onto my side. If I curled up and held my stomach, maybe it wouldn’t growl so much. Sounds came out of the darkness. Some like nails clawing into rotten wood. Others like the
click-click
of naked bones.
A slow, steady breathing wrapped around my shoulders then went out again, hugging the trees and sliding along the ground like the never-ending exhale of some huge creature with lungs the size of football stadiums. The heart of the woods beat through me: a soothing
thack
, a giant underground muscle pumping green blood through every root and into every tree, everything connected to everything else under the dirt.
I dozed and woke with Dunk settled next to me. He’d draped the blanket over us. His breath feathery on the back of my neck.
I fell into a deeper sleep and awoke with Dunk’s fingers clutching my chest.
“Something’s out there.”
The worry in his voice sent a spike of ice down my spine. The fire was dead. My feet were swollen and numb inside my sneakers, the blood pooled.
“Listen,” Dunk said urgently. “Can you hear it?”
The pressure of my held breath pressed against my eardrums, making it hard to hear anything. I forced myself to let it out in a shuddery hiss.
There were the usual clickings and rustlings that I’d almost gotten used to. But another sound, too. A soft noise atop those familiar ones, and beneath them at the same time.
“What is it?” I whispered.
Dunk blew on the coals, stirring the embers. An orange shine lit his face and gave me some confidence. He reached into the backpack. The light of a solitary star winked off the pistol’s silver barrel.
The sound approached then drifted away, switching places to come at us from a new angle.
It’s Bruiser Mahoney
.
The thought snagged in my mind, a sticky black ball covered in fish hooks. Bruiser Mahoney was out there, alive but not really. He’d stalked all day and night and finally caught up. Sniffing us like a bloodhound, lumbering on all fours with his spine cracked out and shining like a half-buried centipede through the dead grey skin of his back. His dentures shoved past his sun-blistered lips and his face swollen with blood, his eyeballs two rotted grapes staring out of the piggy folds of flesh to make him look like a giant prehistoric slug. His fingernails matted with shreds of the tent he’d clawed free of. He’d followed us without stopping, blundering at first but becoming more aware, strides lengthening as he pursued us through the undergrowth. And now he was here.
You ever see an old clown, boys? Clowns don’t die. But sometimes they come back … oh, yessss …
“It’s him,” I said. “It’s Bruiser.”
“It’s not. It’s something, but not that.”
Except it
was
Mahoney. His hair hung in tangled, mud-clotted ropes. His stomach ballooned up with gas and his joints twistedwith rigor mortis. Bones sticking out of his skin where he’d broken them on rocks, not noticing that he’d done so or not caring. The sounds suddenly made sense. The first was the rubber-band sound of Mahoney’s naked muscles: with the skin stripped off his arms and legs, his tendons had cured in the sun and now they creaked when he flexed them. The sucking sound was Mahoney’s rotted lungs.
God rot me, boys …
His lungs were filling and emptying—not because he needed to breathe, but because his body was still mindlessly doing what it had always done.
God’ll rot you, too, soon enough …
Would he eat us? Or just tear us apart? His rage seemed so unfair. We couldn’t have taken him with us—he weighed a million pounds.
The sticks caught. Firelight pushed back the darkness. Dunk stood, baby bird in one hand, gun in the other. Did he even know how to shoot? You could only learn so much from watching
The Equalizer
and
Magnum, P.I
.
Firelight bled to the edge of the clearing, flickering against the thickets. My heart was pounding so hard, my body so keyed up, that I saw everything in hyper-intense detail. Every
click-click
of naked bones.
A slow, steady breathing wrapped around my shoulders then went out again, hugging the trees and sliding along the ground like the never-ending exhale of some huge creature with lungs the size of football stadiums. The heart of the woods beat through me: a soothing
thack
, a giant underground muscle pumping green blood through every root and into every tree, everything connected to everything else under the dirt.
I dozed and woke with Dunk settled next to me. He’d draped the blanket over us. His breath feathery on the back of my neck.
I fell into a deeper sleep and awoke with Dunk’s fingers clutching my chest.
“Something’s out there.”
The worry in his voice sent a spike of ice down my spine. The fire was dead. My feet were swollen and numb inside my sneakers, the blood pooled.
“Listen,” Dunk said urgently. “Can you hear it?”
The pressure of my held breath pressed against my eardrums, making it hard to hear anything. I forced myself to let it out in a shuddery hiss.
There were the usual clickings and rustlings that I’d almost gotten used to. But another sound, too. A soft noise atop those familiar ones, and beneath them at the same time.
“What is it?” I whispered.
Dunk blew on the coals, stirring the embers. An orange shine lit his face and gave me some confidence. He reached into the backpack. The light of a solitary star winked off the pistol’s silver barrel.
The sound approached then drifted away, switching places to come at us from a new angle.
It’s Bruiser Mahoney
.
The thought snagged in my mind, a sticky black ball covered in fish hooks. Bruiser Mahoney was out there, alive but not really. He’d stalked all day and night and finally caught up. Sniffing us like a bloodhound, lumbering on all fours with his spine cracked out and shining like a half-buried centipede through the dead grey skin of his back. His dentures shoved past his sun-blistered lips and his face swollen with blood, his eyeballs two rotted grapes staring out of the piggy folds of flesh to make him look like a giant prehistoric slug. His fingernails matted with shreds of the tent he’d clawed free of. He’d followed us without stopping, blundering at first but becoming more aware, strides lengthening as he pursued us through the undergrowth. And now he was here.
You ever see an old clown, boys? Clowns don’t die. But sometimes they come back … oh, yessss …
“It’s him,” I said. “It’s Bruiser.”
“It’s not. It’s something, but not that.”
Except it
was
Mahoney. His hair hung in tangled, mud-clotted ropes. His stomach ballooned up with gas and his joints twistedwith rigor mortis. Bones sticking out of his skin where he’d broken them on rocks, not noticing that he’d done so or not caring. The sounds suddenly made sense. The first was the rubber-band sound of Mahoney’s naked muscles: with the skin stripped off his arms and legs, his tendons had cured in the sun and now they creaked when he flexed them. The sucking sound was Mahoney’s rotted lungs.
God rot me, boys …
His lungs were filling and emptying—not because he needed to breathe, but because his body was still mindlessly doing what it had always done.
God’ll rot you, too, soon enough …
Would he eat us? Or just tear us apart? His rage seemed so unfair. We couldn’t have taken him with us—he weighed a million pounds.
The sticks caught. Firelight pushed back the darkness. Dunk stood, baby bird in one hand, gun in the other. Did he even know how to shoot? You could only learn so much from watching
The Equalizer
and
Magnum, P.I
.
Firelight bled to the edge of the clearing, flickering against the thickets. My heart was pounding so hard, my body so keyed up, that I saw everything in hyper-intense detail. Every
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