SHUDDERVILLE TWO Read Online Free PDF Page B

bank, its carcass bloated with decay. “Is it dead yet, Olive?” he asked, poking it furiously. “Is it?”
    “Stop it, Andy. Don’t poke it like that!”
    He pierced the dead animal’s swollen belly with the tip of the stick and said, “See, Olive? Those are its guts.”
    “Please don’t!” she cried with alarm.
    He pushed the stick in so deep that intestines gushed from the incision. “Look!”
    I couldn’t rip my eyes away. The morning had exploded like a bomb, everything white hot and shimmering with shrapnel. All beauty had turned ugly. All truth withered. The sun was too hot. The pesky flies were too annoying. I could smell the rotten carcass deep in my nostrils, and it smelled like… Jesus, it smelled like the attic.
    The boy stabbed and stabbed. “Stupid raccoon. Is it dead yet, Olive?”
    The little girl trembled all over. “I hate you,” she whispered.
    He stabbed the stick deeper, and more green stuff oozed out of the incision. “Ew!” he said delightedly. “Look at that, Olive! Its guts are coming out! See that?”
    “Leave it alone!”
    “Disgust-o.” He stabbed and stabbed. “Heck, yeah!” he said joyfully. “Oh! Do you see that? Do you see its shit ? Its shit is coming out of its asshole. Look, Olive!”
    “No!” she screamed and ran away.
    I snatched the stick away and held it high out of reach.
    “Give it back!” Andy cried shrilly, his face red and blotchy. He kept tugging on the crotch of his shorts because his crazy clothes were too tight.
    I tried to grab him by the sweaty arm, but he was quicker than he looked. He ran around in lightning-fast circles, and Olive surprised me by flinging herself at me and wrapping herself tightly around my legs so that I couldn’t move.
    “Run, Andy, run!” she cried.
    The boy tore up the hill, waving his flabby, rash-ridden arms.
    I peeled the girl off me like a Band-Aid and shook her angrily. “Stop that.”
    “I hate you!” she screamed.
    “Calm down.”
    “No!”
    She dug in her heels as I dragged her toward the house, thinking that perhaps my plans have changed. Maybe I’d have to kill them all.
    “Let me go! I hate you!” she protested, her hair a sweaty swirl. She kicked and slapped and pushed and tugged until I finally let go, and she ran sobbing into the house.
    I couldn’t move for a second. It was like one of those strange dreams you can’t wake up from. As if the sun had set and the sky had gone dark and the bats were out, but you couldn’t even summon the strength to go inside.
    *
    I found her in her mother’s room. The closet door was open, and Olive was standing on tiptoes, reaching for something on the top shelf.
    “Can I help?” I offered from the doorway.
    She turned to stare at me. She wiped away the tears and said, “My daddy died in the war. He died last year, and Mommy cried almost every night. I could hear her crying in her room.”
    “What are you trying to get from the closet?”
    “His ashes.” She pointed. “See the box?”
    I spotted the tin biscuit box and nodded. “Are those your daddy’s ashes?”
    She nodded.
    “Want me to get them for you?”
    “Yes, please.”
    I walked over to the closet, picked up the tin biscuit box and made the mistake of shaking it. Something rattled around inside.
    “Bone fragments,” she said.
    I just looked at her.
    “He’s not my real daddy,” she confessed.
    “Not your daddy?”
    “No,” she answered. “He’s my step-daddy.”
    This must be Delilah’s husband, I thought, the one who died in Vietnam and left her a widow. Not Olive’s daddy? So who was Olive’s daddy? Not human, I’d bet. I’d bet a lot of money on it. I hefted the biscuit box in my hands, weighing what little remained of the soldier. I wanted to know what I was holding in my hands, but you could never really tell for sure.
    “Where’d you get that cut?” she asked now, pointing at my face.
    I touched my cheek where the girl in the attic had just scratched me.