“That’s really easy, isn’t it? Don’t have to feel guilty, or sorry. You feel this?” Danny dug his knee in deeper.
“It was an accident,” Skip screamed into the grass. The pain in his arm and back was unbearable. “I swear! I didn’t mean to do it!”
“And I’ll be sure to tell Sheriff Carter that when you help us get Sean back.”
“Game’s over, Fields. Get one of your nerdy friends to do it!”
“Sorry to inconvenience you.” Danny pressed more of his weight into Skip. God help him, he wanted to cause the son of a bitch pain. Skip gnashed his teeth together and squirmed beneath Danny as he spoke. “But you’ve been caught on tape. Run now and Sean dies ... the sheriff gets to watch you push him. Whatcha think he’ll give your performance? Thumbs up or thumbs down?”
The ramifications struck Skip’s brain like a bullet. “What if I help you and he dies anyway?”
“That depends on how much you piss me off between now and then.” Danny jerked Skip’s arm upward. “So you’d better be real fuckin’ nice.”
Skip uttered a pitiful groan.
There was a voice in Danny’s brain; it urged him to pull the arm up until it broke like Sean’s leg, but Danny let more rational thoughts prevail and got off Skip’s back.
Skip staggered to his feet. He looked at Dorr and Coyne. Neither of them made eye contact; they grabbed up their belongs and faded into the crowd, abandoning him.
Slowly, the spectators turned away. Some looked back at Robby Miller’s heroics with Sean, others resumed their packing, and still others began the long walk home. No one paid any attention to Skip. Unlike his loss in the corn, this had been too public a defeat. Skip rubbed his arm, feeling his power at Harmony High evaporate.
“What do I need to do?” he asked, his voice meek.
Danny gave him a push toward Sean. “Let’s go see.”
Sean was still breathing, still unconscious, still covered in the letter jacket and Strawberry Shortcake towel. Robby had removed Nancy from direct pressure duty and she stood behind him, her eyes on Danny, visibly relieved. Mick, Deidra, and Paul regarded Skip with cruel, unforgiving glares.
Skip did not see them; his eyes were focused squarely on the ground.
“Skip’s gonna help us,” Danny said. “What do we need to do?”
“We need to make a stretcher,” Robby told them. “We need two long poles and ... Shit, I don’t know, more towels. I need to tie the towels to the poles so we can all grab on and carry Sean outta here.”
Danny nodded. “You got it.”
“People are starting to leave,” Deidra pointed out. “How many are we gonna need to carry him?”
“Six people should do it. Two at his head, two at his feet, and two to pick up the slack in the middle.” Robby looked around. “Danny, me, Skip, Mick, Paul ...”
“And me,” she volunteered.
Robby nodded. “And you makes six.”
“I can carry our packs and junk to help you guys out,” Nancy offered.
“What about me?” It was Cindi.
“You don’t have to come,” Nancy told her. “You can hike back with Danyell and Monica.”
She shook her head. “All my stuff’s at your house.”
“Fine,” Nancy said. “Help me carry crap.”
Deidra looked around. Sean’s accident had been a pail of water on the Senior Class’s fall bonfire. By the time they manufactured a stretcher for Sean, their little group could very well be walking back alone. “We should tell people to call for help when they get home.”
“Good idea,” Robby admitted. “Could you do that?”
She nodded. “Anything specific you want me to tell ’em?”
“Tell ’em to call 911, tell ’em to say we need a Lifeline helicopter out here. The dispatcher will take it from there.”
“You got it.” Deidra gave Paul’s hand a loving squeeze, then pulled away.
“I’ll help you,” Nancy said. “The more people we ask, the better our chances someone will actually do it.”
As the girls went to relay the message to anyone who would listen, Robby looked at his watch. It was 4:30. Night would chase the sun from the sky by six or seven, and this morning, without the burden of an injured body, it had taken nearly four hours to walk the distance to the quarry.
Robby hoped someone would reach home sooner, hoped they would make that 911 call, hoped help would come and shorten their hike. He did not relish the thought of walking back in the dark, in the inevitable cold that would accompany it.
Not at all.
Part Two:
Masters of the Game
Seventeen
The forest arched over the group, surrounded them like an ancient cathedral. Trees grew in straight lines, columns erected according to the blueprint of some great, unseen architect. Their roots lay buried beneath the ruins of some former temple; toppled trunks so elderly they had seen Miami tribes in their abundance, some ancient enough to remember when Man was but a fantasy God toyed with in the corner of His mind. Now, they lay moldering, their rotting skins covered in minor forests of mushroom umbrellas and swelling puffballs.
A dirt path wended its way through the undergrowth. The group took it slowly, like pall bearers, and Sean rocked back and forth with their every step; Danny and Skip supported his head, Robby and Mick held up his feet, and Paul and Deidra kept his torso aloft. Nancy and Cindi followed behind the make-shift stretcher, loaded down with backpacks and Paul’s camcorder.
Mick adjusted his grip on the wooden frame, then looked down at his friend, his eyes lingering on the immobilized leg and the blood-soaked towel at Sean’s shoulder. “Is he in pain?”
“He’s unconscious,” Robby said.
“But what happens when he wakes up?”
Robby shrugged. “He’ll be in a shitload of pain.”
“Can we give him something?” Danny asked.
Robby did not look up from the path. “Like what?”
“Tylenol or something,” Danny said angrily.
At that, Robby grew angry himself. “Do you have a fuckin’ Tylenol?”
“I have some Midol,” Cindi offered.
“That’s great.” Robby flashed a humorless grin. “When Sean gets his first period, I’ll call you.”
“She’s just trying to help,” Nancy told him.
No one talked for a while after that, but the walk was far from quiet. Wind moved through laden branches, created a sound like a raging river, and the night insects stirred to life; their twittering rose until it was almost deafening, then fell suddenly silent. Together, the sounds became a woodland symphony, not a joyous tune, but a dirge. Within weeks, the forest would be stripped naked and left to die beneath a shroud of snow.
Deidra looked up into the eddies of wind-blown leaves. “The Miami thought these woods were full of spirits. They thought this place was so haunted that for five hundred years it’s been one of their laws not to come in here.”
Paul got off-step, the tip of his shoe catching Skip’s heel.
“Watch it, fucker,” Skip warned.
Paul blinked. “Sorry.”
He thought Deidra might go on to relay the story she’d told him earlier, thought she might mention the crows and the corn. Instead, she left the thread dangling.
Robby picked it up. “Let me tell you some real scary stories.”
Paul lowered his eyes. He saw a pair of bleached antlers sticking up from the seedbed of moss and leaves, as if a deer were submerged beneath it, waiting for them to pass.
Robby told them what he’d learned about the northern fields at the fire station. Danny gave him a dirty look, but that didn’t stop him. He told them about the Warner lynching and the grand dragon’s death in ’46, about the Baptist minister’s act of arson in ’64, and about the Andrews twins in ’72.
Nancy grabbed Cindi’s arm as if she needed protection. “Okay, I’m officially freaked out.”
Skip smiled and jumped in with a tale of his ow
n. “My uncle knew this guy back in high school in ’72. He was driving down Route 6, around midnight, when he saw this little girl – maybe twelve – in his headlights, just walking along the edge of the cornfield at the side of the road. Well, it’s late and it’s cold, and this guy my uncle knew wonders what she’s doing out so late, so he slows down to ask if she’s all right.”
Paul had heard this story before. He looked around, saw Nancy hold Cindi’s arm a bit tighter and Danny stare at the path ahead as if he could not care less. Mick, Robby, and Deidra watched the back of Skip’s head with great interest.
“The girl opens his back door and slides into the seat.” Skip removed his right hand from the poles of the litter, flexed his fingers, then returned it. “She thanks him for the ride and he asks her what she’s doing out so late. She tells him she went for a walk and got lost in the field, said her parents were gonna be worried about her. My uncle’s friend says she must be cold and gives her his letterman jacket. He was a wrestler or something. Anyway, the girl puts the jacket on and gives him directions to her house. On the way there he passes by Townson Cemetery and has to slow down — you know, where the road gets all twisted, like a snake? Anyway, he turns to ask the girl if he’s got his directions right and the girl isn’t there. She’s just fuckin’ gone.”
“Where’d she go?” Nancy asked as if she really didn’t want to know.
“See, it was late, and this guy had a curfew, so he just goes on home. But, the next day, he goes to the little girl’s house.”
“Because..?” Paul asked, knowing the answer.
“Because he wanted his jacket back,” Skip said. “Anyway, he goes to the house and knocks on the door. When it opens, he sees the little girl and asks her for his jacket. She gets all freaked and calls for her mom. The mother comes to the door and she’s a total wreck. She asks my uncle’s friend what he wants and he tells her the whole story. The woman says that it’s not possible, that the little girl was home all night. My uncle’s friend says he’s not makin’ this crap up, says Betsy has his jacket.”
“How’d he know her name was Betsy?” Deidra asked.
Paul smiled. Skip screwed up the telling of the tale and she’d caught it.
“She told him when she got in his car. Anyway, the mother freaks out, tells my uncle’s friend she doesn’t know what he’s trying to pull but he’d better get the fuck off their property. This guy is totally confused, so he asks what’s wrong. That’s when the mother tells him Betsy was Marcia’s twin sister, tells him they buried her three months ago.”
“That’s enough, Skip,” Cindi said with a taut voice. Nancy was strangling the blood from her arm.
“But that’s not the kicker,” Skip told them. “For some reason, after he leaves the house, he drives out to Townson Cemetery. He find’s the little girl’s headstone, the one that says she died in July, and sitting on the muddy grave, neatly folded, is my uncle’s friend’s letterman jacket.”
Robby’s eyes rolled over. “My cousin told me that when I was twelve, but he said it happened to a friend of his in Griffith. It didn’t have anything to do with the Andrews twins or the cornfield.”
Skip sneered at him, a sardonic glaze over his eyes. “Like your stories were any fuckin’ better.”
“Mine weren’t stories,” Robby insisted. “I’m not –” He caught sight of the trees and his train of thought derailed. “Jesus.”
Paul looked up; he half-expected to see Mr. Warner swinging from a branch, white eyes bulging from his black face, eyes that burned with fear and rage. Instead, he saw a flock of birds. Crows. Hundreds of crows. The trees were black with them. His stomach and bladder felt slack.
Deidra was unnerved as well. “It’s like they’re following us.”
Robby chuckled at that. “That’s a sign of good luck ... in Haiti.”
Skip’s lip twisted to a grin. “At least they’re not vultures.”
Danny flashed him a horrified glare, then gave his eyes back to the path. They needed to keep moving, to get Sean some help.
Cindi froze. “They’re not gonna ... attack us, are they?”
Aggravated, Nancy pulled her along until she began walking again. It was getting dark and Nancy did not want to be in the woods at night. “Birds don’t attack people.”
Robby saw his opportunity. “Sure they do.” He took one hand from the litter and pointed to his face. “They go for your eyes and peck ’em out.”
Cindi regarded him with mistrust. One of the crows cawed; she jumped. “Shit!”
“All day, when I’ve seen these birds looking at us, it made me think of this old movie I saw on Sammy Terry,” Paul told them. Sammy Terry hosted late night horror movies on Channel 4. He was just an old man in a Halloween robe, a silly rubber spider named George as his sidekick, but he had the creepiest voice; every introduction promised a truly horrifying experience. The movies that followed, however, were usually schlock. “The Beast With A Million Eyes. Ever see it?”
“No,” Danny said.
“The creature was this cheesy-looking thing. Some stage hand made it by covering a coffee pot with eyes.”
Robby smirked. “Sounds like one of your movies, Rice.”
“See, the studio said ‘the picture’s called The Beast With A Million Eyes, so we need to see a monster with a million eyes.’”
Deidra chuckled. “Makes sense.”
Paul kept his eyes on the flock, but her words brought a smile to his lips. “In the script, the ‘million eyes’ were the eyes of birds. The creature was seeing everything through their eyes. I’ve done the same thing in my space zombie script. These creatures crawl inside people and turn them into zombies-”
“Stop it,” Nancy said with no inflection.
“– but they’re really all part of the same creature, like cells in a body, and, at the end of the movie, we see this huge brain with teeth and tentacles that knows everything and sees everything.”
Deidra feigned upset. “Thanks for ruining it for me!”
“Sorry.” Paul looked at her, still smiling. “But you’re already dead, remember.”
Nancy found anger to give her words weight. “I said stop it!” Everyone’s eyes found hers, saw how uncomfortable the stories, and now the birds, had made her.
Danny shook his head. “Hop off this horror express, guys. Your bullshit’s scaring the ladies.”
“I’m tellin’ you it’s not bullshit,” Robby contended.
“You’re lumping these things all together, things that could really have happened, and trying to say that they mean something.”
“You don’t think they do?”
Danny shook his head again. “If you throw darts at a map, you’re gonna find every town’s had its share of strange stuff. Like the bumper sticker says, shit happens. It’s not ghosts or ancient Indian burial grounds or any of that Sammy Terry crap. It’s just this fucked up world bein’ fucked up.”
“What about these crows?” Paul asked. “You gotta admit this is weird.”
“Weird, sure, but there’s nothing supernatural about a flock of birds.”
Cindi looked at the birds and they looked right back at her. “Well, it’s not natural.”
“Isn’t there a special name for a flock of crows?” Deidra asked. “You know, like a gaggle of geese or a pod of whales?”
“I’ve always just heard them called a flock,” Mick told her.
“No,” Paul corrected, “I think they do have another name ... something ominous ...” It was on the tip of his tongue, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember it.
“I can’t believe you people are such pussies!” Skip suddenly flailed his free arm outward; his mouth and eyes open wide as he let loose a scream.
In the trees, the crows did not move a muscle.
On the ground, everyone but Danny jumped. His eyes flew to Skip, shock and anger brawling within his gaze. “What the fuck are you doin’?”
Skip didn’t answer. He dipped down to snatch a small
rock off the ground. As he moved, the litter tilted and Sean’s head lolled to the right.
Robby leaned over, grabbed the pole with his right hand and tried to pull it level. “Christ!”
Skip stood up, drew back his hand and threw it forward as if pitching a baseball. The rock flew into the crow-laden branches, struck one of the birds squarely in its black chest. It fell to the ground with a thud, its legs pointed out, its wings spread wide open. It looked as if it were trying to make a snow angel in the dirt path.
“Bull’s eye!” Skip smiled and kicked the dead bird from the trail as he walked by. “Just a fuckin’ crow.”
Mick looked at the carcass, then to Williamson. He shook his head. “You’re a fucking asshole.”
Cindi’s eyes were still in the trees. “Why didn’t the rest of ’em fly away?”
Paul looked up. The flock had not moved. They should have scattered the instant Skip lobbed the stone, instead they held fast to their perches.
Skip’s lips parted slowly and froze that way, at a loss to explain it.
“Maybe they’re asleep,” Robby proposed.
Cindi didn’t buy it. “Their eyes are open.”
Had she not been so unnerved, Nancy might have laughed, but her words to Cindi were humorless. “Birds don’t have eyelids.”
“They’re asleep,” Robby said confidently.
Mick squinted through his thick lenses. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because birds do have eyelids, and crows have two sets of them, an outer one, just like you and me, and an inner one – a thin membrane that covers their eyes when they sleep.” Mick pointed toward the trees. “I haven’t seen them use either one.”
They emerged from the woods on the other side, carried Sean out onto a strip of tall grass. Stalks of corn stood before them, a green wall that stretched to the horizon in either direction. The red glow of sunset peeked between ribbons of dark clouds overhead, as if a huge claw had scratched a black sky and left it to bleed.
Paul noticed the difference in sound almost immediately. The music of the woods dulled, replaced by the soft noise of corn tassels brushing one another in the breeze. It seemed expectant, like whispers in the dark before a surprise party.