by Graeme Hurry
All evidence pointed to a wild animal of some sort having mauled him to death, but the death alone had convicted Tobias, everyone there knew it, and my father along with four of his friends set out that very night to bring Tobias to justice.
My father thought I was asleep when he stepped out into the driveway, friends murmuring as they checked their guns in the light from the porch, shivering just a little from the bitter wind ruffling their shirts and maybe a bit of fear for what was to come. None of them had ever killed a man before. My father nodded, and then doors clicked open, slammed shut, and the engine revved to life. I waited for the grind of the wheels kicking up dirt and gravel before getting dressed to follow.
The vast, dark plains scared me that night as much as they had on every other, but I still tucked the gun in my pants and started running out across them, leaving the glowing town of my youth behind me, never, I didn’t know then, to be seen again.
I ran for near two hours before the flicker of light told me the house lay just ahead, and even before I’d reached the simple structure I could hear the screams of pain carrying out through the night, rolling across the land. Tears seeped from me before I could reach the building, aware deep down that wasn’t Tobias’s voice I heard shouting in pain.
I hunched low as I drew closer to the building, raised up to peek in through the window, see the already deformed remains of Teddy Ratz, one of my father’s friends, discarded along the far wall. The other three were there as well, bound and gagged. In the middle of the room my father sat, hands tied behind him, face glistening in red.
My eyes focused more on Tobias himself than my father’s writhing form, the man barely human to me anymore, arms stretched out, chest sunken in, his face like a mask of skin pulled over a much larger head underneath. His smile split the skin open so wide I thought I could see another jaw through the opening, and when his head shifted in the general direction of the window, I couldn’t see his eyes at all, only empty sockets in the skin mask.
I heard, but couldn’t watch, my father’s screams, his strangled death, and the progression to another body to torture, until a gurgling whimper brought the night to silence. I sat hunched low as I held myself and shook violently, nose a mess of wet mucus, cheeks glistening. I heard Tobias chuckle lightly after the final death, the sound deep and guttural. He muttered something, but I couldn’t tell what, too lost in the rage bubbling up at the idea of anyone laughing at my father’s death.
Surprise filled that deformed face topped with disheveled white hair when I rose to point my gun through his open window. He began to bring up a hand filled with unusually long fingers right before I sent two bullets tearing into his chest. The gun nearly kicked from my numb fingers, the bright explosions forcing my eyes shut, seeing only briefly Tobias tumble into the wall behind him.
I could hear the dry wheezing, knew I should’ve gone in to finish the deed, but I couldn’t make myself move closer, and instead turned towards two cans of gasoline by the side of the house. Heart nearly tearing loose from my chest, I doused the upper wood part of the wall above the foundation as fast as I could, nose filled with the thick fumes before I set the house aflame with a shot from the gun.
I ran with the heat licking at my back. From within the flaming structure I heard someone screaming but didn’t stop running, unable to make myself stop until I’d run a mile. Behind me I could see the pyre I’d created, a beacon of light in the otherwise dark plains, but a rumbling in the ground made my throat catch.
The billowing smoke could barely be seen against the black night, but I knew I could see something, and more than just the smoke, I swore I could see another form, much larger, right before the voice seemed to physically crash into me. It spoke two words, or what I can only assume were two, but I cannot write them here, the language unknown to me then or now, and the exact detail of them mercifully forgotten. After the deafening roar of the voice ended I saw the fires vanish in the distance, and the night became still once again.
I didn’t bother going home, my father my only family. Part of me didn’t want to explain what I’d witnessed, didn’t want to see all those eyes trying to pry into me, so I ran a different direction, walked for well over ten hours before stumbling into a new town, and starting my current life.
I know now thanks to the research I’ve done that when authorities journeyed to the Tobias house they found only a deep hole. Exploration revealed the catacombs buried beneath the ground that stretched well into the distance, even beneath my old hometown. Tobias had dug through his cellar to find those caves, but at the bottom of the hole they never found any remnants of the house, or any bodies.
I can only assume Tobias had tried to buy up the land over those caves, though for what end, I can only guess. I know from reading the local reports the people gladly accepted Tobias was dead, but if I stop and lean my head back, I can still hear that roar in the dark of night, and I know a simple fire could never kill whatever I’d seen in the distance.
I know as well that a man turned up roughly seven months later claiming to be Tobias’s son, a man who looked remarkably similar to Tobias, and ensured no one could explore those caves. I don’t know what he did after that, if he continued buying the town, because I was too afraid to look further.
Something in me fears that one day Tobias will find me for revenge, but that’s a fleeting thought. No, what I fear is the thing I saw in the middle of that dark night, and the day when whatever Tobias first began in a small farmhouse, is finally brought to completion.
THE LAST FRAME
by Jon Arthur Kitson
The rock broke through the top pane of the glass door. A flock of skinny pigeons took flight as the fragments crashed to the cement stoop outside and rubber mat within. Ben picked up the second rock. He held it out to his youngest son.
“Want to do the bottom panel?” He asked the boy.
“Sure,” Josh said, excited and surprised; he was never allowed to break the glass. He took the rock and cradled it between his legs. The small boy swung it through the door and smiled as glass tinkled to the ground.
Careful of the remaining shards, Ben reached in and unlocked the door. Josh ran in as soon as it opened. Ben looked for his oldest boy.
“You coming, Rick?” He called to the teenager sitting on the cement retaining wall ten feet away. The boy absently shredded a maple leaf. Pieces covered his lap.
Rick slumped off the wall. He walked past his father in silence.
A small meteor cut through the blue sky. Ben watched it disappear over the horizon, thick smoke marking its wake and crossing the dissipating contrails of the others that had already fallen, then joined his sons.
Ben shivered at the sudden cool of the building. The boys had followed the shaft of sunlight up a pair of carpeted steps. Josh stood at the terminus, wide eyes scanning the dark interior. Rick leaned against the wall.
“What now?” The teenager asked, not meeting his father’s eyes. His fingers twirled the plain, thin wedding band -his mother’s- hanging from a string around his neck.
Ben walked to his younger son and placed a heavy hand on the boy’s head. He tousled the long, dirty hair. “Well, the first thing we need,” he said, “is shoes.” He turned Josh’s head, smiled big into the boy’s face. “What are you now,” he asked, “size 13?”
Josh’s face screwed up, then laughed. Ben fished a flashlight from the backpack slung over his shoulder. The beam pierced the dark. Josh grabbed his father’s hand and pulled him into the building. Rick shrugged off the wall and followed.
Their footsteps echoed in the vast dark. The sound of rubber soles scuffing over carpet bounced off the unseen walls and came back to them carried on the musty scent of oiled wood. The flashlight beam swept quickly around the room, landing on a tall counter. Josh ran to it, peering over the top on stretched toes.
“Um.. those,” he said and pointed behind the counter.
Ben stepped behind the counter. He guided the flashlight off the tip
of Josh’s finger. “Size 4,” he said, reading the number off the back of the pair of shoes spotlighted in their cubby hole. “Are you sure not 13?”
“Dad!”
Ben pulled the size fours from the cubby and handed them to the eagerly waiting boy. He turned the beam back on the wall of open compartments and scanned them up and down.
“You’re a nine,” he called over his shoulder, “right, Rick?”
There was no answer for a moment, just the sound of the boy settling against a plastic table, then, in a sigh: “Eight and a half.”
Ben turned, shined the light at the ragged shoes on the boy’s feet. “Those are pretty broken in,” he said. “You’re probably closer to a size nine, by now.”
Rick shrugged, barely moving. A pair of two-toned shoes, loosely tied together by their laces, landed at his feet. A brown, tread-free sole looked up at him from the swirled carpet. Rick glanced at it, then eyed his father. The older man came from behind the counter, a pair of shoes for himself in his hands.
“What lane are we gonna use?” Josh asked from the carpet. He pulled at his street shoes, a bundle of elbows and knees.
Ben turned the flashlight on the cavernous space opposite the counter, sweeping it right to left. Shadows and reflections danced in the narrow beam. He stopped at the leftmost edge of the room.
“That one,” he said to Josh. “The one closest to the wall.”
The boy twisted, eyes following the light. The beam traveled across a row of connected, molded plastic chairs, glinted off and spilled over a small table with an embedded keyboard and screen, and fell down the waxed grain of the wooden bowling lane. Ten squat pins sat at the far end, where the light began to give out.
“What are you going to do,” Rick said, picking at his fingernails, “point the flashlight at it the whole time?”
Ben made a what am I, crazy face and dug into the backpack, pulling out seven coaster-size plastic circles. He cradled them in his arm and carried them down the carpeted strip between the lane and the wall. At intervals, he affixed each to the wall, first pressing their clear plastic fronts and shaking them. Spotlights of blue-white light fell on the nearest lane, spilling into the others.
Rick hovered behind him.
“That’s all the glow dots we have left,” the boy said. “What if we need them-”
“We won’t,” Ben said, unable to look at his son. “Not after today.” Then lower, he said, “I’m sorry.”
He felt the boy turn and walk away. Ben watched him join his brother at the head of the lane. Josh sat in one of the chairs, his feet swinging and missing the floor by a foot. The untied laces of his bowling shoes whipped around, the ends clicking off the chair legs.
Ben walked to him and crouched at his feet. He took ahold of the laces, paused, sniffed at the boy’s feet and wrinkled his nose. He raised an eyebrow at the child.
“Yeah,” Josh said, “They stink. Whada ‘bout it?” He effected a ‘tough guy’ look. It quickly devolved into a giggle.
For the second time, Ben tousled the boy’s hair.
While Ben and, to his surprise, Rick put on their shoes, Josh collected bowling balls, dumping them noisily into the empty ball return. After testing a few for weight, he selected a green ball with gold flecks and carried it to the top of the lane. He looked back, smiling.
“Ricky,” he said, “do you remember your birthday party we had here?”
“Which one?” Rick hardly looked up from his laces.
“The one with the Batman cake?”
“Yeah.”
“Remember, Mom forgot her-” Josh stopped when his brother’s head shot up. Their mother’s wedding ring dangled from Rick’s neck, slowly spinning in the light. Josh’s eyes darted from the ring to his brother’s face, then to the floor. The smile disappeared.
Rick’s hand folded around the ring. He looked at it, then at his little brother. His face softened.
“What do you remember about Mom, Joshy?” He asked.
Josh looked up, the smile returning as he spoke. “Remember, she forgot her socks,” he said. “She had to buy a pair here. They had silly looking bowling pins on them.”
Ben watched his older son smile. A real smile.
“And remember,” Rick said, “whenever she wore them after that she always said ‘I hope no one bowls me over’.“
Josh nodded and laughed.
“I also remember,” Rick went on, “the birthday party you had here. You ate so much cake you threw up in the parking lot.”
“Yeah,” Josh said, looking into the distance. “I really liked that cake.”
This time, it was Rick who laughed.
Ben looked at his watch.
Twenty minutes.
“Okay, who’s first?” He asked, knowing the answer; Josh was already poised with the bowling ball balanced in his left hand.
“I’m gonna get so many strikes,” the boy said. “I’ve been practicing.”
Rick and Ben shared a smile. The first in a long time. Josh’s ‘bowling alley’, ten two liter soda bottles and a tennis ball, was the last thing they’d seen when leaving their apartment and setting out across the empty city.
Josh’s hand cocked back, then exploded the ball down the lane. It thundered off the wood. After five feet, it rolled into the gutter. Josh turned, his face long. He clutched at the seam of his faded jeans.
“But I practiced,” he said.
“Hold on a sec,” Rick said. He went behind the counter, fished around for a minute, then returned. He carried a long metal pole with a dull hook at one end. The hook fit into a hole between the gutter and lane. Rick turned it twice, then pulled. A rubber and aluminum bumper emerged. He did the same on the other side.
“Now try,” he said.
Josh selected another ball. Tongue poking out, he sent it down the lane.
The ball clattered from bumper to bumper, hitting the pins at an angle. The crash echoed around the room. Josh stood on tip toes, finger in the air, counting the standing pins.
“Five!” He whopped. “I knocked down five!”
“Good job, pit stain,” Rick said.
“Thanks, butt breath,” Josh replied.
Ben grinned.
Josh sent two more balls down the lane in quick succession. Only one pin remained when Ben trotted to the end of the lane and gingerly reset the pins on the oiled wood. He waited as Rick threw two balls, knocking down all ten pins.
“Spare!” The boy announced as he high fived his brother.
“Awesome,” Ben congratulated him. He reset the pins and joined his sons. He took his turn, knocking down eight after three throws.
They took turns as fast as Ben and Rick could reset the pins. Rick rolled the balls collected against the rubber curtain behind the pins back up the lane. Josh scrambled to collect them, falling on his knees like a goalie. The thrum of balls on wood and clap of falling pins -and laughter- filled the bowling alley.
Ben closed his eyes and listened; the reverberating noise was loud enough to be made by an alley full of bowlers, not just two grubby boys and one man.
A smile cracked his thin lips.
“Strike!” Josh shouted in a decidedly outdoor voice.
“Good job,” Ben said. The boy vibrated under his father’s pat on the back.
Rick, halfway down the carpeted strip to reset the pins, flashed his brother a thumbs up. Ben crouched, quickly loosened his shoes, and kicked them off.
“Hey, Rick,” he said. “Race ya.”
Without waiting for a response, he shot down the lane. His threadbare socks skipped and slid over the slick wood. His arms flailed. Two sets of wide eyes watched him as he collided with the tumbled pins and collapsed to his knees.
Josh rolled into him three seconds later.
Ben untangled himself from his laughing son. He collected the dead pins and reset them, ignoring the standard formation for a cluster in the end zone. Josh climbed over the bumper onto the carpeted strip. Ben pulled himself over, his fee
t clearing the lane just as Rick, sans shoes, knocked into the pins.
Rick and Josh hooted in victory. Rick replaced the pins and Ben helped him over the bumper, congratulating the boy with a hearty pat on the back. He didn’t shy away. Together, the three walked back to the top of the lane. Josh hopped awkwardly, pulling up a flopping sock.
“Me next!” Josh declared. He took two steps back, looked from right to left, then sprinted for the lane. Just before hitting the pins, he curled into a ball. The pins toppled as he rolled through, bouncing into the rubber curtain behind them.
Josh gathered the pins, setting them up like a wall in front of him.
“Help,” he said, giggling, and peering between the pins’ tapered ends. “Somebody break me out of jail.”
“Go ahead, sir,” Ben said to Rick, bowing slightly and flourishing a hand toward the lane.
Rick crouched, his legs tightening for the spring, then paused. He looked up at his father.
“I think this is a two person job, old man,” he said.
A lump formed in Ben’s throat. He swallowed it down and took position behind his son. They slipped down the lane, one behind the other, ending on their sides covered in pins. Each exhaled an exaggerated oof as Josh climbed over them.
“I’m free!” He shouted, fists pumping the air.
“Run, brother, run,” Rick called. Josh mimed his escape, knees sliding rapidly in place. He grinned over his shoulder.
Ben left the setting of the pins to the boys. Josh tossed pins from the adjacent lane over the gutters. They clamored to the ground. Rick packed them in the end of the lane as fast as they were thrown. Josh held a hand up at his father, looking just like a boy imitating a man.
“This ones for me and Ricky,” he said.
“Okay, Joshy,” then softer, Ben said, “This is for you two.”
They playfully jostled each other up the lane. Ben watched his sons lock arms, count to three, and shoot for the 20 strong pins. They scored a strike. Pins and laughter rolled and spun up the lane.
