By Jon Oden

“Are ya stupid, boy?” the gravelly voice slurred.

The stubbled face of his father glared at him, vaporous breath making him gag.

“Look at me when I’m speakin’, boy!” The pale, angry face turned, eyes darting around like he was expecting something.  “I see it on ya.  I can smell it oozing outta your skin.”

His father had always been a crazy bastard, even now.  And wasn’t it just like him to show up and try to embarrass him…in public and naked!  

“Stop staring at me queer!”  The man’s heart skipped, could anyone hear this?  “Yeah,” The old man saw fear in his son’s eyes, “I know wha you…you’ve done…been doin’.”  It belched.

The man’s mouth was dry, he could feel his spit fight its way down his narrowed throat.  He couldn’t breathe.

“I told ya to stay away!”  The face blurred as it turned away.  “I told ya not to go lookin’ in places ya don’t have any business…” It faded into sadness, sobbing.

“Why… can’t ya…Listen to me!”  The last three words were a scream!  A deafening sound that pierced his eardrums and made his eyes tear up.  “Listen…Listen…listen…”

“Hey, are you listening to me?” Joel was waving his arms behind the counter.  “What the Hell, man.  You’re holding up the line,”  he chuckled.

The man looked behind him.  No one.

“You’ve been standing there for, like, five minutes, bro.  Holding that burrito like it was your ma’s hand.”  He chuckled again.  “Ya good?”

A faint beeping sound floated up from his belt.  The man quickly placed his free hand on a small box clipped there and silenced it.  He smiled at Joel, who was staring at him.

Joel grinned, “Ya good?”

“Yep, just…need to get my burrito and head to the grove.”  He started searching his pockets for money.

“The grove?  Ooooooo, spooky, man…cool.”  

The little box chirped again.  

“Ya good, bro?  I got some shit back here like…” Joel twisted around and dug through the shelves behind the counter, his dirty smock didn’t cover his ass when he bent over.  “Chocolate and Skittles…they’re only a little outta date…”

“Nah, Joel.  I’m good…got that in the truck if…if I need it.”  His hands passed over his keys making them jingle.  “Aha!”  He pulled out a wad of bills.

The door opened with a jingle sound.  The man turned quickly to look who it was, sweat beading on his forehead. 

His father was still standing at the doorway…still naked and crying.

Joel welcomed the new customers.  A cheerleader from the local high school and what looked like her brother?  Boyfriend?  Who cared.

The man walked up to the counter and tossed a few dollars down.  “That enough?”

“Looks good to me, bro.”  Joel scooped up the cash and put it in his pocket.  

He grinned even wider than usual.  “Old man owes me.”

The man nodded and turned toward the door, pausing when he saw his father’s pasty buttocks heading out with the cheerleader.  

He sighed.  His old man always was a greasy pervert.  He would never change no matter what happened to him.  The man shook his head.  He would get to his truck, eat a few handfuls of Skittles and his father would fade away just like all the other times.

“Hurry up, boy!” A raspy voice echoed from the parking lot.  “I ain’t got all day and your truck is starting to smell bad.”  

The man gulped.  “See ya around Joel.”

 “I’ll be around, man.”

Without turning back to acknowledge his friend, he opened the door.  It jingled just as it always did.  “If you’re headin’ to the grove, Bobby,” Joel’s voice was more serious, “you might want to grab another bag of lye.  Ya never use enough, and if you’ve taken care of what you were gonna take care of, I put out the big bags you asked me to order.”

Bobby turned and nodded.  “Thanks Joel.”

“No worries, man.”  His grin returned.  “I bet even your pops will approve of this one.”

He turned his beat-up, 1984 sky-blue Ford pick-up onto the dirt road that led to his family’s tree orchard.  Rich people from Little Rock and Conway called it the grove.  Thought it was quaint and authentic.  Locals just thought it best to avoid mentioning it.  The land had a history…decades of history. 

He looked at the time, then shoved his phone back into his pocket as he snorted at the thought of how he used to bring his daughter here.  She had loved it.  She really belonged here.  Bobby Pennington looked to his right to see the calm waters of the Arkansas River pass quickly by as he drove deeper into the dark valley of pine and poplar trees that his family had owned for over a century.  

He let his mind wander a bit.  How he had grown up here.  When his mother left him, trusting his father to raise a confused eight-year-old.  Then, how he dropped out of the U of A to join the Marines and fight Saddam.  He scoffed at himself.  He thought of how his heart beat a little faster when his father appeared.  Scared of his old man?  Pathetic!  Stinky geezer!  But, what else could he do?  He couldn’t abandon this place.  His daughter loved it here.

When he finally pulled up to the wooded entrance of the farm, the weather, warm and a little breezy outside of the valley, became suddenly and ominously cold and rainy.  He had to roll his windows up as the pelting rain began to slap him in the face and soak his shirt.  The dramatic drop in temperature forced him to crank up the heat even though the heater in the old beater truck was for shit.  

“Damn!” he groaned wiping the drops of water off his skin.  “Just my crappy luck.”  He pulled the latch to open the door and slide into the freezing rain.

Bobby trudged to the back, careful not to slip and fall into the six-foot-deep culvert at the side of the road.  He reached over the side of the truck and into the dented and worn bed, pushing away the odds and ends, his tool belt, and a shovel.  He grabbed the body-shaped form wrapped in thick black plastic, duct-taped at both ends, and threw it over his shoulder.  The force of the package made him grunt, almost winded him.  

“Heavy sack-a…” he groaned.

In the wind and the rain, his hand slipped off his truck and he fell backwards with the weight of the thick black plastic package landing on top of him.  It made the worst scrunching sound as it hit his chest. 

“Shit!” he gasped, his face plastered in cold mud and gravel.  The smell of industrial -grade plastic shoved up his nose and into his mouth.  He tried not to think about what was under that plastic shroud.  

The little box on his belt beeped again.  Beep…beep…beep.  “Shit…” he whispered.  He pulled the box off his belt and looked at the screen.  69 flashed in bright red.  “Okay…not…too bad.”

Bobby tossed the long, heavy black bag off him and got to his knees.  His muddy hands fumbled desperately across every pocket he had.  “Shit!” he whimpered.  “Where the…”  Then, his ice-cold fingers grazed a small bag deep his in left pant pocket. 

He grabbed it, ripped it open losing some of what was inside to the rivulets of water passing underneath his soaked jeans.  Then, with his muddy hands and frozen fingers, he tossed what was left of the bag into his mouth.  He shut his eyes, tried to relax, and chewed vigorously.

“She won’t come this early.  She won’t come…please, baby…don’t…

He chewed some more and swallowed hard.  Started chewing again.

“She can’t come this early…”

“Daddy?”

Bobby’s heart stopped at the sound of her sweet voice.

He didn’t dare open his eyes.  He knew what would be there.  He couldn’t look at it again…not again.  What he would see was not really her.  He felt the little box vibrate.  “Thank you…”  His blood sugar was normal again…Skittles were working.  He let his eye lids relax…slowly.  He knew she wasn’t there, couldn’t feel her anymore.  “Please…”  As light began to pierce his retina, his heart began to pound a little faster, “Please, sweet love…”  He knew she was gone.  

He sighed as the rain dripped from his face, running together with his tears.  His clothes were, by now, completely soaked, but he didn’t feel it, and could have cared less.  

“Why does this have to happen to me?!”  He wanted to scream it, but he knew to keep quiet in this place.  Noise tended to attract the worst of them.

It had been this way ever since he was diagnosed.  Maybe a little before.  His mother told him he was a sensitive boy.  It was seven years now.  Type 1 Diabetes had pulled him out of the Marines, into his family business…businesses.  It was the insulin and low blood sugars that dragged him into a world he wished he never knew, brought on by “neuroglycopenia.”  He could hear his endocrinologist roll over that word like anybody should know what it meant.  Prick.

His world became a living nightmare from the beginning.  His neuroglycopenic hallucinations were painful at first.  Made his head ache and his eyes burn.  That prick doctor had the balls to write an article about it.  Eventually, he got used to it.  And he stopped going to his doctor.  “My blood sugars are fine, thank you very much.” 

Sometimes, seeing loved ones was hard.  They were the most difficult to see clearly and understand.  All of them presented just as they wished to be seen.  All of them wanted something.  Sometimes they appeared clean and healthy, even happy, other times not so much, gory and grim, dirty.  They each had their heralds that preceded their appearance by just a few moments, like theme music.  Gave him a bit of a heads up, but they would never allow Bobby to avoid them.  

Some preferred a specific smell.  Maddy loved honeysuckle.  His naked father smelled like rot-gut whiskey, which was never easy to take.  Some preferred a sound.  His Marine buddy, Sam, liked the sound of a Harley, which confused the shit out of Bobby when he manifested while he was driving.  Others liked specific sensations like a cut in the skin from a razor, or deep depression.  It was fine, ‘cause it only lasted a few minutes, but if Bobby let himself stay with them too long he would lose himself in their hellish fantasy.  That’s how Joel came to know his…situation.  He sometimes needed a sidekick to fend the more difficult ones off.

He might need Joel tonight.  He would need Joel, but in some part of his mind he didn’t want Joel involved in tonight.  This was his problem to deal with. 

The spoke’s themes told Bobby a little bit about them.  The darker the theme, the more ominous, and maybe more dangerous, the ghoul.  Bobby could sometimes control the event, but it was a work in progress and there really wasn’t any training manual on the subject.  He was doing the best he could with what he had.  

What did they all have in common?  His blood sugar.  It had to be low for him to see them, which is why he paid out his ass for the glucose monitoring system attached at all times to his belt.  He even slept with it right next to him.  If the thing beeped, he knew something was coming and he could treat his low and limit his time, control his time with them.  It was fool-proof, just so long as he kept his monitor connected to him.

There really is nothing worse than waking up to your dead father pretending to take a piss in a dark bathroom!  Ludicrous, really, if you knew how the man died.

Bobby got to his feet and pulled the black bag back over his shoulder, more carefully this time.  He turned slowly toward the entrance of the grove and, after a few deep breaths to slow his pounding heart, he took his first step forward toward the dark line of trees a few yards ahead.  

The grove itself was hidden several hundred yards up a 1500-foot rise in the middle of his valley.  The rustic nature of the land along with the steep grade kept most looky-loos away.  Cops too.  When he was young, his parents would grow weed out here and sell it to the hippies that came up from Dallas.  They made a killing!  

“They sure did make a killing out here,” he chuckled.  

He stopped right after he said it.  The wind was blowing hard through the pines, which always made the air smell so good, but just at the edge of that aroma was something different…raw…musty and rotten.  Through the pounding rain and raking branches up above, he could hear the rustling of leaves and gravel all around him.  Sounds too heavy to be deer or even wild hogs.  Sounds that seemed to close in quickly, then fade back.  Something cold and wet touched his neck.

He twisted around almost too quickly, his feet losing traction in the muck, but he kept himself from falling again.  “Had to be a drop of rain…” 

Something grabbed the bag and pulled him backwards.  His legs followed the momentum, trying desperately to stay upright.  The pulling force stopped.  Bobby regained his balance, falling to one knee, but keeping his plastic-bagged cargo up on his now sore shoulder.  

He heard children giggle just to the right.  He turned his head, but too late.  Just branches were left bobbing in the breeze.  Bobby knew they were playing with him.  They liked to do that when he brought them someone new.

“Come play with us, Bobby.”

“No.”  Bobby stood back up and rubbed the mud off his knee.

They giggled again.  This time on the left.  “Come play…”. The voice was deeper, impatient.

“No!”  His meter beeped again.  “Give me a break!”

“My daddy told me not to yell at my sister.”  The boy manifested right in front of Bobby.  Couldn’t have been more than six-years-old.  “Now I can’t find them.”  His neck was red and swollen.  “Can you help me?  I won’t yell at her anymore.”  His eyes were dark and empty as if he was programmed to say what he was saying, but he didn’t grasp what any of it meant.

Bobby’s heart broke for the boy.  He knew who it was, had gone to Kindergarten with him.  “No, Jimmy, I can’t help you.”  

The boy turned and started to walk back into the forest.  He stopped and without facing Bobby said, “Maddy misses you, but you can’t keep coming here.  You’re only making it worse.”  A mist enveloped him and he was gone.

Bobby gulped down more of his Skittle stash.  Then started walking back up the trail

He planned very carefully for tonight.  He always did for these nights.  Ate the right foods.  Counted his carbs carefully and even though he underdosed with his insulin – he had to subtract two or three units from his calculation just so he wouldn’t have to fight low blood sugars all night.  But that was the thing with diabetes.  You can do everything right, and still feel like you messed up!

“Bitch,” he whispered through the ice forming over his beard.  He was talking to his diabetes and to the heavy figure draped over his back.  It was raining much harder now and the pellets of ice scratched at every exposed pore on his body.  He groaned as he repositioned the black mass across his shoulder.

“Damn it!”  His foot slipped on the slick undergrowth, almost causing him to lose his grip on the plastic again, nearly dropping the limp, pulpy bulk into the stewing morass below. 

He stopped and leaned against one of the taller trees; too dark to tell what kind it was, but he knew just by the feel it was one of his pines.  He blew warm air into his numb hands cupped over his mouth.  “This one deserved it, Maddy.”  He sniffed loudly, “Don’t be mad at me.”

He took a sidewards glance at the shadow on his back, “We’ll be there soon, love.”  His voice stained with sarcasm.  The giggles from behind the leaves returned.  More this time.

A muffled beep pierced the frigid air as his feet sloshed through a puddle of black muck.  He sighed.  “Geez!  Again?!  Alright…just a minute.”  His mind was swimming, his anxiety mounting since the beginning of the evening.  Even though there was little chance of getting caught out here; how suspicious could a tree farm be, really?  Little chance was not zero chance.  

He looked past the darkness and swaying trees, not seeing anything, he threw back even more Skittles and went forward.  “What the Hell is with these blood sugars?”

Another fifty yards up the hill, rain pouring, feet sliding, his black hoodie soaked, and his muscles screaming, he came to a stop.  “This is your place, Senator.”  He said, dropping the canvas-wrapped package between two Frazier saplings sprouting from twin mounds of bare earth.  “I will always love the end of ya’lls session.”  Bobby smiled, “no one will miss you for another three weeks, and with your history, no one will even care.” 

Rivulets of water forced themselves around the new obstacle; Nature didn’t care about the shit in her way.

He pulled out his entrenching tool and started to dig.  The earth was still soft except for the web-like roots of all the vegetation that covered the forest floor, but the rain filled any progress he managed within seconds. 

His waist beeped again.  “Shit!”  His hands were muddy and numb, but he managed to unclip the small, black box attached to his belt.  Fifty-Two now.  Bobby grimaced.  If he used up all his Skittles before he could get back to his truck, the Senator won’t be the only one staying the night in a muddy hole.

Icy water fell into his face from the unkempt mop of grey hair hanging over his thick eye-brows.  “Shit…don’t have time…”.  He fumbled with the screen.

It beeped again, answering the steam from the man’s mouth with a sorta, ‘The take care of yourself, numbnuts!’  The red tracing shining off its face told a blood sugar of 49, and a single arrow pointing straight down.  “That ain’t good,” he sighed.

He looked at the canvas-encased Senator.  “You’ll have to wait.”  

He rolled his eyes.  He could feel the dizziness and weakness begin to grip him.  “Get a hold of yourself.  She wouldn’t want you to have a seizure and she sure wouldn’t want you to get caught out here because of your stupidity.”  He tapped the screen firmly, then pulled out some more candy from his pocket.  Cleansing this world of scum was dangerous enough; leaving home without enough Skittles to treat his low blood sugars was suicide.    

He started to dig again.  “At least no ghosts,” he muttered under his breath.  Noise attracted them.  The roots may still get in his way.  Even so, the farm was still the perfect place to bury bodies.  His soil was perfect for getting rid of bodies and such.  He had been treating the soil since…since his daughter died, forcing the land to grow his trees and adding materials that would dissolve organic matter more quickly.  It was all very scientific-like, which he had learned on the internet.  

He stopped; the memory of Maddy hard to face in this place.  A memory of a horrible day made worse by unwelcome comments by wrong-minded people calling her fag…evil.  A school protest in front of the capitol building for tolerance and peace.  This had all happened before.  A few kids speaking their mind in a closed-minded community.  Backwards beliefs shrouded behind biblical verse.  A dichotomy that defied logic, but bad people didn’t live in logic.  Maddy just couldn’t stand the pressure.  She had accepted herself and her friends.  She took the bullying and the loneliness, but she couldn’t take the hatred spewed from her own community, and it overwhelmed her.  She was all he had, but she protested that day.  Skin heads showed up and started pushing, then the cops arrived.  Someone pulled a gun, and in a blink of an eye, a flash and a tiny pop…she was gone.  

He nodded his head as he continued shoveling out piles of slimy-black earth.  He was doing the right thing.  These people had to pay.  

He had tried talking, tried to change their minds.  In the end, it was like convincing a teenager Tik Tok was just stupid.  

He climbed out of the hole, his numb fingers aching.  

Shaking his head to clear thick drops of water from his eyes, he thought of the horrible person he liberated from the Earth tonight.  The woman made it her job to hate and ridicule everything he…his daughter stood for.  She preyed on the weak.  Lied.  Cheated.  And now she was gone.  

His heart sank as he thought of how many others were out there.  He had to fight off the urge to scream as he pulled the plastic up close to his face.  The woman behind that thick film had laughed at him when he told her about Maddy.  She laughed!  “No one in this legislature will ever support you, or that lesbian bitch’s cause.”  She had said that to his face!  His lips curled, and he spat into what should have been her face.  Then he grinned, letting the weight of her fall backwards into the gloom.

He picked up his shovel and started to cover her.  After, he pulled the last thing left in his pack, a small Balsam pine tree; the root ball covered in burlap. 

“You’ll be ready soon enough, little guy.”  He stoked the tiny green branches.  

His daughter would be proud.

The rain slowed to a drizzle, allowing him to look over his field in the valley below.  His land stretched out to the Arkansas River at the base of the huge hill.  It was shrouded in dense shadow, but he knew every inch of the land.  The moon was hidden by a thick wall of clouds, but he could see faint brushstrokes of green highlighted in the gloom.  She loved it, so he loved it.  The trees meant something to him and his family.  Every tree held something special within it.  Every time a customer took one of his trees home, they took home something more personal and spiritual.

Bobby felt dizzy again, worse this time.

“I am proud of you, Daddy.”  Her voice was so sweet.  Was he imagining her?  His meter hadn’t alerted.

“That’s because I’m smarter than you, dipshit.”  That voice was familiar.

Bobby’s heart jumped into his throat, pounding like it was about to explode.  He pulled his meter back off his belt and looked, but found nothing but a black screen.  He pressed every button, but nothing revived it.  “I just changed you…”

“You did, redneck, but…guess what…I’ve got skills.”  

Bobby followed the sound of the voice to a stubby pine several yard to the left, just beyond the grave he had just covered.  His eyes blurred and his head ached.  He fumbled across his jacket pockets for more Skittles.

“That isn’t going to help you, sugar-boy,” she chuckled.  “I got your number…literally!”  She let out a deep laugh that echoed off the trees.  

Bobby knew who it was, but he wouldn’t let himself believe it.  “I…I…just…”

“Killed me!”  She frowned.  “Yes, you did, Hick!”  She was shaking her head, mussed blonde hair matted with blood swaying with her motion.  “I have had people try to kill me before, but you have some balls on you, sir.”

“Daddy…”

“Shut that lesbian bitch up, or I’ll make sure she sees you suffer.”  A wide grin engulfed her face, eyes black and empty just like the boy before.  “I’m here for you to atone for your sins.”  She glared at the pine trees planted in rows stretching out around her.  “And you have been a very bad boy!  Whoa!”

“You can’t do anything to me,” he panted, barely able to keep his eyes open.

“Oh, but you are wrong, newbie.”  She scoffed, then got on all fours and galloped over to him.  Her face pressed into his.  “You see,” she licked her lips.  “We all have our strengths and weaknesses.”  Her appearance changed into a more gory creature, her lips melted back and her jaw bone broke through her chubby jowls.

Bobby’s stomach turned at the smell.

“I learn pretty fast.”  She stood up and paced back a few steps.  “You have to, you see when you’re a woman in politics.  There are some sick perverts in my business.”  She grinned again.  “I learned while you had me unrestrained…bastard, that isn’t safe…in the back of you heap of a truck, that I can control your electronic devices.”  She raised her hands as if in praise worship, “shout out to my admin person who taught me about TikTok.  You can learn anything on that app.”

Bobby groaned.  He could feel his blood sugar diving down.  He could barely keep his eyes open.  The Senator’s voice was just a dull echo at this point.

“Stay with me, Bubba.”  She sat right in front of his sagging head.  “I’ve been juicing you with more and more insulin all night, dumbass.  That pump you use was very accommodating and easy to activate.”  

“Daddy,” Maddy sobbed.

“I told you to shut up!”

“Leave her…”

“You such a sad sack, Bobby.  You lost your wife in the Gulf.  Another Marine dead on the field.  Then you got kicked out because your pancreas went tits up.”  She moaned in pleasure, “it is just so tasty, but it gets better because then, you lose poor Maddicakes over there to a fidgety cop!”  The woman laughed again.  “Priceless!”

Bobby looked up at her.  

“You didn’t know that, did you?”  She sucked in air through her teeth, “yep, a young cop.  With a family, mind you, made a mistake and we, as the law makers of our state, forgave him for that.”

Bobby’s eyes began to throb.

“Are you gonna cry again, Bob-o?”  She nodded, “go ahead and cry.  I would put you out of your misery with my brand new nickle-plated Colt .45.”  Her eyes got wide with excitement. “I had hollow-point bullets special made for her, but…” She turned and looked Bobby directly in the eyes, “you buried her right over there!”  She pointed a chunky finger at the fresh mound of mud, which was already eroding in the rain.  “Ah well, water under the bridge…or over my mound.”

“I drained your meter of all its precious battery power so you would be blind to your exposure to us.  And, now, all I have to do is sit and wait as your life slowly swirls the proverbial drain, or wait long enough for you to go insane because…pretty soon the others are going to smell fresh meat and come lookin’ for ya.  It’s just a matter of time, and either way you loose…bitch!”

Somewhere in the distance, a faint ringing sound caught the woman’s attention.  “What is that?”  She turned her head this way and that trying to locate the sound.  “That sounds like my phone…”. She turned to Bobby, who already knew his stupid mistake.  “Did you leave my GPS enabled, government-issued phone on my murdered body?” Her face was ecstatic, her massive grin pushed her big cheeks up to her sunken eyeballs.  “You did!  Amateur hour, shit kicker.  You are going to jail now, if you make it off this hill!”  She jumped and skipped around Bobby and Maddy, who had huddled around her father, being careful not to get in the maniac ghoul’s way.

The trees began to giggle again.  “Here they come, Amateur sugar-boy!  Here they come for you.”  She sniffed the air.  Her grin disappeared and her face darkened.  “And they are hungry for you, Bobby.”

Maddy whimpered.

“It’s okay, Maddy.  This…This was probably meant to happen…just rotten luck.”

“Did you forget your emergency bag I made you?” she whispered.  Her voice was older now, more like her real voice.  “I swear, dad, if you forgot it again.”

Bobby sat up and looked at her.  She was pale and thin, but her eyes were just as green as they had been that morning when he left for work.  He wanted so much to hold her.  To hug her say he loved her just once more.  “No…sweetheart…I always keep it in my pocket now.”

“Then take it out and use your emergency shot.”  

“My…”

“Your glucagon, dad, the antidote to insulin.  Use it to get your blood sugar up…Now!”   She screamed the last part loud enough to bring Bobby back from the brink.  His adrenaline was pumping hard enough to force his starved muscles into action.

He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out the red container that held glucagon, the antidote to insulin.  He popped the case open and pulled out the pre-filled syringe.  Then he plunged the long needle into his numb leg and pushed the plunger down.

“Noooo!” the senator screamed when she realized what he was doing and what Maddy had planned all along.  “You’ll never get away with it.  My people will come looking and they’re gonna find tha…phone…”. Her voice faded with her image.

Bobby felt his blood sugar rise and blood begin pumping to his vital organs again.  His mind was clearing. 

His phone rang; his heart jumped into his throat. 

“Hello?” he croaked.  “No, Mr. James, you didn’t wake me up.  I was j-just…uh…getting some…how can I help?”

He listened again.  “Oh…absolutely.”  His grin returned.  “How many…”.  He listened to the muffled voice.  “No, sir.  Fifty Balsams will be no problem…at all.”

Jon Oden, M.D., is Chief of Pediatric Endocrinology and the James H. Hamlin II Endowed Chair in Pediatric Endocrinology at UAMS.