Free Creekers by Edward Lee

them shadows had cut Scott’s dog and bag clean off, and Scott was still screaming and flailing away in the dirt as several of these big shadows got to holding him down, and one of them was smack smack smack! bringing a tire iron or something down fast and hard on Scott-Boy’s arms and legs, breakin’ bones like they was pencils, and another shadow whipped out a buck bigger than Gut had ever seed in his life and started scalping Scott-Boy alive right then and there.
    More of that Creeker jabber shot up into the grove, only this weren’t the gal, these were guys by the sound of ’em:
    “Ah-no-prey-bee!”
    “Ah-no-for-blood!”
    “Skeet-inner this one!”
    “Ona!”
    But then there was another voice Gut coulda swore he heard, but, see, he seemed to hear it in his head instead of his ears, and what he heard was this:
    Redeemer Sanctifier, bless us…
    Ah-no ah-no!
    To thee we bring this gift of flesh…
    Ona!
    Gut felt like part of the tree he was lookin’ past; he couldn’t move at all. These shadows was really doin’ the job on Scott-Boy, the likes of which turned even Gut’s breadbasket. “Gut, Jaysus ta Gawd ya gotta help meeeee!” screamed Scott-Boy, crushed and scalped but still alive. One of the shadows was givin’ it to Scott-Boy something fierce up the tail, while the one with the shank took to cutting off Scott-Boy’s ears, and whittling the skin off his fingers, and chopping off his toes like they was carrots for stew on a butcher block. Gut shuddered frozen behind that tree, not able to move but knowing if he didn’t, these fellas would surely do the same to him.
    Gotta move gotta get out of here right now!
    When the one fella finished havin’ his nut up Scott-Boy’s tail, he slid that tire iron right up the same hole and jiggled it around fierce up there, and that other fella with the big buck cut Scott’s throat so deep you could hear the blade scrapin’bone, and that was about it for Scott “Scott-Boy” Tuckton, yes sir.
    He shore did pick the wrong folks to razz tonight.
    Then them shadows, what they did next was they hauled what was left of Scott-Boy back to that beat-ta-hell pickup of theirs and throwed him in the back like he was a sack of farm feed. And then—
    Another fella stepped outta the shadows.
    Fuck, Gut thought.
    This fella was taller than the others, and Gut guessed he’d been standin’ back in the dark whiles his buddies did the job on Scott-Boy. He stood there a speck and kind of made to sniff the air, and then he turned in the moonlight and—
    Fuck!  Gut thought.
    —looked right at Gut squattin’ behind that there tree.
    Gut’s eyes bugged like they might jump out his head as this big killer dude took to staring at him, and Gut figured he’d just up and die, but what he did instead was piss and shit his pants both at the same time. He only saw the big fella’s face a second but a second was enough, a face squashed up worse than the gal’s with one ear twice as big as the other and fucked-up teeth stickin’ out of his smile, and then he pointed right at Gut with a long, crooked finger, staring back at Gut with eyes just like that gal’s.
    Eyes that were blood-red…
    Run, boy, Gut heard in his head. We’ll getcha next time…
    And Gut ran, and he didn’t stop runnin’ till the sun was comin’ up over the ridge about five hours later.
     
    — | — | —
     

Five
     
    Phil slowed as he passed Krazy Sallee’s, flagged by its great flashing road sign. Place is jam-packed, and it’s barely 7:30, he observed. Sallee’s wasn’t just the only strip joint in town, it was the only bar—period. Phil had only been in there once or twice back when he was eighteen, the old days before the drinking age went up to twenty-one, and all he recalled were a few docile-looking women with bad tattoos and floppy breasts clopping around a strobe-lit stage; he’d be more aroused watching pigs snort in a mudhole. But as he passed, he realized he’d be paying some close