Page 59 of Them

“The first thing I saw was the handgun. This one,” Tim said, pulling his pistol from his waistband. “It was on the counter next to the sink, and there were two empty bottles of beer. Then I saw the glass, two more bottles broken on the floor. The noise was louder. Then I saw an arm, flopping and flailing for a handhold. Too weak to pull the rest of himself up.

“Ron was lying in the bath, hot shower beating down on his face. Bloody water spilling from the back of his head. There was a crack on the back of the tub—a dent, really—from where his skull had hit it. He must’ve slipped. I guess he was pretty drunk. Maybe celebrating, maybe coping. I don’t know. I couldn’t ask.

“He was hurt really bad. His eyes were all bugged out darting around, looking everywhere and nowhere and seeing me and not seeing me. Sometimes he would reach out to me, sometimes he’d shrink away, and sometimes I was just a ghost dangling over him. I watched as his brains leaked out and the shower washed it all away. That was all I could do. Just stand there and watch.” Tim rested his head in his hands.

“How long were you there?” Lane asked.

“I don’t know. It couldn’t have been more than five or ten minutes, I don’t think, but it might as well have been an hour. I wanted to run. Get the hell out of there as fast as I could and never come back; fuck his bunker, I’d take my chances out here.

“I would’ve left. I would’ve called 911 and given them the address and left forever and for all of time. But nobody picked up. The local fire stations and police departments went straight to voicemail. Only place to answer the phone was the hospital, but they said…”

“What?”

“They said, ‘You’ve got to bring him in yourself ’cause all the ambulances are in use. Sorry, little buddy, it’s called triage,’ so I tried, but when I tried he started to slip out the back of himself and I tried to keep it all in, but I couldn’t and he was bleeding and leaking and whimpering and… and he asked me to. That’s what I tell myself, at least. I tell myself that his eyes were pleading with me. I tell myself that he was asking me to help him the only way I could. Asking me the only way he could, Eugheugheugheugh, through a mouth of perfectly fine teeth that was incapable of speech, so I set him back in the tub and the bullet didn’t go through him, Lane, it exploded him, all of him, and I can’t stop seeing him, Lane. I wake up and tell myself it was the right thing and I’ve never believed it once.”

“It was.”

“Then why do I still see him?” Tim asked, his gaze locked over Lane’s shoulder, as if staring at someone else behind him. “Why do I still see the ghosts?”

“Did you think they would go away?”

“Wha—?”

“They don’t,” Lane said. “They don’t go away. The ghosts. The devils and the demons. The sins. The things you carry. They never leave you.”

“They have to. I kept the bullet casing, and then I buried it. So they would go away. So we could all rest.”

“It gets easier,” Lane said. “I promise you it does.”

“You said I did the right thing.”

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”

“That’s not all,” Tim said. He told Lane about the waterfall. About his shortcut through the forest and out into the cornfield. The youngling he’d killed and the fully grown terrors that followed. He described the demolition ritual and the two humans, including the child, dredged out from the debris.

“It’s my fault,” the young man finished, tears puddling below him. “I killed them.”

“Now I know you’ve lost it, Timbo, because just about any sane man would be gratitude incarnate right now. And rubbing the deer shit on yourself? Genius!”

“Aren’t you listening to me? I killed them!”

“No. The Scorpions killed them. Just like they killed the person at the top of the falls. Ate them alive from the inside out.”

“Sure, bu—”

“But nothing. You did your best. How the hell could you know?”

“There was one Scorpion I called the Nightwalker,” Tim went on, ignoring Lane’s question, spilling the tale of the massive beast that had nearly captured him. “I swear to God, I still see it when I close my eyes. Still hear that horrible, grinding screech of pain some mornings. Even the monsters haunt me.”

Lane stroked his chin, thinking of the nickname he’d randomly conjured this morning. What a coincidence, indeed. “A nocturnal Scorpion. I can’t believe it. They aren’t as uniform as we thought.”

Tim said nothing.

“And it held a grudge? All that time, it still chased you?”

Tim let off a nervous laugh. “I guess so. It kept up as long as it could, but with three eyes it couldn’t have gotten that far… right?”

The old man nodded but didn’t look convinced. “Probably got ousted from the pack for starting fights. I heard about that happening on the radio. It’s host to another already, I’m sure.”