The Beckford Bottom Beast Read online

The Beckford Bottom Beast

  Brian S. Wheeler

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  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2013 by Brian S. Wheeler

  Contents

  The Beckford Bottom Beast

  Help Spread the Story Across the Flatland

  About the Writer

  Other Stories at Flatland Fiction

  The Beckford Bottom Beast

  Ralph swallowed and summoned his courage as he raised the cold nine-volt battery towards his tongue. Skunk had stored the battery in the refrigerator kept in his grandmother's garage, claiming that placing batteries between cans of soda and egg cartons preserved voltage. Ralph hoped Skunk's hypothesis would proof false as he closed his eyes and wondered how badly it would hurt when a spark sent electricity surging through his tongue.

  Skunk circled on his bicycle. "Come on, Ralph. Even Brian Erlinger's stuck his tongue on a battery, and he's hardly ten years old."

  "But what good does it do?" Ralph asked.

  Tarence Duncan set a hand on Ralph's shoulder. "First, it tests to make sure we have good batteries in our walkie-talkies. But it also shows that you're committed to our cause. We're gonna have to depend on each other if we find that monster, and tasting that battery is the best test we could think of to test your courage."

  Ralph sighed, for Tarence was the oldest in the group. Tarence pedaled a sophisticated ten-speed instead of the simpler dirt-bikes the rest of the group rode. He wore the varsity cap of the Beckford high school baseball team, an emblem the group gave to Tarence to symbolize his leader status. Tarence had spoken, and everyone who wished to confront the monster would have to taste a nine-volt battery's charge.

  "It only hurts for a few seconds." Lacey Tulley's bike floated next to Ralph's.

  Lacey's green eyes gave Ralph courage. She had tasted the nine-volt battery's charge; and though he hesitated, Ralph knew he would not be able to live with himself if he faulted to do so also. Lacey's company that day was a surprise to Ralph. At twelve, she was no older than the rest of them, excluding of course Brian Erlinger. Yet Lacey seemed so much wiser. She had tongue-kissed with Bryce Hendricks in the balcony of the movie theater that spring before the building had unexpectedly closed at the start of summer. She knew how to dance while the rest of them in that group still failed to find the coordination and courage to peel themselves off of the gymnasium's walls. And Lacey Tulley made Ralph Wilson's heart race, a condition that Ralph realized did nothing to make him unique among his classmates. If Lacey Tulley's tongue tasted a nine-volt battery's charge, then Ralph knew he had to as well.

  Ralph concentrated on the image of Lacey's green eyes as he closed his own and placed his tongue between the negative and positive terminals on the nine-volt battery.

  "Holy crap!"

  The spark that answered the tongue's touch cringed Ralph's face. His tongue numbed. Even his teeth hurt. Ralph dropped the battery.

  But none gathered in that hunting party laughed at Ralph. He too was now one of the initiated. So Skunk gathered that dropped battery and loaded it into Ralph's assigned walkie-talkie. Tarence nodded his approval to Ralph. Brothers Brad and Brian Erlinger gave him high-fives. Darin Richardson applauded. Whatever pain lingered upon Ralph's tongue faded when Lacey smiled at him. The quick hurt from tasting a nine-volt battery seemed hardly any cost at all.

  They set their walkie-talkies to the same channel and turned on the flashlights taped to their bicycle handlebars before standing from their seats and pumping locomotion through their pedals. Chains whirled as they sped towards the darkness falling in the east, towards the river bottoms where they suspected a monster lurked, towards the elevated clubhouses of the Tulley uncles where Lacey vowed the creature waited.

  "You have to pedal harder, Darin," Tarence and the others slowed as Darin's plump legs strained to remain at the vanguard.

  The effort stole Darin's breath and jostled the weapon slung across his shoulder. "I'm pedaling as hard as I can. I can catch up if the rest of you are in such a hurry to get to the river. That's why we have the walkie-talkie."

  During a previous summer, those in the hunting party would have laughed at Darin's strain. They might have giggled had fireworks still exploded to celebrate the Fourth, had the public swimming pool remained open for cannon balls off of the high dive, had baseball games still been played each weeknight on the diamond, had the vending stand still remained open to sell frozen sodas. None of those seasonal charms remained open that summer. Thus none of them, not even Skunk, snickered as Darin gasped for breath as he stepped upon his bicycle's pedals. It did not feel appropriate on that night when they rode to confront the river bottom monster to take any kind of strength from a weakness found in those who had tasted of that nine-volt battery.

  Skunk sped to Darin's side to encourage his friend. "You have to keep at the front in case a bump sets that rifle off. One of us might get killed if we were in front of that gun when it fired."

  Darin growled. "The only thing I'm gonna shoot is the river monster. My dad showed me how to clean and maintain it, how to load it and keep it safe. He taught me how to shoot this rifle before the reserve called him onto duty. And all of you asked me to bring my gun."

  Brad shouted from the back of the rolling pack. "We meant your air rifle. We didn't think you'd bring a real gun."

  "What would a pellet gun do against a river monster?" Darin asked.

  Ralph remained quiet as he pedaled his bike next to Lacey's. What weapons did they carry to wield against the river monster? Ralph knew nothing of guns, and he envied that Darin's father had not abandoned him. Ralph's father had left him before teaching him how to fire a rifle, or how to swing an aluminum baseball bat like the one Tarence carried. Skunk carried his his grandfather's favorite fillet knife, the blade Ralph knew that Skunk and his grandfather had so often used to clean bluegill following the fishing trips they shared before the stroke that debilitated Ralph's grandfather. Brad and Brian shared one of their father's carpenter hammers, a tool both brothers knew would not be missed due to the lack of work their father found that summer season. Lacey armed herself with a small canister of pepper spray.

  Ralph possessed no weapon at all.

  Yet Ralph rode towards that falling darkness all the same. He hated what that monster had drained from Beckford. He wished he could travel back in time, to a period before the arrival of that river bottom beast. He wished he could return to a previous summer and again slither through the downtown arcade's dark, air-conditioned shadows, wished he could once more lock his eyes upon the screens aglow with pixel starships and blooming explosions. Ralph never failed to master any game stood in that arcade's shadow. His prowess made him as much of a celebrity as Beckford could create, a kid, who for the cost of a quarter, could place any client's initials onto the first slot of listed high scores. The younger kids had admired Ralph, and the older kids had respected him. And that meant much to a boy who had spent so much time slithering through the arcade's
air-conditioned dark.

  But that had been before the monster crawled upon Beckford, before that beast arrived to drain Ralph's community of spirit, until so many joys closed their doors before the start of one more summer season. He despised the beast for what it had stolen from him, and so he pedaled his bicycle with that hunting party towards the darkness falling in the east. He could arm himself with none of the video game lasers with which he had been so proficient, and so Ralph armed himself only with hate.

  What, Ralph wondered, drove others in that hunting party to pedal towards that dark? Tarence's bruised face and welted legs spoke loudly enough of the abuse his father inflicted since the shoe factory went bankrupt and silent. Tarence was not the only one among Ralph's classmates to bear such dark bruises of a father's shame. Ralph could not guess what hurt spurred Lacey Tulley towards the river. He saw no bruises upon her. Ralph quietly pedaled his bike beside Lacey's and wondered what hurt led her to fill her pockets with stones to cast at a monster and to arm herself with pepper spray.

  "Can I ask you something