Free Alchemystic by Anton Strout Page A

doesn’t exactly sound like resident behavior, now, does it? Come on.”
    She turned, walking off with her hand still firmly planted over Marshall’s mouth, her fingers clutching his cheeks. He didn’t even bother to put up a fight. Dazed, he simply followed after her.
    Rory didn’t seem to have any trouble seeing in the dark, stepping sure-footed over the thin stream of water that I caught myself avoiding at just the last second. The center of the park was an open space surrounded by iron benches, and a lone statue sitting at the middle of it.
    Marshall pried Rory’s hand from his face. “Who is that?”
    “We don’t know yet,” I said. “Didn’t you hear Rory?”
    “I meant the statue,” he said in a hushed tone. “I doubt it’s like Superman or something.”
    “Oh,” I said. “Sorry. It’s Edwin Booth—some old-time actor—dressed as Hamlet.”
    That seemed to satisfy him and he returned to peering at the base of the statue. “So where’s this other person?” he asked Rory. “I don’t see anyone.”
    Rory pointed low. “Down there,” she said. “Hunched down by the base.”
    I couldn’t see anything abnormal about the base of the statue. It was a large rectangular block of shadow from here, but there might have been the hint of a shape just on the other side of it. Marshall moved forward first, with Rory and me falling into step right behind. The closer we got, the more obvious it became that the hidden shape was that of a man, and that he was no longer living. The shapes of a body were familiar—an arm along the left side of the base and the bend of a leg beneath it, twisted, broken. The clothes were familiar, too, as was the symbol tattooed on its left hand—the stylized but blocky demon. Thick tree branches lay scattered and torn apart all around the figure.
    My eyes rose up to what should have been the person’s head, only what was there could no longer be called one. What remained reminded me of the teen Halloween years when Rory and I used to hang with the badass boys who went around smashing pumpkins. The arrival of flashing red and blue lights drove away the shadows for a second, revealing a spill all around the body that definitely wasn’t pumpkin guts or seeds.
    “What the hell happened to his head?” I asked, but as soon as the words were out I felt my stomach rise in my throat and I turned away from the sight of it. I stumbled away as thecontents of my stomach pushed their way up. It burned as I threw up and unfortunately there was no quiet way to do such a thing. Flashlight beams from outside the gates turned on me just in time to catch my dinner from hours ago splash into some of the shrubbery in front of me.
    “Hey!” a man’s voice shouted, full of authority. Cops. “Stop where you are.”
    I stood to respond, but my stomach coiled up on me once more and I doubled over, still hacking.
    “Shit,” one officer said to another, his light finally training in on me. “A bunch of drunk kids in the park. Looks like one is passed out.”
    “We’re not drunk!” Rory shouted out.
    “Shut up and
don’t move
!” the officer called out. “One of you get over here right the hell now and open this gate.”
    “Hold on! Hold on!” Rory called out as she came over to me, rubbing my back as she did best-friend duty pulling my hair out of the way. “My friend is throwing up.”
    “Stupid underage kids don’t know their tolerance,” the other officer said.
    “We’re not underage,” Rory called out. “And we’re not drunk. It’s worse than that…We think someone’s…dead.”
    “Son of a bitch,” the officer swore. Uncertainty crept into his voice. “Think the kid’s telling the truth?”
    “Only one way to find out,” the other one said. He shouted, “Get your ass over here. Now!”
    Rory gave an angered sigh. Marshall stumbled over to us. “Shut your mouth, Ror,” he said, holding his hands up like he was being robbed. “This is no time to drop attitude on