1

"Jesus! Why would you say that?" The Boy said. "Augh! Demon, seriously? You think jabbering on about demons when they are around is okay? You're lucky one didn't just snipe us from the crowd. Oh, God...what if this spreads? What if they know? Oh, Jesus!—"

Blood boiled in Craig's brain, and his heart belted in his throat. Every tug and every scream went ignored as The Boy dragged Craig through the forest undergrowth, where brambles drew pencil streaks along his knees.

Please don't kill me. Oh, God. I need to get home tonight. Let me see Stripe.

The Boy babbled endlessly while Craig hoped their blood-slicked hands would loosen and separate. Not once had he so desperately wanted to sweat his way out of a situation. Maybe if he thought about holding the hand of a cute girl, he could sweat enough to slip out. He scrolled through names and faces, and not a single one intrigued him. The thought process also faltered due to the endless spit-up of words mashing his brain; The Boy's lips were the tunnel of a fright train of words, and he couldn't keep up. Couldn't. Stars still drafted around as words rocketed past each other.

Scolding? Was The Boy scolding him? Maybe.

Another rough tug and Craig's body cried out. He wanted to scream to quit it, that his legs couldn't keep up and that it hurt, but Craig's throat gave up once he realized nobody was coming to save him.

This was really it, wasn't it? Craig Tucker, dead alone in the woods behind school. Cause of death: unknown, found in a—Craig picked his brain for a word—a shed. Yes, a shed. Some rusty ass shed Twitchy over here picked out for him.

Twitchy? Was that an appropriate name?

"—we're both gonna be dead men. Dead men, you hear me? I don't wanna die, man! You know that dumb saying, think before you speak? It exists for a reason!—"

Yeah, Twitchy'll do. Twitchy'll do just fine.

Why Twitchy? Because of The Boy's jerky spasms. Twitchy's body shivered like the pebbles of a passing train. Craig wondered if he was coked up on crack—or whatever drug made someone shake like that.

Questions. Oh, yes. There were a lot of them, and they droned the obnoxious buzz of bees, yet he couldn't focus on them. The pain demanded his focus. All the aches through his body needed mending, and the blood loss swirled Craig until he couldn't think.

Finally, Craig said a weak, "You're hurting me."

Twitchy twisted and looked at Craig, eyes wide and startled. "I am? Oh, Jeez. Well, nngh, I guess we're far enough, anyway. We should be safe out here."

He let go. Craig rubbed his wrist where Twitchy had planted bloody fingerprints along the bruised skin, and he stepped back. "Safe out here? What's going on? Who are you? What are you? Who are we hiding from? Are you going to kill me?"

Twitchy waved Craig's questions away. "How injured are you?"

Injured? Injured! Very, dickass! Where's the shed? Where's your sick shed I'm gonna die in?

Fear slapped Craig. Shit. Was there really one, or was he going crazy? Why else would Twitchy drag Craig out here? A fucking picnic?

"Injured," he said with a cautious scowl.

"Don't get fucking smart with me."

Twitchy's tone darkened, and Craig reeled back some more. He had to get away. He had to.

He fled in a direction. Any direction would do, but Twitchy lunged and yanked a handful of Craig's shirt. He drove back into a carpet of branches. A thousand coppery screws bolted into his skin. Pain rekindled, and a cry shot out as he trembled on the forest floor. Twitchy frowned down at him.

"Seriously, man?" Twitchy said. He sounded disappointed and looked at Craig, tired. "Get up and don't try to run away in your condition. You'll hurt yourself."

Craig whimpered when he picked himself up. Trickles of blood oozed down his back. He felt it beneath his clothes, and his shirt sucked it up like a greedy sponge.

Twitchy pointed to a fallen tree beside him and snapped his fingers. "Sit."

No, Twitchy. You're supposed to hang me by the ankles on a living tree if you wanna bleed me out, Craig wanted to say.

The wood was sleek and fingerless, bleached white and streaky. Craig could tell it slept on the forest floor for a very long time, such as the others fallen against the brambles. But that didn't mean it was innocent. What if Twitchy tampered with it?

"Like hell I'm going to sit. What's under the bark? Nails?"

"No. What?" Twitchy looked taken aback. "Wait, huh? Yeah, okay. Let me just sabotage the master. Yeah, that's a good idea. No. I'm not finished with you. I said sit."

"Master?" Craig uttered. He sat, and pain croaked up his spine.

Twitchy told him to stay put and set off. Craig analyzed the window to escape and decided against it. The thought even electrified hurt through his body. Twitchy wasn't too far, either, and Craig wasn't ready for another face full of leaf rot and beetles when he inevitably ate shit again.

He picked skin shavings and dirt from his arms when a thought occurred. What if Twitchy was looking for the easiest way to drag Craig to his butcher house?

Because there was one, wasn't there? Craig imagined a rundown shack reclaimed by Mother Nature. Thistles barbed the front of the bleak, sun-streaked shack. The wood pulled away in jerky strips, and deers nibbled at the exterior in late January. Windows were blown out, and Twitchy hung ghostly sheets to hide from the dulled sun. Glass shavings and shingles sprinkled in the grass and suffocated in patches of dirt and colored leaves. But the inside was the worst of all. Craig saw it all before he even had to. A steel worktable, the ones at hospitals in those horror flicks, displayed an array of syringes, scalpels, saws, and knives of every size. Maybe Twitchy even had an electric knife. Oh, God. Please don't let there be an electric knife.

Craig's mind was hooked.

Twitchy had an electric knife hooked to a small power generator he got from a bum on the streets (can bums even get those?), and it roared like a saw. Twitchy hooked Craig up to a table and sawed each and every one of his fingers off, one by one, until they were nothing but birthday candles swiveling around on the split wooden floor. Craig's hand belched blood as he screamed. And he screamed and screamed and nobody would hear him.

Twitchy came back. He had an axe. The same axe he used to kill several others, Craig knew it. He rose it high toward the heavens and slashed through Craig's thin neck, perfectly sideways to meet limbo. And there. There, he had it. Craig's amputated head, surrounded in pumpkin-colored leaves, smeared in red paste. Then Twitchy flipped out the carvers and the scoops, propped himself on the log next to Craig's diseased body (an excellently realistic Halloween decoration), and hollowed the head. After he turned Craig's brain into soup and poured it out, he scooped out Craig's eyes and plucked out his teeth. Voila! Put a candle in that bad boy, and Twitchy had the sickest jack-o'-lantern on Elm Street.

The crunch of pine cones snapped Craig from his nightmare and fished a scream from him. Twitchy emerged from between a pair of birch trees with something cocooned in his hands.

Bugs. Twitchy has bugs he's gonna pour in my mouth.

He scooted back. "What are-"

"Shut up," Twitchy said.

Craig's face inflamed, and his jaw unhitched, surely ready to spit something horrible out until Twitchy spoke up:

"If you waste your energy spending it on stupid questions, you'll have no quarters left for what I have to say, so save it."

Then Twitchy did something Craig never expected. He popped the contents in his hands in his mouth. They turned out to be some sort of feathery-looking herbs—not bugs. Craig blinked in surprise and yelped when Twitchy snatched his arm. He bent and spit the chew on his wounds. Craig flung his arm back.

"Ah! Sick, dude!"

Twitchy grabbed him again.

"Stop it, Craig! Won't you just let me help you?" Twitchy dug his nails into Craig's flesh. That worked because Craig winced and quit squirming. "It's Yarrow, nature's natural medicine. Don't they teach you guys that at school? What if one of you guys got lost in the forest, all bleeding out? You'd all die! And that's no good, man! Usually I have my pill case with me, but I—nngh—left it back home. I had some naproxen that would've helped with the pain."

What kind of loser keeps a pill case on them?

Another voice answered—the reluctant one: The pretty kind, apparently.

A heat sprouted along Craig's face toward Twitchy's newfound concern. "I don't want your dicked up spit on me!"

"Jesus, man! If you know what's good for you, you'd let me do this!"

Craig Tucker caved, and Twitchy's eyes fixed along Craig's wounds. He worked the chew into the tarnished skin until Craig was coated in the warm, gooey grass-saliva mixture. Discomfort puckered gooseflesh along his skin. A breeze chilled his arms.

"What's good for me? What's good for me is not being kidnapped by some dumb demon and dragged into the woods to get some nails up my ass!"

Or getting dragged into a shed.

"Ahh! Will you stop that? Jesus! I have no interest killing you! I'd only screw myself over if I did that."

Craig frowned at that.

Then why are we out here, Twitchy? Why did you drag me out here? To spit on me? What's in your spit? Acid? Poison? Tiny larva eggs? Gonna grow worms in me, Twitch? Grow weird demon eggs in me and watch me explode when thousands of hellspawns crawl out?

Then Craig thought about Alien, that old Sci-fi/horror flick, and his brain rolled him into space on an alien planet: This is Spaceman Craig to ground control. I think I'm screwed.

"Then what do you want from me?" Craig said.

"What do I want? What do you want? You're the one that summoned me to fulfill your sick desires." Twitchy stood in front of Craig with his arms crossed.

"I have a sick desire to go home."

"No! Not like that!" Twitchy spat. He tugged his shirt awkwardly, then paced back and forth."The killing kind, numbnuts! Who did you summon me to kill?"

Craig leaned back further and almost thought he'd fall into the twigs again. "I don't want you to kill."

"You...you don't?"

"No."

Twitchy's hands swept through his hair. They combed and combed like the world's most violent brush before he yanked down. He was shivering. It wasn't cold out yet. "Gah! Then why did you summon me?"

"I didn't. My EX did."

A sudden guilt enveloped Craig. He almost wanted to lie. He almost wanted to say, Yeah, okay, I admit. It was me, to spare the demon's anxiety, but that was stupid. Craig wouldn't summon a demon, and he didn't want anyone to think he ever would, not even Satan's prettiest hellspawn. Especially Satan's prettiest hellspawn.

Quit calling him pretty.

"Then why was it your blood used to activate the ritual?"

Craig tossed his hands up. "Jesus, dude. I don't know! She told me to cut myself and drop my blood in the center. I didn't know it was a stupid ritual. She told me it was her art project."

Twitchy quit pacing. He looked at Craig, astonished, and his fingers stopped raking. He spoke slowly—or as slow as Twitchy could speak: "Her art project that looked exactly like a ritualistic pentagon? You didn't understand what she was trying to do?"

Saying it out loud, Craig sunk in a pit of stupidity. God, he really was stupid, wasn't he? Craig hardly thought twice about it when Rue said she'd leave him alone if he did this one thing for her.

His eyes sunk to the floor, where a big fat beetle crawled across a Puffball. "I don't know."

"Ahh!" Twitchy flung back into his pace. His hands worked harder at stealing strands from his achy scalp. "Oh my God! We're all gonna die! We're gonna get slaughtered like pigs! And it's all your fault!"

Craig sucked in air through his braced teeth. He wanted a cigarette and a Pepsi. He also wanted to defuse the situation so Twitchy wouldn't pull out the I have a surprise, by the way! and pull him into the slaughterhouse. Because that's what he said, right? Slaughtered like pigs?

"Hey," Craig said awkwardly. "Where are your demon horns n' stuff?"

Twitchy looked back at him. A quiet calm stole the raspiness of his breathing. Cool waters. That's what Craig wanted. "What! I'm not a demon. I'm an imp. Don't you know the difference? And how stupid do you think we are? Do you really think we walk around in our impish forms with them, ngh, patrolling? Do you know how much of a death wish that is for us?"

"Who's them?"

"You're seriously stressing me out! Augh!" The panic snagged him again. "What do you mean you don't know about them? You have to know! Everyone knows! Oh, God! Oh, Jesus! They're gonna get me. They're gonna get me, and we're all gonna die! You, me. We're all in this!"

Craig thought on it. Them? No...them didn't ring any bells. In fact, the more Twitchy spoke, the more questions scuttled around his brain. And Craig doubted Twitchy had many answers.

"I'm not in this," Craig said.

Twitchy turned, and a dark cloud boomed in his face. He bent and jabbed Craig's chest, and Craig felt worried again. "Oh, don't say that lame shit to me! You can't expect to get yourself wrapped up in a ritual and to pay no consequences!"

Too close, too close! Twitchy was too close! The unmistakable stench of coffee wafted from his breath, which Craig found impossible. His heart twitched in his caged chest. Too close!

Spaceman Craig to ground control, Spaceman Craig to ground control! It's too close! It's too fucking close!

Craig panicked, and a flush of heat found its way to his cheeks. Control. He had to have control.

Craig did the only thing he thought to do. The only thing he could do. The only thing that shouted, Hey, imp shitbag! I have balls bigger than the moon!

Craig spat in Twitchy's face.

And suddenly he wished he hadn't done that.

Anger dispelled from Twitchy's face. It felt like the receding tide of the ocean as Twitchy watched Craig with those false blue eyes, and he slowly touched his cheek. The tsunami hurled down when Twitchy jolted his hand in the air.

A red trident—the ones from the bible—appeared, and Twitchy slammed Craig back until he plummeted into the shrubs. Twitchy shot the trident down.

Dead.

Dead.

Dead.

Craig Tucker was dead.

His eyes opened.

The trident caught his neck between the prongs.

He was alive.

Craig grabbed the scorpion-red fangs.

This wasn't an imp with the almost-cute nickname Twitchy. This was a demon. This was The Boy.

The Boy stood over Craig and crouched. His eyes were twin matches of flame wicks. Those blue eyes were gone. "Do you have any idea how much of a pain it is to get constant headaches all day because of your dumbass and to come up and see you getting your ass beaten by some chick because you couldn't keep your stupid mouth shut? Do you have any idea how much energy it is to have to babysit you and keep you safe? It's so much pressure!"

Craig squirmed beneath the trident. Sharp breathes hissed through his grit teeth, and tears brimmed his eyes.

"You spit on me in that state. A state I could easily break you in two without a fight. The fucking nerve."

Don't kill me! Please don't kill me! I'll be good! I'll behave!

These words bridged Craig's mouth, but they never met the frosted season.

The Boy stood. His face went slack, and the fire in his eyes wisped away until no emotion was left. He grabbed the trident, pulled it free from the earth, and tossed it in the air. It vanished.

"Leave."

Craig held his throat. "What?"

"Leave!" he burst. "Go! Get out of here! I—nnh—need to think!"

Craig obeyed. He scrambled to his feet and ran. He fought the pain, the leak of blood, the soreness, everything, and ran. He ran through the leaf pilings and through the ivy. He ran until he hurled over himself and plowed into a heap of Beargrass.

He ignored the hurt and peeked back. The Boy had not followed. Instead he was crouched in the herbage, head tucked between his folded arms.

Distantly, very very distantly, Craig thought:

This is Spaceman Craig to ground control. It's crying.

2

Their feet stood beyond each other on the moonlit pavement. The smaller of the two flipped out a pocket knife, and upon recognizing each other, they pocketed it. Then, they walked together toward the playground.

Their shoes avoided leaves and grass. They were pocket ghosts, glazed in shavings of the moon—the early morning frost that hummed cold down to both of their bones.

The swing groaned when they sat. The playground was lit by a single street lamp.

"News?" the taller asked.

The smaller nodded. "He said it. He said it right there after getting his ass handed to him by Wendy. He said demon, just like you said he would."

This time, it was the taller's turn to nod. Their hands tightened around the murky chains.

"What are we gonna do? Oh, God. I don't think I want to do this anymore. There's so much going on; I don't think I could handle it."

The smaller jerked when the taller placed a hand on their back.

The taller smiled. "You could handle it. I know you can."

They stood and continued their midnight stroll down the sidewalk, voices just below a whisper.

The taller said, "This is just the beginning, but if everything goes to plan, that hellspawn will be nothing but blood on our hands, and you'll have Craig once again."

The smaller said nothing. Nothing at all.

The taller stopped and faced them. "And Rue."

Rue looked at them.

"Be safe out there, okay? Promise me that. It's dangerous, especially with that thing lurking. It cannot be trusted under any circumstances, no matter what it says to you." They paused. "And don't trust Craig, either."