The Wide Game Read online

  He held the book up over his shoulder. The words “My Diary” set in gild across the front cover. “Oh, just Sandy Doan’s innermost thoughts and feelings.”

  Nancy’s eyes grew wide. “You took her diary?”

  He nodded, pleased with himself. “I followed this group of girls for a bit until they sat down for a break, keeping in mind rule number one ... not being seen. Then, keeping the tie breaker in mind, I found this open bag and –”

  “That is so not cool!”

  Cindi snickered. “This from ‘Slick?’”

  “That was somebody’s music. You can hear music on the radio. A diary is somebody’s thoughts. You don’t just walk up and take –”

  “I want to kiss Danny Fields so badly,” Robby read, his voice cracking as it attempted femininity.

  Nancy blinked. “What?”

  He pointed to the page, grinning. “Right here in black ... er, blue and white.”

  She hurried up to him, grabbed the book from his hands. Her eyes moved quickly across the scrawled thoughts and her face clouded over. “That bitch!”

  As Nancy turned the page Cindi rolled her eyes. “Excuse me ... could you be any more hippocratic?”

  Robby laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “Hypocrite,” he corrected. “Could you be more of a hypocrite? Hippocratic is the oath doctors take, She Bop.”

  “You are such an ass.” Cindi offered him her scowl. “We may be stuck with you, Jerk Off, but you’re stuck with us too. Either play nice or we start taking baby steps. By the time we get to the quarry, everyone will have come and gone.”

  Robby did not look at her, did not offer anything in reply. That was fine with her.

  “‘That idiot Cindi is so full of herself,’” Nancy read aloud. “‘It’s like she thinks she knows everything. Well her shit stinks just like everyone else’s.’”

  Cindi reached over and grabbed the diary from Nancy’s hands. “That bitch!”

  Robby and Nancy both laughed as she read on.

  Tree branches stretched above the tasseled stalks ahead, reached up into blue sky. Win or lose, the game was almost at an end.

  Eleven

  40 INT. FARM HOUSE – NIGHT

  The CAMERA moves through the various rooms. We see that everyone is asleep except for David, who stands watch by the BAY WINDOW.

  41 CU TAMMY’S EYES OPEN

  She looks at David.

  42 INT. FARM HOUSE LIVING ROOM—NIGHT

  Tammy gets up and walks over to David.

  DAVID

  (smiling)

  Hi.

  TAMMY

  What are you looking at?

  DAVID

  Just looking at the stars.

  TAMMY

  Staring vacantly out the window.

  The stars.

  DAVID

  Sometimes, I wish I was up there.

  Away from all of this.

  TAMMY

  You want to be one with the stars?

  David looks at her.

  DAVID

  (snickering)

  I never thought of it that way,

  but ... yeah. Maybe I do.

  Tammy takes his hand.

  TAMMY

  Maybe I can help.

  DAVID

  And how’s that?

  TAMMY

  Dance with me.

  DAVID

  There’s no music.

  TAMMY

  Does there need to be?

  David looks at her strangely.

  Tammy leads him to the center of the room where they begin to sway back and forth as if dancing to a slow love song. We hear JERRY GOLDSMITH MUSIC — a creepy waltz — building.

  She lays her head onto David’s shoulder. After a moment, her head jerks up and she smiles. She OPENS HER MOUTH and CLOSES HER EYES as if she is going to kiss him.

  David CLOSES HIS EYES, waiting.

  SLIMY TENTACLES SHOOT FROM TAMMY’S OPEN MOUTH and WRAP AROUND DAVID’S HEAD. He cries out a MUFFLED SCREAM and struggles to break free of her grip. Her mouth OPENS WIDER than any human being’s would, allowing the HEAD of a TOOTHY CREATURE to emerge from it.

  Matt STIRS in his sleep, waking up to look at what is happening. He can’t believe his eyes. He picks up his MACHETE and RUNS over to them. With ONE SWING, he SEVERS TAMMY’S HEAD from her body.

  The body falls to the floor, lifeless.

  Tammy’s head still holds on to David’s. MORE TENTACLES SHOOT from the stump of its neck. The scalp begins to split open like an eggshell as BAT WINGS emerge from it. The husk which once formed Tammy’s beautiful face rips apart and slides to the ground with a SICK SPLAT, revealing the creature within.

  Matt begins to HACK at the tentacles with his machete. The creature CRIES OUT, releases David, and takes flight.

  ***

  “Jesus,” Deidra muttered as she set Paul’s script down in the straw between them. It was as if she wanted to keep him from coming any closer to her. “Where do you get this sick stuff? You’re so nice.”

  Paul gave an uncertain laugh, not knowing how to answer the question he’d heard more times than he cared to remember. His mother, his teachers, his friends, and now even Deidra, they all seemed to want to psychoanalyze his inclination toward horrific images. It was as if they expected him to break into some sobbing confession, telling them he’d lived through some horrific experience that had forever marred his fragile brain. The truth be told, his life had been boring, spent entirely in the homes and fields of Harmony. The only horrors he’d ever witnessed came to his eyes via the television or movie screen. The twisted ideas, the truly sick concepts, were just sparks from the darkest recesses of his mind.

  An English teacher once had his entire class take a Right/Left Brain Test. The way Paul understood it, the left side of the brain was responsible for logic, for reason and language, while the right side controlled creativity and emotion. Paul tested almost entirely Right Brain. It explained why he was flunking Algebra, why he had to agonize over every word when he wrote, why he visualized every sentence he read, and why he made films.

  In fact, it was through the view screen of his camcorder that Paul had first seen the Hunton’s barn.

  The stalks had given way to a grassy plain where the wooden structure leaned on its axis like the tower in Pisa. Paint (had it been red?) had all but abandoned the boards, leaving them naked and weathered. Many planks had fallen from their roosts, creating cavities in the walls through which sunlight now streamed, allowing glimpses of the bales of straw stacked within.

  Deidra suggested they go inside for a moment to rest. It was just after eleven, but the sun was already warming the rows. They had yet to take a break, and, as a result, felt confident they had a good lead on their friends.

  Now, they lay in a pile of straw at the center of the barn, its sweet smell replacing the musty scent of the corn outside. Sunlight shone through the the Swiss cheese walls, throwing weird patterns on the floor, and chains hung down from pulleys in the rafters above; the breeze played with them, transformed them into strange wind chimes.

  Deidra moved the pages of script, snuggled up to Paul in the straw, let the back of her head rest on his chest. Her eyes watched clouds drift past a hole in the ceiling, searching for shapes and patterns. “So, was Tammy an alien the whole time?”

  “No.” Paul watched her head rise and fall on his chest as he breathed, ran his fingers through the rosy locks of her hair. “It leapt into her when she cut off that zombie’s head in the drug store.”

  “That’s why she started acting so –”

  “So alien?”

  “Well, yeah.” She smiled. “So I’m Tammy?”

  “I’d like you to be.”

  “You wanna cut off my head?”

  “It’s a character, dear,” he reminded her. “It’ll be a shock to the audience, like Janet Leigh getting butchered in Psycho. No one will expect it.”

  “I sure as hell wasn’t expecting
it. I won’t have to really spit out worms, will I?”

  “Tentacles, and no,” Paul promised. “It’ll all be done with make-up effects. The worst part will be making a cast of your head.”

  She shot him a worried glance. “You mean like in that book you have? Where they pour crap over the guy’s face and stick straws up his nose so he can breath?”

  “I can’t afford any of that ‘crap,’ so it’ll be plaster bandages ... but you’ll still need to stick straws up your nose.”

  “Something tells me I should have read this whole thing before I signed on,” she grumbled. “What have you got against my head anyway?”

  “Trust me,” Paul told her, “after last night, I have no complaints about your head.”

  Deidra laughed. The full sound echoed through the barn’s interior, and, when it faded, her voice turned thoughtful. “So what do you think it will really be like?”

  “What?”

  “The end of the world.”

  Paul shrugged, then smiled. “Zombies or no zombies, I’m gonna live in a mall.”

  Deidra snickered. “This is the apocalypse. There won’t be any malls. There won’t be anything.” Her face grew grave. “The missiles launch, and thirty minutes later we’re all shadows burned into the wall.”

  “You know we live in a target rich environment,” he told her, still stroking her hair. “We’ve got Grissom Air Force Base not too far away, Fort Ben in Indy, and then Chicago is probably a big bull’s eye for the Russians.”

  “No big loss there,” she breathed against his chest. “Anyway, it’s better to be close to the Big Bang. That way we won’t die slowly, with our hair and teeth falling out everywhere. We really will be burned to shadows.”

  Paul kissed her forehead. “It’s all a little scary.”

  “Seriously, what would you do?”

  “If I were with you, I’d hold you and wait for the end,” he said without thinking. “And if we weren’t together, I’d probably pray we’d be together when it was over.”

  “I’m not sure I want to be Catholic.”

  Paul’s eyebrow rose. “Where did that come from?”

  Deidra shrugged. “It’s just something I’ve been thinking about, especially after the last couple of weeks.”

  “Let’s see ... Dan Rather walked off the set ... Lorne Greene died ...”

  “The Pope.”

  “Oh, that.”

  Pope John Paul II had spent ten days in the United States. It was all his mother could talk about. The point of his mission, trying to repress dissent among American Catholics, seemed lost on her.

  “He got as close as Detroit,” Deidra said. “I’m surprised your mother didn’t go see him.”

  “She wanted to. St. Anthony’s was putting a group together. I think she just didn’t trust leaving me alone for a few days.”

  Deidra laughed at the absurdity of that and Paul joined her. He was so straight-laced and dependable. She had been close to being thrown out of her home, and yet her parents now trusted her with the responsibility.

  She sighed. “I mean, for him to stand up there on his pulpit and say to all those Bishops that freedom of speech is ‘incompatible with Catholicism.’” Her hands rose, becoming hooked, like claws. She then held out her fingers, tapping each of them as she listed other grievances. “Priests can’t marry, women can’t even be priests –”

  “Do you wanna be a priest?”

  Her eyes widened. “No. I told you, I don’t know that I even wanna be Catholic. I mean, I believe in Jesus and all that junk, but the whole Pope thing just ... I don’t know. It’s like he’s such a total gynophobe.”

  “Guy-no-what?”

  “Gynophobe. Afraid of women.”

  “Is that a real word or a Sniglet?”

  She giggled. “I don’t know. If it’s not a real word it should be, and the Pope would definitely be one. It’s like the whole Catholic Church is stuck in a fuckin’ time warp. I mean Catholics don’t even believe in birth control. Every time we have sex we have to have a kid? Forget that!”

  “I’m pretty sure they frown on us having pre-marital sex at all,” he chuckled. “And if you’re really worried about my stance on birth control, I wore a condom last night, didn’t I?”

  She chuckled as well. “Okay. So you’re saying you don’t want to be Catholic either?”

  There was a time when it had been true.

  He’d been six or seven, and he knew that to be Catholic meant going to St. Anthony’s Catholic Church. He also knew that he wanted nothing to do with that place. It frightened him to the point of nightmares.

  Paul would sit in the pews, looking up at the statue of Christ hanging on the cross, seeing His mouth hang open and His eyes turned up in agony. Worse still, in His torso Paul saw another face. The naval was a round, moaning mouth; the raised ribcage formed the high cheekbones of a skull, and the nipples were angry eyes. It was as if this God were screaming because something was growing out of Him.

  Not to mention the golden-framed lithograph that hung above the entrance to the Church – Schongauer’s “The Temptation of Saint Anthony.” It depicted a bearded man surrounded by horrible monsters. The monsters pulled at his hair, at his clothes, at his flesh; monsters with claws, and beaks, and teeth. Some even had clubs.

  Yes, as a small child, St. Anthony’s was not a holy place.

  It was the den of scary monsters.

  Paul smiled a bit at the silliness of the memory and went on, “I’m just saying ... the stuff against birth control, the no women priests ... all that was made up by men. I still believe in God, in Jesus, in Mary, in the saints ... all of that makes you Catholic, not the other stuff.”

  Deidra’s head tilted on his chest, her eyes locked with his. “I just don’t want anything to ever come between us, and I was wondering if you being Catholic, and me not wanting to be one anymore, would.”

  “If we decide to get married it might.”

  She looked away. “Oh.”

  Paul held her chin in his hand, tilted her eyes toward him again. “I mean to the Church. If we get married in the Church, I think you have to want to be Catholic, or at least want our kids to be.”

  “We can always elope.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right after prom. Well, after after prom, anyway.”

  Paul grinned. “Whatever you say.”

  Deidra looked away from him again, her eyes focused off into the darkness. “We can move into one of those married dorms,” she said after a brief silence, her breath hot on his chest as she spoke, “and I can star in all your college films.”

  “Sounds like paradise.”

  She offered him an evaluating glance. “It could be.”

  For a moment, he found himself in the future she described. Married. Living together at USC or UCLA, Deidra studying art and drawing storyboards for the films he was shooting for a grade. The vision brought a smile to his lips.

  It was the response she’d hoped for. The evaluating stare became a beaming grin. “Just something to think about.”

  Paul kissed her forehead. “Being with you is just about all I do think about.”

  She held him tighter for a moment, then relaxed as she drifted off to sleep.

  He ran his fingers lazily through her hair, stared up at the rafters of the barn without seeing them. Paul thought that this was the best day of his life.

  Twelve

  Dale Brightman looked like the perfect specimen of a young man as he hiked the last mile toward the woods. He was an inch shy of six feet tall, possessed a healthy build, naturally even teeth that had never known brace or filling, skin clear of even the ghost of acne, and hair as golden as the corn that filled the husks around him.

  Some would have gone so far as to call him beautiful.

  The look in Dale’s eyes was a serious one, one normally reserved for track meets. And why not? The Wide Game was a race after all, and he intended to win it. He’d won every race in Phys Ed – the dashes, the hurdl
es, had even run the mile in the shortest amount of time. When he joined the track team, however, he found it was one thing to be faster than any kid at Harmony High, but it was quite another to be faster than kids from South Bend or Peru. After his first fifty-yard dash, he’d stood there, his sides screaming, his legs numb from the workout, sure it must have been a pre-race nightmare, but it wasn’t. Victory had been inches out of reach. Over and over, each of those fifty yards crossed his mind in detail. Had he started badly? No. Had he looked back? That was the deadly sin of running. You never looked back. And, of course, he hadn’t. The truth of the matter was he had just not been fast enough. Fast enough to beat most of the other runners, sure, but not all. The coach, his parents, even his teammates had congratulated him on the effort, but the bottom line was that he lost. By one step, he lost.

  Dale never wanted to experience that feeling again.

  He trained, he drove himself to shave time off his runs, and the next time he raced ... he won. A victory in the Wide Game would be just as sweet, something the school would talk about the rest of the year.

  “There goes Dale Brightman,” they would say. “He won the Wide Game, you know? Yeah, no one has ever made it to the old quarry faster.”

  He might even make the papers.

  As he pushed the leaves from his path, Dale could not know how right he was.

  He pressed onward, paced himself, and soon the row ended at the edge of a clearing. Dale stooped to catch his breath, but just for a moment. He had to keep going. He had to win.

  Someone had been there recently. The ashes of a bonfire lay smoldering in the dirt, the wood made white by intense heat.

  What happened here?

  Around the cinder pile, something caught Dale’s eye. He set his pack on the ground, stretching before he delved further into the clearing. Dolls. Cornhusk dolls had been placed on woven mats encircling the remains of the fire.