After Midnight

“I bet we’ll find him here,” I said as she made the turn.

“You hit him that hard?” she asked.

“No. He’s probably conscious by now. But if I were in his shoes…or shoeless and bare-ass naked, as the case may be…”

Judy laughed softly.

“I might just decide to stay put. At least I’d be in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by trees, so I wouldn’t need to worry about everyone seeing me.”

“You’d have to go home eventually.”

When she said that, I immediately thought of my prowler. Maybe he was a guy who hadn’t gone home eventually.

“I might just decide to stay in the woods,” I said, “and live like Tarzan.”

“Yeah. I can just see Tony swinging through the trees.”

“I said grab the VINE!”

Judy laughed, shaking her head. Then she said, “Ouch.”

“How would you know?” I asked.

“It’s gotta hurt.”

“I guess so.”

I knew so. I bit one, once. Chomped it right off, in fact. You should’ve seen the guy! It hurt, all right.

Don’t go feeling sorry for him, though. And don’t think I’m some kind of evil person or nut. He shouldn’t have gone and stuck it someplace where it didn’t belong. Especially not after I’d begged him not to.

He got no worse than he deserved.

But you should’ve heard him scream! It hurt, all right! And then he went crazy trying to get it out of my mouth. He yelled, “Give it back! Give it back, you fucking bitch!” I guess he figured they could sew it back on for him at a hospital. But I wouldn’t let him have it. He kept yelling and hitting me, but I went ahead and chewed it up. After I swallowed it, he really went berserk and almost killed me.

Anyway, enough about that. Like I said near the front, this book isn’t an autobiography. I just had to tell you about that incident because of how it fit in with what Judy and I were saying on the road to the Shady Creek Picnic Area.

I didn’t tell Judy about it, though.

I never told anyone about it, until now. Not even my mom or the people in the hospital where they took care of me afterwards. I made up a story about getting beaten up by a mugger, and the guy never told.

I don’t know what ever happened to him.

Well, I can vouch for two or three inches. Not the rest, though. When I got better and went back to school, we had a new principal. He got hired because the one before him had suddenly and mysteriously left town.

Anyway, that’s really more than I intended to tell. I guess I’ll leave it in, though. Why not? It’s the truth. And it also goes to show you what pigs men are—even school principals.

I only have one regret about what I did to him.

No mustard!

That’s a little joke.

Anyway, I’ve strayed away from the real story.

When I left off, I’d just told Judy the old Tarzan joke about grabbing the vine, and we were having some laughs about that. She was driving us along the road to the picnic area. She thought we might find Tony there. I was sitting in the passenger seat, and had Tony’s pistol in the front pocket of my cut-offs. I’d be using it on her pretty soon.

The next thing you know, we came to the end of the road. The pavement spread out into a clearing with logs laid out to show you where to park. There were places for six or eight cars, but no other cars were there. Judy drove up to one of the logs and stopped.

The beams of our headlights reached out into the picnic area, lighting a couple of the green wooden tables.

“I don’t see him,” Judy said. “Do you?”

“No. But we weren’t up here. We were down by the creek. If you want, I’ll run down and see if he’s there.”

“No, don’t do that. We’d better stay in the car.”

“What if he’s still unconscious?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“I’ll just run down and take a quick look.”

“No, don’t.”

“It’ll only take a minute.”

“I’ll go with you,” Judy said, and shut off the headlights.

The night dropped down on us.

“My God,” she said. “It’s dark out here.”

“Do you have a flashlight?”

“Sure. Back in my bedroom. Maybe I should go get it.” But she was kidding. Instead of turning the car around, she shut off its engine and unfastened her seatbelt.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Not hardly. I don’t want to go out there.”

“Then stay here. That’s fine. I’ll just go…”

“No way. If you’re going, I’m coming with you.”

“Then we might as well get it over with,” I said, and opened the passenger door. The car’s overhead light came on.

“Much better,” Judy said.

I climbed out. My legs were trembling. I was shaking all over, and sweating. My heart was pounding like mad. I was a genuine wreck.

For one thing, the place gave me the creeps. As a general rule, I don’t like to be in forests at night. Plus, a lot of bad stuff had gone on in Miller’s Woods, and I was a little nervous about the prowler. He might be nearby. After his visit to Serena and Charlie’s house, he’d gone back into the woods only about a mile from here.

My other reason for being a wreck is that I had to kill Judy. It stank, but there was no way out of it. And this was the perfect place for it.

Dark as death, secluded, and within reasonable walking distance of home if I took the shortcut through the woods.

When we shut our doors, the light in the car went out. We met in front, but didn’t say anything. As if we were afraid to speak. Afraid of who might hear us.

Side by side, we walked up the gentle slope toward the place where we’d seen the picnic tables. We could still see them, but now they looked so dark and vague that they hardly seemed real.

Here and there, tiny dabs of moonlight made it down through the trees. A soft, warm breeze was blowing. It might’ve felt good, if things had been different. Just then, there was no such thing as good. Good, for a while, seemed to be gone from the face of the earth.

We walked past the picnic tables, and went on to the crest of the hill. There, we stopped and gazed down toward the creek. I saw a few places that looked like moonlight glinting off water. And I saw a flat shape that might’ve been a picnic table. But nothing looked very clear or very real. Mostly, there was only darkness.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Judy whispered.

What are you, psychic?

“What kind of bad feeling?” I asked. I didn’t really want to know, but I had to ask.

“Like we’re really going to regret going down there.”

“You don’t have to go down.”

“Yeah. I do.”

Brave, innocent, stupid Judy.