“You’d rather just watch me flip through the channels and not find anything?”
Maria leaned over to look at Jack. “You want to watch it?”
“Yeah,” he said, grinning.
“He picked it!”
“Fine, fine. But I’m going upstairs if it gets too scary.”
“We finally won one.” Scott said, and held his fist out.
Jack bumped it.
“Don’t get used to it,” Maria said.
Scott got up, popped the VHS out of its case, and then inserted it into the VCR. He hit play, then asked if any of them wanted a drink as the previews started.
“Get me some cranberry juice with some vodka, please?” Maria said, not just pleading with her tone but with her eyes as well.
Jack shook his head.
Scott went into the kitchen, and through the window noticed that Mr. Gibson’s blinds were still down.
Weird.
He grabbed the juice from the fridge, then grabbed the bottle of vodka from one of the lower counter cabinets. He filled a cup up from the cupboard with ice from the ice cube tray in the freezer, then started fixing up the drink.
For some reason, his eyes kept glancing out at Mr. Gibson’s house even as he poured the liquids.
The old man had either turned into a vampire since yesterday or he was taking the longest nap ever.
With the drink done, he went back into the living room.
“Thanks, sweetie,” Maria said, taking the glass from him. She saw the concerned look on his face. “You okay?”
Scott shook his head as he sat on the couch. “Mr. Gibson’s blinds have been down all day.”
“Oh,” Maria said, taking a sip of her drink. “You think something happened to him?”
On the TV screen, the opening of Leprechaun 3 started. Jack pretended to be paying attention to the movie rather than the conversation the adults were having.
“I don’t know,” Scott said, “but when you’re that old, anything out of the ordinary is worrisome.”
Maria took another drink. “Yeah. What do you think we should do?”
“Wait until morning, I guess. I’m sure some of the other neighbors probably would be alarmed before us if something was wrong. Maybe this is normal for him, you know?”
Maria took another swig of her drink, this one bigger than the last. Maybe this nice, quiet neighborhood wasn’t all that quiet after all.
“We saw him earlier,” Jack chimed in. “We gave him Lucas—his doll back.”
“Oh,” Scott said, relaxing. “I’ll knock for him tomorrow morning just to make sure.”
“Good idea,” Maria said. “For now, let’s just try to enjoy this leprechaun nonsense.”
Scott laughed, then the three of them settled to watch the movie.
Jack’s thoughts were on the house next door, though, and what might be happening inside.
It was happening already.
Lucas crumpled to the floor, his legs losing their strength. He hit the floor like—like, well, what he was, a big block of wood.
It’d come seemingly out of nowhere. One minute he’d been walking, the next he toppled over. Raymond wondered if that’s how it’d happened to Ernesto, too.
Then, he started to wonder if anything that’d happened in the last twenty-four hours had been real or just a hallucination. Maybe it was the onset of dementia that made him think the dummy had been returned to him alive. And now his mind was battling the disease, and won (for the moment), returning him to reality. To the reality where dummies made of wood didn’t walk and talk on their own but fell down on the floor in a heap.
Yes, that’s what was happening. He was sure of it…
Until Lucas spoke from the spot where he was laying. “F…Father. I can’t feel my legs. We need to fix this. We need to help Oliver Harper.”
“Lucas!” Raymond wailed, and knelt down to pick his son up, like in the movies when someone holds a dying loved one from the back with one hand on their midback and the other behind their head. “Lucas, what’s wrong?”
But he knew. He knew this was the bad thing Lucas had just mentioned.
There was enough strength in the dummy for him to shake his head. “Father… These evils that plague the world… We must rid the world of them. That’s how I can be well again.”
“Okay Son, we will. Just stay with me, please.” Raymond could feel the warmth from the dummy slipping away with each passing second.
When the warmth was gone, Lucas would be gone, too. Raymond would be all alone again.
Lucas’ voice was weaker than before when he spoke. “Cleansing the boy’s lives… That’s the only way to turn me into a real person for good, Father.”
“Yes,” Raymond pretended to understand, hoping that if he did, whatever force was taking Lucas away from him would let him stay. “Tell me how, Son.”
“By stopping the evil.”
“How, Son?”
“By stopping Bob Harper.”
“Tell me how.”
The dummy’s eyes rolled over to Raymond. “By killing him.”
“Killing...” Raymond glanced out the front window. “Killing Bob Harper?”
Lucas nodded.
Raymond had to make a choice. A man’s life for the life of his son, or a return to bleak loneliness.
“I will do it.” The words escaped his lips in a desperate rush.
He was driven to do this for love and companionship, but also because it felt right.
Raymond put Lucas down on the floor, and got up. His son wasn’t talking. His son wasn’t moving.
Staring into the workshop, with all his tools and implements, he wondered what the easiest way to kill someo
ne would be.
Chapter 15
“You have to be shittin’ me,” Jarod said, dropping his Whopper on his lap. The bun toppled down to the floormat of the car, leaving a streak of mustard and ketchup on everything it touched including his pants and the car seat.
“What?” Poochie said next to him, rolling up a joint.
He looked up, and saw what had Jarod so excited. Big Bob’s tow truck drove past them on Carolyn Street. It was going at a moderate enough speed that they could see the driver was Jamie Harper. Next to him was that little turd, Oliver.
“This must be how someone feels when they hit the lottery,” Jarod said, turning the key in the ignition.
He kind of meant it, too. Because now he didn’t need to go to Jamie’s neighborhood and risk Big Bob getting involved, or drive around town until he spotted the fucker randomly. He was here, right in front of him, on his first night back.
Obviously, he’d take a winning lottery ticket so he could get out of this shit town, but this was the next best thing luck could have given him.
“Alright, Poochie, let’s go kick some ass.” He hit the gas and the old Ford peeled out of the Burger King parking lot.
Poochie’s mind turned to the gun in the glove compartment. He had tried to bail on this whole thing an hour ago when they were hanging at his place, but Jarod had promised to buy him a Whopper combo, chicken nuggets, and a milkshake.
Now that it was becoming real, he wasn’t so sure if the meal had been worth it. In fact, the fear in his stomach made him want to throw it up.
Jamie heard the faint sound of a metal song blasting from behind them, he looked into the rearview mirror to see a black Ford coming up on them quick.
“Oh shit!” Oliver screamed. He’d just seen the same thing.
He didn’t curse around Jamie much—he always felt strange when he did, like he was trying to act cooler in front of his older brother or something—but this time he couldn’t help it. He thought the Ford was going to ram into Big Bob’s truck and send them flying off the road.
“Holy fuck,” Jamie said, realizing the car wasn’t slowing down.
It took Jamie a second to process what was happening, to figure out what the fuck this was about, but when he saw the driver stick half his body out and flip him off, it all came back to him.
Jarod Crimp, one of the rednecks he used to hang out with back in high school.
Ah, fuck. Dutch County, you don’t ever change, huh? he thought, smiling.
“Jamie, you have to get away. Get away from them!” Twist cried out.
Jarod slipped back through the window and blared on the horn.
By now the black Ford was tailgating him with only about two feet between them. Jarod saw Jamie look in the rearview mirror and pointed with his index finger to the side of the road.
“I’m going to fuck you up, Harper!” Jarod yelled out his window.
Jamie didn’t need to be an expert in reading lips to get the gist of the message. The bastard wanted to fight him.
Of course he did. He was still angry over that nonsense of stealing his girl a year ago. Poor guy, if only he knew that he was on his way to see the same girl, he’d flip. He’d given Jarod a good whooping before he left for the Army, and for some reason he thought a rematch would go differently.
Alright. I’ll oblige you shithead.
But before that, Jamie tapped on the brakes.
The front of the Ford kissed the back bumper of the tow truck, making a metal scraping on metal sound until Jarod hit the brakes on the Ford to create distance between them again.
Jamie jerked the wheel to the right, to the side of the road, and slowed the tow truck down. Behind him, Jarod did the same with his car.
He was outnumbered, because Poochie was in the passenger seat of the Ford. And he didn’t like that his little brother was with him, but fuck if he was going to give Jarod Crimp the satisfaction of punking him on his first night back.
The Ford stopped a few feet behind the truck and the two boys inside climbed out.
“Alright, Oliver. Stay in the car,” Jamie ordered.
Twist looked in the side mirror. The angle the car was on let him only see James “Poochie” Anderson walking up to the car, but he knew Jarod was next to him. Poochie had that permanent idiot look on his face he always had, except the color on his face seemed to be drained. He looked as scared as Twist felt.
“What’re you going to do, Jamie?”
Jamie shook his head. “Nothin’. But if Crimp wants to rumble, then we’ll rumble.”
“There’s two of them.”
“I know,” Jamie said. “But sometimes you gotta hammer the fear out of yourself.”
He unbuckled his seatbelt and climbed out of the car. Before walking around to the grass on the side of the road, he said, “You better stay in the car, Twist. I’m serious.”
“I will,” Twist responded, but his voice was so small, he wasn’t sure Jamie heard him at all.
Jamie marched forward, his eyes never leaving Jarod’s as Jarod came stomping toward him. For a split second, Jarod’s pace slowed, but then he picked it back up.
But that was enough to show Jamie there was some fear, some hesitation in his mind. The first battle was already his.
“Never thought you’d have the balls to show back up here again, Harper,” Jarod yelled out.
They were only five yards apart now, and in a matter of seconds they’d be face-to-face.
“Why’s that? Think I’m scared of you, Crimp?”
“You will be after I fuck you up.” Jarod said.
“Try it, asshole.”
The boys stopped within a foot of each other, squaring off like two boxers in the center of the ring.
Poochie hung in the back behind Jarod. The color in his face draining until he was white as a sheet.
In the tow truck, Oliver sunk lower into his seat but couldn’t get his eyes away from what was about to happen. He was a barely visible set of eyes through the back window.
Jarod cocked his arm back to take a swing at Jamie. The punch came at him slow, and Jamie ducked underneath it easily. He tackled Jarod to the ground, but Jarod pushed him off as they fell backward, and started back to his feet.
Jamie swung as they both stood up and clocked him right in the nose. There was a sound like someone crunching on popcorn as his nose broke, and Jarod fell to the ground. Blood was spraying everywhere.
Jamie loaded up a kick aimed at his ribs, meant to end this.
“Don’t you ever fucking try—” The words got caught in his throat as he saw Poochie darting toward him, arms outstretched to grab on to him.
Jamie tried to plant his foot back on the ground to sidestep, but by the time he stopped the momentum of the kick, it was too late.
Poochie grabbed ahold of him, not a good enough grip for a clean tackle, but enough to knock Jamie off balance.
He tried shifting his weight back to keep himself on his feet, but Poochie had a fistful of his shirt and pulled harder. They both went tumbling into the grass.
Their legs tangled, and Jamie kicked out to roll Poochie onto his back and wind up on top. Jamie threw a flurry of punches, but only hit his forearm.
That wasn’t working, so Jamie got up, pulling Poochie up with him. at the same time, he kneed him in the stomach. With a grunt, Poochie tried to fall back to the ground, but Jamie kept him up. He was winding up for a second knee when he felt arms wrap around his neck.
Jarod had recovered faster than he’d anticipated, and was dragging him down in a chokehold.
Jamie threw a punch over his head as they both fell to the ground, but there wasn’t much to it and the blow glanced off Jarod’s forehead without causing much harm.
In the scuffle of them falling, Jarod managed to wind up on top and now pinned Jamie down with all of his weight and started punching him in the face.
Jamie tried blocking them with his arms, but a good one got through that made his arms go woozy.
Stars danced in his vision.
Oh, fuck. he thought, as he watched more punches coming at his face.
He was frozen in the car seat, his mind unwilling to accept what was enfolding before him. Jamie was getting beat in a fight.
Twist thought he’d never see the day. It’d all happened so fast. Jamie had been winning until Poochie jumped in, and now Jamie was on the ground, hurt. Jarod and Poochie loomed over him, laughing and enjoying their triumph.
“Come on faggot, get up.” Jarod screamed, and kicked Jamie in the ribs.
Jamie twitched, then curled himself up to grab at his midsection.
Oliver broke out of the trance that held him, unlocked the car door, and ran to his brother’s aid.
In the back of his mind he knew Jamie would be mad at him for not listening to what he’d said, but he didn’t care.
Both of the boys had their backs to him and were too focused on hitting Jamie to notice him coming.
In some grand twist of fate, Poochie knelt down to punch Jamie in the stomach just as Twist got in range of them, putting him down at Twist’s level.
He jumped on to his back, wrapping his arms tight so they met at the front of Poochie’s chest.
By now, Jarod had noticed them, standing there staring with his mouth open, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.
Oliver bit Poochie’s ear as hard as he could, and pulled with his teeth like he was tearing the top off a ketchup packet. Blood squirted into his mouth.
Poochie flailed wildly, trying to buck his attacker off his back. When that didn’t work, he decided to throw himself on the ground. It was both a combination of a change of strategy to try to squish Twist underneath his weight, and the pain in his ear making him fall over.
Twist jumped off before he got caught under Poochie’s weight, which meant Poochie fell to the ground screaming by himself.
“What the fuck,” Jarod stammered, looking at Poochie clutching his ear. A huge amount of blood oozed between his fingers, but Jarod wasn’t sure what was going on.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Poochie screamed, rolling in the grass and kicking his feet in agony.
“You’re dead, you little shit!” Jarod shouted, storming toward Twist.