Qualm Meadow Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The Evans’

Around 9pm Friday Night

10088 Alpine & Turquoise Ln

The pitch of Pootie’s whine grew into a full bark as the massive Mastiff-Rottweiler mix paced the French glass doors of the pool house living room; the mutt clawed at the windows to a full stand and jumped down again just to begin his whine-bark-howl again. He hadn’t stopped since that morning Kelly took him out. There was something in the Brendonson’s house, Gerald Kelly knew, and Pootie was intent on getting it.

“Pootie, calm down!” Kelly demanded from his work desk; there was no way he could concentrate on piecing his notes together on the corrupt lives and careers of the members of the Meadow County City Council representatives, one in particular Gloria Gold.

But the hound carried on, pawing and pacing and panting as if the night was calling him into a deep withdrawal. He howled intently and returned his masters demand with a look of longing his beady black eyes pulling hard on Kelly’s heartstrings. His mother, who had called from the main house, was more than enough to convince Kelly to give into his begging dog. “I can hear him from my room! Take that damn thing for a walk!” And the next thing he knew Gerald Kelly was being pulled up the hand laid cobble and turquoise stoned pavement of Alpine and Turquoise Lane.

The night was hot and muggy; Kelly’s armpits were already damp by the time they got to the Brendonson’s long driveway - but that wasn’t where Pootie wanted to go. The dog just whined in the empty mansion’s direction only to continue on and across the Evans’ front lawn. The moon blanketed the treeless cliff-top area of the Qualm Meadow community in an eerie silver coat. Kelly could barely even see Pootie but for altering silver linings that reflected and danced on in his fine black coat.

The dog rounded the mansion to the backyard and through Mrs. Evans’ flower tunnel, around the infinity pool, and down into the century old sinkhole that was now infested with wild ferns and shadowing pine trees that were too coated in a blanket of silver light from the Cajun half-moon. A silver blue blanket of light refracted against Betty Evans’ greenhouse too. The sight of the glass monolith and the deep moans and high pitched howls, constant buzzing and exotic chirping, grunting and croaking that filtered from the distant world and through the night caused Kelly to rear Pootie. “Whoa boy!” He halted pulling the dog to its hind legs, “I ain’t goin’ in there.”

Gerald Kelly remembered that four-foot tall kangaroo that bruised his face and body while those thorn flower vines constrained him by his limbs and throat. He remembered Betty – Gunga – and that clicking-humming-grunting noise she made when she showed up at three o’clock that morning to save him from being suffocated and beat to death by man eating vines and a boxing kangaroo. But the marsupial stopped and the veins retracted when the strange Island woman had arrived. She laughed at him, treated him with a sense of Victorian coquetry, tended to his wounds, and mended his bruising. Betty even offered him some honey tea that she had harvested from two sections of her garden-house. “Da’ venom in dem vines woulda kill ya boy. Skin woulda sloughed off in burnin’ clumps. Yo eyes woulda melted from they sockets. Yo throat woulda constricted and you woulda choked ta death only to be waken up when the cronstraint loosin’ and da pain wake you up. Death woulda came slow, boy, and you woulda had to watch. . . . Dis’ tea and honey gon’ clear out any impurity still in ya’. Yo’ pretty face gon heal fine too.” She had no heating device, no filters, no materials yet somehow the woman had managed to concoct a steaming cup of herbal tea – in barely any light but for some low an eerie natural light that could have been mistaken for a florescent light high above the misfit canopies if it were not already apparent that the greenhouse had not electricity.

Even the cup was not a cup but a hollowed flower; it’s petals as fragile yet resistant as thin porcelain. “What is this place?” He had asked after carefully sipping the steaming cup of tea – it was sharp and full of flavor, he took a gulp despite its scorching temperature.

Betty had laughed at the question, “Yo’ dog don’t seem ta’ care eitha’ way. I ain’t pickin’ up dead dog, am I?”

“That had to be more than just tea.” Kelly said allowed to himself in hindsight. But either way he was not chancing it.

Pootie had to remember those words too because he growled with hate toward that cursed death trap and pulled Kelly on another way. There was no light under the thick feathering pine branches. The sound of crickets encroached the night but there was no welcome to sight. Pootie pulled Kelly blindly through the obscurity, but the reporter could feel the clearing of a rooted trail under his feet as he followed his best friend faithfully. He was confident his pooch would not lure him into a pit of spikes – which was one of his biggest fears. Soon his eyes adjusted and the shrubbery immediately around him became shades of dark blue and gray. He knew he was still on the path for he followed a tunnel of black abyss flanked on either side by wild pinewoods and invasive grass, weeds, and ferns that eerie smoky hue. He made sure to keep his footing among the heavily rooted and uneven path despite the mongrels sure insistence. Kelly walked straight while Pootie paced the half a yard wide path from side to side his snoot never leaving the forest floor and either leg lifting in alteration of either side of the path to piss his state of location.

They crossed through the canyon up its opposing slope and down another decline that lead into the forest between the hills and cliffs of Qualm Meadows and the soft rolling lands of Misery Valleys. It was not long before they met a gentle running creek seven feet wide no deeper than four feet, it ran east with the declining hillside down into Misery Valley where there it turned into a lazy river about forty feet wide and more than twenty feet deep in some places and split the valley in two sections then in four before escaping into more oak and pine forests. Walking down the slope the valley a four and half miles below looked like a stretch of parallel luminaries that were the boxed houses Gerald Kelly could not afford still. He was a successful reporter, respected journalist, but he heart had spent all his money left him carless, houseless, and hopeless. He let the darkness absorb these thoughts.

About twenty minutes later Kelly had the urge to piss his location against a towering oak tree where the river had opened to around fifteen feet across and its current was strong enough to be heard. It was while relieving himself that the sound of house music was carried to his ears further upstream by the declining current. It was a twisted beat of retro pinball music and deep bass drops. Pootie drank from the river and sat anxiously as his master redressed, he had heard the dirty bass all the way from home. The dog sprang up on all fours and the silver lining on his back turned to a spiky range, his snoot pointed into the forest, and he exhaled a low demonic growl. But the sound of dried fall leaves crunching beneath cloaked hooded figures in the forest is what really got the reporters attention. He zipped up his fly and reassured his grip on Pootie’s leash, the grey hooded cult members were just shadows in the obscurity of the night and oak canopies that let no moonlight through their roofs.

“What is that boy?” Kelly asked.

The dog barked a reply that could have only meant in dog language “Let’s go see!”

So they carried on close to the river bank careful to remained one with the night and thick legs of ancient oak, pine trees, and ferns. The shadows crept along their parallel, Kelly didn’t hear another sound or foot step but he saw their irregular shades creeping through the trees. But as he walked the music got louder and the indecisive clangor of voices grew stronger. The shades grew thinner and smaller and their footsteps were unsure and aimless. Gerald realized they were girls stumbling drunk through the woods, a group of them and some other boys. He stayed close to the forests’ edge, Pootie taut on his leash but quiet with his sinister growl.

Soon the river broke into a heavy decline that was bare with steep boulders and rocky terrain that sloped over a forty five degree angle down into a wide quarry fifty feet below. The forest ended at a cliff and the manmade body of water was a brilliant blue silver under the half moon. Gerald saw where the noise was coming from another manmade obstruction that was a dock being used a DJ stage with large screen at its edge that set just above and in front of the shallow edge of the quarry. Between the dock’s end, the water was rippling by the frolics of young adults high school and college and vagrant. A floating dock sat further out on the quarry it was populated with young people too; they were assembling floating candles and fire boats that spotted the water-black drop like tiny suns that dwarfed the stars the quarry already reflected from the clear sky. Women and men danced around large bonfire among other smaller fires that were surrounded more groups of people whom listened and watched the psychedelic visuals projected on the screen before moonlit rocky rapids that crashed into a black by night quarry where the current continued westward and around or over another waterfall and further down into the county. From his view the manmade lake, fifty feet below, broke off on the other side in various rushing waterfalls and the speed of the current quickened with denseness of the pine. The Misery Valleys homes were strips of soft light. The sight left Kelly rather subliminal and in that second of nirvana his grip on the leash loosened and Pootie was off and into the woods.  

“Shi-“ Gerald Kelly stumbled as the leashed snatched from his hand, before he had the chance to regain sight and mind Pootie had dashed into the dark forest and had become one with the night.

The sound of a young man slurring “I can see my house from here!” echoed through the night and halted the reporter in his steps.

“Be careful Cody, we’re like forty feet up here and you’re drunk.” A young woman’s voice harmonized the night.

“Come on, man. Just do it. I’m ready to get it over with!” Another young man’s voice echoed.

Kelly could not see the young people as they crossed between a stone and sand trail ten feet below his position on the earth. They were obscured by high boulders and towering pines that had rooted themselves between the stone crevasses. The five young people were guided by the moonlight that contrasted excellently off the grey stones. They were clothed in swim trunks, some in their underwear, and each was on some sort of high. The trail ended at an opening flanked by two young pine trees about twenty feet tall, the cliff over looked the deepest part of the quarry on its far side where the current picked up and dragged you down river rather over the water fall. The five young people, two girls and three young men, absorbed the view Gerald Kelly had been appreciating before he went searching for his dog.

“Oh my gosh this is so high up.” One girl remarked. Her name was Bridget Samson; she wore a lace white bra and panties. Her blonde hair was platinum in the light of the moon.

“Ahhh . . . I’m so scared,” Nelly Serena playfully screamed to hear her echo bounce between the stone walls of the quarry. She and Bridget were residents of Qualm Meadows; their grand-fathers had actually been contractors who led the quarrying of the limestone – jewel granite riverside for the step-stone roads of the community. It had to be the hundred time they jumped from this spot but they were putting on a show for Carter Evans, a new resident of Meadow County.

Carter tipped toed slowly towards the edge of the trail bare from waist up with nothing but his Superman briefs below and grabbed on to the base of a pine tree before poking his head over the side to gaze thirty feet down into what looked like an endless abyss. He took a final drag of the joint he had carried up the trail and flicked it over the edge. He counted six seconds before the tiny red end was snuffed in the water.

“Man, why’d you do that?” Baron Greene asked, resident of the middle lands of Qualm Meadows and the Misery Valleys – still considered Misery Valley, son of the county sheriff, Daryn Greene.

He was referring to the half of a joint that Carter had flicked over the edge. Baron stood right next to Carter casually looking over the edge but Carter was still taken by the height of the jump. Your first day at that school and you let these white people talk you into this? “Y’all are crazy as fuck, bro. I’m not doing this.”

“Aww come on, man.” Waron Greene said, “You wasted my weed, you’re doing this.”

“And you’re gonna puss out in front of the ladies?” Baron added.

They were both in colorful board shorts like they had done this many times before. Carter met them both in gym class in the weight room. The brothers took to him immediately and they have been inseparable since second period when they learned that he was from the worst part of California and that his step dad was a murdering drug dealer. Baron was supposed to be a senior but he was a sophomore with his brother Waron. For the two years that separated the boys they might as well been twins. They were from Wisconsin and were different from the other young men that went to Meadow County High School; they were not driven by the material things or what others at the school thought of them. They shared a rusty pick-up truck raised twelve inches that they drove to the quarry’s shores (a feat no one at the school believe possible) through a trail that they had carved with fire and hatchets. They were truly young men, and men of the wild, but they were not whole men like their father. They were harden by the crudeness of modern society and they objectified women, tarnished their bodies with drugs, hurt and bullied others, and cursed unlike men of religion. Even more unlike their father, they hated the law.

“Guess we better jump so we can get back to the good stuff!” Waron playfully remarked as he jumped and hauled himself up and atop the first branch of a pine tree. Soon he was at the top and gazing down at the quarry’s surface that was now lit up almost entirely by tiny boats of fire. A crowd had formed on the shore and people were howling and hooting in anticipation.

“Oh no, I can’t watch him this!” Either Bridget or Nelly squealed.

“Neither can I!” Carter still could not make out which girl said what for he was still captivated by Waron so high up in the pine tree.

“Jump with me!” Was the last thing he heard a female say before the two girl took each other’s hands and launched over the abyss hand in hand, seconds later a splash followed by a round of applause echoed the quarry.

“You gotta jump now, dude. Especially if they did.” Baron said.

“Wha-“ Carter started, but as he turned to greet Baron he saw that the boy was already up the opposing pine tree, almost to its top.

When Baron had reach and secured his footing atop a board nailed to the final and highest branch of the twenty-five foot pine tree his lungs had filled with elation and he was engulfed in a high unlike any he could ever experience with any controlled substance. From his position on the tree, his feet on the arm of the trees last and highest branch, his shoulder and head stood over the bar end tips of the pine tree; his hands were held firmly to the thin bark. Baryn looked at his brother who was virtually in the same position, just a few feet lower, on the opposing tree. Woryn was looking back. Together the stood at least twenty feet higher than the already forty foot jump into the water.

“Y’all are crazy-“

“You’re lame as fuck!” They both yelled before Carter had a chance to finish his statement. The crowd below roared with approval.

“You better jump dude.” Baron warned.

“Your reputation is gonna depend on this, no girls gonna ever wanna talk to you.” Waron added.

“I don’t need to-“

But before Carter had a chance to reply the pine trees started drastically swaying with the force of the boys. Broken pines rained down on Carter as the opposing branches caught and clung and scrapped against each other. The boys rocked the tree hard back and forth back and forth back and forth to the point Carter thought the branches would snap in two, then they launched out and over the quarry screaming and yelling “ye haws” and “woo hoos” while tumbling and spinning unsynchronized but fantastically through the air almost to the rhythm of the out of control house music blasting from below. They came down one straight and feet first and the other in a cannonball. The shore irrupted in roars of approval and the party raged on.

Carter waited and contemplated but convinced himself that it was not worth his life. The crowd on the shore seemed to simultaneously get the message and released an “aww” all in harmony. “He’s scared!” One girl playfully whined. Another girl yelled profanity. While another yelled “Enjoy the walk back down!” And he started back on the trail, but after less than ten seconds of walking he heard the sound of heaving grunting and beastly panting and the flash back of the beast he saw on his first night flashed in his head. He realized then he was in the middle of the woods. The grunting got louder and he could then hear the rapid pace of something running on all fours, then came the low bass like barking, and finally came the rapid distortions of the dark and a shade that was boring right for him. He turned on his heels without thinking and ran toward the cliffs edge. He could feel the beast’s hot damp breath on his hells and calves as he ran, he could almost feel its sharps fangs and clamping jaws just inches from his legs before he leaped over the edge and into the darkness. Pootie skidded to a stop at the edge howling in discontent. “Come back and play with me!” He might have meant.

Baryn and Waryn were walking back onto shore when they heard the splash of Carter Evans’ breaking the quarry’s surface. The screamed with joy as their new friend proved his worthiness and they both ran back into the water to greet the boy. Carter came back up and in one quick gasp and slight of sight he saw a shooting star cut the sky above him before Baron  and Waron dragged him back underwater. They came back up to the cheers of the other young adults on the shore. Bridget and Nelly, who had found a place on the floating dock, called for Carter and the other boys to join them - they had already gotten refreshments and party favors from the shore - they were surrounded by other girls and the boys swam over to join them.

“Whew!” Brylla cheered more than relieved from the bed of a truck on the shore of the stone quarry. She was cheering on her brother for having the guts to jump from such a high spot but she really felt relief from the fact that he was still alive.

“That’s your brother?” A young man ran up to her amongst a group of his friends. They were all clothed in some sort of white t-shirt and jean shorts, all wore baseball caps and boots.

Brylla smiled and nodded and sipped her fruity beer while the light from the fire danced against her smooth brown face. Another boy replied. “Hell yeah! At least we got some cool minorities in this county now!” And they were gone.

“Losers.” The tiny girl next to Brylla laughed before taking a sip of her beer; the flames of the fire reflected wildly off her thick lensed glasses. “They act like they never seen black people before.” But it was true, the only minorities in Meadow County and indefinitely in Qualm Meadows were Middle Eastern, Indians, Chinese, or Japanese.

“Definitely not any so pretty!” Her boyfriend complemented Brylla while playfully shoving her shoulder. He shoved her as she took another sip of her beer, she fumbled in response, and the fizzing liquid splashed her cleavage that was exposed under a tight black collared v-neck she had worn with a pair of pink denims her new little friend had convinced her to wear.

The little woman’s boyfriend was quick to respond with a handkerchief and almost got to padding Brylla’s full breasts before his little woman said, “At least kiss her first, Mel.” And Brylla gently snatched the hand towel from Melvin Smarts and dried herself. “Now walk away,” the little woman told her boyfriend and Mel did.

“Sorry about that,” Brylla smirked.

“Nah, you’re hot, he’s a perv’, shit happens.” Her name was Cynthia Playwright and she was 4’9, with the spark of a firecracker. Her with was as quick as the house music that was now a slower melody of chimes and bells that dropped into a heavy bass that moved the crowds of dancing people like a wave of euphoria. Cynthia had long black hair that she kept tied behind her back that hung to her waist. She dressed in a t-shirt that she tucked into her belted blue jeans that she tucked into her ostrich skin boots. She said she had to wear those thick glasses because her boyfriend lost her contacts. She had not explained to Brylla how. “Your brother’s pretty brave.” Cynthia said after belching.  

Brylla shrugged her shoulders, “eh, seems kinda dumb to me.” She would have never jumped from that cliff.

Cynthia laughed. “I agree. I would have never jumped from that cliff.” She almost repeated the thought. “Is that your other brother?” Cynthia had noticed that Brylla spent most the night watching Josh move through the crowd by the hands of a pretty blonde girl that was introducing him to everyone. And by the looks of it her older brother was very well received. Brylla, on the other hand, how she felt according to the girls she saw herself associated with, felt out of place. Those girls looked at her in false contempt and Brylla feels like an alien in their world. Their boys flock and swoon and flatter her, while their women avertedly glared and gazed and shouldered cold and shade as they passed her. They giggled nothings under their breaths and did as much as possible not to talk to her. But each and every one of those chickens reacted with breadth and fresh air in the presence of her fair toned green-eyed brother. The girl he was with was the worst and he limped after her on that casted broken ankle from here to there all round that campground.

Cynthia was not the type of person Brylla saw herself associating with at all but since first period and again when she saw the tyke of a girl in third period and again by lunch she was the only other decently pretty girl that had approached and talked to her. So by the time school was over she had one new friend and was invited to the Meadow County Homing Coming Countdown Kickoff. Cynthia reminded Brylla a lot of Victoria but a white Victoria that drank, smoke cigarettes, wasn’t so good in science, and had a boyfriend. In fact, Cynthia was very little like Victoria but after a while of knowing the girl she felt some sort of familiar connection with Cynthia.

So she nodded a reply, as to say “Yeah that’s my brother.” And she sighed as to say “I feel like such a loser.” But she did ask. “Who’s that girl he’s with?”

Cynthia snorted, “Gretel Frank, her dad’s the doctor of the town. That’s her sister over there.” She pointed their attention across the bonfires on the other end of the circle of trucks to a physically deformed girl jaggedly bent at the spine holding a beer with her one fully formed arm drooling from the mouth gazing into the fire. “That’s her twin sister, her names Gretchen. They’re the daughters of the town physician.”

Brylla did feel like a strange creature in a strange land but she in no way could compare herself to what Gretchen Frank might have been feeling. But if Brylla did count to gauge how out of place she was with how out of place Gretchen felt she would have been disheartened further for Gretchen did not howl at the moon. She was perfectly fine with her deformities and even more content with her large breast and thick thighs, her scattering eyes were not darting the licks of the flame on the bonfire but darting the different boys she wanted to talk to and maybe date. The deformed girl lifted her red solo cup to her mouth and sipped what beer she could from it the other sum of it spilling to the ground from her awkward position. But her peers reacted to her in kind, greeting and hugging and doing what they could to make conversation with the girl. Some girls helped fix her hair or her bra straps and pulled up her pants that she kept pulling down or messing up for attention. But the members of the party were fine with her and it was expected of Gretchen to be that way and they cherished and loved and assisted her to help her feel more welcome. Although she paid them little mind, reacted to their charity with a sense of condescension, almost to a regard of baronial – she acted as if she was royalty. And her confidence rubbed off well because soon she was invited with a group of people to escape into the woods.

Gretchen told her sister that she was going with her friends – a group of kids involved with a ‘believers circle’ at Qualm Meadow High – into the woods. Gretel paid her little mind because she bet that the kids could do no harm, they didn’t drink or do drugs they didn’t curse or do bad things. So allowed the group of girls and guys, about six of them, lead her sister into the woods while she continued to introduce her new friend, Josh Evans’ to the young people of Qualm Meadows.

“He’s from California,” the she would add “The worst part.” After a few gasps and “I know – I know – I know . . . “ she’d continue “He used to be a basketball star over there but my Uncle Willie says that he’s gonna be a football sensation over here!” And the many groups of people would turn to chatter.

But they would quickly quiet when Joshua spoke, edger to hear him speak, “Yeah I just gotta get this cas-“

And she would interrupt. “He might even be homecoming king!” And the girls would swoon.

“Too bad you don’t stand a chance to be queen-“ But before Marla Madison could continue her senseless hate rant Gretel was on to the next crowd with her new trophy and the routine would start again.

“Yeah, my dad said we’re gonna get hella recruiters to show up and I could get a scholarship because you’re gonna be bringing so much attention our way.” One of his future football teammates said while patting him on the back and throwing back cans of haps beer. Another of his teammates assured him “With that Ford Raptor of yours, you’ll be getting way more p-“ but before he could finished Gretel whisked Joshua to the next group of spectators. Where another one of his teammates offered “Right now, I take over for Harry Chyman, he was the quarterback before he died a few weeks ago – my older brother is the coach at school. He told me that you got the potential to take over for Chyman.” It was more of a question than statement but before Josh had time to reply Marcus Damacus replied “Well that’s somethin’ you gotta prove with your hands, not your mouth.”

“Anytime man.” Was all that Josh could say before Gretel asked him to walk her into the woods so she could pee.

Together Joshua Evans and Gretel Frank awkwardly ambled into the dense forest hand and hand. They walked beyond the quarry and downhill on a path overgrown with ever growing grass. “I want to show you something.” Gretel said before kiss Joshua on the cheek and disappearing into the dark and now breast high grass. “Come find me,” she called from down the trail.

The pasture of grass washed like an ocean in the humid Cajun breeze the long stocks of fine brush sounded like easy crashing waves, silver in the moonlight. Josh limped sure footedly ever careful of his broken ankle and cast as he searched for his new girl. He met Gretel after lunch in seventh period during football practice. He couldn’t play on account of his broken ankle and saw that the cheer captain, Gretel, was watching him under the bleachers while she smoked a cigarette; the rest of her squad did their best to train one another. The first thing besides her heartbreaking looks, that Josh noticed about her was her cool attitude, she was mean but confident, sweet but direct. They hit it off immediately on the Qualm Meadow High School football field and he invited her to ride to the bonfire with him and Brylla and Carter. She declined but she said she would see him there. They have been inseparable ever since she found him amongst a group of her girlfriends. Joshua Evans belonged to Gretel Frank.

Joshua followed the path flanked by tall grass until he came to an old stone and wood grist mill sat over where the river had split into six daughter streams each at least eight to twelve feet across. The grist mill sat above two of the creeks supported by the middle two of the six islands, four wooden paddle water wheels still in good shape and functioning, two spun in the streams the grist mill was built over and the other two – which were significantly bigger but out of shape – ran rigidly in nearing streams on either side of the grist mill. A wooden bridge connects separately to each shaft that spins off the waterwheels into a gear contraption built under the wooden foot bridge and connects to runner stone in the basement floor of the mill. Joshua did not expect the mill to be operating as he walked the footbridge over the streams and into the wooden house suspended above two creeks and in between four more. But it was and the scent of crushing grain was unfamiliar to his nose, the scent of tobacco however wasn’t.

The grist mill was three stories besides the flooded basement that the current rushed through and spun the wheels. The stone grinder grinded with steady force above that rushing water, supported by the energy of the its four supporting waterwheels. The lines efficiently pushed, lined, separated, crushed up the next two stories and binned the grain back on the first. What an old fashioned grist mill like this was being used for in this day and age Josh did not know nor did he care. He entered the grist mill on the wooden footpath – which peculiarly vibrated beneath his feet on account of the spinning gears – through one open door entrance and out through the next guided by the light of the moon. He crossed the next two crevices over the river - the islands were even infested by thick roots of grass – to a point where the bridge had been shattered by the force of some ancient current that was since tamed by a manmade stone dam a few yards up the river. He peed in between the gap and into the deep rushing stream twelve feet below him.

Far off in the pitch dark romantic glade of the dense pine and oak forest a large flickering light was visible to Joshua’s eye and out of the distant low, rumbling, and thunderous bass of the bonfire rave came an opposing exhortation. Moans and chants and the shouts of a queer tongue carried on the current. Between the feelings of relief that came with draining his bladder, the red star dappling behind the oak trees, and the enchanting sounds of the forest Joshua didn’t hear Gretel sneaking up behind him. She grabbed his waist and he jumped for the sky, his cast caused him to lose proper footing and it he would have fell if not for Gretel using her weight to anchor him back on to the bridge. He fell on top of her and she laughed. Her hair was silver in the light of the moon and the stars flickered off her blue eyes that were black under the shade of the night. Her skin was a milky white and her lips a pale grey. She looked fantastically supernatural in his thick arms as he stared down at her and he went to kiss her but someone yelled “Glory to the creators of the universe!” and that stopped him. He dropped her and hopped to his feet, it was coming from the broken path on the other side of the riverbank.

“What was that?” He demanded.

“I don’t know.” Gretel grudgedly replied as she gathered herself. “You can’t jump the bridge and go see either.”

How does everyone here know what I’m thinking? He thought to himself and before he had a chance to reply Gretel reared up and vaulted the gap and landed like a gymnast on the other side. She’s amazing. He watched her laugh and spin on her heels. The smooth sway in her hips as she walked away could have been body language for “You gonna just watch me walk away?” And she disappeared into the dark forest.

Joshua backed up, marked his position and ran, he vaulted high into the air and landed barely on the other side with his left feet saving his casted ankle and swinging it onto the edge. He didn’t give himself to think about the danger before he ran after Gretel. He found her on all fours hunched behind a large and thick palm fawn dwarfed by rows of pine trees and spotted mossy elk. She shh’d him and motioned for him to kneel down beside her before he had the chance to frighten her in the dark. The giant light was now completely visible from their position; it was a red shaded flambeaux that hung from a giant branch of a mighty oak. Wicks of fire licked the air on tall torch poles that enclosed a small congregation of people all seated in benches ranged round an immensely tall and skinny mountaineer draped in brown wool robe preaching the damnation of the world as he paced beneath the guttering lights of the flambeaux and torches.

He preached about the thirteen high kings and the six creators and roared about the one true God that was only known by the name God. He spoke of the kings as appointed by right and blood and claimed himself to be one. He said that his great great and many more great grandfathers was a creator and that creator was a friend and known associate of the first man that was the direct son of God and God was the Universe. With every turn the pitch of his voice would peak and he thrust his hands into the air with great vigor. The distant rumbling of the bass music sounded like slow rolling thunder and added reverence to his words. In the benches directly in front of him were younger folk, the youngest were two girls with pigtails down their backs that clung to each other with fear, the oldest a young woman suckling her babe and rocking as the tall cloaked man paced back and forth. Behind them were older people, big burly women in gingham dresses and tall lanky men dressed in overalls, boots, and top hats, their beards fine, rough and gray passing their shoulders, chests, stomachs, and some even waists. But each individual, young or old, fat or skinny, colored or gray haired sat eerily attuned to every word the man said. Some exalting with Halleluiahs and Amens, Blessed be’s and almighty’s, some standing and shaking with pure elation and chanting in twisted tongues.

“What are they doing?” Joshua whispered to Gretel.

“I don’t know, I never even seen these people before.” Gretel returned.

The preacher stopped and what followed as a brief palaver and the rearrangement of the seating. A bench was pulled under the flambeaux and the teacher announced a new member to the congregation. “She has asked for us to pray for her.” He said in a low and haunting voice as he held out her arm for introduction.

The woman had a bag over head and she was bent over stiffly as two men, also dressed in wool cloaks, escorted her to the bench where she sat jaggedly bent to the left beneath the red glare of the lamp. When they removed the wool bag from her head to reveal the distorted and disfigured facial structure of Gretchen Frank the congregation erupted in gasps that quickly turned to indiscernible tongues and prayers each one unique to the individual. The younger children cried and the sight and clung tighter to each other or ran to their guardians whom only moved them closer as they moved to touch the deformed mishap of the universe. Soon they were all upon her. The leader fell to his knees with a mighty thud and his head alternated thrown back dramatically or buried in his hands. Words spouted from his cracked, white, and chapped lips like a broken machine gun – shout appeals to the creators of man and the perfectors of the universe. He demanded penance a he rose to his feet and began to squirm and jerk with impassioned thrust of spirit before he fell head first into the crowd of waving pyramid of supplicants.

A dark, continuous and heavy bass beat rolled over like thunder from the quarry. Joshua watched from the shaded shrubbery in fear while Gretel laughed and mocked the heathens. But it was until Gretchen slowly rose and detached herself from the squirming and jabbering mass that Gretel really took notice. Her head jerked back and massive veins strained like cataracts from her ears to chest as she wailed and hissed and moaned. Her already jagged and bent shape heaving and thrusting from shoulders to hips in directions that Gretel did not know her sister to be capable of moving in. Her rapid moving eyes caught and paused in her head and then rolled back to where only the whites in her eyes were visible. Gretchen locked in her regular bent position, what looked to be like her pelvis bone violently pulsing and protruding from her side. And she screamed a prayer only to be described the inarticulate and delirious caterwauling. The group clangor of radical foreign prayers, the disrespectful screeching laugh of Gretel, coupled with the low rumblings of bass gave the scene an all too ominous effect and Joshua began to back away. That is when he saw a man sinisterly cloaked in a hooded wooden, cloak his face not visible, sweep behind Gretchen and slit her throat in one fluid motion.

The squabbling orgy exploded in sheer elation while Gretel choked on her wretched laugh. She screamed a shrilling cry that echoed into the night but only blended with the expected sounds of House music and contagious congregation. Blood squirted from the retarded girl’s neck and all over mass and they bathed and drank and frolicked in it. It was all Joshua could do to hold Gretel back but he had a feeling those people would have done the same to her so he fought her with all his strength. Then they saw a black smoke raise from the wound in Gretel’s throat – she was still standing, her body still bent, and her pelvis bone still pulsing from her side. A deep, cracked, and demonic voice that seemed to be coming from within the depths of Gretchen’s body spoke a thick satanic curse and Gretchen convulsed violently.

The crowd watched intently, shaking, and moving and chanting until their leader yelled “Stop! Stop, I tell you. God is no longer with us; this is the devil’s work I tell you. Look at her!” He yelled and pointed his long and yellow wooden like fingernail in the direction of Gretchen Frank who was smoking from her neck and seizing violently on her feet beneath the red glare of the flambeaux. She cursed, wailed, and flung rapidly; a demonic voice spoke from within her but not from her mouth. Soon her voice box and nodes where hanging by the threads of her throat. “Kill her! Kill her before we release the devil into this world!” And the hooded woolen man was on her again. He stabbed the hump in her back, her neck and head, he even stabbed her face but Gretchen kept wailing and thrusting her arms. She knocked the knife from the man’s hands, grabbed his shoulders, and with the strength of a god she pulled him to the ground and shattered his collarbone beneath the pressure of her jaws. She ripped out his jugular and seemingly chewed and swallowed it.

It did not take long before the children were bolting into the woods unconcerned about the curiosities of their parents and elders. The chanting had evolved to screams and shouts, the men grabbed their torches and the women threw rocks but they did little to disturb the girl who had already devoured half a man’s torso raw. Then the beast burst through the night and out of the shrubs and was on her, his teeth deep in her bulging pelvic bone, its jaws locked and ripped her side open. A large, thick, and powerful arm burst bloody from the seams of Gretchen Frank’s thighs, grabbed Pootie and flung him into the woods. She didn’t favor the taste of dog.

The congregation distinguished and the members scattered into the nights and dense forestry; torches darted the night as the mountain people escaped into the heaths. Even Gretel, as scared and confused as she was for her sister, and Joshua, scared and confused with a broken ankle jumped back over the bride and ran. The sounds of screams overpowered the sound of house music and soon the DJ stopped playing all together when the congregation of religious peoples swarmed through the shores of the quarry screaming of a man eating abomination and devil dogs. The teenagers and young adults laughed until they saw that the fleeing congregation was covered and sticky with blood; a few started to retreat. But it was once the seventy pound mastiff-Rottweiler mix that was Pootie, who was caked in blood, and slobbering red everywhere that the party truly started to spread in terror. Then came Gretchen, and the demonic voice was loud and plain and simple coming directly from her. A third arm - among her one good arm and other deformed arm - muscular and bloody wailed and jerked Gretchen here to there. Her voice box and jugular hung from her neck by her vocal cords under her wide cleft jaw and razor sharp teeth, she wanted blood. And she found in the neck of Cynthia Playwright who had tripped over a deep root. When her boyfriend saw that Gretchen was upon her and already half her scalp and chunk of shoulder was missing he locked Brylla in his truck and sped away with her.

Josh saw Brylla speed away, then managed to catch sight of Carter leaving in a rush with Baron and Waron Greene. So he helped a still in shock Gretel into his Raptor and sped after the other trucks bored back down the path they came. Students – high school and college – jumped onto, into, and clung to the backs of trucks as they sped away from Hangman’s Quarry.

Gerald Kelly then found himself the only one left at the party. He could not take his eyes away from Gretchen Frank. And when she finally caught him staring she was after him too, running half foot because one leg was shorter than the other and the new arm made her even more unbalanced; the demonic voice yelling from a place that was not her mouth “Eat him! Eat him! Eat him!”

Kelly spun on his heels and ran at full hilt. He ran towards the cover of the woods fighting the inclines in full thrusts. He ran left, he ran right. He fell over a root. But he was back up again and he bolting through the woods. He ran as hard as he could and when he thought he had put enough distance between him and the deformed blood thirsty girl he ran harder. Soon he was back at the mouth of the crater and he still ran. He was running by Betty’s greenhouse when the sound of feet cutting quickly over the forest floor pushed him harder. But the thing was upon him and closing in quick. His heart pumped full adrenaline and it coursed through every inch of his body but the footsteps still gained him. A burrowing force knocked his feet from under him and he landed head first on the incline and rolled to the back to the base of the crater.

Gerald Kelly laid statically on the ground hoping that whatever it was that wanted to eat and kill him would spare him if it though he was dead. His eyes shut tight he could not bear another site of the monster. The smell of wet iron washed over him and the heavy breathing blew the hair and goose bumps back on his face. He pissed his pants before Pootie licked his face.