Tag Archives: HooseCow Killer

Kangaroo Court

Posted on October 3, 2011 | 1 Comment

Kangaroo Court

When Taylor Nickles summarized the murderous activities of “Bud” Abbott to his baseball team, he was so calm Hank almost forgot they were talking about a real life murderer in their midst. If it wasn’t for the nightmarish image of “Bud” Abbott pulling off the head of the Babe Mooth costume, and of the anguished squeal that came from his mouth at that time, Hank wondered if he could convince himself everything was normal for the baseball team. Things were far from normal. As soon as Hank remembered the look on “Bud’s” face, he remembered Taylor had also ordered “Bud” Abbott to be locked up in a pen in his barn, and to be guarded by a ballplayer armed with a shotgun and pepper spray.

“So we’re going to call the cops, right?” Alphonso Ruiz said. He was sitting, with the rest of the remaining HooseCows, on a hay bale. They were in a mostly empty barn on Taylor Nickles; property. The rest of the HooseCows sat with him, in a full circle: Danny Marks, Drew Harrold, Jean Gierau, Tommy O’Leary, Rick Newton, Sean Martin, Alan Stone, John Todd, Mickey Danz, and Hank James. Fred Duchess was the guard assigned to “Bud” Abbott and was not in the circle. Seth Speaker, a local baseball fanatic who published a fanzine and had his own baseball-related Internet bulletin board, was also invited. Seth looked nervous, and Hank didn’t think he belonged in this meeting. When he asked Taylor Nickles about Seth’s presence before the meeting, Taylor simply responded: “Somebody has to write down what we do this season.”

Rather than answering Alphonso, Taylor Nickles’ pointed to a garbage bag in the center of the circle of hay bales. In it were all of the made-up teddy bears “Bud” Abbott had made for his victims. Hank assumed it was one bear per girl he had murdered, because he was trying to finish one when Taylor, Hank, and John Todd had found him. Hank had been asked to collect the bears from “Bud’s” baseball host family’s home. When he got back to Taylor’s house, he found Hank and John Todd preparing this meeting.

“Some of those girls got killed when he was on our team,” Taylor said. He sounded smug, like a father who had just sat through a bad parent/teacher conference. “Is that something you’d be proud to let someone else clean up for you?”

“This is murder, Taylor,” Rick Newton said. “This isn’t about some cocky ballplayer refusing to run out an infield hit.”

“It’s all about being a part of this team,” Taylor said.

It grew silent inside the barn. Outside, Hank heard farming implements starting up, and couldn’t believe how loud they sounded. Rick half stood up, like he was considering walking out. Alphonso just leaned back and shook his head. Drew Harrold pointed to the bale underneath Rick and told him to sit down. John Todd looked like he was going to be sick.

“We handle our business in house,” Taylor said. His voice was thick with the shame he was trying to spit into his players’ hearts. “We been playing well, but that’s not all we gotta do to be a real team. If you’re not a part of this team before you’re a part of anything else, you’re not anything worthwhile. Not to me.

“And just give up on your dreams of getting into the bigs,” Taylor continued. “You don’t think they have meetings like this up there all the time, about stuff they didn’t call the cops on because they were man enough to handle it in-house? Do you sons of bitches even know about Ty Cobb or Mickey Mantle or Marty Bergen?”

The baseball players were silent. Hank James wasn’t convinced, but many of the other players were starting to come around to Taylor’s way of thinking. Drew Harrold looked angrier than anyone else, and Hank suspected that was because he didn’t really know about the baseball players Taylor had mentioned. Mickey Danz, who had quit talking to Hank, had no facial expression at all.

“What you going to do? Hang ‘em in the front lawn? Get a firing squad going?” Rick Newton asked.

“Shut. Up.” Drew Harrold told Rick.

“The cops will be looking for him,” Hank said.

“We took care of that. We drove his car down to the Cedar Rapids airport and left in the parking lot, with the Babe Mooth costume in the trunk,” Taylor explained. “It’ll keep them busy. They’ll assume he got away somehow. So we can handle this however we need to.”

Silence. Taylor Nickles’ words truly set in.

“We’re really talking about executing someone,” Alphonso said.

Taylor pointed to the bag filled with teddy bears.

“Is this really someone you don’t want to bring justice to?” Taylor asked.

“I don’t want to murder anyone,” Rick said.

“We can make it more fair than that,” Taylor said. When he smiled, Hank knew Taylor had already decided how this was going to work. He was just setting it up so all the cogs and gears worked the way he wanted them to. The manager looked to his watch, and Hank glanced at his watch as well. It was two minutes to midnight. From the corner of his eye, he could see a small, ghostly face peering in to watch the proceedings. He tried to look directly at the ghostly child, but whenever he did, it disappeared. He did notice Mickey Danz was deliberately avoiding looking in that direction.

“In one minutes, Fred is going to let let “Bud” Abbott free, to run into the cornfield. If you want to wait for the police to handle our problems for us, just let him go,” Taylor said. Everyone tensed on their hay bale. “If you’re not okay with that, you can do the right thing. I borrowed and bought a few more combine harvesters and lined them up outside. It was hard to get nine together this time of year, but I did it. With nine out there at once, combing the fields, someone will hit him and finish off his miserable life pretty quickly. The less of you go out, the larger the chances that he gets away. So I guess it depends on what sounds fair to you. Some of you have daughters, right?”

Outside, a gunshot. Hank assumed it was Fred letting everyone know he had set “Bud” free. Drew Harrold and Tommy O’Leary ran out of the barn first, but everyone else came after them. As Taylor had promised, there were nine combine tractors waiting. Their claw-like tines and whirring metal parts were alive and running. In the tall green corn, Hank could glimpse moving leaves and hear “Bud” panting in fear and exertion. He was never in the best of shape. For a moment, everything stayed like that, until it was clear “Bud” could get away.

Tommy and Drew led the charge again, each getting into a combine nearest where they had last seen “Bud” run into the corn. Then, Fred Duchess and John Todd climbed into the cabs of combines, John Todd still looking far too pale. The rest of the team members stood and kicked at the gravel beneath their feet. Fred Newton was swearing to himself.

“The girl that man just killed wasn’t even out of high school. Do what you’ll be proud of,” Taylor Nickles said.

Danny Marks and Sean Martin got into combines. Hank couldn’t believe they were all going in, or that they all knew how to operate the machinery. Then, he remembered how much Taylor had used work on his farm as part of his coaching. Rick Newton kept shaking his head and cursing out no one in particular, but Alphonso Ruiz was slowly crawling into the cab of one of the giant machines. Hank remembered Alphonso had two daughters.

Drew Harrold was cheering himself on, but other than that and the noise of the machines. Hank could  not tell what was going on in the field. He had seen combines operate before, having grown up in the Midwest. He knew the front of the machines was all twisting metal and sharp, cutting implements. He didn’t know if “Bud” was going to bleed out or be crushed and mangled, but he knew “Bud” was about to die badly.

Alan Stone moved to stand next to Hank James, as did Rick Newton.  Jean Gierau and Mickey Danz joined them, as did Seth Speaker. They were the ones who refused to murder the murderer. Taylor Nickles watched the big tractors rush across the field, occassionally saying things like, “Do what’s right, boys.”

“I’m sorry,” Mickey Danz said.

“He really got them to do this,” Fred said.

“When do you honestly think you’re going to be able to tell this story?” Alan asked a shaky Seth Speaker. “Who could you ever tell?”

“He said someday people would want to know,” Seth said, shrugging. His eyes were lost in the mayhem of the night. “Someday, I guess.”

“What are you sorry for?” Hank asked Mickey.

“I was the one who drove his car down to Cedar Rapids. I didn’t know I was covering up this,” Mickey said, leaving the question of what he thought he was covering up unanswered. He looked for the ghostly children, but they had finally abandoned him completely. Mickey’s face grew cold and dead as this sunk in.

From the field, there was a loud and wet scream. Moments later, the other combines were coming back to the barn. Hank hoped it was a quick death, and that he would not have to hear “Bud” Abbott screaming ever again. Except in the nightmares that would come for him soon.

(NEXT)

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Babe Mooth

Posted on September 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Babe Mooth

When “Bud” Abbott finally struck again, it was crowded and boring in the HooseCows office. Hank James was glad when Taylor Nickles had a phone call to answer. The office comfortably seated two people, but ever since “Bud” Abbott had disappeared, Taylor had insisted on having John Todd in the office, too.

Taylor slammed down the phone, stopped, and glared at the wall. Again, Hank was glad. It had been a tense and bland day, because their series with the Mason City Ugly Birds was canceled. In fact, all future series with the Ugly Birds were canceled because the team had quit playing, due to the death of player (and family member) Chuck Swede in an on-field promotional event involving dynamite.

No one had told the HooseCows this, though. They had driven to the ballpark to find it mostly empty, with a few confused fans sitting in the stands and looking at their watches. In a scene that would have been funny if it had happened to anyone else, Hank James and the rest of the team sat on the bus as it pulled up to manager Dom Swede’s house and Taylor got out and knocked on his front door. They watched as the door opened only far enough for Dom to stick his finger out and point it threateningly in Taylor’s face a half dozen times. Then, the door was slammed shut, Taylor got back on the bus, and they went back home without any games to play. The only one who was relieved was Sean Martin, who had been pressed into being the catcher in “Bud” Abbott’s presence, and was not succeeding in this role.

“I think ‘Bud’ went and got that girl he was stalking at our home games,” Taylor said, his jaw barely opening to spit the words out. “That was Janesville High School’s principal. They want to know why we authorized our mascot to come visit their volleyball practice.”

From the way Hank could see rage in Taylor’s eyes, he knew the man had never called the authorities about “Bud” or the bodies Hank and Mickey had found outside of Denver, Iowa. The bodies the authorities had not found on their own, as of yet.

“The guy who does Babe Mooth is at his family’s cabin in Minnesota this week,” Hank said.

“You know who’s in that costume,” Taylor rasped. He leaned forward. “Think about it.”

They all three rode out to Janesville in Taylor’s truck, with Hank stuck uncomfortably in the middle seat. Highway 218 was mercifully free of law-enforcement, and they weren’t pulled over for speeding. The highway was made for speeding, as long as you could switch between the left and right lanes to avoid aging farmers who insisted on driving one mile under the speed limit in the fast lane. Hank looked out the window at the tall corn, the small ponds, the abandoned barns, and the isolated bunches of trees. If someone created a landscape for disposing of bodies, they’d design Iowa.

Taylor turned the car left, passed a gas station, and almost slowed to a stop in front of the small high school. Hank grabbed the  manager’s shoulder and pointed down the street. There was an old iron bridge ahead in the road. It had been barricaded off and was clearly far from safe. Despite it’s proximity to the school, the trees and dip down to the river made it a convenient and secluded place for someone to take a potential victim.

“We found the last girl by water,” Hank said. “He’s gotta be down there.”

He didn’t tell Taylor the other reason he knew the catcher had taken his prey by the water. He didn’t tell Taylor he had seen a small, ghostly shimmer that just barely formed the shape of a small boy pointing in that direction. The ghosts face was turned down, and by that, Hank knew the girl was already dead.

Taylor parked the truck and they scrambled out of the vehicle and moved toward a small footpath to the left side of the bridge. The crows were screaming, and the path was steep. They were halfway down when they first saw the black-and-white clothes of Babe Mooth, now covered in clotting red blood. Behind Hank, John Todd slid on the path and said, simply: “No.” Hank looked behind him and blocked Todd’s progress.

“You can’t help her now,” Hank said, trying to find some sort of half-smile that might help, and failing. “You should go back up the hill. Seeing this is going to hurt you.”

Hank reached out a hand, and John Todd swatted it away and exhaled loudly through his nostrils. Hank shrugged, because it was all he could do, and they continued down the path to meet Taylor, who had already reached the bottom. They stood with their sneakers getting muddy and forced their eyes to look at the scene before them.

It was easy to guess what had happened. Dressed in the mascot’s costume, “Bud” had been able to walk right into the school and get attention from a group of high school girls, who assumed this had all been approved by the adults in their lives. Somehow, he must have got the girl outside. Maybe he offered her something. Then he overpowered her, took her down to the river, and then it all ended in this sad image Hank would never be able to forget.

“Bud” Abbott was still in the Babe Mooth costume, and he was soaked in blood and clumps of hair. Hank could hear his muffled cries through the mascot’s cow-shaped head. The dead girl in front of him was dressed in her volleyball uniform, and Hank couldn’t bear to notice more about her than that. In one of the costumed killers paws was the teddy bear “Bud” Abbott had been keeping in his locker. In his other paw was a tube of lipstick. “Bud” had not been able to apply the lipstick correctly with his costume on, and it was smeared all over the face of the teddy bear. “Bud” kept rocking back and forth.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Taylor told Hank, without even looking at him. John Todd had wandered off into the bushes. From the sounds Hank heard, it was clear the pitcher was trying not to vomit. “But we still don’t call the cops. This needs to be handled in-house, by the team. This kind of thing especially.”

From the tone in Taylor’s voice, Hank almost started to feel sorry for “Bud.”

(NEXT)

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Teddy Bears

Posted on September 19, 2011 | 1 Comment

Teddy Bears

Before they left the clubhouse and got into John Todd’s truck, Todd made Hank stop to look at “Bud” Abbott’s locker. It looked as it always had, except that the lucky teddy bear Abbott touched before every game was not on the top shelf. “Bud” would touch it before every game, but he would never answer any questions about it.

“That’s not good,” Todd said. He motioned for Hank to follow him out to the parking lot, and from there they got into the truck and began driving to the house where “Bud” Abbott was staying with a host family. It hadn’t really sunk in, until they were alone in the truck, that Hank was riding with a man he was sure had murdered “Bunk” Edwards.

“Forget about the ‘Bunk’ thing,” Todd said. It couldn’t really be considered mind reading, Hank thought, when the contents of his mind were so obvious. “We’ll talk about that later, when it’s time. You might even understand it. This is about ‘Bud,’ and the girls he’s killed. And the girl he’s going to kill if we don’t stop him today.”

“You’re sure?” Hank asked.

“Cops came around to ask him questions, and they talked to Taylor Nickles as well. They were asking about Audrey Sheldon, the elementary school teacher who got kidnapped last year. Apparently, someone at the All-Star game recognized him as the guy who took Audrey. They didn’t get to it right away because of everything that went on with Chuck Swede getting blown up after the game. And if you put a picture of Audrey next to a picture of Leigh Palmer, it’s pretty close. I know they’re thinking he got her, too. Maybe more.”

“He was one of the few of us who didn’t have a criminal record,” Hank thought out loud.

“He also wasn’t that good,” Todd said. “He never made it far in the minors or the other independent leagues. We talked to this guy, Seth, who runs a BBS where people can log on and talk baseball, and he said some guys in Arizona were telling him the other players on ‘Bud’s’ team were instructed to never let him walk out of the clubhouse alone when there were still girls in the stadium.” Hank nodded, recognizing Seth as one of the local baseball experts Ron Leeman had mentioned to him.

They were parking in front of an old, white home in East Waterloo. There was a giant, chicken-wired garden out back and Christmas decorations still on display in front. Small children ran into and out of the house.

“You here to see ‘Bud?’” a boy of about seven asked them.

“Is he home?” Hank asked. The kid had come up to him. John Todd was peering around like he had just gotten out of basic training. Looking at him, Hank couldn’t believe he had been a music loving, smiling, laid back ballplayer when he first joined the team. Taylor Nickles had really molded the man.

“No, he’s out with a lady,” the boy said. Then, more seriously. “Don’t go touching his teddy bears. He says that every time he goes.” The boy paused and dropped his eyes to the grass at Hank’s feet. “He knows if you’ve been in there, too.”

Todd went into the house, and Hank followed him. They nodded at the mother of the children, and host parent to ‘Bud,” as she talked on her cordless phone. Following the boy’s directions, they went downstairs and walked past a rec room filled with a giant big-screen television and torn leather coach. ‘Bud’s’ room was small, and located next to a small half bathroom. There were no pictures or mementos in the room; all the two ballplayers could see was a small bed with a line of 5 teddy bears on it.

The bears were all facing the wall, as if they had done something bad and needed to be punished. John Todd and Hank James both looked over their shoulders and, seeing as they were alone, moved closer to the teddy bears. The basement room was hot, and Hank felt a bead of sweat slide down the side of his nose and slowly drip down. Outside, they could hear a neighbor working a lawnmower up and down their lawn.

The stillness was interrupted by the sound of something clattering against the pile of toys heaped beside the sofa. The ballplayers turned, each one tensely forming their hands into fists. Behind them, the little boy from outside held a small plastic action figure — something bright yellow with a helmet and tall white boots — that he had fished from the pile.

“Don’t touch his teddy bears,” the boy said. “He said don’t touch them.”

“Okay,” Hank lied. Todd had not yet unclenched his fists.

The boy did not leave, so Todd shut the door. The men turned back to the bed, and the teddy bears. John Todd walked forward and nodded to Hank. Hank nodded back, and Todd touched the first teddy bear. Hank looked around nervously. Outside, the lawnmower had stopped.

Todd turned the teddy bear around and both men were facing what was almost a completely normal teddy bear. “Bud” had altered it only slightly. He had put make-up on the bear’s face. He had caked the lipstick and eye shadow on thickly, as if he wanted to make sure the whole world could notice. In the bear’s ears were earrings, and around its neck was a necklace.

With more urgency, Todd turned around the other four bears. Each had been made up by someone who clearly did not know the first thing about applying makeup. Hank had never applied makeup himself, but he had been married for enough years to have a better idea of how it was done. There was a new noise outside, but it didn’t sound like the lawnmower. To Hank, it sounded like the disjointed, terrifying music of the Rochester pipe organist.

“Which one do you think was Audrey Sheldon’s color?” Todd asked. “Or Leigh Palmer’s. And where’ s he taking the other bear to right now?”

Hank felt his face grown numb as he remembered the girls who had seen someone eyeing them from the bushes outside a HooseCows game. He had an idea of where “Bud” Abbott might be going, but he didn’t know if they’d be able to find the girl in time.

(NEXT)

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Strike

Posted on September 12, 2011 | 1 Comment

Strike

In spite of the open murder investigations, the Pride of the Working Class Heartland League was still open for business, and the majors were not. It happened late on Thursday, August 11th, right after the HooseCows finished off their last series with the Mankato Man Pigs. The Man Pigs had sported black patches in honor of the deceased Alan Carpenter. Afterward, all of the HooseCows gathered on Taylor Nickle’s farm. They watched cable — one of the few modern conveniences Taylor allowed on his farm — and cheered when it was announced the majors were going on strike. Players slapped each other on the back, and Hank even caught himself grinning a little. He felt bad for Belle, Thomas, the Montreal Expos, and other major leaguers that were getting a raw deal, but he needed something that made him happy.

Taylor Nickles was definitely not grinning. Hank had heard the manager say the Ugly Birds wanted to leave the league after the tragic death of family member and team member Chuck Swede. Taylor had also said they weren’t making nearly as much profit as the money guys in Rochester had hoped for. Things had gone better for the HooseCows, who had a town desperate to embrace baseball after losing their minor league team and a gimmick that sold tickets and merchandise. A popular item at the gift shop was a black and white, convict style ball cap with “HooseCows” written across the front like the name of a prison.

The manager moved out of his comfortable chair (which no ballplayer dared sit in once he left) and stood on out on the porch, where a few of the players were spraying each other with beer and cheering. Taylor probably knew, like Hank did, there was still a lot left to consider. Would they bring in replacement players? What would happen in the minors? How many players would go abroad, to play in countries like Japan? The odds of hitting the bigs were better today, but they might not be as good as what the younger guys thought.

John Todd stood, quietly, and went into the kitchen. He walked around Taylor’s old farmhouse like he owned the place. When the season had begun, Todd had been a smirking, cocky reliever with something to prove. Now, he was silent most of the time, and he was always lurking in the shadows and watching. Hank had already caught him taking evidence away from one murder scene, and he hadn’t ruled out his involvement in the bludgeoning deaths of two more HooseCows.

That crime would have been pinned on Chuck Swede, but he had been blown to bits in a publicity stunt gone bad. Thousands of people had watched, and Hank didn’t have to ask to know the league was getting sued. Hank had heard, from friends on the Rochester team, that the team was now being managed by Chuck’s teammate/brother George Swede because Chuck’s father/manager Dom Swede wouldn’t leave the Des Moines ballpark where his son exploded. Supposedly he got there at dawn every morning to make sure there were no small bits of his boy still around that could disturb some poor kid. At least, that’s how he explained it when they let him in. Hank’s Rochester source had also heard the man didn’t cry or talk to anyone. He just walked up and down the bleachers looking for parts of the runt child he had neglected in life.

Hank nodded to Alphonso Ruiz and Jean Gierau, who had been watching television with him, and went upstairs to use the bathroom. There was one on the lower floor, but he was pretty sure “Bud” Abbott had used it last. This meant it was not fit for human beings for at least twenty minutes. “Bud” Abbott was their only catcher now, and his personal hygiene was so poor you could see the other players wince when he walked out to the mound. Hank nodded to Mickey, who was staring at the window into the corn. Hank had a feeling Mickey was seeing the ghosts out in the cornfield, and that Mickey was scared they were angry with him again.

Having only one one catcher was just one way the HooseCows were trying to get by with less. After “Bunk” Edwards died, Taylor had every player show up early to practice pitching. Since most ballplayers started out pitching in high school, it wasn’t entirely ridiculous. Pitchers were also practicing fielding. Some of the support staff had been bitching about not getting paid.

There were three bedrooms in Taylor’s upstairs, and all of them were nearly empty. Hank knew this house had been in his family for at least a hundred years (there was a plaque outside to prove it), but there were no antiques or mementos on display in the room. Each room just had one bed, made to pass military inspection. Hank knew Taylor had no children of his own, and he realized this is what a house looks like when a family’s time has come and gone. Hank reached the bathroom and did what he came to do, admiring the old claw-footed tub and faucet fixtures that came straight from the 1950s. When he opened the door, Taylor was standing in front of him.

“I always forget what it’s like to work with the real young guys,” Taylor lamented.

Hank nodded. He hadn’t told Taylor about the dead bodies they’d found outside of Denver, IA. The cops hadn’t found them either, so maybe he could continue stalling. His ears were still ringing lightly, because he had been too close to the explosion at the All-Star game. Sometimes, the high pitched wailing in Hank’s ears reminded him too much of the bizarre music he had heard from the Rochester ballpark organist he had accidentally killed with a foul ball. He heard that music in his nightmares, too.

“I think John Todd is someone to watch. You know. About what we were talking about,” Hank said. He had wondered if the manager had been concerned about his relief pitcher, too. Since Taylor had first told him to watch certain players as potential murderers, John Todd was the player he kept coming back to.

“Nah,” Taylor said, far too quickly for Hank’s comfort. “Todd’s fine. He stays out here most of the time now, helping me out with the farm. I got him watching the team, too.”

“I saw him take something from “Bunk’s” pocket before they came to get the body,” Hank told the manager. He was very aware the manager was standing between him and leaving the bathroom, and he was staring to feel like he wanted out of the room in the worst way.

“Just hiding something illegal to protect “Bunk’s” family,” Taylor said. His smile barely moved his lips, but it set his eyes on fire. “He told me you saw that, and that you’d be worried.”

“He told you that?” Hank asked.

“Of course,” Taylor said, and then he smiled again. “Who do you think I asked to watch you?”

(NEXT)

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Riding Pine

Posted on September 5, 2011 | 3 Comments

Riding Pine

For Ray Bradbury

“This wasn’t really put together well,” Alphonso Ruiz told Hank James. The All-Star games was over, if you could even call it an All-Star game. The league had just combined the HooseCows with the Radiation (the one team the league felt would not try to brawl with the ‘Cows) and then combined the Man-Pigs and the Ugly Birds. The managers for the teams picked the best line-up they could and they played another game.

The only difference was this game was being played in Des Moines, and it was being played in a carnival environment. To Hank, it seemed like the league had decided  no one would care about this brand of baseball anyway, and they had to pack the day with activities to distract from the game. There had been local bands singing before the game, and a marching band for the Star-Spangled banner. Beer was cheaper than water. He had even heard someone say there was a promotion where each section had been assigned a player, and if your player got a home run, hot dogs were free for fifteen minutes. He had a feeling some of those hot dogs had found themselves thrown at the outfielders before the day was done. Hank shook his head. This was the part of the minors he was most glad to leave behind.

The Mason City Ugly Birds were almost all on the field, now that the game was officially over. The Ugly Birds were a big part of the reason this even had not felt professionally run. The Swede family members on the team had insisted on playing the whole game, because in the mind of the Ugly Birds this event was about getting drunk and seeing who could slap his teammates in the crotch the most. Even Chuck Swede had gotten in on the action. The smallest member of the Swede family was laughing loudly with his family. No one would ever know Hank and Mickey Danz had recently calmed Chuck down after he called them from a greasy spoon diner. Just days earlier Chuck walked away from waking up in a room with two dead ballplayers and his own ball bat, which was covered in blood, and now he just as giddy as the next Ugly Bird.

Hank spit some sunflower seeds and grimaced. He knew there would be more to come from the murders of two former HooseCows. Mickey thought it was a ghoulish revenge on the part of the Ugly Birds, for what Hank had done to their pitcher in a game. Hank still thought it was the same person who had murdered the girl outside of the ballpark. They didn’t spend long arguing the point, and instead quickly buried the bat out in the cornfield behind the house and left the building, careful to dust off any fingerprints. They both agreed that Chuck probably had not done it, and when it came down to it, hiding from the what scared them seemed what they were comfortable doing.

“Did you see the Man Pigs pitcher freak out and point to his wedding ring when that woman ran out on the mound and kissed him?” Alphonso Ruiz chuckled.

“I don’t think he knew about the whole “Kissing Bandit” thing,” Hank said. “I guess they couldn’t afford to bring in the official Kissing Bandit.” The girl who had run out to kiss the opposing team’s pitcher, to the tune of “Love Shack,” had smiled sweetly as she sauntered onto the field, but her body filled out the outfit they had dressed her in like there was nothing at all sweet on her mind. No wonder the pitcher made sure to mention he had a wife; she was probably in the audience.

“Did you see the kid in the stands staring at ‘Bud’ Abbott?” Hank said to Alphonso. “Looked like he was going to pass out or have a fit when he saw ‘Bud’.”

Volunteer players from both sides were helping the final piece of entertainment set up on the field. Mickey Danz was sitting lifelessly on the bench behind Hank. He had probably had the worst day of all. He started the game but, after only two batters, he refused to pitch to the third batter. When Manager Taylor Nickles finally brought him out of the game, Hank could hear Mickey chanting “I can’t stop the game. I can’t stop the game.”

Hank knew Mickey had been seeing more of the dead children since that night at the abandoned farmhouse. Hank wanted to help him, but he was spending most of his free time with the cordless phone in his lap, wondering if he should call the cops anonymously or just turn himself in for his involvement. He had never been this far past the light gray side of legal living. Mickey would stop in periodically to inform Hank the ghosts had told him they were doing it all wrong. It didn’t help anything.

Chuck was supposed to have gone up to Hank’s house in Minnesota to relax for a while, which is why Hank and Mickey were extremely surprised to see him playing today. They met up with him during his batting practice (being careful to stay in the stands, away from the Ugly Birds thugs who were eying them). Chuck smiled like he hadn’t just been framed for a double-murder and said his family had something special planned for him during this game. After that, he smiled and mouthed, “I’m leaving for your house right after the game.”

“Just hang in there,” Hank told Alphonso, patting him on the shoulder. The final attraction of the night was almost completely assembled. “The Majors are going to go on strike, and that means there’ll be some openings. It can only help us, right?”

Alphonso nodded, and Hank heard the remaining crowd start to cheer. Hank realized he was mostly talking to himself about getting up to the majors. He knew he was hitting the ball well enough to make it somewhere, and he was ready for another shot. He had been calling his ex-wife to talk with her about it, but so far, he hadn’t been able to get in touch with her.

Hank’s thoughts were interrupted by what he thought he heard on the field.

“Did someone say ‘dynamite?’” Hank asked Alphonso.

“Dynamite chair. Saw one of these things when I was playing down in Florida once. Weirdest thing. Guy sits in that chair, all that dynamite goes off, and somehow it works just right that he doesn’t get hurt at all.”

Hank looked out to see a man wearing a shiny silver outfit, complete with motorcycle helmet, visually inspecting an old wooden chair and large amounts of dynamite strapped to it. A couple of Swedes were out watching him and jostling each other, including Chuck Swede.

“That guy makes his living doing that,” Alphonso said. “Makes what we do seem grown-up.”

Hank smiled and went to get more sunflower seeds. As he did, he saw the look on Mickey’s face. When Mickey had come off of the mound, Taylor had taken him to the training room. When Mickey had come back out, he was much calmer. Taylor had probably sedated him. Now, however, he could see a look of panic trying to force itself through the medicinal stupor. Mickey’s eyes were red and bulging, and his jaw was wide opening and trying to work out some words of warning.

Hank turned back to the field to see Chuck Swede’s family members gently guiding him to the chair. They were smiling and messing with his hair, and Chuck was beaming like it was the proudest day of his life. The crowd was cheering. Even the baseball players, in both dugouts, were cheering. Chuck sat in the chair and put on a helmet someone had handed him. The crowd started counting backwards from “10.”

Hank heard Mickey collapse on the bench behind him. The pitcher was drooling and kicking his legs on the floor. The trainer was running over to see him, but Hank knew it was because the ghosts were close now, and they were angry enough to scare Mickey into trying to work through his sedation. How big of a dose had Mickey gotten?

All of this served to delay Hank, who didn’t get out of the dugout until the crowd chanted “4.” Hank stood at the top of the dugout and waved his arms back and forth, screaming “no.” No one heard him. Those who saw Hank thought it was just part of the act. In the stands, Hank could just glimpse the ghosts of the dead, young ballplayers. They had turned away from the field, their heads tilted as if they were disgusted. On his big chair surrounded by dynamite, Chuck saw Hank and gave him a “thumb’s up” sign.

Then, the crowd reached zero.

(NEXT)

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Now Batting, Number 22.

Posted on August 29, 2011 | 1 Comment

Now Batting, Number 22

“You think he wants to get traded to the HooseCows?” Mickey Danz asked Hank James as he pulled his car onto the grass at the side of the gravel road. Both men looked up to the farm and the large white farmhouse, both abandoned years ago. Hank stepped out of his car and noticed signs of partying high schoolers — cigarette butts and crushed beer cans.

“I don’t even think we can trade people in this league,” Hank told Mickey. “Are you ready to go in there?”

“No,” Mickey said, looking at the house. “But we probably ought to.”

About an hour before they arrived at this house, Mason City Ugly Birds’ back-up catcher Chuck Swede had called Hank James. He started by saying, “I didn’t know who else to call,” and he hadn’t finished the sentence before Hank noticed the man was hysterical, and had been crying heavily before he picked up the payphone. “I’m at a restaurant called the Weather Vane in Denver, Iowa, but . . . The thing you need to see is just east of town. You take a left at the first gravel road and just head straight. It’s on your right.”

“What is it?” Hank asked.

“Just pick me up after and we’ll talk. I’m sitting here drinking coffee by myself. But I did not do it, okay.”

And now Mickey and Hank were walking up the gravel road. Hank did not want to be there, peering into the overgrown weeds and shadowy windows for attackers. He had no ties to Chuck Swede, the runt of the Swede litter. He could just as easily have called the police. He had thought about doing just that, but in the end, he knew he was too involved in all of the insanity of this summer to leave it to someone else. His only concession to safety was bringing skinny Mickey Danz along with him, to help him spot the presence of more otherworldly evils.

“We’re probably going to get jumped by the rest of the team. After all, you did assault his brother on the field.”

“I think Chuck would’ve assaulted his brother on the field, if he thought he could get away with it. You see the way they pick on him?”

Mickey nodded. Then, when they were closer to the abandoned farmhouse, he added, “Still, we’re probably going to get the shit kicked out of us when we get there.”

“If you really thought that, you wouldn’t have come,” Hank said. Mickey just shrugged.

They began to move more slowly as they stepped onto the boards of the farmhouse’s porch. They were warped and rotted enough that Hank was pretty sure the family had quit taking care of it long before they abandoned it. The white paint on the house itself was flaking away, and the beer cans were now collected in little piles at the corners of the porch.

The first room the men entered had been the kitchen. From the smell of things, one of the high school aged partiers had relieved their bowels in the sink. Hank saw at least two mice skitter across loose, cheaply-made linoleum when he and Mickey made it through the doorway, and he could see the furry brush of a dead squirrel’s tale peeking out from under a cabinet.

“You’re going to get me severely beaten,” Mickey said. Somehow, the pitcher was still walking ahead of him, despite all of his fearful protests. Hank moved to avoid bumping into the doorless refrigerator, which was now home to various nests of insects.

Mickey turned on the flashlight and stopped dead in his tracks. Hank bumped into him and then turned and screamed. The scream was without words or sense, and he was barely able to stop it. He steadied himself on the door frame and wondered how Mickey had managed to keep from yelping in terror.

Mickey’s flashlight fell on two dead HooseCows. “Smitty” Carroll and Roger Bartt were slumped against walls, their wrists and ankles tied with bloody bailing twine. Each man had been beaten severely with a baseball bat; Hank had to force himself to scan their ruined features several times before he was sure it was them. In the middle of the room, where the blood had pooled the deepest, was a broken and splintered baseball bat. The handle of the bat was facing them, and Hank saw the number “22″ written at the base of the handle.

22 was Chuck Swede’s number.

(NEXT)

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Sweaty Underbelly

Posted on July 25, 2011 | 2 Comments

Sweaty Underbelly

It was ten AM, and it was already 90 degrees outside. The heat had crept in during the last two games the HooseCows played the Rochester Radiation, and both teams felt that walking out of the sweat and humidity splitting a four game series was quite all right. It was Tuesday, June 28th, and the team didn’t play again until Saturday. Hank was back at the ballpark, which was now deserted. He used his key to get in and prayed no one else was there.

After seeing the message scrawled into infield dirt by the spirits of long-dead children, Hank James had felt like he was half dead himself. He had seen just enough that questioning his own sanity seemed like an option he had passed long ago. He knew he had seen John Todd pocket “Bunk” Edward’s chewing tobacco tin before the cops came in to pronounce the relief pitcher dead. He was even beginning to listen to the other bizarre things Mickey Danz would talk to him about, when they were both in the dugout watching games. Mickey had a long, elaborate theory about baseball gods that was ten times crazier than anything Hank had heard another ballplayer say, but somehow Hank couldn’t stop listening to the pitcher.

The ghosts had told Hank, through their chicken scratches, that John Todd was hiding bodies under one of the sections in the ballpark. Hank assumed it was John Todd, at least. He knew Todd and Drew Harrold had been out late last night, and were moving slowly, made fragile with tequila hangovers. With the heat, he hoped no one else would dare come to the park until after things had calmed down, and that gave him time to search under all of the stands. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for, but he was scared he would find it.

Empty and steaming, the stadium felt like a place where animals went to die, not a place where fans went to cheer. Part of the glamor of baseball at this level was that players did a lot of the grunt work themselves. Looking at the amount of popcorn kernels, french fries and half eaten hot dogs “missed” by players assigned to clean the stands, it was clear they did not take pride in this task. He was able to make it under the seats without hunching over in too uncomfortable of a position, but his hands were always touching dried gum, unknown wet substances, and unknown sticky substances. He wiped these latter two mysteries on his pants, and he could tell the fabric over his upper thighs was already changing colors.

The heat was rising, as well. Still unsure what he thought he was going to find, Hank winced every time fat drops of sweat slid into his eyes. He couldn’t rub them out without getting the foreign fluids in his eyes, and that seemed like a very bad thing. The sun was glaring off of the metal of the bleachers, and it was getting more difficult to see when the glare hit Hank. He was bumping into the support struts of the bleachers more now, feeling like some sort of caged animal desperate to reach out and swat at its surroundings until it was free.

The final frustration literally smacked him in the face. He walked into a cement wall, about six feet high. He staggered backwards, feeling his chin for the cut and the blood that would soon be seeping from it. His chest felt sore, and he hoped it wouldn’t be bruised; that would be too embarrassing in a locker room of younger guys who never stopped joking. Unable to keep his composure, Hank kicked at the wall and then remembered a relief pitcher who had broken a toe doing the same kind of thing. He flexed his foot, and was relieved everything seemed functional.

When he had blinked away the sweat, he noticed the wall he had run into had been constructed very recently. It formed a six foot by six foot by six foot cube. There was a small door in it, and it had both a deadbolt lock and a strong padlock holding it shut. Hank walked closer to the door and took a deep breath. It smelled like the garbage he had been walking through, but there was a heavier, sick smell hiding beneath the usual stinks. Hank looked down and saw a thin line in the dust, and when he used his forearm to brush the sweat from his eyes, he saw a brownish-red line of liquid where the door had opened. Hank did not want to touch the liquid.

Behind him, Hank heard the sound of someone shifting their feet in the dirt and dust. The hot sweat all over his body turned cold in an instant. He realized he was blinded by the glaring sun, trapped in an enclosed area, and unaware of where this other person was. There was nothing he could use as a weapon, and no way of running to escape.

“I can hear you,” Hank said loudly. This time, there were no noises.

“You wanna come here and talk about whatever’s on your mind,” Hank yelled. For a second, he winced, fearing he was just talking to someone come in to do maintenance. Then, he remembered the newly-made extra room under the seats, and the nasty smell from within it, and he didn’t regret yelling at all.

Hank heard another scuffling sound, and he began to run in the direction of the footsteps. He felt like he might pass out, with the heat and fear, but he couldn’t imagine sitting back and waiting for the other guy to do something. Unfamiliar with his surroundings, Hank hit his head on the bottom of a bleacher seat and stepped backwards, blinking. It would leave a bump, but nothing more.

His watcher, whoever he was, had taken this opportunity to run away, and he did a much better job of it than Hank had. Before the stars and little birdies had cleared from Hank’s head (and before the inevitable headache had arrived), the jogging footsteps were drifting out of ear shot. Hank rubbed his head and looked between his feet. The footprint he saw there looked new, but the tread wouldn’t help him. It was the same kind of running sneaker half the team wore on their way to the ballpark.

NEXT

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Midnight, Moonlight

Posted on July 18, 2011 | 2 Comments

Midnight, Moonlight

“Midnight, Moonlight

Hope I see a ghost tonight!”

Rhyme from a child’s game.

Hank James put another fistful of sunflower seeds into his mouth. He tucked the half-empty bag into his jeans pocket and hooked his fingers back into the wire mesh of the chain link fence behind home plate. This time, he was not at the HooseCows’ stadium, but was at a small town ballpark in Waverly, Iowa. Most of the ballpark looked plain but had been taken care of. The poles that held up the backstop seemed older and were more worn than everything else, as if they had stood there through several changes in fencing material.

Hank was watching a small group of children playing in the night, but no parents were worrying about these kids. These kids had died many years ago; Hank still didn’t know how. These kids were haunting his life, off the field sometimes, on the field most of the time. The only two people he knew who saw the ghostly children were he and Mickey Danz, and he was pretty sure Mickey Danz was most of the way crazy. Now, standing alone in an empty ballpark at four in the morning, watching ghosts trot around the infield, he had to wonder how close to crazy he had come.

If only everything was going as well off the field as it was going on the field. He was hitting at least a home run a game, and his fielding felt effortless and had remained error-free. When  he was at the plate, he felt patient, like he knew what each pitch was going to be. As long as the eerily effective Alan Carpenter wasn’t on the mound, he was hitting the ball like he belonged back in the big leagues. He even had a biggest fan: a tan, athletic guy who was always quoting numbers to Hank that Hank had never considered, telling Hank he was going back to the top of bigs, and then getting Hank to sign one more old baseball card.

The ghosts kids — there were five of them — could clearly see him. They walked about the infield, kicking at the dirt here and there with screwed-up expressions of concentration on their young faces. He could finally see what the red markings were on their shirts. Each child had a name written on the front of their shirt in what looked like lipstick. A first and a last name in most cases, but in one case there was just a first name and a question mark. When they stopped and stood next to each other, never seeming to actually talk, they would turn and look at him. When they did this, he felt as if a cold wind had whipped across the small of his back, even though the night was deadly still.

Hank spit out a sunflower shell and considered, for the hundredth time, walking out to greet the children. There was nothing stopping him from stepping right out to the pitcher’s mound, like a coach about to make a change. He couldn’t do it, though. Couldn’t even bring himself to say “hello.” He just stood behind the fence and marveled at what he was actually seeing, surprised that the directions Mickey Danz had given him brought him to the right place. Mickey had been tracking the ghost children for a while, and had found out they stayed here some nights back during a time when his teammates were still willing to loan him cars.

Hank had no business being out here, especially considering that he had some real flesh and blood problems that were more pressing. He was pretty sure John Todd had poisoned “Bunk” Edwards chewing tobacco, even if the coroner had ruled it death by natural causes, citing “Bunk’s” unhealthy lifestyle as an accelerant. The HooseCows held a moment of silence for the relief pitcher at that morning’s game, and Hank was pretty sure he caught John Todd giggling to himself. The pitcher nearly turned to whisper to the man standing next to him, then composed himself and returned to looking like the normal guy Hank had been friends with just days earlier. He wanted to tell Coach Nickles about what he had seen, and to suggest he had a new suspect in the Leigh Palmer murder, but he couldn’t. John Todd was Taylor Nickles’ pride and joy. Todd was a washed up pitcher Nickles had resurrected and brought back to earth to throw strikes and get outs. Todd wasn’t like a son to Nickles; it went so much deeper than that.

Unable to sleep, Hank had torn himself from bed to see if Mickey Danz’s claims that the ghosts would take the field at this particular ballpark, hidden from public view behind a golf course. Hank had already seen them several times at other locations, but it had never actually occurred to him that the ghosts would really be there. Now, he had no idea what to do.

As if sensing his confusion, the smallest of the boys walked toward the fence. Hank tried to stand tall, and he put his feet flat on the ground. His right hand started twitching like a bird caught in wire, and he grabbed down on the fence to keep it from moving. When the ghost child had almost reached him, he immediately spit out all of his sunflower seeds, fearing it would seem rude if he kept spitting while they talked.

But the boy didn’t talk. The ghost looked absent of emotion, just tired and somehow distant. The boy’s face was distorted somehow, as if it had been fixed and stuffed together with something pale that threatened to burst the seams. In a timeless gesture, the child raised up his ballcap and pushed his hands through his hair. Then, he pointed back over his shoulder at the pitcher’s mound.

Behind him, the other boys were standing on the pitcher’s mound and facing him. Slowly, they were fading away. It was like watching shimmers of heat above a highway go out of existence when the car got too close. Hank looked back to the boy closest to him, who had just enough time to meet his gaze before he drained completely out of existence.

Hank’s first two steps toward the mound were lurching and awkward, but by the third step he could feel himself walking with his baseball strut. As he neared the mound, he began to walk more carefully. The ghost had not just been walking around the field. They had somehow been able to scratch a message into the dirt. Angrily, he realized he had walked across one section of writing and ruined the ghosts’ hard work. The rest of the writing, from what he could decipher, was chilling.

“HE KEEPS DEAD BODY UNDER SECTION . . .”, with the number having been erased by his careless feet.

(NEXT)

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Imperfect Day

Posted on July 11, 2011 | 2 Comments

Imperfect Day

All of the signs pointed to this game being just another day at the ballpark for Hank James. They were at home again, and he and Mickey Danz could take some time understanding what they had seen Mankato relief pitcher Alan Carpenter doing out in amongst the trees. They were playing the Rochester Radiation, a team financed by wealthy Rochester doctors and populated by numbingly average players who were playing at exactly the level of baseball they should be. The only thing remotely interesting about the Rochester team was that a few of the players, including ace pitcher Ernest Barron, had been highly regarded pro prospects who suffered injuries the Rochester doctors thought they could fix.

Hank wasn’t even upset when he saw the HooseCow ticket takers asking patrons to sign a “waiver” stating the fan is aware every member of the HooseCows team had a criminal history. It was someone’s way of trying to sell tickets. The money guys in Rochester were probably worried the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area would still be mourning the disappearance of their minor league affiliate, the Waterloo Diamonds, and then boycott the HooseCows unless they had a scandalous reason to pay attention. Having played ball with the team for over a month, Hank knew most of the players had just had trouble with drugs or alcohol at some point, gotten in trouble, and were now trying to get past it. Some had no criminal background at all; aging, crime-free pitcher Fred Duchess had been instructed to tell people he was guilty of “robbing Father Time,” and barely mediocre center fielder Tommy O’Leary delighted in telling the girls he was guilty of “being drop-dead gorgeous.”

Hank was comfortable with the entire team as they prepared for the night’s game against the Radiation. He was getting more convinced that Coach Nickles was just a nervous old man, and that none of the players were killers at all. That said, he still didn’t trust Drew Holland, and found he was the only player on the team he wouldn’t choose to be around when he wasn’t playing. The only thing that made Hank James nervous in the locker room was the old baseball he had gotten from the the spectral child that night at the playground. He kept it in his locker, wrapped up in a towel.

Hank was absolutely cheerful when he got to the dugout and heard the announcers call his name. There were some boos in the crowd, but they were friendly. It seemed as if the HooseCows were professional wrestlers more than ballplayers. Thinking this, Hank looked down along the stands and saw their mascot, Babe Mooth, acting tougher than a mascot should act. When they left the dugout to take the field, there was no frightening organ music to worm inside his head.

It was someone odd when Hank noticed “Bunk” Edwards slump down in the bullpen. Relievers should pay attention to the action on the field, but “Bunk” was barely human in his social skills. “Bunk” smelled like he was begging people to stay at least ten feet away, and if a player braved the stench, one of “Bunk’s” never ending stories about growing up in Texas would drive them away next. Even with the HooseCows short on pitchers since T.S. Wilson up and left them, “Bunk” rarely got into games. Maybe he was just giving up.

The HooseCows won a 3-2 ballgame and everyone went in to laugh and shower. Hank hadn’t quite made it to shower before he realized “Bunk” still wasn’t in the locker room. Hank’s mouth went dry, and all of the imperfections of his nearly perfect day returned to him in one moment. He slid back into his uniform pants and, bare-chested, he ran back to the field because he had to see.

The reliever was still motionless in the dugout, his elbows on his upper thighs and his cap pulled down. As Hank ran across the field, ignoring the few fans lazily trickling out of the stadium,, he was able to see the dark pool of fluid growing on the bleacher seat his feet were resting on. A stadium usher was standing near the bullpen. The old man was looking at the unmoving relief pitcher and shuffling his feet. The usher then looked to Hank James and relaxed, because he somehow thought Hank James would have some idea of what to do.

Hank got to the bullpen and pushed his way through the chain-link door. He yelled for the usher to get the cops, and the usher jogged a few paces down the bleachers to shout at another usher, who then went for the cops. Hank sat down next to the man he had not minded, but had never liked, and realized he was the first person to find him dead.

“Is he . . .” John Todd asked Hank James. He had noticed the big infielder leaving the locker room, and then he had gone out to see if he could help. Todd looked shaky, like he might pass out.

“I think so,” Hank said. He almost wished crazy Mickey Danz was out there, too. Except Mickey didn’t do as well with the real things that weren’t ghosts going bump in the night.

Careful not to touch the body, Hank peered under the chin of the dead man in front of him. The man’s face was blue, and his tongue was thick and protruding from his mouth. The blood pooling on the floor came from painful-looking wounds where “Bunk” had bitten his own tongue. Bitterly, Hank wondered if, when the man was convulsing and dying, his teammates and the bullpen chalked it up as just another way “Bunk” found to be obnoxious. Hank sat next to the body, and John Todd sat down on the other side. Together, they waited for the cops, and Hank wondered why bad luck was allowed to happen on good day.

Then, Hank saw John Todd sneak “Bunk’s” tin of chewing tobacco, take it from the dead man’s back pocket, and put it in his own. At that moment, Hank stopped thinking about luck all together.

(NEXT)

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Rocket Park.

Posted on June 28, 2011 | 1 Comment

Rocket Park

Taylor Nickles and Hank James heard the woman screaming as they left the stadium. They were usually last to leave, having baseball business and regular business to take care of that didn’t involve the rest of the team. Most of the other players milled about the clubhouse for a bit, letting the fans trickle out before heading home. The last of them, two of whom were on the list of players to watch, had left half an hour ago.

Both men jogged over to the side of the girl with the jet black hair, who was wearing combat boots and a baby-doll dress. She was very pretty, but her two friends behind her clearly lived in her shadow. One dressed too conservatively, almost boyishly, and was losing a battle to acne. The other was rail thin, curveless, and pale as moonlight.

“You saw him, right?” the pale girl asked. The girl with the jet-black hair just looked to the ground.

“Saw who?” Taylor asked. Hank almost expected a man his age to be a little bit winded after their jog over, but Taylor had kept himself in almost military shape.

“That guy, over in the trees,” the girl with jet-black hair said. She kept pulling down at the hem of her dress, and Hank felt very uncomfortable. He scanned around, and there was no one else in the parking lot. Or in the trees.

“We were just talking, you know?” the pale girl said, and the girl with the jet-black hair blushed. “Didn’t feel like going home right away, couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”

Taylor nodded, but both he and Hank knew what this was. They were high school girls, and they really didn’t have anything better to do in the Cedar Valley except sit in the all-night restaurants for hours drinking coffee with too much cream and sugar. They were hanging out in the parking lot because the ballplayers were still coming out. They were too young to meet them in bars, but they didn’t mind hanging out and getting a peek at the players. It was the most normal thing in the world to do, and they didn’t deserve to be harassed for it.

“Anyway,” the pale girl continued, “we look over into the woods and see some guy is in there. We can just see his foot. At first, we thought it was just a shoe, but then it moved a couple of times. All right. Weird. Then we hear something drop and roll out of the trees. When we go to look at it, this guy just runs as fast as he can away and we don’t know where he went. It’s getting pretty dark.”

The girl who hadn’t spoken, with the acne, held up what they had found like it was something pulled from a drain. It was a roll of athletic tape, the kind the HooseCows order in bulk.

“He was looking at me,” the pretty girl said. “I know he was.”

“We’ll call the cops. You kids need to get home,” Taylor said. He was gruff, but reassuring. He looked over their car — in the trunk, the backseat, underneath of it — and they all got in.

“Drive straight home,” he said. “Anyone tries to stop you, you just run ‘em right over if you have to. I don’t think anyone will. We’re going to call the cops, but you two gotta be safe, first. I’m sorry. This wasn’t right. Call tomorrow and we’ll give you free tickets and everything, if you’re still willing to come out.”

The girls smiled and drove away. Taylor and Hank watched.

“We’re not calling the police, are we?” Hank asked.

“You know it’s one of ours,” he said. “Look at the tape. I bet he’s still out there waiting.”

“So what do we do?” Hank asked.

“Building door locked behind us,” Taylor explained. Both men we’re peering into the dark, nearly moonless night. They could see very little. “I figure he’s either in the cemetery or in the park, so we check them out ourselves.”

Hank nodded and looked into the night. Taylor’s note of players to watch, in case one of them had killed Leigh Palmer, the girl they had found dead outside the stadium. On the list were: “Bunk” Edwards, Drew Harrold, Rick Newton, and Danny Marks. The last two names didn’t concern him, but the first two made him suspicious enough to keep playing boy detective with Taylor. He turned to Taylor to speak, and was abruptly cut off.

“I saw you thinking over there. I’m old, but my nerves are still tougher than yours. I’ll take the cemetery.”

“What if we find someone?” Hank asked. He would’ve felt perfectly comfortable in the cemetery, considering all the time he had spent in them doing his photography, but he knew better than to threaten the old man’s ego.

Splitting up, he was glad he didn’t have to walk past the darkened stadium any more than he had to. Lately, when he was alone in the darkened stadium, he couldn’t help but hear the frantic, frightened music of the Rochester organist. He heard it enough in his nightmares, as if to berate himself for not feeling guilty enough during the day for what his foul ball had done to the man.

Ahead of him was a giant piece of children’s playground equipment shaped like a giant rocket. The rocket rose up to be over ten feet tall, and it must’ve seemed like a skyscraper to the children who played here. There were slides and staircases all over the rocket, which you reached by walking by crossing a bouncing bridge and going up several stages of gradual ramps. Hank walked over to inspect the thing, if for no other reason than to imagine playing in it when he himself was a child.

After leaning on the strong central pole of the playground, Hank was almost ready to move on to looking other places when he heard a slow creaking noise, followed by the unmistakable sound of pea gravel sliding across metal. Someone was in the rocket. Hank felt his heart stop, then start again and race to twice its normal rate. It could just be some kid, he reasoned. He still had no idea what he’d do if one of his teammates came out of the structure and stood face to face with him. Would it be enough to really know the truth?

The next sound he heard was the sound of sand and rock being scraped against the floor of the rocket. Someone was squatting inside of the metal, perhaps standing and preparing to rush out. Hank worked at keeping control of his breath. Should he say something, or should he just be prepared to run and maybe even fight. He was ready to tackle someone, but he didn’t really want it to come to that. He worried that, if he tried to run, he would weave about as if in a drunken stupor.

Hank stepped back to take in the situation, and at that exact moment he heard another scraping noise. He looked up and saw what was above him in the giant rocket. His heart reacted immediately, pushing itself even faster within his chest. His hand reached up to cover his eyes, and he finally was able to pry it free and cover his mouth instead.

Sitting in the biggest portion of the rocket was one of the small, ghostly boys he and Mickey Danz had been seeing around. The boy had moved to sit at the edge of the platform, with his legs barefoot and dangling from between the safety bars. Hank could see there was writing on his shirt, but once again he could not read it. The boy’s eyes were dark, and he wasn’t sure they were even in his skull at all. The boy’s right hand was also outside of the barred-in platform, and as Hank watched, it released something. As Hank watched, it fell to the ground. He looked down for just long enough to see the boy had dropped a baseball, and when he looked back up, the boy was gone.

Later, Hank was proud he didn’t scream at that moment. He managed to hold on just long enough to reach up and pick up the baseball, which was somehow real enough to hold in his hand.

(NEXT)

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