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