Under the Overtree

by James A. Moore

  Patrick started for his car before remembering that his keys were on the dresser where he always left them. He turned the corner of the house running as quickly as he could, spotting Dave’s two point landing in the grass as he did. Dave looked remarkably calm, that scared Patrick all the more; only lunatics like Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers stayed calm when wielding implements of destruction.

  The way Patrick saw it, his only hope lay in the woods. He truly wished he could think of something else, the woods had stopped being friendly in his eyes the same night he had his chemical nightmare about Mark munching on Tommy Blake, instead of the usual late night snack. What the hell else could he do? The Summitville Baseball Massacre was about to take place if he stopped now. He heard Dave closing on him, the footsteps sounding louder and quicker by the second. Adrenaline does wonderful things to terrified muscles, he poured on some extra speed. The woods were right in front of him.

  Patrick didn’t have time to focus on Dave any longer, he was busy dodging trees left and right. The woods had never seemed quite so full of the large wooden obstacles in the past. Patrick zigzagged randomly, he’d been in these woods for most of his life and had no fear of getting lost. He knew he was gaining the distance he needed and risked a look back.

  Dave was nowhere to be seen. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing, for all he knew Dave was right behind him even now. Patrick looked around, trying to orient himself in the shade of the trees. Nothing looked familiar.

  Patrick refused to accept that, he knew these woods like the back of his hand, had spent almost as much time unconsciously studying them as he had that very same limb. The woods he was standing in were not the same woods he had grown up with, but they had to be, he hadn’t run all that far.

  Off to his left he heard the sound of a thick twig breaking. He turned to look and that direction and there stood Dave Brundvandt. Shit, Dave had spotted him.

  “Dave, let’s talk about this, okay?”

  “I tried to talk about this before, you didn’t want to.”

  “Dave, I really don’t want you hitting me with that thing. C’mon, put it down okay? A joke’s a joke, but this ain’t even funny.”

  Brundvandt plodded forward, stepping over roots and branches that Patrick wished would leap up and trip him. “I’m not laughing, Patrick, I’m gonna bust you up.” Patrick felt his knees start knocking. Without the running, the adrenaline was simply making his whole body jumpy. “You shouldn’t have told me to fuck off, Patrick. Now you went and made me mad.”

  Not quite as dynamic as the guys in the comic books, but the point came across just as well from Patrick’s point of view. Patrick started running again.

  Before he’d gone more than a hundred yards, Patrick broke into an unexpected clearing in the woods. Cursing his luck he tried to bolt to the left. Dave Brundvandt was already there somehow and slapped the baseball bat into Patrick’s right arm, which flared hot for a second and then grew numb. Patrick grunted and stumbled backwards, managing to keep his feet.

  There was a huge slab of rock in the center of the clearing, almost as if the trees that surrounded the rock refused to get any closer than they had to. Patrick’s mind realized that the boulder had use as a potential shield against Dave’s bludgeon and ran as quickly as he could to the other side, cradling his battered arm in his free hand.

  Dave was smarter than Patrick would have honestly given him credit for, instead of going around the boulder, he scampered to the top of the rock. He looked down on Patrick from a good four feet off of the ground and lifted the bat above his head like a lumberjack preparing to chop into wood.

  Golden opportunities come too seldom in life to pass them by; Patrick jumped about two feet up and planted his fist right in the center of Dave’s scrotum. Dave dropped the bat, dropped to his knees and fell off of the rock, in about three seconds flat. He rolled on the ground with both hands trying to comfort his battered privates, while Patrick went for the baseball bat.

  Blood colored light filtered in to take the natural colors away from the woods. Looking at Dave Brundvandt on the ground left Patrick as unaffected as if he was looking at a fly caught in a spider’s web. Dave struggled feebly, trying to stand up through his pain. Patrick calmly kicked him in the side of the head for his troubles.

  Dave had been terrorizing Patrick for over three weeks now and enough was enough. Patrick hefted the baseball bat in his left hand, shifting his grip so that the bat could be managed with only his good arm. He didn’t say anything and in that moment he might have been surprised by how expressionless his face had become. Like Dave’s, or Michael Myers’, or Jason Voorhees’.

  Dave tried to beg. Patrick was having none of it. The beating went on for almost fifteen minutes, the screaming had stopped after about three. The wet breathing sounds continued until the very end.

  Heaving the bloodied bat into the woods, Patrick went home. There was so much to do…Dave’s car had to be gone by the time his parents both got to the house. Patrick thanked God for the luck of having two working parents.

  By the time Patrick managed to get the car in motion, the sun was starting a slow crawl towards the western horizon. The chase and fight had taken a lot longer than Patrick had realized, it was after two in the afternoon by the time he managed to fire the engine in Dave Brundvandt’s car. Somehow he knew that Dave wouldn’t mind. Patrick had learned how to hotwire cars from one of P.J. Sanderson’s books, he was grateful for the man’s diligence in research. The only real problem was that the book had made it all seem so much easier than it was in real life.

  It was a bumpy trip over paths that were not meant to be traveled by car, but an hour later, he drove Dave’s hot-wired car into the waters of Lake Overtree. By four o’clock in the afternoon he was making himself a late lunch of Beenie Weenie and Cheetos. The shower’s hot water faded from his body, replaced by the almost painful cold of water that was not given a chance to heat, before Patrick felt clean again. Even that did not stop a ravenous hunger from building in his body. Beenie Weenie and Cheetos, them’s goood eatin’!

  Dave had screamed just like a girl as the old baseball bat cracked bones in his body. Somehow, that made it all seem okay.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  1

  Word of the Brundvandt boy’s disappearance didn’t really surprise very many people, it was almost expected from the Brundvandt brood. The parents were notorious for their drunken fits of rage and more than one of Dave Brundvandt’s older siblings had taken to flight as a good way to avoid the regular beatings at the Brundvandt homestead.

  Word of Chuck Hanson’s disappearance was different in effect; the adults in Summitville stopped being as friendly and open as they normally were. Nobody could have said that Hanson was the best sheriff ever, but he was better than nothing at all. Without his normal appearance on the streets, nobody really felt that they could trust their neighbors any longer. It was a sad turn of events in the paranoid little town. The summer was almost over and for the first time in a long while, children didn’t dare moan and groan about having to go back to school. They were afraid of gathering their parents’ attention.

  Everyone wanted to make the most of the last week, Lisa and Tyler were no exceptions. Mostly, they wanted to spend time together, get to know each other all over again. It was a little awkward at first, Lisa was certain that the knowledge of her having been raped, even if she couldn’t honestly remember the incident, would make her less attractive to Tyler. Tyler was quick to prove her wrong; he doted on her every move just as much as he had before the incident had occurred.

  It was on Wednesday, that last week before school started again, that the couple got together with Mark and Cassie for a picnic on the shore of Overtree. The day would have been perfect, save for the continuing strange looks that Tyler threw at Mark when he was certain his friend wasn’t looking. Mark did notice, but he did his best to ignore the look. It seemed almost like a mixture of curiosity, hatred and fear. That was nonsense, of course
, but Mark couldn’t help noticing. He made a mental note to have a chat with Tyler later; no sense in ruining the fun for everyone involved, was there?

  Even the looks seemed to fade after about a half an hour, but they came back with a vengeance when Mark brought up the name of Jonathan Crowley. Tyler was surprised to hear that they had met and even more surprised to hear that Mark thought he was a great guy. Crowley had been by only the night before, to tell Mark how much he had enjoyed the book manuscript that Mark had given to him. Tyler was fairly convinced that he was hearing things. He resolved to meet up with Crowley as soon as possible; something here was decidedly rotten in Summitville and he suspected that the rot came from Crowley.

  For Lisa and Cassie’s part, they talked about everything. The guys talked with them, but for some reason there seemed to be messages going around to which the guys were not privy. In later years, they might have gained the wisdom to understand the language that the girls were speaking, but they were not nearly experienced enough at that time.

  It was later in the afternoon, after they had finished eating the huge amounts of food that Tyler had prepared—all of it edible and surely nutritious, but about as tasty as chalk—when they got down to serious talk.

  Cassie started it off by talking about the book she and Mark were working on together. “I think it’ll work out pretty well and maybe we’ll even become a regular writing team, if Dopey over here ever manages to wake up before noon.” She smiled and squeezed his hand to take the sting out of her words. Her smile managed to bring a quick grin to Mark’s own face and they both made Goo Goo eyes until Lisa interrupted.

  “Are you sure that’s what you want to do with your lives? I mean, I feel like I’m behind the times here. I haven’t even decided what courses to take for electives this year, let alone where I want to be when I’m thirty.”

  Tyler came back immediately with a patented Tyler remark. “Where else, barefoot and pregnant, cleaning the kitchen floor while I watch football on the ESPN.” It was a touch too soon after the abortion for that kind of comment and Tyler realized it as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Before he could think of a way to take the comment back, Mark intervened.

  “Got that wrong again, Tyler. Lisa’ll be watching the movies based on Cassie an’ me’s books. You’ll be scrubbing the floor.” Tyler was so grateful for the save, he barely felt the hard elbow Cassie practically drove through his chest.

  Lisa managed to force a smile, accepting the apology in Tyler’s eyes. After that, the conversation started to lag. Mark was having none of it and decided it was time for everyone to go swimming. He volunteered Tyler to be first, effortlessly tossing him the five feet it took to land him in the lake.

  Tyler came up gasping for air and Mark and he both laughed about it. For some reason, the girls weren’t laughing. Lisa was the one that hit the mystery question on the nose. “When the hell did you become Superman, Mark?”

  Mark looked perplexed, but the implications hit Tyler instantly. Mark was sitting Indian style on the ground, yet he had reached over and tossed him a good five or six feet through the air. He wasn’t a very heavy guy by anyone’s standards, but nobody he had ever known could have tossed him that far with that much ease.

  Mark looked around at everyone for a few seconds before the full impact of what he had done sank in. Lisa and Tyler both looked scared, Cassie probably would have too, but she knew him better and for some reason that seemed to take the sting of what she had just seen. Mark seriously doubted that even Tony could have made that kind of throw.

  That seemed to take all the fun out of the day, within half an hour everyone was on their way home. Except for Mark. After seeing Cassie to the door and giving her a quick goodbye peck on the lips, he wandered off into the woods. He needed to think and he always did his best thinking in his special place.

  2

  Jonathan Crowley had watched the entire picnic, busying himself with a pocket knife and a good piece of whittling wood. He cut the soft pad of his thumb open when he saw Mark toss Tyler. Hissing back a curse, he closed the knife and watched the reactions of the people with the Howell boy. Tyler looked scared, Lisa looked nervous and appreciative of the raw strength such an effort took. Cassie looked excited. In Crowley’s opinion things had gone on more than long enough. He slipped the wooden carving into his shirt pocket and started following Mark Howell.

  Crowley watched as Mark kissed his lady love goodbye and slipped into the shadows until Mark had again entered the woods. He followed at a fair distance, enough to ensure that Mark didn’t catch a glimpse from the periphery and watched until the boy hit the clearing. Crowley stopped at the spot in the woods where the trees changed; something in the woods was warping the very nature of the greenery, making the entire area seem less real, more menacing. His view was good enough to allow him to track Mark Howell with his eyes.

  At first the boy sat alone on the rock, then, tentatively, the Folk made their presence known. The boy smiled broadly as the creatures came to him. They were tiny smudges of shadow from where Crowley stood; he knew the boy was seeing them in an entirely different light. Then Howell was enchanted by them, laughing with them and allowing them to crawl all over him like a seething mass of tarantulas. He watched the way that the beings caressed him, stroking his skin in awe, as if he were made of expensive silks rather than human flesh.

  After perhaps twenty minutes of remaining completely motionless, Crowley was rewarded for his patience. The boy closed his eyes and fell into an unnatural slumber as the tiny creatures covered his body entirely. Slowly, with incredibly light touches, he saw the creatures reach into Mark Howell’s body with their hands and actually start moving about under his skin.

  They continued their manipulations for well over an hour, touching different portions of his body and seemingly wading through his flesh as if it were made of water. When they had finished, they faded into the woods around the clearing; some hid in the trees, some scurried under leaves seemingly too small to conceal them. In a matter of less than a minute they had disappeared from sight.

  Still Crowley watched without moving, ignoring every painful protest of his body. In another five minutes, the boy stood up and walked away from the clearing, looking for all the world like a healthy, happy, teenager on his way to adulthood. Crowley knew better now. The boy was being changed into something that should not, could not be permitted to exist.

  He followed Mark Howell all the way to his home, watching as he entered through the front door. The hatred he felt for the little creatures was increased with every step he took. He liked Mark Howell, liked his mother and his stepfather. He knew he had to end the troubles now, provided it wasn’t well past the point of no return.

  He’d never seen the Folk take so long just to make minor adjustments. If he was right, they knew he was here. That would make them dangerous. If he was lucky, it would also make them careless. One way or another, the Folk and their Changeling would be no more by morning.

  3

  It was dinnertime in Summitville, loosely translated that meant that most of the people that lived in town where at the diner or at the Chinese restaurant, or at home, eating their suppers. Most of the town ate around six-thirty at night, allowing just enough time for the commute from Denver and Boulder with a few minutes left over to relax beforehand. P.J. Sanderson was not eating like most of the town, but then he was hardly a normal resident. P.J. was instead gathering together his supplies for a last chance at redemption.

  He could remember even after all of these years, the approximate location of the Stone in the woods near Overtree. It was the Stone that had caused all of the troubles in town and he, along with Alex, had been the one to cause the Stone’s awakening. To P.J.’s way of thinking, that made him responsible for eliminating the accursed thing.

  Everything he needed was in his suitcase: a flashlight, a thermos of coffee in case he got hopelessly lost and needed the caffeine rush and four homemade molotov cocktails. As an extra
precaution, he carried the pack of three Bic lighters in their unopened package in his jacket. He stepped out of the Basilisk’s front door and proceeded towards his car.

  After a moment of nervous fumbling, he pulled the car keys from inside his jacket and unlocked the door. He tossed the bag towards the passenger side without thinking about the four bottles of gasoline that were nestled within. Fortunately, Jonathan Crowley was there to catch the bag.

  “Hello, Phillip. I’m so glad you didn’t disappoint me.”

  P.J. grabbed at his chest, willing his heart to start beating again as he backpedaled away from the driver’s side door. “Jesus Christ! What the hell are you doing here!”

  Crowley grinned. “Waiting for you, Phil. and please, there’s no reason to scream. I thought you might like a little help on your little hunting trip.”

  “What the hell do you know about it. You never make mistakes, you never do anything wrong. Leave me alone, you bastard.”

  Crowley made a show of looking wounded. “Phil, you cut me to the quick. I want to help and you’re going to deny me?”

  P.J. practically snarled his reply. “You’re goddamned right I’m going to deny you! Get the hell out of my car! NOW!”

  Crowley chuckled at the rage on the author’s face and slid smoothly out of the passenger door. Somehow he managed to shake his head good-naturedly at the same time that he was staring P.J. in the face. “Ah, Phillip. That’s the spirit I like to see. It’s misdirected, mind you, but that’s the fire I always knew you had in there somewhere. Sure you won’t change your mind about the company? I’ll even promise not to get in the way.”

  “Fuck you, Crowley.”

  “Heh. Have it your way. See ya around.” Crowley turned sharply on his heel and walked towards town. P.J. almost managed to convince himself that he was happy to see him go. He finished the climb into the car and started the engine.