Blood Lite II: Overbite

by Kevin J. Anderson

  “Bullshit.”

  “You said he kicked you earlier, right?”

  Darren tugged at the waistband of his sweats. “Imagined it. That guy was done. Dead. Finished. Cold. He had that bullet wound.”

  “No blood, though.”

  “Right . . .”

  “So how’d he get outta the river and down the road?” Bobby frowned. “Let’s just go, okay?” He tugged his door open.

  “Can’t.”

  “What?”

  “Tires slashed. At least the front two.” Darren walked over and kicked the rubber with a dull thud. He slumped to his haunches and looked under Bobby’s open door toward the rear. “Got those, too.”

  “D?”

  Darren tugged at his hair again. “What Bobby?”

  “You leave this note in here?”

  “What note?”

  Bobby’s fingers trembled as he held up a slip of paper with dark scribbles on it, scribbles that spelled out: Looks like you’ll have to walk into town. Have fun with Harry, boys. He’s all yours now. His other hand held up a brown wallet.

  “Not mine.”

  Bobby dropped the note and flipped open the wallet. “Belongs to a fella named Harold Francis Beamish.”

  “Lemme see that.” Darren took the wallet, feeling the smooth leather and stitching. “It’s cold . . . like it was wet. I think I saw it on the road earlier, back where you . . .”

  “Hit the stiff?” Bobby slammed his truck door. “This is nuttier than your aunt Lucy, D. What do you think they mean, ‘have fun with Harry?’”

  Darren tossed the wallet back on the truck’s hood. “We’ve gotta get back to town.”

  About a hundred yards away, a rustling noise echoed under the bridge. Bobby’s wide eyes flicked between the wallet and Darren. His mouth opened.

  “It’s Harold Francis Beamish . . . he’s a goddamned zombie.”

  “Bullshit.” Darren said it, but felt the bile rise in his throat, pumped by the maniacal assault of his heart.

  “I’m not sticking around . . . either Beamish gets us or his buddies.” Bobby backed away slowly, turned, and ran, sprinting into the darkness toward the road.

  Rustle.

  A shape shambled closer. The moon cut across a pale face. Darren lowered his head and dug his heels into the dirt like a wind sprint in football practice, taking a right angle away from the stumbling form near the bridge. His chest burned, and his stinking, water-soaked clothes dragged against him, but he made the main road and beat his feet against the asphalt across the bridge. His left knee, the knee with reconstructed ligaments from a vicious chop-block last season howled, and his gait slowed to a crooked, limping jog. Bobby was only a few dozen yards ahead, leaning on his knees. He doubled over and retched onto the pavement.

  “We . . . follow . . . the road . . . into town,” Bobby panted. He wiped his mouth against his flannel sleeve.

  Darren nodded, but his eyes caught the tire marks on the shoulder. “This is where we hit him.”

  “What?”

  “Harold whatshisname.”

  Darren saw the headlights in Bobby’s eyes. A car, behind them. He lowered his shoulder into his friend and lunged, sending both of them into the ditch in a crumpled mass. Brittle grass and twigs scratched and gouged at their exposed skin, and Bobby sat up with a jagged line across his cheek.

  “What the hell did you do—”

  “Shhhh,” Darren pressed a finger against his lips. A vehicle, invisible to the boys in the high grass, zipped by, its tires buzzing against asphalt. They lay in the grass for a moment, both listening. The night had grown colder, and puffs of breath came in little clouds.

  “I wanna go home, man,” Bobby whined.

  “I know . . . I know.” Darren rubbed his sore knee and suddenly snapped his head to one side.

  “What?”

  “Listen,” Darren whispered.

  The sound was faint: a scraping of feet against the road, as though someone dragged two wet and stiff legs across the asphalt, a slow but persistent shuffle in their direction.

  “D . . . I think I peed myself.”

  “It’s river water.”

  “No . . . it’s warm.”

  “God, you’re useless.” Darren shook his head, pushed himself off the ground, and limped toward the road.

  “W—Where you going?”

  Darren glanced back at Bobby with a trace of a smile working on his lips. “That last car sorta gave me an idea . . . I’m going to make sure ol’ Harold stays right in the middle of the blacktop until another moron comes zipping over the bridge. Then, wham”—he slapped a fist into the opposite palm—“Harold’s their problem, and we can get your sorry ass some clean clothes.”

  Dick and Larry

  D. L. SNELL

  “Looks like a guillotine,” Dick observed as he and Larry approached the trapdoor in the woods.

  “It’s a trap,” Larry replied.

  “What kind of trap?”

  “Did you bring the containment unit?”

  “It’s called a Nikon, Larry.” The camera hung around Dick’s neck. “This thing’s got more megapixels than your brain.”

  “Did you bring the ectoplasmic injector?”

  Dick raised an eyebrow. “The turkey baster is in your proton pack, Rick Moranis.” He rhymed the surname with a planet, the one with the o-ring. “Now, what kind of trap?”

  Situated along the Collings Mountain Trail, the cell consisted of two-by-twelve planks and telephone poles, preserved in creosote but weathered and growing lichen nonetheless. The trapdoor, mounted on vertical tracks, hovered above the entrance.

  Larry supposed Dick was right: the door did look like a guillotine. Although he didn’t know how big a guillotine was, exactly. Definitely bigger than a zillion.

  Larry crouched and examined the ground. He walked on his haunches to spots of interest, sniffing fir scales and dirt.

  Dick rolled his eye. “What are you doing, Larry?”

  “Looking for droppings.” He tasted a stick.

  “I don’t see any droppings.”

  “Yeah, you’ve only got one eye.”

  “And it sees just fine, thank you very much. If you can’t tell me what this place is, you’re walking out of here.”

  Larry found something pearly on the ground and picked it up.

  “It’s just a sequin,” Dick said.

  Larry put it in a specimen baggy anyway.

  He went to step into the cell, but the trapdoor cast a shadow over him; it was definitely bigger than a zillion—and he couldn’t even count that high.

  He shuddered and sneaked under the door as quickly as possible.

  In the cell, something had busted the floorboards. Something big. Larry’s nose detected only old wood and pee. Not the smells he’d expected.

  Outside, Dick fingered his digital camera. “I can’t take pictures of this cage, Larry. I don’t think The Current Courier publishes juvenile carvings of pot leaves and the scatological pranks of apes. What’re you doing in there anyway?”

  “Well,” Larry said, retrieving a Tupperware container from his proton pack, courtesy of JanSport. “I took out the bolt that the Forest Service used to deinstall the trapdoor back in the late, uh . . . Middle Ages. Now I’m just laying the bait.”

  “Bait?” Dick asked as Larry opened the Tupperware and scooped up its invisible contents. “Looks like air.”

  “You look like air,” Larry said as he hung the bait on a hook in the ceiling; the hook was cabled to a cotter pin in the trapdoor, so if something pulled the bait, the gate would drop and lock. Larry understood it perfectly.

  “If it’s not air, then what is it?”

  “Ghost turkey.”

  Dick rolled his eye. “I should have written about Table Rock.”

  “No, this’ll make you a journalist, bro—cross my heart.”

  “That’s exactly what you said when we hunted down the infamous Bandage Man of Cannon Beach.”

  “He was rea
l, wasn’t he?”

  “It was Halloween. You punched the kid in the neck.”

  “Yeah, well . . . I went as Chuck Norris; what’d you expect?” Larry took out the ectoplasmic injector and basted the bait. “Anyway, this is better, hope to die, stick a needle in my . . .”

  Dick narrowed his eye.

  “Um . . .”

  “So what kind of monster eats ghost turkey, Larry?”

  “Only one that I know of.”

  “Which one?”

  “Bigfoot’s ghost.”

  “Great!” Dick threw his hands in the air. “So I not only need to believe in Bigfoot, but in ghosts as well?”

  “And ghost turkeys,” Larry added.

  “You know what, Larry?” Dick tapped his foot in the dirt. “You can hitch a ride home with El Chupacabra, comprendo?”

  He started to walk away.

  Larry glanced at the guillotine. “Hey!” he called, lunging out of the cell. “Wait!”

  Dick turned his head, and Larry struggled to find something to say. “What happened to you? You used to love this kind of stuff.”

  “Yeah, Larry, it was all fun and games . . . until someone poked out my eye.”

  Larry blushed. “It was . . . possessed.”

  “It’s called a nervous tic, Larry. And for chrissake, did you have to use Father McKy’s crucifix?”

  “You can always hike up the mountain for your article,” Larry said, changing the subject. “Take pictures of the Applegay Lake.”

  “It’s the Applegate, Larry.” Dick tapped his foot again and shook his head. “You can spend the night here if you want; I’ll pick you up in the morning.” He started to walk away.

  So Larry said, “I’m telling Mom.”

  Dick sighed. After a very long silence, he turned around and crossed his arms. “Just tell me one thing, Larry: have you put any thought at all into how a wooden cell is supposed to hold a ghost? Can’t they just walk through walls?”

  Larry smiled. “Abba cadaver, bro.” He began to cast containment spells on the trap.

  “You hear that?” Larry asked. He wore a brown beard of s’mores and graham-cracker crumbs.

  Dick, with his keen eye, glanced into the darkness beyond the campfire; they had pitched their tents next to the collapsed miner’s cabin, where the trappers once awaited Bigfoot.

  “I don’t hear anything,” said Dick. “Except your heavy breathing.”

  “No,” Larry replied, trying to hear over the creek and the pounding of his heart. “The howling: it’s . . . a mating call.”

  “Wait—ghosts mate?”

  “Duh. Where do you think ghost babies come from?”

  Dick glanced around again, acting worried. “Well, then, let’s put out the fire—it’ll scare off Bigfoot!”

  “Ghosts aren’t a’scared of fires, Dick.”

  “Yeah. Unless they’re ghost fires.”

  Larry stirred the coals with a branch. “Good point . . .” He peered into the silent darkness, his face more and more crestfallen with every uneventful minute.

  He licked the chocolate around his lips, and a sudden memory brightened his eyes.

  “Hey, want to hear a ghost story?”

  Dick shrugged.

  “I heard the trappers actually caught Bigfoot and never told anyone once. They gave him, like . . . a whole barrel of whiskey. I think they had their own still or something.

  “So they got all piss-drunk playing quarters with Bigfoot, and . . . remember those bumper stickers back then about the spotted owls getting endangered?”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Dick said. “‘Save a logger: wipe your ass with a spotted owl.’”

  “Yeah—that’s it! Turns out Bigfoot had one of those bumper stickers on his pickup truck; he was a big-time logger. So he got all drunk that night and . . . did what the bumper sticker said with his ass. What he didn’t know was that the trappers were owl conservationists. So they shot Bigfoot—in the foot.”

  “Mmm. Shoot the only Bigfoot in existence to save a stupid owl. Perfect sense.”

  “Well, it was Bigfoot’s fault,” Larry said, crossing his arms. “Big oaf stepped in his own poop and died of gonorrhea.”

  “And yet no one ever donated his remains to a museum. Interesting.”

  “Well, no, Dick, they shot Bigfoot. They’d go to jail.”

  “Actually, Larry, we don’t have that law. Not in Oregon. Lil Pantry would probably sport pictures of the kill right there next to the lotto winner and the catch of the day. But kill a spotted owl and . . .” Dick shook his hands and went “Ooooo” like a ghost, then laughed at his own joke.

  “You know,” Larry said, “you’re not smarter than I am. You think you are, but you’re not.”

  “Yeah? Prove it.”

  At first Larry couldn’t. Then he said, “I took all those special classes in school and you didn’t, so there.”

  “Hmm, forgot. You’re Momma’s special little boy.”

  “We don’t have the Bigfoot law right now, Dick, you’re right. But back then, yes. I read all about it in The Local Inquirer.” After a second Larry added, “What makes it so hard for you to believe anyway?”

  Dick stared at him for a while with his one eye; he only needed one, he was such a good aim. Finally he opened his mouth to say something. Bigfoot howled instead.

  Dick startled.

  Larry did, too, but in an instant a smile stretched across his s’mores-covered face. “Come on, we need to . . . the trap!” He grabbed his proton pack and unzipped the pouch.

  Dick tried to settle in his chair. “Probably just a coyote, Larry. They can sound like that—like they’re screaming.”

  “Have you seen my EMP recorder?” Larry asked, rummaging through his bag.

  “Your what?”

  “My EMP rec—my electronic voice phenomenal, uh . . . my press-record thingy! For ghost words!”

  “You left it in the car.”

  Larry growled and flung Scooby Snacks out of his pack, trying to stop the tears from boiling over. It was okay; he didn’t need the recorder. He dropped the bag. “Let’s just—where’s the flashlight?”

  “I’ve got it,” Dick said.

  “And your camera?”

  “You mean containment unit? It’s right here.” The Nikon hung around his neck.

  “Well, come on!” Larry started running up the trail toward the trap, emitting a high-pitched “Eeeeee!”

  Dick stood and folded his chair. “I’m not going anywhere, Larry. And neither are you. We’re going home.”

  Larry stopped, and his jaw dropped. At first he didn’t understand his brother’s reaction. His mother had always said understanding people wasn’t his strong suit. But this he finally understood.

  “You’re just a’scared,” he said.

  Dick barked. “I am not.”

  “Are too. You’re a’scared of me. Always have been.”

  “Wait . . . afraid of you?”

  Larry crossed his arms.

  “Look,” Dick said, “I’m pretty sure this isn’t what Dad meant when he said to humor you and play along. I’ve been doing that my entire life, Larry, and I’m sick of it. So pack your things and let’s—”

  “No. You can’t make me.”

  “Larry . . .”

  “How about you just tell Mom why you let me chase after Bigfoot’s ghost all by myself.”

  Before Dick could stop him, Larry dashed up the trail.

  “Damn it, Larry—get back here!”

  No more than thirty feet, darkness fell black and complete. Larry stumbled forward over roots and ferns, crying hot tears and gritting his teeth. That Dick!

  Suddenly he ran into something solid and hairy. It clawed at his face, and he shrieked.

  “Larry?!” A flashlight beam followed him, illuminating just far enough for Larry to see the trail.

  The thing that had scratched his face loomed over him: just a mossy old tree.

  Larry scrambled onward to the trap, then ran ou
t of Dick’s light and hid behind a Douglas fir.

  “I can see you,” Dick said.

  Larry tried not to move.

  “You’re squatting in poison oak.”

  “You are.”

  “That’s enough, Larry. We’re going home.”

  “Shhh—you’ll scare the ghost away!”

  “Goddamn it, Larry, there is no such thing as Bigfoot’s ghost!”

  Larry picked at some leaves that were brushing against his crotch—until he remembered that Dick had called them poison oak. Larry liked oaks, but he wasn’t sure about poison.

  Dick stepped closer and shook the light at him. “You really want to know why I don’t believe in this stuff, Larry? You really want to know?”

  Larry said nothing and picked at the leaves.

  “Remember Dad’s African ghost knives?”

  “Yeah, of course. They kill ghosts.”

  Dick chuffed. “‘But not just African ones,’” he said, quoting their father. “You know I googled those knives for an article, Larry?”

  “The one you wrote for Wikip—”

  “Doesn’t matter where I published it; sometimes you write just for the love. Point is, there’s no such thing as African ghost knives. Dad lied.”

  Larry’s mouth hung open. “This isn’t like . . . that joke you played on me, where you said Dad really isn’t on vacation forever?”

  Dick shined the light in Larry’s eyes, and Larry quickly dried his tears.

  “Yeah, Larry.” Dick moved the light back down. “I’m just joking you. Sorry.”

  Larry let out a deep breath, and Dick probed the darkness with his light; the Bigfoot trap cast a giant shadow.

  “Look, Larry, there is no ghost. Let’s just—”

  In the woods, something moaned.

  Dick stiffened. “What’s—?”

  “Shhh!” Larry scanned the darkness for ghost orbs. Didn’t see any. And when he heard the branch snap, he knew they weren’t dealing with a ghost.

  He jumped to his feet and yelled, “Go!”

  Larry ran into Dick. Their limbs entangled. Dick’s eye got poked.