The Pricker Boy

by Reade Scott Whinnem

  Around us the night insects get louder.

  And louder.

  And louder.

  And I wish I could just stick my head underwater and let the water fill my ears so that I can’t hear them anymore.

  Aslobbering tongue is lapping at my cheek. I open my eyes. Boris looks down at me. He whines.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. I don’t know what time it is. I’m face to face with Emily. I turn to the other side to see Vivek’s hairy toes. Ronnie’s head is next to Emily’s feet; Vivek’s head is next to Ronnie’s feet. They’ve got me penned in on three sides, but we—all of us—could only stay awake for so long.

  And then along comes Boris, my faithful friend, to rouse me.

  I scratch Boris behind the ears, tell him to follow me as I head back to the house. I make one more trip to Nana’s garden, gathering up a few sprigs of lavender. Its smell seems to sink through the skin of my hands and settle on my bones; it’s like smoke that leaves soft talcum on your arms, your chest, your face, inside your nose and mouth. According to Pete, lavender makes you smell like an old woman. To me, it smells like earth with all the grit rinsed away. It smells like the best that soil has to offer.

  Robin is still down by the water. I don’t think that she’s fallen asleep. I should say something to her, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.

  On my way back to Whale’s Jaw I pause by the twin climbing trees and pull up some of the bloodroot that grows around the base. Boris sticks his nose in the leaves but can’t figure out what I find there that’s so interesting.

  Once at Whale’s Jaw, I quietly open my knapsack and take out my heavy ceramic bowl. I pull some leaves from the lavender and place them in the bowl. I take a match and light the leaves, letting the smoke drift over my friends. Around all of them I place pieces of the bloodroot. Even in the moonlight I can see the stains the bloodroot leaves on my fingers, stains that will show up red by the light of day.

  Lavender smoke to deepen their sleep even further. Bloodroot to protect them.

  Boris is thumping his tail in the dirt. “You’re going to stay,” I tell him. “Stay with them.”

  I turn toward the hill, but I hear him follow after me. “No. You stay here tonight. Bark if you see trouble. Wake them.”

  Listen to me. It’s not like he’s Lassie. He’s faithful, all right. But he’s not smart. Still, he lies down at the base of Whale’s Jaw, places his head on his paws, and watches me as I walk beyond the Widow’s Stone.

  The spikes of the Hawthorns are pretty horrifying by moonlight, and if they really are the three old ladies of the woods, then I hope that they too are fast asleep.

  I place the bottle of gasoline in the bushes. I open my pack and take out the salt. I lay down a line of salt from tree to tree, forming a large triangle with the Hawthorns at its points. I scatter the horehound leaves along the salt lines.

  I pull leaves from the rosemary, place them on the offering stone, and light them. The smoke wafts over the bark of each of the three trees.

  Salt to form the walls. Rosemary to cleanse the site before evil is brought forth. Horehound to help banish.

  I kneel on the ground outside the lines of salt. From my pack I pull out the candle and mason jar. I light the candle, put it inside the jar, and place the jar on the offering stone next to the smoldering herbs.

  The wind picks up for an instant. The branches of the Hawthorns waver back and forth. The flame in the jar flickers slightly, but it does not blow out. It should remain lit for a good long time.

  “The stars will pierce the darkest night, the moon above will give me sight. Mother bless this simple ground that evil led here may be bound.”

  I stand at the opening to the path that leads back into the woods. I close my eyes and concentrate as hard as I can. In my head I picture them all: the Cricket, my parents, my nana, Emily, Vivek, Ronnie, even Robin. I picture them all in my head as clearly as possible. I let my feelings for them fill me from my forehead to my feet and out to my fingertips. I imagine that they are a white light around me, protecting me from what is waiting out there. Though I go out there alone, I imagine that their light goes with me.

  It’s hard to concentrate with all this noise, this summer’s never-ending cacophony. It’s hard to picture all of them together, to feel each of them, to generate a white protective shell. It’s there for a moment, but then it wafts away like vapors, and I have to draw it back together. I guess it will have to do.

  I place the remaining lavender in my pocket. It brings sleep when burned, but when carried with you allows you to see spirits.

  It’s time.

  I’m about to turn on the path when a piercing scream stops me dead. Somewhere far off in the woods, something cries out. I can’t tell if it’s a scream of joy or pain. The voice rises to a high pitch, then falls back down again, snickering and sobbing as it descends. The wind picks up, and with it the branches of the trees and the brush begin to sway. I wonder if I can really do this.

  The first step is the hardest. I take another step, then another. I pause.

  The woods go silent except for the swishing of the trees in the wind. I step forward again.

  I use the clippers to cut the thorns away, clearing my escape path. When the thing that made that noise finds me, I will be able to move over fairly open ground.

  Somewhere out there in the woods is a screaming thing, a thing with a voice like a child, but also like a wild animal. He could be around any corner. He could be hiding in any bush. For all I know he could be circling around to close in behind me. I try not to think about it, but the more I try the more difficult it becomes. I begin to feel like someone else is running the movie projector in my brain, and I’m locked down in the theater with no way to stop the images that are rolling on the screen. I can see in front of me by the light of the moon, but my brain takes what I see and adds to it, twists it, makes it appear to be more than it is. It lashes out and grabs at the most horrible thing that it can, and try as I might, I can’t get it out of my head.

  I reach out to grasp one of the thorn branches to cut it away, and I feel the cool, smooth skin of it. It feels like the leg of a giant spindly insect. In my brain, I see that I am not standing in the middle of a thorn patch in the woods. Instead, I’m in a nest of giant insects. Thousands of them, all moving slowly in the darkness around me, reaching out with long, spiked legs. They’re waiting until I am far enough away from my friends that I can’t call for help. The projector in my head runs the images in obscenely sharp focus. I hear the projector noise, but then it’s not projector noise; it’s buzzing. The buzzing of the insects. And in my head I can listen so closely, I can hear words in their humming machine.

  Every branch I reach for has segments like a hornet’s leg. It feels like they’re shifting, trying to bend and pull away from me. I grab them tightly and cut them anyway. Every time I cut one, I see it oozing black blood onto the forest floor. Behind me a hundred stumps dangle, each one dripping and wiggling. I can see them, not with my eyes—the moon only shows so much—but in the projector in my head. In my head I see them clearly.

  But I don’t see the rocks or the hole between them.

  My left foot comes down on a large stone on the path in front of me. It slips into the hole, jams in there. I fall forward, and then to the side. I feel something tighten and then snap.

  I try to crawl but—

  my ankle lodged in there—tug—doesn’t move—

  like a—trap has closed—like teeth—

  like metal—I yank—

  twice—three times and—it pulls—

  Rock slides along the bone knub on my inner ankle, ripping off the skin, but I’m free.

  But pain … sick … grit my teeth … sick … pounding my fist … dirt, but the pain … sick … draining … sick … not going away, it isn’t going away, it isn’t going away, it isn’t going away, it isn’t going away—

  I get to my knees, but I can’t see. I trip, fall again.
Sick. I feel so sick. All the white, light, life draining. I can’t concentrate on the light.

  I can’t do this.

  It hurts too much.

  All I can do right now is roll around on the ground.

  I can feel the darkness gathering on all sides.

  It’s as if the moon went out, as if it means to leave me alone out here in the dark.

  Somewhere in my head a small voice, like a little boy’s voice, reminds me that the moon can’t make decisions. It’s not on anybody’s side. That small voice suggests to me that I’ve swum too far below the surface and I’m not seeing things correctly.

  And with that, the moonlight comes back. It was the trees blowing in the wind and leaning out so far that for a moment they took the moon away. The moon hasn’t left me, but she’s fighting with the trees. I can see her. Even with the pain trying to push my eyes closed, I can see her.

  Then I hear a sound that shouldn’t be heard in the woods at night. It’s a sound that might make a person smile in other circumstances. But this time I’m not smiling.

  It’s the sound of a playground, of children running and playing. But these children are doing the impossible. They’re running on either side of me, straight through the thickest part of the thorn patch. They run as if they were in an open field. As they pass they giggle, call out to each other, but I can’t make out any of their words, just their high squeals and tumbling laughter.

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the ring … no, I pull out my ring. I don’t know who it belonged to before, but it’s mine now. I place it on my left thumb. It may be too big for my finger, but on my thumb it’s snug. It could have been anybody’s. It could be a person living or dead, good or downright evil. I shudder and immediately pull it off.

  But it feels better—I feel safer and stronger—with it on my hand, so I slide it back over my thumb. I fidget at it with my middle finger, rubbing at the etching on the outside. I force myself to stand and find that I can keep my balance. But God this hurts. It hurts so much.

  I limp forward toward the Hora House. Along the way I have to stop several times and wait for the pain to subside.

  I reach the spot where the black puddle should have been, but it has long since disappeared during our dry spell, and all that is left is cracked mud.

  As I make my way toward the old ruin, I realize that I’m not really limping anymore. It’s more like I’m dragging my injured foot behind me, hopping with all my weight on the right leg.

  I pass the ancient stone boulders. They remind me of beasts, not rock, not “glacial erratics” left ten thousand years ago. Something older. Dinosaurs. Dragons. Things that slept through the great Ice Age and still sleep. I can see the monsters softly breathing. I imagine that if I step on even the smallest twig, they’ll wake and rise to their feet to see what has finally disturbed them after all these years.

  I pass around the last boulder and into the hollow where the remains of the Hora House lie. Everything here is quiet. No children. No creature crying out. I find a large rock near the open cellar and sit, grateful to take the weight off my foot. I sit and wait.

  I pick a few pebbles off the ground and begin chucking them one at a time into the square wound that the foundation cuts into the earth. At first the silence and the wind calm me, but then I realize it isn’t the wind. I can hear them swirling in the air above, can feel the air sweep across my cheek as they skim by. Together they cry with one voice, and then all at once they dive down into the foundation. The next thing I know, a hand is reaching up from inside the wreckage of the Hora House.

  “Bastard,” I whisper, and chuck the rest of the pebbles in his direction. I stand and move back up the path.

  An arm appears and flexes, and with one push the Pricker Boy leaps up from the hole in the ground. He crouches down near the edge of the hole. He wheezes, he cries, and he chuckles. He sniffs the air for me.

  He is about twenty paces away, and I can make out his outline in the dark, can see the tangle of sharp thorns growing across his back, can see the long spike of his chin pointing down at the earth. He appears to be crouched over and walking on all fours, more like a spider than a boy. His breath is broken and desperate. He finds my scent. He freezes and locks his eyes on me. He lets out a light, rambling whine, a tone that rises and falls and cuts through the darkness toward me.

  I back away and stand among the boulders. I see him rise to his feet. He twists his neck, spreads his fingers wide. He stretches his back and his skin crackles. He wavers back and forth as if trying to get his balance after a long, dry, restless sleep. He treads sideways and falls down on all fours again. His legs buckle and morph and become more like an insect’s than a human’s. He moves on his knuckles, sniffing the air and clicking softly at me.

  I turn to run back down the path, but my foot can’t support my weight, and I end up facedown on the ground. I force myself to stand and try to steady myself, but I only fall on my face again. I can’t walk. I turn around. The thing, the Pricker Boy, is getting closer. He is not bolting toward me; he is not running. With my leg gone, he could catch me in a second. But from the projector in my mind I can see, and I know. He’s been waiting quite some time for me. He’s been waiting since he killed Pete and dumped his body in the pond last winter. And he knows that I’m wounded, and that there is time, plenty of time, left for killing.

  I begin to crawl, using my hand to steady myself as I lurch forward. I must look like an animal crawling along, broken and helpless. Behind me the Pricker Boy is laughing. He knows that my foot was torn apart by a trap in the woods. He knows about traps and what they can do to a leg. He knows from so many years ago, back when he felt the snap and crunch of his father’s trap closing around his own ankle. But he had been saved by the thorns. I will not get the same treatment from them. Even the dead thorns can get at me. The branches that I clipped earlier cut into my palms as I struggle back over the path. The branches are still oozing, and my hands start to bleed. Our blood mixes together. Pain registers somewhere, but I don’t slow down.

  Twice I accidentally throw myself off the path and into the thorns, then scramble back out, my face and arms sliced by the bushes. At one point the creature is less than two yards away. I can hear his stuttered breathing, but he chooses not to pounce. He actually stops and stands. He watches me struggle to drag myself across the ground, cocking his head to one side as if wondering why I’m even bothering to try and get away. He is planning, I can tell, to pull me into the woods, to make me just one more voice in his collection of children’s souls living in the broken-down basement of the Hora House.

  I break into the clearing of the Hawthorns, and I scramble forward to the space in the center of my triangle. He enters the clearing, pauses, sniffs deeply at the air. Overhead the sky rumbles, and the wind rises until I hear the tree branches begin to crack together.

  But he doesn’t step forward. He just stares down at me, his anger rolling over me in waves. The spikes across his body glow orange by the light of the candle. Every inch of him is covered with spikes, even his eyelids, even the palms of his hands.

  “Come get me,” I taunt. “Haven’t you waited for this? Haven’t you always wanted one of us? I’m offering myself to you, offering myself in place of my friends. You can take me back there, lock me into that basement of yours like all the others you’ve taken.”

  He doesn’t move. He walks around the outside of the Hawthorns, staring at the ground, smelling the air.

  I find a fist-sized rock on the ground. I hurl it at the creature, and I must strike him dead-on because I hear a small cry and he jumps back a few steps.

  “You’re weak, aren’t you?” I ask him. “You want me to believe that you’re stronger, but you’re just a frightened little boy, a little boy so easily fooled—”

  He leaps so suddenly that I can’t get out of the way. I’d let down my guard, and he knew it. I try to turn, but he grabs at my wounded ankle. Thorns rip into the already torn flesh. I scream. I kick at
him with my other foot.

  “I’m not afraid of you!” I scream. “I’m not afraid of you! I’m not afraid of you!”

  He lets go for just a moment, leans back and prepares to leap, and that is all the time that I need to push myself off and up—

  Even with my crushed ankle—with the blood, with the cracked bones—up and over without breaking the line of salt and horehound and out of the triangle.

  I roll on the ground, and the pain is there, but adrenaline is driving it away. The Pricker Boy leaps forward, but just as I expected, just as I planned, he hits an invisible wall in the air and is knocked backward. He leaps again, but again is driven back. He howls against his cage, spikes snapping against the invisible wall as he struggles against it.

  I crawl to the bushes and retrieve the gasoline. I get to my feet and face the creature.

  He’s desperate, scrambling in circles, hissing, kicking, throwing himself at me, but he’s locked behind the wall of salt and horehound. He moves faster and faster, struggling so hard that I hear pieces of him cracking, as if he’d gladly break off one of his own limbs to get out of this trap.

  I have to hold my voice clear, hold it steady. I want to shout, but I have to restrain myself or my anger could release him. “The fire of the sun has fed me. The light of the moon has guided me. The strength of wind has driven me. The might of thunder, of storm, I bring to crush thee. The stars in the sky I call down to swarm upon thee.”

  I pour a line of gasoline just outside the boundary of his trap. “The power of Heaven and Earth I hold over thee.”

  He begins to struggle so fiercely that I can no longer see him clearly. His limbs blur, his eyes become white coals smeared into smoking trails of hate. He throws his entire body at me, but all I see are blazing golden trails against the candlelight.

  I can’t help it anymore. I have to scream. “The power of fire I carry with me, and I use it to drive thee away forever!” I light a match and drop it into the gasoline.