Timothy 01: Timothy (6 page)

If I had helped him, he would most likely have made it. Sure, it would have been one hell of a scar on his neck but that would have been a small price to pay. He never uttered another word, but his eyes stayed on mine for the next three hours, never wavering. I was stuck now. I couldn’t leave him. If by some miracle he got up and walked out of here or some other person stumbled upon him and rescued him he would rat me out. Wasn’t I nearly as guilty at this point as Polks, Lyle, and Garrett?

The sun was close to setting and I had not checked in. I was going to have hell to pay for being late, plus I was famished. More than once, I looked around for a big enough rock to finish him off. I was trying to justify that I was going to put him out of his misery, but that wasn’t true. I wanted him out of my misery. Those eyes would not stop watching me in that accusatory way.

I felt a small chill run up my spine the exact moment that Kevin seemed to have left his body, his eyes focused on nothing and he seemed forever frozen in a thousand yard stare. Maybe his departing soul had brushed up against me, I don’t know, back then I was just happy that he wouldn’t be able to get me in trouble. I ran home as fast as my legs would take me, I was terrified that I would end up for the night in those woods with Kevin and Polks. I didn’t sleep much that night or the next few for that matter; I kept dreaming that Kevin was going to show up on my porch with his dead flat eyes and cold presence, demanding an answer. What was I going to tell him?

The cops found his body eight days later. Seems there wasn’t much left to identify him, feral cats had got to his body. The little bastards had stripped him clean of all his meat from what I heard, now that’s something I would have liked to have seen, from a distance. Within a few days of the discovery I was playing in my room when I heard the cops talking to my mom in the living room. I didn’t even realize it at first but with my ear pressed to my door, my bladder had involuntarily loosed, hot piss ran down my leg and onto the rug.

“
Yes ma’am, some of your neighbors said your son frequents the woods where Kevin Thompson’s remains were discovered. We’d just like to ask him a few questions, maybe if he had seen something.”

“
My son hasn’t gone to the woods in over a week.”

‘
Oh shit’ I was thinking, that sounds pretty suspicious to me and I’m not a cop.

“
Is he a suspect?” My mom asked, almost like she was expecting them to reply,

‘
Yes he is public enemy number one.’

Now I know I’m not Johnny damn Appleseed but I’m not Al Capone, either.

“
No ma’am, at this time there are no suspects, we are just trying to gather some information.”

“
Because that thing with the neighbor’s dog was not his fault.”

“
Shut the fuck up, Mom,” I moaned against the door.

“
The dog, ma’am?” The cop asked.

“
I mean, how does anyone call something that small a dog, anyway? Thing wasn’t much bigger than a sewer rat and not much better looking, if you ask me.”

“
The dog, ma’am?” The cop asked again.

“
Oh, that thing,” my mom started up like she had completely forget about what she was talking about. “My Timmy was riding his bike when the rodent darted out in front of him. My poor Timmy almost fell off.”

“
What happened to the dog?” the other cop asked.

“
Deader than a doornail, that thing was. My Timmy ran right over its head and my son is a big boy, crushed its skull right into the pavement. It was pretty grotesque, the thing’s legs were all sticking up in the air, twitched for close to twenty minutes. The whole time the neighbor bitch is yelling at my Timmy and me. The cops actually hauled her away to calm her bitchy ass down. Now if she had a real dog like a Doberman pinscher or something you boys wouldn’t be here trying to pin a crime on my son.”

“
Ma’am, no one is here blaming your son. Like my partner said earlier, we are just trying to see if your son saw anything suspicious while he was out playing.”

“
Like I said, he hasn’t been out in those woods in over a week.”

“
Ma’am, Kevin Thompson went missing eight days ago.”

I could almost hear the audible gasp my mother had produced at the coincidence in time frames. “Well, that means nothing.”

‘
Nice recovery,’ I thought sarcastically. My left leg felt cool as a breeze came in through my window, it was then I noticed the darker wet spot extending from my privates all the way down to my socks.

“
Fuck,” I mumbled. If the cops saw me like this they would just go and haul me off, only the guilty piss themselves.

I could hear my mom coming down the hallway as I frantically ripped my jeans off. I put on the first thing I could get my hands on, that it was Batman pajamas was inconsequential at this point. My mom entered without knocking, which was standard practice—and gave me the once over. Wadded up wet jeans in one hand and wearing pajamas at two in the afternoon, she had her suspicions but luckily she didn’t say anything.

“
There are some policemen here to see you,” she said a little louder than she needed to. “Could you please get up and speak with them?” She turned so that she was facing back down the hallway. “He hasn’t been feeling too good.” Then she turned back to me, I think I saw a hint of fear in her eyes, like maybe she thought I could have had something to do with it. She’d never tell the cops that but things would forever be different between us—I was no longer to be her big teddy bear. From this point on she would always hold me at arm’s length.

And the fucking dog had deserved it, thing nipped me twice. Now I didn’t specifically go hunting the thing down like the neighbor lady said, but I also didn’t swerve to avoid it when it came out to get me for the third time. I’ve got to admit it grossed me out when I crushed its skull but there was also a sense of satisfaction too, watching its brains leak out onto the ground, knowing that it was never going to bite me again. I wasn’t expecting Mrs. Daniels to go quite so ballistic on me; she called me some names I’m still trying to figure out their meaning. By the time my mom figured out what was going on, the dog had just about stopped twitching and Mrs. Daniels was about to become even more volatile.

My mom pretty much sent me home before she jumped into the fray, looking back I don’t think it had so much to do with Mrs. Daniels and the dog, it was more in the vein of ‘if anyone is going to yell at my boy, it is going to be me’. Whatever, I didn’t care all that much, I had put my bike up and gone back into the woods.

“
Son, I know you don’t feel so good,” the first cop said to me.

I nodded, I bet I didn’t look so good either, I was scared almost shitless, which was a good thing because if I crapped myself now that would just about be an admission of guilt. Confession by shit!

“
Could you please tell me where you were on the twelfth? I guess that makes it last Monday,” the thinner of the two cops asked.

“
I… I think I was here,” I answered honestly—who really knows what they were doing more than a week ago?

“
What about earlier in the day, son, before it got dark? The day your friend went missing.”

“
He wasn’t my friend,” I said a little too hastily.

“
But he was in your class, isn’t that right?” The second cop who was by the doorway was beginning to look a little more interested in the proceedings.

“
I guess but, there’s lots of kids in my class,” I said lamely.

“
None that have gone missing, though.” The first cop looked up from his pad.

I could feel more piss dribbling from my dick, luckily my bladder had been flushed mere moments before, unless they stared at my crotch I should have been alright. I started to shudder involuntarily.

“
Look, he’s sick with fever,” my mother said, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. Looking back, I think it was more of a protection for her. If I confessed to something the stigma of her son being a murderer would be stuck on her; that was not something she could abide by. What would her bridge club think? “Unless my son needs a lawyer,
I think that you two should leave until he feels better.”

I watched as the two cops gave each other knowing glances, they knew something was up but neither one would ever return. The cop standing by the door, Officer Franco would die three days later as a petty thief named Wellington Conrad (strange name for a thief, should have been a Congressman) would decide that having a shoot-out with the cops for a whopping seventeen
dollars he stole was infinitely better than spending any amount of time in jail. He got his wish, bleeding out on the street with three shots to the abdomen. He could have potentially been saved if the town’s only ambulance wasn’t busy transporting the dying Franco to the hospital, with a .22 long rifle caliber bullet lodged in his neck. His severed carotid artery pumped blood at a rate that would have dropped an elephant. Apparently, it had been a one in a million shot, Conrad had merely been shooting his gun up in the air trying to dissuade the cops from pursuit. After traveling a little bit over a mile straight up the bullet had been caught ever so slightly by a small breeze which pushed it off its trajectory and straight down into Officer Franco’s neck. He left behind a wife, two young kids and a third on the way. That’s what he got for making me piss my pants. A few months after everything blew over, I snuck out of my house with the sole purpose of going to the house of his widow and breaking out two windows. I hauled ass once I saw the lights turn on and at least one of the brats start to cry. Nowhere in this narrative did I say I was a good person, but the more I say the more I realize maybe just how shitty I truly am.

The second cop, Officer Dunleven, would become increasingly busy as the football player Lyle and his sister went missing at the same time. Polks must have thought he was too great a threat. Then a string of two more kids would never be coming home for Spaghetti Wednesdays. I don’t know what happened to Polks at that point or why he stopped, I can’t imagine that the evil within him was sated. Much like the Hugh(s) in me the evil would need to be fed constantly. Garrett, on the final play of his last game of his senior year, snapped his neck in two places. He’d be sucking smoothies through a straw for the remainder of his days. I never did have the courage later in life to check on Polks or his whereabouts; had suppressed it, in fact, these many long years. But most likely without the backing of Garrett and his muscles he wouldn’t be able to lure much more than a wayward cat into those woods.

***

‘
Dark. Food.’

That startled the shit out of me.

‘
Can you open the door or do I need to show you again?’ I asked Hugh.

‘
Do it! Hungry! So hungry!’

I had to tell myself to think these things out, if he was able to start learning I’d be out of a job and that meant he would redouble his efforts to get to me. As long as I was useful I was alive. Should have played the defensive line; they were the thinkers.

I had been so lost in my story I had not realized when the shooting had stopped but the church was eerily quiet. I would have preferred some noise something that would mask a door I was sure was going to be on loud squeaky hinges. Hugh relinquished almost all motor control on his right arm, it was nearly as easy to control it as it had been before I had been possessed. Maybe I should just choke the hell out of myself and escape from this fucking nightmare. Instead, I pushed the long handle down and pulled the door toward me, it slid open effortlessly and more importantly quietly. Anna’s brown eyes seemed to gather ambient light and shine
at me brightly from a few feet away where she was sitting at a pew, her attention rapt completely on the door I was now entering through.

“
I knew you were still there,” she sobbed quietly. “Nobody believed me.”

I brought my index finger up to my lips, Hugh did not have the knowledge to make a ‘shush’ sound but the imagery still must have been terrifying. I smelled warm piss emanate from her direction, I was well aware of that odor. Hugh lurched over her way, Anna seemed caught between running like a rabbit and fainting like one of those Brazilian goats.

‘
NO!’ I screamed to Hugh. ‘She’s last.’

‘
Eat her!’ Hugh demanded.

‘
Soon my tapeworm friend.’ I began to show him what I thought would happen if we started to munch on our little princess before we took care of the bang sticks. Hugh might have a few lights burnt out on his string of Holiday lights but he was bright enough to understand death.

‘
Can I use my vocal chords?’ I asked. Hugh had no clue what I was talking about. This showing him everything that I needed to do to keep us alive shit was growing old. He released his grip on the entire neck region. Anna grew wide-eyed as my head plunged into my chest, I bet she was hoping I had died. I slowly seized control of the muscles and pulled it back up into a more respectable pose, her chagrin at my unexpected revival was pronounced.

My first attempt at sending air over my rigor induced vocal chords sounded like glass embedded in a cat’s back being pulled slowly over a chalkboard. Anna pissed herself again, that was one healthy bladder and I was looking forward to tearing into it. I thought about going back into the hallway and clearing my throat to get this right, but Anna was under a spell at the moment and if I left now she would surely bolt. I kept pushing air until the bleeding cat glass sound turned to fingernails which in turn became the rough sound of a 40 year smoker who had swallowed small stones. It wasn’t a pleasant or comforting sound but it got my point across.