Fiends

    We yucked it up.

    After calming down, Jim said, ‘Hey, we don’t wanta get polluted.’

    ‘Speak for yourself.’

    ‘Where’s the cork?’ I gave it to him, and he squeezed it into the bottle’s neck. ‘We’ll save it for the return trip.’

    That sounded like a fine idea.

    He carried it the rest of the way to Cyndi’s house.

    Except for a lamp at the end of the driveway, Cyndi’s house was dark. Not even the porch light was on.

    ‘What gives?’ Jim asked.

    ‘I don’t know.’

    ‘This is her house, isn’t it?’

    ‘Sure.’

    We’d both been there before. Three times, we’d followed her home after school, first to find out where she lived, then later just because we liked to watch her walk, books clutched to her chest, hair golden in the sunlight, skirt swinging.

    ‘Sure looks like her house,’ Jim muttered.

    ‘That’s because it is.’

    ‘Maybe they’re around back.’

    So we hurried across the frontyard and made our way alongside the house. The windows there were dark. So were those in the rear, and those along the other side. I was shaking pretty badly the whole time, scared of getting caught, thrilled by our search for the girls. I could see why a guy like George might get a kick out of sneaking around like that. It was a real charge. But the charge died when we got to the street.

    ‘Well, shit,’ Jim said.

    ‘We must’ve gotten here too late.’

    ‘Thanks to George, the little shit.’

    ‘Damn it!’

    ‘This is the right house, right?’ Jim asked.

    ‘Of course it’s… hey! Maybe we’ve got the wrong night! Maybe it’s tomorrow night. All we did was guess, remember?’

    ‘Yeah! Bet it is tomorrow night.’

    ‘All right! So no big deal. We’ll come back.’

    We turned away from Cyndi’s house, and started walking. ‘Tomorrow,’ Jim said, ‘we won’t have to waste time fooling around with George. He won’t come anywhere near us from now on.’

    ‘Right. And we’ll get away earlier. Mom and Dad are going out. They won’t be getting home till really late.’

    ‘Man!’

    ‘We can leave at like ten or something!’

    ‘Fantastic!This calls for a drink!’

    We passed the bottle back and forth a couple of times. We probably would’ve polished it off and gotten ourselves really smashed, except the bottle got smashed first. Jim stumbled on a raised section of sidewalk. He went lurching forward and the bottle flew. It exploded on the sidewalk in front of us.

    Scared that somebody might’ve heard the noise, we ran two blocks and didn’t stop till we reached Jefferson.

    When the guard rails of the bridge came into sight, my stomach went kind of cold. The last thing I wanted to do was go down to the underpass.

    ‘Wonder how Georgie-porgie’s doing,’ Jim said.

    ‘I guess we’ll have to find out.’

    ‘I bet he’s already home.’

    ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I hope so.’

    ‘I just hope he’s learned his lesson. It’d sure be a pain if we had to go through this again tomorrow night.’

    ‘When he sees us coming from now on,’ I said, ‘he’s gonna run the other way.’

    'Less he liked it down there.’

    ‘Nobody could like it down there.’

    ‘I don’t know. He’s a pretty weird kid.’

    ‘No kid’s that weird. It’s too damn creepy.’

    Jim laughed. ‘Hope he crapped his pants, the little shit.’

    At the other side of the bridge, we ducked into the trees and started down the slope. I only looked once at the underpass. The idea of George being tied up in that dark, awful place made me feel kind of sick.

    Jim and I both fell on our cans a few times before we got to the bottom of the slope. The wine might’ve had something to do with that.

***

    Finally, we got to the tracks.

    We walked between the rails, our flashlights off. With every step, I felt shakier. I told myself that George probably had gotten loose and run home. We wouldn’t need to go under there, at all, just shine our lights in, make sure he was gone, and leave.

    He’d probably left my rope behind. It could stay right where it was. I sure didn’t need the rope badly enough to go in after it.

    Just where the tracks disappeared into the darkness, we stopped and turned on our flashlights. The shiny rails gleamed. About twenty feet ahead, the rail on the left was draped with rope.

    My rope. It had to be.

    George had worked himself loose.

    Now, we could go home.

    Jim’s flashlight swung away from the rail, away from the rope, off to the side where we’d left George.

    Just as I’d expected, George wasn’t there.

    But he wasn’t gone.

    Jim’s light found him a couple of yards closer to the wall.

    We both gasped. I felt like I’d been kicked in the belly.

    We ran toward George, our beams jerking all around as we tried to spot who’d done it to him. We saw no one.

    We stopped by his body but didn’t look down at him. Darted our lights everywhere else. We were both panting, even though we hadn’t run very far. Jim made these weird whiny sounds every time he sucked in a breath.

    ‘See anyone?’ I asked.

    ‘Huh-uh.’

    ‘Maybe… they’re gone.’

    I swept my light across the center supports. Four broad, concrete walls. A crazy or two or three might’ve been lurking behind every one of them. I knew one of us should go to the other side for a look. I didn’t have the guts to do it, though.

    ‘Let’s… get,’ Jim whimpered.

    ‘Can’t leave him.’

    We shined our flashlights down at George. He lay sprawled on his back, his shirt wide open, his boxer shorts and Bermudas hanging off one foot. He was bloody all the way down to his knees.

    ‘What’d they… do to him?’

    I shook my head.

    George’s eyes were shut. One was swollen so it looked like a hardboiled egg with a slit across it. I’d seen a boxer on TV one time who had an eye like that after going eleven rounds with the heavyweight champ.

    George’s neck was shiny red, but I didn’t see any wounds on it.