Tanya looked down at the troll. Karen had one cuff of his baggy trousers. Heather had the other. They pulled, and the pants shot down his pale, skinny legs.
“Oooeee,” Cowboy said. “This ol’ boy, he’s hung like a mule.”
“Sure puts you to shame,” Liz remarked.
“My ass ’n your face, bitch.”
“Shut up, you two,” Nate said. “Come on, let’s get him up.”
The naked troll, stretched by hands pulling his wrists and ankles, was raised off the boards. He twisted and jerked. He whimpered. He flung his head from side to side. “Lemme be!” he cried. “Lemme be!”
Tanya spread out his coat. Holding her breath, she tossed his shoes and clothing onto it. His shirt and pants felt moist, slick in some places, scabby in others. She gagged once, but went on with her task and wrapped the coat around his other garments. She picked it up. Holding it off to the side, she followed the struggling, spread-eagled troll as he was carried to a lamppost.
Its light—all the lights of Funland—had been extinguished an hour after closing time.
Cowboy slipped a coil of rope off his shoulder. He kept one end. He hurled the rest upward. The coil unwound, rising, and dropped over the wrought-iron arm of the lamppost. The hangman’s noose came down. He grabbed it.
“No!” the troll cried as Cowboy dangled the noose over his face. “Blease! I din do nuffin!”
“He din do nuffin,” Liz mimicked.
“Let’s string him up,” Samson said.
“Hang him high,” added Karen.
“No!” His head flew from side to side, but Cowboy got the noose around it.
“Gonna stretch your neck,” Cowboy said, leaning over him. “Gonna watch you do the air-jig.”
“Let’s stop wasting time and do it,” Tanya said. Dropping the bundle of clothes, she grabbed the loose end of the rope and pulled the slack out. She strained backward, tugging. The troll squealed. The group let go of him. Tanya saw his legs drop. He swung down, his rump off the boardwalk, his feet pedaling as he tried to get them under him. His sudden weight yanked the rope. Inches of it scorched Tanya’s hands. Then Samson and Heather and Cowboy joined in.
“Okay, okay,” Nate called.
They stopped pulling. “Hold on,” Tanya said. She stepped away, leaving the other three to keep the rope anchored.
The naked troll danced on tiptoes, clutching the noose at his throat.
Tanya walked over to him.
“You want to die?” she asked him.
He made sobbing, whining noises. A string of snot hung off his chin, swaying.
“You’re disgusting,” Tanya said. “You’re scum. You’re a stinking pile of excrement.”
“That means shit,” Liz informed him.
“We don’t want your kind creeping around, messing with us. You got no business here. We’re sick of it. Do you understand?”
He blatted like a terrified baby.
“Hoist him!” Tanya yelled.
The troll went up, clawing at the noose, back arched, legs flying as if he wanted to sprint on the wind.
“That’s enough,” Nate said.
The troll dropped. His heels bounced off the wood. His rump slapped it. His knees shot up, one of them clipping his chin and knocking his head back. Lying sprawled, he whimpered and tore the noose from his neck.
Nate snatched it from his grip.
Looped it around the troll’s right ankle, slid it tight.
“Pull,” Nate ordered.
The troll’s right leg shot upward.
His body followed.
When his head was a yard above the boardwalk, Cowboy lashed the rope around the base of the post. “That oughta hold the booger,” he announced.
They gathered in front of the troll. He was swinging from side to side, twisting and spinning, pawing at the boardwalk. His loose left leg didn’t seem to know what to do with itself.
“Now, there’s a right pretty sight,” Cowboy said.
“It’d be a lot prettier,” Tanya said, “if we’d left the rope around his neck.” She crouched and glared at the eyes of the dangling troll. “Next time, you motherfucker, we’re gonna kill you dead! Understand? So you better get the hell away from here as soon as you’re down.”
“Miles away,” Nate added.
With a giggle, Heather lunged in, slapped her hands against the troll’s hip, and shoved, sending him high as if he were a kid on a playground swing.
Tanya toed the bundle of clothes toward him. With a small canister of lighter fluid from her handbag, she squirted the coat. She struck a match, cupped its flame from the wind, and touched it to the soaked cloth. The bundle erupted into a ball of flapping fire.
Its glow shimmered on the troll’s slimy whiskered face, on his swinging body.