by Jason Murphy
Zeke sat, letting the mosquitos and memories have their way with him, when he heard a scream. Axe in hand, he burst from the thicket. More screams, but he couldn’t see—
There.
The picnic tables. He’d missed them, just a couple of crude tables sheltered beneath a tin hutch. Couldn’t see them from his hiding spot. Five teenagers jumped around under the sheet metal roof. He crossed the park in a full sprint, looking for his target.
Another scream. A girl, her blonde hair shock white under the moon, dangled from the support beam over the sagging picnic table. Zeke’s arms pumped, eyes scanning, ready to plant the hatchet in some ugly punk ass’s skull. He couldn’t see through the shapes dancing around the girl. They laughed at her. They poked and prodded, capering in a circle.
Was this a sacrifice? Was she disemboweled? He wasn’t ready, not for this.
She kicked and screamed again. She had seconds if she wasn’t already dead.
Zeke ran hard, hot breaths hissing.
The girl dropped. The four others cackled. They climbed up on the tables and swung from the low rafters. One sat on the table below and cracked open a beer. A lanky boy swung now, kicking his legs out and trying to knock the beer from his friend’s hand. The blonde girl sat on the ground, catching her breath.
Laughter. They were playing.
Zeke stopped, exposed in the center of the park.
They were just kids monkeying around. He spun and checked the tree line to make sure.
They were just having fun. They were safe.
He held the hatchet against his leg, hoping they wouldn’t see it as he slinked back to his place in the trees. Too engaged in their own hijinks, they hadn’t spotted him yet. With barely restrained calm, he moved slowly.
Nothing to see here, y’all. Just a sweaty man with an axe. We’re all good.
His phone rang in his pocket. Institutionalized by Suicidal Tendencies sounded across the park. Zeke’s hand flew to his phone, trying to silence it, but it was too late. The teenagers were quiet. Their stares and furtive whispers followed him back into the brush.
Out of sight, he retrieved his phone. It rang and rang, never going to voicemail. The screen read DAD.
Zeke’s stomach twisted. His sweat turned cold and he pressed DECLINE.
The phone rang again.
DAD.
“Come on, not tonight,” he said under his breath as he stared at the screen.
But the phone kept ringing.
He pressed Answer, but said nothing.
Silence.
Finally, the familiar baritone said, “I can hear you, son. You ain’t going to say hi?”
“What is it, Dad?”
“Don’t you sass me. You ain’t so big I can’t bend you over my knee.”
Zeke ground his teeth.
“What do you want?”
“What the hell you think you’re doing out there?”
He knew. Of course he knew. He always did.
“Just trying to do some good, Dad.”
His dad laughed. It was a hollow sound, far away and bottomless. Teetering on the edge of that chasm, Zeke sat on his bag.
“Some good, huh? That’s funny. Now you decide to do some good? Now?”
“Yeah, Dad. Now. And I don’t need to hear it from—”
“There’s a monster that’s going to appear there. You don’t know much about it, do you? ’Cause you don’t know much about nothin’. There’s a monster that’s gonna eat them kids right up, but you think you’re going to run in there with your knives and help them like you’re some damned superhero. Is that it?”
“Yeah, Dad. That’s exactly it.”
That laugh again. “Hoowee! A big damn hero. Ain’t you fancy? But me and your mama know the truth. And you do, too, don’t you?”
A single yellow sodium lamp clicked on, casting the park in a sickly glow. The kids ran beneath it, Zeke all but forgotten. They laughed and called out to each other.
“Zeke?” Dad asked. “Son, you can forget about them. That thing that’s coming for them? That’s the Bogeyman. He’ll get them eventually. He gets us all. Just like he got me and your mom. Just like he got your grandma. You couldn’t do nothing about it then and you can’t do nothing about it now.”
“I can.”
“Nah. You can’t. Ol’ Baal’Raspus said so. He told me personally. The Bogeyman his own self. Want me to ask him? He’s right here with us. In fact, he’s playing his nightly games with your mama right now.”
His Dad’s voice broke. Zeke couldn’t tell if he was laughing or sobbing. Zeke’s hands shook. He tried to focus on the kids as they spread out through the park.
“That’s right, son. Every night, the Bogeyman swoops in on his mighty wings and digs out her eyes. They grow back by morning, but he always returns and gobbles ’em right up. Then he gets to work on her guts. And boy is your mama crying. She’s crying and begging, just like she did when you couldn’t protect us. But you keep trying to be the big hero, Ezekiel. You just keep on—”
Zeke hung up on him. He shoved the phone into the red bag.
It wasn’t true. None of it was true. None of it. Still, his breath and his tears came hot and fast. He wiped them away and took in deep, sharp breaths. He focused on his breathing. He visualized a blue-white light coursing through his body. It began in his chest, a bright star in the center, and he drew it out, spreading across his limbs with each exhalation.
No time to meditate. In the park, the teenagers found their hiding places. One climbed on top of the jungle gym, another under the slide.
It was starting.
A tubby kid in a beanie stood up tall in the middle of the park. He called out. “Grunley! Grunley! One, two, three! Grunley! Grunley! Can’t find me!”
The kid ran and crouched in the center of the merry-go-round. Even in the darkness, Zeke could see his eyes gleam with excitement. All of their eyes sparked with nervous energy. They waited.
Zeke wiped his sweaty palms on his sleeveless tee and gripped the axe. He shifted in place, scanning the park. So many dark places. The streetlight threw Caligari shadows across the grass. The kids searched, too. In that light they already looked dead.
The blonde girl poked her head out. She said, “Grunley! Grunley! One, two, three! Grunley! Grunley! Can’t find me!”
Dammit. Shut up. Just shut up and go home.
A breeze picked up and rustled the pines. It faded. There was nothing but the uninterrupted cacophony of the cicadas. If Zeke rushed out, screaming at the idiot children and waving his axe, he could stop this. He could prevent these kids from making the worst mistake of their lives. For now. He could scare them good tonight, but nothing would keep them from coming back in a week or a month. They’d play this stupid game and at least one of them would die.
The kids all waited. They snickered. It was Bloody Mary to them. It was their fingers brushing across the planchette of a Ouija board.
“Nothing’s happening,” one said in a theatric whisper.
Another one shushed him.
It’s three times, idiots. It’s always three times. But just go home. Please. Just go home.
The tubby kid in the merry-go-round stuck his head out and said, “Grunley! Grunley! One, two, three! Grunley! Grunley! Can’t find me!”
The frogs stopped chirping. The cicadas grew quiet. The wind was still.
Dammit.
Zeke focused on his breathing. He pictured the blue light suffusing throughout his body. It crackled from his fingertips and into the hatchet, Iggy. He envisioned the sacred symbols carved into its handle—the ankhs and crosses and Star of David—coming to life with that force, the blue-white glow of his qi.
A familiar and sharp clack-CLACK! sounded behind him. Zeke pivoted on his heel and raised the axe.
“No! No! Don’t you move, fella! I swear to Jesus H. Christ I will kill you,” said the shape in the shadows.
The streetlight glinted off the barrel of the shotgun pointed at Zeke’s c
hest. The man came from behind, stepping quietly through the brush. Zeke had been so focused on the kids …
“Drop that axe.”
“Sir…” Zeke said, and threw a glance over his shoulder.
The kids were trying to see what the ruckus was about. They poked their heads out from their hiding spaces like prairie dogs.
“Oh my God, it’s that guy,” one of them said.
“Huh-uh, buddy. You drop that axe right now,” the man told Zeke and stepped into the light.
Zeke had a few inches on him, and where Zeke had muscles and scars, the man in the red ball cap had loose fat and tattoos of classic rock bands. He could have been anywhere from thirty to sixty years old. He had the leathery look of hard living. The man nodded to a double wide across the highway, the one with the shiny boat parked out front and a dog sleeping under the porch.
“I watched you try to hide in there and was gonna let you be, friend, but I got your ass now, don’t I?”
Zeke leveled his gaze at the man. “I guess you do.”
“Damn right, I do! I done called the sheriff. He’s on his way. I don’t know if he’s gonna make it in time, truth be told.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean … friend?”
The barrel of the gun twitched. Zeke wished the man knew what he was going. When somebody who wasn’t scared brought a gun to a fight, you knew what was going happen. But when the guy with the shotgun couldn’t get his shit together, that’s when things tended to go south.
“I think you know what that means,” the man said. He advanced on Zeke. Step-by-step, he backed Zeke out of the trees and into the park. “Now drop that goddamn axe.”
Zeke dropped it.
“You’re the one, ain’t you?” the man said.
“The one what?” Zeke asked, keeping his eye on the man.
“Mr. Roberts?” one of the kids asked. “What’s going on?”
“Y’all just sit tight now,” Mr. Roberts said without taking his eyes off Zeke. “I got the sumbitch. I got him.”
The kids erupted into whispers but didn’t move from their hiding spots.
“You’re the one,” the man said again, still pushing forward, leading with the shotgun. “You’re the one that took them kids. I thought you was just some hobo out here to sleep in the woods, but something wasn’t right. I just knew it!”
They didn’t have time for this. Zeke’s hackles were up, his Spidey-sense. It was coming.
“Sir? Mr. Roberts? Please lower the gun so we can talk about this. There’s been a misunderstanding.”
Roberts laughed. “Oh, I understand, all right. I understand that I got your ass, and you’ll be lucky if I wait for the sheriff to get here, you damn pervert murderer. What did you do with them kids?”
Zeke sighed. He lowered his hands. The man flinched, but the gun didn’t go off. “Put the gun down, boy,” Zeke said. “’Cause I’m about to put some kung fu on you. Truth.”
Tremors of fear caused the barrel to dance in Roberts’s hand.
“What did you say to me?”
“I said kung fu is about to happen. To you.”
Roberts leveled the shotgun. His lips wormed around bared yellow teeth. “You telling jokes now? This ain’t funny.”
Zeke hadn’t wanted to hurt this guy. Not at first. Now it wasn’t a matter if Roberts got hurt. It was a question of how many bones Zeke was going to break.
“Mr. Roberts?” A kid asked.
“Y’all don’t worry now. I’ve got this under control,” he said.
Zeke shook his head and laughed. “You really don’t.”
A voice cut through the stillness of the night, a voice of gravel and dead leaves. It rolled across the park, a soft and slow thunderhead.
“Grunley! Grunley! Now he comes! Grunley! Grunley! Run, run, run!”
At the edge of the park, a man stepped into view, emerging from the cinder-block restroom and its invisible cloud of sun-baked piss.
No, not a man, exactly. Something like a man. It was tall and tattered, seven feet even without its lopsided top hat. Long arms with freakishly large hands hung down to its knees. Beneath the brim of the hat, its eyes sparkled.
The blue-white light at Zeke’s core burned hot. The axe was close, but not close enough.
“What the hell?” Roberts asked.
Zeke spun, snatched the shotgun from his hands, and slammed the butt into the man’s forehead with a quick jerk. Mr. Roberts’s head whipped back. His arms twitched and he hit the ground without so much as a whimper.
“Oh my God. Oh my God! What’s happening?” the blonde girl screamed.
One of the kids bolted. He tore through the woods and into the night, but his friends held still. Seeing something you can’t explain has a way of shutting everything down. Zeke knew the feeling, like trying to scream inside of a nightmare. Nothing worked.
It was Grunley—not as Zeke imagined him, but close enough. A monster was a monster, a solid, gangly thing that Zeke could hurt. Grunley took long, slow strides to the kid under the slide. His immense hands rose, and the grin spread, large and hungry.
“No,” the kid said, breathless.
Zeke moved. He dropped the useless shotgun and launched himself at the thing in a full sprint. No time to grab Iggy.
Grunley’s smile grew. His eyes blazed. His hands could throttle the world. The kid collapsed onto his ass, paralyzed. Broad fingers wrapped around the boy’s torso.
“Grunley! Grunley! He’s got you! Grunley! Grun —”
Zeke kicked him in the teeth with a flying leap. The thing’s misshapen, massive head nearly snapped loose from its neck. The top hat tumbled, revealing stringy, black hair and dripping sores.
The kid under the slide looked up at Zeke, uncomprehendingly. Zeke nodded for him to run. The kid scrambled. He tripped over himself, trying to move faster than his feet could manage. He left a shoe in the grass.
Grunley looked up at Zeke. Its head was shaped like a crescent moon with a shattered maw of teeth. The spark in its eyes dimmed as it cradled its lantern jaw. “What the hell was that? I think you broke my jaw. Was that karate?”
The incendiary qi surged through Zeke’s bones. A crackling, sharp-as-lightning and hungrier-than-sex urge to whip this guy’s ass. He smiled. “Oh, we’re just getting started, baby.”
“Whoa! Whoa!” Grunley said and held up those giant hands to shield his face.
Zeke grabbed him by the greasy lapels, jerked him up off the ground, over his head, and slammed him down hard onto the grass. Grunley’s breath vomited from his lungs. Ectoplasm sprayed between his teeth.
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” the monster said with a deep, sharp wheeze.
Zeke punted Grunley’s oversized skull. The crack echoed across the park and sent nightbirds scattering through the black sky. Grunley moaned. He clawed at the grass and tried to slither away.
Zeke wrapped an arm around Grunley’s throat and punched him hard with his free hand. Grunley’s hooked nose flattened under the blow. “Where are your rhymes now, asshole?”
He punched him again.
And again.
Thick ectoplasm oozed from Grunley’s lips and obliterated nose.
“Stop,” he tried to say, and coughed up more of the white sludge onto his shirt.
BOOM!
A chunk of the bathroom’s brick wall exploded into powder inches from Zeke’s head. He dropped Grunley and ducked as Mr. Roberts racked the shotgun.
“Y’all think you can come into this town and take our children? You got another thing coming!”
BOOM!
The spray ripped up grass and sent clumps of dirt flying. Roberts approached them, still drunk from the blow to his head. He staggered, shotgun swaying left and right.
“What the hell, man?” Zeke said. “I got a monster here!”
BOOM!
The shot went wide, but close enough for Zeke to retreat until he backed into the restroom wall. Stale urine mixed with spent shells. Z
eke blinked the sting from his eyes.
“You just hold it right there!” Roberts screamed.
He fired again. The recoil of the blast nearly knocked the man off his feet. He fell to one knee. Behind him, the rest of the kids scattered.
Grunley crawled to his feet and shoved Zeke into the men’s bathroom. The shotgun roared. Pellets peppered the doorframe.
“He’s crazy!” Grunley said.
Zeke scanned the concrete room. There was no door to block and no windows to crawl through. It was an unlit dungeon with a urinal trough and a drain in the floor.
BOOM!
The shot blasted through the doorway. Roberts was getting closer. He ranted with shrill panic that made his East Texas drawl sound like an alien tongue.
Grunley poked his head around the corner. He looked back at Zeke, “I mean, me, I get, but why’s he trying to shoot you? That’s bananas.”
“Get your asses out here and face me! I ain’t scared of no boogeyman!”
“Right?” Grunley asked. “I mean, what’s his problem?”
Zeke set his jaw. This was some damned foolishness. It wasn’t the gun-toting asshole outside or even the monster at his feet that worried him. Those gun-blasts were going to draw the police and cops were to be avoided at all costs.
He looked down at Grunley as the monster cowered. “Aren’t you undead?”
Grunley shrugged. “It’s more complicated than that, but basically.”
BOOM!
They flinched at the roar. Roberts kept howling.
Zeke shook his head. “Then why in the hell are you scared of a dang shotgun?”
“I still don’t like getting shot!”
“Not as much as me! Get out there!”
Grunley furrowed his brow and considered it. “Yeah…” he said. “Yeah!”
“So you get out there and distract him,” Zeke said. “I’ll get the gun.”
