Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories (22 page)

He kept pedaling the bike, pedaling furiously, but he twisted in the seat to look behind, to get a good look at them this time.

Four of them.

The oldest of them was a big, bluff blonde boy with a buzz cut wearing a muscle shirt. He looked maybe 14 or 15. Flanking him on either side were a younger boy and girl, maybe 12 years old. They both looked scrawny. The boy was emaciated, and the girl looked filthy.

Just ahead of them, on a smaller bike, was a boy of about eight. This boy glared at Scott, and his whole body radiated malice and anger that shimmered around his form like a heat haze.

Their eyes met, and the little boy scrunched his face into a horrible grimace, lurched his bike out of the parking lot.

He was followed in quick succession by the other three, all of them riding pell-mell along the side of the road, their bikes swaying back and forth with the force of their pedaling.

Scott gulped his heart up into his throat, and he flung himself back around in the seat, worked his legs furiously. Over the sounds of the traffic, over the sounds of his bike and his own racing heart, he heard the reassuring
clickety-clackety
of the baseball cards in his spokes, and he thought of his dad, his mom.

He thought of the two quarters in his pocket.

If there’s a problem . . .

How he might just have to use them.

This made him angry, gave him a spectacular burst of adrenalized energy.

The bike shot down Lindbergh, and Scott realized that he didn’t know exactly where he was going.

But he knew he had to get away from her.

Away from
them
.

***

Halfway to Velvet Freeze, the fear, the electric exhilaration began to ebb, and Scott’s muscles felt flabby and exhausted. His lungs ached, his thighs burned, and his arms were sore from clenching the handlebars so hard.

The cool morning had given way to a relentless summer day. The sun, hanging directly overhead now, was unshaded by cloud or tree, and its heat was sapping. Scott could feel it in the air, radiating up from the asphalt of the road, reflected back at him from the silver-stream of cars whooshing by.

He had to stop, had to take a breather.

Veering farther off the road, the bike left the narrow margin of the shoulder onto a scraggly verge of weeds and trash that declined shallowly into a gulley. This, in turn, emptied into a concrete drainage ditch that disappeared into a corrugated metal pipe under the road.

From this vantage, a little safer distance from the road and its relentless traffic, Scott looked for the kids, the woman, the police; he wasn’t precisely sure which.

No one followed him.

He could barely make out the sign of the store in whose parking lot he’d been hit, far in the distance, lost in the gleaming heat.

But there was no one following him, no police sirens, no screaming women.

Just hot asphalt and a gleaming snake of cars curling away in both directions.

He took a deep breath, let out a sigh, collapsed atop his bike. His legs felt rubbery and he really, really wanted to go home.

He leaned his head against the handlebars, and the cool metal felt good against his pounding skull, his hair sweat-plastered to it.

When he opened his eyes, he saw immediately that he was missing something.

Somethings.

His bags. The one with the candy and the one with his paperback.

Gone.

He’d looped them through the handlebars before he left Village Square, but they must have been knocked loose when the lady hit him.

If he wanted them, he’d have to go back.

Shit!

The curse came from his lips so quickly, so unexpectedly that he actually slapped a hand over his mouth in surprise.

With that, he started to giggle.

He couldn’t go back. If he went back for his stuff, he’d surely be stopped by the lady . . . or even the police.

Or even
, he thought,
those kids . . .

And that stopped the giggling cold.

No, he couldn’t go back.

He’d simply lost his purchases for the day. He was out about a buck-fifty, but that was that. He’d just have to eat it. He hoped his father wouldn’t ask him what he’d done with the money, because he’d have nothing to show for it.

As he contemplated this, he raised his face to the sun, felt like crying.

He rode it out, though, until it passed.

He simply would not cry. He was too old for Underoos and “Scotty,” and he was far too old for crying.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw it, across the street.

Velvet Freeze.

Orange Sherbet
, he thought.
At least I can get some orange sherbet, then head home.

Just up ahead was an intersection, so he walked the bike up to the traffic light, pushed the button, feeling a little light headed.

The traffic slowed to a stop, and the
Walk
sign across the street lit up. Scott still looked both ways, as he’d been taught, rode the bike across the first two lanes, paused to make sure the sign was still illuminated, moved quickly across the remaining two lanes to the other side of the highway.

There, just a few buildings up, was the Velvet Freeze.

They were there, too.

Scott’s foot slipped off the pedal, and the bike skewed to the side, stopped.

All four of them, the flattop kid, the scrawny one, the filthy little girl.

And the small, angry one.

Scott could see them clearly from this distance, could see their eyes, how they followed him.

He reacted instinctively.

The bike was already partially turned back toward the light, so Scott stepped on the pedals, made a hard turn into the intersection.

Just as his bike jumped down off the curb, the
Walk
sign winked out, and the orange hand lit up.

Don’t Walk.

Scott ignored it, lowered his head, pushed hard on the pedals, launched across the road.

As he did, he heard “Scott! Wait . . .
don’t!”

It was the older kid, the flattop, he knew it without looking. The boy’s voice rose above the idling traffic, the sound of the wind in Scott’s ears.

How does he know my name?

But Scott didn’t stop.

He was barely across the second two lanes when the light changed, and the cars nosed forward.

Pulling up on the handlebars, he brought the bike’s front tires up, jumped the curb, gained the shoulder on the side he’d just come from moments ago.

His breath was harsh in his ears, and sweat trickled the length of his back, dripped into his eyes. He swiped a hand absently across his brow, turned to look across the road.

There, through the whirr of the passing cars, he could see them, clustered at the other side, glaring at him fiercely, so anxious to get to him they seemed to vibrate in the seats of their bikes.

Scott didn’t wait, he pushed off down the side of the road, but this time followed the ditch into the drainage culvert, carefully navigating the steep hill with his feet on the ground rather than in the pedals.

“Scott!” he heard the boy cry again, but he didn’t wait, didn’t look back.

At the bottom, a thin trickle of water snaked across the cracked and jumbled surface of the culvert, and he had to dodge all sorts of debris—bricks, tumbled shopping carts, and old tires.

He was fairly sure where this channel went, surfacing in some common ground in a neighborhood just a few blocks away from his own. He’d simply follow it out, then head home.

Forget the book, forget the candy, forget the god-damn orange sherbet,
he thought.
At least I still have my bike.

As this thought settled over him, he steered the bike through a gentle turn, came around the bend . . .

. . . and saw the four riders, spread out across the ditch there before him.

How?
was all he could think, and he jerked the bike hard to the left, went partially up the inclined concrete banks, then turned completely around, back down the wall, and retreated. The
clickety-clack
of the baseball cards in his spokes echoed across the walls of the ravine.

“Stop!
Please!”
came the voice, but Scott was operating purely on fear now. It had been a helluva day, with the high of getting his new bike and the low of getting hit by a car.

And in between, this . . . whatever
this
was.

Being followed around by four kids he didn’t know, yet somehow knew him.

It was too much, so Scott simply fled.

Darting in and out between debris, returned to where the drainage ditch passed under the highway. A wide, angular concrete apron led up to the mouth of the metal pipe that opened there; a mouth filled with shadows and dribbling spilth.

He’d have to go in there,
through
there to escape them.

Scott slid to a stop.

Somehow, impossibly, the four were there ahead of him, grouped across the apron, blocking him from racing into that terrifying maw.

Not knowing what else to do, where else to go, he simply stood, one foot on the ground, the other on a pedal, the bike leaning.

He breathed heavily, and fear wrapped icy arms around his stomach, squeezed.

“Scott,” said the flattop boy. “Finally.”

“What do you want?” Scott yelled, his voice cracking in exhaustion and dread.

The older boy rode his bike off the lip of the drainage pipe, came to a stop right beside Scott. The other three followed, slowly, forming a semi-circle around him, as much to be near him as to block him from fleeing.

“We’re here to help, Scott,” Flattop said. “We’re here to take you home.”

From this close, Flattop’s face looked smooth and kind, and Scott found some of his fear sloughing away, dissipating.

“Who are you? Did my parents send you?”

“No, your parents didn’t send us,” Flattop smiled. “We just knew to be here. It’s kind of like our job.”

“Our job, yeah,” the angry little one sneered in agreement.

“Shh,” Flattop said, without anger. “He still doesn’t know.”

Scott frowned in confusion. “I don’t know what?”

Flattop’s eyes shaded momentarily.

“That you’re dead, kid.”

Scott stiffened, his fingers tightened on the handlebars. “You mean you’re gonna . . . ”

“No, we’re not gonna
do
anything to you, Scott,” Flattop said. “You’re already dead. You got hit by a car, remember?”

“Yeah . . . so?” he said. “How can I be dead? I’m right here.”

“No,” Flattop said, and his tone was firm but sad. “You’re back there.”

And suddenly, they were.

There was no
pop!,
no flash of light or gaudy theatrics.

In that instant, they were not in the culvert anymore, but under the bright, hot sun in the parking lot of the store.

The young lady in the short, black skirt was there, too, still screaming.

The car was there, with its crumpled hood.

As was the twisted wreck of his bike. Scott stared at the baseball cards his father had helped him clip to the bike earlier. One was missing altogether, and the other three were crumpled and torn, splashed with red.

And there, laid out in front of them—in front of
him
—was the twisted wreck of Scott.

His body lay curled on the pavement near the bike, one hand tucked beneath, one hand with bloody knuckles extended over his head. His legs were thrust out, and he noticed one of his shoes was gone, exposing his striped tube sock.

His shirt was rucked up, and his white, white belly was cut and scraped.

A pool of glistening ink spread from beneath his body, as if the asphalt beneath it were melting in the overbearing sun. He saw the glint of dark red, the strange dent in the curve of his head from which it flowed.

All of this was confusing and distressing. He could plainly see the body there
—his body!—
yet, here he was, standing with his bike, neither of them damaged.

Still the woman screamed and screamed.

“Is that . . .
me?”
he croaked.

Flattop’s smile was thin and severe. “Yes.”

Tears filled Scott’s eyes. “I don’t believe you. I can’t be dead. I’m right here. That’s not me!”

As if on cue, the small, angry kid moved his bike forward, nearer to Scott. He was smiling, ferocious and determined. He stopped right beside Scott, reached out and touched him, gently, with one finger.

That one, small touch—the boy’s tiny finger tapping against Scott’s chest—exploded through Scott’s consciousness like a detonation. Hundreds of sensations scoured over him, a formication like a million stinging ants crawling over his skin.

A constellation of pain illuminated every nerve in his body. He felt bones within his arms and legs shattering, the pain like supernovas bursting inside him.

He experienced the curious sensation of his skull quite literally splitting, and felt something vital leaking out. Liquid pattered across his shoulders, rained to the ground, spattered the tops of his sneakers.

Scott collapsed, fell to his knees.

As he did so, he looked up, saw that the younger two riders—the girl and the other boy—had dismounted and had come to stand before him.

The boy was emaciated, an articulated skeleton. His hair was wispy, no-colored. His skin was the unhealthy yellow of jaundice, and his eyes were sunken into bruised hollows that fell deeper than his collapsed cheeks.

He reached one bony hand out, touched Scott’s sternum, just where the angry boy had touched him.

Scott’s stomach twisted on itself, and he vomited a slurry of nearly colorless liquid, splashing onto the pavement and mixing with the spreading pool of blood coming from the body.

More disturbingly, he let loose his bladder, his bowels, felt the warmth of this soak into his underwear, trickle down his pants legs. Its smell rose to his nostrils, already clogged with the flat, metallic smell of his own blood, and he was momentarily embarrassed.

The boy stepped back, and his sister, a twin perhaps, stepped forward, reached out with a filthy, scabby hand to also touch him.

As the slight pressure of her finger faded, Scott felt his body swell, his gut expanding, his limbs puffing. He looked at his hand, propping him up against the pavement, and watched it inflate, the fingers splitting like sausages, the flesh beneath rising, then putrefying, bubbling, running like soft butter.