Where the Dead Things Go

  My name is Alisha Turner and I woke up in a good mood on a sunny morning. I pulled apart the blinds to see my weird neighbor Karson dragging my dead dog Bernie across his backyard. Unfortunately, this is not the first dead animal I've seen Karson handle.

 When we were ten our neighborhood had a problem with rats which mysteriously started clearing up on its own. One night I was putting some food out for Bernie when I saw Karson taking bags of deceased rats and dragging them to the shed. I guess I thought maybe it was some sort of weird service project for him.

 A few years ago I had a school project and Karson was my partner (worst partner ever). His mom had let me into the house so we could work on our project. I was sitting at the counter waiting for him when I had to go to the bathroom. I walked down the hall and opened the door to the bathroom to find him flushing a good dozen dead fish down the toilet, muttering to himself, “He doesn't like seafood. Stupid, stupid.” Needless to say we failed that project.

There was that other time I came home from our High School, Thunderridge High, a few months ago to find rabbit traps all over the forest behind Karson and I’s houses. Karson was wearing camo and face paint while hiding behind a blackberry bush with two or three rabbits struggling to get away from his clutch. They didn’t make it. That snapping sound still haunts my dreams.

So I have to say I wasn’t altogether surprised to see Karson with my poor Bernie. But I was pretty upset.

“KARSON!” I screamed as I climbed out my window and vaulted over the fence separating our yards. “What did you do to my dog?!”

Karson looked at me with wide eyes. He had dark bangs that hung over his eyes and he was thin and reedy. He was six months older than me but I had always thought of him as a little kid. The sad thing was, we had actually been good friends when we were little.

We used to play in the garden and chase each other in the woods. He’d call me “Ally-Tally” and I’d call him “Karson”. Then for a while he stopped asking me to play. He was always “busy” when I came over and he looked sick at school. One time when the teacher asked him what he did over the weekend he peed his pants and started crying. Sobbing about the forest and his nightmares or something along those lines.

Then, out of the blue, Karson asked me to come over. Not just come over but have a sleepover. My little kid heart leaped for joy. We were still friends! 

“You sleep on the mattress, Ally, and I go on the bed,” Karson said. The blow-up mattress was by the window and no matter how much I asked, he would not let me close it. Or move the bed. I didn’t know why at the time. I noticed he seemed to keep waking up at night and checking on me. I thought it was sweet. And I assumed he had fun because he kept inviting me.

“Hi, Ally-Tally, wanna come over?”

“Hiya, the mattress is ready for you, Lisha.”

“Will you come over? I don’t like sleeping alone.”

I always said yes. And it sure seemed like he didn’t like sleeping alone. He would always look out the window into the backyard for a long time before we went to bed. Sometimes leaving the room to go do “things”. So I said yes. I didn’t want him to be scared and alone. Sometimes he whispered to me that I was going to save him. How and from who I never knew but it filled me with pride that he put so much confidence in me. And I used to think he really did trust me to do something amazing because he would check up on me with such consistency. Keeping me right under the window.

That was until a gloomy night in May when it was so cold you could see your breath. Karson had me over. It was time for bed and I pulled on my PJs and slipped into the mattress. It was freezing.

“Karson, can I pleeeeease close the window? It's so cold,” I’d whined.

“No!” He snapped.

“Why not?!”

He turned over in his bed and ignored me. I huffed with annoyance and tried to sleep. A few hours later a gust of wind woke me up and I opened my eyes to see Karson staring at me. His forehead slightly creased.

“What?” I said grumpily. I was mad at him for making me sleep so cold and his staring no longer felt protective, just weird.

“I’m doing it right,” Karson murmured. So quiet I thought I’d imagined it.

“I thought I was,” He whispered. “Why won’t he come?” His pale blue eyes met mine. But it was like he didn’t see me there. Like I wasn’t really a friend to him. Maybe I never had been. I was about to ask him what he meant when a soft gleam filled his eyes. Like he finally understood something. 

“Oh,” he breathed. “He doesn't like them moving.”

That was when I ran. I climbed through his window and ran across his backyard and I never, ever slept at Karson’s house again. 

His house looks pretty much the same now as it did back then. The shed is the only thing that looks a little different. It looks older somehow. Like it aged too much too soon.

“Karson Trever, you freak!” I yelled at him as I stormed across his yard towards him.

“I–I…you don’t understand!”

“Yeah, I sure don't! And you’ve got ten seconds to explain or Bernie won’t be the only dead thing here!”

Karson got a shifty look in his eyes and then he sighed. “It's better if I just show you," he said. Dropping poor Bernie’s leg and walking to the shed.

“Uh, heck no.” There was no way I was going to get in a creepy old shed alone with the kid who had probably murdered my dog.

“I…I don’t know how to explain,” Karson said with a pleading look in his eyes.

I put my hands on my hips. “What? You can’t remember how you did it?” I said mockingly. But my heart ached. Poor, poor Bernie. I should have seen this coming. I should have known how crazy Karson was. He wasn’t the sweet little six-year-old I used to play with. He wasn’t even the creepy little seven-year-old who had me over for sleepovers. He was dangerous.

Karson tightened his jaw and shook his head but I was done with this game. In fact, I was done with him. Him and his manipulation and his lies and his strange hunting. 

I pulled out my phone. “I’m calling the cops!”

“Why?” He asked, tilting his head to the side.

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Uh, you killed Bernie, remember.”

“I said sorry.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Sorry.”

I rolled my eyes and started to dial the numbers. Maybe they would help Karson. Maybe once he was on some medication he would be different.

“Ally-Tally! Wait!” 

I bristled. “Don’t call me that!”

Karson looked confused again. “But I used to always call you that.”

“Yeah, before you killed my dog–”

“I said sorry for that.”

“--and before you tried to…I don’t even know what you tried to do when we were seven.”

Karson hung his head. “I didn’t want–”

“I DON’T CARE!” I screamed at him and almost finished calling 911 before he started to talk again. “I don’t care if you’re sorry! You killed my dog!”

“Ally–I mean, Alisha…it's just…I’ve always had to do it alone. He always wants more. I’ve–I…nobody’s ever helped me before.” I’d wanted to point out that I was going to turn him in not help him with his little murder obsession but I wisely stayed quiet. 

Karson looked me in the eyes and he looked so tired. “Please…let me show you. I don’t want to do it alone.”

And I wanted to believe that he could still be the old Karson so I followed him to the shed and watched in horror as he pulled open the doors and showed me his dark secret that he’d kept for so long. 

I used to think Karson was weird. I used to think he was a freak. I used to think he was mean. I used to think he hated animals. I used to think he was a potential psychopath. I used to think he wanted to kill me when we were seven. But now I know it was all because of the monster in his shed. 

Oh, and now I know that, in a pinch, It will sometimes take moving things too.

The end.