Free Dweller by Jeff Strand Page B

hands in the dirt, trying to get the blood off. He scooped up a handful of dirt and rubbed it on his arms and on his face, desperate to hide the red. He wiped off the mud but a crimson stain remained on his skin.
    Why had he brought the knife? Why had he even brought the fucking thing in the first place?
    He bit down on his wrist to keep from screaming. Screaming was bad. Screaming brought people.
    He just wanted to die.
    No. No, he didn’t. He’d get through this.
    Larry and Nick were horrible people. They deserved to die. Even worse than the way they had. A slow, lingering, agonizing death was the way they should have gone, so Toby was doing them a favor. The world was better offwithout them. They contributed nothing but misery. It was their own fault. Stalking him through the woods—you take a huge risk when you do something like that. You put your life in danger. It wasn’t his fault.
    And they deserved it. They completely deserved it.
    He was a murderer. A cold-blooded murderer. A criminal.
    He took a deep breath. He had to calm down. Had to figure this out. It was done—he couldn’t take it back, so now he just had to figure out how to get away with it.
    The blood-splattered boy. The crazy-eyed boy. The cackling, maniacal, don’t-let-your-children-get-too-close boy.
    Think.
    Did anybody know where they were? If you were following some kid into the forest with a gun, unloaded or not, would you tell your parents where you were headed? Unlikely. They’d want to be able to deny it later. So they’d either not told anybody, or they lied. This was good.
    His nose was still bleeding, but he just let the blood flow.
    The boy they should put in a cage, so people could poke him with sticks.
    Had anybody seen them go into the forest? No way to know. If they cut through his yard and his mom was in the living room, she might have seen them, but only if she happened to be facing the window. She knew what Larry and Nick looked like and what they’d done—she wouldn’t let them just wander into the woods without saying something.
    So there was a very good chance that nobody knew where they were.
    The demonic boy. The hell-bound boy.
    Stop it !
    If he hid the bodies well enough, he might be okay.
    This was a vast forest. Millions of places to hide a body.
    But could he hide it well enough to keep it from the police and their dogs? If he buried them deep enough, maybe, but…
    What if he fed them to Owen? Owen would probably pick the bones clean, if he didn’t eat those as well. And, worst-case scenario, if the bones were found, the authorities would think that Larry and Nick met their ghastly fate at the claws and jaws of a never-before-seen monster.
    You can’t let Owen take the blame for this. He’s your friend.
    Jesus Christ, what was he thinking? Of course he could let Owen take the blame for this! He was a wild animal.
    Anyway, the remains would never be found. He’d make sure of it. It was far from a foolproof plan, but it was the best he had for the moment, save for marching over to the police station and confessing everything. That wouldn’t end well.
    If he had time to sit around, mulling his options in a leisurely fashion, he’d probably come up with something better, but right now he had to move quickly. He couldn’t do this in the dark, and he couldn’t risk leaving the bodies out overnight. Larry and Nick would be missed by bedtime. So the best course of action was to feed the corpses to Owen.
    Could he even bring himself to do such a thing?
    Yeah. If he could stab them to death, he could feed them to an animal.
    There was a problem with the plan, though. Well, there were lots of problems, but one particularly big one: he couldn’t drag their bodies out to the cave. Not even one of them by sundown, much less both. So he had to bring Owen to them.
    He needed bait.
    Toby walked down the path. He held the bottom of his shirt out in front of him, like a little girl carrying blueberriesthat she’d picked.