Toddlin’

1

“You’re dead,” three-year-old Michael said.

“Na-unh!”

“I got you!” He held up a complicated construction of red, blue, and yellow colored blocks, that, when you thought about it, had a design as universal as any machine. A long pointed shaft, a handle grip, and a place to rest your finger. Michael wiped wispy bangs of blond hair from his eyes, and smiled. He pointed his “gun” at his older brother, J.J. and expressed an equally universal sound effect, that of a major explosion from a small gentle mouth.

J.J., with a fuller mane of the same shade of blond hair, tilted his head back, and closed his eyes. He fell backward onto the carpet. Michael dropped his weapon, and pounced. J.J. grunted. “Michael, stop!”

The youngest child grinned wildly, a low-growl of laughter machine-gunning from his throat as he rolled across his brother. They completed two revolutions across the floor, before a lower voice announced a warning, “Boys! Settle down.”

Michael popped his head up, and saw his daddy walking in the front door. He jumped to his feet, and ran on light feet through the room.

“Daddy!!”

Stephen bent down, and scooped his son into his arms. Michael wrapped his tiny legs around his waist and his arms tightly around his neck. They held the embrace for a few moments, and then the boy wriggled loose. Stephen set him back on the floor, and announced in his whimsical three-year-old speech pattern, “Daddy, I gots a gun.”

He displayed the makeshift weapon proudly. Stephen rolled his eyes, and nodded. He hadn’t resigned himself to the fact that his boys were prone at such a young age to create weapons, especially guns, and hoped to wipe out that particular bent from their playtime.

“Hey, J.J. Bad!” he called to his oldest son.

The tow-headed lad didn’t look up from his blocks, but voiced his displeasure at the nickname. “My name is J.J., Dad. Not J.J. Bad.”

“I don’t think I should call you J.J. Dad,” Stephen countered. “I’m Dad around here.”

“No … not J.J. Dad! I’m just J.J.!”

“Okay, Just J.J.”

“No …!” the boy protested again, finally looking up at his father with a pained expression in his wide eyes. Stephen marveled again that his two boys could have been so beautiful to look at. Pure blond hair, vivid blue eyes, and fair skin. J.J., in particular, had large eyes, and a pale rim of white surrounding the pupil, that added an extra intensity to them. People had always commented on that feature.

“Come up here and say hello to your dad!” Stephen invited. J.J. stood, still looking with fervent concentration at his invention-in-progress, and walked to his dad. He wrapped one arm around his legs, and then sat back on the floor to continue his project.

Stephen set his briefcase down, and began extracting his daily objects from pockets: keys, sunglasses, iPod, and phone onto a common shelf that originally began its designated life as a depository for his things. Over the last few years, that shelf had attracted with magnetic proportions things that belonged to every individual in the house. Why on earth were there broken toys, cast-off rubber bands, and wrappers without any candy in them up there?

“Hi, honey,” his wife, Beth, called from the kitchen.

“Hey, babe,” he responded. A wild screech behind him made Stephen turn his head.

The boys struggled in a tug-o-war over a lengthy set of blocks. Michael let go, and smacked his oldest brother on top of his head. J.J. scrunched his face up in pain and extreme displeasure, and ran to his daddy.

“Daddyyyy! Michael hit me!” He held his head for emphasis.

“Don’t hit, Michael. Now, hug your brother and say you’re sorry.” Stephen left the brothers to amend this latest infraction of house rules, and entered the kitchen.

Beth stood at the oven, dressed casually in exercise shorts, and a t-shirt. She wore her hair short, with natural and abundant curls surrounding her head like a halo. She smiled when she saw her husband, and further greeted him with a kiss and embrace.

“How was your day?” she asked.

“Work day was fine, but my drive home was weird—”

(“J.J., that’s my toy!” echoed from the next room …)

—and I still haven’t shaken it off.” He leaned against the kitchen sink as he began describing his drive home.

Beth listened for a few moments, and then put down her spatula. “And they were just glaring at you? You didn’t honk your horn at them, did you?” she asked warily.

“No, but I wanted to. I just didn’t understand why they were pacing me like that. They had to be gang members.”

 “Just because they were minorities, doesn’t mean they were in a gang. That’s profiling, honey.”

“Five of them crowded in a car, like that?”

“I’m sure five people have never been seen in a car at the same time, before.”

Stephen frowned. “That’s funny, Beth.”

“I’m not trying to make fun of you, but I just want you to see that not everything is gang related. You’re probably being paranoid.”

Stephen shrugged his shoulders, and left the kitchen. He saw his boys in a huddle on the floor. He sat down next to them, and stretched his neck and spine. It cracked comfortably from a long day at work. Absently he gazed out the front window at the fading daylight. A little while till dinner, and then the nightly ritual of bathing and teeth-brushing for the boys.

A time yet, to play with his little guys.

For the next half hour, Stephen lost himself in an improvisational adventure inspired by every fleeting and changing thought his ADHD-prone boys could come up with, from building a far-reaching tower of blocks to the ceiling, to a superhero game of chase, tag, and chase some more. More often than not, he was the bad guy, while little scrawny J.J., and slightly smaller Michael, wrestled him to the ground. Stephen took turns one at a time of lifting each boy into the hair above him, lying prone on his back. The kids kicked their legs wildly behind them, waving their arms, pretending to either fly, or attempt escape from the villain’s vile clutches. After each turn, they chorused together, “Again, Daddy!” After several repetitions each, Stephen finally waved a hand, and slowly stood to his feet. The boys begged for more.

“No, go on a play for a few more minutes, guys. Dinner’s almost ready.”

“No!” J.J. declared.

“J.J., please, go, and show your brother how to make a tower like we did before. Build it as high as you can.”

“Okay!” he exclaimed, and ran to their room.

Stephen took another breath and flexed his arms from the effort of hoisting his tiny children. He smiled, and turned to the kitchen.

His cell phone rang. After a brief glance at the number, he swiped the screen and took the call.

“Hey, there, I can see you, so don’t even move, man!”

Stephen’s blood dropped several degrees, and his eyes darted out the window. A familiar car idled in front of his house in the growing darkness.

“Yeah, I’m talking to you, man, so don’t even move. I got you covered from every angle, so get ready…”

Then he saw figures pop out from every window in the car, dressed in dark clothes, and holding weapons, guns, oh, God, guns, were those automatic weapons?

Bright flares of orange and red light burst in staccato flashes from the tips of the guns, followed closely by sharp cracks of explosions. Instantly, glass shattered from the windows in vivid bursts of razor sharp shards. Plaster turned to small explosions of dust. He heard the passage of projectiles hurtling through the air at high speed.

Stephen threw his body to the floor, and screamed, “Boys, get on the floor, now! J.J. and Michael, drop on the floor and LIE DOWN!”

Behind him, he heard Beth shout in distress, and approach the room from around the corner.

“BETH, STOP RIGHT THERE! DROP, BABY!”

Bullets continued to spray through the house, the sounds of entry a haunting barrage that rattled his spine and filled his whole being with fear and flight-impulses.

Then a new sound, one he’d never in his life entertained hearing came from the next room.

Where his boys had been playing.

J.J. and Michael …

Then came the most horrifying crying and screaming they’d ever uttered in their short lives.

When the bullets continued, and the crying suddenly stopped, the ensuing silence was far worse.

 

2

The house on Virginia Avenue was strangely quiet. No one played a stereo loudly from inside its thin walls. There wasn’t as much as a clatter of voices enjoying a party. The windows were dark. A metallic, root beer brown ’67 Impala sat in the driveway. This wasn’t inordinate for this neighborhood. Many houses in the area had a custom job decorating a driveway much in need of decoration. In fact, in just about every house on this street, the only expensive allowance you could find were the cars, tricked out and painted in wild and garish street design, and big HDTVs.

At 1300 Virginia Avenue, not even the television was on. Instead, Manny Gutierrez sat quietly on the broken and worn couch in the living room, nursing a forty ounce beer. In between sips of the drink, he drew heavily from a roach cigarette. A low cloud of cannabis hung over his head in the dark. His thoughts sat just as heavily. He thought of Alicia, and their five year old daughter, Wendy. He didn’t get to visit her very much. Wendy was quite clear on that issue. They lived three towns away, on the other side of the county.

Manny pictured Wendy’s eyes, and her wavy black hair.

The TV news reported that two little boys had died as a result of a drive-by shooting. The news stunned the community. Never had such activity occurred in that neighborhood, or anywhere near it on that side of town. It was a mystery to everyone concerned, with no clear motive. The parents of the two little boys had been hospitalized with minor wounds. Neither would speak to the press about what had happened. The police organized a manhunt. Witnesses who’d heard the rapid-fire shooting claimed they saw a lowrider type car, but feared repercussions on reporting what they’d seen. As one eyewitness was videotaped saying, “If they came here to do this once, I don’t want to be the cause of them coming back.”

Manny grimaced at the thought. No chance of that.

None of his guys had looked in the backseat of the dude’s car. No one had seen a child’s car seat. Just that gringo, staring at them on the road. Like the dude was challenging them. Manny remembered thrusting his chin up at the white guy, as if to say, “What, homie? What you gonna do about it, ese?” Frankie at the driver’s seat paced the white guy, all the while Manny and Robby in the backseat gestured and glared. Finally, the white dude speed up and headed into the left lane. Frankie drifted a few cars behind and followed. They kept within sight of the man’s car, and followed him to his neighborhood. Once they saw the house the man pulled into, they marked it—marked it well—and headed off to collect some friends.

After leaving the guy’s house for the second time that night, they split off from each other, and laid low. No doping. No hitting stores for cash. Manny knew better. The cops were looking out for anyone stupid enough to add to the crime and draw attention to themselves.

Manny had hid in his small house on the corner of Virginia Avenue for the last four days. The first had just been wise caution. Then he’d heard the news. Two little boys. He pictured Wendy, running through her house, sprayed by bullets. He knew he’d go after any fool who dared shoot his daughter. White man or no, geek or tough, those two boy’s dad would come after him. It would be foolish, and probably the last thing that man ever did, but he’d come looking.

So, Manny lay low a bit longer. But while the day passed into two, and then three, he thought again, of the little boys. He couldn’t get his daughter’s face out of his mind. He kept picturing a fresh-faced five year old girl in that guy’s house, instead of the little boys.

“Stop it, man,” he chided himself. He took another hit off the roach, reached the end of the clip, and threw it on the table in frustration. Manny stood up, and put on his grey fedora.

In minutes, his Impala roared. He raced down Virginia Avenue to 21^st Street. He squealed to a stop in front of Frankie’s house. Frankie was the only one he let drive his car. Frankie had driven that night. He never had a gun.

Frankie stepped out his front door. “Man, where have you been?”

“Keepin’ low,” Manny answered. His friend nodded, and gestured to the house. Frankie was watching a movie on TV. “Where’s Joe?”

“Out at Lisa’s. It’s jus’ you and me, man. Wanna beer?”

Manny accepted one, and bummed a cigarette from Frankie. His friend threw him a pack. Flicking open a lighter from his pocket, many drew deep on the fag, and exhaled slowly. He flopped down in a chair.

“What’s eatin’ you, Manny?”

“Nothing.”

“You worried about the pops coming?”

Manny regarded his friend, and thought about his answer. Anyone else, he never would have admitted his fears. But Frankie had been around since they were little kids. No one else could understand him as well.

“Maybe.”

“I hear he’s still in the hospital. He ain’t coming out here. No one in that rich white neighborhood will talk if they even think they saw anything. We’re cool, man.”

Wendy, running, laughing, down a hall, her dress fluttering around her little legs, a doll in each hand. Suddenly falling, her head exploding open from the force of a high caliber bullet. Her body hitting the floor, spraying blood on the carpet and walls.

Manny shivered.

 

3

An hour later, Frankie and Manny split; Manny headed off to find Robby, while Frankie hit the liquor store for a drink and some chips. Frankie stopped his car in the farthest slot from the front door, checked his hair in the mirror, and sauntered into the store. His denims hung low, boxers exposed, a gray sweatshirt opened loosely over a L.A. Kings jersey. The store clerk gazed with a long stare as he entered the joint. Frankie shrugged, and gestured to the aisles with the food. He hovered, staring at the chips for a moment, and then selected a sizable bag that should last him all night. Then he slowly shuffled to the back row of refrigerated coolers. Frankie glanced once over his shoulder back at the clerk, and saw an older woman enter and stop at the counter. Good. Should keep that old fart busy. Frankie opened a glass door, and pulled out a tall bottle of beer, and slid it into his jacket’s deep pocket. Then he slid over two doors, and grabbed a large 1-liter plastic bottle of soda. With the large bag of chips and soda in front of him, he headed across the back of the store, to the farthest aisle, but didn’t stop his progress. He didn’t want the clerk to suspect that he might be working the merchandise into his clothes somehow.

As he turned the corner onto the aisle, Frankie stopped when he saw the kid staring at him.

“Hey, didja loose your mommy?” he said low. “She’s over there, little dude.”

The kid only stared, with big eyes and a frown on his face. The kid had dirty, matted hair. The kid’s mom was probably buying lottery tickets and booze, and would likely have no money left over to get the kid a good shampoo.

“Get going, man,” Frankie said. “It ain’t polite to stare.”

The boy tilted his head down, and seemed about to cry. Frankie knelt down. “Hey, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

The boy looked up again, sluggishly. He tugged at his red shirt.

“You gotta go to the bathroom?” he asked the little boy.

The kid turned his head back towards the front of the store. As he did, Frankie saw something wet stuck to the kid’s hair, like he’d fallen in the store’s cherry syrup for the soda fountain.

But nearly half of the kid’s skull was missing, ending in scraggly edges of red-stained bone, and crispy hair.

“What the—” Frankie whispered.

The kid looked back, and Frankie saw that the kid’s eyes were pale, gray almost white in color. His mouth and jaw hung askew, as if it had been partially ripped away, but left attached to the boy’s face. That mouth opened, and a high, screeching wail came out.

Frankie skidded backward, and fell on his backside. The stolen bottle of beer in the sweatshirt pocket slid behind him as he fell, and he landed on it hard enough to shatter it. The cool smell of hops and barley wafted up from the floor. He dropped the chips and soda, and tried to get back up, but the floor was suddenly slick with spilled alcohol.

The boy took several staggering steps forward.

“I waaaannnn …”

Frankie gripped the edge of the shelf beside him, and pulled. His foot slipped once in the puddle of booze, and then he was running back the way he’d come, by the coolers. Distantly, he heard the clerk at the front shouting at him. Frankie saw the woman drop to the floor, fearing a holdup and gunfire.

His gun. He’d kept it in the car. Manny had said not to draw any attention to himself, but he wasn’t going out unprotected. It was just under his front seat.

As he neared the front door, he chanced a look behind, and saw the little boy slowly plodding his way after him.

Frankie burst out the doors of the convenience store, and ran to his car. He reached into his pocket for his keys, and panicked when his hand got stuck in the pocket. Of course, he’d had to reach down low to grab them, and suddenly, the height of his pants waistline was a detriment. Bent in half, he struggled in an awkward angle to grasp the keys, and get in the damn car. As he pulled his hand free, the keys tumbled from fingers slick with beer, and clattered onto the pavement under his car.

He dived down, and searched.

On the other side of the car, Frankie saw a small set of bare feet running up the passenger side of the vehicle, towards the truck. He stood, and faced the weird kid. He never questioned his fear or the irrational situation. He never had time.

Frankie waited, and waited. The kid didn’t show from around the car’s truck. Slowly, keys forgotten, Frankie stepped toward the back of the car, meaning to dropkick the kid, and send him crying across the parking lot.

He jumped and landed at the back bumper.

The kid was gone.

Frankie, turned quickly to look behind him. No kid. He made a quick circuit of the car, and found nothing. Had he just imagined it? All that guilty talk with Manny had him spooked. Man, he needed some sleep.

Frankie slowly bent back down, and reached under the car, half expecting the kid to grab his arm from underneath. He found the keys, but no tiny hand, and breathed a sigh of relief. Quickly, he ducked into the car, and locked the doors.

After buckling his seatbelt, he started the engine, thrust the car in reverse, and turned around to check the parking lot behind him.

The little boy knelt in the seat in the back, holding a length of bungee cord. The kid whipped the cord out, and the metal hook slammed into Frankie’s left eye. He screamed. His foot slammed down on the gas. The car shot out into the parking lot. Frankie grasped the cord in a reflex action, and jerked. His eye popped out, stuck on the end of the hook. He screamed again, arms flailing. The boy stood on the back seat, a high whine building in his throat. “I waaannnnt mmmyyyy mmmooooommmyyy …” The whine turned into a cry of pain and fear. Then the kid began slamming his fists down on Frankie’s head in a petulant manner, grunting in displeasure every time he landed a blow. It almost had the appearance of the kid throwing a tantrum for not getting his way at play.

The car smashed into a street sign, and continued backward into the street. A speeding taxi didn’t see Frankie’s car until it was too late to turn or stop. It hit Frankie’s vehicle broadside, throwing Frankie across the seat, slipping out of his seatbelt. His head smashed the glass on the door, and a spray of blood shot out in all directions.

The taxi driver had been alone in the car, on his way to a pickup point, and running low on fares all night. He was severely injured, too much so to exit the car after the impact.

Frankie didn’t move.

Emergency responders arrived later, after the clerk from the convenience store called for help. They found Frankie slumped dead in the seat, the bloodstained bungee cord with his eye still hooked on the end lying on the floor of the backseat.

There was no sign of a kid, nor any reason to look for one.

 

4

If Robby had known that Manny would come looking for him, it might have changed the course of his life that night, for he might have gone running around town with him, instead of shacking up with his lady. But, life holds no guarantees, and Robby’s future was too much in flux to say for certain which way his path might have taken.

Robby had gone to see Jackie. Unlike Manny or Frankie, he hadn’t paid attention to the news the last few days. He hadn’t heard that two little boys had been killed at his hands. He had not seen the pictures of the little blond boys shown for the last three days on TV and in the papers. Therefore, he would never know the danger he was in.

After bedding Jackie, he shuffled across the room to the shower.

“Are you coming back to me?” Jackie asked.

“Not like we just were, otherwise why am I cleaning up? Stupid girl.”

He turned the faucet, and waited several moments while the water warmed. The shower was hardly more than an echo chamber for torture. He pushed the door nearly closed, and stepped inside.

The doorbell rang. Jackie slid out from the sheets, and covered her nude body with a robe. As she approached her front door, she cinched the belt tight. Jackie peered through the viewfinder set in the door, but didn’t see anyone standing there. As she turned away to go back to bed, the bell rang again. Frowning, she peeked out the large window set next to the door, first up, and then down.

A little boy stood staring in at her.

“Oh, my gosh!” she said. Jackie turned the locks open, and pulled on the door.

A short blond-haired boy stood in the glaring light of her porch.

“Little boy, are you okay?”

Dried tears tracked dirt on the boy’s cheeks. He held his hands clasped together in front of him, and he knocked his knees together, almost shy. He rocked slowly back and forth.

“Where’s your mommy?” she asked him.

At the mention of his mother, he looked up, and stared straight into her face. What she saw sent her taking several steps backward into the house. The boy’s eyes were bloodshot in the whites, and pale of all color in the irises and pupils. What she’d thought were vivid freckles was actually spots of dried blood. He opened his mouth to speak, and goopy blood dribbled slowly from his lips.

Jackie screamed. She turned to run, but felt the belt of her robe catch on something, a chair, maybe. She reached down to grasp the ensnared belt, and instead, felt a tiny hand. It let go of the belt and grabbed her wrist. The boy squeezed tightly, with unnatural strength. She felt and heard bones snap in her arm. Jackie cried out, and fell forward on her face. The robe tore open. Jackie tried to roll onto her back to face her attacker

(a little boy, it’s a freaking little kid!)

head-on. As she did, the boy fell on top of her, and dropped his knees into her soft stomach. The air gusted from her, and she gasped. The boy looked down at her, and spoke softly. It almost sounded like he’d said, “I see your booties …” The boy smiled mischievously. Then he placed his tiny hands on her face and shoved them into her gaping mouth. Jackie still hadn’t gained her breath back. Her eyes popped open wide as the boy grabbed the edges of her mouth, on each side, and began to pull. The seam at the corners of her mouth ripped upward into each cheek. Blood sprayed and ran in warm rivulets down her face into her ears and down her neck. She tried to call out to Robby, but choked instead on blood and saliva. The boy shoved his hand deep into her throat, and lodged it there. Jackie struggled and thrashed beneath the kid, but soon lost the battle, and fell limp. Her eyes remained open, staring emptily up at the ceiling.

 Robby shut off the water, and took up a towel to dry himself off. He paused, listening. Quiet. Jackie must have drifted off to sleep. He finished drying, and then walked softly into the bedroom. He stared at the sleeping form of his girl in the bed, and then shook his head. Too late now. He’ll have to go another round tomorrow. Robby sat on the edge of the bed, and pulled on his clothes. He’d just finished tying his shoes when he heard a sound from the front room.

He frowned, and turned back to the bed. Someone was in the house. He didn’t want to wake Jackie, but he thought she should be awake, in case something had to go down. He stepped around to her side of the bed, and reached down for the blanket.

He grasped the edge and pulled it back.

Empty.

“She’s in the kitchen,” he murmured. “Hey, babe. You getting something to eat? I’m hungry too, after what we did.”

He left the bedroom, and walked down the hall. When he reached the living room, he stopped.

The front door was hanging open.

“What the hell …” Robby stepped closer to the door, and looked outside. There was no one there, but that didn’t mean they weren’t in here right now. He turned, and looked back into the kitchen.

Jackie wasn’t there.

He took a step toward the next room, and stopped when he heard his shoes squish on the carpet. There was blood on the floor beneath his foot.

Robby looked all around him quickly. There was no sign of Jackie, other than the blood on the floor … if that was her blood at all. Something had happened. Suddenly, he felt sick. He rushed to the sink in the kitchen, and filled a glass with water. He drank deeply, almost choking on the liquid. He gasped for air loudly as he set the glass down on the counter.

A deep-throated giggle sounded behind him, sounding as if in a pool of water.

Robby turned back to face the living room.

It was empty.

“Jackie?” he called. He followed his voice into the next room, and stood waiting. “Baby?”

“Baby!” a tiny voice shouted from his left. Robby turned in that direction, and saw a small blond-headed kid running toward him. The boy’s hands were soaked in blood. He smiled as he ran.

“Oh sh—” Robby started, and then turned to the front door.

It was closed. He grasped the knob, and twisted. Locked. He fumbled on the lock set in the handle, and then turned. The door wouldn’t budge. The deadbolt, then. He turned it, but it was too late.

Something sharp shot into his leg, sending white-hot flares of pain up into his brain. He screamed, and looked down. The kid held a long butcher’s knife with both hands, like a…

“Sword!” the little boy cried out. He pulled out the knife, and then swung it mightily. It cleaved into the side of his thigh with a muffled thump. Blood sprayed in a fountain. Oh, God, he cut my artery … The boy tugged, and then pulled the knife back out again. The flood was enormous, running down his leg in a crimson fall, and pooling around his feet. Waves of dizziness washed over him, as Robby stumbled to the floor, and tried to crawl away. He collapsed near the back of the couch, and saw through steadily dimming eyesight Jackie’s still body stuffed behind, her face staring out, her mouth a sprawling rictus of horror.

Robby tried to scream, but felt himself fading too fast to do more than gasp a whisper. He flopped over onto his back, in time to see that the boy was gone, the door to the front of the house open, and he was alone.

Then he was no more, for the dark had taken him, too.

 

5

A few hours had passed since the death of his friends, (he didn’t know that part yet), and Manny cruised aimlessly down the main drag on his end of town. There were a few hookers still walking the street, bumming business in a town that knew better. Ain’t no way I’m catching some skank’s disease, he thought. That’s no way to go out.

The all-too familiar pulse of flashing blue and red behind him made Manny groan. Cursing, he pulled over. Better that, when wouldn’t find anything on him, than to try to run, knowing how gun-happy the cops were around here. He would never survive a car chase. He eased his Impala to the side of the road, and waited for the cops to walk up.

The officer stepped out, drew his gun, and hid behind his car door.

“Manny Gutierrez! Get out of the car! Slowly, and keep your hands where I can see them.”

“What the—?” Manny hesitated, looking in both his rear and side mirrors. The officer wasn’t messing around. Then, in the background, he saw another police vehicle park behind the first. They meant business. Had they somehow linked him to the shooting? Impossible. He’d wiped that slate clean, as far as he knew.

Waiting any longer was likely to get him shot, as well. Manny nodded his head once in acknowledgement of the instructions, and then opened his door. He put one leg out of the car, hands near his head. Then with practiced ease, ducked his head as he stood up out of the car. He turned and faced the car, his hands laced behind his head.

The officers moved quickly. As one spread his hands on to the roof of the car, and patted him down for any weapons, the second officer read him his rights.

“I also have a right to know what I’m being arrested for,” Manny said in a low voice.

“We’re going to determine that when we get to the station,” the first officer said. They walked him back to the police vehicle.

“Hey man, don’t just leave my car out here like that! Somebody’s gonna steal it!”

“Payback’s a b—” the first officer started to come back, but the second waved him off.

“We’ll secure it before we leave.”

They shoved Manny into the back of the car, and made him wait while they did as they promised.

The back seat of any police vehicle, for the uninitiated, was never made for a comfortable ride. In fact, it was more of a hard plastic bench, than a cushioned seat. There were seatbelts, of course, and Manny had been buckled into one, but sometimes, if a suspect was violent, the officer had the option and right to just throw the arrested person into the back unsecured to the vehicle. Of course, there was a steel mesh separating the backseat from the front, and no access to door or window handles. It was basically a box. Manny had been in a few from time to time. It was never cool, but for the first time tonight, he thought he just might escape further jail time and conviction.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement to his right, on the sidewalk. Looky-loos, trying to peep at the latest criminal. The officers were both at his car, turning it inside out. Oh yeah, securing it. Thankfully, he’d stashed the guns and dope. The car was as clean as it could be. Not even a beer bottle.

Manny looked up to tell the onlookers what to do with themselves.

He only saw a short boy, standing on the sidewalk, staring right back at him.

A little boy with blond hair.

“Hey kid! Get out of here! Get going! You shouldn’t be out here—”

The kid launched himself at the window of the police car. The boy’s hands splatted on the glass, and red stuff, dark and oily, sprayed and oozed off the kid’s fingers. Manny jumped back, but was tightly belted, and couldn’t scoot over. The boy started banging on the glass with his fists. Hollow echoes accompanied each thump, but Manny knew that the glass windows in these vehicles were pretty strong. The little kid continued slamming the window, which shook visibly each time. He wouldn’t stop.

Manny’s guts felt like ice. Who was this kid?

“Hey!” he shouted. “Officers! Hey, stop this kid!”

He looked up at the two cops, who lazily glanced back at him, saw nothing amiss, and went back to their search. Manny looked back at the window.

The kid was gone. The window was clean. No blood, if that was what had been on the boy’s hands.

Manny turned in his seat, searching as well as he could all around the back of the car. There was no one standing around.

A few minutes later, the officers returned to the car, having completed their search. They locked the Impala, and one officer got into the driver’s seat in front of Manny.

“You look a little freaked out before,” the cop said. “Something you want to say?”

“Just take me to the station,” he muttered.

At least there, he would be safe.

 

6

For the last hour, Manny sat in silence at the table, his hands cuffed behind his back. He was stunned, to say the least. Frankie and Robby, both found dead. Robby’s girl, too, whatever her name was. Murdered.

And the police thought he’d done it.

Hence the silent treatment. Manny knew better. If he had any hope of getting out of this one, it was to zip it up, and wait for a lawyer. The cops in this town knew how to twist your words, and trick you into saying something you didn’t want to say. The best way to combat that was a closed mouth.

After hearing about the deaths of his friends, it was difficult to think of anything to say.

Then he saw the kid … again.

This time he was sitting on a chair down the hall, near the front desk. Just swinging his legs back and forth like kids did when sitting on a chair too tall for them to touch the floor. Only once, had the kid looked up at Manny and stared. It was a strange look, like the kid knew him or something. How had that kid got to the police station so fast?

These things inspired Manny to shut his trap. He waited out the cops, until they’d lost their patience. A detective stood him up and walked him to a cell. Only after the cell door closed did Manny breathe a sigh of relief.

 

7

The hours drew long after his incarceration, and for Manny, sleep was fleeting. His thoughts dwelled on his homies, murdered, the blame laid solely at his feet.

How had it happened? Who was the culprit? Someone in the East Highland Kings? For years, they had been rivals with his gang, and it wouldn’t surprise him to discover that someone had found a way to frame him for murder, and get him out of the picture.

But that didn’t make sense. He never crossed with the East Highland Kings. He stayed in his own territory. Frankie and Robby were too smart to let something like this happen to them by a rival gang. It had to be something so shocking, that they couldn’t recover enough to gain the upper hand.

It seemed as though an hour had passed in the cell, and though Manny didn’t remember slipping silently into sleep, he now sat up on his cot, and stretched. It was still dark. The police had stripped him of all his belongings when they booked him, including his cell phone and his watch. Manny had no idea what time it was. There was light in the hall. He stood, and walked to the door of the cell. He leaned down to the tiny hole set in the door for food, and looked out.

Frankie was lying on his back on the floor, his sightless eyes staring up at the ceiling. His head was gashed wide open, and his left eye was missing.

“Frankie,” Manny hissed. “Oh man, what is this?”

At the sound of his voice, Frankie slowly sat up, and gazed with his remaining eye at his old gang leader.

“Manny,” he whispered. “Why’d you do it, man?”

His bowels twisted in a knot, and then dropped like a bag of rocks into his abdomen. “Do what, Frankie?”

Then Frankie moved, fast, and shot his arm through the opening in the cell door. He wrapped his hand around Manny’s throat, and began to squeeze. Manny gasped, and then began to choke. He pried at Frankie’s fingers, but his former friend’s grip was far too strong.

“Why’d you make us shoot them?” his friend asked.

Shock and panic fogged his mind. “W-who?”

Still squeezing his throat in a vice, Frankie turned his head to look down the hall. Manny, fighting unconsciousness, opened his eyes, and followed the gesture.

Two boys, both blond, walked down the hall hand in hand. Their bodies were coated with splattered blood, oozing from various wounds on their tiny bodies. Like twins, they walked in unified steps, halting and stiff, and yet resolute and continuous. Part of the shorter boy’s head was missing. The taller boy had a gaping hole in his chest, the telling result of an exit wound by a high caliber bullet.

Manny slipped backward, and pushed against the door with his feet. He managed to slide out of Frankie’s grip, and backward into the cell.

He bumped up against someone stiff and cold.

Manny looked up into the pale face of Robby, seated on the edge of his bed. Robby slowly tilted his head down to look at Manny.

“You doomed us, Manny,” Robby said.

The corpse on the bed reached down and grabbed Manny’s hair. He pulled with inhuman strength, and yanked the gang leader off the floor.

Manny pushed against him, and felt his hand sink into a wound in his thigh the size of a toaster oven slot. His fingers sank deep into cold, unyielding tissue, slick with coagulated blood. Manny cried out, and fell back onto the floor. His hair ripped out by the roots, hanging in Robby’s outstretched hand.

The cell door slowly opened. Manny looked up. Those boys stood there filling the doorway, this time accompanied by a young girl near Robby’s age. His old lady? She stood between the little boys, holding their hands, as would their own mother. One of her hands hung at an awkward angle, and didn’t seem to grasp the boy’s hand but sat in his little fingers. Looks broken, Manny thought. Then he saw her face. Her jaw hung straight down to touch her neck, the sides of her mouth ripped open wide to her ears, lips and cheeks stained a dark black color that could only be crusty, dried blood. She wore a robe laid opened, exposing her pale, bloodless body, that should had held some interest for him under better circumstances—that Robby always knew how to hook up with the hotness—but this time disturbed him to the core. That she appeared neither concerned by her nudity, nor even aware of it, was frightening in a way that seeing her walk around with her injuries had failed to do before. This was somehow real.

They entered the cell, followed by Frankie. They crowded around him in a loose circle. The boys stepped forward. The older and taller one began to cry. Only instead of tears, his eyes dripped blood. His voice quivered, and his mouth stretched open. His face distorted into a combination of pain and need that any parent would recognize.

“Owwie …” he whined, touching his chest wound. “ I want my mommy …”

Then he reached down for Manny, fingers slippery with blood tracing his cheek, marking him.

Manny screamed …

 

8

… then jerked awake, fighting phantoms that were not there. The cell floor had dissolved into the mind, replaced by a fabric seat cushion. The cold, hard accusing fingers of the boys became the steering wheel, pressed up against his face. What dimly felt like blood running down his chin was only drool from his sleep.

Then he remembered, sort of. Driving, aimlessly around town. Fatigue. He’d pulled over in his neighborhood, found his driveway, and fallen asleep in his car. Why hadn’t he gone on, stepped out of the car and into his house?

Manny stretched stiff, sore muscles, and recalled the dream that had haunted him so vividly. Frankie and Robby dead … and those boys.

No doubt, those news reports had fueled his mind with guilt, and the rest was explainable, though far from sensible.

He opened his car door, and walked quickly into the house. He stopped just inside the doorway, and listened. All was quiet. He turned on every light switch in the place, and searched in every corner and cabinet. There was no sign that anyone had been at the house.

Manny went to his closet in the bedroom, and pulled out a loose board above the top shelf. From the hole, he withdrew a short stack of tabloid style newspapers. He thumbed through yesterday’s, and found what he needed. The obituaries for the little boys.

Yes, the pictures matched how he’d imagined them in his nightmare. He re-read the text, and saw where they had planned to bury the kids earlier that day.

There was only one way to confirm that he had nothing to worry about. He pulled out his phone and dialed Frankie and then Robby. Neither one answered, and for a long moment, Manny entertained the thought that perhaps his nightmare had some truth to it.

No. Not possible. He shook his head to clear away the creeping insanity, and went back out to his car.

Then he gunned the engine, and screamed down the street.

 

9

The night was quiet at Ridgeview Memorial Cemetery. Manny parked his car near the east gate, not caring who saw it there. He had to know, and he didn’t have time to waste on details like someone discovering his car. He quickly scaled the gate, and slipped down on the other side.

It was a large property, and served a great many in town, one of four cemeteries for a population of over five hundred thousand people. If statistics were to be believed, this place had to have been the resting location of at least three people just this week. All he needed to do was find the most recent plot of ground disturbed. If the grass were still in place, then he would know that he’d only imagined the boys out of fear and remorse.

But where to begin?

The land sprawled out for dozens of acres in every direction, full of gently rolling hills and dotted with wide-reaching trees that by day certainly would look soft, and inviting, providing shade and comfort at a time of bereavement, but now in the thick of night, looked threatening, as sentinels guarding an asylum of the damned. Sounds carried far way out here on the edge of town, but Manny heard neither traffic nor animal. Yet something occasionally made some sound, a creak, perhaps, or the soft, whispering suggestion of a footstep.

“Just your nerves,” Manny scolded himself. His voice was barely discernable to even his own ears, and yet it seemed to crack loudly as the rock that dislodges the avalanche on the mountainside. He stopped walking, and waited to see what the avalanche would be in this lonely place.

Nothing moved, not even a breath of wind. Manny’s own breathing was shallow and low. He sucked in a sudden gasp of air, as his nerves tingled up and down his spine. He whipped his head around, and continued to see nothing but endless rows of headstones, and trees.

“Come on, Manny, get this done,” he murmured.

Swallowing his fear, he stepped off the asphalt drive, and started to work his way deeper into the gloom of the cemetery.

 

10

Stephen sat up in his hospital bed with a loud gasp. The nightmare, oh God, the nightmare, please let it be over. His mind reeled. The boys. His little boys. Oh, what had happened to them? Not his tiny, precious boys. He closed his eyes, and then opened them again, when he heard the noise just outside his room.

Stephen gasped again when he saw them standing at the door.

 

11

Manny wandered the cemetery for an hour, until he’d found a shovel. It was small, and the handle rough with splinters. It didn’t matter. He needed an end to this madness. Manny continued on through the burial grounds, stalking up and down row upon row, stumbling in his fatigue over each headstone, each divot or depression in the grass.

A faint fog filtered through the air just above the ground, lending a surreal quality to the night. Manny chuckled despite himself. How typical. He rubbed one hand across his eyes, trying to smear the tiredness that threatened to collapse him in the center of this place of the dead. He couldn’t stop. He mustn’t! There had to be an answer here, buried and safe.

Finally, he saw a deeper darkness in the ground ahead. Manny tripped over feet like lead weights, and nearly pitched down into the soft, loose dirt. The grass hadn’t been replaced yet, just a large square plot of brown soil.

“Ya better be in dere,” he drawled.

He drew back, and pushed the shovel into the dirt. It went easily enough.

As he threw the small amount of dirt to the side, he wondered that this was the first time he’d done any hard work by himself. His body wasn’t used to the effort.

After five shovelfuls of soil, he doubted that he could go one any further. It was so late at night. Sleep hovered over his brain, seeking to devoir him.

“No, Manny,” he chided himself. “Finish it. Finish it now.”

With a resolve he didn’t know he possessed, he put in the digging instrument again, and continued to remove the soil.

In the sky above, dark clouds drew together to form a blanket of cold. The moon and stars had disappeared. It wouldn’t rain this night. That might almost be a relief.

 

12

On this night, which seemed to last forever, Manny had collapsed into the hole he’d dug in the middle of the town cemetery. He couldn’t remember passing out, or how long he’d been out of it. All he knew was the disappointment and frustration he’d felt when he saw the massive concrete block that stood between him and his goal. In agony, he’d slipped away into the black fields of his subconscious.

It was the grinding sound of cement rubbing against itself that awoke him.

He sat up, and felt himself slide a little on the sloping sides of the hole he’d opened. Many looked down into the concrete box, now shockingly pulled apart, to see two small brown coffins.

Manny coughed, spraying dust from his lips and face. He slipped down, and stood on the ground between the boxes.

Swallowing hard, he slowly pried open the first box.

Lying peacefully inside was the older of the two brothers, J.J. His blond hair was matted down with the sudden exposure to the humidity of the ground and cemetery. Eyes that had been bright blue in the pictures he saw on TV were now forever sealed shut, never to open and gaze upon the world again.

Manny turned, and opened the other box.

It was the younger brother, Michael. He looked very much like his older brother. Same blond hair, same faint skin color, and body build. Eyes closed.

They were here after all! Both boys, sealed in their coffins for all time.

Many felt his initial guilt melt away.

Satisfied, he began the arduous and slippery climb back out of the hole. He stood on J.J.’s coffin, and tried to jump. He almost landed on his leg in an awkward manner. Manny took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly, and bent his knees.

He jumped.

A hand caught his wrist, and pulled.

 

13

Manny stared face to face with a dead man.

Two of them.

Frankie hissed low at his former gang leader. “It’s time.”

A thin trickle of urine ran down Manny’s leg. He hardly noticed. His skin had gone ice cold.

“F-Frankie!” he said.

“We buried them again,” Robby murmured through a throat filled with dry blood.

The leader looked back and forth between his two friends, hardly believing his eyes. Frankie pointed down into the hole. “The price is yet to be paid.”

“They deserve to rest.”

Frankie took up one arm, while Robby bound the other, and held up Manny between them.

“Guys, please, let me go.”

“Not here,” Frankie said.

They dragged him across the grounds a short distance, and then stopped. From behind a tree, a pale figure stepped out, walked up behind the trio, and raised a long object high into the air.

Stephen brought the shovel down on Manny’s head. Once. Three times. Six.

He slumped against the tree a moment, and looked to the two young men warily.

Frankie nodded once.

“It’s done, now. Go and be with yours. We’ll take care of ours.”

Stephen waved at them, and then turned slowly. He brought the shovel up over his shoulder, and shuffled carefully over the ground to return the dirt and dust from whence it came.

Frankie and Robby pulled the limp body of Manny through the cemetery, pausing near the mausoleum just in time to watch the slight glow of the sun beginning to rise over the distant mountain range.