that.
It was a snowy day in early February when I
found the old man dead.
I walked into his dark room, a cold dread
heavy in the pit of my gut. The pneumonia had taken its toll,
drowning him in his own bodily fluids. His skin was icy to the
touch. I was just about to pull the blanket up over his head, when
his chest hitched violently. Stepping back, I watched in horror as
his chest rose and fell, his throat emitting a wet wheezing sound.
The old man was dead, yet he was breathing. I could hear the mucus
within his lungs churning and sloshing of its own accord.
Then his ribs began to snap... one by one.
I fled from that dark house, but lingered on
the front porch, torn between going and staying. From within the
house I could hear a terrible racket; the ugly sound of splintering
bone and ripping flesh. I stood on that porch for what seemed an
eternity, my hands clutching the frozen railing, my attention
focused on the tranquil snowscape of the West Piney Woods. Then I
was aware of a shuffling, liquid sound behind me... the sound of
ragged breathing from the open doorway. I made a mistake, I
tried to convince myself. The old man's not really dead.
I turned around and screamed.
On the bare boards of the front porch,
trailing a gory residue of fresh blood and slime, was Jess
Hedgecomb's lungs . They heaved and deflated like a pair of
gruesome bellows, pulling themselves across the porch with a life
of their own. Then they paused, as if my screaming had drawn their
attention.
The gory windpipe, weaving like the head of a
serpent, turned my way and regarded me blindly, the hollow of the
gullet staring like a deep, eyeless socket. I pulled my own eyes
away, hearing the wet clump, clump, clump of the thing
making its way down the porch steps.
When I finally did gather the nerve to look,
it was gone, leaving an ugly trail of crimson slime across the
virgin snow. I could hear it thrashing through the dead tangle of
thicket, huffing and puffing, could see plumes of frosty breath
rise as it headed into the wooded hollow.
As far as I know, the thing never returned to
the dilapidated shack beside Silver Creek again... and neither did I
.
I mostly keep to myself these days,
preferring not to involve myself in other people's affairs. Every
now and then, I can't help it, though, especially where the old
man's childhood buddies are concerned. Lately there's beenalot of
talk going around about them and the grisly death of Jess
Hedgecomb. Whenever some busybody asks me about those last days
with Old Hacker, I politely tell them to mind their own damn
business.
Lester Wills died the other day over in
McMinnville. There was a big ruckus in the newspaper about it.
Seems that a wild animal got into the nursing home somehow and tore
out poor Lester's throat and lungs right there on his deathbed. Of
course, I know that ain't what happened... and so does Charlie Gooch,
the last remaining of the three. Charlie ain't looking so hot these
days, either. Every time I see him in town, his face is pale and
worried. And when he has one of his bad coughing spells, I turn my
head, afraid to look.
Sometimes when I'm out squirrel hunting in
the West Piney Woods, I can hear something crawling through the
honeysuckle. Something just a-puffing and a-wheezing as it makes
its way through the shadowy hollows along Silver Creek. Sometimes
it sounds as though there might be more than one.
My twelve-gauge is hanging in the window rack
of my pickup truck, cleaned and loaded with double-aught buckshot.
I hang around the general store and the courthouse in the evenings,
waiting, listening for word that old Charlie has finally kicked the
bucket.
And, when I do, I'll take my gun and a pack
of hounds, and I'll go hunting.
THE
ABDUCTION
He remembered the night of Tanya's fury.
He remembered the night of her laughter, of
the delicate glint of honed steel and the sting of thin-edged pain.
He remembered the quick pulsating of blood released... his blood.
But,
Faye Hunter
Edith Hawkins
Margaret Hawkins
Cara Albany
Peter Ackroyd
Andrew Taylor
Khaled Hosseini
Michelle Zink
Abigail Graham
Geof Johnson