Frankie had paid his dollar, listened to instructions for his initiation and was now lying awake in bed wondering why he was so afraid.
Even if they had asked him to do these things in full daylight he would still be scared. He had grown up in this town and there were things that everyone knew but no one ever talked about. Things best buried and left undisturbed.
But he wanted to join the club and the only way to do that was to show that he wasn't afraid - even if he was.
Frankie went over the instructions again. He was to meet the group on Wednesday night at the Rat Hole at 11pm. The group had chosen Wednesday because it was the night when the moon would be full and the moonlight would be the only light that Frankie would have during his initiation.
The first thing he had to do was to get out of the house at that hour. The easiest thing to do would be to tell his parents that he was camping out at Barry's. He would try that. If it didn't work he would figure out something else. He still had a couple of days to plan.
From the clubhouse, the group would walk over to Chestnut Drive and wait on the other side of the street while Frankie walked into Old Lady Mackey's yard, down the overgrown pathway and up to the porch and the site of the old rose garden where, after all of these years, the blushing white rose bush still put out an occasional bloom.
The group wanted him to pick one rose and bring it back to them.
Frankie was not sure that he could do that but even if he could, what they wanted him to do next was even worse.
He kept running over the instructions in his head and reality slowly loosened its grip. As his eyes closed, the bed he lay on darkend and he could feel the the rich loam of a freshly dug grave slipping away under him. The dirt fell down and away into a dark hole opening like a flower below him. As the dirt trickled down he could hear it striking the hollow wooden casket at the bottom. And now he was slipping down with the dirt, slipping, falling, sliding... his hands reaching out, grabbing loose dirt, digging in, pulling, reaching, fingernails sliding over roots and rocks, tearing, bleeding, clumps of dirt falling away below him as he slips further, faster, walls crumbling below and above, falling...
The last of the dirt crumbles beneath him and the darkness pulls him down. He reaches out blindly and grasps a hand reaching out from the black night above him. His feet dangle below him as he clings to the hand and tries to pull himself up and up and ... his grip is tight but he is still slipping, the skin on the hand he is holding is waxy and soft. Even in the dark he can see it pulling and stretching and tearing, maggots crawling from beneath the torn skin and onto his hands, his arms...
Frankie screams and lets go. As he falls he sees the grinning skull-like shape of Old Lady Mackey's house above him. The house is laughing.
No comments:
Post a Comment