murderous little animal that should be shot in the head and dragged away, so that the sight of him wouldn’t horrify onlookers.
Finally he crawled away from Nick, leaving the knife in the bully’s throat, and vomited.
What had he done?
It hadn’t happened. There weren’t two dead kids lying in the woods with him. There was no possible reality where that could be true.
He was a killer.
He’d murdered Larry and Nick. It wasn’t even self-defense.
Toby looked back at Nick’s body, waiting for Nick to sit up, wipe the fake blood off his chin, and let out a shrill laugh at the uproarious practical joke they’d played. “Stop being so gullible, Floren! We aren’t really dead! A little runt like you could never kill us!”
Nick remained dead on the ground.
Toby rubbed his hands in the dirt, trying to get the blood off. He scooped up a handful of dirt and rubbed it on his arms and on his face, desperate to hide the red. He wiped off the mud but a crimson stain remained on his skin.
Why had he brought the knife? Why had he even brought the fucking thing in the first place?
He bit down on his wrist to keep from screaming. Screaming was bad. Screaming brought people.
He just wanted to die.
No. No, he didn’t. He’d get through this.
Larry and Nick were horrible people. They deserved to die. Even worse than the way they had. A slow, lingering, agonizing death was the way they should have gone, so Toby was doing them a favor. The world was better off without them. They contributed nothing but misery. It was their own fault. Stalking him through the woods-you take a huge risk when you do something like that. You put your life in danger. It wasn’t his fault.
And they deserved it. They completely deserved it.
He was a murderer. A cold-blooded murderer. A criminal.
He took a deep breath. He had to calm down. Had to figure this out. It was done-he couldn’t take it back, so now he just had to figure out how to get away with it.
The blood-splattered boy. The crazy-eyed boy. The cackling, maniacal, don’t-let-your-children-get-too-close boy.
Think.
Did anybody know where they were? If you were following some kid into the forest with a gun, unloaded or not, would you tell your parents where you were headed? Unlikely. They’d want to be able to deny it later. So they’d either not told anybody, or they lied. This was good.
His nose was still bleeding, but he just let the blood flow.
The boy they should put in a cage, so people could poke him with sticks.
Had anybody seen them go into the forest? No way to know. If they cut through his yard and his mom was in the living room, she might have seen them, but only if she happened to be facing the window. She knew what Larry and Nick looked like and what they’d done-she wouldn’t let them just wander into the woods without saying something.
So there was a very good chance that nobody knew where they were.
The demonic boy. The hell-bound boy.
Stop it!
If he hid the bodies well enough, he might be okay.
This was a vast forest. Millions of places to hide a body.
But could he hide it well enough to keep it from the police and their dogs? If he buried them deep enough, maybe, but…
What if he fed them to Owen? Owen would probably pick the bones clean, if he didn’t eat those as well. And, worst-case scenario, if the bones were found, the authorities would think that Larry and Nick met their ghastly fate at the claws and jaws of a never-before-seen monster.
You can’t let Owen take the blame for this. He’s your friend.
Jesus Christ, what was he thinking? Of course he could let Owen take the blame for this! He was a wild animal.
Anyway, the remains would never be found. He’d make sure of it. It was far from a foolproof plan, but it was the best he had for the moment, save for marching over to the police station and confessing everything. That wouldn’t end well.
If he had time to sit around, mulling his options in a leisurely fashion, he’d probably come up with something better, but right now he had to move quickly. He couldn’t do this in the dark, and he couldn’t risk leaving the bodies out overnight. Larry and Nick would be missed by bedtime. So the best course of action was to feed the corpses to Owen.
Could he even bring himself to do such a thing?
Yeah. If he could stab them to death, he could feed them to an animal.
There was a problem with the plan, though. Well, there were lots of problems, but one particularly big one: he couldn’t drag their bodies out to the cave. Not even one of them by sundown, much less both. So he had to bring Owen to them.
He needed bait.
Toby walked down the path. He held the bottom of his shirt out in front of him, like a little girl carrying blueberries that she’d picked. Piled in the makeshift sack were twenty severed fingers.
The fingers had been difficult to cut off until he got into the proper rhythm, and he’d originally wanted to use simple strips of flesh, which were easier to slice away. But the first strip leaked badly and came apart in his hands. He needed something firmer, to avoid leaving traces along the path to the cave. So he went with fingers.
Bite-size, he thought, but was unable to amuse himself.
When he reached the cave entrance, there was no sign of Owen. It was going to be a pretty rotten night if the monster had finally moved on to greener pastures, but he’d remain optimistic.
He held up his shirt with his left hand, and selected an index finger-Nick’s, he thought-with his right. His gag reflexes kicked in, even though he thought he would’ve been over that by the sixteenth or seventeenth digit he cut through with the hunting knife. He flung the finger at the cave, but the throw went wild, landing a good twenty feet off the mark.
He stared at the spot where it landed, marking it clearly in his mind. He’d have to make sure he retrieved it later. He’d do it now, but he didn’t want to walk that close to the cave until he was certain of Owen’s whereabouts.
“Owen!” he called out. “I’m here with food!” He should’ve announced himself before the first throw. He couldn’t afford to waste fingers.
Owen emerged from the cave, looking sleepy. Toby hurriedly selected another finger, a ring finger this time, though without an actual ring on it, and tossed it to him. Owen caught it in his hand, stared at it for a second, then popped it into his mouth.
“Was it good? Was it delicious?” Toby asked, slowly backing away. Owen seemed to agree that it was indeed delicious and followed him. Toby’s hope was that Owen would follow him at the same pace that he was walking, and not stampede over to him to get the rest of the fingers. There was a definite level of trust here. And probably stupidity.
He tossed Owen another finger as he continued moving backward along the path. The monster caught this one in his mouth. He was pretty good at that. If he got caught, maybe he could pay for his legal defense by charging people to watch Owen do tricks.
Focus. Concentrate. This is serious stuff.
Owen followed him, step by step, for about twenty feet. Then Owen let out a soft growl. Toby tossed him another finger. At this rate, he wasn’t going to make it anywhere close to where the dead bodies lay. He had to ration them.
He couldn’t walk backward the entire way back, obviously, so he switched to a sideways step that allowed him to keep track of Owen and the uneven ground. After another twenty feet or so, Owen let out another growl.
