by Rick Hautala
Still, Kip couldn’t figure out why they were planning to do this. What had brought them together in the first place? And what was in it for Watson? Maybe most importantly, why and how had he and Watson gotten to be such friends? The word surprised him when it sprang to mind. It almost seemed inadequate to express what they shared.
Kip scowled when a passing cloud cut off the little light that was filtering into the kitchen.
“Cut the bullshit,” he whispered, smiling grimly. He knew exactly why he was doing it, but—at twelve years old—he might think he was supposed to have a more complicated reason, but there wasn’t anything complicated about it at all.
He was doing it to get revenge!
Anything else was just extra.
He wanted revenge!
And if Watson was willing to help him get revenge on these creatures that had killed his mother, then fine. That was his choice. Yesterday in the woods, he had been more than wiling to tell Kip about the untcigahunk. It seemed almost like he needed to spill his guts about them, as if by telling him about them, he was somehow released from guilt or something.
Kip chuckled when he suddenly had an image of Watson sitting on the prow of a sailing ship with a huge bird tied around his neck. In English class last winter, they had read Longfellow’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and thinking about it, he could see a resemblance between Watson and the mariner. Of course, from class, he had never quite grasped what that bird—What had it been called? An albatross? Whatever—he couldn’t figure out what it was supposed to symbolize. It had something to do with guilt, and that was how he saw Watson. All day yesterday and all last night, it seemed as if the old man had been driven to talk about the untcigahunk as if by telling him about them, he was somehow clearing his conscience.
No matter. What it had done, though, was clear Kip’s memory.
He had finally broken down most if not all of the mental blocks he had thrown up around what he had witnessed five years ago. Seeing Dr. Fielding may have helped, but he felt as though he had done it all pretty much on his own...with a little help from Watson. And maybe that’s all this was. Like a chance encounter with a wizard in a fantasy adventure game, Watson had just “been there” when he needed him.
His reveries were suddenly interrupted by the sound of Watson’s truck pulling into the driveway. Kip dashed to the sink, turned on the faucet, filled his cupped hands with cold water, and splashed his face. He was sputtering and dripping when Watson entered the kitchen with a brown paper bag in one hand.
“How’d you do?” Kip asked. He kept his dripping face over the sink and reached for a paper towel from the dispenser. Tearing off two sheets, he quickly wiped his face and tossed the wet wad of paper into the overflowing trashcan.
“Got everything we need,” Watson said as he walked over to the counter and put down his package. “Got some good lights and four extra batteries.” He pronounced the last word with just two syllables, making it sound like bat-trees. “Here’s what’s left of your twenty.” He frowned as he handed Kip a crumpled wad of bills and some coins.
Kip slipped the money into his pocket without bothering to count it and then, opening the bag, withdrew the two new flashlights. They were simple chrome cylinders with red lens holders. Kip clicked one on and shined the beam on the kitchen wall. Even in the daylight, the circle of light was strong and sharp.
“So we’ve got everything we need,” Kip said as he snapped off the flashlight. “Looks like too much stuff already. We don’t really want to be weighed down too much.”
“Not if we might have to run,” Watson said with a faint laugh.
Kip didn’t find his comment at all funny. It chilled him and made him reconsider what they were doing. His voice threatened to break when he said, “So—uh, I guess, besides the lights and weapons, we’ve got the canteen of water. We should probably bring some food. I figure we should have jackets, too, in case the cave’s damp and chilly. So other than getting the gasoline and some matches to light it with, that’s about it.”
“You know, I been thinkin’ bout that all the while I was gone,” Watson said. “‘N I think your idea about burnin’ ’em’s a good one. Figurin’ they don’t like sunlight, I’d reckon they ain’t too fond of fire, either. Lemme see what I got in the garage, but I was thinkin’ we could scare ‘em off with—these.”
He opened the bottom drawer of the counter and pulled out a bundle of road flares. The red sticks looked like sticks of dynamite, loosely held together by a rotting rubber band. Their outer casings were a pale, waxy red that was peeling. The directions, printed on the sides in black, were faded.
“Where’d you get those?” Kip asked.
“Years ago I used to work for the highway department.”
“You think they still work?” Kip asked.
Watson shrugged. “We can give one a test before to make sure. Hang on. I’ll be right back.”
Watson left the kitchen. Kip, alone once again, looked at their supplies on the kitchen table. All of them—especially the shotgun—made him feel nervous and almost dizzy with excitement. After checking to make sure Watson wasn’t watching, he picked up the shotgun and hefted it. He was surprised by how heavy the gun was. Then again, what would you expect from something that could really kill.
He tried not to think about what Watson had said, that the little brothers weren’t really animals, that they were the first form of human beings. From what he had studied in science class, he was pretty sure that wasn’t true. He believed humans had evolved from apelike ancestors, but cavemen had died out thousands and thousands of years ago. Watson was just telling an Indian myth, and no matter how much the little brothers might look human, they just plain weren’t. He had to convince himself it would be just like killing animals...a whole, nasty bunch of animals.
The kitchen door slammed open, and Kip wheeled around to see Watson backing into the room. Both of his arms sagged down from the weight of what he was carrying. Gasoline sloshed hollowly as he heaved the cans onto the tabletop. He also had a tattered olive canvas bag with thick shoulder straps.
“Two five-gallons and a one-gallon can,” he said. “I figure we can top one ‘em off with what’s in the other. I’ll take the five, ‘n you can carry the one. I found this, too. An old backpack. We can load it up with the flares ‘n bullets ‘n such so our hands’ll be free.”
Kip suddenly realized he was still holding the shotgun. Remembering that it was loaded, he gently placed it onto the table and took a cautious step away. Seeing Watson’s old-fashioned backpack made him long for his own modern, lightweight pack, now nothing but a shredded mess on the forest floor. He picked up the pack and slung it onto his back, taking a few seconds to adjust the straps.
“I can carry the flares and the five-gallon can in this,” he said.
“Maybe,” Watson said, considering. “We’ve got a lot of other crap to carry, too. You gonna be able to hack it?”
Kip nodded bravely, wiggling his shoulders so the pack rode in the small of his back. “Of course,” he said, a bit defensively.
“Like I said, I don’t want to be too weighed down if we have to run,” Watson said.
“We can drop it and run if we have to.”
“Lemme take care of this, and then what d’yah say we have a quick lunch and get started?” Watson unscrewed the top of one of the five-gallon gas cans and peered down inside. “Hey! I can’t see a damned thing. You got a match?” After a second, he turned and looked at Kip with a broad smile. “Just kidding,” he said with a chuckle.
Kip wasn’t the least bit amused.
As Watson uncapped the other five-gallon can and slowly poured from one to the other, all Kip could think about was that they were actually going to use this stuff to kill something.
Just like hunting animals, he told himself, but the uneasiness in the pit of his stomach wouldn’t go away.
Hunting had never much interested Kip, especially since three years ago, when he had sneaked his father
’s shotgun out of the bedroom closet and gone into the backyard. Taking aim at a chickadee on a pine branch, he had squeezed the trigger slowly like he’d been told until the shotgun went off. The butt slammed into his shoulder with a deafening blast. All that was left of the chickadee were two down feathers that drifted in slow spirals to the ground. The rest of the chickadee was just...gone. When he told Marty about it a day or so later, his brother had joked about the bird taking a ride on the “lead ball express,” but that hadn’t eased Kip’s guilt about ending an innocent life.
But this was different because, unlike the chickadee, the little brothers had it coming. They had killed his mother, and what he and Watson were planning now was simple revenge.
“You can carry the rope,” Kip said, forcing firmness into his voice, which he didn’t really feel. He coiled it into wide loops so Watson could drape it across his shoulder and let it can into another. The smell of gasoline filled the small kitchen, making Kip feel dizzy. He slid up the window and, leaning over the sink, took a few deep breaths of fresh air.
“I ain’t got a whole lot of food we can bring,” Watson said. “Grab that bread there and pop a few slices into the toaster. There’s still some peanut butter and jelly left over from breakfast, right?”
Kip nodded. After placing the coiled rope on the table, he took out four slices of bread and dropped two into the toaster slots.
Watson finished filling the five-gallon can and screwed the cap back onto the full one. Then he opened the one-gallon can and poured what little remained into that.
“Maybe we could use that money you’ve got left ‘n top this can off,” Watson said. He held up the one-gallon can and gave it a quick shake. “This ain’t more’n half full, and I’ve got a feeling we’re gonna need more, not less.”
“I can carry the five-gallon, so maybe you can carry the one-gallon can on your belt or something, so your hands will be free. We can figure it all out after lunch,” Kip said.
The two slices of toast popped. Kip took them and smeared them with globs of peanut butter and grape jelly. He put another two pieces of bread into the toaster while Watson got the almost-empty jug of milk from the refrigerator and poured them each a glass. They both leaned against the counter, staring at their pile of equipment as they ate. Neither one of them bothered to talk.
After a second round of toast and a glass of water because the milk was gone, Watson looked at Kip and smiled grimly. “Well, if we’re gonna do it, let’s go. The longer we wait, the more reasons we might come up against doin’ it.”
“I suppose so,” Kip said. He emptied his glass and put it into the sink. “You know, I was thinking about what you said earlier, about how the little brothers might not like fire. I was wondering if maybe we should have torches as well as flashlights when we go in. We might need something like that to keep them away if there’s really a lot of them.”
Watson nodded. “Not a bad idea, but for that, we’ll need even more gasoline than what we got. Tell you what. We can make the torches now, ‘n then I’ll go down town to the gas station ‘n fill the one-gallon while you carry some of this stuff out to the Indian Caves. I can meet you there with the rest of the stuff.”
It took them a while to fashion two torches using some old sheets Watson had saved. They wrapped the sheets into big balls held in place by wire on the ends of two thick sticks. They left them soaking in gasoline while they made their final preparations.
The day was warm, so rather than wear his jacket, Kip tied it loosely around his waist and draped the canteen over his shoulder. From their supplies on the table, he took ten flares, one set of extra batteries, and a handful of shotgun shells and slid them into the side pouches of the backpack. He tied one of the torches—a spare because he intended to use a flashlight—where the bedroll should have gone, and put the five-gallon can into the main compartment. He grunted, surprised by the weight when he slung the whole thing onto his back.
After adjusting the pack so it rode comfortably, at least as comfortably as such an old-fashioned rig could ride, he strapped Marty’s hunting knife to his belt and took one of the new flashlights and slid it into his back pocket. Watson opened a cabinet drawer and pulled out a ball of string and handed it to Kip. Using some of the wire they had used for the torches, Kip quickly fashioned a little roller that he clipped onto his belt. He gave the string a couple of test pulls, pleased when it unwound smoothly behind him. Finally, feeling as ready as he’d ever be, he walked over to the door.
“Take these, too...just in case,” Watson said as he tucked a small box of wooden matches into one of the side pouches. “They ain’t the safety kind. They’ll strike on anything, so be careful.”
“Thanks,” Kip said, feeling as though he looked like a poverty-stricken traveling salesman. His equipment clanked and sloshed with every step.
“I’ll be needin’ that money,” Watson said. “For the gasoline.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure,” Kip said as he dug into his jeans pocket for the wad of bills. He handed them to Watson.
“After I get the gas, I’ll come back for the torches and the rest of my stuff,” Watson said.
As soon as the money was back in his hand, though, Watson began thinking—once again—about how easy it would be to stop by the liquor store and pick up a pint of whiskey. To hell with the kid and his half-assed idea of going up against the untcigahunk. Now that he was leaving, good riddance. Let him wander out to the Indian Caves and wait...wait out there as long as he wanted or until the untcigahunk came and got him.
“See you in about an hour then,” Kip said, glancing at Watson before going outside. Watson nodded. The door swung shut behind him with a loud bang.
Watson went to the kitchen window and watched as Kip headed off into the woods. Then he grabbed the five-gallon can by the handle and went out to his truck. Even as he slid in behind the steering wheel and put the key into the ignition, he knew that, no matter how much his body cried out for a drink, there was something else—something much stronger—pushing him to finish what he had started with Kip.
“Come hell or high water,” he muttered to his reflection in the rearview mirror as he started up the truck. After a moment, he slammed the shift into gear. Looking over his right shoulder, he backed down to the road, turned around, and headed into town.
3
It was a little before nine o’clock in the morning, and Bill was seated at the kitchen table, staring blankly at the cold coffee on the bottom of his cup. On the placemat in front of him was a half-eaten bowl of soggy cereal and an English muffin with just one small bite out of it. Every thirty seconds or so, he would check his watch, glance at the phone, and heave a deep sigh.
At six o’clock that morning, he had been on the phone, talking to Parkman. The police chief had been genuinely surprised to learn that Kip hadn’t shown up yet. In his experience, so he told Bill, when a kid ran away from home, sometime during the night—in the tough cases, maybe not until early in the morning—the kid would get hungry and cold and lonely, and he’d turn up at home, shivering and saying how sorry he was. If the parents had been so upset that they actually expressed joy at seeing the kid, then running away had accomplished what it was supposed to accomplish; it had gotten the kid the attention he had wanted all along...at least for a little while.
“Look, Harry, this isn’t some jerk with a prank phone call,” Bill had said, trying his best to keep his temper from flaring. “Kip’s never done anything like this before. None of his friends have heard from him or seen him. I’m really afraid something’s happened.”
Parkman hadn’t sounded pleased to be awakened so early, and he had repeated to Bill what he had told him yesterday—that he couldn’t file a missing persons report until Kip had been missing for twenty-four hours. That was the way it worked.
“For Christ’s sake, Harry. I’m not asking you for anything I wouldn’t do for you if you asked me,” Bill had shouted into the phone.
He couldn’t help but remember
that Parkman had been the first one on the scene at the house site five years ago. He and Parkman both knew that’s what had drawn them together and deepened their friendship over the last five years. And friends never owed friends favors. Bill hated feeling angry at Parkman, but he just couldn’t believe the cop wasn’t jumping into this with both feet.
Why’s he being so damned...distant? So cold?
“And I’m telling you I have to follow procedure,” Parkman had said. “Look, Bill. I was up ‘til after three o’clock this morning investigating a car accident out on the Limington Road, and I—”
“What happened?” Bill had asked. “Was anyone hurt?”
Maybe, Bill had thought, a friend of Parkman’s had been hurt...or killed! Still, this was Kip they were talking about! “Car was totaled. The driver’s down at Maine Med. Yeah, you know her. It was Suzie LaBlanc.”
Oh, Christ! Bill had thought, freezing at the mention of Suzie’s name. Immediately, he had wondered if somehow Woody had been involved.
“She must’ve been doing sixty-five or seventy on a back road,” Parkman had said “She didn’t quite make the turn by the Limington Congregational Church. Her car’s totaled, and she’s damned lucky she wasn’t killed. Lucky thing she was wearing her seatbelt.”
“Yeah. Lucky for her,” Bill had said. “But listen, Harry. How many times have I helped you out? Huh? Think about all the times you’ve asked me for legal advice, and I never pulled this ‘following procedure’ bullshit on you? How many times?”
“Plenty,” Parkman had said softly.
“Any time you had legal problems, I’d give you advice without charging. I can remember a few times I even told you something from the courthouse that maybe should have remained confidential. I never squawked about procedure. All I’m asking you to do is get some men together and start a search party.”
Parkman had then let out a loud groan. As the pause lengthened, Bill had begun to think that—at last—he had broken through to him. “Yeah, well,” Parkman had said gruffly, “I’ve had less than two hours sleep. I ain’t shaved yet. Christ, I haven’t had time to wipe my ass.” He sighed loudly. “I’ve got to follow up on this accident first. But get off my back, all right? I promise by noon today there’ll be at least twenty men out there, beating the brush. All right? I’ll give you a call when we’re getting organized.”
