Bentley Little - The Association

Something about that didn't sit well with him. He thought of everything Barry had told them, and it suddenly seemed mighty suspicious that there was a secret hideout here in the middle of the woods where Stumpy was supposed to be.

Maybe it was where he lived.

Maybe it was where he was made.

His first gut reaction had been to turn tail and run, but as Dylan peered through the dark foliage at the equally dark building, his adrenaline started pumping. This was why he'd come out here, this was what he'd come to see.

He approached slowly, keeping a watchful eye out for any signs of life. He had stopped shouting, having determined that the best course of action would be not to announce his presence but to sneak in and out with no one I wiser. Leaving the trail, he crept through the bushes toward the building, trying not to step on twigs or leaves, trying no to make any noise. The wall ahead of him appeared to windowless, so he swung around, making a wide arc, was gratified to see that on the side of the building was , open doorway.

He pushed his way through a series of interlocke bushes, managing not to cry out when a stray broken brand dug into his ankle, and then he was standing in the clear space next to the building. This close, the similarity between the structure and the surrounding forest seemed even!

creepier. There was something organic about it, and Dylan! was suddenly aware of the fact that there was no noise here.1 The distant sound of bird cry and the underbrush scuttling | of lizards that had accompanied his trek down the path had | disappeared, replaced by silence.

He stepped forward carefully, intensely aware of the too loud sound his shoes made on the gravelly ground.

It looked like a bunkhouse, he thought, seeing it this;] close. He half-expected Stumpy--or Kenny—to come lurching out of the darkened doorway, shrieking at him, but the place seemed to be abandoned, and he appeared to be the only one here. He was grateful for that, and his reaction made him wonder what he was doing here in the first place, why he didn't just turn around and head back up the path to Barry's. He didn't know. But he did know that he needed to look inside that building, that even if he didn't see the freak, he still had to find out what was inside there.

He walked up to the doorway. The building obviously had no windows, but at the far end of what appeared to be a single large room that took up the entire interior of the structure, he saw the dim yellowish glow of an old kerosene lantern.

He squinted into the darkness but was unable to make out any specific features, so he stepped inside, stopping just past the entrance to let his eyes adjust.

It was a bunkhouse, and he could see that the small cots lining both sides of the long room were occupied. He whirled around, intending to flee, but strong hands grabbed his right arm. He swiveled to see a tall elderly gentleman staring blankly at him, The man had no ears.

Other hands grabbed his left arm, clamped around his neck, and then the people in the cots were rising, standing, walking toward him.

Or some of them were walking. Others were limping, and while they were not Stumpy, Dylan could see in the far off light from the lantern and the dim illumination from outside that they all appeared to be handicapped, missing arms or hands or legs or feet.

He tried to free himself from the grip of those who held him, but his captors held him tight.

Captors?

He struggled mightily, lashed out with his feet, tried a backward head butt, attempted to jerk his right arm free and throw a roundhouse punch at the tall man before him. No one had yet spoken, the only sounds in the bunkhouse were his own grunts and exhalations and the shuffling clopping of feet on wooden floor, and he was starting to get seriously scared.

The grip on his left arm weakened for a moment as the man holding onto it was bumped by a fingerless figure approaching from the side, and Dylan took advantage of the opportunity, yanking his arm away and using it to claw the face of the tall man. For a brief second, he was almost free, then the hands on his neck tightened, and he slipped, almost fell. "Fuck!" he managed to get out.

And then they were beating him.

When Dylan came to, he was gagged and restrained, strapped down with chains and bands of leather to what felt like a metal table. He was no longer in the bunkhouse, he knew that, but exactly where he'd been taken was not yet clear. He was able to move his head, and he turned it first to the left and then to the right, seeing only dark blurriness from between his puffy eyelids. Gradually, his brain adjusted to this altered vision, deciphering the scrambled signals and reformulating them into a more coherent picture. He saw a grimy stone wall, although his brain must have been having trouble judging distances because it looked as though it were several yards from where he lay. Next to him, on the table, was an old and obviously well-used machete, a hammer and a pack of nails, and a portable band saw with a rusted blade. Above, high and far away, was a black ceiling.

A woman walked up, dressed in dirty jeans and a torn, bloody T-shirt, a pair of yellowed plastic goggles hanging around her neck.

"One of the guests?" she asked.

An old man appeared next to her, a strange-looking individual with dry, crinkly skin and a face that owed more to the makeup wizardry of horror films than the biology of real life. "Yes," he said, his voice deep and filled with the offhanded authoritarianism of someone in power.

"What's the plan?" the woman asked.

The old man looked at Dylan dismissively. "Do the hands and feet first," he told the woman. "We'll figure out where to go after that."

"Rogerwilco ." The woman lowered her goggles.

Behind his gag, Dylan screamed as the band saw started to buzz.

When an hour had passed and Dylan wasn't back, Barry felt a slight twinge of unease.

When two hours had passed and Dylan still hadn't returned, he was filled with fear and a horribly familiar sense of panic. He gathered together Jeremy and Chuck, and the three of them headed out to the bridle trail to search for their friend.

They walked up and down the trail, following each fork, encountering only a pair of yuppie joggers and an old woman.

No Dylan.

It was nearly dark when they finally returned to the house, tired, angry, discouraged, and worried. The wives met them on the porch, and one look at their faces told Barry that Dylan had still not come back.

They went into the house, closing and locking the door behind them.

Maureen hurried upstairs to get drinks.

"You think the association got to him?" Jeremy asked, voicing the thought that was on all of their minds.

Danna turned toward Barry. "He was off to see that armless, legless guy, right?"

But Barry was already shaking his head. "Stumpy-Kenny--couldn't've done this. He's scary, but when you get down to it, all he could do is gum someone to death. He certainly couldn't take down a big guy like Dylan."

Jeremy nodded. "So it was someone else. Or several someone elses "Whatever it was, we're not going to find out by guessing about it in the living room." Barry looked at him. "You want to call Sheriff Hitman or do you want me to?"

"I'll talk to that bastard." Jeremy picked up the phone from the table, dialed 911, and waited.

And waited.

He hung up, dialed again, and this time someone answered. He asked to speak with the sheriff, and when the person on the other end of the line began asking questions about the nature of the emergency, Jeremy turned on the legalese and in his most serious and officious voice began berating and intimidating the person into transferring the call to the sheriff.

Barry had to smile. An angry and belligerent Jeremy was something to behold, and not for the first time he was glad the man was on his side.