Ken Douglas: Ragged Man

“ You win again, but I’ll get you tomorrow.”

“ Let’s go.” She ran toward the front door. She loved riding on the back of her father’s bike.

“ Right behind you.” Vicky and Janis were out the door ahead of him. He wasted a few seconds getting his keys. He wore them around his neck when they rode in the mornings, because his sweats had no pockets.

“ Seven-thirty,” he told his wife as he unlocked the garage door.

“ Seven-thirty?” she questioned.

“ Seven-thirty, don’t you get it? Up only forty-five minutes and look what we’ve already accomplished.”

“ Wash your mouth out.” Vicky laughed.

They brought the bikes out and Mark locked the garage. Janis was laughing as he lifted her up to her seat and strapped her in. Then they were off, pedaling down Seaview Avenue toward the bike path. They turned right at the end of the street, onto the bike trail, and started picking up speed on the way to the Wetlands. Mark’s heart was beating fast as they turned into the nature preserve. Vicky hadn’t broken a sweat.

They usually made four laps of the Wetlands, the first and last at a slow, leisurely pace, because they thought Janis liked to look at the ducks. The second and third laps were the fast laps, and the ones that Janis really liked.

Peddling into the early morning mist was the best part of Mark’s day.

A half mile into the Wetlands, they started their turn to the right, past the duck ponds, back toward the entrance. Janis squealed with delight, leaning into the turn, urging her father to go faster and Mark picked up the pace, passing Vicky as they neared the entrance turn and the completion of their first lap.

“ Yeah, Daddy, we’re winning, go, go, go!”

Mark pedaled furiously, keeping his lead for the next half mile and started to pull away from his wife. Both Mark and Janis leaned expertly into the turn around the ponds for the second time, and leaned again around the entrance turn when Vicky started to gain on the straightaway, heading toward the ponds.

“ She’s catching! Pedal, Daddy! Pedal, pedal, pedal!”

Vicky passed them just before the ponds and kept the lead all the way back to the entrance turn, where she braked hard, hopped off her bike, laughing, and waited for her panting husband to puff his way to the finish, before starting their cooling down lap.

“ She always wins, Daddy.”

“ That’s because I have you on the back.”

Mark laughed, chugging his way to the finish.

“ I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,” Janis sang as they slowed down.

“ Wanna rest a second?” Vicky said. Mark nodded, sucking in great breaths of the crisp morning air.

“ Daddy sounds like a broken engine,” Janis said.

“ He sure does.” Vicky laughed. “We’ll just have to wait till the engine’s all rested up and ready to go before we do our last lap.

“ All right you two,” Mark said, trying to laugh and control his breathing at the same time, “let’s go.”

“ Can we feed the ducks?” Janis asked as they were approaching the duck ponds on their cooling down lap.

“ How? We don’t have any food,” Mark said.

“ I sneaked some bread.”

They parked their bikes by the turn and walked down to the duck pond, Janis in the lead, breaking up the bread. “Here ducks, here ducks,” she sang.

“ Stay out of the water,” Vicky said, cutting Janis’ stride short. The girl waited till Vicky caught up and they went down to the pond together, where Vicky watched as the ducks took the bread from her daughter’s hand.

Mark stayed back with the bikes.

Janis was chasing after the one duck that always refused to take the bread from her hand. It was the same every morning, the duck ran and she chased, but this morning as Janis ran behind the waddling bird, it stopped. Something caught its attention and Janis followed its eyes to the bike path and saw the beggar man.

He looked like one of those homeless people that hang out in the park during the summer, except she had never seen a homeless man that dirty. Dirt and grime were mixed up in his scraggly hair and it looked like he had wet his pants so many times that the wet place the pee makes was covered in black, like old engine oil.

The man turned her and she almost screamed when she saw the blotchy skin and bloodshot eyes, but suddenly the duck turned and was running toward her. She forgot about the beggar man and grabbed on to the duck she’d been chasing after for as long as she could remember.

“ I got you,” she squealed. She didn’t wonder why the duck didn’t fly or why it didn’t struggle and she didn’t see the Bowie knife in the beggar’s hand, gleaming silver as it reflected the sun’s rays.

Vicky turned to wave at her husband as the scrawny man stepped behind Mark, grabbed him by the hair, jerking his head back. He ran a knife across his neck, slitting his throat from ear to ear. The ragged man smiled, even as blood washed down the front of Mark’s sweatshirt.

She wanted to scream out, but she was struck dumb, paralyzed in place, as planted as any of the trees in the forest. She could only watch as the ragged man brought the giant knife up to Mark’s left ear and made another ear to ear incision, this time along the jaw line.

Then he ripped the skin off of her husband’s face.

Then he slashed the knife around Mark’s hair line, separating the skin and scalp from the head, pulling them off in a filthy clawed hand.

Then he jumped back as Mark Donovan, with only a bloody stump for a head, danced a quick, herky jerky, death jig, before collapsing on the dew damp ground.

That galvanized Vicky into action. Without thinking she grabbed the duck out of her daughter’s arms, threw the screeching bird aside, wrapped an arm around her daughter’s waist, tucked the child into her side like a football and started to run. Her system was working again, she was in excellent shape and the pumping adrenaline gave her added strength and endurance. She was an animal mother fleeing with her young.

She scattered ducks in her path as she ran flat out, hard and determined. She ran with the pond to her left and the bike trail to her right, seeking to put distance between herself and the evil thing that was carving up her husband’s body. She harbored no doubt as to what it would do when it finished with Mark. It would come after her and her child.

She broke right and crossed the bike trail into the forest. Brush and branch whipped against her, tearing into her sweatshirt, but she kept on. She tasted her own blood when a low branch ripped a gash in her face, but she ignored the coppery taste and slicing pain in her attempt to get away.

Then she was through the brush and on a deer trail that she’d walked many times with her husband and daughter. She turned left, picking up her pace, thinking now that maybe she had a chance. She knew these woods.

Then she heard the scream, up ahead to the left, probably on the bike trail. The wail, coming from the belly of whatever was up there, wasn’t indigenous to these woods. It was a bad thing. It was the evil that killed Mark and it was ahead, waiting for her.

It screamed again, a lightning blast to her heart. She stopped, fought her panic, turned to double back, when she heard something coming through the brush. “Another one,” she moaned under her breath. “There’s two.”

Then she saw it, a tall pine with ladder like branches. If she could reach those branches, maybe she’d have a chance. She could hold them off till help came. She ran to the tree and saw the futility of her plan. She could never squeeze through the closely packed branches, but Janis could, if she could hold her high enough to get a hold.

“ Janis, I’m going to lift you up to that branch. I want you to grab it and climb as high as you can. Do you understand?”