Charlie was almost there now, urged on by his wife’s pleas for rescue, and Kate was kicking at the bastard who straddled her. With a single thrust the man pushed his way inside and Kate’s tortured voice grew louder with rage and fear.
“Save her, Charlie!” Khalim yelled and Charlie looked back in time to see the large tribesman slice his friend’s head cleanly from his neck with a long sharp blade. The man spat on the still spasming body and started to move again toward Charlie.
“Kate!” Charlie roared. “Get off her, damn you!”
Tears rolled down Charlie’s cheeks and into his eyes as he realized he stood no chance against these butchers. His beautiful wife would end up a slave to the sexual desires of these tribesmen, she would become a baby factory for them until her usefulness was over and then he knew that she too would die. Hopefully not by crocodiles. Dear God, please not that...
Charlie reached out to grab the hair of the man who was raping his wife. He was just a foot or two away, he could smell the greasy rankness of the man. “CHARLIE!” Kate screamed and he could tell by her eyes that the larger man had caught up to him. Still he tried. The rapist made no move to stop him as Charlie’s fingers found the man’s hair and yanked back hard.
“Get off my wife!” He growled and slammed his open hand against the man’s face just as a blade drove through his back and exited through his abdomen, his blood spraying over Kate and her rapist. Charlie screamed at the fire in his guts and threw another punch at the man still atop Kate. “I hate you! You son of a bitch! Do you hear me? I hate you!”
Charlie felt blood trickling down from the corner of his mouth and suddenly felt the fight go out of him, felt the heat of his burning hatred ebb away as his energy level dropped quickly. Strong hands suddenly grabbed him from behind and lifted him up off the ground. He could offer only minimal resistance, but still managed to keep his fists swinging.
“KATE!” Charlie screamed as she grew farther away. The large man was carrying him over to the edge of the Nile River, not even registering the weak punches that Charlie was landing on his back and neck.
“Charlie,” she sobbed, one hand outstretched toward him on the ground while the man continued his thrusting, others holding her down with calm expressions.
“You bastards,” he said and tried to grab his killer by the neck, wanting to strangle the life out of him, as the man dumped him on the ground at the edge of the riverbank. The man punched Charlie once hard in the jaw, rocking his head back to the ground, and quickly reached down into the wound in Charlie’s stomach, pulling out a fistful of intestines. Charlie stared in horror, the scene playing out in seeming slow motion as if it were all just a dream. He watched as the man threw his intestines into the Nile River and felt a weird sucking feeling as his entrails were pulled from his body. The man glared down at him and planted a foot on his side.
Charlie looked for the last time at Kate with tears in his eyes and hoped that he would wake up any minute now. “Just a dream,” he said out loud through the bloody spittle on his lips. “Just a dream...”
The man kicked out with his foot and sent Charlie tumbling down the riverbank to splash into the water. He could see the crocodiles coming for him, several of them at once and he was the only meal left.
“I love you, Kate,” he said and closed his eyes as the first set of teeth sunk home.
THE END.
THE WATCHER by Kevin Kekic
“How did you do that?” I asked the boy with the long hair. He was walking away from me, fingers pressed against the skin of his arm where the knife had cut. I pushed myself up and followed. Stabs of pain came from everywhere. My eye was swollen, my head rang, and my stomach was bruised and stinging.
“Hey,” I called out. “Wait up.” Bloodstains smeared the cracked cement along the walkway of the abandoned shopping center. Shards of broken glass crunched under my feet.
It all happened so fast. I was taking a shortcut to my buddy Alan’s, who lived on the other side of the block. The slim path ran its way behind some old businesses, and was usually deserted during the day. It cut off a good five, six minutes from my walk.
That’s where they jumped me. The Little Devils, they took the few dollars I had, smacked me around like a piñata. Probably would have stomped my head in if that boy hadn’t come to help.
I glanced around at the three gang members. They were all on the ground, busted up worse than me. Ten seconds, I thought. He did that in ten seconds.
A siren rang out down the road. I couldn’t see the police yet, but others were out and watching from across the street. A large man in a lumberjack flannel stood in front of some dive bar, pointing in my direction. Beside him, a man in a brown suit watched on, beer in hand.
I turned my attention away from the curious onlookers and followed after the boy, but made a quick stop at the old, rusty signpost. If I hadn’t stopped to stare at it, if my wandering mind had not decided to do its damn wandering, I probably would have made it safely to the fence before the Little Devils had arrived.
I let a finger touch the rusty metal. Once it held up a stop-sign or something, but at some point the top had been snapped off, leaving the rusty shaft jutting upward, jagged and pointy, from a circular base of cracked cement.
I heard the gate creak open. Glancing up, I saw the boy step into the next lot. He moved quickly, and I mentally cussed myself for once again stopping to stare.
Wandering, always wandering…
I pushed through the opening of the fence. Up ahead, the boy with the long hair turned off the path and headed toward an abandoned auto service center. It sat further back than the rest of the buildings lining the main road and always seemed out of place, standing all by itself, surrounded by long grass and tall trees. It reminded me of something from a ghost town.
I followed the boy inside. He had a strange way of movement—long strides, almost graceful—as if every step had been thought over and planned.
“Hey,” I called out again, closer now. The boy slipped around a busted counter, over a small stack of tires. He never slowed, never stopped. Never even turned. He just kept moving forward, through another door, and back outside.
My feet snapped twigs and crunched over rusty beer cans. “Hey. How did you do that?” I called out again.
The boy came to a stop. “Do what?” he asked.
“Back there. To those kids. How did you do that?”
The boy turned towards me, staring. His eyes matched the deep earthy brown of his long hair. “Simple,” he said. “Take you hands.” He held them up. “Go like this.” He made two hard fists. “And use them.” Before I could respond the boy was off and moving, leaving the auto service center behind.
I kept followed through waist-high grass. Stabs of cramping pain flashed in my belly with every step. “You make that sound so easy.”
“It is,” he called out over his shoulder.
“No it’s not. You coulda’ got killed.”
The boy mumbled something as he stepped around a cluster of old pine trees.
“What?” I asked.
The boy slowed his paces. “He should not have cut me.”
“He had a knife.”
“He should not have cut me,” he repeated.
I sped up, until I could almost reach out and touch the back of his heavy, gray work shirt. “Why, do you teach karate or something?”
The boy only laughed. “Go home,” he said, and continued onward. I continued to follow. The trees grew closer around us, forming a small wood within than the larger city block from which it was contained.
The boy seemed to be moving at random, cutting left, stepping right, over this and under that, yet he must have known where he was going because he made quick progress. Eventually he stopped near a small puddle of water from last night’s rain. He bent down and began to drink from his hands. He poured water over the wound on his arm.
I watched, fascinated. “Um, I could go get you a bottle of water from the store,” I sa
id. The boy looked up at me and smiled. I saw it then. His face, which had seemed strange just a moment before, was in fact quite familiar. “I know you.”
“Do you?” he asked.
“Yes, you, you…”
“What?” His smile straightened, and his features hardened.
“You went missing. A year ago. Maybe two. I remember your face on the news.”
“I never went missing.” He began to splash water along his face, the gruff of his cheeks.
“Yes you did, your name is Adam.”
“You have to be lost to be missing. And I have never been. I am home.”
“Here?” I said, glancing around the wood. Many of the trees leaned crookedly, and some had fallen to the earth below. No flowers poked from the grass, no cardinals and robins brightened the dull browns and tepid greens that went on and on. “But…but everyone says this place is haunted. And even though it’s small people somehow get lost in here. They get lost and die.”
The boy washed caked blood from his hands. When he did not answer I went on. “I live two blocks away. At night I sometimes hear a bell ringing. My grandpa says there’s an old clock tower.”
“Your grandfather is right.” He wiped his hands on his thick shirt. “And so is everyone else, which is why you should turn back and head home. This is no place for frightened boys.”
“I’m not afraid,” I said as bravely as I could. Although Adam was right, I was afraid. My thoughts turned back several years before to the one night I had never forgotten. In my bed, well past midnight, the wind strong as it rattled the open window. The toll of the bell was strong that night, louder than it had ever been before or after. I counted them off, twelve in all. When it ended the wind surged so strong that tiles chipped off my parent’s roof and landed in our neighbor’s front yard.
Adam did not answer me. He only stood and pointed over my shoulder. “Follow that trail of pine on the left. It will lead you back where we came from.”
I nodded, unsure of what to do. But the boy named Adam just stood and stared, so I stepped away from him and toward the pine. The wind was picking up and I shivered as I went. After traveling several yards I felt as if there were unseen eyes watching me. I stopped as something moved within the thick shadows. A cold wind whipped at my face. From the darkness came the sound of laughter.
I turned around, towards the puddle of water. Adam was gone.
“Wait,” I yelled. “Wait for me.” I headed away from the pine trees, in the direction I assumed Adam must have gone. The cloud cover had darkened the wood into grey shadows.
Heavy, panting breaths came from behind me.
Nothing but the rush of wind.
I tried my best to be sure footed, like Adam, but my steps were clumsy on these unknown grounds.
Up ahead, along a dense section of brush, came a flicker of shadow. Something stood there.
No, not something.
Someone.
He approached me, waving me over as if I was an old friend. His unbuttoned red and black flannel flapped in the breeze like a hobo’s cape, and I knew at once it was one of the men from the dive bar. He came closer and smiled. The hole within his thin lips held no teeth, no tongue, only a dense blackness. I stopped, cut to my right, bolted down a path almost too thin to be deserving of the name. Within ten strides I saw him again, stepping over a fallen trunk. Not the man in the lumberjack flannel, but Adam.
“Adam, hold up,” I yelled, but he was too far ahead to notice.
Something brushed the back of my hair. I forced myself to somehow go faster, but it did not matter, because a few steps up the man in the flannel leaned against a large oak, watching me as black serpentine shadows coiled around him.
I jumped over a spindly bush that tore at my Sketchers, came around a bend in the path, and Adam was closer. As I closed in his words cut through the wind. “—come here. It isn’t safe.” Ahead of Adam stood a deer, and as he shooed it away with a wave of his hand I briefly wondered if the words were meant for me or the doe. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let you follow.” He walked up to an old tree. Tall and leaning, its branches stuck out in jagged angles. “It’s too late now,” Adam said before reaching out and grasping one. The branch was short, having at some point been snapped off less than a foot from the trunk, yet when Adam pulled his hand back, the branch came with it. But there was something else, something which glinted in the pale light. Iron, steel, something of power.
Adam freed it completely from the tree. It was a sword, its blade long and fierce. It gave off a hazy green glow which pushed away the nearby shadow. The hilt was the knotted, twisted branch, and I could see a dry leaves attached to the mast. They seemed to wrap around Adam’s hand.
Impossible, I thought. But the blade was there, tight in Adam’s grip. As he brought up the blade and cut away a branch standing in his way, I knew it was in fact very real.
Adam let the tip of the sword fall to the ground. It cut into the earth, leaving a jagged line in the dirt and grass. Adam shifted in front of me, left and right, yet the sword was never lifted from the ground. He dragged it onward, cutting the earth. Behind me, I heard my name whisper through the trees. “Dennnnnnniissssss….” The word slithered, as if spoken from the flickering tongue of a serpent. I sped up, following the line cut into the dirt. It led me to a thicker path, perhaps a deer trail. A series of stones were set in the ground, running from one end of the trail to the other. Each touched from end to end, stretching onward into the darkness of the tress. Those aren’t there by accident, I told myself. Those stones have purpose.
A few steps past the stones the line cut from Adam’s sword ended abruptly at my feet. “Adam?” I called out. The only answer was the sound of silence, as if the wood was holding its breath. And then it exhaled, or so I thought, as hot breath washed over the back of my neck. I gasped, turned, hoping it was the boy Adam. Instead, the man in the lumberjack flannel reached for me and gripped me by the throat. He then pulled me back towards the row of stones. His eyes were as black as the empty hole between his lips. From his breath came the foul scent of rot. I tried to scream, but couldn’t, as my head strained to turn, seeking out Adam. The man squeezed down, drug me away. I struggled for breath as the world grew dark. But a glint of green flashed from above, and I looked up to see Adam come crashing down from the trees, sword raised high above his head. A single, heavy stroke cut the lumberjack man almost in two. His hand loosened on my throat and I took in a gulp of precious air. I stepped away, fell on my knees.
I looked up to see Adam pull the sword from the blood and bone of my attacker. The man fall apart, one shoulder slumping to his left, the rest of him to the right. He landed with a pulpy squish.
Adam straightened up, lifted the sword again, and plunged it deep into the man’s open chest. A red rain of blood splattered my skin. Then a wind came, strong and biting. It pulled down branches and whipped at my hair. A rush of both cold and heat blasted past me, before the wood fell silent and still.
“Come,” Adam said, pulling me along. He wiped blood from his brow. “We must go.”
As I followed I heard the first toll echo through the woods.
DUUUM
It rattled my bones, sent goosebumps up and down my arms. Six more followed, each spaced equally part. It was then, after the seventh toll fell silent, that we came to the clock tower. It appeared ancient, not just decades old, but centuries, which it surely couldn’t be. Not here, not in Cleveland, Ohio. It was gray stone from top to bottom. A spider-web of cracks and fissures ran throughout. Vines snaked around the lower half of the tower, gripping it, as if the wood itself was trying to pull the tower beneath its soil. High above, rising almost to the tops of the surrounding trees, was the actual clock. The numbers were gold, the hands silver. It was every bit as breathtaking as it was plain. Above the clock a pointed archway hid the bell from my prying eyes, but it was there, waiting to toll once again.
I followed Adam towards it. My neck throbbed to the drum o
f my heartbeat from where the man had squeezed. Between that and the beat-down the Little Devils had laid on me, I wondered how battered and bruised I would appear come morning.
Adam stopped before the tree closest to the tower and plunged the sword inside of it. Only the hilt remained, but it was no longer the handle of a sword, just a weathered branch on an insipid tree. He then went to the doorway of the clock tower, where an old woman hunkered against an old stone wall. Adam handed her something. “Thank you, my guardian,” she said, voice croaking like some tired old bird. She even resembled one, with a beak for a nose and a short, pointed forehead. Her curly white hair was wet with perspiration, and she shivered under a pile of old blankets. The old woman swallowed down whatever Adam had given her with a swig from a plastic bottle. By the ill look of her, I assumed it was Aspirin or Tylenol. Eventually Adam left her and met me near the tree. “You’ve seen more than you should.”
“You made the bell ring when you killed that man.”
“His death made the bell ring.”
“But how?”
Adam remained silent. The old woman, however, did not. “One toll for each circle,” she squawked. The few teeth she still possessed were yellow and chipped. “The tower knows. Oh yes child, the tower knows.” She then let out a series of hacks and coughs that were so severe it made my own lungs hurt.
“I never should have left the ring,” Adam said. “This is my own fault.”
“What ring?”
“The ring of stones,” he said. His brown eyes seemed deeper this close to the clock tower. I could see shimmers and movement inside. “You stepped over them before I killed it. They circle this entire area.”
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