Fairy Lights Read online

  He came to the cave as the sun reached its apex. Here, the everyday sounds of the forest died away. No birdsong. No creaking branches and whispering foliage. No crackle of dead leaves as the animals who called this wood home journeyed from place to place. Not the slightest hint of a breeze. Here, at the mouth of the cave, all sound was swallowed whole. Moss had no way of knowing how unnatural the silence was. The quietude of the Handy’s haunt was a bit of normality for the boy. Comforting. Like a mother’s acceptance.

  He glanced over his shoulder, down the trail leading to the haunt, saw no one and nothing out of the ordinary. He rolled the bodies inside.

  Directly inside the mouth of the cave was a steel-banded wooden trunk. Moss abandoned the barrow and shuffled through the loose soil of the cave floor to the trunk. He flipped the latch, which he kept unlocked for lack of a tool to keep it secure, and lifted the lid.

  Over the past year or so, he’d amassed quite the collection of useful items. A large flashlight with a hand grip, three flares, and a box of matches were atop the other supplies, all of which he’d learned to use while stalking prey. He was fondest of the flares, but they were hard to come by. Once he’d played with a device that shot red balls of fire from its mouth, but he’d smashed it on a rock when it hadn’t worked a second time. Then there was his Stuffy, but that was back home, behind the falls.

  Under the implements of light and fire was a collapsed tent, an empty duffle bag, a box of meat sticks wrapped in shiny packaging, and a small green cylinder with a silver stem. The last two items had been pillaged from an abandoned campsite a week prior. Someone had hung a bag of food stuffs from the branch of a tree. Moss had found all sorts of tasty goodies inside. Goodies he had not shared with the Handy. He still felt a pang of guilt whenever he thought about gorging himself on the various treats. He’d opened one can with a rock to find a gelatinous mass of pink meat that looked vaguely like the inside of someone’s head. The meat was terribly salty, had wrinkled the skin of his fingers while he devoured the brick of flesh.

  A hatchet with a yellow handle and a knife with a foldable blade lay at the very bottom of the trunk. Normally, Moss took the hatchet with him on hunting trips, but had forgotten yesterday. Hence the reason he’d had to brain the couple with beer cans. Had he the hatchet with him, he would have killed them at their camp, where he had first seen them.

  Moss sat back on his haunches and stared straight ahead, toward nothing but rocky cave wall and darkness where the daylight was devoured by shadows.

  He recalled how he’d come across Monica and Ralph, had heard them using each other’s names: her screaming his, him moaning hers. When they had finished wrestling by their fire, they’d decided on a dip in Moss’s pool. At least Moss considered it his. He’d found it. Finding denoted ownership in his book. It never crossed his mind that others had found it before him.

  Then they’d dirtied Moss’s pool by washing their slimy bodies in it. Because of this, he’d killed them. Yes, the Handy had to eat, but this hunt had been satisfying in more ways than just the feeling of a hunt well done. Monica and Ralph had sullied his pool and Moss had made them pay. He prided himself on this accomplishment.

  He recalled how he’d dragged Ralph from the pool only to realize with a start that Ralph still lived. Moss had laid a hand on Ralph’s bare chest, felt it rise and fall. Ralph had been face down in the pool. How had he breathed under water? Moss didn’t know. Didn’t care. It was so rare to have a moment like this. To find them alive and safe to touch. He’d caressed Ralph’s cheek. Fingered the gash the beer can had left in the top of the man’s head. Petted Ralph’s flat stomach. Cupped and squeezed the man’s shriveled testicles. Traced muscular thighs with a trembling finger. Ralph was a nice specimen. Very little fat. The chubby ones never satiated the Handy for long, thus Moss left the fatties alone. The only time he returned to the haunt with a pudgy one was when he could find nothing else.

  When Moss had finished admiring Ralph’s tanned and toned body, he finished bashing in the man’s head with a new beer can. Once he was sure Ralph was dead, Moss flipped the body over and put his thing in Ralph’s butt. Three pumps and Moss was sated.

  Smiling, Moss grabbed the flashlight and depressed the button on the top. Nothing happened. He clicked it again. Still nothing. Oh well. At least he had the flares. All told, he preferred the fire sticks over the flashlight. He pulled out the hatchet and hung it from the neck of his plain white tee, stood, returned to the wheelbarrow.

  The hatchet was cold against his chest. He considered dismembering and dressing Monica and Ralph here, before he got to the Handy’s hidey-hole. For some reason, the Handy wouldn’t eat the bodies whole. Liked its food in pieces. Sometimes it shared and sometimes it didn’t. If it didn’t share today, Moss would return to the trunk and eat one of the sticks in the shiny packaging. In the end, Moss decided to segment the corpses once he reached the haunt. He didn’t want the Handy to think he’d stolen any of its meat.

  Moss struck the flare. He stuffed the handle in Monica’s gaping mouth.

  Leaving the bright safety of the day, he moved deeper into the cave.

  5

  “Why you fucking with this white boy, Robert?” Bobby’s father stared at him over the rim of his coffee cup. Dad’s eyes belied all emotion. Father and son were seated in the kitchen across the table from each other. The shower could be heard down the hall—Bobby’s mother getting ready for work.

  “Huh?” Bobby asked, though he knew good and well what his father meant. This was not the first time they’d had this conversation, and Bobby expected it wouldn’t be the last either.

  “Don’t play dumb.” Marcus Johnson leaned back his chair and set his coffee cup on the tabletop. The chair creaked under his weight. Bobby couldn’t wait for the day one of his mother’s rickety old dining room chairs collapsed under Dad’s immense weight. It’d be hilarious, he was sure. Dad wasn’t a morbidly obese guy, but his gut was large from over-imbibing Steel Reserve and too much of Mom’s comfort food, what Nana Penance—who’d died of diabetes three years prior—had called ‘soul food.’

  “I don’t necessarily mind you hanging ‘round white people, but you gotta know that they don’t really see us the same. It’s a bad time to be black in America. Not that there’s ever been a good time but…Just look at the news, son. Trayvon Martin. Enough said.”

  “I know, but Tony’s good people. You met him. He’s too dumb to be racist.”

  “Do you hear yourself when you talk? Because it doesn’t sound like you do.”

  “You know what I mean.” Bobby shoveled a spoonful of Frosted Flakes into his gob.

  “No, Robert, I don’t.” Dad sighed. “I’m not trying to be a jerk, no matter what you might think. I simply don’t want this kid getting you in trouble. You need to know that he’s going to be able to get away with much more than you ever will. And only because your skin is darker than his.”

  Bobby met his father’s gaze. The look father gave son stopped Bobby chewing his cereal. There was a heavy sadness floating between the pair. Bobby’s heart felt as if it might break under the weight of his father’s stare.

  He swallowed partially chewed flakes. They scratched his throat going down. He grimaced and said, “Tony’s a good guy. And you saying he’s trouble because he’s white is just as racist as the stuff you’re warning me about.”

  “This world isn’t safe for black men, Robert. That’s the truth of the matter. One of these days, you and Tony are going to ditch school and get drunk together, or smoke weed out back of school, or whatever—”

  “Dad—”

  His father held up a pink palm. “I know what kinda shit boys your age do. I was a teenager once too, and I did the same shit. It’s nothing I’m proud of, but it’s the truth. The thing is, if you get caught, the hammer of justice is gonna come down a lot harder on you than it will ever come down on Tony.”

  “I’m not arguing that.” Bobby scooped more cereal but didn’t stuff it into h
is mouth just yet.

  Dad quirked an eyebrow. “You’re not?”

  “Nope,” Bobby said. “I don’t plan on doing anything stupid like ditching and getting drunk or smoking a joint out back of school. And neither does Tony. I’m not you, Dad. I love you, but I ain’t nothing like you. I don’t even cuss.” He stuffed the spoon into his mouth.

  Dad laughed softly. He picked up his coffee cup and held it out, as if he expected Bobby to toast him. “I normally don’t trust a man that doesn’t cuss, but I’ll make an exception where you’re concerned.”

  Bobby swallowed. The masticated flakes went down smoothly. “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it. Now finish your cereal. You’re already late.”

  Dad dropped Bobby off at the Turk’s house at a quarter past two that afternoon. Tony was loading a sleeping bag into his mother’s SUV. Dad waved at Bobby then Tony. Tony returned the wave and Dad drove off. Bobby gave Tony a fist bump and hitched his duffle farther up his shoulder.

  “What’s up?” Tony asked, smiling. “Got everything you need?”

  “I guess so.” Upon seeing Tony, Bobby’s discussion with his father returned to the forefront of his mind. He remembered the weight of Dad’s stare. He suddenly had the feeling that he had somehow let his father down by going on this trip. Why he hadn’t felt this way during the conversation, he didn’t know.

  Tony seemed to sense Bobby’s discomfort. “You okay?”

  “Oh yeah.” Bobby smiled. “You talk your mother into a hotel room yet?”

  “No,” Tony said, deflating. “And that bullshit you told me about the card swipe on the televisions was just that—bullshit.”

  Bobby laughed. “You believed me? You Muppet.”

  “You asshole.”

  “Guilty as charged, sir.”

  “Hi, Bobs!” Brenda Turk called from the doorstep. She was carrying another sleeping bag in the boys’ direction.

  “Catch!” She tossed the neon-yellow bundle at Bobby. He caught it with ease.

  “Good reflexes, Bobs. You can close the trunk after that. I think we got everything.”

  “Okie doke.” Bobby stuffed the sleeping bag and his duffle into the Land Rover’s rear compartment, and then slammed the door.

  “Can I drive?” Bobby asked with a smile.

  “You got your permit on you?” Brenda asked.

  “Yup.” Bobby removed his wallet from his back pocket and showed her his learner’s permit.

  “No way you’re letting him drive.” Tony gawped. “He’s not allowed on the freeway!”

  Brenda nodded at the permit and Bobby put it away. Then she said, “No, he is not allowed on the freeway. But he can get us to the freeway and I can take over.”

  “No fair.” Bobby sulked like a spoiled toddler deprived of his favorite toy.

  Brenda grabbed her son by the shoulders and spoke softly, as if explaining to him why he needed to share his candy with the other kids. “It’s not Bobs’s fault you failed your test, Anthony. Guess your weak-ass needs to learn how to parallel park instead of backing over curbs like a little bitch.”

  Bobby chuckled. “You know, dude, she’s got a point.”

  Tony’s eyes cut to his friend. “Shut up, Bobby.”

  “Yessir.” But Bobby kept right on laughing.

  6

  The flare died after a while, but Moss could see clearly now. The fairy lights, fist-sized balls that gave off a sickly greenish hue, shone brightly, guiding his way. The cave’s roof and walls were speckled with these, and each ball turned to watch Moss as he moved down the wide corridor.

  Farther along, the pathway narrowed before opening up again fifty yards ahead. The chamber Moss walked into now had a low ceiling with stalactites reaching toward a pool the color of antifreeze. The water was the same color the fairy lights gave off, and had a strong, sour order, like musty armpits.

  Moss dumped Monica and Ralph at the water’s edge. Ralph’s sludge-like blood oozed from the wheelbarrow when Moss tilted it. The goop trundled down a slight slope and disappeared beneath the softly glowing water.

  Overhead, something shifted, rattled. Moss saw this movement from the corner of his eye and ignored it. The Handy didn’t like to be looked at. That’s how mother had disappeared. She’d looked and made the Handy mad.

  Moss removed the hatchet from the neck of his t-shirt and set to work. He butchered Monica first, removed her legs at the hips, arms at the shoulders, and then her head. As he detached each piece, he allowed it to roll down the grade and into the pool. When Monica was nothing but a torso, he shoved in what was left of her. A second later, something splashed down into the glowing water. The rattling ceased. Ripples rolled toward him from the far side of the pool. Moss put his back to the water. He could hear bubbles popping on the surface, the splash of the water against the walls of the chamber.

  He listened closely. Waited for the Handy to finish. When the rattling returned, Moss began dismembering Ralph. Piece by piece, the man went into the pool. As with Monica, the torso went in last. Moss turned away from the pool, stared down at his bloodied hands. His fingers ached from wielding the hatchet. He was cool but sweaty from exertion.

  Splash.

  The rattling disappeared.

  But this time, things were different. When the rattling returned it was much louder. Closer. The chamber brightened significantly. Moss’s shadow surrounded by a corona of green light was tossed out and up the wall in front of him.

  Breathing on the back of his neck.

  Water dripping on rock.

  Splat.

  The sinister clicking of bone on bone.

  Splat.

  A sound akin to the gnashing of teeth.

  Splat.

  The Handy loosed a keening howl. Moss remained where he was. He trembled, feared.

  A severed length of arm sailed over his shoulder and slapped down in front of him, landed half-in and half-out of his quaking shadow. He was shoved hard and went sprawling. The rattling grew to an ear-shattering pitch. Now the Handy sounded like perpetually-shattering glass.

  Moss crawled forward. He genuflected before the length of arm. The nails of the hand were painted—Monica’s.

  He lifted the offering and began to eat. The flesh was tough. The muscle tougher. But his teeth were sharp and used to raw meat.

  The Handy rattled while Moss enjoyed his allotted supper.

  Done and sated, the Handy once more hiding in shadow, Moss collected the wheelbarrow and left the chamber. The fairy lights travelled with him until he could see the dim light coming in from the entrance of the cave, then they retreated with a rattling much softer than that of the Handy’s.

  Moss left the barrow in the darkness of the cave. He had to return to Monica and Ralph’s campsite, had to salvage what he could use and hide what he could not.

  He glanced up through the canopy of trees to the westering sun. By the time he made it back to their camp it would likely be dark. He could sleep there or take a flare with him for the return trip. He decided on the spot to forego the flare. He only had two left and the flashlight wasn’t working. Maybe tomorrow he could make torches with which to use the matches on. Maybe…

  It all depended on what he found at the camp.

  He set off. It wasn’t until he was almost a mile away from the Handy’s haunt that he started hearing the creaks and chirps of crickets and felt the tender caress of a cool evening breeze on his neck and calves. He hiked up his shirt, allowed the wind to cool his sweaty rump.

  Although Moss had no concept of time, the world stops revolving for no man. Two hours passed before he arrived at the couples’ campsite. He didn’t hesitate, but went straight to the job at hand.

  He found bags of nuts, chocolate candies, and raisins in Monica’s overnight bag, along with a device that vibrated when he turned the knob on the end. He didn’t know what it was good for so he stuffed it back inside the bag and zipped everything up.


  Still stuffed from supper, Moss didn’t open the trail mix right away, only tucked it under his arm. He dug through Ralph’s backpack and came across a small flashlight, which was as long and wide as Moss’s middle finger, and a package of AA batteries. He knew how useful all these new items were. On several occasions, Moss had seen people replace batteries in their flashlights. The only reason he’d never replaced the ones in his flashlight was because he’d never found the proper batteries.

  Moss slung both bags into the tent and crept inside. He was suddenly overcome with tiredness. He’d had a long day, that much was certain, but sleeping here could be treacherous. Anyone could come along in the night, or in the morning before he woke. In the end, exhaustion won out, and Moss lay down inside the tent. He used Monica’s bag as a pillow and drifted off into a deep, dreamful sleep.

  He’s small. Much smaller than he is now. He’s running through the woods, chasing what his mother calls ‘fairy lights.’ His father calls them ‘lightning bugs,’ but four-year-old Moss doesn’t like to think of these pretty things as bugs. Bugs are yucky. The fairy lights are not yucky.

  The fairy lights dart and swarm, always staying just out of reach. Moss doesn’t think about how far away from home he’s being led. Doesn’t realize at all that he’s being led. Somewhere far off, Mom’s calling his name. “Moss! Moss, where are you?”

  Moss hears this but he’s so close. He’s almost caught them. Just a few more feet. He trips, falls. His knees are scraped and he’s howling, screaming for his mommy. Mommy finds him easily. She pulls him to his feet and tells him how worried she was and how much he scared her.

  The fairy lights are gone. For now.

  Moss jerked awake, sat bolt upright. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep but he didn’t feel the least bit rested. His penis was ridged, looked like a light house jutting from a briar bush. He pissed without getting up and his penis deflated, shrunk to half the size it had been, but was still six inches long. His urine was warm and comforting. He laid down again and drifted back to sleep. This time, his slumber was dreamless.