Back From The Dead

Chapter Nine

All four boys were standing around the bum, peering down at him when Rebecca Watkins showed up.

“Okay, what happened?” she asked. She shouldered her way into the circle of guys and gasped when she saw the bum’s condition. “Oh my God, what have you guys been beating him with?”

It was the following afternoon and they’d set on the bum shortly after arriving at Scott’s house directly from school. They’d headed straight to the guest house, flipped a quarter, then started the game. Steve first, then Scott.

“What the hell do you think?” Steve said. There was blood spattered on his face and chest. He was rubbing his swollen, bruised knuckles. “No weapons, just our fists and feet. That’s the rules.”

Gordon and Steve had headed to Scott’s house straight from school and gotten into the game the minute they entered the guest house. Two minutes later, Scott placed a panicked phone call to Rebecca, telling her to get the hell over to the house now. He wouldn’t have called her if he didn’t trust her; she’d known about the past wilding incidents in Philly and Harrisburg and he’d told her about their abduction of the homeless man a few days ago. Her only concern was that she didn’t want him to get caught.

Rebecca knelt on the floor near the bum’s cracked and bleeding head. The man was in worse shape than ever. Not only was his face a swollen, bleeding mass, his right eye was ruptured and there appeared to be a crack in his forehead. Scott could see the white of shattered bone and the thick jelly-like substance of brain matter filling the cavity of the wound. “Well, if you guys wanted to keep him alive all week, I think you’re going to be out of luck.”

“What do you mean?” Scott barked.

“He’s fucking dying, you nitwit!” Rebecca stood up.

“What the hell do you mean he’s dying!” Scott grabbed Rebecca by the arms and was about to shove her against the wall when Gordon and Steve intervened. Gordon grabbed Scott and held him back.

“Get your fucking hands off me!” Rebecca shouted.

“Come on, man,” Gordon said, holding Scott back. After some shuffling around, in which Gordon and Steve kept Scott and Rebecca separated, Gordon and David continued talking Scott down from his anger. “She knows what she’s talking about, man, she’s done all the First Aid courses at the Rec Center and shit. Come on, chill out.”

Scott let go of Rebecca. They glared at each other. “Sorry,” Scott muttered.

“Fuck!” Rebecca rubbed her upper arms where Scott had grabbed her.

Steve motioned to the bum lying on the floor. The bum was unconscious but breathing. His breath came in slow, bubbling rasps. “You said he’s dying. There’s no way to save him?”

“Not without taking him to a hospital, and they’re probably not going to be able to save him either,” Rebecca said. She looked at the dying bum. “His head is bashed up. You sure you didn’t hit him with a rock or something?”

“No,” Scott said. No use in telling Rebecca that the guy had been slammed in the face repeatedly by fists and feet for the past few days. She knew that. “I didn’t realize that if you hit somebody repeatedly and hard enough, you’ll eventually break their skull.”

“Well no shit! Welcome to Human Anatomy 101!”

There was awkward silence for a moment as Rebecca crouched down and visually examined the bum again. She picked up his left wrist and took his pulse.

“Well?” Scott asked.

“Pulse is weak. His breathing is shallow. See how he’s breathing? Hear that bubbly sound?”

The boys nodded. Rebecca continued. “The bones in his face are so broken they’re creating a problem for his nasal cavities. He’s probably bleeding down into his esophagus. Also, see that purple stuff there in that cut? Looks like jelly?”

Steve answered; he sounded hesitant. “Is that his brains?”

“That’s singular. And yes, it’s his brain. It’s swelling. It’ll probably fill the wound and then he’ll be dead in an hour, maybe less.”

“Damn.” Scott turned away from the group, clearly mad at this latest turn of events.

Rebecca stood up. “You asked me on the phone if I could help him. I can’t. He’s dying. You should finish him off as soon as possible.”

Gordon traded a glance with Scott. “We could do it now.”

“One more blow to the head should do it,” Rebecca said.

Scott exchanged a look with Gordon, then all three boys looked at her. The grim realization of what had to be done seemed to be evident in their faces. “Okay,” Scott said. He moved forward to escort Rebecca toward the door. “Thanks. And listen,” he said as he ushered her outside. “I’m sorry for blowing up at you like that.”

They were standing outside the guest house now. Rebecca lowered her guard slightly. “Okay, but don’t wig out on me like that again.”

“I won’t. Scout’s honor.” Scott began to walk Rebecca down the stone path that carved its way through his immense back yard to the back deck of the house. “And listen, I appreciate you coming out here so quick. We just…I guess we never thought it would…”

“End so quickly?” She stopped and looked at him. There was something in her face that was so damned sexy to Scott. He kissed her once then hung back, waiting for a reaction. Her mouth turned up in a slight smile. “Bastard.”

Scott grinned.

Rebecca’s features became serious again. “Seriously, Scott. You still going to do what you talked about? You’re gonna bury him in the woods, right?”

“We’ve got that all figured out, just like we talked about it.” He’d told Rebecca about burying the bum in Zuck’s Woods. He didn’t tell her about their plans to try resurrecting him via black magic and bringing him back to the guesthouse so they could beat on him some more. She’d really think they were seriously deranged.

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah.” Scott put his arm around Rebecca’s shoulders and led her to the back deck. “Trust me, we got it all figured out.”

“Okay, just remember,” she said as they mounted the steps of the porch. “I have no knowledge of what you guys are doing here.”

“Of course not. You and I were in my car cruising around in York County the night that bum disappeared.”

“Exactly.”

“And Gord and Steve were at the Reading outlets.”

“Damn right they were.”

They looked at each other again and then Rebecca turned to look at the guest house. She looked grim. “Seriously though, Scott…if that guy wasn’t such a…you know — ”

“A worthless no nothing homeless nigger?”

Rebecca gasped, then looked at him in irritation. Scott grinned.

“I can’t believe you said that!” Rebecca said.

“Okay, I’m sorry.” Scott put his arm around her and ushered her gently across the deck and into the kitchen. He closed the sliding glass doors behind them.

When Scott stepped outside fifteen minutes later, Steve, David, and Gordon were on the deck sitting in the lawn chairs. They looked over at Scott as he came outside.

“Well?” Gordon asked.

“Rebecca’s still cool,” Scott said. He sat down at the bar his parents had erected on the deck. “She thinks he might live another day at the most, probably not much longer than that. He’ll most likely die tonight, though.”

“So we’re still going to do it?” Gordon asked.

“Yeah,” Scott said. “I must be crazy for going along with this, but…” He shook his head. “What can it hurt?”

Last night and today at lunch, they’d talked about the burial site. Steve was convinced Gordon’s spell hadn’t worked on the rabbit because animals had no souls. Gordon asked him to explain that and Scott did the honors. “God made man in His image and breathed life into him, giving him a soul,” he’d explained. “The Bible doesn’t say anything about God giving animals souls. That’s why it didn’t work.”

It made sense. By the end of lunch they’d convinced Gordon that it was at least worth a try to bury the bum at the spot. Steve asked how long they would have to wait. Gordon answered, relying on his dim memory of his scant read of that passage in the book Count Gaines had given him. “It should happen overnight,” he said. “If we bury him at nightfall he should come back the following morning.”

“So we’ll have to camp out there at night,” Steve suggested.

“Or get there real early in the morning,” Scott ventured.

Now Gordon got to his feet. A nervous twinge of dread coursed through him. Might as well get this over with. “I say we do it. We can have him in the ground and be back here by midnight.”

The boys eyed each other warily. Scott nodded. He turned to Gordon. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

The boys stood up and then slowly headed to the guest house. Before they stepped inside, however, each boy headed to the utility shed that sat catty-corner from the guest house. Scott unlocked the padlock with a key on his key ring. The boys reached inside and each of them grabbed a different gardening tool — shovel, spade, hoe, pick. Then, as if they had a singular purpose, they headed toward the guest house and stepped inside.