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Devourer of Souls Eight
EIGHTWednesdayI didn’t realize until breakfast when my sister Amy asked what I’d done with the blueberries that I’d forgotten to stop by Mr. Trung’s on the way home from fishing Saturday. Dad had already left for work so Amy felt the freedom to call me several choice names, questioning the number of chromosomes I’d been born with. I basically told her to “shove it.”But I knew how much Dad loved blueberry pie. Eager to keep him in a good mood so I could attend that night’s showing of The Creature from the Black Lagoon at Raedeker Park, I finally told Amy very kindly to “shut your cake-hole, I’ll get the damned blueberries.” She then threatened to tell Dad I’d said “damned.” I countered with a threat to tell Dad about the older boy she’d been dating on the sly from Webb County Community College (Amy was only a junior in high school). That pretty much sealed everything up in a tense truce, so I left the house that morning feeling pretty damned productive, indeed.So damned producti
Devourer of Souls Nine
NINEAfter dropping the blueberries off at home (and telling myself over and over that Mr. Trung hadn’t seen me hiding in his bushes) I pedaled to Bobby Drake’s farm to bale hay. Bobby’s dad ran a dairy farm just outside town. That’s where most of us earned our cash. It was pretty much an all-summer occupation. With Kevin still most likely chopping firewood it was just me and Bobby and Bobby’s younger brother Matt . . . and, well, the last person I expected to see: Jake. Of course, Jake’s family needed the money—his dad out of work again—and Mr. Drake always welcomed the extra help.We all arrived in front of the Drake barn around ten. Mr. Drake pulled his tractor out, hitched up one of his wagons. We clambered on and trundled off. We usually worked until we filled that wagon, then afterward we’d hitch up an empty wagon, work straight until noon and break for lunch, which Mrs. Drake always packed into a cooler for us.Then we’d get back to work. Once we filled the wagons, we’d retur
Devourer of Souls Ten
TENI met Bill Ward at Raedeker Park around seven. The Creature from the Black Lagoon started at eight, so we bought some hotdogs from the concession stand and walked through the zoo, because they always offered free admission an hour before the weekly movie. Raedeker Recreational Park wasn’t just an athletic field and a playground. It was a collection of various attractions on the west end of town. Down Barstow Road past the New York State Electric and Gas Payment Center, left onto Samara Hill and about two miles up on the right sprawled Raedeker Recreational Park. Upon entering, if you went straight, you’d take a winding road descending to Raedeker Park Zoo.The zoo wasn’t that impressive. It offered only a moderate collection of animals, always permeated by a mild air of dilapidation, constantly under a renovation that never seemed to end. According to Dad, it started to go downhill years ago after it suffered a rash of weird accidents. First, a train ride derailed, resulting in m
Devourer of Souls Eleven
ELEVENI’d always loved Creature from the Black Lagoon, even though I’d already seen it several times before on Channel 34’s Sunday afternoon cinema. It was campy and a bit silly, overacted, and I was well old enough to know the monster was a guy in a rubber suit . . .But despite that, something in the beginning gave me a bad turn that night. After Dr. Maia (played by Antonio Moren), discovered the petrified hand-fossil of the Creature’s ancestor, the live Creature reached menacingly out of the Amazon’s waters to scrape its claws on the bank. It was an amazingly effective shot despite the brassy musical score accompanying it. The only thing shown is that webbed claw, looking terribly life-like in black and white (to an imaginative fourteen year old, anyway), reaching out of the water and clawing the bank, almost as if it was marking its territory.But the jolt I suffered that night had little to do with cinematography and to do more with the images conjured in my head of something
Devourer of Souls Twelve
TWELVEI squeezed my bike’s handbrakes, slowing to a stop. “Jake,” I said, feeling oddly calm, for some reason. “What’s up?”He shrugged, his face weirdly blank in the yellow glow of the streetlights.“Were you at the movie? Didn’t see you.”He shook his head. “Nah. I . . . uh, had some thinkin’ to do. About stuff. Hey,” he leaned over his handlebars, face finally coming alive, looking eager, nervous, maybe excited . . . and . . .Yes.Afraid.“Listen. I’m gonna do somethin’ tonight. I need help. Someone to watch out. Could . . . could you go with me? I’m sorry for the way I freaked out in the woods Saturday. I just . . . I need your help, man. Need you to watch out for me.”I stared at him: his brow furrowed, jaw firm, a vein pulsing on his temple, eyes wide and glimmering. I knew where he wanted to go but I asked anyway. “Where?”And then I saw it, creeping back into his face as a gradual sneer—that old Jake Burns look, but with something else burning his eyes.Hate.Absol
Devourer of Souls Thirteen
THIRTEENI’m still not sure why I followed Jake out to Mr. Trung’s. Dad had set pretty firm rules for the night. I could go to the weekly movie on my bike alone, so long as I returned home by eleven, allowing for some dawdling after the movie and the ride home. But here I was, flying down Bassler Road behind Jake Burns at what had to be eleven already.Usually Dad went to bed before us because he had to report to the lumber mill by five, but who knew? Maybe he wouldn’t be able to sleep. Maybe he’d wait up and when I didn’t come home like I was supposed to he’d wait up some more, come out looking for me or call the sheriff, even. Worse, maybe Amy had come home early, noticed my absence and in true big-sister fashion, ratted me out. Could be either of those fates was in store.Or maybe neither of them. Maybe Dad had gone to bed as usual—around 8:00, right after his nightly beer—and had fallen hard asleep like always. Maybe Amy was still out with her friends and wouldn’t get home until
Devourer of Souls Fourteen
FOURTEENJake brought his bike to a skidding stop along Bassler Road’s gravel shoulder. I followed suit. We walked our bikes the rest of the way. As we turned onto Mr. Trung’s property, his trailer leaped from the darkness, a dim white ghost partially lit by one porch light.To our left the rows of blueberry bushes looked like dark, impenetrable walls of a maze. On the other side of the trailer lay Mr. Trung’s beautifully manicured flower gardens and his koi pond . . .Mr. Trung, praying in the koi pond.The koi praying to him.. . . and I felt a surge of inexplicable relief that Mr. Trung’s trailer blocked my view of the garden and that koi pond.The koi.Praying to Mr. Trung.“Here,” Jake whispered as he cut off the road, across the shallow ditch and along the edge of Mr. Trung’s property. “Quieter than the driveway.”I followed him—still tugged along by some strange insistence I didn’t understand—looking at Mr. Trung’s darkened trailer. No lights shone in the windows. Only
Devourer of Souls Fifteen
FIFTEENI crouched at the edge of those blueberry bushes, quietly afraid. Jake left his bike with me, hoisted his backpack over his shoulder, hefted his hammer once more and melted into the darkness soundlessly like a cat.I couldn’t help but shiver, thinking about Dad saying James Burns could do the same thing as a kid. That’s why he’d been picked to be a Green Beret, because he could fade into the misty Cambodian jungles like he’d never been there at all. Here Jake was, doing the same, leaving me alone. The night closed in around me, darker than I’d ever seen it, so dark I could barely make out my hand.After what seemed like forever finally it came: the sharp ring of metal striking stone, Jake swinging away at that stone chest under the gazebo. On the first strike every muscle in my body tensed. I gripped the flashlight so hard my knuckles ached, expecting the shrill sound and its echoes to bring something from either the shadowed depths of the blueberry bushes or from Mr. Trung’
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