by Lee Hayton
“Can’t you use your magic hand to help out?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how it works.” Tyler’s rapidly clearing head was leading him into a state of sobriety that he hadn’t visited for a long time. It made him testy. Having a dead fake-cop to dispose of on top of that really felt like the last straw.
“Give it a go. Send out one of those pink beams and make it all go boom!”
“Fine,” Tyler said. “Stand back then. And if it doesn’t work then I don’t want you ribbing on me, okay?”
Wilma put her hand up to her mouth and actioned a zip begin drawn across, then took a few giant steps backward.
Tyler flung his magic hand toward the corpse. “Dispose of the body,” he commanded, cutting through the thin night air with his voice.
Wilma gave him a shove between his shoulder blades. “How about whispering, since we’re trying not to be found? Unless you think the stone is deaf?”
“Sorry,” Tyler said. He stepped forward to look at the dead man again and saw absolutely no change. He was about to pick up an arm and recommence dragging when the pile of cardboard boxes beside the dumpster began to move.
“What the hell is that?” Wilma asked, tugging on his arm so Tyler back away another step. “Is someone there?”
A tiny shape ran across from the dumpster and stepped up on top of the body. As it turned its head, sniffing the breeze, Tyler recognized the unsettling form of a giant rat.
Others soon flocked to join it. Running up over the corpse’s chest, and legs, and arms. When one scurried across to sit on the man’s face, Tyler turned away, nausea churning in his stomach.
“Well, I’m not touching it now,” Wilma said in a shrill voice edging toward hysteria. She backed up with her palms out toward him. “I may not have high standards, but rats are where I join the line.”
“But we can’t just leave him sitting on the ground,” Tyler protested. “Someone will find him as soon as they open tomorrow. We want him hidden, not just lying about.”
“I can’t—” Wilma held a hand up to her face, then turned and ran a few yards away, jumping on top of an empty drum at the edge of the parking lot. She tucked her legs up beneath her and ducked her head down between her legs. As Tyler drew near, she hummed to herself, the tone rising from a low vibration into a shriek of pure terror.
“Don’t let them near me!”
Tyler looked back at the body. The seething mass of tails and teeth coated the dead man like a wriggling blanket. Even though rats didn’t usually scare him, the pure force of numbers turned them into a horrific sight.
The corpse had entirely disappeared beneath their furry bodies. Just as it seemed that every rodent in the city had joined the party, another would scurry into the mix.
“It’s okay,” Tyler said, though it clearly wasn’t. He touched Wilma on the arm, and she screamed, clasping her hands together in a shield over her head.
Tyler positioned himself between Wilma and the body. He reached out and touched the back of her hand gently, keeping it there when she tried to throw him off.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to let the rats near you. Let’s just get in the car, and we can drive far away.”
Wilma peered up at his face, and Tyler gulped in sympathy. The fear had turned her face into a mask, horror writ large in every childish feature. Her eyes were so large that he grew scared they’d pop right out of her head.
“I can’t walk to the car,” Wilma managed between heaves of her chest. “I—”
She ducked her head down, pulling her hand free of his with short, frantic motions. “No. no. no.”
Tyler leaned forward. “Look, I know exactly how you feel. Trust me. I’m going to get you to the car safely, and we can get the hell out of here.”
“You. Don’t. Know. How. I. Feel.”
“You remember last week when I screamed at the hose lying outside your office?”
Wilma’s eyes tried to look past the edges of Tyler’s body, and he stepped closer, ensuring her view of the rats was blocked.
“I thought it was a grass snake. Even when I knew it wasn’t, I didn’t walk that way to your office all week in case I saw it that way again.” Tyler shuddered. It was an automatic gesture at the thought of snakes, not something he needed to fake for Wilma’s benefit.
Perhaps that truth shone through. After a moment’s hesitation, Wilma stretched up her arms to wrap them around Tyler’s neck. He pulled her close against his torso, letting her cross her legs around her waist, safely above the ground. She curved her head into his neck, hiding her face from the sight on the ground behind him.
Tyler walked her to the car as fast as he could manage. While she kept her eyes screwed up, he fumbled with the door and then bent into the front seat until he thought it was safe to say, “You can now let go.”
Wilma dropped into the seat, stretching toward the driver’s side as she sought to put more distance between her and the corpse outside. Tyler shut the door and walked around the vehicle, risking a glance back to satisfy himself that the rats were still too busy to turn his way.
Tearing cloth and ripping flesh added to the lower notes of mastication. As their food supply dwindled away, the rats began to disperse.
There was nothing left where they’d been. No skin, no bones, no clothes, no flesh. If Tyler hadn’t been looking straight at the spot where he’d last seen the dead cop, he wouldn’t have believed a body had been sitting there.
Within a minute, he pulled out of the parking lot and back into the safety of the road.
“Ugh,” Wilma said, her eyes still closed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “I think I can happily live without ever seeing something like that again.”
“They did a good job, though, didn’t they?”
Wilma rewarded Tyler’s comment with a smack on his arm. “Time to retrace our steps. Let’s find out where Gary’s at.”
They drove away from where the corpse had been. When Gary’s text came through with a loud and happy series of beeps, Wilma gave a small scream and jumped, then smacked Tyler when he smiled.
“Hey,” he said. “I wasn’t the one who decided to shoot him. Don’t go blaming me for this mess.”
“Would you rather be dead now and have that freak holding your arm?”
“Nope.” Tyler grinned. “Not at all.”
He drove them to the meeting point with Gary and found him locked in a stare with a homeless man.
“I tried not to be seen,” Gary said, pointing to the fellow in the alley in case Tyler was blind.
“Don’t worry about it,” Wilma said, opening the back door for Gary to climb inside. “What’s he going to tell someone? That last night he saw a warthog drive a police car into the alley? I’m sure that’ll go down really well.”
“You get rid of the body, okay?”
Wilma’s face screwed up like she was about to expel the entirety of her stomach contents.
“Yeah. The dead guy’s well out of sight,” Tyler said. “Now, I’m just looking forward to getting back home.”
He drove them there quickly, on edge the whole time in case another cop attempted to pull them over. Tyler wasn’t sure what he’d do if that happened, but drive straight for them seemed to be high on the list of great ideas.
The gunmen from earlier were still standing like odd statues in the barbecue area. Some of the other tenants had helpfully decorated them with strings of fairy lights. When Tyler got close to the leader, he could also admire the penis drawn with magic marker on his forehead.
“You can’t just leave them out here,” Wilma complained. “If new tenants see this lot when they first come in, I’ll never rent the empty slots. Get them out of sight before you go to bed, or I’ll nail your tenancy agreement to your door in the morning.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Gary gave a salute, and the little girl offered him a flip of the bird in return.
“I’m serious,” she called over her shoulder as she walked back to the office
. “You’re both eyesores enough without that lot clogging up the place.”
“We could put them in the bins,” Gary suggested.
Tyler’s back gave a painful twinge, reminding him that he’d once thought the same about the cop.
“Maybe one of them, if we’re both working at full steam. I don’t think we’ll be able to pile up all five.”
“Make them light, then,” Gary said. He pointed at Tyler’s finger and then waved his hand in the air. “Do your thing and command them to become as light as feathers. Then we can move them no problem.”
Tyler wished that Gary had been the one with him and they’d left Wilma to hide the police car. He held his hand out in a commanding pose, and shouted, “Be as light as feathers.”
Again, the stone sent out a brilliant glow. When it faded, Gary walked over and picked up one of the men, tucking him under his arm. He escorted him to the dumpster, then came back for another.
“Brilliant idea. Thanks, Gary.”
“Not a problem. I’m not just a pretty face.”
As Tyler stared at him, wondering if a witty retort would be appropriate given their current levels of exhaustion, Gary’s snout bent down, and his mouth opened in a huge yawn. “I need to get some rest. See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah. See you. Let’s hope it’s less exciting than today.”
“Just keep a low profile, mate.” Gary opened his trailer door. “If you keep your head down for a couple of days, I’m sure everything will be just fine.”
Chapter Six
A loud banging on the side of his trailer woke Tyler the next morning.
“Mr. Moby? We’d like to talk to you!”
Tyler couldn’t think of anyone who would want to talk to him at that moment. Certainly no one that he’d be the slightest bit interested in hearing. He ignored the pounding for the time being. For a weekday morning, his mind and body felt remarkably refreshed. After a quick glance at his watch, he knew why.
Nine hours of uninterrupted sleep.
That never happened. Always, at some point during the night, he’d wake up and go over every single thing he’d ever done wrong in his life. If not that, then he’d at least wake to take a pee. Usually, his nights would end with a few beers to send him off to twinky land. Although Tyler had trained his bladder to industrial strength over the years, he still couldn’t hold it forever.
The pounding on his trailer door recommenced. “We know you’re in there. You have to come out sometime. May as well be now.”
“Or you can fuck off,” Tyler whispered under his breath. He got out of bed but only to set the coffee on the stove while he stared at his magic hand.
In the bright light of day—not to mention the clear-headedness of an alcohol-free night—the stone looked rather beautiful. A myriad of colors roamed its surface, creating patterns then dispersing, only to form again. The clear ropes of light that held it fast to his skin were pale yellow shot through with streaks of dark gold. The pink glow, so visible the night before, was muted in the sunlight.
Pretty but also a nuisance.
Tyler took a butter knife out of the drawer and tried to cut through one of the light straps holding it in place. They bent beneath the force, then accepted the blade into them. What they didn’t do was cut through. He wriggled the flat edge of the blade underneath the stone’s side and tried to lever it up. There was a tiny bit of give, then it stopped short. Increasing the pressure, Tyler only stopped when he realized the blade was bending so far that it would soon snap.
He took it away and held the knife up in front of his face. It now had a sharp tilt to the side, increasing in angle toward the tip. He tossed it into the small sink where it joined his dishes from the last three days.
“Mr. Moby, if you come out and talk to us right now, we might be able to head off the police from coming to arrest you. They have footage of last night, you know. They’ll be very interested in what that has to show.”
Tyler stood bolt upright, his back an iron bar. We shot a cop!
If they had footage of that, then he was going behind bars, and no one would ever let him out. Tyler had one hand on the trailer door when sense came knocking.
Who the hell wants to interview you if they’ve got footage of you shooting a cop?
Nobody, that’s who. Any news station worth their salt would just run it. On a twenty-four-hour loop, if needed.
Tyler reached behind him for the freshly brewed cup of coffee and sipped it as he tried to think through the matter again.
What else had he been up to last night?
“Hey. You can’t stand around here, banging on trailer doors. This is a private establishment, and some of my tenants work nights. I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
Tyler leaned his head closer to the door, all the better to hear the new confrontation. Nobody ever wanted to get on the wrong side of Wilma. Not even a person who wasn’t reliant on her for their home.
“And who are you?”
Tyler stifled a laugh against his forearm at the change in tone. It was the same voice he’d heard a thousand times before. The tone used when speaking down to a child.
Wilma was the wrong child to use that voice on.
“I’m looking after this trailer park at the moment, and you can get the fuck off this private property. If I have to go back to my office because you’re still here, it’ll be to call the cops.”
“We were invited onto the property,” a man said. “One of the tenants issued us an invitation.”
But Wilma couldn’t be phased that easily. “Not to bother somebody else, they didn’t. Now fuck off.”
“Or what?” the first lady asked sweetly. “Are you going to run and tell your mom or dad? Ooh, so scary.”
Considering that the last person to mess with them had ended up with a hole in their head, courtesy of Wilma, Tyler decided it was time to put a stop to it. Whatever ‘it’ was.
“I’m Tyler Moby,” he announced calmly as he opened the trailer door. “Who the hell are you?”
“Tyler! My name is Angela Merrick. I’m with channel eleven news.”
She held out a hand, and Tyler looked at it, keeping one of his own on the door and the other tucked into his jeans pocket.
Angela gave an awkward laugh and stepped back, wiping her fingers against her blazer as though they had touched something nasty.
“What d’you want?”
“We have footage on file of you and a friend at an ATM down Main Street last night. I have to say—the bank isn’t feeling very happy.”
The bank may not be happy, but that condition didn’t extend to Angela Merrick. Her grin stretched as far as it could go.
After a short pause, Tyler shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Sure, my friend went to an ATM last night to get out money. So, what?”
“So, his account has a ten-thousand-dollar error in its balance this morning. The manager of that branch is in a state of high distress.”
“What footage do you have?” Tyler moved down one step, keeping the last in reserve so that he maintained a good half foot in height over everybody. Now that the door wasn’t blocking his way, he saw that a cameraman and a sound operator with a boom mike were hiding around the corner.
“I can show it to you if you’d like,” Angela said. “But first, we’ll need a short statement.”
Tyler shrugged. “I don’t have anything to say. I’m baffled as to why you’re here. You woke me up hours early just to tell me that my friend’s got money in the bank?”
“That you put there.” Angela stepped forward a pace, showing off the fortune she must have spent in teeth whitening. “You seemed to go all alakazam!”—she waved her hand above her head—“then suddenly your friend has a heap of money in his account.”
“Sounds like a banking error to me,” Wilma said from behind them. Tyler hadn’t seen her up to that point because he’d been looking above her head. “Do you want these people to stay on your property, or should I throw th
em out?”
“Time for you to go,” Tyler said to Angela. “Any invitation you had on offer is rescinded. Get off my property.”
“We just need a quick word of corroboration,” Angela said, planting her feet in a firm stance. “Once we have that for our story, we’ll be on our way.”
“Fine,” Tyler said. “Is this the camera I’m meant to look at?”
He pointed to the cameraman, who mounted it on his shoulder and nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Last night,” Tyler said. “Me and my friends went to an ATM and pulled out money. Then we went to a bar to grab a few beers and a meal, then headed home to bed.” He laughed and mimed an explosion in front of his body. “That’s some breaking news, right there!”
“That’s the stone,” Angela said, her pleasant demeanor dropping like a whore’s robe. “Get him.”
Too late, Tyler realized that he’d pulled his hand out of his pocket. The cameraman clicked over something on his equipment and Tyler was looking down the barrel of a gun, rather than a lens. Deja vu washed over him, sweeping his composure away. “Son of a bitch.”
While the three of them stared at Tyler, Wilma pulled a gun from the back of her jeans and fired a shot at Angela’s feet. The crew turned as one to survey the new threat.
“I don’t know who sent you, but it’s time to head back empty-handed.” Wilma leveled the gun at Angela’s midriff, aiming for a sure hit rather than the kill.
“Get her, Mike,” Angela yelled at the boom operator. The man swung the stick around, knocking Wilma on the back of the neck and toppling her tiny frame to the ground.
Anger rose in a red cloud of fury around Tyler, buzzing through his head like a swarm of wasps. A warning erupted out of his throat. “DON’T MAKE ME HURT YOU!!!”
Tyler held his hand out, the stone glowing with a light brightly visible even in the morning sun’s intense rays. He crouched, lowering his center of gravity, looking at each of the attacker's faces in turn.
“Who the hell sent you? How did you know I was here?”
