LOCUST YEAR
Sam Neace
1.
Timmy teetered at the edge of accountability. By his eleventh birthday, hormones hit him like a hammer. Suddenly, rock ‘n’ roll sounded less like noise and more like music. Certain girls in his class blossomed breasts. Naturally, he had taken notice. But his curiosity was innocent in nature, much like Pandora just before she opened her box.
His eleventh birthday found him trying to match the mysterious colors of adulthood’s Rubik’s cube. He somewhat understood that sex claimed a color, as did pride and profanity. But he was still too young to piece the puzzle together.
The only things that mattered to Timmy were his family, Kentucky basketball, and Jason Voorhees. He was no more obsessed with Jason than the average prepubescent boy is obsessed with video games. Timmy’s parents thought it an innocent allure. That is why they bought him the entire ‘Friday the 13th’ movie collection for his eleventh birthday.
Timmy burrowed beneath blankets and curled, quivering like a frightened fetus, in his bed’s warm womb. His television screen oozed ghastly images. Jason’s shimmering machete slashed in flashes of silver. Teenage girls shrieked- their bodies slicked with sweat. Their boyfriends’ blood beaded like honey on Jason’s long machete shaft.
Timmy cowered beneath sheets, until the closing credits rolled. He wondered, all the while, how he could find enjoyment in such a disturbing movie. Closing credits gave way to television static. The VCR spit the finished cassette from its lips, where it dangled like a teasing tongue. Timmy clawed from beneath his cocoon and wandered about the room with the soft steps of a child freshly awakened from a nightmare.
Perhaps it was coincidence. Perhaps it was one of God’s little plagues. Timmy turned eleven during the climax of locust season. Locust season occurs once every seven summers in southeast Kentucky. The insects are actually cicadas, but locals use the term locust because it sounds more biblical. From early spring into late autumn, locusts’ nests blister across sycamore trees. Larva bursts from the blisters to exercise whistling wings. Soon, Appalachia is blackened with bugs. They eat the crops. Their skull-like heads ping against windowpanes. A million wings fill the atmosphere with deafening doom like tornado thunder. This only occurs once every seven summers. As chance would have it, the locusts were in a hell-raising mood, the night Timmy turned eleven.
The locusts’ devilish taunts overshadowed television static. He crept to his open bedroom window and craned an ear into the dark, trying to decipher their code.
“KILL, KILL, KILL, ALL, ALL, ALL…” they seemed to say.
Timmy slammed the window shut. That is when he heard his mother scream. Brave, little Timmy dug his Louisville Slugger from under the bed and headed into the hall with tears dampening his flannel pajamas. He cut the corner into the living room.
Mommy stretched across the carpet like a slab of meat. Her face was so bloody and mangled, Timmy could only recognize her by her emerald eyes. Her banana blond hair now dripped red cherry juice.
Daddy lounged in the recliner, facing Timmy. His guts spilled like spaghetti into his hands. Daddy’s lips shaped, as he tried to form words. All that came out was a gurgle, followed by a river of blood.
Jason stood in the doorway. His black boots left scarlet footprints all across mommy’s clean, blue carpet. That fabled hockey mask hovered above his shoulders like the moon. Hollow, black eyes ripped gashes through Timmy’s soul. Blood poured from the tip of his machete, as if the blade itself was bleeding. Jason opened the front door. Outside, the locusts called.
“KILL, KILL, KILL, ALL, ALL, ALL…” Jason left Timmy standing there to pick up the pieces. Timmy knew not what to do. He ran to the phone, dialed 9-11, just like they had taught him in school, then hurried upstairs, locked his bedroom door, and hid beneath blankets, until the men with badges arrived to take him away.
2.
“Uncle Vic?”
Timmy rapped knuckles against coarse oak. The door stood open like a dead eye, still Timmy felt the need to knock.
“Uncle Vic, are you home?”
No one answered. Timmy entered Vic’s log cabin. Everything was exactly the way he had pictured it in his dreams. A bull’s skull peered from its resting-place above Vic’s stereo. Timmy took a moment to notice how much the bull’s skull resembled a smiling locust.
Slate arrowheads sheeted every table. Beer cans lined the couch’s skirt like buckteeth. Stuffed squirrels nibbled porcelain acorns in all the corners. There was a buck’s head above the fireplace and a boar’s head above the kitchen doorway. The place smelled like a hunter. The place smelled like blood.
Timmy’s tennis shoes left grids in thick dust on the hardwood floor, as he crossed the living room. Nary board creaked. Vic’s floors were as strong as a grizzly’s backbone.
“Uncle Vic, are you home?”
Water sloshed in the rear corner of the house. Timmy pinched the lip of his black Stetson and stroked the hem of his denim jacket. Someone flailed about in bath water at the rear of Vic’s home.
Timmy remembered Vic. He was the kind of man that would shoot his own mother if she flinched at the wrong moment. Timmy’s shoulder slumped. A backpack slid down the length of his arm. Timmy unzipped the backpack and fished for his pistol. He hoped like hell, he wouldn’t have to use it.
“Uncle Vic, it’s me.”
“Well,” Vic slurred, still sloshing bath water, “nice to meet you, me. Either identify yourself by name or, ‘here lies me,’ will be all your mama reads on your headstone.”
Timmy snickered and cast the buck’s head a questioning stare. Something in the dead deer’s eyes let Timmy know that Vic was not lying.
“It’s your nephew, Timmy,” Timmy shouted, with his hand clutching the pistol.
For a long while, there was silence.
“What’s your mama’s name?” asked Vic.
“Dara,” Timmy answered, “Dara Collins. That’s the name I read on her headstone.”
Vic was not convinced.
“What was the number on your jersey when you played biddy league basketball?”
“Twelve,” answered Timmy, “just like you, Uncle Vic.”
For a long while, there was silence.
“Come on in here and show yourself,” Vic demanded, “and drop that gun.”
“I ain’t got no gun,” Timmy lied.
Vic laughed. Timmy heard the harsh sound of a riffle cocking.
“Drop the gun and come on in here,” Vic ordered.
Timmy tucked the pistol into his pants and hoisted the backpack onto his shoulder, while crossing the kitchen. Bare, pork chop bones stacked each other on a paper plate, sitting at the edge of the kitchen table. A lonely locust whistled from atop barbecue bones. Beer bottles trimmed the counter like fort walls. The smell of Irish Spring soap intensified with each step.
Timmy made his way to the bathroom. As expected, Vic relaxed in steamy water with a .16 gauge shotgun protruding from the crest of soapy residue. White bubbles spread from Vic’s chest, all across the tub, like a bride’s gown.
“Take off that hat,” Vic slurred. Timmy removed his Stetson.
“Oh my God,” Vic gasped, “oh my God, it is you. I’d recognize my sister’s eyes anywhere.”
“It’s me, Uncle Vic,” Timmy proclaimed, “you can shoot me if you want to, but just keep in mind, I’m the only family you’ve got left.”
Vic laid the gun parallel to the tub and smoothed soap from his heavy, butterscotch hair. His eyes widened into ovals, white and black, like the moon. Vic arose from the tub. White water dripped from his fury chest in tiny beads like soapy teardrops.
Vic stepped from the tub, grabbed his shotgun, and headed through the cabin, still naked. Water trickled from his toe-tips and left a soapy trail all across the floor, moistening Timmy’s dusty footprints into soggy mud.
“I figured you’d be this way,” Timmy groaned, “some things never change.”
Timmy followed Vic’s water trail past the kitchen to the bedroom doorway.
“Today’s my birthday,” Timmy said to the doorway, as if it were an open ear, “I’m eighteen today.”
Vic shuffled around in the bedroom for awhile. Finally, he stepped into the hall. Long, thermal underwear tightly snuggled his legs. A green bandana with the letters S.O.B printed across the brow kept Vic’s wild hair at bay.
“I never did care too much for cake,” Vic said, brushing past Timmy on his way to the kitchen.
Timmy lingered in the hall for a moment, not knowing whether to be offended or humored. He walked to the kitchen entrance. Vic propped himself against the open refrigerator door, guzzling a beer.
“Uncle Vic, I didn’t drive across two states on my eighteenth birthday to have a Hallmark moment with you. I just want to ask you one question. If my presence annoys you, then answer me this question and I’ll be on my way.”
Vic crossed to the sink, leaving the refrigerator door open. He discovered a lonely locust, tenderly pinched its wings, and softly cuffed it in his palm. The puzzled locust scurried back and forth from Vic’s fingertips up the ridge of his wrist.
“I know you’re a hunter,” Timmy continued, “ain’t nobody in these parts that would argue, you are the best hunter since Daniel Boone. I know people say you’re a little crazy. I guess that just comes along with being a hunter. Truth is, I’m a little crazy too.”
Vic rotated his hand palm-side up to backside up, over and over, as the confused locust made its trek.
“How do you kill a man, Uncle Vic? There’s somebody I’m going to kill, and I want to know how to go about doing it. He isn’t an ordinary man. Hell, if he were, I wouldn’t waste your time. I’d just hunt him down and pop off a few rounds in his head. But this man is as far from ordinary as they come. Many people have tried to kill him and paid fatally for it.”
Vic swallowed the remainder of his beer. He searched for a spot on the counter to place the empty bottle. When he realized no spot was vacant, he dropped the bottle to the floor and returned to the refrigerator to retrieve another. All the while, the happy locust skipped along Vic’s knuckles.
“I remember the stories you used to tell about the great, gray buck that lived in these hills,” Timmy recalled, “you talked about that old buck like it was almost immortal. At the opening of every deer season, you always told me how hunters would follow the riverbanks into the deepest hollows in search of Old Gray. Only the hunters with the sharpest of senses and the keenest of eyes could track Old Gray down. Occasionally, a hunter was lucky enough to get Gray in his sights and fire off a shot. But none of them were ever good enough to take that animal down.
The man I’m after is a lot like Old Gray. I came to you for advice because you are the best there’s ever been. Now, you can either help your only nephew out or send me on my way. That’s your choice. But I am going after him. And I do plan on taking him down.”
Vic popped the bottle open with his teeth and spat the cap to the floor. He downed about half the beer and closed his fingers around the skipping locust.
“Two years after your mama and daddy died,” Vic grizzled, “I killed Old Gray. I found him up in the head of Wiley Branch, wetting his whiskers in a pond. I hit him square in the heart with a crossbow. He ran maybe ten yards and fell over deader than disco. My first thought was to carry him into town and have him mounted, so I could rub it in all of my hunting buddies’ noses. I changed my mind. He was too old to make for good eating, so I left him lying there by the pond. I figured, after all he had weathered, it was only proper to let the mountain take his body. To this day, no one knows he is dead except for me, you, and the mountain.”
Vic took another swig of beer and shook the locust in his closed fist like a man ready to throw dice.
“I might be crazy,” Vic belched, “I might be a little uncivilized. But I ain’t no idiot. You came back here to kill the man that murdered your mama and daddy. It was a locust year, the year they died. This is the first locust year we’ve had since.
They called you back here, didn’t they? You heard these locusts hollering from wherever you were, and you came back here to answer their call.”
Vic opened his fist and quickly pushed the stunned locust into his mouth. He slurped the bug headfirst down his tongue and sucked on it like it was a piece of candy. Timmy’s stomach turned when he heard Vic burst open the locust’s hard shell with his teeth. Vic chewed and swallowed the bug. He sucked a few juices from his teeth with the tip of his tongue and washed it all down with a drink of beer.
“I’ve never been one to argue with nature,” Vic said, “You want to know how to kill this man you’re after? Pull up a seat, and I’ll tell you.”
3.
Timmy parted grass in the yard outside his old home. The grass stood knee high and was full of locusts. At the right end of the yard, his swing-set rusted like metal memories. One swing swayed back and forth like a pendulum in the wind. The full moon perched high in the sky, ghostly pale and punctured with black-craters, like a hockey mask. Appalachian pines spread needle fingers toward the almighty mask like worshiping hands. High hanging summer clouds caught silver moonlight and twisted it in their bowels, until it spit from their guts all lavender and scarlet like blood.
After the murders, no one dared to move into the house. Small towns have long memories. Town shed a million tears the day Timmy’s parents were buried. It was a memory they would all rather keep locked away. So, the house remained abandoned at the far end of town. Paint chipped and shingles shed from the decaying home. It looked a lot like a pine coffin, weeping in the whistling grass, waiting to be lowered into the ground. Timmy stood at the front door, shivering. The last time he entered that home, everything was… normal.
The inside looked exactly the same way it did that night. Mold, mildew, cobwebs, and dust had staked their claim, but for the most part, nothing changed. Rats had tunneled through the sofa’s cotton innards, but dad’s bloodstains were still evident. Timmy kneeled near the brown blotch where mama laid, hemorrhaging on the carpet seven years earlier. In the kitchen, his Scooby-Doo bowl balanced at the edge of the table. He had eaten Apple Jacks that night, just before retiring to his bedroom. It was all perfect like some sort of dusty, distorted nightmare.
Timmy’s bedroom was no different. Blankets bunched together in the center of the mattress, just the way he had left them. His television was gone, but the cable protruded straight across the nightstand like a severed artery. ‘Friday the 13th’ videocassettes scattered across the floor. Their cardboard cases mildewed and withered with time.
The glass had long since been shattered from his window. Timmy stared out the hole into the night. Heat lightening strobed the sky. A platoon of locusts wandered through the window and exercised their wings in the doughy paste of peeling wallpaper. Timmy sat at the edge of the bed and buried his head in his hands. He stayed that way, until sleep nearly overcame him.
The front door hinges slowly screeched open. Timmy’s hands immediately shot into his backpack. His head snapped erect. Had he forgotten to shut the door all the way? Perhaps the wind had blown it open.
From the living room, heavy feet thudded against week floor joists, slow and powerful like Frankenstein’s monster. The dry rotting floor whined. For a brief second, Timmy thought he heard his mother screaming. As Timmy pulled the revolver from his backpack, Uncle Vic’s words looped over and over in his head.
“YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW TO KILL THIS MAN YOU’RE AFTER? PULL UP A SEAT, AND I’LL TELL YOU…”
Lightening iced Timmy’s bedroom wall. His shadow cut across the door, black and slumped, like a demon.
“THE MAN YOU WANT TO KILL IS JUST LIKE THE LOCUST I ATE…”
Timmy twisted the dusty doorknob and raised the revolver shoulder level with his shadow.
“THAT LOCUST COULD HAVE LIVED TO SEE ANOTHER HOUR, HAD I ALLOWED IT. BUT I DID NOT ALLOW IT. NOW, THE LOCUST IS CHURNING IN THE PIT OF MY GUT…”
Timmy headed down the hall. All of the sudden, he was eleven again. Jason’s boots beat thunder through the living room.
“EVERYTHING THAT LIVES ON THIS EARTH IS EASY TO KILL. THERE’S NO GREAT TRICK TO IT. ALL IT TAKES IS ONE SMASH OF THE HAND OR ONE ARROW TO THE HEART…”
Timmy cut the corner into the living room. Jason waited there, baptized in full moonlight. Sweat trickled from Jason’s bald head. His white hockey mask glowed like a honeydew jack o’lantern. Black eyes burned the scene like Hell coals. Jason’s machete was a mirror, reflecting Mama’s brown bloodstain and Timmy’s tear streaked face. The blade was clean, sharpened, and ready for blood.
Jason reached into his coveralls and removed a thin strip of bloodstained cloth. He tossed the cloth across the room. Timmy caught the strip with his free hand and held it up into moonlight.
The cloth unfurled across Timmy’s fingers, and he realized it was a green bandana. As Timmy feared, the letters S.O.B glistened beneath blood smears.
“No, not Uncle Vic. Damn you, he was the only family I had left!”
“WHEN YOU FIND HIM, DO WHAT YOU MUST DO QUICKLY. WORDS ARE UNNECESSARY. THERE’S NO TIME TO HESITATE…”
Timmy raised his pistol and pulled back the hammer.
“SHOOT HIM IN THE EYES. MORE THAN LIKELY, THIS WILL KILL HIM. BUT EVEN IF IT DOESN’T, HE WILL BE BLINDED AND WEAK...”
Lightening sheeted the sky with the rhythm of a pulse. Black then white, black then white, like a twitching eye. Sour sweat collected at the corners of Timmy’s lips. Jason slashed the air with each pulse of light, his blade shredding paneling on the walls. Splinters splashed across the floor. Jason stabbed at Timmy, and he dodged just in time to avoid demise. Timmy remembered the last words his mother said to him, as she tucked him into bed that same night seven years ago.
“I don’t know how you can stand to watch those scary movies…”
A streak of lightening froze just long enough for Timmy to get good aim.
“Every time I watch those movies, I have nightmares for days…”
Timmy squeezed a shot through each of Jason’s eyes. Blood squirted across the front window and glowed neon in flickering lightening.
“But you don’t get scared, do you, my brave, little man? You’ve always been mommy’s brave boy…”
“AFTER YOU SHOOT HIM IN THE EYES, HIT ALL HIS VITAL SPOTS. PUT A BULLET IN HIS HEART…”
Timmy pulled the trigger. Jason’s heart burst like a blood blister.
“PUT ONE IN HIS LIVER…”
Timmy fired again. Jason jerked on the floor like he was having a seizure.
“PUT ONE BETWEEN HIS EYES…”
By now, Jason was lifeless. Timmy shot him between the eyes for the hell of it. Jason’s mask cracked. Blood oozed through the grooves.
“You know what? If Jason came into this house, I bet he wouldn’t stand a change against you. That’s how brave you are…”
“TAKE HIS BLADE AND DECAPITATE HIM. DON’T THINK ABOUT IT, JUST GRAB THE MACHETE AND DO IT FAST…”
Timmy picked up the machete. Lightening rendered the land shadowless. With one mighty strike, Timmy cut through Jason’s throat.
“DON’T SPEAK TO HIM. DON’T UNMASK HIM. JUST SET THE PLACE ON FIRE AND WALK AWAY. LET ALL THAT HATRED GO UP IN FLAMES BECAUSE IT IS OVER. HE IS IN HELL, AND YOU ARE VICTORIUS. LEAVE HIS ASHES FOR THE LOCUSTS…”
Timmy’s trembling hand set the sofa ablaze. He ran out the front door and hit his knees in the grass, weeping. All around, the locusts were screaming.
“KILL, KILL, KILL, ALL, ALL, ALL…”
Hell flames devoured the house. Timmy’s last memory of his mother hung in his head like a snapshot. She stood in his bedroom doorway. Her blond hair was so alive and pretty; her green eyes filled with tender happiness.
“I love you, my brave boy. Happy birthday, Timmy.”
She turned out the light and blew him a kiss. That was the last time he saw her alive.
Timmy hurried off to Vic’s house as fast as his car would take him. He dashed up the front porch steps. Vic’s front door opened like a dead eye, the same as before. Every light in the house was on, but no one was home.
Timmy bolted from room to room, preparing himself for a gory display. He found nothing of Vic, until he came to the bathroom. Vic’s hair carpeted the tile- thick, wet, and mushy with shaving cream. There was nothing else, no dead body, no spilled blood. Timmy stumbled backwards through the hall. He found his balance and fell to his knees in the kitchen doorway.
The refrigerator popped on and hummed like a locust. Timmy recalled the last words Vic said to him, just that morning.
“GO BACK TO YOUR OLD HOUSE. IF YOU’RE GONNA FIND HIM, CHANCES ARE, YOU’LL FIND HIM THERE. THESE LOCUSTS ARE CALLING OUT TO YOU. THEY’RE PROBABLY CALLING OUT TO HIM TOO. THEY WANT BLOOD. THAT’S WHAT THE LOCUSTS ARE AFTER. THEY DON’T CARE WHOSE. THEY JUST CRAVE IT AND WON’T STOP UNTIL THEY TASTE IT.”
Earlier that day, Timmy thanked Vic for his advice and turned to walk away. Vic called out to him once more. When Timmy turned around, Vic tossed him a cold beer. With expressionless eyes and a voice so cold it was almost dead, Vic said the three words that have always sent shivers through his nephew’s spine.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TIMMY.”
Sam Neace
1.
Timmy teetered at the edge of accountability. By his eleventh birthday, hormones hit him like a hammer. Suddenly, rock ‘n’ roll sounded less like noise and more like music. Certain girls in his class blossomed breasts. Naturally, he had taken notice. But his curiosity was innocent in nature, much like Pandora just before she opened her box.
His eleventh birthday found him trying to match the mysterious colors of adulthood’s Rubik’s cube. He somewhat understood that sex claimed a color, as did pride and profanity. But he was still too young to piece the puzzle together.
The only things that mattered to Timmy were his family, Kentucky basketball, and Jason Voorhees. He was no more obsessed with Jason than the average prepubescent boy is obsessed with video games. Timmy’s parents thought it an innocent allure. That is why they bought him the entire ‘Friday the 13th’ movie collection for his eleventh birthday.
Timmy burrowed beneath blankets and curled, quivering like a frightened fetus, in his bed’s warm womb. His television screen oozed ghastly images. Jason’s shimmering machete slashed in flashes of silver. Teenage girls shrieked- their bodies slicked with sweat. Their boyfriends’ blood beaded like honey on Jason’s long machete shaft.
Timmy cowered beneath sheets, until the closing credits rolled. He wondered, all the while, how he could find enjoyment in such a disturbing movie. Closing credits gave way to television static. The VCR spit the finished cassette from its lips, where it dangled like a teasing tongue. Timmy clawed from beneath his cocoon and wandered about the room with the soft steps of a child freshly awakened from a nightmare.
Perhaps it was coincidence. Perhaps it was one of God’s little plagues. Timmy turned eleven during the climax of locust season. Locust season occurs once every seven summers in southeast Kentucky. The insects are actually cicadas, but locals use the term locust because it sounds more biblical. From early spring into late autumn, locusts’ nests blister across sycamore trees. Larva bursts from the blisters to exercise whistling wings. Soon, Appalachia is blackened with bugs. They eat the crops. Their skull-like heads ping against windowpanes. A million wings fill the atmosphere with deafening doom like tornado thunder. This only occurs once every seven summers. As chance would have it, the locusts were in a hell-raising mood, the night Timmy turned eleven.
The locusts’ devilish taunts overshadowed television static. He crept to his open bedroom window and craned an ear into the dark, trying to decipher their code.
“KILL, KILL, KILL, ALL, ALL, ALL…” they seemed to say.
Timmy slammed the window shut. That is when he heard his mother scream. Brave, little Timmy dug his Louisville Slugger from under the bed and headed into the hall with tears dampening his flannel pajamas. He cut the corner into the living room.
Mommy stretched across the carpet like a slab of meat. Her face was so bloody and mangled, Timmy could only recognize her by her emerald eyes. Her banana blond hair now dripped red cherry juice.
Daddy lounged in the recliner, facing Timmy. His guts spilled like spaghetti into his hands. Daddy’s lips shaped, as he tried to form words. All that came out was a gurgle, followed by a river of blood.
Jason stood in the doorway. His black boots left scarlet footprints all across mommy’s clean, blue carpet. That fabled hockey mask hovered above his shoulders like the moon. Hollow, black eyes ripped gashes through Timmy’s soul. Blood poured from the tip of his machete, as if the blade itself was bleeding. Jason opened the front door. Outside, the locusts called.
“KILL, KILL, KILL, ALL, ALL, ALL…” Jason left Timmy standing there to pick up the pieces. Timmy knew not what to do. He ran to the phone, dialed 9-11, just like they had taught him in school, then hurried upstairs, locked his bedroom door, and hid beneath blankets, until the men with badges arrived to take him away.
2.
“Uncle Vic?”
Timmy rapped knuckles against coarse oak. The door stood open like a dead eye, still Timmy felt the need to knock.
“Uncle Vic, are you home?”
No one answered. Timmy entered Vic’s log cabin. Everything was exactly the way he had pictured it in his dreams. A bull’s skull peered from its resting-place above Vic’s stereo. Timmy took a moment to notice how much the bull’s skull resembled a smiling locust.
Slate arrowheads sheeted every table. Beer cans lined the couch’s skirt like buckteeth. Stuffed squirrels nibbled porcelain acorns in all the corners. There was a buck’s head above the fireplace and a boar’s head above the kitchen doorway. The place smelled like a hunter. The place smelled like blood.
Timmy’s tennis shoes left grids in thick dust on the hardwood floor, as he crossed the living room. Nary board creaked. Vic’s floors were as strong as a grizzly’s backbone.
“Uncle Vic, are you home?”
Water sloshed in the rear corner of the house. Timmy pinched the lip of his black Stetson and stroked the hem of his denim jacket. Someone flailed about in bath water at the rear of Vic’s home.
Timmy remembered Vic. He was the kind of man that would shoot his own mother if she flinched at the wrong moment. Timmy’s shoulder slumped. A backpack slid down the length of his arm. Timmy unzipped the backpack and fished for his pistol. He hoped like hell, he wouldn’t have to use it.
“Uncle Vic, it’s me.”
“Well,” Vic slurred, still sloshing bath water, “nice to meet you, me. Either identify yourself by name or, ‘here lies me,’ will be all your mama reads on your headstone.”
Timmy snickered and cast the buck’s head a questioning stare. Something in the dead deer’s eyes let Timmy know that Vic was not lying.
“It’s your nephew, Timmy,” Timmy shouted, with his hand clutching the pistol.
For a long while, there was silence.
“What’s your mama’s name?” asked Vic.
“Dara,” Timmy answered, “Dara Collins. That’s the name I read on her headstone.”
Vic was not convinced.
“What was the number on your jersey when you played biddy league basketball?”
“Twelve,” answered Timmy, “just like you, Uncle Vic.”
For a long while, there was silence.
“Come on in here and show yourself,” Vic demanded, “and drop that gun.”
“I ain’t got no gun,” Timmy lied.
Vic laughed. Timmy heard the harsh sound of a riffle cocking.
“Drop the gun and come on in here,” Vic ordered.
Timmy tucked the pistol into his pants and hoisted the backpack onto his shoulder, while crossing the kitchen. Bare, pork chop bones stacked each other on a paper plate, sitting at the edge of the kitchen table. A lonely locust whistled from atop barbecue bones. Beer bottles trimmed the counter like fort walls. The smell of Irish Spring soap intensified with each step.
Timmy made his way to the bathroom. As expected, Vic relaxed in steamy water with a .16 gauge shotgun protruding from the crest of soapy residue. White bubbles spread from Vic’s chest, all across the tub, like a bride’s gown.
“Take off that hat,” Vic slurred. Timmy removed his Stetson.
“Oh my God,” Vic gasped, “oh my God, it is you. I’d recognize my sister’s eyes anywhere.”
“It’s me, Uncle Vic,” Timmy proclaimed, “you can shoot me if you want to, but just keep in mind, I’m the only family you’ve got left.”
Vic laid the gun parallel to the tub and smoothed soap from his heavy, butterscotch hair. His eyes widened into ovals, white and black, like the moon. Vic arose from the tub. White water dripped from his fury chest in tiny beads like soapy teardrops.
Vic stepped from the tub, grabbed his shotgun, and headed through the cabin, still naked. Water trickled from his toe-tips and left a soapy trail all across the floor, moistening Timmy’s dusty footprints into soggy mud.
“I figured you’d be this way,” Timmy groaned, “some things never change.”
Timmy followed Vic’s water trail past the kitchen to the bedroom doorway.
“Today’s my birthday,” Timmy said to the doorway, as if it were an open ear, “I’m eighteen today.”
Vic shuffled around in the bedroom for awhile. Finally, he stepped into the hall. Long, thermal underwear tightly snuggled his legs. A green bandana with the letters S.O.B printed across the brow kept Vic’s wild hair at bay.
“I never did care too much for cake,” Vic said, brushing past Timmy on his way to the kitchen.
Timmy lingered in the hall for a moment, not knowing whether to be offended or humored. He walked to the kitchen entrance. Vic propped himself against the open refrigerator door, guzzling a beer.
“Uncle Vic, I didn’t drive across two states on my eighteenth birthday to have a Hallmark moment with you. I just want to ask you one question. If my presence annoys you, then answer me this question and I’ll be on my way.”
Vic crossed to the sink, leaving the refrigerator door open. He discovered a lonely locust, tenderly pinched its wings, and softly cuffed it in his palm. The puzzled locust scurried back and forth from Vic’s fingertips up the ridge of his wrist.
“I know you’re a hunter,” Timmy continued, “ain’t nobody in these parts that would argue, you are the best hunter since Daniel Boone. I know people say you’re a little crazy. I guess that just comes along with being a hunter. Truth is, I’m a little crazy too.”
Vic rotated his hand palm-side up to backside up, over and over, as the confused locust made its trek.
“How do you kill a man, Uncle Vic? There’s somebody I’m going to kill, and I want to know how to go about doing it. He isn’t an ordinary man. Hell, if he were, I wouldn’t waste your time. I’d just hunt him down and pop off a few rounds in his head. But this man is as far from ordinary as they come. Many people have tried to kill him and paid fatally for it.”
Vic swallowed the remainder of his beer. He searched for a spot on the counter to place the empty bottle. When he realized no spot was vacant, he dropped the bottle to the floor and returned to the refrigerator to retrieve another. All the while, the happy locust skipped along Vic’s knuckles.
“I remember the stories you used to tell about the great, gray buck that lived in these hills,” Timmy recalled, “you talked about that old buck like it was almost immortal. At the opening of every deer season, you always told me how hunters would follow the riverbanks into the deepest hollows in search of Old Gray. Only the hunters with the sharpest of senses and the keenest of eyes could track Old Gray down. Occasionally, a hunter was lucky enough to get Gray in his sights and fire off a shot. But none of them were ever good enough to take that animal down.
The man I’m after is a lot like Old Gray. I came to you for advice because you are the best there’s ever been. Now, you can either help your only nephew out or send me on my way. That’s your choice. But I am going after him. And I do plan on taking him down.”
Vic popped the bottle open with his teeth and spat the cap to the floor. He downed about half the beer and closed his fingers around the skipping locust.
“Two years after your mama and daddy died,” Vic grizzled, “I killed Old Gray. I found him up in the head of Wiley Branch, wetting his whiskers in a pond. I hit him square in the heart with a crossbow. He ran maybe ten yards and fell over deader than disco. My first thought was to carry him into town and have him mounted, so I could rub it in all of my hunting buddies’ noses. I changed my mind. He was too old to make for good eating, so I left him lying there by the pond. I figured, after all he had weathered, it was only proper to let the mountain take his body. To this day, no one knows he is dead except for me, you, and the mountain.”
Vic took another swig of beer and shook the locust in his closed fist like a man ready to throw dice.
“I might be crazy,” Vic belched, “I might be a little uncivilized. But I ain’t no idiot. You came back here to kill the man that murdered your mama and daddy. It was a locust year, the year they died. This is the first locust year we’ve had since.
They called you back here, didn’t they? You heard these locusts hollering from wherever you were, and you came back here to answer their call.”
Vic opened his fist and quickly pushed the stunned locust into his mouth. He slurped the bug headfirst down his tongue and sucked on it like it was a piece of candy. Timmy’s stomach turned when he heard Vic burst open the locust’s hard shell with his teeth. Vic chewed and swallowed the bug. He sucked a few juices from his teeth with the tip of his tongue and washed it all down with a drink of beer.
“I’ve never been one to argue with nature,” Vic said, “You want to know how to kill this man you’re after? Pull up a seat, and I’ll tell you.”
3.
Timmy parted grass in the yard outside his old home. The grass stood knee high and was full of locusts. At the right end of the yard, his swing-set rusted like metal memories. One swing swayed back and forth like a pendulum in the wind. The full moon perched high in the sky, ghostly pale and punctured with black-craters, like a hockey mask. Appalachian pines spread needle fingers toward the almighty mask like worshiping hands. High hanging summer clouds caught silver moonlight and twisted it in their bowels, until it spit from their guts all lavender and scarlet like blood.
After the murders, no one dared to move into the house. Small towns have long memories. Town shed a million tears the day Timmy’s parents were buried. It was a memory they would all rather keep locked away. So, the house remained abandoned at the far end of town. Paint chipped and shingles shed from the decaying home. It looked a lot like a pine coffin, weeping in the whistling grass, waiting to be lowered into the ground. Timmy stood at the front door, shivering. The last time he entered that home, everything was… normal.
The inside looked exactly the same way it did that night. Mold, mildew, cobwebs, and dust had staked their claim, but for the most part, nothing changed. Rats had tunneled through the sofa’s cotton innards, but dad’s bloodstains were still evident. Timmy kneeled near the brown blotch where mama laid, hemorrhaging on the carpet seven years earlier. In the kitchen, his Scooby-Doo bowl balanced at the edge of the table. He had eaten Apple Jacks that night, just before retiring to his bedroom. It was all perfect like some sort of dusty, distorted nightmare.
Timmy’s bedroom was no different. Blankets bunched together in the center of the mattress, just the way he had left them. His television was gone, but the cable protruded straight across the nightstand like a severed artery. ‘Friday the 13th’ videocassettes scattered across the floor. Their cardboard cases mildewed and withered with time.
The glass had long since been shattered from his window. Timmy stared out the hole into the night. Heat lightening strobed the sky. A platoon of locusts wandered through the window and exercised their wings in the doughy paste of peeling wallpaper. Timmy sat at the edge of the bed and buried his head in his hands. He stayed that way, until sleep nearly overcame him.
The front door hinges slowly screeched open. Timmy’s hands immediately shot into his backpack. His head snapped erect. Had he forgotten to shut the door all the way? Perhaps the wind had blown it open.
From the living room, heavy feet thudded against week floor joists, slow and powerful like Frankenstein’s monster. The dry rotting floor whined. For a brief second, Timmy thought he heard his mother screaming. As Timmy pulled the revolver from his backpack, Uncle Vic’s words looped over and over in his head.
“YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW TO KILL THIS MAN YOU’RE AFTER? PULL UP A SEAT, AND I’LL TELL YOU…”
Lightening iced Timmy’s bedroom wall. His shadow cut across the door, black and slumped, like a demon.
“THE MAN YOU WANT TO KILL IS JUST LIKE THE LOCUST I ATE…”
Timmy twisted the dusty doorknob and raised the revolver shoulder level with his shadow.
“THAT LOCUST COULD HAVE LIVED TO SEE ANOTHER HOUR, HAD I ALLOWED IT. BUT I DID NOT ALLOW IT. NOW, THE LOCUST IS CHURNING IN THE PIT OF MY GUT…”
Timmy headed down the hall. All of the sudden, he was eleven again. Jason’s boots beat thunder through the living room.
“EVERYTHING THAT LIVES ON THIS EARTH IS EASY TO KILL. THERE’S NO GREAT TRICK TO IT. ALL IT TAKES IS ONE SMASH OF THE HAND OR ONE ARROW TO THE HEART…”
Timmy cut the corner into the living room. Jason waited there, baptized in full moonlight. Sweat trickled from Jason’s bald head. His white hockey mask glowed like a honeydew jack o’lantern. Black eyes burned the scene like Hell coals. Jason’s machete was a mirror, reflecting Mama’s brown bloodstain and Timmy’s tear streaked face. The blade was clean, sharpened, and ready for blood.
Jason reached into his coveralls and removed a thin strip of bloodstained cloth. He tossed the cloth across the room. Timmy caught the strip with his free hand and held it up into moonlight.
The cloth unfurled across Timmy’s fingers, and he realized it was a green bandana. As Timmy feared, the letters S.O.B glistened beneath blood smears.
“No, not Uncle Vic. Damn you, he was the only family I had left!”
“WHEN YOU FIND HIM, DO WHAT YOU MUST DO QUICKLY. WORDS ARE UNNECESSARY. THERE’S NO TIME TO HESITATE…”
Timmy raised his pistol and pulled back the hammer.
“SHOOT HIM IN THE EYES. MORE THAN LIKELY, THIS WILL KILL HIM. BUT EVEN IF IT DOESN’T, HE WILL BE BLINDED AND WEAK...”
Lightening sheeted the sky with the rhythm of a pulse. Black then white, black then white, like a twitching eye. Sour sweat collected at the corners of Timmy’s lips. Jason slashed the air with each pulse of light, his blade shredding paneling on the walls. Splinters splashed across the floor. Jason stabbed at Timmy, and he dodged just in time to avoid demise. Timmy remembered the last words his mother said to him, as she tucked him into bed that same night seven years ago.
“I don’t know how you can stand to watch those scary movies…”
A streak of lightening froze just long enough for Timmy to get good aim.
“Every time I watch those movies, I have nightmares for days…”
Timmy squeezed a shot through each of Jason’s eyes. Blood squirted across the front window and glowed neon in flickering lightening.
“But you don’t get scared, do you, my brave, little man? You’ve always been mommy’s brave boy…”
“AFTER YOU SHOOT HIM IN THE EYES, HIT ALL HIS VITAL SPOTS. PUT A BULLET IN HIS HEART…”
Timmy pulled the trigger. Jason’s heart burst like a blood blister.
“PUT ONE IN HIS LIVER…”
Timmy fired again. Jason jerked on the floor like he was having a seizure.
“PUT ONE BETWEEN HIS EYES…”
By now, Jason was lifeless. Timmy shot him between the eyes for the hell of it. Jason’s mask cracked. Blood oozed through the grooves.
“You know what? If Jason came into this house, I bet he wouldn’t stand a change against you. That’s how brave you are…”
“TAKE HIS BLADE AND DECAPITATE HIM. DON’T THINK ABOUT IT, JUST GRAB THE MACHETE AND DO IT FAST…”
Timmy picked up the machete. Lightening rendered the land shadowless. With one mighty strike, Timmy cut through Jason’s throat.
“DON’T SPEAK TO HIM. DON’T UNMASK HIM. JUST SET THE PLACE ON FIRE AND WALK AWAY. LET ALL THAT HATRED GO UP IN FLAMES BECAUSE IT IS OVER. HE IS IN HELL, AND YOU ARE VICTORIUS. LEAVE HIS ASHES FOR THE LOCUSTS…”
Timmy’s trembling hand set the sofa ablaze. He ran out the front door and hit his knees in the grass, weeping. All around, the locusts were screaming.
“KILL, KILL, KILL, ALL, ALL, ALL…”
Hell flames devoured the house. Timmy’s last memory of his mother hung in his head like a snapshot. She stood in his bedroom doorway. Her blond hair was so alive and pretty; her green eyes filled with tender happiness.
“I love you, my brave boy. Happy birthday, Timmy.”
She turned out the light and blew him a kiss. That was the last time he saw her alive.
Timmy hurried off to Vic’s house as fast as his car would take him. He dashed up the front porch steps. Vic’s front door opened like a dead eye, the same as before. Every light in the house was on, but no one was home.
Timmy bolted from room to room, preparing himself for a gory display. He found nothing of Vic, until he came to the bathroom. Vic’s hair carpeted the tile- thick, wet, and mushy with shaving cream. There was nothing else, no dead body, no spilled blood. Timmy stumbled backwards through the hall. He found his balance and fell to his knees in the kitchen doorway.
The refrigerator popped on and hummed like a locust. Timmy recalled the last words Vic said to him, just that morning.
“GO BACK TO YOUR OLD HOUSE. IF YOU’RE GONNA FIND HIM, CHANCES ARE, YOU’LL FIND HIM THERE. THESE LOCUSTS ARE CALLING OUT TO YOU. THEY’RE PROBABLY CALLING OUT TO HIM TOO. THEY WANT BLOOD. THAT’S WHAT THE LOCUSTS ARE AFTER. THEY DON’T CARE WHOSE. THEY JUST CRAVE IT AND WON’T STOP UNTIL THEY TASTE IT.”
Earlier that day, Timmy thanked Vic for his advice and turned to walk away. Vic called out to him once more. When Timmy turned around, Vic tossed him a cold beer. With expressionless eyes and a voice so cold it was almost dead, Vic said the three words that have always sent shivers through his nephew’s spine.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TIMMY.”
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