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Devourer of Souls Three
THREESaturday“Here he comes,” Kevin Ellison muttered as we browsed over a table filled with used comic books at the Commons Trailer Park Yard Sale. I glanced up and, sure enough, there was Jake Burns peddling his clunky old bike down the fairway toward us.I snorted and returned my attention to an issue of Rom: Space Knight. “Peachy.”“Y’know, he really seems to dig you,” whispered Gary McNamara from the other side of the table, where he was perusing an issue of Thor. “I mean really. Like you’re best buds or something.”I shook my head and sighed, trying to lose myself in Rom battling these blobby aliens whose tongues turned into drills that bored into a person’s skull and ate their brains so the aliens could become them. It was a little cruel but as Jake clattered to a stop I wondered if that’s why he didn’t fit in. Maybe he was like one of these aliens. After eating the brains of the “real” Jake Burns a few years ago, he’d never learned how to act like the rest of us.His sne
Devourer of Souls Four
FOURSomething else Jake excelled at was ferreting out deep water holes hidden underneath the creek’s banks and catching what my dad called ‘bottom feeders’ (carp and suckerfish) by hand.I kid you not. Jake would scout out spots along the creek where the bank hung out over the water, lie down and literally reach under the bank into recessed, watery alcoves. He’d then grab either a carp or a suckerfish by the gills and drag it flopping to shore.According to my dad carp and suckers don’t taste so great. But they’re big, sometimes the size of large walleyes or small northern pikes. They provide plenty of meat, regardless of taste. Given the needs of Jake’s family, taste probably wasn’t a big concern. Any type of free food helped.My dad had never taken up fishing by hand because he could never get over the fear that maybe something else waited for him under that bank. Like water moccasins or a snapping turtle. Jake, however, showed no fear. I suppose needing to eat and always being
Devourer of Souls Five
FIVEIt nagged me on my ride home after we all parted ways on Asher Street: something was wrong with Jake. Something had always been wrong with him. It wasn’t just how annoying he was or his lack of social graces or his dirty jokes that weren’t funny or even his lightning-quick temper. It lay deeper, and somehow I understood without actually knowing it had something to do with his dad. Which made me think about the similarities between Jake’s dad and mine, and how similar we were, in a way . . . even if I didn’t want to admit it.Neither of us had a mom. Both our dads worked at the lumber mill (until Jake’s got fired a few months ago) and both fought in Vietnam. Even though he wasn’t a drunk like Jake’s dad, my dad liked a beer every day after work to wind down.This also made me think even more about how Jake had latched onto me, following me around the most. In a burst of juvenile paranoia, I started worrying that maybe Jake hung around me so much because he recognized something i
Devourer of Souls Six
SIXTuesdayI hid my worries for two days. After we’d finished dinner Tuesday night and I’d washed the dishes, Dad was relaxing in the den watching the Mets with his nightly post-dinner beer. I worked up the nerve to poke my head around the corner. “Dad . . . got a minute?”Dad always listened to me, taking everything I said seriously, never treating me like a kid. Even if the Yankees were playing the Mets at Shea Stadium and it was the bottom of the ninth, he’d block it out and listen. I’ll always be grateful for that.Which makes me feel even worse about how I’ve turned out.Anyway he stood, walked to the television and shut it off, sat back down and raised an eyebrow. “What’s up?”“I won’t end up like Jake Burns someday, will I? And you won’t ever be like his dad . . . will you?”Dad sat forward, frowning slightly. “What brings this on? You guys aren’t havin’ any troubles with Jake, are you? I mean, any more’n usual.” He paused, eyes narrowing. “His dad isn’t . . . ”I shook
Devourer of Souls Seven
SEVENDespite Dad’s reassurances that night, I had a nightmare, one of the worst I’d ever had. We were all back at the Commons Yard Sale—me, Kevin and Jake—standing before Mr. Trung’s table. I couldn’t move, frozen in that way we usually are in nightmares. The air felt thick and humid. Everything sounded muffled, as if we stood underwater.Chanting guttural words, Mr. Trung laid tiles out in overlapping rows. I couldn’t see the engravings on them because they blurred and moved across the ivory. He laid the tiles, arranging them, preparing them . . .For us to play.Then Mr. Trung stopped his strange, gurgling song. He stared at each of us in turn. I desperately tried to move my arms, legs, head, something, but I couldn’t. I was locked in place, joints frozen, feet rooted to the ground. Mr. Trung’s eyes—much larger and a deeper black than I’d ever seen—seemed to peel back layers of me until I felt raw, exposed and quivering beneath his gaze.Mr. Trung reached into the black wooden
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
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