The Beckford Bottom Beast Read online

personal Ralph?"

  Ralph's bike swerved as his neck snapped towards Lacey. For her, he would answer any question.

  "Do you believe in the monster?"

  Ralph blinked. "Sure I do. Why wouldn't I believe in the monster?"

  Lacey sighed. "My older brothers laugh at me when I tell them all these bad things are because a monster lurks in the river. They tell me it's about money and economics, and politics, and employers and employees. But I don't know. It's hard to follow their arguments."

  "I've heard that talk too," Ralph replied. "My mom speaks all that jazz on the phone with her sisters and friends. But I know it's a monster, Lacey. There's something that's happened to all our hearts. There's something that's been sucked away, drained empty. The monster cloaks itself in all those numbers and politics the adults talk about. None of our parents can see it. But that monster lurks in the river just outside of Beckford. It has to be a monster."

  "What do you think the monster looks like?"

  Ralph chuckled. "I've imagined it looking like so many things. Maybe it has a pair of big, black eyes on an oversized head perched on a thin, long neck, like the space aliens in the movies. Sometimes, I imagine it looks like a giant scorpion, with not one, but two, barbed tails. If it lurks in the river bottoms, maybe it's made of nothing else than shifting, squirming mud. It might have scales. It might move like a snake. I suppose my imagination's too active to make a good guess."

  Lacey shook her head. "I think the monster looks more like a man than you think," and her eyes peered over her handlebars, squinted through the wind in the direction of that falling darkness. "Only it's taller than most men, with big forearm muscles, with a swollen stomach on top of thin, shuffling legs. And it's got a long, thick beard, that scratches your face when it's breath is so close to you, a beard that hides its face so you can never see its expression. You know it looks like man beneath all that hair, but you know it doesn't have any man's heart. And that's the most terrifying thing, knowing that the monster is more like ourselves than we want to admit."

  Ralph wondered if he did something wrong. For Lacey stood from her seat and pumped her bicycle away from his side, leaving him alone to his thoughts, alone with his imagination to consider Lacey's description of monsters.

  That summer season proved as dry as it did hot. The river retreated from its customary shores, opening rare shortcuts to the hunting party's progress. They sped beneath the wooden footbridge on the outskirt of Beckford. They coasted through the concrete flood drain, where the older boys were known to smoke, drink and fight those prior, lost summers that had been as dry. Skunk's chilled batteries remained fresh as the hunting party roared towards the river with their walkie-talkies cackling over the hum of their wheels.

  Tarence jumped from his ten-speed bicycle as a line of tight trees obstructed forward progress. He paid no attention to how far his bike rolled into the brush.

  "Leave the flashlights on the bikes," ordered Tarence. "The light will give us away sneaking along the shore. Whisper into your walkie-talkie in case you get lost in the dark."

  None of them hesitated to enter the thicket of trees, shrubs and weeds bordering the river. They grimaced as thorns and brambles bit into their forearms and shins. They swatted at their faces to keep the swollen mosquitoes at bay. They shook to dance away the spiders they imagined crawling into their shirts as their faces felt the brush of unseen webs. They helped one another off the ground as ankles tripped over twisted roots. All of them tried their hardest not to consider how badly they would itch for all the poison ivy they trampled upon in the dark.

  Skunk broke through the underbrush first to look upon the river's edge. His radio whined as he opened a channel on his walkie-talkie. "We're where we need to be. The river clubhouses have never looked so high on their stilts. The water's nowhere near them. Several of the clubhouse lights are on."

  Lacey hissed back through Skunk's radio. "Hush, Skunk. My uncles are going to be drinking in those clubhouses. It's early, so they're far from passed out. But they're probably really mean by now. Be quiet and don't attract their attention."

  Music blared from those perched clubhouses as the hunting party gathered once more together at the shore. None asked why Lacey trembled as she stared at those clubhouses. All of them saw how fear made her shiver, how Lacey's heart raced and quickened her breath. No one made a sound.

  They nearly reached the center of the shallow river before the waters rose to their hips. Though not deep, the current remained swift and tugged at their legs. Brad gripped his younger brother Brian's hand as they moved downstream, away from the music and the light drifting from the clubhouses. Darin took the rifle from his shoulder and held its barrel over his head, and out of the water, as he had seen soldiers do on old, black and white war movies. Skunk unsheathed his grandfather's fillet knife. Tarence gripped his aluminum bat.

  He had no weapon, but Ralph remained, protective, at Lacey's side. His eyes scanned the shores for any trace of a monster's lair. He thought he saw a collection of bone at the point of a bend in the waters, but he found as he approached that his imagination had transformed rift-raft into such remains.

  The river grew colder and deeper as the hunting party continued around several bends. The current strengthened and forced the party closer to the shore.

  "Is it much further, Lacey?" asked young Brian. "My teeth are rattling from the cold."

  Lacey paused in the waters. "The monster should be anywhere around us. It's here, where the river starts to get deeper, where the currents get so cold."

  Darin slowly slung the rifle back over his shoulder. "But you don't know for sure, do you Lacey?"

  Tarence twisted the aluminum bat. "Maybe it's like the adults say. Maybe there's no monster preying upon Beckford. Maybe it's because of all those other things. Those things that are so hard to understand."

  Skunk nodded. "Maybe there's nothing we can do to help Beckford."

  Lacey's shoulders fell, and she sobbed. Ralph wanted to reach out to her, to rest a hand on her shoulder, to clasp her fingers in his own. But he saw how her lips trembled, how her green eyes watered. Lacey Tulley was something more powerful than Ralph had ever imagined, and so he hesitated and did nothing. He had expected to be terrified when he confronted a monster. Instead, his terror arrived at another time and prevented him from doing a thing so courageous, or foolish, as touch Lacey.

  "There's a monster," Ralph growled. "You only have to believe it. There is something we can fight. We can beat it away."

  Ralph lowered his hands into the cool river. He thought he felt a spark, a sensation like that when he had placed his tongue between that nine-volt battery's positive and negative terminals. He thought he felt electricity rush from his arm into the waters. He dreamed of those monsters he had mastered during those summers when he had ruled the video game arcade. He imagined what those glowing, boxy monsters would look like if they were given flesh and bone. He had brought no weapon with him to the river, but he had never so desired a creature with glistening teeth to slither and hiss in the night. Ralph closed his eyes and dreamed. He willed a monster to circle the party. With anger and determination, with his sorrows and his frustration, he summoned something to rise from the river's depths and give a face to the decay that sapped Beckford.

  "There it is!" Brian jumped at the back of the hunting party. "There it is!"

  Brother Brad lifted his father's hammer over his head. "It's swimming over by that sandbar! I saw it's eyes!"

  Darin leveled his rifle and squinted down its barrel. "I see those eyes too! They're red! And hungry! And they're coming this way!"

  "I'm gonna skin it like a fish!" Skunk waved his knife.

  Tarence gripped his bat. "Bring it on!"

  Lacey aimed her canister of pepper spray in front of her with one hand, and gripped Ralph's hand with the other. "Never again! You son of a bitch!"

  The monster roared and rose from the water. Lacey greeted it with a
blast of pepper spray, and the hunting party cried war shouts as their eyes burned and their stomachs reeled in the toxic cloud that hovered above the river. Darin's rifle roared. The monster stumbled as the bullet tore through its bone. Skunk darted forward, and his knife reflected moonlight as it carved into the eye of the monster responsible for his grandfather's stroke. Tarence dove into the water before rising with a shout and swinging his bat into the monster's knee. The monster roared as it struggled to protect itself from the hunting party of children who had come from the shores to enact Beckford's revenge. It stumbled and fell beneath the assault, and Brad and Brian took turns smashing its skull with their father's hammer.

  Ralph watched as the others continued their attack. He felt proud to count himself among the initiated. He would never again fear placing his tongue between a nine-volt battery's terminals. He watched as the party members wielded their weapons against the monster. He watch Lacey snarl as she threw one stone after another against the creature.

  Yet the water flowing around his hips remained cold, and Ralph's heart cracked as the