There had to be a way to get back at the bullies without risking a broken nose. What if he bought them each a "Thank You" card for the toilet incident? That would really mess with their minds. It could be a really colorful card, maybe with a piece of chocolate inside, presented to them with no trace of irony. Something like that might really fuel their sense of paranoia. They'd wonder exactly what he had planned for them. Their stomachs would hurt whenever they saw him. It would be glorious!
"What does this mean?" Larry would ask, reading the card for the 73rd time. "Has he gone deranged? Or does he have a ghastly fate in store for us?"
"I do not know!" Nick would answer. "But the suspense may drive me mad!"
Toby felt a little better as he ran.
His dad always got home at 7:15 sharp, which gave him another two hours to goof around in the woods. Maybe he'd see how far he could get in an hour. He spent a lot of time in the woods and knew the few square miles behind his house well, but it was a vast forest that offered new discoveries all the time. Mostly just different trees, but still...
He moved through the woods for about half an hour, alternating between jogging, walking fast, and a couple of brief bursts of sprinting. He should probably join track at school. Might make him some friends. Or one friend.
He stopped running.
Something was lying on the ground in front of a small clearing. Toby walked over to investigate. It was a wooden sign, lying on its side, mostly covered by bushes. The red lettering had faded to almost the same grey color as the wood, but the words were still legible: Danger. Keep Out.
Wow.
A couple of years ago, Toby had discovered an old rusted car, right there amidst the trees. It had looked like something from the 1930's. He'd spent long nights wondering how it got there. Rationally, he knew that the answer was straightforward, that there had probably just been a path at one time that had since been abandoned and overgrown. But there were dozens of much more interesting scenarios, and they'd captured his imagination until a few weeks later when he found the deer carcass. He'd searched the vehicle thoroughly, but alas, there was no hidden stash of mobster cash.
Danger. Keep Out promised something even more exciting.
What could it be? An abandoned mine? An old bunker filled with explosives?
Toby slowly stepped through the clearing, which was a circle about fifty feet in diameter, watching his feet to make sure he didn't walk in a bear trap or something like that. The clearing itself seemed to be devoid of anything interesting. He walked around the perimeter, then walked across it several times, but didn't see anything that looked even remotely worthy of the sign.
They wouldn't put out a sign like that for no reason. There had to be something. Maybe it was the former site of a horrible plague.
No, even in ancient times, people probably took stronger precautions against the spread of a plague than simply putting out a wooden sign.
He kept searching the area, but there was nothing. What a rip-off.
What if the sign had been moved? He just needed to keep searching. He continued to walk around the area, not going quite so far as to crawl around on his hands and knees, but making sure he was searching thoroughly. If there was something great out here, he was going to find it.
About five minutes beyond the sign, he found a path. A narrow uphill path that looked recently used.
Well, maybe not. There weren't any distinct footprints or broken branches or anything specific to indicate that somebody might have recently taken a stroll around here. Still, Toby had a weird feeling, something he couldn't quite pinpoint, that he wasn't the only person to have used this path today.
This meant that, as a rational, intelligent human being, his best bet was to get the hell out of there as soon as possible.
Instead, he stepped onto the path and followed it.
The Keep
A bonus excerpt from Paul's novel, THE KEEP, also available in the Kindle Store...
Privates Friedrich Waltz and Karl Flick, members of the first Death's Head unit under Major Kaempffer, stood in their black uniforms, their gleaming black helmets, and shivered. They were bored, cold, and tired. They were unaccustomed to this sort of night duty. Back at Auschwitz they had had warm, comfortable guardhouses and watchtowers where they could sit and drink coffee and play cards while the prisoners cowered in their drafty shacks. Only occasionally had they been required to do gate duty and march the perimeter in the open air.
True, here they were inside, but their conditions were as cold and as damp as the prisoners'. That wasn't right.
Private Flick slung his Schmeisser behind his back and rubbed his hands together. The fingertips were numb despite his gloves. He stood beside Waltz who was leaning against the wall at the angle of the two corridors. From this vantage point they could watch the entire length of the entry corridor to their left, all the way to the black square of night that was the courtyard, and at the same time keep watch on the prison block to their right.
"I'm going crazy, Karl," Waltz said. "Let's do something. "
"Like what?"
"How about making them fall out for a little Sachsengruss?"
"They aren't Jews."
"They aren't Germans, either."
Flick considered this. The Sachsengruss, or Saxon greeting, had been his favorite method of breaking down new arrivals at Auschwitz. For hours on end he would make them perform the exercise: deep knee bends with arms raised and hands behind the head. Even a man in top condition would be in agony within half an hour. Flick had always found it exhilarating to watch the expressions on the prisoners' faces as they felt their bodies begin to betray them, as their joints and muscles cried out in anguish. And the fear in their faces. For those who fell from exhaustion were either shot on the spot or kicked until they resumed the exercise. Even if he and Waltz couldn't shoot any of the Romanians tonight, at least they could have some fun with them. But it might be hazardous.
"Better forget it," Flick said. "There's only two of us. What if one of them tries to be a hero?"
"We'll only take a couple out of the room at a time. Come on, Karl! It'll be fun!"
Flick smiled. "Oh, all right."
It wouldn't be as challenging as the game they used to play at Auschwitz, where he and Waltz held contests to see how many of a prisoner's bones they could break and still keep him working. But at least a little Sachsengruss would be diverting.
Flick began fishing out the key to the padlock that had transformed the last room on the corridor into a prison cell. There were four rooms available and they could have divided up the villagers but they had crowded all ten into a single chamber instead. He was anticipating the look on their faces when he opened the door--the wincing, lip-quivering fear when they saw his smile and realized they would never receive any mercy from him. It gave him a certain feeling inside, something indescribable, wonderful, something so addictive that he craved more and more of it.
He was halfway to the door when Waltz's voice stopped him.
"Just a minute, Karl."
He turned. Waltz was squinting down the corridor toward the courtyard, a puzzled expression on his face. "What is it?" Flick asked.
"Something's wrong with one of the bulbs down there. The first one--it's going out."
"So?"
"It's fading out." He glanced at Flick and then back down the corridor. "Now the second one's fading!" His voice rose half an octave as he lifted his Schmeisser and cocked it. "Get over here!"