The Bottom Feeders and Other Stories (14 page)

“
I left my pole. I want it
back…” I didn’t think before adding, “asshole.”

He looked at me in silence. The blood sucked
out of his face, and his mouth hung open slightly. “Fine,” he
eventually said. “Fine. And I’ll make sure that dead guy is still
there before I call the cops. No problem.” His voice trembled at
that boundary between anger and tears, that special emotional
cocktail unique to adolescents. He turned and walked away, lost in
the mass of students laughing and slamming their lockers in the
hallway.

The phone rang after dinner that night, and
Mom answered. Five minutes later she stood in the doorway of my
bedroom with arms crossed. I paused the game and met her grey gaze,
and I squirmed in the gravity of that moment.

“
Dennis, that was Joel’s
mom.” She uncrossed her arms and sat down on the corner of my bed.
“Joel didn’t come home after school today.”

I thought about the argument in the hallway.
In my mind’s eye, I saw the pond, the body lying in wait just at
the edge of the dark water, and the rotting hand opening as I crept
closer. My stomach deflated, cast aside like an old balloon. I knew
where Joel went, but the rational, logical part of me still wanted
to forget about the dead pond and pretend he was safe at home.

“
His parents want to know
if you have any idea where he is.”

“
No.” I broke her gaze and
searched the pile of laundry on the floor across the room. “No, I
don’t really have any idea.”

“
Where were the two of you
on Saturday?”

My neck was hot now, and sweat tingled under
my arms.

“
Dennis?” She rose from my
bed, but felt miles away from me.
“Just riding around,” I lied. “We just rode around.”

Joel wasn’t at school the next day, but the
rumors flowed freely. I walked in the fog, struggling to pay
attention to anything the teachers said, breaking two reeds in
band, and dropping my tray at lunch. After lunch the pressure
building in my chest became too much. I told my English teacher
that I needed to see the principal before fifth period. He called
the police.

Mom and I rode together, following the squad
cars through the winding gravel pathways in Greenwillow Cemetery. A
red Huffy rested against an old junk pine. The police, a few city
cops and three or four sheriff’s deputies, waded into the grass and
ruined trees around Potter’s Pond. Aside from his bike and my
fishing pole, they didn’t find any sign of Joel. I shook at Mom’s
side, broken in my chest because I had sent him back to that place,
alone, in the late afternoon. Elroy Jantz’s words, “…they’re still
hungry…” rattled in my skull.

I begged her to bring me back the next day,
let me skip school. She consented—Joel and I were close, and she
heard the fear on my quivering voice. The sheriff’s department
brought a small boat and the hooks they use when dragging a river.
I knew what that meant, but tried to avoid the thoughts.

They found his body that afternoon. Mom and
I were held on the other side of the yellow tape, but cries and
shouts made the announcement for us. I squirmed from Mom’s grasp,
darted under the tape and through the gap that the police had
opened in the fence. The officers stood around, one of them
kneeling on the ground, examining two bodies. Between the officers’
legs I caught a snatch of Joel’s face and his arm. His swollen,
too-pale flesh was covered with pink marks—torn patches from cuts
or scrapes, places where his skin had broken open. The other body
was covered, but one arm hung out from underneath the plastic—a
horrible arm ending in a slick, rotting hand—just like the body
we’d found a few days before.

One of the police officers saw me and pushed
me back towards the fence, but as I backpedaled, squirming against
the push toward the cemetery, I overheard the deputies as they
discussed how a body would usually float for a few days after it
fills with air, but something held Joel’s body under. When they
pulled it from the murk, the other corpse came too—the corrupted
body of a man wearing the strips and tatters of an old, black suit.
A cheap suit like something you’d pick up at the DAV. The decaying
hands of that body had been wrapped around Joel’s ankles, locked
tight; it had lured Joel closer, just as I felt drawn on Saturday,
hooked him, and pulled him under for the hungry bottom feeders.

Acknowledgements

“
Everything in Its Place” ©
2009 first appeared in
10Flash
, edited by KC
Ball.

“
In Hollow Fields” © 2009
first appeared in
Return of the
Raven
, edited by Maria Grazia
Cavicchioli

“
Tesoro’s Magic Bullet” ©
2009 first appeared in
Nossa
Morte
, November 2009.

“
A Plague from the Mud” ©
2008 first appeared in
Monstrous
, edited by Ryan C.
Thomas.

“
Care and Feeding of the
Old Flat Mile” © 2009 first appeared in The Black Garden, edited by
Christopher Allan Death.

“
The Eyes Have It” © 2009
first appeared as an audio podcast at
Well
Told Tales
.

“
Grim Adaptations” © 2009
first appeared in
Dead Bait
(Severed Press).

“
Bait Worms” © 2008 first
appeared in
Niteblade Fantasy and
Horror
, edited by Rhonda
Parrish.

“
The Surgeon of An Khe” ©
2009 first appeared in Absent Willow Review.

“
The Bottom Feeders” © 2008
first appeared in Cemetery Moon #3, edited by Chris
Pisano