But then, the world toppled again and he found himself fighting the small dots of darkness that threatened to overtake his vision. His legs gave out from under him and his body met with the ground for a second time.
It couldn’t live. It couldn’t live. It...
He clawed at the ground, pulling his whole body toward that thing. He clawed and clawed until he felt the blood flowing from his breaking fingernails. He was only inches away from its leg now, only one more push forward and—
Just as he leaned down to pick up the shotgun, something grabbed his leg and pulled him backward. Mark felt his whole body plunge to the ground. A shot of dizzying pain scurried through his body as his whole body collided with the cement floor beneath him. Tears welled in his eyes as another bolt of pain shot down his spine.
He turned to see Bradley clawing at his ankle, a wild grin covering his lips. There was very little that was still human in that face. His every feature had been replaced by something animal, something rabid and thirsty for blood.
Mark turned to look at the gun. It was so close to him! Just a few feet or so and he’d be able to grab it and blast Bradley back to hell. He kicked at the man with his free leg. The first kick went wild, hitting nothing but empty air. He kicked again. This time, to his complete surprise, the kick did collide with the man, hitting him straight on the forehead. A loud scream of pain erupted from the man’s lips. The fingers gripping Mark’s ankle loosened, giving him just enough leeway to be able to push his body forward. The tips of his fingers kissed the end of the barrel. He kicked at the man again and pushed his body forth.
His palm searched the wet floor. When his fingers finally found the hard, circular shape of the barrel, Mark brought his whole body upward and stood over the man. This time, he was the one grinning as he brought the gun in front of him and pointed it at the man who lay moaning at his feet.
Only, the thing in his hand wasn’t the shotgun. He felt a deep-sinking sensation as he realized that he was holding a long, white bone, a bone to which dried little pieces of flesh still clung.
When the thing pointed the bone at him, a loud, happy laugh rose from his throat and burst through his lips. So those things were as dumb as they looked!
He got up from the ground to stand a few feet away from the thing.
Both their heads turned to look at the shotgun that reposed only inches away from them.
Time froze as they both stared at each other, each waiting for the other to make his move. Bradley wasn’t about to make another mistake. He’d play his cards right this time and win the hand fate had dealt him.
Their eyes locked. They both shared a strange rush of anger and fear as they each waited for the other to make his move. The air stood still and heavy and silent around them. Except for the two of them, nothing else lived in their world.
It didn’t surprise Bradley one bit to see that little monster make the first move. Something sparkled in its eyes and a strange grin covered its thin, nearly non-existent lips as its tiny body lunged sideways toward the gun. A faint animal screech burst out of its mouth.
He followed it in its dive, his arms extended in front of him, reaching for the thing’s legs. His fingers clasped around its ankles as they both hit the ground beneath them.
Billy heard the first gunshot echo through the woods and knew too well where it had come from.
Mark!
A shudder of fear sent his body into a stream of panic. His every muscle clenched to render him motionless. He waited, listening to the thick silence of the forest, hoping that what he thought he’d heard had only been the product of his imagination.
But then, another shot exploded through the night and the fear he had been able to drive away for the time being came back to haunt him with a newfound voracity.
“Mark. Jesus, Mark!” Tears welled in his eyes, burning the already irritated flesh of his face. He couldn’t go home now. He couldn’t leave Mark back there on his own. He had to go back and help his brother out.
He turned around and ran in the opposite direction, toward that house, toward that barn, toward that horrible man and his gun.
Blood flowed from the man’s stomach. A large puddle was quickly forming on the floor under him, tainting the bones and the rotting hay with its redness. The man held his stomach with one hand and one of those long bones with the other. Blood seeped out of his mouth as he looked up at Mark with a dazed expression.
“You fucking little bastard,” he said, followed by a long howl of pain. “You damn bastard! You fucking shot me.” Bradley coughed, letting a small rivulet of blood escape through his parted lips.
Mark didn’t respond. He stared back at the man with a horrible sense of fear. He had actually shot the man. He had made the man bleed. As his fingers clutched to the shotgun, his whole body trembled.
Bradley clawed toward him, gritting his teeth with pain. “I’m gonna kill you now,” he moaned as he heaved his body forward, inching ever so close to where he stood.
Mark lifted the gun and pointed it down at the man, his trembling hands sending the barrel into a quivering fit.
The man laughed. “Oh, I’m gonna git you now.”
His fingers were barely a few inches away from Mark’s feet. The man laughed again, blood flowing out of his mouth in great streams, an effervescent glint of madness glowing brightly in his eyes.
Mark closed his eyes and fired the shotgun for a third time. In the darkness of his mind, the thick silence melted with the stinging stench of gunpowder to leave him feeling dizzy and numb with terror.
When the third shot came bursting through the night, Billy felt everything inside him sink. Mark couldn’t be alive, not after the shotgun had been fired three times. He stopped running again, one part of his mind telling him to turn around and run home to his parents, the other part, the one that was shouting at him and which refused to remain unheard, telling him to go and save his brother from that horrible man.
There wasn’t much he’d be able to do against Bradley. Not with that gun of his. But that was his brother back there. Mark had always been there for him and would never have left him alone with that man had the situation been reversed. The fact that he’d run away from his brother, the fact that he’d left Mark there to die in order to save his own life, was swallowing him whole with guilt.
All the fear he had felt dissipated. He couldn’t leave Mark to die like that. He had to try to help him.
He had to save his brother.
He didn’t want to step over that man’s body. Bradley was clearly dead, his whole body covered with a very thick film of rust-colored blood. He could see the large hole the last bullet had made in the middle of his forehead. But the corpse lay between the door and the place where he stood, turning him into an unwilling prisoner of this dark, damp place. If he wanted to escape, if he wanted to get out of there, he’d have to step over that body.
He threw the gun away from him and heard it land on the cement floor with a loud thud somewhere to his left. He didn’t care about prints. He didn’t care about what the police called damning evidence on those TV cop shows he liked to watch with Billy. He was too afraid to think rationally, too shocked by what he had done to make sense of things.
He took one step toward the body and waited. The man didn’t move, didn’t even seem to be breathing. He took another step, and then another, feeling more and more confident with each step that the man was truly dead and that he wouldn’t grab at his leg the moment he tried to step over him. And with all that blood seeping through the cracked cement floor, like tiny red veins, Bradley couldn’t be alive.