Dead Men (and Women) Walking by Anthology Read Free Book Online Page A

it,
along with dead thistles and thorns and vines. There must have been
over a hundred years worth of dead plants that made up that
thicket.
    “ What yah….what yah doing,
Buster?” I asked, tentatively, and somewhat out of breath. The
little Chihuahua was waiting to get the backhand.
    “ I think I found it,” he
said. Again, he was excited.
    “ Found it?”
    “ Yeah, the well,” he said
flatly as he rolled his eyes at me. Sweat poured off of
him.
    “ The well?” I asked,
dumbfounded.
    Buster looked at me with
disgust on his face. “Damn it, man, what’s wrong with you
today?”
    “ The curse, man,” I said,
immediately and without thinking. “We shouldn’t be here.” I felt
like I was pleading with him.
    Buster threw his machete to
the ground. I knew I had said the wrong thing. What was I supposed
to say, anyway? I was scared.
    “ Stay here,” he said. He
walked away and back up the path he had cut. I was actually glad he
walked away. It was better then the ranting and raving he could
have done.
    I sat on a rotting stump
while I waited. A spider the size of a quarter crawled out of a
hole at the bottom of the stump. He was a wood brown with black
lines that traced his body. He was the perfect color for his
surroundings. He stopped and turned in my direction as if he were
looking at me. I guess he didn’t like me sitting on his house. I
brushed my foot at him and he scampered off under some
leaves.
    It seemed like Buster was
gone for a long while—too long. Eternity seemed to pass me by, but
by my watch it had only been less than ten minutes. I jumped when
he called my name.
    “ Johnny?”
    “ What?” I answered as I
jumped from my seat on the stump.
    Buster laughed at the way he
had startled me. “Why are you so nervous, man? We’re all alone,
Johnny. Ain’t nobody here, ‘cept you and me.”
    This did nothing to comfort
me.
    Buster had two six packs of
beer in his hand—Miller Lite, I believe they were. They had been in
the back of the truck in an old blue cooler filled with ice. He
pulled one of the beers off of the template and tossed it to
me.
    “ No, thanks,” I said as I
caught the can just shy of hitting me in the face. I set it down on
my spider friend’s house. Leave it for the spider, I thought. He
might want a drink later.
    Buster rolled his eyes
again. He pulled one of the beers off of the template for himself
and opened it up. He took a few gulps and looked at me.
    “ What?” he asked,
disgustedly.
    “ What?” I repeated. Here it
comes, I thought.
    “ What? What’s your deal,
Johnny?”
    “ Buster, this place is
cursed. I don’t. . .”
    “ Cursed?” Buster
interrupted. “You’re worried about a bunch of BS legends? They tell
these stories to keep people out of this swamp—they’re not
real.”
    “ People have disappeared
out here, Buster.”
    Once again Buster
interrupted me.
    “ People disappear all the
time, Johnny. The only difference is they’ve found a few bodies
back here. Hell, have they really found any bodies or is that just
some mumbo-jumbo they made up also? And all that bull crap about
that woman—that Catherine chick—is just a stupid story.”
    Buster picked up his machete
and looked at me.
    “ Are you going to help me
or not?” he asked.
    Wow, I thought. He didn’t go
off near as bad as usual.
    “ Yeah, sure, Buster,” I
said.
    That’s Buster. He’s my
hero.
    Ka-pow. Ka-thump.
    Ahh. . . shut-up.
    I pulled the pair of work
gloves out of the back pocket of my old blue jeans and put them on.
I pulled the dead branches and thorns away as Buster cut them down.
We must have worked a solid two hours before Buster’s machete hit
something other than plants.
    -Clank-
    The sound of steel hitting
brick stopped us both. We looked at each other and then we started
pulling branches in a fevered pace.
    I have to admit I was
getting excited, myself, as we cleaned around the base of the well.
We stood back and looked at what was left of the 200 year old