Charnel House by Fred Anderson

bones. As long as the house had already been sitting vacant and forgotten, chances were damn good Garraty himself would be a moldered skeleton before anyone found the remains.
    The ice scraper was ruined, nicked and dinged so the blade was no longer straight and true. He’d need to get a new one before winter came. Leaving it next to the grave along with the tire iron, Garraty took the flashlight and began to wriggle backwards toward the opening. He didn’t like not seeing where he was going. Didn’t like it at all. Shoulda thought this one through a little better, kemosabe. Once he’d made it under the low beam there was enough room to turn around. God, the way out looked so tiny from here! Slowly, like a grunt working his way through a barbed wire obstacle course in basic training, he crept on his elbows back to the opening and the body that waited there for him. He crawled past the dead boy into the moonlight without looking at him and stood, relishing the crackles and pops in his bones. Goddamn, it had been tight under there.
    The three beers had migrated from his belly to his bladder while he was in the crawlspace, so he moved away from the porch and further down the exterior wall a little, then urinated into the thick growth. This would all be over soon and he could go home to the trailer and get more acquainted with the rest of that case of Pabst. Maybe it would help him forget this night ever happened. But first, he had one last thing to do.
    The crackle of the Mylar blanket seemed as loud as fireworks in the cramped confines of the crawlspace as Garraty dragged the dead boy toward his final resting place. It was slow going, especially as the ground drew closer to the skeletal frame of the house. Every time Garraty advanced a foot or two, he had to awkwardly turn and hitch the body forward the same distance. By the time he’d reached the makeshift grave, his arms and back sang from the effort and a stitch in his side made it hurt to take a deep breath. Add a few trips to the gym to that life makeover list, my man.
    Motes of dirt and dust billowed into the Maglite’s beam when Garraty rolled the wrapped corpse into the hole. The boy tumbled limply over the edge, landing on his side atop the blanket with his misshapen split head twisted around like he wanted to catch one last bit of weak light on his upturned face. Looking up at Garraty still with those half-lidded eyes. Those goddamn blood-filled eyes.
    “Who are you, kid?” he asked, and the sound of his own voice coming out in that shuddery whoosh of breath caused him to start nervously. As if the boy would answer. Why were you out so late by yourself?
    He took a deep breath, then slithered forward so that he could reach down to the body. He checked each pocket for identification—mindful of the gift in the back that was beginning to soak through the denim of the boy’s jeans—but found only a ten dollar bill, which he tucked into his own pocket. Kid doesn’t need money where he is. I do. Ten bucks is enough for a new ice scraper. He felt the dead eyes on him, cold and still on his heated flesh. On his face . He couldn’t finish this with the little bastard watching him. He swiped his hand across the kid’s lids to shut them once and for all. To stop the judgment . He wasn’t a bad guy; he’d just had a shitty run of luck. First the wife, then the job, now this. The last thing he needed was some dead kid staring at him with this kind of mute awareness that said I think you are a bad guy, buddy, and it’s high time you stop lying about it to yourself . He didn’t need that shit.
    Goddamn right I don’t. What he needed was to get out of this hellhole before he drove himself crazy.
    Garraty reached across the hole and pulled one of the piles of dirt toward him, raking in with his hands and trying to ignore the sound of it pattering like a gentle rain on the dead boy’s clothes and Mylar blanket. God, he could use a drink. Whatever buzz he’d had