Monster Chapter Seven

Jul 12, 2024

“One, two, three, four, five six, seven; All good children go to heaven.” Children’s song

Nick waited. He evaluated his surroundings, trying to find any danger.

Death might be internal. The boy could suffer from heart disease. A blood clot. Little Cowboy could collapse, and Nick would be powerless to help.

But the boy looked healthy enough.

Nick had seen video clips of bulls charging into rodeo stands, but the bull riders were the last event of the evening. They’d just started the barrel racing, and the bulls wouldn’t be set loose for another hour.

Nick checked the timers of people sitting nearby. None expired within the next few years, let alone the next few minutes. Whatever killed the boy wouldn’t kill anybody else.

Nick settled back against the bleachers, the aluminum seat behind him poking into the muscles of his back. He let his eyes wander over the rest of the crowd. Rifts and symbols swaying and moving like wildflowers on a hillside. He practiced calculating the timers. Eighteen years. Thirty-four years. An older gentleman who looked to be in his eighties still had twenty-one years left on his timer. The old man had a thick nicotine-stained mustache and a week’s stubble on his face. He sat alone, his expression blank. Nick wondered if the man would find comfort, or despair, in knowing how long he still had to live.

A younger boy sitting to Nick’s right shoved popcorn into his mouth and laughed, poking a girl who must have been his older sister. He had six years left on his timer. The boy giggled at something his sister said—a lighthearted sound. Nick stared. The pleasant evening at the rodeo was no more.

He pulled out his phone and took a picture of the arena, making sure to capture the boy and his sister. He tucked the phone back into his pocket. If he could find out who that boy was—somehow find his name and where he lived—maybe he could save him too. He could—

Nick sat forward and shook his head. Focus.

A cowgirl rode into the arena on a dapple-gray thoroughbred, and Little Cowboy sprang to his feet.

“Mama!”

A few people near the boy looked and smiled, the boy’s happiness contagious. The father stood too, first clapping, then putting two fingers to his mouth and blowing a sharp whistle. The woman in the arena steadied her horse at the far end. After a short pause, she spurred her horse forward, racing through and around barrels. Her hair—the same color as Little Cowboy’s and done up in braids—whipped behind her in taut cords.

The woman raced her horse around the barrels in a cloverleaf pattern. The announcer stated her time and the crowd showed their approval with a cheer and scattered applause. With a smile and a wave, the woman rode once around the arena and then through the gates.

Little Cowboy was on his feet, already racing down the stairs. His father followed, stepping carefully past rodeo attendees, trying to keep up. Nick counted three beats of his heart—which had become more rapid—stood and followed.

He felt a vibration against his left leg. A text. Mom wondering if he’d got lost fetching hotdogs. He continued his descent down the bleachers, taking two steps at once. Little Cowboy had disappeared, and Big Cowboy was almost out of sight.

Nick pushed out of the arena, taking in the scene with a glance. The boy ran, plunging though the crowd, headed toward the rodeo parking lot where pickup trucks and horse trailers were parked haphazardly, creating a labyrinth of aluminum and steel.

A small boy running through that mess would be invisible to anyone driving in a high-cab pickup truck.

Nick heard the father call out to his son. “Jimmy, hold up.”

Little Cowboy—Jimmy—either didn’t hear, or more likely chose to ignore, his father’s command. The boy didn’t slow.

Nick ran. He gave no thought to being noticed now. Any moment the boy could fall, hit his head, or get crushed by a truck backing out of its parking spot.

Jimmy’s father kept a steady pace, so Nick veered wide to the right, around and past him. He didn’t look back. He didn’t want Big Cowboy to see his face.

Horses grazed peacefully, tied to trailers by short lengths of rope. Nick imagined Jimmy startling one of them, the horse rearing up with with steel-covered hooves.

Little Cowboy raced between two trailers. Nick was twenty feet behind the boy and could just made out the boy’s symbols before he was out of view.

ДДФ

ФДФ

ФФД

ДДД

Just under five minutes left.

Nick slowed, trying to look casual. He gasped from running, from fear, or maybe from excitement. He walked to the open row where Jimmy had disappeared. Glancing to his left, he captured the scene. Little Cowboy stood by his mother, his arm around her legs, and his eyes and smile lifted upward. The mother had one arm around Jimmy. She used her other hand to rub a brush against the muscled flanks of her horse.

Jimmy was safe.

Nick kept walking, turning down the next row. Jimmy spoke from the other side of the horse trailer. “I watched you, Mommy! You were fast, just like at Granddad’s.”

Nick’s stomach felt raw—tore open and plucked. This boy, so full of life, had only minutes left to live.

This was death. Not like in the movies with the swelling music and slow-motion movements. Death came swift, leaping out of nowhere on a nothing night, shredding, taking, leaving only a gaping, bleeding hole in the hearts of family and friends.

This was Death. And Nick would fight against it.

Nick moved down the row, turning so he could view the family through the windshield of an ancient Chevy pickup. Big Cowboy was there now. He leaned in to kiss his wife, then pushed down his son’s hat so that it covered his eyes. Little Cowboy laughed and pulled his hat back into place.

The husband and wife shared words. Nick felt wrong for spying on the family. Invading their intimate moment. He shuffled his feet but didn’t move. His phone vibrated again against his leg.

He touched his pockets. His phone was in his left, the keys to Mom’s car and a pocketknife were in his right. He fingered the knife. A gift from Dad on his twelfth birthday.

The symbols continued their steady march to zero. This time he figured them exactly.

188 seconds.

So soon.

Nick pulled at his hair, looked once all around, and realized Jimmy had come around the corner of the truck. The boy stared at him, and Nick could see the boy closeup. Could see the rift.

Icy symbols danced before him, almost eye level. They mocked him.

152

Nick bent over and pretended to tie his shoe. On one knee, he could look Jimmy directly in the eyes. The boy returned his gaze. Nick nodded and smiled. Jimmy dipped his head and touched his hat, looking for all the world like John Wayne playing some old-timey western sheriff.

128

If the numbers couldn’t be changed—if the rules couldn’t be broken—then in two minutes, Nick would be there when this little boy died.

He almost fled. Back to the bleachers, back to his family.

He’d hold his two sisters while listening to the wail of an ambulance. He’d close his eyes to block out the flashing red lights. But most important, he’d tell himself there was nothing he could have done. Death was unavoidable; an unwavering and unchangeable fate.

Walk away.

The numbers would complete their count, and Death would collect its corpse.

Don’t look back.

Jimmy picked at a piece of rust on the bumper of the trailer. His eyes studying the blemish.

Run away.

The little boy in front of him was whole. His mind curious and alert. Alive.

No. Nick wouldn’t run. He might fail, but he wouldn’t run.

Let Death come and meet them both.

Little Cowboy kicked at the tire of the horse trailer. Not a soft kick, like he was tapping the tire to check the air pressure, but a good swift punt. He pulled back his leg a second time and slammed it into the wheel like he was trying to blast it off the axle.

“Jimmy!” Big Cowboy’s voice floated over the trailer. “What are you doing over there?”

Nick was still on his knees, wiggling his fingers over his shoelaces. He didn’t want Jimmy’s father to turn the corner and see him lurking around his son. But he was crouched and ready to jump.

“Nothing,” Jimmy said. “Can we go get Pepsis now?”

“Mom’s almost done rubbing down Katie Lou. We’ll get Pepsis in a minute, and then go watch the rest of the rodeo.”

For the first time since he’d discovered the symbol’s secret, Nick doubted. The boy had less than a minute to live, and there wasn’t a hint of danger. Perhaps Nick was crazy after all. Perhaps this whole thing was the result of some kind of brain damage—

Ground-shaking thunder to the north.

No. Not thunder. Hooves on turf. Horses galloping. The snap of flailing cowhide. The sharp clang of loose chain.

A runaway team.

Nick saw the chain of symbols above the little boy’s head. Jimmy’s life thread scrolling through the rift. He saw the end come into view. The spindle of code that was Jimmy fell apart, the thread scattering into tiny pieces. This is what death looked like through the rift. This was the edge of a life.

The end in sight, but still to come.

Nick was on his feet before he realized it. Jimmy, who had been digging in the dirt with the toe of his boot, turned toward the noise.

The boy would run, looking for the source of the noise. He’d move out from the shelter of the trailers and see the galloping horses and freeze directly in their path. Two thousand pounds of muscle and bones would slam the little boy into the dirt, leaving behind a broken and mangled body. Little Cowboy would struggle, eyes searching for his mother. For help that wouldn’t come.

And then his eyes would become still as the spark of life slipped away.

This scene. This scene would play out over the next fifteen seconds, and then it would be over.

Jimmy’s legs were already moving. Carrying him toward the thunder.

Nick leaped. “Jimmy, stop!” he yelled, grabbing the boy by his red-and-blue checkered collar. Pulling him forcibly to the ground. Jimmy fell with a thud on the W’s of his Wrangler jeans. The thunder grew louder, and Jimmy and Nick watched as two horses—yoked together—raced past within inches of the trucks, muscles pulsating under tight flesh. Hooves throwing up chunks of brown and green thatch behind them.

Jimmy watched the horses in wonder, but Nick watched only the rift.

The ivory shapes paused and flickered and then were gone. The symbols, the code, the thread . . . snuffed out.

For a moment, the space above Little Cowboys head was empty. A vacant rift floating in the air. And then symbols returned, flaring back to life, polished and white.

Nick held his breath.

The numbers had changed.

The Open Author

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