Jeff Strand - Dweller

So there was a very good chance that nobody knew where they were.

The demonic boy. The hell-bound boy.

Stop it!

If he hid the bodies well enough, he might be okay.

This was a vast forest. Millions of places to hide a body.

But could he hide it well enough to keep it from the police and their dogs? If he buried them deep enough, maybe, but…

What if he fed them to Owen? Owen would probably pick the bones clean, if he didn’t eat those as well. And, worst-case scenario, if the bones were found, the authorities would think that Larry and Nick met their ghastly fate at the claws and jaws of a never-before-seen monster.

You can’t let Owen take the blame for this. He’s your friend.

Jesus Christ, what was he thinking? Of course he could let Owen take the blame for this! He was a wild animal.

Anyway, the remains would never be found. He’d make sure of it. It was far from a foolproof plan, but it was the best he had for the moment, save for marching over to the police station and confessing everything. That wouldn’t end well.

If he had time to sit around, mulling his options in a leisurely fashion, he’d probably come up with something better, but right now he had to move quickly. He couldn’t do this in the dark, and he couldn’t risk leaving the bodies out overnight. Larry and Nick would be missed by bedtime. So the best course of action was to feed the corpses to Owen.

Could he even bring himself to do such a thing?

Yeah. If he could stab them to death, he could feed them to an animal.

There was a problem with the plan, though. Well, there were lots of problems, but one particularly big one: he couldn’t drag their bodies out to the cave. Not even one of them by sundown, much less both. So he had to bring Owen to them.

He needed bait.

Toby walked down the path. He held the bottom of his shirt out in front of him, like a little girl carrying blueberries that she’d picked. Piled in the makeshift sack were twenty severed fingers.

The fingers had been difficult to cut off until he got into the proper rhythm, and he’d originally wanted to use simple strips of flesh, which were easier to slice away. But the first strip leaked badly and came apart in his hands. He needed something firmer, to avoid leaving traces along the path to the cave. So he went with fingers.

Bite-size, he thought, but was unable to amuse himself.

When he reached the cave entrance, there was no sign of Owen. It was going to be a pretty rotten night if the monster had finally moved on to greener pastures, but he’d remain optimistic.

He held up his shirt with his left hand, and selected an index finger-Nick’s, he thought-with his right. His gag reflexes kicked in, even though he thought he would’ve been over that by the sixteenth or seventeenth digit he cut through with the hunting knife. He flung the finger at the cave, but the throw went wild, landing a good twenty feet off the mark.

He stared at the spot where it landed, marking it clearly in his mind. He’d have to make sure he retrieved it later. He’d do it now, but he didn’t want to walk that close to the cave until he was certain of Owen’s whereabouts.

“Owen!” he called out. “I’m here with food!” He should’ve announced himself before the first throw. He couldn’t afford to waste fingers.

Owen emerged from the cave, looking sleepy. Toby hurriedly selected another finger, a ring finger this time, though without an actual ring on it, and tossed it to him. Owen caught it in his hand, stared at it for a second, then popped it into his mouth.

“Was it good? Was it delicious?” Toby asked, slowly backing away. Owen seemed to agree that it was indeed delicious and followed him. Toby’s hope was that Owen would follow him at the same pace that he was walking, and not stampede over to him to get the rest of the fingers. There was a definite level of trust here. And probably stupidity.

He tossed Owen another finger as he continued moving backward along the path. The monster caught this one in his mouth. He was pretty good at that. If he got caught, maybe he could pay for his legal defense by charging people to watch Owen do tricks.

Focus. Concentrate. This is serious stuff.

Owen followed him, step by step, for about twenty feet. Then Owen let out a soft growl. Toby tossed him another finger. At this rate, he wasn’t going to make it anywhere close to where the dead bodies lay. He had to ration them.

He couldn’t walk backward the entire way back, obviously, so he switched to a sideways step that allowed him to keep track of Owen and the uneven ground. After another twenty feet or so, Owen let out another growl.

“Not yet,” Toby said. “You’ll get more, lots more, I promise. Just be patient.”

Owen growled louder.

“No.” Toby shook his head. “Don’t growl. Just follow.”

He kept moving without throwing another finger. Owen followed him at the same pace, and didn’t seem ready to pounce on him to get the meal sooner.

“Good boy,” Toby said. “Very good. Keep this up and you’ll get all kinds of scrumptious, yummy treats.”

The plan worked well enough that by the time Toby reached the bodies, he still had four fingers left. He tossed them to Owen, one after the other. His stomach never stopped churning.

“Here,” he said, pointing to Larry’s mutilated body. “Dinner for you.”

He quickly moved back, giving Owen plenty of room. The monster walked toward him a few steps, as if unsure what Toby was trying to say, and then saw the corpse. Owen dropped down to all fours over the body and thrust his face down onto Larry’s stomach.

Toby quickly turned away. It wasn’t enough. The sounds of ripping and chewing made him fall to his knees, dry heaving.

Could Owen eat all of this?

Not in one sitting, but he didn’t think that a creature so obviously hunger-driven would leave the bodies to rot. He’d take them with him, right? Toby had no idea. He might have totally screwed up his plan by doing this, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to try to take Owen’s meal away from him.

There really wasn’t anything he could do at this point except hope that Owen liked to clean his plate.

Toby lay in an excruciatingly cold creek, letting the water rush over him for several minutes, hoping it would take the blood away.

He couldn’t think of a good way to explain away his appearance beyond “I fell in a creek.” Fortunately, Mom and Dad were in the kitchen when he came through the back door, and Toby hurried across the living room before either of them saw him.

“Toby…?” Mom asked.

“Gotta go to the bathroom! It’s an emergency!” Toby said, rushing up the stairs.

He wadded up his wet clothes in a tight ball and hid them in the back of his closet. Tomorrow he’d burn them.

The broken nose he explained as a nasty fall. Mom and Dad both looked doubtful and questioned him relentlessly, but he insisted that it was a result of his own clumsiness, and that nothing would make him happier than to have them give Larry’s and Nick’s parents a call if the bullies had been the ones to injure him, but this time it was his own fault. They seemed to reluctantly believe his story.

He didn’t expect to have an appetite for dinner, but instead he was ravenous. He also didn’t expect to be able to sleep, but exhaustion beat out guilt and he was asleep minutes after climbing into bed.

The nightmares, however, were rapid-fire images of knives and blood and sharp teeth.

News of Larry and Nick’s disappearance had spread through the student body before classes even started for the day, and Toby wasn’t surprised to find himself pulled out of first-period history within two minutes of the bell. Mrs. Pendle, the secretary, took him into the principal’s office, where two police officers sat. One had a thick mustache and a friendly smile, while the other was clean-shaven and wore a scowl. Good cop, bad cop.