Back From The Dead

Not this time, though.

“All right!” Scott said, clutching Tim’s jacket. He began herding Tim into the field. “Got something I want to show you, Gaines.”

“Listen, I really got to — ”

Dave and Steve were laughing as they stood on either side of him, helping Scott herd him into the field. “You’re gonna love this, Count Gaines!”

Count Gaines? That had been the first time the nickname was used and at the time Tim didn’t know what they meant by it. “What?” he asked.

“You’ll see!” Scott’s grip was solid. As they walked into the field, Tim caught a glimpse of Scott’s features. There was something in his eyes that sent shards of fear through Tim’s body. They were cold, calculating. They spoke volumes, and Tim had the sense that something very bad was about to happen to him.

Tim tried pulling away, tried protesting, but it was no use. They overpowered him and Dave socked him in the upper thigh, giving him a Charlie horse. He tried yelling at the top of his lungs but another blow to the face cut it off. Scott loomed over him, telling him he didn’t have to make a big deal out of this…they just wanted to show him something, just wanted to help him. Tim was out of breath, scared, confused, and he let the three boys lead him deeper into the field where they suddenly stopped.

At first the smell did not register with Tim. He was so worked up with fear that he hadn’t noticed it until they were standing directly over it. Tim was practically touching it with the tips of his shoes. A cloud of flies swarmed up at their arrival, buzzing frenziedly, then landing on what appeared to be a lump of fur.

“I shot it this morning with my.22,” Scott said. “Blood should still be fresh. Go ahead, have a sip, Count.”

Tim had stared down at what he now took to be a dead possum. There was an animal smell of sweat and shit. “What are you talking about?”

Scott’s fingers had pressed down on his neck, forcing him to his knees in front of the dead possum. Scott hissed in his ear. “Vampires drink blood, don’t they, Count?”

Steve and Dave laughed, crowding in closer.

“I saw that book you’re reading,” Scott said, holding him down. “About vampires. You want to be a vampire, Count?”

Tim almost shouted, almost pleaded, no, I don’t want to be a vampire, I just want to go home! Instead he made one more valiant attempt at escape. He forced himself up only to be brought back down by Scott and his friends. He fell to his knees in front of the possum. The flies buzzed up again, circling.

“Fucking weirdo is what you are,” Scott growled in his ear. His fingers dug into his collarbone. “Always reading books about ghosts and witches and vampires. And that fucking Harry Potter shit! What are you, a fucking devil worshipper?”

Dave and Steve were laughing but Scott was deadly serious. “I don’t see you in church, and neither do people I talk to,” Scott continued. “And all you read is that devil shit. When you read occult books it opens you up to be influenced by the devil. Is that what you’re trying to do? Be influenced by the devil?”

Tim had wanted to shout at him: are you out of your mind? Do you really believe what you’re saying? but he couldn’t. The pain in his collarbone was too fierce, and he was too frightened.

“I know a lot of kids like the Harry Potter books,” Scott said, standing over him, keeping him to the ground. “But you…the stuff you read…it goes beyond that. I’ve seen the kind of books you bring to school. Those comic books. Those paperbacks. Stuff with ghosts and demons on the cover. It’s all you read. I’ve never seen you read anything else. To me, that spells trouble. It makes sense now why you don’t want to hang out with anybody but that Richard Pilson freak. Makes sense why you aren’t into sports or why we never see you at the park or why nobody sees you at church. Vampire devil-worshippers like to hide, don’t they, Count Gaines?”

Tim could tell that Scott’s logic was not only misguided, it was twisted. He’d dimly followed a newspaper account from earlier in the school year when a local Fire Hall refused to provide security and protection during a YMCA event because of the organization’s sponsorship of a Harry Potter reading event geared toward children. The Fire Hall’s excuse was that the Harry Potter books glorified and promoted witchcraft and Satanism. Mom and Dad had a lot to say about that; the people at the Fire Hall were illiterate morons, obviously. And as they’d explained to Tim later, when illiterate morons gained positions of power, especially illiterate morons who were religious fanatics, all sense of reason and diplomacy went out the window.

Tim had never given much thought to the over-whelming Christian church-going views of the Spring Valley township’s population until that moment. He knew that Scott was a member of some church youth group and that was about it. In the years to follow, he would come to learn that his greatest tormentors hid behind the mask of Christianity, using it as an excuse with which to heap their verbal and psychological abuse. But that day, in the field, with a dead possum at his feet, his mind was a swirling mass of confusion as he tried to connect the dots.

“Do you believe in God, Tim?” Scott’s fingers tightened on his collarbone, pinching a nerve.

“Aaah!” Tim breathed in pain.

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes!” Tim said loudly. “Yes, yes, I believe in God!”

“How come I don’t believe you?” His grip tightened.

“I don’t know! I believe, I believe!”

“If you believe, how come I don’t see you in church? How come I never hear you talk about going to church?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know!” He just wanted this pain to stop!

“If you believe in God, why are you always reading books about devils and demons and vampires?”

His grip tightened again and he pushed Tim closer to the dead possum. Steve and Dave’s laughter had settled into occasional chuckles as they stood watching.

“Do you like reading about vampires, witches, and demons?”

Tim winced at the pain in his shoulders and neck, which was becoming unbearable. He squirmed in Scott’s grip, trying to ease the pressure, to escape. “Please…” he panted. “Let me go — ”

“Answer the question!” Scott barked, retaining his grip on him.

“Ahh — ” Tim winced, his breath held. “Please — ”

“Do you enjoy reading about vampires, demons, and witches? Yes or no?”

“No! No, I don’t, now please, just let me go — ”

“You’re lying because that’s all you read. You like reading about demons, witches and vampires because that’s what you want to be, isn’t it? You’re drawn to the unholy because you’re not like the rest of us. You’re not a Christian, you don’t go to church, you’re a witch-loving, demon-loving freak who wants to be a vampire!”

“No, that’s not true, please — ”

“Then why do you like reading those kinds of books so much?”

“They’re just…stories! Just stories, that’s all they are — ”

But Scott wasn’t having any of it. His grip was tight on Tim’s neck. “Just stories, huh? Stories like the Harry Potter books, right? Witchcraft and devil-worship. Those Harry Potter books aren’t just stories, Tim! Witchcraft and devil-worship is real! It’s not Christian, and neither are vampires.”

Vampires aren’t real, Tim wanted to say, but couldn’t. His mouth was dry.

“We’ve been trying to get you to see that it’s bad for you to read that kind of stuff for weeks now,” Scott said, and Tim’s mind instantly replayed to several incidents that had occurred over the past few weeks. Jeering catcalls made in the hallways at school about Tim’s love of spooks and devils. Verbal jabs in the playground that Tim liked the devil more than he liked Jesus. Tim was intelligent enough to dismiss all of this as immature crap. It wasn’t his problem his classmates couldn’t differentiate fiction from reality.

Apparently, though, he was wrong because now it was his problem.

“Now we realize you weren’t listening because you don’t care,” Scott continued. “You love the devil more than you love God. That makes you a freak. So we decided if we can’t save you, we’ll help you. That’s why we brought you out here.”

Tim struggled once more briefly and Scott applied vice-like pressure to the nerve in his collarbone that sent