Scarecrow Gods (52 page)

It struck the cat as it leapt. Instead of landing on Danny, the cat tumbled sideways in mid-air. Screeching and yowling filled the circle of saguaro. Feathers and blood flew amidst the roiling dust.

Hyperventilating as he screamed, Danny pulled himself to his feet. He tried to climb the Scarecrow God once more, but his hands were too slick with blood. Instead, he hid behind it.

Somehow Simon was still alive. He struggled to his feet. His left arm was in shreds. Flesh hung like torn paper showing the whiteness of bone in several places. Blood ran freely, his entire left side sodden with the sticky liquid.

“Help me,” Simon gasped, his face white. The presence of the man calmed Danny enough so that his breathing returned to a semblance of normality. He tried to help him, but was pushed away. “No. The Gods. We must use them. We must invoke them!” Simon hobbled towards the backside of the saguaro next to him. “Help me,” he said as he slid around the unforgiving skin of the cactus.

Although Danny was sure that Simon was babbling, he obeyed. Simon sat down hard, his back to the saguaro. He found purchase with his feet and began to press backwards, stress making his neck muscles bulge. Blood continued to pour from his ruined arm. Danny leaned a shoulder to the same great trunk and pushed. He felt the saguaro begin to give as the towering ton of cactus overwhelmed the shallow root system.

The screams of the owl and the mountain lion came less and less now as each creature was weakened by the other. Their battle was lost to Danny, his vision obscured; yet it sounded as if the mountain lion was winning.

“Come on and push!” screamed Simon, his voice bare and ragged. “It’s our only chance. Give it all you’ve got!”

The Great Horned Owl shrieked one last time and went silent.

Danny groaned, adjusted his stance, and heaved with every ounce of strength he could muster.

The Scarecrow God gave way.

Slowly at first, it gathered speed, coke-bottle lips whistling through the air. Danny felt himself knocked to the ground by the roots as they shot free from the earth. And with a
whoompf
, the great cactus crashed onto the mountain lion.

Simon lay atop the trunk, his arms splayed to the sides. His wide eyes stared sightlessly at Danny, determination curving the lips into a half-smile.

A wind came from nowhere as the other Gods spoke, air sheering across their glass lips like a desert lament. Then just as suddenly, the wind was gone. Everything was still. The only sound in the circle was Danny’s own whimpers as he stared back at Simon.

* * *

Paradise Valley, Arizona

Billy Bones had crawled through the darkness on elbows and knees, willing himself to remain unseen until he made it to the
dirty room
. Allowing the voices to guide him, he opened the door and strode straight through, oblivious to the screams of the girls surrounding him. Several of the girls tried to stop him in his holy mission, but he gently pushed them aside.

He had some violence to commit, but it was not for them. They’d been victims just as he had been, each of them used and held at the ready to be used again. He saw Bingo being held by a young girl. That was good, for this was not Bingo’s time, it was his. He knew this because the voices told him so.

Reaching the end of the
dirty room
, Billy Bones came to a door and twisted the knob. Locked. He found a chair, brought it over his head and slammed it against the face of the door. After three attempts, both the chair and the door splintered.

Billy Bones stepped into the room. He hovered over the sleeping figure for a moment, before he slipped a knife from his belt and raised it before him in a double-fisted grip.

The man’s eyes snapped open. Not human, they were the eyes of a beast. The man growled, low and deep.

“Evil’s agent in dirty room. Is no amity. A rope ends it. Time for real fun.”

The knife pierced the man’s heart just as humanity began returning to his eyes.

“Time for real fun.”
Time for funeral.

Billy Bones left the knife sticking in the cult leader’s chest, as he turned and stalked out of the dormitory. He only dimly registered the screams behind him, the sounds of running, crying. He ignored all of this and, instead, listened to the voices within his head. He’d learn to live with them instead of fighting them. In exchange for their help in his revenge he’d promised them a life of their own.

Billy headed off into the desert in search of a place where he’d fit in.

* * *

Danny tore through the hip-high weeds, his legs churning as fast as they’d go. Tears flew from his face, his sobs intermingling with his own desperate gasps for air as he ran. He dodged the ocotillo and mesquite trees, but plowed through lesser bushes. He leapt over a yucca plant, the nasty tines almost finding his backside. Everywhere it seemed as if the land was conspiring against him, trying to keep him from his sister, from the end of this terrible tale.

He had to find her. He had to make sure she was still alive. Things had become so chaotic, he didn’t know what to expect.

Brother Simon was dead. He’d been mortally wounded by the mountain lion. His arm had been all but ripped away. Great grooved lacerations banded the man’s legs and abdomen where the cat had scratched.

Danny had never been witness to death at this close of a range. He’d never been a part of the drama. He’d never actually seen someone eaten alive. Once again, bile rose in his throat and he stumbled, then stopped, dry heaving into the high desert weeds.

The memory of his terror made him sick.
He’d felt so afraid. Now more than ever he wished that Maxom were here. Danny glanced towards the sky, searching for a circling bird. Turning around, he appraised the land around him, hunting for a rabbit or a kangaroo mouse that appeared a little too intelligent. Nothing. For all he knew, his friend was dead.

Don’t think that!
He screamed to himself.

He couldn’t take any more death. As it stood, he’d been forced to stare at the dead eyes of Brother Simon. Even as the flies landed and began to feast, Danny waited, hoping that the man was just resting, his little boy mind unwilling to believe the evidence before his eyes.

No. Maxom wasn’t dead. Only the owl was dead. Maxom was fine. He was probably sitting on his couch in the cool Tennessee gloom, rubbing his nubs and dreaming of disco dancing. Danny smiled as an image of his friend dressed in a white suit like John Travolta intruded across his mind. Ladies grasped each of Maxom’s arms as he propelled them around a lighted dance floor.

Danny straightened and wiped his hands on the sides of his pants. With his forearms, he wiped his tears away.

He heard sirens far off in the twilight. He turned towards the sounds which were in the same direction he’d been running. Now a little less spastic with fear, he began running, his long loping strides eating up the distance.

Five minutes later he crossed the road and entered into a melee of reporters, police officers and bald girls dressed in shapeless white gowns being treated by paramedics. The entire highway had been blocked off in front of the compound. He’d barely registered the presence of the police when he’d visited the compound earlier, but now they were overwhelming.

A short man in a suit reached out and grabbed his arm. “Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

Instead of answering, Danny jerked his arm free and dashed into the crowd. The man yelled after him, but Danny didn’t care. His attention was only for one person. He looked past the policemen who were trying to reign in the havoc. He dodged around paramedics who checked the vitals of the poor girls who’d been lured into the compound. Each of their head’s had been shorn of hair. The sight would have been laughable, had it not been so sad.

The compound was bathed in light in the distance. Men in uniforms and business suits swarmed in and out of the doors. One shouted and the others followed into the dorm where his sister had been. Danny readied to run, but a voice stopped him.

“Who does this one belong to?” asked a voice struggling to be heard over the chaos and confusion.

Danny whirled around and found himself face-to-face with the sallow slip of a girl that had once been his sister. Bloody red droplets splattered her cleanly shaven head and the left side of her face. Her expression was void of emotion, gravity rather than her mind controlling the muscles. Her wide eyes stared into the distance, past the compound to a private place. She clutched the collar of a ratty looking dog.

Danny’s heart stopped hard, then restarted. “She’s mine,” he whispered to the man who held her hand.

“What?”

Danny cleared his throat of the emotions that had been dammed within. “I said she’s mine. That’s my sister.”

The man nodded, but doubt still carved his features. He examined Danny for several long heartbeats then turned and searched the crowd. Abruptly, he turned back, the eyes hidden behind wrap-around sunglasses, lenses reflecting the brightness of the arc-lights.

“Where are your parents?” he asked.

“Tennessee, Sir. They’re in Tennessee,” said Danny.

“You here all by yourself?”

“Yes, Sir,” said Danny.

“Well, ain’t you the little hero,” the man said as he held the girl’s hand out to Danny.

“No sir,” replied Danny.

The man frowned. “What did you say?”

“I said I’m not a hero. I’m just her brother.”

Danny took his sister’s hand and squeezed it tightly. He stared into her eyes, searching for that spark that was her. It took a few moments, but after a while, her focus changed and she looked at him. He smiled and held it there until she started to cry. He couldn’t help himself. He cried too.

He pulled her to the edge of the crowd and leaned his forehead into hers. Before the summer had begun, she’d seemed so big, but now they stood eye to eye. He stroked her hair as she sobbed, telling him about the math teacher who’d touched her, and the fear and self-loathing that had twisted her heart and sent her running.

Danny pulled her closer and gazed at the compound. Relief like he’d never felt suffused him. Everything, every hope and dream, every crazy idea had paid off. He couldn’t wait to get back and tell Maxom. He couldn’t wait to tell Bergen. He owed a lot of people a lot of things, not the least being his mother…and his father.

* * *

The Land of Inside-Out

Maxom opened his eyes and inhaled a savage breath.

He’d won. Even as the owl and the cat had died, crushed beneath the mighty weight of a Scarecrow God, Maxom and the other had slipped back into the Land of Inside-Out. There seemed a moment when he’d thought perhaps that they’d fight, but instead the other had shot back towards its corporeal form. Somehow it had known of the danger to its physical self. By the time Maxom had followed, the spark of light that had represented John had already begun to fade.

Maxom had waited a while so he could be there when Danny arrived. But the longer he’d waited, the more melancholy he’d begun to feel. Suddenly he’d felt incredibly tired. So it was with a fond wish for Danny’s happiness that he disengaged with the Land of Inside-Out and returned to his body in a rush. He paid the price for his haste as his head immediately began to throb.

Maxom hung in his hazardous waste suit, suspended from his harness above the shadowed sea of maggots that undulated beneath him. The electricity had been turned off, the only illumination coming from two emergency lights. He remained motionless, the aluminum stirring rod attached to his right arm holding him in place. Every now and then he’d hear muffled shouts come from the other side of the thick steel door that he’d locked earlier.

Bernie had been with him since his death. So many times Maxom had wished for his friend. Now to discover that Bernie had been with him the whole time was almost too much. Perhaps Maxom didn’t truly understand the nature of the Land of Inside-Out. Bernie had saved his life by allowing the Chill Blaine to take him, but was he gone for good? Did Bernie need saving? Could he be saved? Was the life of a Chill Blaine such a terrible life?

Maxom sighed.

Even as the questions manifested, he knew that the answer couldn’t be found in this place. Here on Planet Earth, even floating above a tank containing a billion maggots where he was God, he was limited in his every movement. Here he was a cripple, a freak of nature. He was a reminder to all who saw him of the extreme limits of the pain a person could endure. And the world hated him for it.

There’d been a tenacity about Danny that Maxom had admired. Even in the face of impossible odds, the boy had aspired to his goal. Maxom had thought his own tenacity used up, bartered for his very life upon the cross in front of that Mung village so long ago. Or at least he’d believed it to be. It seemed that even then Bernie had been there to save him.

Maxom felt a sudden and irrevocable kinship with the little boy. He understood the kid’s almost over-powering need to find his sister. Maxom had thought Bernie lost to him, but the man had never been closer. Tenacity. Maxom felt it growing within, filling him with a desire to do something. Perhaps the physics of the Land of Inside-Out would allow him to meet Bernie again.