“Don’t look Them in the eye. Don’t tease Them. And never talk about Them,” Shelly warned me, her forefinger in my face.
“They live in secret,” she said. “You dare speak about Them and they’ll curse you.”
“I won’t tell,” I said, rocking back and forth excitedly. We’d always played together, but this was the first time Shelly revealed a secret to me.
The sun had nearly set on Grand Prairie Trailer Park—my childhood home. I was seven years old. Mom and I had just moved from our trailer into Reg and Shelly’s, which was tucked at the end of a gravel-lined, dead-end road. Everyone in the trailer park knew everyone else—and everyone avoided Reg.
“Don’t tell you-know-who,” Shelly said, referring to her father, Reg. “Or I’ll never play with you again.” She squished my cheeks between her fingers and thumb, turning my lips into a blowfish. “And I’ll hate you forever.”
Her bubble-gum smelled of artificial grape.
“I won’t tell, I swear.”
“Pinkie swear?” She held out a curled pinkie.
I interlocked mine with hers.
“Follow me,” she said. “And be quiet.”
In our snow boots and puffy jackets, we trudged out across the field behind the trailer. To the west, a snow-capped Mt. Meridian stuck up like a frozen wart from the tree-lined horizon. Pines spread down the mountain like an army, stopping a stone’s throw from the field’s back fence. To the east, acres of cow pastures rolled into the distant hills.
Woven between the bushes in the field out the back of Reg’s trailer was a series of tripwires disguised with flashing Christmas lights. Reg told me he put them up to keep the deer from eating off his crab-apple tree. And the threat of scavenging bears is why he had a rifle and practiced with it on a burned-out car in the middle of the field. I didn’t think too much of it. I just thought he wanted to protect his daughter. But halfway through the field, we crossed an old shed with words spray-painted in black across the side facing the forest that spoke a warning:
Any of THEM who trespass, God casts to HELL.
#
Following Shelly into the forest, I turned to look behind. The field, the trailer, and the road, were all gone. In their place stood tall dark trees. Mom had warned me not to go into the woods, but she told me follow Shelly’s orders too. Shelly was twelve—five years older than me—and often babysat me.
“Do you know the way back?” I asked.
Shelly’s breathing grew heavy, snow crunching under her steps. “I could find my way back blindfolded.” She shot me a glance; pupil cornered in her eye. “But you couldn’t.”
I quickened my pace. My eyes roved to and fro, monitoring for Them, whatever they were. Monsters? Cannibals? Shelly wouldn’t tell me. Only that they’d committed great sins, and hid deep in the woods, away from the eyes of God.
She slowed to a stop.
“Alright you wait here,” Shelly said. “I’ll go call Them.”
“Can’t I come?”
She shook her head. “You’d scare Them away.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
“No.”
My heart leapt in my chest. I shut my mouth and nodded. She turned to leave. There were woods in every direction. I had no idea how to get back home.
“Don’t … don’t go without me.”
She turned to me. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”
“Mom said you’re supposed to keep me in sight.”
“You will be,” Shelly said. “You just won’t see me.”
“What if there’re wolves?”
For a moment, Shelly paused and then retrieved something from her pocket. Her jack-knife. She took my gloved palm and pressed the folded knife into it.
“Use this. Anything happens, yell my name and I’ll come running.”
I nodded, slipping it into my pocket.
She walked into the network of tree trunks and snow-covered rocks and fallen trees, the sound of her boots flattening snow receding until silence prevailed.
And just like that—she was out of sight.
I didn’t dare move. Not even a few feet. The trees were so tightly packed I didn’t want to be in the wrong spot when she got back.
A minute passed. Maybe a few. I wondered if I could fight a coyote or a wolf. No way, I’d concluded.
The light vanished, only enough to see a few trees deep before they melted into a heavy blackening mass of twisted branches and gnarled trunks. My seven-year-old-imagination spun images in the darkness of screaming faces with distended mouths. If Shelly never came back, I knew I’d freeze out there and the thought made me whimper. The sight of my breath pumping into the abyss reminded me I was a breathing animal of flesh and bone, something that could be hunted and eaten like any other, and it drove me to contemplate my own death.
A loud snap broke my thoughts.
I whirled on one foot, shaking. It sounded like a branch in the distance. It echoed and could have come from the left or right. Squinting so hard my eyes hurt, I searched for movement.
A crunch. Like a nest of twigs being stepped on.
Heart hammering, I muttered incoherent noises, imagining what it could be. Was it Them? Or a coyote? A wolf?
“Shelly!” I shouted.
Desperate, my eyes and ears strained for a sign. Another crunch. Then another. From behind. I twisted so fast I lost balance and nearly fell. Where was she?
“Shelly! Something’s in the woods!”
The crunching and breaking of dead branches drew nearer. My whole body shook, and my snow pants filled with warmth and for a moment I thought I lost feeling in my legs, but no, I’d wet myself. Crying, I screamed for Shelly at the top of my lungs. But she wouldn’t come.
I could hear its laboured breathing. More than one—moved through brush and trees—encircling me.
“Mom, help!” I cried, body shuddering.
A clump of snow hit the top of my head.
Forgetting the jack-knife in my pocket, forgetting everything, I ran, bolting into the darkness, without thought or direction.
#
“Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble.”
She wasn’t dressed like cops I’d seen on TV. She had a white collared shirt and dark blue suit on. I couldn’t look her in the face so instead watched a cockroach crawling along the windowsill of my bedroom. It seemed lost, feeling the air aimlessly with its antennae.
She tried to scooch her chair closer, but it caught on the thick pile of the brown carpet, so she undid her jacket, and leaned forward. Her badge was clipped on her belt at the hip along with a holstered gun. My legs dangled from my bed; one knee twitching.
“How’d you find your way home?” she asked.
I shrugged, staring at her gun now.
“Did you run away on purpose?”
I shook my head. “Just got lost.”
“And you kept walking through the woods, in the dark, and eventually found your trailer?”
“I saw lights and went towards them.”
She nodded and asked something I didn’t expect.
“Have you ever told someone a secret?”
I looked at her. She was about my mom’s age—wrinkles in the corners of her big kind eyes. She wasn’t smiling though.
“What kind of secret?” I asked.
“You know what a bad guy is right?”
“Like, the bad guys on TV?”
“What do you think makes someone a bad guy?” she asked.
“Someone who robs or hurts people.”
“Exactly.” She brought her hands together under her chin, as though in prayer.
“Is Reg a bad guy?”
I pressed my lips into a grimace and scratched my head. An incoherent mutter escaped my mouth.
“Has Reg ever asked you to keep a secret?”
A hard ball grew in my throat. A ball I couldn’t swallow.
She leaned closer and lowered her voice. “I followed the footsteps you left in the snow. There was another set beside yours.”
The muscles in my jaw tensed. “Those must have been Shelly’s.”
She shook her head. “They were adult footprints. I followed them as far as I could and found more—nearly ten pairs of adult sized feet. I followed them until I hit a ravine, and they disappeared.”
Head dipped, I said nothing, gripping the blanket on my bed.
“If you tell me who’s footsteps they were, I won’t tell. It’ll be our secret, okay?”
I wanted to tell her—but I couldn’t. If anyone found out about Them, bad things would happen to me. Or my mom, or Shelly.
So, I kept my mouth zipped.
#
Shelly nursed her stomach. Reg’d belted her there so she could go out in public without him getting accused of beating his daughter.
“What’d you tell that cop?” she hissed at me, grunting in pain.
We were in her bedroom. The cop had left, and Reg and my mom were having an argument outside by the woodpile. Their muffled yelling got interrupted every few seconds by Reg splitting a piece of wood, each thud of his axe so heavy and strong the impact reverberated through the trailer into my feet and legs, then travelled up into my skull, making my teeth prickle.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Nothing?” She grabbed my chin, her other hand still cupping her stomach.
“No … but …”
“But what?”
A loud chop followed by the peeling ache of wood splitting into two halves and clattering to the ground.
“She saw the tracks,” I said. “The ones made by Them, in the woods.”
She looked away, wrinkling her nose. “Fuck.”
“Is that bad?”
“If the cops find out about Them, we’re dead meat.”
I remembered something. “Here.” From my pocket I retrieved Shelly’s jack-knife and held it out to her.
She hesitated before taking it. “What’d you do to it?”
Scrawled along the handle I’d etched her name and filled in the grooved letters with white-out.
Another deafening chop.
“In case you lose it,” I said.
She laughed. “God, you’re so lame.” She gave me a light kick.
I kicked back. Grinning, her tongue curled out the corner of her mouth, and she leaned forward and shoved me against the wall. We started rough-housing—grabbing and shoving each other.
Mom and Reg’s yelling outside grew silent. Entwined on the floor, Shelly and I froze, our eyes widened. Heavy bootsteps entered and crossed the trailer. We got up from the floor, brushing ourselves off, and straitened each other’s shirts.
Reg burst into the room and with him came a foul vinegar stench. He sat on the bed and grabbed me by the arm, facing me to him. I was a doll in Reg’s hand. A bear of a man, I remember, he’d reminded me of Paul Bunyan.
His bushy unkept moustache dripped wet and his body heaved. In his other hand he held a mason jar of yellow liquid.
“Who led you out of the forest, boy?” he asked, pulling me closer, eyes wild.
When I didn’t reply he shook me.
“Was it, Them?”
My mom came to the doorway.
“Was it Them or not?” Reg said.
“Stop it,” Mom said.
Reg’s eyes were fixed on mine. All I wanted was to disappear with Mom and Shelly.
“It was Them, wasn’t it?” Reg searched my face.
“Leave him alone,” Mom said.
He took my chin in his sweaty palm and closed his fingers over my head. It felt like being in the grip of a hot catcher’s mitt.
“Tell me.”
“Don’t you dare hurt him.” The tone of Mom’s voice scared me. It must have scared Reg too, because he let go.
Reg kneeled on the carpet, in the centre of the bedroom. From his shirt pocket he lifted out a small leatherbound book. Lowering his voice, he read to us aloud.
“The heavens, that their beauty not be lessened, have cast Them out, nor will deep Hell receive Them—even the wicked cannot glory in Them. They can place no hope in death, and their blind life is so abject they are envious of every other fate. The world will let no fame of theirs endure; both justice and compassion must disdain Them; let us not talk of Them, but look and pass.”
Reg closed his eyes and placed the book in his pocket, mumbling something to himself. As a kid I thought it was the bible he read from, but I’ve since learned that it was a modified passage from Dante’s Inferno.
“Now we take our medicine,” Reg said, exasperated, as though the reading had sapped all energy from him. “You first, boy.” He held the jar under my face, unscrewing the lid. The acrid smell made me gag.
“Go on. It’s good for you. It repels Them.”
#
That night I woke to yelling coming from outside the trailer. On my digital clock it read 2:25am. When I stepped out in my pyjamas, Mom was peering through the kitchen blinds.
“Oh, Christ,” she muttered.
“What’s going on?” I rubbed my eye.
Mom opened the door, and a blast of cold air turned my feet into bricks of ice. I followed her onto the porch, which faced the road.
In the middle of the street, under yellow lamplight, Reg staggered, holding a half-empty bottle of whiskey.
“Go home!” someone yelled from their trailer.
“Don’t … don’t you tttteeeeellll me what to do,” Reg walked to the side of the neighbour’s trailer and banged with a flat hand. “Your one of em! Aren’t ya! Huh? Adddmiitt it!”
I ran to Shelly’s room. She was awake, curled on her bed towards the wall, staring at it.
“Shelly, your dad …”
I shook her to get her to come, but she didn’t move or speak.
I ran back to the door. Mom was in the street—coaxing Reg into the house. He swore at her, and when he attempted to stagger away, he slipped on a patch of ice, his hands flailed, and as he fell backward the bottom of the whiskey bottle struck Mom in the temple. By the time I reached her, she’d regained her focus and was pulling Reg towards the trailer. Lying limp, Reg muttered as she pulled him across the road, his boots scraping the asphalt. A bump formed above Mom’s eye and swelled so large blood seeped from its edges.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Get the door,” she said, crouched down, arms scooped under Reg’s. She struggled at the porch steps, and I was too small to help.
“Shelly! Get out here, or your father’ll freeze to death.”
Shelly emerged with a sullen face, climbed over her father, and hoisted his legs.
#
“Your mom’s outside waiting to pick you up,” the woman at the desk said.
I’d been called into the principal’s office. Mom planned to pick me up for a dentist appointment.
“But she said she’d pick me up at 2’oclock. It’s only half past one,” I said.
“I guess she came early. I just got off the phone with her, she’s waiting by the bus stop at the side of the school.”
Leaving school, confused as to why Mom made the dentist appoint earlier, I soon discovered she hadn’t.
It wasn’t Mom’s car at the bus stop.
Idling at the side of the road was a black school bus. It looked as if it’d been spraypainted by hand—patches of orange showed through at the edges. Even the wheels were sprayed black. Inside sat adults wearing black balaclavas, all facing forward. The door shuttered open as I approached.
It was Them.
At first, I hesitated, then remembered what would happen if I didn’t do what they wanted. I stepped in and the bus driver pulled a lever and the door shut behind me with a loud bang. The engine released a shrill hiss as the bus lurched forward.
Wipers batted away clumps of snow pelting the windscreen. Down the aisle, all the heads faced my direction, but their eyes were not on me, they were dead, unfocused, as if in a trance. All the seats were taken except one in the front row.
I sat down next to a man dressed all in black.
“The man you live with,” he said, turning to me. “Reg. He’s a bad man.” His voice sounded old, like my grandfather’s. He wore a weather-beaten trench coat and a pair of glasses hooked around the nose of his balaclava.
I watched the road ahead, conscious not to look him in the eye. The bus groaned as we turned a corner.
“Reg ever hit you?”
I shook my head.
“What about his kid?” he asked. The man smelled of old leather. Maybe it was his jacket.
I nodded.
“The cops ask you about us?”
“Yeah.”
I didn’t want to get Shelly in trouble. I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. The black bus turned another corner. We were circling the school grounds.
“I didn’t tell the cop anything,” I said.
He made no reply.
Biting my lip, I felt the heat inside my body rising. I wanted to unzip my jacket but decided not to.
The bus rocked to one side as it struggled over a bump of hardened snow.
“How would you feel if Reg disappeared?” the man said.
Staring at my gloves, I picked at a loose strand of wool when the bus slowed to the same spot it picked me up.
“He makes us drink his pee,” I said.
The bus came to a stop and the door accordioned open.
“Reg is a mad dog, who’s hurt a lot of people. He’s like a dog with rabies, and you know what people do when their dog gets rabies, don’t you?”
“Take them to the vet?”
The man turned to me. “Ever see that movie, Old Yeller?” The man handed me a walkie talkie. Black and rectangular, it was old and used and not like ones I’d seen at the mall. More military style.
“Keep this near you,” he said, facing forward.
#
Sitting in the principal’s office, I watched the colour drain from my mom’s face as she jutted her forefinger at the woman behind the desk.
“Get the principal. Now.”
“It sounded like you,” the woman said in desperation.
“What if he got kidnapped?”
The woman’s lips were trembling. “I swear to God, I thought it was you, I’ll be more careful next time.”
Mom scoffed. “There won’t be a next time. Do you know how serious this is? If you’re not fired, there’s something seriously wrong with this school.”
My nails dug into the plastic chair and scrapped back and forth. The principal walked in, and Mom raised her voice and the more she talked the more her words shook, and she began crying.
#
The next morning’s sun was low in the sky and chickadees chirped and twittered. My ear throbbed from sleeping with the walkie talkie under my pillow. Its static mechanical clicking had woken me up and I clenched the side button.
“Hello?”
A moment of static laced silence before the old man’s voice came down the line, I’d assumed balaclava’s from the black school bus. “You remember the spot we showed you?”
I rubbed my eyes. “Yeah.”
“Go there.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
I looked over at Shelly asleep on the bed across the room. “Why?”
“You remember the symbols?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Get dressed and hurry here, alone. Now.”
“Why?”
There was no response.
“What was that?” Shelly said, groggy, eyes still closed.
I tucked the walkie talkie under the covers.
“Nothing,” I said, and dressed into my snow gear and boots. Shelly fell back asleep, and Mom and Reg weren’t up yet—their bedroom door still closed. Following the scarring on the trees, I made my way into the woods. It was Them who taught me how navigate the forest using symbols they’d cut into the barks—a secret I’d sworn to protect. It made the woods more inviting, and this time, stamping through the crisp morning snow in long strides, I didn’t feel scared the way I did when Shelly first took me there.
I remember wondering what they wanted to show me, and why so early. Close now to the clearing where their campsite was, I heard a mixture of laughs and grunts echo through the woods. The laughter roared, coming from one person, no doubt as to who the cackles belonged—Reg.
Stepping carefully behind a tree, I investigated the clearing. In the centre, Reg knelt, naked, his arms extended behind him, lashed to a wooden post. He was covered in lacerations. Blood trickled from a latticework of cuts across his chest, shoulders, face, and legs. Groaning, he laughed through clenched teeth as one of Them, a hunched woman in a balaclava, drew a knife across the top of his chest. Reg screamed and the red line seeped blood.
I stepped back, my stomach clenching. The forest receded. All I could see was Reg, my vision absorbing every detail of his cuts, the little pools of blood formed in the deepest crevasses.
A hand clapped onto my shoulder. Gasping, I looked up at man in a balaclava. No words came from my mouth and the man said nothing either. He pushed me into the clearing, towards Reg, encircled by Them.
Head lolling, Reg’s eyes upturned and drilled into mine.
“I fuckin knew it,” he said, voice hoarse. “You’re one of Them. So’s your mother. Isn’t she?”
I was in shock, and couldn’t move or speak, my brain overheating with effort to process the scene before me.
“Isn’t she!” he yelled, startling me so bad I nearly swallowed my tongue.
Eyes charged with rage, Reg attempted to stand, pulling at the post he was tied to.
“You won’t get away with this, you little shit.” Rocking back and forth, he got the post to wobble.
One of Them grabbed my hand and placed a knife in it.
He pushed me closer to Reg.
Reg was hard to look at, so much dark red blood leaked down his body. I tried to step back but met the resistance of a hand.
“Do it,” one of them said, an old woman’s voice.
I shook my head, body shuddering.
Reg grunted and swung his torso, loosening the post in the ground.
I was shoved forward, and fell to my knees not six feet from Reg. The veins in his neck popped out so far, I thought they’d burst, his thick arm and shoulder muscles bulging and strained. Reg let out a deep primal yell. The post cracked and then exploded into a thousand splinters. One of Them, a man, plunged a knife at Reg’s throat but he grabbed their wrist mid-strike, pulled the attacker towards him, and jammed the knife up under the man’s chin. Grabbing a chunk of shattered post, Reg beat another one of Them across the head, sending the masked woman into the ground.
Without thinking or making a noise, I ran into the woods. Chest heaving, my heart was on fire, so I peeled off my jacket and tied it around my waist as I sprinted through the forest—I couldn’t dare pass out. I slowed to orient myself, darting my eyes from one bark to another until finally spotting a scar—an ‘X’ stretched up a trunk of pine bark.
I found the next scar, and the next.
Behind me—ragged breathing drew closer, along with the crunch of footsteps in snow.
“Good boy,” the voice said, dry and rasping. “Lead the way.”
I turned and saw Reg, his naked, slashed body stepping towards me.
“They showed you how to get out of here, didn’t they?” He leant against a tree, tilted his head back and winced in pain, scrunching his face. “Go on then. I haven’t got long left.”
I continued towards home, not knowing what else to do. There was nowhere else to go. I kept a distance from him, thinking maybe I could lose him, but he kept pace, apparently not as damaged as he’d looked.
“Show me the way home, boy,” he said behind. “You know how long it takes an ambulance to get out here? A long time.”
Tears filled my eyes and blurred my vision. I lost my bearing, so stopped in my tracks. Wiping my eyes, the woods around me seemed endless and I wondered whether dying there was better than continuing.
“Don’t stop,” Reg said. “Quit your blubbering and get going. I’m losing a lot of blood. Shelly loves you, you gonna let her father die?”
No, I’d thought. I didn’t want Shelly’s dad to die, because if I did, she’d kill me or at least hate me forever. As scared of him as I was, in that moment, I didn’t want Reg do die. I didn’t want anyone to die. Eyeing a bark-scar made by one of Them, I stepped towards it, regaining my pace.
The moment the trailer came into view, I bolted across the field faster than I’d ever run in my life, yelling for my mother and Shelly. Standing on the porch, seeing me run at her, Mom’s face turned ashen, and when she looked behind me her hands closed over her mouth. Pushing her inside I explained that Reg was coming to kill us, to lock the door and to call the police.
While mom called 911, I deadbolted the door and through the window watched Reg close in on the trailer, struggling across the field in a blood-drunk stagger—the desperation to stay alive seemingly fuelled his body. Reg glistened red in the brilliant morning sunlight, on the stark white snowfield tracked with footsteps of his blood. His gargled yell sounded as though from another world.
“Boy! Come out here, boy! I know you’re one of Them. You and your mother.”
Reg reached the porch of the trailer and banged the door. “Shelly? Sheeeelllllyyyyy? Let your father in.”
“Where’s Shelly?” I whispered to Mom. She was still on the phone with the police, her voice guttural, describing the scene and asking what to do.
“We should grab a … a weapon?” she said into the phone, looking to me for an answer. “I … I don’t know. A kitchen knife?”
“His rifle,” I said, pointing to their bedroom.
“I’m losing a lot of blood,” Reg moaned outside.
Mom put the phone down and ran into the bedroom.
A deafening bang shot through the house, and I thought the trailer might’ve cracked in half, but it was the sound of an axe through the door. The axe-head pulled free, and as though swung by a giant, it struck again, snapping off a long chunk of door-wood.
From her bedroom Mom emerged with the rifle in her hands. “I don’t know how to use this. Do you?”
Another bang.
“Is it loaded?” I sidled next to mom, checking the chamber.
“I think so,” mom pointed it at the door and fumbled, dropping it to the floor and picking it up again. “For fuck’s sake, oh fucking hell.”
Reg’s hand reached through a hole in the door, unlocked it, and entered—his large, naked, pulpy-red body holding an axe. When he saw the gun, he stretched a trembling forefinger at it.
“You don’t know how to use that. Put it down.”
Mom aimed at his head. “It’s loaded, Reg.”
Beneath the blood his skin was ghost white. “I knew you were one of Them. You and your boy.”
“I don’t know what fuck your talking about,” Mom said, voice trembling.
“Even hell won’t take you,” his voice wavered. “You’ll walk in limbo for ever. Like the sound of that, boy?” He looked at me and stepped closer. His moustache dripped blood. “You can blame your mom for that.”
“You’ve lost your damn mind,” Mom said. “Listen to yourself!”
His attention turned back to Mom and the rifle. “Put it down.”
“Police are coming, and an ambulance. It’s not too late, they’ll patch you up.”
He stepped towards Mom, his face a few feet from the end of the barrel.
“It’s too late for all of us.”
“Reg, don’t.”
“You tried to kill me.”
“One more step and I’ll fire. I swear.” The end of the barrel swayed.
His eyes focused, and he snatched at the gun. Mom fired, but she’d aimed the barrel too far to one side and the recoil kicked back so bad, she nearly fell over. Reg swiped the gun from her, and with his other hand grabbed mom’s throat and squeezed, pushing her head against the flimsy trailer wall that dented under the impact.
“Stop it!” I yelled, grabbing his arm. He kneed me in the stomach, sending me to the floor. The room tilted. At mom’s feet, I watched as her face went blue and she beat his chest with both fists to no affect. Reg crouched, slipping mom down the wall to sit next to me. I grabbed the gun and pulled at it, but Reg ripped it back, threw it across the trailer and in one movement, grabbed me by the throat with his other hand.
No air could enter my lungs. My legs kicked and my fists thrashed.
Reg’s pale face beneath the blood was haunting. He’d lost strength, no doubt due to having lost an incredible amount of blood—finally it was taking its toll. As though sensing the grip of death, veins popped from Reg’s skull and his grip tightened.
The trailer blurred. It was like being held under water too long. Lungs on fire, I tried sucking the air one last time, but could breathe in nothing.
A knife materialised at the side of Reg’s head and plunged into his jugular. His eyes widened. The knife jerked outward from behind his windpipe, spraying blood and chunks of throat-flesh, then, at an angle, the knife stabbed him again, this time into the crook of his neck. His grip on my throat loosened and I managed a gasp. Air burned down my constricted windpipe, just enough to keep me conscious. Both hands flat on the floor, I wheezed and strained to refill my lungs. Mom did the same next to me. Her hand clenched mine and I looked up to see her purple face fading back to its normal colour.
Reg’s body—a folded pile of gore, remained still and silent. He was dead. Sticking up from his neck, was the handle of a jack-knife with ‘Shelly’ scrawled up its side in white-out. Over the body she stood as one of Them, masked in a balaclava, looking down at me.
Behind the balaclava, green wet eyes glinted in the sunlight streaming through the curtains. She looked out the window as though she were beckoned.
Slowly, I rose to my feet, hand against the wall. She grabbed me by the arm to help me up and brought me to the door so I could see Them.
Standing around the trailer were a group of Them.
Shelly let me go and removed her balaclava. All of Them followed, removing their masks too. It took me a while to recognise Them.
I’d grown up with Them.
Lived with Them all my life.
Huddled around us were my neighbours.
The residents of the trailer park.