Joel Arnold - Fetal Bait Apocalypse - 3 Collections in 1

At least that’s how I saw it. A lot for a boy of twelve to think, I know.

Spencer and I saw Jack and Paul in school for the next two weeks, but we didn’t hang out after the bell rang, and we stayed away from Hench’s farm.

Until one night. After midnight.

“Get up.” Spencer shook me awake. There was panic in his voice. “Get up!”

“What—”

“Shhh! Come on.”

He threw a pair of jeans at me, a gray sweatshirt and shoes. I followed him quietly past our parents bedroom and out the door. We hopped on our bikes. I followed him to Jack’s house. Jack waited in the driveway with a knapsack slung over his shoulder.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

They took off down the street. It wasn’t until we reached Hench’s farm that I caught up to them.

Spence and I followed Jack into the orchard. I was too out of breath to protest. What was in his knapsack? Spray paint? A gun?

Jack jogged past the apple trees across the grass to Hench’s barn. I kept looking toward the house, kept waiting for the light to pop on, the sound of the screen door swinging open and slamming against the frame of the house, the sound of Hench’s drunken ‘Who’s there?’

But I heard none of that.

Jack stopped at the barn. Took off his pack and opened it. He pulled out a flashlight. Looked over his shoulder before opening the barn door.

We heard the nickering of a horse, the wind blowing through the barn’s rafters, the creaking of old wood.

“What the hell are we doing here?” I asked. “If Hench finds us—”

The look in Jack’s eyes stopped me, froze the words in my mouth so fast, I nearly choked.

“What?” I whispered.

Jack turned and headed to the far stall. The smell of hay was strong. The smell of mold and horse manure, owl droppings, tractor oil. Before opening the stall door, Jack paused, wiped the sweat off his forehead with his shirt sleeve. He looked at me.

“Davy, you gotta promise not to tell. Not ever.”

I stared at him. “Tell what?”

Spencer stood next to me, barely breathing.

“You gotta promise.”

“Okay. I promise.”

“Spence?”

Spencer nodded. “Yeah. I promise.”

Jack nodded. Opened the stall door. Shined the flashlight inside.

I saw the boots first. Then the jeans. A flannel shirt. And when I got to the neck—

I fell to my knees. The world spun. The supper I’d had earlier came up in a rush.

Jack put his hand on my shoulder. He squatted so that his face was level with mine. He picked up some hay from the ground and used it to wipe off the remainder of vomit on my chin.

“You promised, okay? You can’t tell any one.”

I nodded, fighting to keep the rest of my food down.

Jack stood up, shaking his head. “I didn’t think he’d do this. I really didn’t.”

Spence and I stared at the body in the stall. I felt numb. “Where is he?” I asked. “Where’s Paul?”

I looked in once again at the body. The neck ended abruptly at the dull metal of a gardening spade. The edge of the spade was embedded into the dirt floor, separating Hench’s head from his body.

“He’s at home,” Jack said. “He’s doesn’t want to leave his room.”

I nodded toward Hench. “What are we going to do with him?”

“Leave him be,” Jack said. “No one’ll know it was Paul.”

“Maybe we should tell someone he’s here,” I said. “Make an anonymous call.”

“Leave him,” Jack said. “Don’t call anybody.”

Spencer spoke up. “Let’s bury him.”

We turned to him.

“We can bury him out in the orchard. Bury him deep so no one will find him.” He stepped over the body. Yanked the spade up from the ground.

We took turns digging out in the orchard under an apple tree using the spade. We dug as deep as we could, wanting nothing and no one to find him. It was cold that night, but the ground had still not frozen. Our sweat soaked our shirts and chilled against our skin. Steam drifted off of us and disappeared into the branches above. When we finally set him in the ground, we were tired and dirty. We spread out the fallen apples over the grave. Buried the spade under some hay in the barn. Rubbed the muzzle of the horse, who stood and watched, its big eyes rheumy and nervous.

The apple tree man. Old and withered, a skinny bent pervert nestled in the crotch of apple tree branches. He reaches out with long bony fingers. Strong enough to lift a twelve year old kid from the ground up into his brittle lair.

I promised I would never tell a soul about what we did that day, what Paul did, what we all did when we buried Mr. Hench beneath the apple tree. Twenty-five years have gone by. The promise becomes more difficult to keep. Guilt plays its hand, seeps into the most hardened of souls and picks at it a little at a time, disintegrating the foundations.

We were kids. We didn’t know any better. It was self-defense. Hench almost killed one of us.

Rationalizations. The list gets longer as we grow older.

Meanwhile, we’ve grown into lifestyles we’ve become comfortable with. I have a wife. A child. I don’t want them to suffer the consequences of old childhood secrets. I don’t want them to become smeared by scandal. There’s safety in keeping secrets secret.

It’s been a hard choice for all of us. For Paul, for Jack, for Spencer.

For me.

But I’ve made up my mind. Just as the others have made up theirs.

I drive to the town of Hendricksville, an hour drive from where I live, past rolling hills, fields of corn, soybeans, the autumn sun turning the dead stalks a rust-tainted gold. Flocks of geese fly overhead. There is the smell of farms, hay and manure and soil, a smell I like, and I breathe it in deeply. It’s the smell of natural things, and it feels as if I’m preparing the soil of my own soul, strengthening it for the oncoming winter, the task ahead.

I wait until night and drive to what was once Hench’s farm.

The land was bought up by the Braemer Family Orchard. A couple more rows of apple trees were planted. A pumpkin patch. Raspberries. The barn was torn down years ago, and a Quonset hut sits where the house once was.

There’s a new fence now, too; straight rows of wire stretching into the distance, evenly placed signs warning of the electricity that flows through them. I stand a moment, leaning on the handle of my shovel. I can see no break in the wire, but there’s a maple tree close to the fence with a large branch just low enough for me to reach. I toss the shovel over. Jump for the branch. I feel like a kid again as I swing up and over. I retrieve the shovel. Find the tree I’m looking for. It’s late in the season and I see no apples left in the branches. I stop and listen. Look. It seems safe. I kick aside the layer of dead fallen apples beneath the tree and begin to dig.

The dirt comes up easily. The roots have already been broken through.

There is something cleansing in this. I pause to light a cigar, digging slowly enough so as not to let the growing ash fall with the effort. It falls when I hit the marker I’d placed there six years earlier. Another shovel. There’s a plastic bag knotted around one end of the shovel, and inside that is a bloodied pillow case and a gun.

Not Hench’s gun.

A different gun.

Another secret I’ve promised not to share. A promise I made to myself.

Let me tell you another reason why apples scare me.

End of summer, four years ago. Our first summer in our present house. You’d think I’d have noticed our neighbor’s apple tree before purchasing our house, but we bought it in the winter, when the unpruned branches were bare, and it looked no different than the other trees scattered throughout the neighborhood. But when the blossoms appeared in the spring, I became frightened.