there so many times. Resting my head against the window, I listen to “Tiptoe Through the Tulips with Me” by Tiny Tim, a 1968 nightmare of a song that makes my bones hurt.
It’s featured in plenty of horror movies because it’s scary as shit, like a maudlin clown with a knife. It’s always been Neil’s favorite song. It sets the tone for the afternoon as he winds up a quiet blacktop road toward the parking lot of Our Lady of Mercy cemetery. My father was Catholic, so we have a family burial plot here.
The nicest thing Pamela ever did for Pen was to bury her here beside our dad.
Probably because it was pre-paid so therefore, in her eyes, free.
Neil parks the car, humming the words to the song under his breath as he loads his pistol with a fresh magazine, bobbing his head in time with the music.
This primal sense of survival takes over me as I exhale, sitting in the back of his cop car, fully aware that he could kill me at any moment.
That’s not what he’s here for though, not yet. If I died now then he’d never get to stick it to me, show me he was boss, punish me for all my years of resistance. Nah, it wouldn’t be near as fun. I’m sure he intends on raping me, too.
I swallow back my fear, letting that icy lump crash into my stomach as I let my alpha female side take over.
Fight, Bernie, always.
The boys will come for me. I just need to buy them time. That’s my job right now.
Neil climbs out of the car and then opens my door, gesturing with his gun to indicate that I get out. For a moment, he just studies me, but then his lips curve up into an insidious smile.
“We’re going to play a game together, Bernadette,” he tells me as I lick dried blood from my lip, staring back at him as I wait for the rules of this nightmare. Memories flicker in my mind, but I push them back. Not going there, not right now. The Thing makes a show of checking his gun to ensure that the safety is off. “You remember when we used to play hide ‘n’ seek when you were a kid?”
I do.
And I wish I didn’t.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are …”
Neil used to force Pen and me to play with him, chasing us through the dark as we scrabbled like rats to avoid him. If he found us, it usually wasn’t good. He was always drunk back then, and he’d knock us around a bit, just for fun.
“I’m going to give you a fifteen second head start,” Neil tells me, tapping the butt of his gun against his palm. “But if I find you …” he trails off and then aims his weapon at the angel statue above Penelope’s grave. My eyes widen and my breath quickens, but I can’t do anything but watch as he pulls the trigger and blows off her head. Bits of marble that look like skull fragments explode across the grass as I take off running, weaving between tombstones and around mausoleums.
I need to find somewhere to hide, I think, eyes darting around the cemetery as the sun dips low in the sky and the birds call out their final songs from the trees around us. The Thing is laughing, the sound echoing across the freshly-mowed grass as he counts down from fifteen.
“Twelve,” he continues, his voice a maniac growl. He’s planned this all perfectly, lying in wait on his belly and watching with eyes above the swampy water for us to venture too close to the watering hole. See, Neil isn’t about showy moves like dumping a kids’ corpse in a trunk. He just crawls around on curved claws until an opportunity arises.
Just like it has today.
And this, this is why he’s always been so goddamn dangerous.
“Eleven.”
I keep running, being careful not to trip. I need every second I can get to put space between me and him. But the issue with this graveyard is that it’s carved from the woods and surrounded by a cast-iron fence that’d be very difficult to climb in handcuffs.
I have to find a way to get the jump on Neil, I realize as his countdown ends, and I swing behind a statue of the archangel Michael. He’s the defender of justice, right? Seems a fitting place to stand as I struggle to control my breathing, to stay