One Must Go by Alex Reid

Author:Alex Reid [Reid, Alex & Publishing, Wicked House]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

True Strength

It was just after seven in the evening and Sam was weaving his way through crowds looking for anything that resembled a boy dressed as a dog. Every freak, creature, and monster seemed to be prowling the sidewalks. Sam had pulled his Dracula mask down over his face, concealing his identity, as if Benjamin wouldn’t recognize him by his costume.

But that is what hunters do, they conceal themselves, and they strike when you least expect it. They kill. Yes, they do. Right in the vitals, life blood and soul draining out onto the concrete if the prey isn’t nimble enough. Sam’s prey was nimble, he knew that, but he was also weak, and strength is what matters.

Large groups of costumed revelers passed by the little boy in the Dracula costume and took no notice of him. He was just another snot-nosed child on his way to get his precious candy and become a nuisance to his parents for the rest of the night.

Sam had lost the bag that was to hold his candy that night, though he wasn’t sure when. It must have been at some point after the incident at the graveyard.

There was a comforting numbness in the way he felt. Warmth and emptiness mingled in his body, and before long the people around him seemed to vanish completely. All he noticed now was the spaces between the buildings he passed. Those dark, narrow chasms between brick that led into an abyss. He thought about what it would feel like to drag his former friend into one of those chasms and exit alone, leaving the weakling in the darkness where he belonged.

People love pretty birds, Sam thought. Benjamin was a lot like a bird. Frailty came to mind when Sam thought of him. Something so paper-thin and brittle, it would snap at the slightest amount of pressure. Despite the obvious weakness though, people seemed to love Benjamin. His teachers, neighbors, strangers, and Sam’s parents always seemed to be drawn in.

It was the same way people will stop by a bird cage at a pet shop and smile at all the pretty birds. But at the end of the day a bird, no matter how pretty, would always just be some brittle bones wrapped in paper thin skin and feathers. Absolutely useless.

Almost twenty minutes had passed before a familiar face made Sam stop in his tracks. It wasn’t Benjamin’s face. Benjamin had escaped, gone across the street in the middle of a large crowd and was well away from Sam at this point.

Though, he had other unseen pursuers just at his heels.

Sam paused at seeing Jeff Jameson. Jeff’s wavy black hair was wild and knotted. The werewolf mask Sam had seen him holding the day before at the costume shop was tucked underneath his arm. In his hands was a wooden baseball bat covered in the drying orange strings of pumpkin guts. Standing behind him were two kids that seemed to be his age, maybe even older. They didn’t have any costumes and didn’t look to be upset about it either.

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