Bad

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Bad”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Christopher J. Reeves.

H

e circled the block again, until he came up to the point where he could see the girl without her being able to turn and see him in enough time to get away. Not that she would be thinking that quickly, she couldn’t have been much older than 8 or 9 years.

 

            He brought the van to an abrupt halt as he noticed one of the owners of the houses on this street had come out on the front porch to shake dust out of a broom. The woman didn’t even glance in the direction of his van or the girl that was walking near her home. Indeed if she had looked she probably wouldn’t have noticed anything out of the ordinary. It was around 4 o’clock, on a lazy Saturday afternoon. A young girl like this, in a quiet neighborhood, would probably be on her way home from a friends birthday party or something.

            That meant he had to hurry.

            This was a quiet neighborhood, and he knew that parents who lived far from the big cities were often complacent about the safety of their kids when they were just up the street at the Smith boy’s 9th birthday party, or walking home from some toy sale, or even just home from an afternoon of playing dolls at a girlfriends house, while drinking lemonade and watching cartoons.

            No reason to pull mom or dad away from their morning activities when little Suzy was just walking home from a friends house just up the street. None at all. What could possibly happen?

            He could happen.

            He had happened to at least 7 young girls and boys, that were probably no farther away from home than girl number 8, who he was still following. Those parents had assumed nothing could upset the balance of their quiet little lives, in their quiet little towns, to their quiet, good, little sons and daughters.

            They had been wrong. And those 7 sets of parents were still waiting for their kids to walk through the door, full of apologies for wherever they had been for the past several months.

            But he knew they would not be walking through the door. He knew because he had begun killing children for the past 8 months. All across the country.

            At one time he used them just for sex. He had had a rewarding career in child molestation since a very young age. He knew exactly what to say and who to threaten. Children have an unfortunate ability to blame themselves for thing that happen to them, or to their parents, and he exploited it to the fullest extent. He was a true predator. He would research his prey, and then, once captured, he could use names the child recognized to ensure the silence of his intended victims. “Aunt Sally” would wake up to find her dog dead if he told anyone what he did to them. Her parents would die in a car crash, their favorite pets and family members would all fall to some great harm unless they kept their big mouths shut and let him have his 30 minutes of fun.

            Shopping malls were the point where he had the most luck. Big noisy places where kids invariably wandered off at some point, bored with the clothes shopping mom was doing and impatient to look at the new Power Ranger device. Mom was wrapped up in her shopping, shouting  “Don’t wander off now...” without lifting her head from the price tag to make sure the child had heard, or was still there. 

            He hung around the toy section. Waiting for the lone child to wander in. He fancied himself like a lion, that separated prey from the herd before the kill. Then he would tell some story about a lost puppy he needed help finding, or how the child’s mother was looking for her, out in the parking lot, near that big black van.......

            Many were the days he would go home frustrated. Angry, because the parents were taking too much notice of their kids, or would notice them missing and come looking for them just as he was prepared to tell his story. He was good at what he did. Once he was cornered by a mother while holding the hand of her daughter. “We were just coming to look for her mom or dad, weren’t we sweetie?” He smiled at the young girl, glad he had not told her much of a story as yet, only that he had a job for her to do. The girl was woefully unprepared and had smiled and given him her hand willingly.

            “Mommy!” And the child ran to the arms of her mother, who thanked the kind stranger for watching over her child for time she had been missing.

“Thank you. There are some real weirdoes out there you know?”

            He knew.

            The irony of it, is that he may never have gone any further than molestation, and threats of harm should the children tell on him, may never have turned to killing, if it wasn’t for Tommy Jardin. Tommy was a boy who had been separated from his father at a baseball game. He wasn’t aiming to hunt a child on this particular day, he was just lucky enough to be at the game on the same day that Tommy was separated from his dad, couldn’t find his seat, and wandered, crying, into the big stadium washroom where his dad had taken him 3 times that day already (too much pop).

            He pulled the boy into a stall on the far end of the washroom and did what people like him do to small children. It was not a playoff game, and was early in the season for a team that the city knew would not make much of a mark in the season. No one came in to the washroom in the time he did what he did, no one that could have heard Tommy.

            He had taken quite a risk with that boy, in public, in his own town, but a hand over the mouth and a random threat against the boy’s whole family (he had no time to research) was enough to make him feel secure, confident, and satisfied.

            3 Days later, Tommy’s mom noticed bruising on the boys back, where he had been held.

            5 Days later, a terrified Tommy finally broke down and told the police about the bad man. He told how he was afraid now that he had told about the man, and was upset that he would cause the man to come and kill his family like he said he would. Tommy had nightmares for weeks.

            7 Days later, police reviewed security camera tapes of the halls around the bathrooms at the stadium. It was not a busy day at the stadium, not many people to pick from at that time of day, and Tommy, tearfully, picked out the face of his attacker.

            12 Days later, the predator was picked up at his work.

            He spent the next 7 years in prison, or in therapy. He managed to control himself for 5 or so months after his release, before he gave in to the urge and kidnapped and killed his first child, 8 month ago.

            There had been exactly one kid per month, traveling across Canada, and living in his van. He took odd jobs wherever he could, but he like to work construction. That proved to be the best way to deal with the bodies. He would bury them in the foundations of buildings he discovered were under construction. And if he couldn’t find work on the site? Well, it’s pretty easy to sneak in at night at the time of construction he needed. Guards wouldn’t be posted until the buildings began to store valuable construction materials. No one could walk away with an iron girder! But there was plenty of deep holes, ready to be filled by concrete, or sand.

            They said he was sick, that he was not safe to be free, that he was not intelligent. But he was intelligent. He could learn. He did learn.

            Kids today were smarter. Kids could no longer be trusted to keep their mouths shut. He would learn from Tommy Jardin. He trusted the kids to be too scared to tell on him. The children would not get the chance to tell on him again.

 

He accelerated to intercept the girl at the end of the street, his heart racing at the thought of what was to come.

           

******

 

            He had no way to know it, at least until a newspaper report came out about the missing girl that he assumed would tell him the details, he liked to read about his hunts, but Amanda was 10 1/2 years old, and had wondered away from her father while he was busy filling out sports lottery tickets. She knew he would sometimes take an hour to fill in the stupid little blank squares on those sports cards, and she wanted to get back to her mother at home, and to some TV.

            She had simply walked out the door of the variety store and had taken a left instead of a right and she was soon lost. She wasn’t really scared though. Not yet, she just needed to see something she knew.

            Brampton was a small city, and she recognized some of the landmarks from when her parents took her for walks. She saw a large field with a school in the middle of it and thought she recognized it as the school that practically joined on to the back of her house, so she decided to walk through it and locate her house from the back. She had walked this way with her mom several times. She remembered it because she liked to stop and pat all the dogs on the way home. She talked to them sometimes, and they usually talked back, although her mom didn’t hear, or believe it was possible. All the dogs were friendly except Max, the big malamute from the end of her road. He was about 130 pounds and looked ragged and tough, but he never tried to bite her, he was not much of a talker. Amanda knew his owner was not very nice to him, and he was mad because of it. She had seen the owner hitting the dog and yelling: “Bad, bad dog. Bad...” She screamed at the man, but he just yelled at her and went back in the house. She told her mom, but her mom told her it made her very angry how some people treated their animals, and that some people were just...bad,

 

******

 

The driver of the van was suddenly surprised to see the girl calmly walk through a catwalk between the last 2 houses on the street. As he drove by he could see a field containing a clump of trees and a large building that looked like a school at the far end of the field. She was not trying to evade him, as she had not seen him yet. But she was getting close to the school. It was summer, but there was a chance that someone was working at the school, or kids playing in the field that would see him. He would have to be fast to avoid losing his prey.

            He parked the van and jogged to the far end of the catwalk so he could see the whole of the field.

            The girl was almost at the large clump of trees that separated the land behind the houses from the fields surrounding the school. She would have to walk through these trees to get to the school. He began to jog around the left side of the girl, giving her a wide berth so as not to alarm her and cause her to run or scream.

            She would be screaming soon enough.

           

******

 

            Amanda was in no hurry, she now knew that this was the field that backed onto her house on the far side. All she needed to do was walk through the trees, past the school and she would be able to see the greenish-brown wooden fence that made up her backyard fence. She would be home in 10 minutes.

            She glanced to her left, and saw a man running towards the same trees she was walking towards, but he was a long way off, and seemed to be paying her no attention. He must be late for something, she thought.

 

******

 

He saw her from the corner of his eye. He would not turn his head to let her know that he had seen her. Kids today were so smart, they were a lot smarter than most adults gave them credit for. If she knew that he was looking at her, she might be alarmed, and his hunt would be over.

            He ducked into the trees about 150 feet from where the girl would enter. He entered on a slight angle, trying to make it look like he was actually aiming away from her. Once inside the tree line he quickly ducked to his right and headed to intercept the girl before she could make it through the trees. The trees were a blessing for him. He could see there were no kids playing in the park, it must be dinnertime, and they would block any view from the opposite side. The treeline was about 30 feet thick, with various paths and gaps in the foliage, but it was the height of summer and in other places they were thick enough to block an observers vision, even if he were right on top of them. It was still risky and dangerous, but they would do. He was desperate, as it was getting near to 30 days since his last victim, and he needed his fix. He would not be able to remove this body for disposal, it would look very strange for a man to be seen carrying a young unconscious (dead?) girl back to his van, People would take more notice than he wanted. He would have to just leave this body to be found, but that wouldn’t matter, he wore gloves, and knew that all he would leave behind was semen and possibly hair samples, but as far as he knew he had never had blood tests done on him that could be used for comparison, and even if they knew it was him, he would be a thousand miles away by this time on Monday.

 

******

 

            Amanda jumped as the man she had seen running towards the trees away from her, now came bursting through some trees to her left. She thought he must be really lost, or in a really big hurry, or both, because he had a wild look in his eyes and was red faced and out of breath. She couldn’t help but realize that she was in the middle of the clump of trees, and was 15 feet from the edge where anyone could see her and this strange man. She was not about to panic, and didn’t. She met people all the time that were for the most part, friendly. She thought this man may just be lost.

            Until he reached for her with fingers curled like claws, flexing as he came closer.

 

******

 

            He knew he had her. They were a long way from prying eyes, and covered by trees that blocked the sight of anyone farther than the treeline. He reached out for her, intending to throttle her to the point of unconsciousness, then he might revive her just enough so she knew what was happening and he could enjoy her fear.

            The best was yet to come.

 

******

 

She had time for the small knot of fear in her stomach to swell to the point where she thought her chest might explode from the pressure it was creating within. She began to scream and only managed to get out only the barest fraction of the sound before he pushed her roughly to the ground and knocked the wind out of her. She landed hard against a tree root and knew that she was in trouble. Surely her little peep of a scream was too short to have been heard by anyone. She knew what men like this did to little girls, her mother had warned her about rides from strangers and candy from unknown men. But this wasn’t candy, and she hadn’t been offered a ride, she had been walking through the park behind her house, on her way home when she had been rushed. She began to feel anger mixed in with her fear. But she knew that she couldn’t do much against a man as big as this. She wished her mother was here.

 

******

            “I know you’re thinking of screaming”  he told her as he began to undo his belt, “but I’ll make you a deal. You keep your little mouth shut, and I’ll let you live when I’m finished, and let you go home to your mom and dad O.K.?”

            She didn’t believe a word he said. She was a smart girl, and knew she was being lied to, but she didn’t know how to react to this bad man. Could she say anything to change his mind? She didn’t think so.

            “No you won’t. You’re a bad man and you won’t let me go home at all.” She began to cry.

            He was angry that she didn’t believe him. So what if he was lying, he was supposed to be smarter than her and should be able to fool her. With his pants down around his ankles, he leaned forward, and loomed over her.

            Amanda closed her eyes and prayed for help.

            Help arrived, although it came in a most unexpected form. The man was panting, close enough to her that she could smell the foulness of his breath, when suddenly, he shouted, loud enough to hurt her ears. She thought it might have been something men do when they want to put their things inside you, she wasn’t sure, but the man was still screaming, and was obviously in a lot of pain.

            He backed away from her, eyes wide with pain and shock, and sat up on his knees. He waved his hand behind him like he was swatting at something. It was then that she noticed the blood the was pouring down his thighs, and the little dog.

            It was Gulliver, a Jack Russell Terrier from one of the streets near her house. She recognized him at once because she had spoken to him often, and recognized his brindle markings. But he didn’t look like how she remembered. This wasn’t the same dog that rolled onto his back to have his tummy scratched. He had a wild gleam In his eyes and was snarling at the man who attacked her, he was backing away while never taking his eyes off the man, and there was something in his mouth that he let drop to the ground. It looked like part of the man covered in blood, a small, almost round part covered in blood and hair.

            One of his testicles.

            She didn’t know the technical name for them, but she had seen something a lot like it, only with it’s twin, in some of the books her girlfriends brother kept hidden under his bed. Boy’s crotches were different than girls, she knew. Boys had these things where she had none. And now, neither did her attacker. 

            Gulliver had come up behind the man while he had been naked, and had bitten part of him off from behind. The man was so busy trying to swat at Gulliver, and deal with the numbing pain that blossomed from his ruined balls, that he forgot about Amanda for the moment. She jumped to her feet and began to run.

            “No you don’t you little...” He didn’t finish the sentence. The man turned his attention from the dog, not wanting his prize to get away, and reached for the girl. The dog darted in as soon as the man’s head turned away, and tore another chunk of flesh from the back of the man’s thigh.

            The man was outraged. The little girl was getting away and he was being torn apart, bit by bit, by this rotten little dog. He thought about how he should deal with this. He would turn and kick the dog, hopefully to death, and then grab the girl and finish the job he started with her. He could not let her get away and report what she knew, but the pain the dog was inflicting was more immediate and desperate. He was certainly being optimistic if he thought he could run at all with a testicle recently ripped away. But he was denied the chance to act against the girl or the dog.

            He stood and turned to face the stocky little terrier, but it was now a good 10 feet away in a clearing. He knew that there was no way he could catch a dog that fast, certainly not in his present condition. This was all coming apart too quickly. He turned to face the girl who had stopped by the edge of the tree line. Amanda wanted to run, but she wanted to make sure that the man wasn’t going to hurt Gulliver. He was her friend. And after what he had saved her from, how could she run away without him?  The man felt that the dog had lost it’s nerve for attacking him, now that he had stood up It wasn’t making a move to bite him again, so he decided to ignore the mutt and try and drag the stupid girl back into the forest. He felt prepared for the dog now, ready to defend himself, and if it came close again he would kill it with a stick he picked up from the ground, or with his bare hands. He pulled his pants up to the point where they would not hinder his walking, just leaving a section of his stomach exposed where his fly fell open.

            He had not taken 2 steps toward the girl when a noise started to come from the little dog. For a brief moment he thought it was another attack being staged, but was surprised when he turned to see the dog standing in the clearing, howling. He didn’t know much about dogs, but he didn’t think that the normal ones made a sound like this on did. It was a type of howl, obviously, but sounded like it was coming from somewhere else other than the dog. He could see the dogs mouth working and forming the sounds that issued from it’s belly, but it was nothing like anything he had ever heard before. It didn’t sound like it should come from a dog so small.  He assumed he was beginning to hallucinate from losing more blood than he realized, because why else would it made the hairs at the back of his neck stand up, and send chills down his spine. On some inner level, he thought he knew what the sound was. Could almost hear the intent. But his conscious mind would not place it for him.

            He felt disoriented for a moment, then snapped back to reality as he realized he could get lost listening to that hypnotic, awful wailing sound. He would ignore the stupid dog. He felt he had to act quickly. The dogs strange noise might bring some park people closer to investigate. He dropped the stick and picked up a softball sized rock, prepared to hurl it at the girl. He would knock her out, or kill her, and leave the body behind. Anything so long as she could not tell what had happened or identify him. He was prepared to hurl the rock at the girl, who was still staring the dog and smiling, when the sound coming from the dog stopped. He was almost sighing with relief that the horrid sound had  finally stopped, when he thought he heard a new sound behind him, where the little dog had just stopped his howling. The dog was running to attack him again, but he was ready this time. He spun around, and through blind luck he managed to catch the dog inches before it would have torn a hole in his exposed belly. The dog was a good jumper, but he had it now. The dog barked in anger and terror as he knew he had made an error in letting this man get a hold of him. He tried to snap at the mans fingers with his strong, terrier jaws, but the man was expecting that, and shifted his grip so he was holding the dog by his muscular neck. Like the way snake handlers holds dangerous snakes. Isolate the mouth and you were safe.

            Gulliver was helpless in the mans hands.

            “Lets see how your fucking dog does after I introduce him to a tree!” He panted out to Amanda, clearly the worse for wear of the confrontation between him and Gulliver, and drew his hands behind him, preparing to use a two handed pitch to throw the troublesome dog into the trunk of the nearest tree. Gulliver was helpless with his nimble feet separated from the ground, and growled frantically as he tried to reach something on the man to bite.

            There was a brief silence in the second or two that he decided on a thick trunk on which to hurl the dog. Amanda had no time to scream out a cry of protest. The man stopped in almost mid-pitch, for he detected another sound. Something else had broken the silence of the trees that was even louder than the strangled growls of the dog in his hands.

            He heard the sound of footsteps behind him. The girl? A passerby? He turned to look in time to realize he was hearing many sets of feet, and a growling noise almost in tune with the growling of the little dog he now held loosely. He saw the source of those noises, and what he saw, his mind refused to accept. A dozen dogs  were charging him. Mouths open and teeth glaring. There were German shepherds, hounds, and about 8 or 9 smaller dogs that looked like spaniels and terriers. He didn’t know where they had come from, but they looked mad.

 

******

            Amanda stopped being afraid when Gulliver started his call to the other dogs. There was a brief moment when she saw the man catch Gulliver where she was prepared to try and do something so the man would not throw him, but she could see over the mans shoulder, and knew that he would not get the chance. She didn’t know how she knew what the dogs had in mind, maybe it was similar to whatever let her understand these animals when other people couldn’t, or wouldn’t, but she knew what was going on. The sound Gulliver had emitted was a type of distress call, and she thought it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard. She recognized the dogs of course, they were all the dogs from around her house that she spoke to on the way home from school, or when walking with her mom. But they looked different. They were not the calm domesticated lap pets that she knew most of them to be, the look in their eyes was a little scary. They were acting like true animals, kind of like the ones she saw on the TV. The wild animals that hunted to live and would probably kill any human that tried to pat them or make them get down off the couch.

            These animals ran toward the man, and a big Dalmatian (his name was Spirit) knocked the man backwards with a scream of surprise as the big dog rammed him. Gulliver dropped lightly to the ground as the man let loose his grip to deal with the bigger dog, and the other animals circled the man as he lay prone, with blood still dripping down his legs from the wound Gulliver had inflicted earlier. He thought the Dalmatian was going to begin biting him now, but the big dog merely took up a position in the circle of dogs around the fallen man. Amanda wanted to call them all by name, but didn’t feel it was proper to call them by their house-pet names. They were no longer house pets, and probably wouldn’t want to be treated as such right now, any more than a dingo in the wild would enjoy a pat on the head from a stranger. They had all changed to their more animal natures to confront this man, and they had done it for her. They were her friends. Any move the man made to get up was countered by a growl and a slight advance from the pack until he sat back down.

            He was confused. If they belonged to the girl, why weren’t they attacking? They seemed to be waiting. Waiting for what?

            “These all your dogs you little bitch?” The man was scared, but wanted to come across as brave, he had been surprised by the dogs but assumed they were just trained by this little girl or by her family, and he didn’t see any other people following the dogs so assumed he was the only other human around other than his prey. He felt he could still get the job done. He just had to get away from these mutts.

            “Yes, I guess they are!” She smiled at him.  “But I have to go now. They say he’s coming and he doesn’t want me to see what they’re going to do to you.” At this statement Gulliver, seemingly of his own accord, ran from the circle of dogs and sat next to Amanda. Just sat there, watching. His eyes alternating between the doomed man and her, and she knew what he was. He was her guardian, and it was his job to see her home.

            His confusion grew. Who did she mean was coming? Her parents, The police? A stranger? His mind was a blur. He had lost a lot of blood and wondered how he was going to explain this to someone at the hospital after this was over. He assumed he would be leaving the trees in one piece.

            Force of habit, and gratitude, caused Amanda to smile at the dogs, but they didn’t respond. This was business. They were protecting a member of their pack from a predator and there was no room for pleasantries. She turned her back and was prepared to leave the man, when she heard the rustle of leaves as something cam walking out of the bushes to the left of the fallen figure. He turned to look, and screamed as he realized what was going on. and what the pack had been waiting for.

            Max walked slowly into the clearing. The 130 pound malamute from Amanda’s street. He wandered in to the circle and glared at the man with raw hatred.

            Max had been waiting for the others to get the predator into position, which he now was. He was weak from loss of blood, but Max could smell his fear, and knew that fear sometimes gave strength. He glanced briefly in the direction of Amanda who had stopped once the scene had changed.

            “Go”

            Amanda heard the command as plain as day, although she would bet that the man had only heard growling from the big dog. She obeyed and walked out of the trees. Within seconds after she was out of the treeline she heard the man begin to scream, first in defiance, along with the sounds of a struggle, then in fear and pain. His screams rose as the sound of growling and tearing flesh faded behind her. She began to run.

            She knew what the growling meant, what they were saying, and wished the man would hear it for what it was, rather than growling animal noises. She could hear them all saying it, but she could hear Max above them all, repeating one word.

           

            “Bad.”

******

 

            Amanda didn’t mention what had happened to her to anyone. Max had asked her not to. She didn’t hear about the body of a man being discovered near her school, and she never asked what happened to the body. That would have been impolite.

            She thanked all the dogs over the next few days as she walked around the neighborhood, but none seemed inclined to discuss it. The recurring sentiment was: “It was business”.

            So now she is playing in her front yard with some other kids from school. In a small corner of the yard is Gulliver. Other kids see him and want to play with him, but he warns them off with a growl. They don’t understand that this is business. He is watching everything the kids do, and is especially watching Amanda.

 

Watching very closely.

 

 

End