Dennis grabbed Mark by the collar of his shirt and began to wrestle with him, trying to get Mark’s head in a chokehold. Mark dropped the camera; it went off with a flash and a mechanical whirring noise. For an instant we were all painted in brilliant white light, a terrible portrait of grimaced, ugly faces.
I yelled a wordless sound as I hit the ground. The little boy began to really sob now, heavy piercing cries that bordered on screams.
I turned on my hands and knees to make sure he was all right. He looked okay, the bird looked okay (although still very dead), but before I could say something to make him calm down a cracking report sliced through everything else.
“NOT MY BOY!” someone screamed behind us.
Ears ringing, I whipped around to see the woman – the same plain-faced woman who’d turned us away with a smile and a kind admonition – standing on the steps of her house, double-barreled shotgun in hand.
She wasn’t smiling now. Her eyes were wild, the eyes of a mad grizzly bear protecting its cub. She cocked the shotgun, sending the spent shells flying, and leveled it at her shoulder.
It all came together at once in that terrifying way when your brain works faster than you thought possible – or perhaps you have your lizard-brain to thank – this was the boy’s mother, she was not as she had seemed, and we only got one warning shot.
“Run!” I screamed, struggling to my feet.
Dennis released Mark and bolted towards the car. I could hear Barb inside, screaming. I lost my footing briefly but soon I was on my way too; I looked over my shoulder to see Mark on his hands and knees. I wasn’t sure if Dennis had left him that way until I saw that he was grabbing for the camera.
“Leave it!” I shrieked, halfway to the car. Mark heard me and looked up – maybe that’s what did it. Maybe that’s all it took, that one second of hesitation. The woman took aim and fired the shotgun again.
Mark screamed in agony, crumpling over the Polaroid on the lawn in front of the small white house that was getting smaller as I ran. He was clutching his leg, still screaming, when I heard the woman bellow,
“Get ‘em, boys! For your brother!”
I didn’t know what that meant and I had no intention of sticking around to find out. We scrambled to the car, Dennis in the driver’s seat, me in the back, Barb still wailing in the passenger seat.
“You left him, you left him!” she was shrieking.
“Drive, Dennis!” I twisted in my seat to look through the back window. Mark was still on the ground, grabbing his buckshot leg, screaming either in pain or for us to come back.
I was still watching him, my heart hammering in my ears, face hot with the rush of panicked blood, when I saw them come out of the woods.
Some of them had no legs and dragged themselves along the grass with thick, muscular forearms. Some had uneven limbs that swung back and forth as they lumbered across the lawn. Some had the same huge head I’d seen on the little boy, swollen to near impossible sizes.
They descended upon Mark and the screaming evolved into something beyond screams, a strangled tangled noise of pure animal panic and pain.
Barb heard this – did not see it – and began making the same shrill cry over and over like a dog that’s been kicked.
“Go go go for the love of fucking god Dennis just drive!” I cried.
Dennis stomped on the gas. We were mostly turned back around towards the road but he had to do some maneuvering to get us pointed the right way on the little stone bridge. While he did Barb screamed and I pounded the passenger side window, urging him to hurry, hurry, please fucking hurry.
Gravel spat out from under our tires when he finally got us straight. There was the squeal of burning rubber and then we were off, barreling down the narrow winding road at breakneck speed.
“Mark, we left Mark, they got Mark, the Bubbleheads got Mark,” Barb shrieked before dissolving into unintelligible gibbering.
We were going fast, too fast – each turn was nearly a miss, the car threatening to spin off the road or flip end over end. I kept looking through the back window to see if they’d followed us. I was sobbing uncontrollably but lizard-brain was in charge by then and it was almost like I was out of my body, regarding the situation with a sort of cool detachment. If we could get out of the woods, if they didn’t follow us, everything would be okay.
