Skulls

To my amazing family.

Chapter One

Jacob Rile looked into the face of death. Through a hundred eyes, death stared back.

His heart thundered in his chest. He stood rigid as he faced the array of polished white skulls laid out before him. Shallow niches carved into the earthen walls cradled the skulls. Each was angled so their blackened sockets cast their sight upon the narrow entryway to the bunker.

A slick sheen of sweat broke out on his brow and he wiped it away with a shaking hand. The dark eyes seemed to follow his movements as he shifted from foot to foot near the ladder, which led to the quiet forest above.

His huffed breaths loud in the confined space, Jacob dared a step forward. The air was cool, prickling his skin. The gentle musk of moist earth tickled his nose. He reached out a tentative hand and traced his fingers along the nearest skull, the touch light and fast. Expecting plastic, the perfect shine too bright to be real, he yanked his hand back as he felt cold bone. His fingertips tingled from the contact.

His courage faded under the lifeless scrutiny. He returned to the ladder just in time to hear a muffled growl filter in through the trap door above.

To the rhythm of his booming heart, Jacob hurtled up the solid, wooden ladder. He emerged within the tangled mass of shrubs and trees that hid the bunker’s hatch from sight. He closed the door and winced at its squeak of protest, shuffling the concealing web of branches overtop.

Jacob ducked low and slipped from the thick foliage before he could be seen. He dashed to hide behind a nearby tree as the guttural snarl erupted again. He smiled at the graveled growl, almost comic in its distorted deepness.

He darted out again and found a thicker tree further from the hatch. As he pressed his back against the mossy wood, it gave a quiet creak. He held his breath at the sound.

“Jacob?” a tenuous voice called out.

Caught, he glanced out from behind the tree and saw Cass’s worried face. She stood just past the derelict barbed wire fence. Her hands went to her narrow hips when she saw him.

“Damn it, Jake, you’re gonna get us killed.” Her voice quavered as she waved him toward her.

Jacob walked over, his hands out before him, his gait shambling. “I was trying to avoid being eaten, oh zombie mistress.” He chuckled as he met her at the fence.

Her brown eyes glared, somehow appearing darker in the shadows. “I’m not playing.” She gestured from the fence toward the side Jacob stood on. “That’s Old Man Jenks’s property. You’ve been around long enough to know better.”

Jacob glanced back toward the hidden bunker. A chill crept spider-like down his spine. “Yeah,” he muttered, pressing the wire down with his foot and quickly hopped over. He looked back toward the bunker a moment, then shook his head as if clearing it of sleep.

“You all right?” Cass asked, grabbing his wrist.

Jacob twitched and turned to look at her, his eyes wide. “Yeah, I’m fine.” His voice cracked at the end and he coughed to conceal it. “Was just thinking about Jenks. He really that bad?”

Cass tugged him away from the fence and they headed further down the hill, casting furtive glances behind them. “Nobody knows for sure what he is, but the dude ain’t right. There have been kids disappearing from town ever since he started living here, back in the late ‘80’s. Least that’s what my dad says.” She shrugged. “But either way, you don’t want to get caught on his land.” She whistled low and shook her head.

Jacob nodded, believing he’d seen firsthand evidence of Old Man Jenks’s cruelty. He started to tell Cass about what he’d found, but his tongue seemed thick in his mouth. He licked his lips and felt a strange sense of propriety about his find. There was a sudden reluctance to tell her, to tell anyone, about the skulls.

Not seeming to notice his preoccupation, she stopped behind a huge tree trunk. She peered surreptitiously into the woods. They’d been playing
Zombie
, for lack of anything more interesting to do, when he’d stumbled across the bunker, seeking a place to hide. The rest of their friends were either still hiding, trying to avoid Cass, or were out searching for the rest, having been infected by being caught by her.

The quiet forests of Ruidoso were the perfect backdrop for their game. They had the whole mountain almost to themselves. On summer vacation from school, the rest of the world rumbled by on the highway at the bottom of the hill, or north of the Downs where all the tourists gathered.

Out on the western slopes, it was just them, the birds and the bears, and the crazy old recluse who rumor said was a murderer.

A quiet growl drifted to their ears from further down the hill. The thick trees distorted the distance. Cass pointed and smiled before casting out an answering rumble.

Jacob chuckled, amazed at how such a little girl could roar so loudly. He laughed in his head. A Death Metal Diva, Cassandra Boone would kill him to hear Jacob call her ‘little’. ‘Petite’, ‘short’, or ‘upwardly challenged’ she’d handle without blinking an eye, but ‘little’ wasn’t a word she liked. She said it made her feel like she was being called a baby. She was anything but that.

A model’s body squeezed into Cass’s five-foot frame, there was no mistaking her for a baby, despite the covering of loose fitting jeans and concert T. Jacob had seen her in a bikini once when he stopped by her house unannounced one afternoon when they were both blowing off school. That image had lingered on long after that day, never far from the front of Jacob’s mind.

He chuckled at the thought and tried not to dwell on the memory. Cass glanced back at him, one eyebrow raised below the frame of her wild black hair. He put his hand over his mouth and looked away as he felt his cheeks growing warm. He laughed again to cover his embarrassment.

A sudden shout drew her attention down the hill and Jacob sighed grateful. There was a loud growl, followed by a girly shriek, both morphing into amused laughs, octaves apart.

“I got her,” a voice called out. The words echoed through the trees. “Zombies win again!”

“They always do,” another voice shouted from nearby, startling Cass and Jacob.

They turned to see Dennis Jones amble through the trees toward them. He was breathing heavy. His hair glistened moist and lifeless in the flickering light under the canopy of trees. It hung limp over his eyes. “I’ve been up on that hill for an hour since you caught me, Cass, only to find out everyone is way down here. Man, I hate this game.”

Cass laughed. “You’re just a lazy zombie.”

“Screw climbing around in the mountains to find somebody to eat. No wonder the dumb shits are always screaming about brains. They need them because they’re
stupid
.” He poked his bony chest with his thumb. “Me, I’m a smart zombie. I’d just go to school and chomp down on Miss Foreman.” He mimed gnawing on a big chicken leg. “Now she’d be a meal.”

Cass rolled her eyes. Her hands on her stomach, she reeled side to side. “Thanks for the visual.” She shook her head and moved off down the hill.

Jacob laughed and followed her down. “I’d check the ingredients on that package, man. She’s at least 85% bitch, and that can’t be good for you.”

Dennis stumbled along behind. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. She’s always nice to me.”

A voice further down the hill cut in. “That’s because you’re
special
, Dennis. The law says she has to be nice to you.”

Dennis muttered something under his breath as the rest of the group laughed. Coming together in the middle of the trees, Jacob, Cass, and Dennis met up with Chris Mason and Dee Palmer.

“When’d she get you, man?” Chris asked Jacob. His bright blue eyes shined in the gloom. “We know when she got dipshit over there; first, as always.” He motioned toward Dennis with his chin and sneered as Dennis flipped him off.

“Just a few minutes ago. She caught me over by Jenks’s property.”

“Not by; on,” Cass corrected. She bumped his thigh with her hip.

Dee’s eyes went wide and she pulled her wavy blond hair out of her face. “You were
on
Old Man Jenks’s land? You’re brave.”

“Stupid’s more like it,” Chris corrected as he pulled a Marlboro from the pack in his shirt pocket. “That old dude’s a stone cold killer. Unless you’re looking to get your head chopped off, you better stay the hell off his property.” He lit the cigarette and took a deep pull, continuing through a cloud of willowy smoke. “You’ll end up like that one chick whose body they found in the canal. What was her name?”

“Katie,” said another young man as he walked up alongside the group. The name rolled off his tongue slow.

“Yeah, that’s it. I remember now, Katie James. Thanks, Glenn.”

Glenn Dover nodded. His shaggy mop of dirty brown hair bounced in rhythm to the motion of his head. Prematurely mature, Glenn’s face was a patchwork of rampant black fuzz, a garden grown amok. His eyes were narrow slits under thick eyebrows and he smelled like the forest. A musky, leafy odor lingered around him all the time.

“Leave it to Glenn to know her name,” Cass said with a mock look of disgust. “Mister serial killer himself.”

“Nah. There’s no way Glenn could be a serial killer,” Jacob countered. “He’d wander off in the middle of stabbing someone to go looking for a brownie.”

Everyone laughed. Glenn just nodded his head.

“But damn, once the bodies were hidden, there’d be no finding them, huh?” He joined in with a chuckle, his voice gruff. “No sir, officer, I don’t remember where I buried them, seriously. Did they have cookies?”

“Can you imagine the news report?” Dennis asked cutting in from behind the group. “We’re here with the father of the notorious Ruidoso Slasher. Mr. Ben Dover…can I just call you Ben?”

Jacob hid his laugh behind his hand as Glenn turned straight-faced to look at Dennis.

“Oh hey, man. You’re still here? I thought you left already.”

Dennis shoved Glenn, but the older boy just grinned and played with the sharpened point of his scraggly goatee. Jacob spotted Dennis’s watch as he blustered. The glowing red time sunk in.

“Shit. It’s almost seven. I gotta go.”

He gave Cass a quick hug, slapped hands with the rest, and barreled off through the trees.

“Don’t forget the party on Friday!” someone shouted from behind him.

He waved and kept going. His father having wanted to talk to him before he left for the night, Jacob ran full out. Their trailer on River Trail, in Paradise Park, deep in the Downs, was a good twenty-minute run.

His lungs on fire, Jacob made it in fifteen.