Dweller

by Jeff Strand

  Nick turned and ran.

  In a voice that sounded muffled, as if he were speaking from inside a casket, Toby reassured him, promised him that everything was going to be okay, that he wasn’t going to hurt him, that Larry was fine. As Nick got farther away, Toby pleaded with him, did the begging he’d refused to do at gunpoint, said things that made no sense.

  Nick fell to the ground.

  Had Toby thrown the knife? No, it was still in his hand. Nick had just tripped, that’s all.

  Toby couldn’t even feel his foot as he ran over to the fallen boy. He swung down at him, jabbing the blade into the open palm Nick held up to defend himself. Toby stabbed again and again, the blade slashing Nick’s arms, his chest, his face. It took Toby a long time to stop.

  He was covered with blood. Dripping with it. If he watched this scene from the outside, he’d be filled with revulsion at the boy with the knife. The deranged boy. The ghoulish boy. The psycho boy, drenched with red, the murderous little animal that should be shot in the head and dragged away, so that the sight of him wouldn’t horrify onlookers.

  Finally he crawled away from Nick, leaving the knife in the bully’s throat, and vomited.

  What had he done?

  It hadn’t happened. There weren’t two dead kids lying in the woods with him. There was no possible reality where that could be true.

  He was a killer.

  He’d murdered Larry and Nick. It wasn’t even self-defense.

  Toby looked back at Nick’s body, waiting for Nick to sit up, wipe the fake blood off his chin, and let out a shrill laugh at the uproarious practical joke they’d played. “Stop being so gullible, Floren! We aren’t really dead! A little runt like you could never kill us!”

  Nick remained dead on the ground.

  Toby rubbed his hands in the dirt, trying to get the blood off. He scooped up a handful of dirt and rubbed it on his arms and on his face, desperate to hide the red. He wiped off the mud but a crimson stain remained on his skin.

  Why had he brought the knife? Why had he even brought the fucking thing in the first place?

  He bit down on his wrist to keep from screaming. Screaming was bad. Screaming brought people.

  He just wanted to die.

  No. No, he didn’t. He’d get through this.

  Larry and Nick were horrible people. They deserved to die. Even worse than the way they had. A slow, lingering, agonizing death was the way they should have gone, so Toby was doing them a favor. The world was better off without them. They contributed nothing but misery. It was their own fault. Stalking him through the woods—you take a huge risk when you do something like that. You put your life in danger. It wasn’t his fault.

  And they deserved it. They completely deserved it.

  He was a murderer. A cold-blooded murderer. A criminal.

  He took a deep breath. He had to calm down. Had to figure this out. It was done—he couldn’t take it back, so now he just had to figure out how to get away with it.

  The blood-splattered boy. The crazy-eyed boy. The cackling, maniacal, don’t-let-your-children-get-too-close boy.

  Think.

  Did anybody know where they were? If you were following some kid into the forest with a gun, unloaded or not, would you tell your parents where you were headed? Unlikely. They’d want to be able to deny it later. So they’d either not told anybody, or they lied. This was good.

  His nose was still bleeding, but he just let the blood flow.

  The boy they should put in a cage, so people could poke him with sticks.

  Had anybody seen them go into the forest? No way to know. If they cut through his yard and his mom was in the living room, she might have seen them, but only if she happened to be facing the window. She knew what Larry and Nick looked like and what they’d done—she wouldn’t let them just wander into the woods without saying something.

  So there was a very good chance that nobody knew where they were.

  The demonic boy. The hell-bound boy.

  Stop it!

  If he hid the bodies well enough, he might be okay.

  This was a vast forest. Millions of places to hide a body.

  But could he hide it well enough to keep it from the police and their dogs? If he buried them deep enough, maybe, but…

  What if he fed them to Owen? Owen would probably pick the bones clean, if he didn’t eat those as well. And, worst-case scenario, if the bones were found, the authorities would think that Larry and Nick met their ghastly fate at the claws and jaws of a never-before-seen monster.

  You can’t let Owen take the blame for this. He’s your friend.

  Jesus Christ, what was he thinking? Of course he could let Owen take the blame for this! He was a wild animal.

  Anyway, the remains would never be found. He’d make sure of it. It was far from a foolproof plan, but it was the best he had for the moment, save for marching over to the police station and confessing everything. That wouldn’t end well.

  If he had time to sit around, mulling his options in a leisurely fashion, he’d probably come up with something better, but right now he had to move quickly. He couldn’t do this in the dark, and he couldn’t risk leaving the bodies out overnight. Larry and Nick would be missed by bedtime. So the best course of action was to feed the corpses to Owen.

  Could he even bring himself to do such a thing?

  Yeah. If he could stab them to death, he could feed them to an animal.

  There was a problem with the plan, though. Well, there were lots of problems, but one particularly big one: he couldn’t drag their bodies out to the cave. Not even one of them by sundown, much less both. So he had to bring Owen to them.

  He needed bait.

  Toby walked down the path. He held the bottom of his shirt out in front of him, like a little girl carrying blueberries that she’d picked. Piled in the makeshift sack were twenty severed fingers.

  The fingers had been difficult to cut off until he got into the proper rhythm, and he’d originally wanted to use simple strips of flesh, which were easier to slice away. But the first strip leaked badly and came apart in his hands. He needed something firmer, to avoid leaving traces along the path to the cave. So he went with fingers.

  Bite-size, he thought, but was unable to amuse himself.

  When he reached the cave entrance, there was no sign of Owen. It was going to be a pretty rotten night if the monster had finally moved on to greener pastures, but he’d remain optimistic.

  He held up his shirt with his left hand, and selected an index finger—Nick’s, he thought—with his right. His gag reflexes kicked in, even though he thought he would’ve been over that by the sixteenth or seventeenth digit he cut through with the hunting knife. He flung the finger at the cave, but the throw went wild, landing a good twenty feet off the mark.

  He stared at the spot where it landed, marking it clearly in his mind. He’d have to make sure he retrieved it later. He’d do it now, but he didn’t want to walk that close to the cave until he was certain of Owen’s whereabouts.

  “Owen!” he called out. “I’m here with food!” He should’ve announced himself before the first throw. He couldn’t afford to waste fingers.

  Owen emerged from the cave, looking sleepy. Toby hurriedly selected another finger, a ring finger this time, though without an actual ring on it, and tossed it to him. Owen caught it in his hand, stared at it for a second, then popped it into his mouth.

  “Was it good? Was it delicious?” Toby asked, slowly backing away. Owen seemed to agree that it was indeed delicious and followed him. Toby’s hope was that Owen would follow him at the same pace that he was walking, and not stampede over to him to get the rest of the fingers. There was a definite level of trust here. And probably stupidity.

  He tossed Owen another finger as he continued moving backward along the path. The monster caught this one in his mouth. He was pretty good at that. If he got caught, maybe he could pay for his legal defense by charging people to watch Owen do tricks.


  Focus. Concentrate. This is serious stuff.

  Owen followed him, step by step, for about twenty feet. Then Owen let out a soft growl. Toby tossed him another finger. At this rate, he wasn’t going to make it anywhere close to where the dead bodies lay. He had to ration them.

  He couldn’t walk backward the entire way back, obviously, so he switched to a sideways step that allowed him to keep track of Owen and the uneven ground. After another twenty feet or so, Owen let out another growl.

  “Not yet,” Toby said. “You’ll get more, lots more, I promise. Just be patient.”

  Owen growled louder.

  “No.” Toby shook his head. “Don’t growl. Just follow.”

  He kept moving without throwing another finger. Owen followed him at the same pace, and didn’t seem ready to pounce on him to get the meal sooner.

  “Good boy,” Toby said. “Very good. Keep this up and you’ll get all kinds of scrumptious, yummy treats.”

  The plan worked well enough that by the time Toby reached the bodies, he still had four fingers left. He tossed them to Owen, one after the other. His stomach never stopped churning.

  “Here,” he said, pointing to Larry’s mutilated body. “Dinner for you.”

  He quickly moved back, giving Owen plenty of room. The monster walked toward him a few steps, as if unsure what Toby was trying to say, and then saw the corpse. Owen dropped down to all fours over the body and thrust his face down onto Larry’s stomach.

  Toby quickly turned away. It wasn’t enough. The sounds of ripping and chewing made him fall to his knees, dry heaving.

  Could Owen eat all of this?

  Not in one sitting, but he didn’t think that a creature so obviously hunger-driven would leave the bodies to rot. He’d take them with him, right? Toby had no idea. He might have totally screwed up his plan by doing this, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to try to take Owen’s meal away from him.

  There really wasn’t anything he could do at this point except hope that Owen liked to clean his plate.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Toby lay in an excruciatingly cold creek, letting the water rush over him for several minutes, hoping it would take the blood away.

  He couldn’t think of a good way to explain away his appearance beyond “I fell in a creek.” Fortunately, Mom and Dad were in the kitchen when he came through the back door, and Toby hurried across the living room before either of them saw him.

  “Toby…?” Mom asked.

  “Gotta go to the bathroom! It’s an emergency!” Toby said, rushing up the stairs.

  He wadded up his wet clothes in a tight ball and hid them in the back of his closet. Tomorrow he’d burn them.

  The broken nose he explained as a nasty fall. Mom and Dad both looked doubtful and questioned him relentlessly, but he insisted that it was a result of his own clumsiness, and that nothing would make him happier than to have them give Larry’s and Nick’s parents a call if the bullies had been the ones to injure him, but this time it was his own fault. They seemed to reluctantly believe his story.

  He didn’t expect to have an appetite for dinner, but instead he was ravenous. He also didn’t expect to be able to sleep, but exhaustion beat out guilt and he was asleep minutes after climbing into bed.

  The nightmares, however, were rapid-fire images of knives and blood and sharp teeth.

  News of Larry and Nick’s disappearance had spread through the student body before classes even started for the day, and Toby wasn’t surprised to find himself pulled out of first-period history within two minutes of the bell. Mrs. Pendle, the secretary, took him into the principal’s office, where two police officers sat. One had a thick mustache and a friendly smile, while the other was clean-shaven and wore a scowl. Good cop, bad cop.

  After some polite introductions by the good cop, the bad cop spoke: “When was the last time you saw Larry Gaige?”

  “Yesterday after school, when he broke my nose.”

  The bad cop raised an eyebrow. Toby had decided that trying to hide his adversarial relationship with Larry and Nick would be a mistake. Everybody knew about it. Pretending that they were friends would raise suspicion. Better to be open about his dislike—after all, he wouldn’t be telling the cops that he hated the dead kids if he were the one who stabbed them to death, right?

  If his parents discovered the discrepancy in his story, he’d just say that he’d been embarrassed to admit that he’d been beaten up yet again.

  “And why did he do that?” asked Bad Cop.

  Toby shrugged. “Because he and Nick are jerks.” He’d mentally rehearsed this on his way to school. Are jerks. Not were jerks.

  “You saw him with Nick Wyler?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  “After school. They came into my backyard, started threatening me. Then Larry punched me.”

  “Did you fight back?”

  “Not really.” Toby tried to look suitably ashamed of his own physical inadequacies. “They’re big guys—both of them. If I’d had a baseball bat I would’ve bashed them in the face, but I didn’t, so…well, there’s a reason guys like that pick on guys like me.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you liked them very much.”

  “I don’t. They’re bullies.” Not gonna catch me using past tense, Bad Cop. “You heard about what they did to me before, right?”

  Bad Cop nodded. “We did. Why do you think they did that, Toby?”

  “I just said why. They’re bullies. That’s what bullies do. Didn’t you have them when you were in school?”

  Bad Cop ignored the question. “What else can you tell me about what happened?”

  “Not much. I was outside doing my homework, they came up and started saying, ‘You’re dead, Floren!’ I tried to get back inside but they wouldn’t let me pass, and then Larry punched me. They laughed their asses off and left.”

  “Any idea where they might be?”

  “Antarctica, hopefully. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish them dead or anything like that, but I’m not going to sit here and tell you that we got along and that I hope everything is fine. They’ve made my life pretty miserable.”

  The officers nodded, although Toby couldn’t tell if it was a nod of understanding or a nod of “We’ve got our killer.” “One last question,” Bad Cop asked. “Did Larry say anything about his parents?”

  “Not to me.”

  “Okay. If you think of anything else, tell your principal and she’ll get in touch with us. We’ll let you get back to class now. I know you’ve got a test this morning.”

  Crap! He’d forgotten about the history test!

  “Thanks,” he said, and returned to class. He was amazed at how easily the lies had come, considering that he usually couldn’t even successfully lie about drinking one of Dad’s cans of Coke. He wasn’t proud of this, but he was certainly relieved.

  Right before third period, everybody was marched into the assembly room. The principal explained that two students had gone missing, and that anybody who had any information should share it with her as soon as possible. Then all of the students were asked to close their eyes and silently pray for Larry and Nick’s safe return. Toby took that time to pray that his crimes wouldn’t be discovered.

  By lunchtime, Toby had heard most of the story. Larry and his parents had been fighting in a big way ever since he got suspended. For years he’d been threatening to run away to New York City, and he’d apparently left a note on the kitchen table saying that he’d done just that. Two guns were missing from his dad’s collection.

  Wow. So he and Nick had probably stopped by Toby’s place for one last bit of cruelty before running away from home. That would explain why they were willing to risk pointing guns at him in the woods, even empty ones, knowing that they’d almost certainly get expelled for it.

  What did Larry want in New York City? To be an actor? A singer? To just wander the busy streets? He’d never envisioned Larry as having any ambitions beyond beating up kids smaller
than he was.

  Why was Nick going with him? They must have had a pretty strong friendship.

  Screw them. Screw both of them. They deserved to be digesting in Owen’s stomach right now. If they were going to run away to New York City, then they might as well have been killed by Toby, who had a legitimate grudge against them, instead of some random drug dealer.

  Justify it all you want. You’re still a murderer.

  Toby spent the rest of the day lost in fantasies where the knife got stuck in its sheath. Larry and Nick pointed at him and laughed while he fumbled around, trying unsuccessfully to withdraw the blade. They left him in the woods, enjoying a good hearty chuckle at his incompetence.

  He called in sick at the grocery and walked out into the woods, hoping that the bodies were gone. Please, please, please let Owen have cleaned up my mess. It didn’t have to be flawless—he just didn’t want to find dozens of body parts strewn among the trees.

  Except for some bloodstains, Larry and Nick were gone. Toby almost cried with relief.

  Though he wanted to walk to Owen’s cave to investigate, he also wanted to spend as little time in the woods as possible until things calmed down. Thanks to the “runaway” element, the police wouldn’t be searching the forest for corpses. They’d be trying to find motorists who might have picked up a couple of unpleasant hitchhikers. Toby was far from safe, but he was much better off than he was yesterday. He walked back through the woods into his backyard.

  Then he remembered the severed finger he’d left behind, cursed, and headed back into the forest.

  It was still there. He felt intense revulsion as he picked it up, despite having handled severed fingers galore yesterday. It just wasn’t something you got used to, and now the finger had a fairly rank odor. He brushed off the tiny ants that swarmed over the parts that had no skin, and then—

  Owen stood in the cave entrance, looking at him.

  This was the closest Toby had ever been to the monster. Not close enough for Owen to reach out and slit Toby’s throat with one of his talons, but close enough that Owen could be on him in seconds. Close enough that he could see that one of Owen’s talons was split, and that he had a tiny bare patch over his left eye.