Fetal Bait Apocalypse: 3 Collections in 1

by Joel Arnold

  Another October was nearly gone. We never planned on going to Hench’s farm, but so often at night, we found ourselves there.

  This night was no different. The moon projected a silver sheen across the grass and trees, already budding with a light frost. Our breath rose visibly from our mouths.

  We crawled through the barbed-wire fence, whispering, stepping among the rotten apples.

  Spencer started it. Picked one off the ground and flung it at me.

  It hit me in the chest. I retaliated. Scooped a small, hard one from the grass and threw. He ducked and it disappeared in the darkness. Paul and Jack joined in, grabbing ammo from the ground and chucking it at one another. The apples were cold and stung, but we laughed when we were struck. It was a joyous sting.

  Suddenly, Paul yelped. “Hey!”

  “Gotcha!”

  We looked up. It was Hench. We hadn’t heard or seen him sneak across the frosted grass, and now he had one hand clamped on top of Paul’s head, and in the other hand he held his revolver, its muzzle digging into Paul’s temple.

  Hench’s hand shook as he cocked back the hammer. The sound it made — that click like a knuckle popping — caused us all to freeze, caused the world to turn into something dream-like and unreal.

  Tears ran down Hench’s cheeks. His eyes rolled wildly in their sockets. He shook his head back and forth, his breath escaping in choppy bursts.

  We stood among the trees panting.

  His voice was ragged. Torn. “You think this whole world’s yours to do what you want with?”

  He pulled Paul closer to him. Squeezed the top of his head, fingers digging into his short red hair, twisting it. “Stop squirming.”

  Paul’s eyes strained toward the revolver.

  “Answer me!”

  Jack said, “Leave him alone!” His words were like pebbles swallowed up by a deep well.

  Paul shut his eyes. His face quivered. Snot bubbled out of his nose.

  “Answer me or I’ll shoot you, I swear, you goddamn punk.”

  Paul held his breath, his facial muscles tight, cheeks bright red, forehead salted with sweat. He stood as still as possible until his breath burst out and he sucked in enough air for all of us.

  Jack’s hands clenched and unclenched, but he wouldn’t move from his spot by the fence.

  Spencer tried to hide behind a branch the thickness of his finger. I was frozen in place. I felt that if I moved, Hench’s finger might slip on the trigger and Paul’s head would explode like a rotten apple.

  Hench’s eyes widened. His lips trembled into a grin. He leaned down until his mouth was on Paul’s ear. “Come on, boy. Time’s a-wastin’.”

  “N-n-”

  “Speak up. This whole world your playground?”

  Paul tried getting the word out, that one simple two-letter word, but he couldn’t quite manage, just the N sound followed by a spray of spit that coated his chin.

  Hench dug his fingernails into his scalp. “I can’t hear you.”

  “N — n — n.”

  “N — n — n?” Hench mocked.

  “Leave him alone,” Jack said.

  Hench rubbed the revolver’s nozzle in a small circle on Paul’s skin. “One last chance. Answer the question. I’m counting to three, then I’m pulling the trigger.”

  Paul’s mouth moved again, but this time I heard nothing.

  “One — two—”

  The gun fired.

  My heart stopped. I fell to my knees. God, no—

  I heard Hench laughing as the echo of the gun faded. I looked up.

  Paul’s head was still there. No gaping hole, no blood. Hench had moved the barrel away from Paul’s skull before pulling the trigger.

  The front of Paul’s jeans grew dark.

  Hench wrinkled up his nose and dropped Paul to the ground. “You shit yourself! You goddamn shit yourself! You really think I was gonna shoot you? You think I’m gonna go to jail for a little shit like you?”

  He backed away, his gun still smoking. “I’m calling the police. I know where you live. Understand me? I know where you live.”

  We grabbed hold of Paul and dragged him quickly toward the fence. We lifted him up and over, ignoring the stick of metal barbs piercing our arms and legs. We dragged him over the rough ground to our bikes. He screamed for us to stop. He stood up wincing, holding his ear.

  “I shit myself?”

  None of us said anything. We got on our bikes and pedaled home in silence.

  I cried that night as I laid in bed. It wasn’t so much that Mr. Hench caught one of us and pulled a gun. I never really thought he would shoot Paul. The reason I cried that night was because I knew Paul had believed him. He honestly thought he was about to die, and he had frozen up and fouled himself. It was his humiliation I cried for. He’d remember that night for the rest of his life, a memory that wouldn’t go away, and when he raised own family, with his own kids looking up to him, he’d have trouble looking at them without remembering that night.

  At least that’s how I saw it. A lot for a boy of twelve to think, I know.

  Spencer and I saw Jack and Paul in school for the next two weeks, but we didn’t hang out after the bell rang, and we stayed away from Hench’s farm.

  Until one night. After midnight.

  “Get up.” Spencer shook me awake. There was panic in his voice. “Get up!”

  “What—”

  “Shhh! Come on.”

  He threw a pair of jeans at me, a gray sweatshirt and shoes. I followed him quietly past our parents bedroom and out the door. We hopped on our bikes. I followed him to Jack’s house. Jack waited in the driveway with a knapsack slung over his shoulder.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  They took off down the street. It wasn’t until we reached Hench’s farm that I caught up to them.

  Spence and I followed Jack into the orchard. I was too out of breath to protest. What was in his knapsack? Spray paint? A gun?

  Jack jogged past the apple trees across the grass to Hench’s barn. I kept looking toward the house, kept waiting for the light to pop on, the sound of the screen door swinging open and slamming against the frame of the house, the sound of Hench’s drunken ‘Who’s there?’

  But I heard none of that.

  Jack stopped at the barn. Took off his pack and opened it. He pulled out a flashlight. Looked over his shoulder before opening the barn door.

  We heard the nickering of a horse, the wind blowing through the barn’s rafters, the creaking of old wood.

  “What the hell are we doing here?” I asked. “If Hench finds us—”

  The look in Jack’s eyes stopped me, froze the words in my mouth so fast, I nearly choked.

  “What?” I whispered.

  Jack turned and headed to the far stall. The smell of hay was strong. The smell of mold and horse manure, owl droppings, tractor oil. Before opening the stall door, Jack paused, wiped the sweat off his forehead with his shirt sleeve. He looked at me.

  “Davy, you gotta promise not to tell. Not ever.”

  I stared at him. “Tell what?”

  Spencer stood next to me, barely breathing.

  “You gotta promise.”

  “Okay. I promise.”

  “Spence?”

  Spencer nodded. “Yeah. I promise.”

  Jack nodded. Opened the stall door. Shined the flashlight inside.

  I saw the boots first. Then the jeans. A flannel shirt. And when I got to the neck—

  I fell to my knees. The world spun. The supper I’d had earlier came up in a rush.

  Jack put his hand on my shoulder. He squatted so that his face was level with mine. He picked up some hay from the ground and used it to wipe off the remainder of vomit on my chin.

  “You promised, okay? You can’t tell any one.”

  I nodded, fighting to keep the rest of my food down.

  Jack stood up, shaking his head. “I didn’t think he’d do this. I really didn’t.”

  Spence and I
stared at the body in the stall. I felt numb. “Where is he?” I asked. “Where’s Paul?”

  I looked in once again at the body. The neck ended abruptly at the dull metal of a gardening spade. The edge of the spade was embedded into the dirt floor, separating Hench’s head from his body.

  “He’s at home,” Jack said. “He’s doesn’t want to leave his room.”

  I nodded toward Hench. “What are we going to do with him?”

  “Leave him be,” Jack said. “No one’ll know it was Paul.”

  “Maybe we should tell someone he’s here,” I said. “Make an anonymous call.”

  “Leave him,” Jack said. “Don’t call anybody.”

  Spencer spoke up. “Let’s bury him.”

  We turned to him.

  “We can bury him out in the orchard. Bury him deep so no one will find him.” He stepped over the body. Yanked the spade up from the ground.

  We took turns digging out in the orchard under an apple tree using the spade. We dug as deep as we could, wanting nothing and no one to find him. It was cold that night, but the ground had still not frozen. Our sweat soaked our shirts and chilled against our skin. Steam drifted off of us and disappeared into the branches above. When we finally set him in the ground, we were tired and dirty. We spread out the fallen apples over the grave. Buried the spade under some hay in the barn. Rubbed the muzzle of the horse, who stood and watched, its big eyes rheumy and nervous.

  IV.

  The apple tree man. Old and withered, a skinny bent pervert nestled in the crotch of apple tree branches. He reaches out with long bony fingers. Strong enough to lift a twelve year old kid from the ground up into his brittle lair.

  V.

  I promised I would never tell a soul about what we did that day, what Paul did, what we all did when we buried Mr. Hench beneath the apple tree. Twenty-five years have gone by. The promise becomes more difficult to keep. Guilt plays its hand, seeps into the most hardened of souls and picks at it a little at a time, disintegrating the foundations.

  We were kids. We didn’t know any better. It was self-defense. Hench almost killed one of us.

  Rationalizations. The list gets longer as we grow older.

  Meanwhile, we’ve grown into lifestyles we’ve become comfortable with. I have a wife. A child. I don’t want them to suffer the consequences of old childhood secrets. I don’t want them to become smeared by scandal. There’s safety in keeping secrets secret.

  It’s been a hard choice for all of us. For Paul, for Jack, for Spencer.

  For me.

  But I’ve made up my mind. Just as the others have made up theirs.

  VI.

  I drive to the town of Hendricksville, an hour drive from where I live, past rolling hills, fields of corn, soybeans, the autumn sun turning the dead stalks a rust-tainted gold. Flocks of geese fly overhead. There is the smell of farms, hay and manure and soil, a smell I like, and I breathe it in deeply. It’s the smell of natural things, and it feels as if I’m preparing the soil of my own soul, strengthening it for the oncoming winter, the task ahead.

  I wait until night and drive to what was once Hench’s farm.

  The land was bought up by the Braemer Family Orchard. A couple more rows of apple trees were planted. A pumpkin patch. Raspberries. The barn was torn down years ago, and a Quonset hut sits where the house once was.

  There’s a new fence now, too; straight rows of wire stretching into the distance, evenly placed signs warning of the electricity that flows through them. I stand a moment, leaning on the handle of my shovel. I can see no break in the wire, but there’s a maple tree close to the fence with a large branch just low enough for me to reach. I toss the shovel over. Jump for the branch. I feel like a kid again as I swing up and over. I retrieve the shovel. Find the tree I’m looking for. It’s late in the season and I see no apples left in the branches. I stop and listen. Look. It seems safe. I kick aside the layer of dead fallen apples beneath the tree and begin to dig.

  The dirt comes up easily. The roots have already been broken through.

  There is something cleansing in this. I pause to light a cigar, digging slowly enough so as not to let the growing ash fall with the effort. It falls when I hit the marker I’d placed there six years earlier. Another shovel. There’s a plastic bag knotted around one end of the shovel, and inside that is a bloodied pillow case and a gun.

  Not Hench’s gun.

  A different gun.

  Another secret I’ve promised not to share. A promise I made to myself.

  VII.

  Let me tell you another reason why apples scare me.

  End of summer, four years ago. Our first summer in our present house. You’d think I’d have noticed our neighbor’s apple tree before purchasing our house, but we bought it in the winter, when the unpruned branches were bare, and it looked no different than the other trees scattered throughout the neighborhood. But when the blossoms appeared in the spring, I became frightened.

  By the time the fruit was the size of walnuts they dripped blood.

  They whispered to me.

  As they grew, eyeballs appeared. Dismembered fingers and toes. Lips moved. Tongues clucked disapproval. I heard them at night, giggling, commiserating, splintering through the wall to my soul.

  Middle of the night, late September, I slid a black windbreaker over my pajamas, and grabbed a hacksaw from a hook in the garage.

  As I sawed at the base of the apple tree, I ignored the apples dangling above me, ignored their accusations, the feel of blood dripping on top of my head. I ignored the smell of rot, and the sound of a gun being fired through a pillow into an old friend’s head.

  Guilt is a dangerous thing.

  I sawed it into small parts. No one woke up that night, no lights came on. The only sounds were the screams of dying apples as they hit the ground in a series of sickening splats, like the sound of skin being broken, like the sound of blood squirting across the ground.

  Or across the sheets of a rumpled bed.

  Guilt.

  VIII.

  I will say this only once.

  Six years ago, I killed one of them. One of my friends. I shot Paul through the head with his own revolver. He begged me not to, but he gave me no choice. It had to be done.

  The day before, he called me on the phone and talked about guilt; of how he could no longer live with it, how he’d recently found out that Mr. Hench had family down in Tennessee who still visited the grave they’d erected when he disappeared from the face of the earth. Paul told me how he called Hench’s brother and talked to him, and told him he knew Mr. Hench, of how he’d pestered him, and how he was sorry for all the trouble he’d caused.

  “What else did you tell him?”

  I heard Paul crying on the other end. “Nothing. But I don’t know how long I can hold it in. It’s killing me.”

  “Think of what it would mean to Polly. How could she support herself with you in jail?”

  “I was only a kid.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” My grip on the phone tightened. Sweat trickled from my ear into the receiver.

  “Whatever happens, happens,” he said. “I can’t live like this.”

  I paid him a visit the next night. Luck was with me. His wife was playing Bridge across town. He was asleep in bed when I found him. I told him I was sorry, but we’d made a promise.

  I intended to hold him to it.

  I grabbed his wife’s pillow, held it firmly over his face, and pumped two bullets into it. I worked fast to remove him, remove any evidence.

  Polly came home a full hour after I left.

  IX.

  Guilt.

  X.

  I pull up the old shovel from the grave beneath the apple tree and look up at the moon through the tree’s branches. Something catches my eye, silhouetted against the moon, a black pulsing orb, breathing like some hungry creature. There’s an apple left, after all.

  I set down my shovel at the edge of the grave, my cigar halfway done, and walk
quietly back to the electric fence. I hoist myself up and over via the maple branch, find my car and open the trunk.

  XI.

  Two years ago, Jack called.

  Told me of how he wanted to tell someone, how he was thinking of seeing a psychiatrist to get some of the past off his chest.

  “Have you told anyone yet?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

  “Is that what you told Paul?” he asked, and hung up.

  At least Jack was still single. I didn’t have to worry about a wife, kids. When I entered his house, I found him sitting in an easy chair, a bowl of apples on his lap. He’d taken a bite from each one, and it was hard for me not to look at them, as they beat red and bloody like tiny hearts.

  “I hear them sometimes,” he said as I emerged from the shadows dressed in black. “I hear them whispering to me.”

  I waved my gun at him. “You want to talk about this?”

  He set the bowl down. Lifted his own gun from his lap. “I knew you’d come,” he said. “I know you killed Paul.”

  I kept my eyes on his weapon. “Is this how it’s going to be?” I asked. “A shoot-off between two old friends?”

  He smiled. A sad smile. Tears in his eyes dripped down his cheeks, and met beneath his chin. “No,” he said. He lifted the gun. Pressed the nozzle to his temple and pulled the trigger.

  Within the echo of the shot, I heard the bowl of apples at his feet laughing.

  Guilt.

  At least Jack had a proper funeral. I left him there like that. The only thing I didn’t leave alone were the apples. I picked up the bowl, holding them away from my body as they continued their wretched laugh, and put them down his garbage disposal one by one.

  XII.