"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 16

Peter stopped to get his bearings. He was about to call out for Dill again when a noise came from up ahead. The shhh shhh shhh of someone else moving in the corn.

“Dill?” he croaked, his throat dry.

No answer. But the corn stopped moving.

“Dill?” Peter whispered again.

There was the sound of something dropping to the ground, a series of light thumps. A gentle pressure touched Peter’s foot.

He gasped, stepped back, and shone his light on the ground.

A tomato. It must have rolled across the ground and bumped his foot.

Anger flared inside Peter where fear had once been. He picked up the tomato and forged ahead, pushing apart corn stalks.

“Dill, we’re out here to find raccoons, not pick – ”

He meant to say ‘vegetables,’ but the word stuck in his throat.

There was a man right in front of him.

He was kneeling on the ground, picking up the tomatoes and zuchinnis and corn he had dropped. He was dressed all in black – black pants, black shirt, long black jacket. His head was bent, and he had a hat on – the hat was black, too – so Peter couldn’t see his face.

A hobo.

Something smelled wrong, though. Literally. The smell of green plants was gone, and the odor of burned leaves filled the air.

Peter gasped. “I’m sorry – I didn’t mean – I – I – ”

He stopped speaking.

In the dim light of the flashlight, Peter saw the hand that was picking up the last tomato. The hand was black, too.

But not African-American. Back in California, Peter had lots of friends at school who were black. Next door in his apartment building, there had lived a friendly man from Nigeria who was darker than anybody else Peter had ever seen in his life.

But even he wasn’t this dark.

Black, like ink. Like outer space, between the stars.

And the hand was too skinny for a grown man. It looked like a claw or a skeleton’s hand, but charred and cracked. Like the ashes of a log after the fire has died out. That’s when he realized the clothes and the hat weren’t black, either. Not originally.

They were burned. The man had been burned to a crisp.

He must’ve died. No human being could look like that and still be alive.

But he was moving. His arm was moving.

No no no no no no no no

The blackened claw gripped the last tomato…then paused.

The hat tilted up and the face looked into the light.

What was left of a face.

No ears, no nose, no hair.

No eyes. Just gaping holes.

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Copyright © 2008 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.