Hooked

Chapter 6 of Carnival

Carnival

Chapter 6

Hooked

The head shop was a narrow, parti-colored store sandwiched between a florist’s and a jeweler’s. The shop’s interior was dark, but, thanks to the lighting arrangement, never for too long in any one place. A backlit plastic disk, its clear surface splashed with colors, revolved on a slow arbor above the doorway, scattering brief bursts of colored light about the room, over the boys’ heads, across shelves stacked with hookah pipes and mind toys. A huge surrealistic painting of Alice’s Cheshire Cat grinned mischievously from the far wall, blue smoke spurting from its nostrils in ever-widening rings. A strobe light pulsed over the cat’s head, distorting time and space within the shop, rendering motionless the thick smoke trails of jasmine-scented incense wafting from every corner.

Now Mitchell, asking Eddie and Mike to wait outside, led Kevin around a purple velour curtain draping a doorway below the Cheshire Cat’s tail. They emerged in a tiny storeroom. Seated at a card table, a fat, bald little man was perspiring heavily before the rapidly revolving blades of a small electric fan while nervously watching the goings-on in his establishment via closed-circuit TV. Head shops were Meccas for shoplifters. The store’s owner knew he needed to blend in, and, at the same time, advertise. So for the sake of his business he was dressed exclusively in his own merchandise: a synthetic alpaca greatcoat with copper zodiacal charms dangling from the cuffs, draped by a loud, heavy zarape with braided fringe and the legend LOVE IS WHERE IT’S AT lettered boldly on the back and front; a thick and highly polished nickel swastika medallion hanging almost to his lap; an “Indian” belt of tiny strung yellow beads and fake turquoise, with erratically spaced profiles of a tepee, horse, and the standard bonneted chief in red beads; patriotically striped-and-starred trousers with snaps down the sides and bordering the pockets; Liverpool-style black patent leather ankle-high boots with oversized heels and a replica of Dave Clark’s signature stitched in white on the toes. Kevin felt that this man, despite his outlandish appearance, was the straightest and most uptight person he’d ever encountered in a head shop. The man’s bare skull shone like a cue ball, with only a sparse fringe of brown curls about the ears and nape. He was forever squinting worriedly at the monitor, drawing deeply on a cigarette, tapping the ashes in the general direction of an amber glass ashtray overflowing with neurotically mashed butts. The only interruptions to the ash-tapping were frequent pauses to roll his neck, and a compulsive tugging at the front of the coat as he pulled it free of his sweaty chest. The room was as thick with tobacco smoke as the shop had been thick with incense fumes.

“Yeah, whatcha want, Mitch?” he asked in a tough voice, reluctant to avert his eyes from the screen. Before Mitchell could reply the little man spun in his seat, hollered, “Mark!” and whirled back around, spilling ash on his striped pants and furiously rubbing that ash into the material with a wide stubby hand.

Immediately another curtain was pulled aside and a thin, long-haired man of thirty peered out over the top of blue-tinted, square-rimmed granny glasses. A single streak of his banded brown hair was dyed iridescent green. “Yeah, Dad?” The granny glasses swung to Mitchell. The longhair motioned him inside. Kevin was ignorant of store protocol, but he wasn’t about to remain with the edgy little owner. He shoved through the second curtain behind Mitchell.

This room was scarcely larger than a medium-sized bathroom, illuminated only by a single dusty bulb dangling from a frayed and twisted cord. Tier upon tier of large cardboard boxes left barely enough room to squeeze in sideways. The three spoke in whispers. The long-haired man’s attire was, in Kevin’s eyes, as inspired as the father’s. This Mark wore a tan leather vest with long strips of beaded fringe, slick black leather trousers, and platform shoes spangled with brass buttons. Cheap turquoise jewelry dangled from his wrists and neck. An armband on each skinny bicep had the words off the pig embroidered in red, white, and blue. Now Mark opened a nondescript cardboard box tucked behind one of the tiers to display at least thirty bagged ounces. Kevin chose the thickest, and, after smoking a joint and fingering the contents, gave the benignly smiling and nodding man a ten dollar bill. The entire transaction had taken a mere five minutes; no fuss, no muss. As promised, Kevin gave the Filipino boy a generous pinch from his stash. Still whispering, he bade adieu to Mark and to the obsequiously smiling Mitchell, who had business to discuss in broken English. Kevin strode through the stockroom, past the nervous little owner now almost hidden in a tobacco fog, and out through the purple curtain. He leaned against the mural.

A hat rack stood adjacent to the purple velour curtain. Dozens of different styles of caps, fedoras, derbies--even one rhinestone-studded turban--dangled from pegs on the rack. But Kevin was taken by a floppy brown hillbilly affair, which he pulled low on his ears and admired in a small rectangular mirror affixed to the rack for that purpose. The hat’s crown reined in his wild hair, while the great brim created a frizzy shape resembling a broad puffy collar. Suddenly Kevin was too cool for words.

He looked around for his friends, saw them, and froze. Mike and Eddie--especially Eddie--were being entertained by two bikinied girls in the center aisle, next to a large cylindrical postcard rack. Both girls were bronzed, brunette, and slender. They were such an even match that Kevin first supposed they were twins, but as he approached and hesitated he noticed one girl bore a slightly Oriental cast, while the other was certainly a Jewess. He hesitated because he was high from the grass, and because the two girls and his friends had hit it off so well--giggling and poking and pinching--that he was at a complete loss for action. He certainly didn’t feel like giggling or poking or pinching. He felt like bashing Mike’s and Eddie’s heads together, for his pot-rationale found something selfish and downright unfriendly about his pals enjoying the goodies while he was away on an errand for their mutual benefit. Testosterone worked the fingers of Kevin’s right hand into a fist. The boy took a deep breath and relaxed.

He forced a saunter as he approached Eddie, now being teased by the Jewish girl, and asserted himself with the robust announcement of his purchase. Eddie either didn’t hear or ignored him completely, responding to the girl’s tickling with nervous, slavering giggles. Kevin had never seen his friend so beside himself. Eddie’s eyes were wild and rolling with agitated bashful lust. His weirdly contorted body was hunched in what could only be described as a standing fetal position. He was absolutely electrified by the girl’s probing fingers. Flecks of foamy saliva showed at the corners of his mouth. His giggles were spastic, rattling deep in his throat. Every once in a while he would convulsively paw her shoulder or arm, his idiotic giggles ascending in frenzy.

Mike slapped the girl hard on her bottom. As she spun around laughing, Eddie grasped her arm and stroked it with crooked fingers. She backed straight into Kevin, who could only grin vacuously.

“Excuse me,” the girl said with complete indifference, and pursued the passionate tickling of Eddie, who continued to wheeze and titter moronically. Now the other girl joined her friend in the exquisite tickling torture. A string of saliva rolled from Eddie’s lower lip. Furious, Kevin ground his teeth, wanting to passionately fondle either rude, shameless girl; showing them how a self-assured man behaved, and revealing what a fool Eddie was making of himself. Then the other girl, swinging around to tickle Eddie from behind, spooned right into Kevin.

“Excuse me!” she snapped, with a look of real distaste. In an instant he was forgotten. She squeezed right back between Eddie and the postcard rack.

His cheeks and ears burning, Kevin stepped around the rack, which occasionally clattered counterclockwise from the disturbance on the other side. He stared blindly at a colorful postcard, wanting to slam his fist into anyone, anything. Slowly the blood drained from his face, and he saw that the postcard was a glossy photograph of San Francisco Peninsula, taken from across the bay. He removed the card for a closer inspection. This created a view space, revealing the trespasses on the rack’s other side. Helpless to avert his gaze, he looked on with icy ire.

A grimacing grin was frozen on Eddie’s face, shudders were racking his body. He was bent like an old, old man. His arms and hands were white as death, but his face was so red Kevin fancied he could feel its heat. Little hiccoughing yelps of frantic arousal burst sporadically from Eddie’s nostrils. Mike abruptly reached around and pinched the Jewish girl on her derriere. She laughed and turned half-around, her bikinied breast thrust almost into flabbergasted Eddie’s bulging, throbbing eyeball. Kevin could just about feel the primitive impulses shrieking through Eddie’s overheated brain, as the boy stared transfixed at this taunting fruit an inch from his nose. With an anguished little cry, Eddie jerked as though he’d been kicked, and his trembling hand worked its way up, out of his control…paused hovering an inch over the breast…molded itself agonizingly to the curvature…squeezed it twice. The girl turned around delightedly and slapped Eddie’s hand with a scolding smile. Eddie squealed and fidgeted like a naughty little gnome. He drew the hand spastically to his mouth.

Kevin turned away slowly, his breath shallow and rapid. His hands were shaking. Eddie was totally out of line here! If he, Kevin, had not been depleting his energy for the sake of Eddie’s and Mike’s welfare, it would have been a whole different story. He reasoned, unreasonably, that it was he who should have been tickled, and he the one to bring up a nervous hand for the quick double squeeze of that wonderful, teasing protuberance. Eddie had…Eddie had no right!

Sick, he shuffled off, his right hand softly, painfully cupping and fondling air, his left hand gripping the now creased and sweat-stained postcard. The incense smoke, competing for his air, agitated his distress, so he stopped and leaned against a sales counter. He looked up, directly into the lens of a closed-circuit camera fixed on his trembling face. He could almost see the pudgy little owner’s neurotic eye glaring out at him.

“You,” came a young woman’s voice. “Hep?”

Kevin thought, You bet your dumb whoring a*s I am! He tearfully swung to meet the sound.

The sales girl slouching behind the counter was a gaping, homely salute to estrogen gone wild. Only a supremely bored God could have produced such an outlandish exaggeration of the female form; a butt like two watermelons supporting an almost skeletal torso. What the sales girl carried upstairs Kevin could only guess, for she wore a tie-dyed peasant’s blouse billowing like a parachute. The girl had no waist to speak of. Her outsize combat trousers were tucked into polished black jackboots, and secured by a tiny belt of entwined asps of anodized steel. Heart-shaped sunglasses with hot-pink lenses took up half her face, exposing only a heavy jaw, lips painted the color of Mercurochrome, and a forehead tattooed with the message MOO! written backward for rear-view mirror appraisal. Her hair, long and straight like her brother’s, had been variously sectioned--clipped, banded, pinned, braided--ironed here, frizzed there, bleached in certain spots, dyed in others; loosely ornamented like a Christmas tree with dangling beads, feathers, gewgaws and the like. The whole rowdy mess was crowned by a tiny plastic silver-and-black birthday hat, its wide dayglo orange strap snapped tight under the girl’s Peking Man jaw. The hat’s shiny surface featured holographic grinning cartoon images of a wildly popular teenybopper band known as the Monkees.

Now Kevin, dazzled by the holograph, blinked and dropped the crumpled postcard on the counter.

“Hat? Buy hat too?”

He fingered the limp brim dully and grunted.

Leaning back, the girl looked him up and down while slowly shaking her trinket-barnacled head. The boy’s eyes shifted side to side in response to the small movements of reflected light. After a minute of this she took him by his shirt’s lapel and dragged him over to the leathers section. She bent down to root through a cluster of opened cardboard boxes.

Kevin almost fainted.

The contents of the girl’s billowy blouse were now revealed in all their braless, pendulous glory. He clenched his fists, forced a quick look around. Surely everybody in the place was staring at him, absolutely crimson with outrage.

No one seemed remotely interested.

Then the camera…no, no, his back was to the camera.

Suddenly clammy in his armpits and crotch, Kevin felt his burning gaze drawn irresistibly to that spectacular dangling duo. The sales girl was wrestling with something heavy in one of the boxes, grunting and panting as she jerked up and down, up and down, up and down. And up and down and side to side. Her long hanging hair formed two sides of a window for Kevin’s bursting eyes alone, and within that window heaven just danced on and on; a performance way superior to the static displays in his girlie magazines, more vital by far than his steamiest fantasies. Kevin caught his breath as she straightened with a gasp, triumphantly holding a mass of fresh-smelling brown suede.

Her eyes crossed.

“You!”

Kevin unclenched his fists and released his long-held breath. He was busted, Caught Ogling! “M-me?” he managed, the sudden center of attention for dozens of umbrageous shoppers, blushing clergymen, gaping schoolchildren, and iron-grim plain-clothes detectives. The apparitions vanished. He tried to refocus.

The sales girl pushed the folded vest at him. “You,” she said, frowning now. “You.”

Kevin took the vest by its neck, let it fall open. The thing was bulky, with long leather fringing at the hem.

“You!” the girl said, exasperated. She mimed pulling on an upper body garment for Kevin’s benefit. “You!”

Kevin shrugged the vest on. It fit tightly, smelled earthy and masculine. That tightness very agreeably made his chest and shoulders feel powerful and prominent. The vest’s hem reached his waist. Those long strips of leather fringe hung limply almost to his knees. Little colored ceramic beads and roach clips were strung around the pockets. He slowly pivoted and noticed for the first time that a Zig-Zag logo the size of a dinner plate was stitched onto the back. The rugged earthiness of this vest, he felt, gave him a likeness approximating that of a, like, totally dignified dime store wooden Indian, and, since the Movement rabidly sympathized with every Native American cause Hollywood could dream up, Kevin saw the vest as a badge strongly identifying him with people like Guy and with all the Aquarian generation stood for.

Again holding him by the lapels, the girl dragged Kevin over to a full-length mirror standing against the wall. She then used her hands to patiently explain the advent of a mysterious third party, tapping a forefinger on his chest while the other hand indicated his reflection.

“You.”

“How much?” he panted.

The sales girl rushed her hands together, halting when the palms were only a few inches apart. Kevin, expecting an impact, jerked his head straight back

For a second all was blackness. The shop re-materialized, swam about him. The Cheshire Cat, leering from the far wall, morphed into a wolf and bayed in Kevin’s slack mooning face. The girl’s eyes rolled back in her skull.

“Dirty night, nitey-nite,” she chanted.

But Kevin wasn’t so befuddled he’d buy into witchcraft or Gothic verse. Physical art, poetic expression…these things were way too cryptic for like a totally plainspoken dude. Besides, that kind of stuff was really only for nerds and losers. Kevin’s testosterone level plummeted. She’d blown it. Babes, he acknowledged for the billionth time, just don’t get it. Only minutes ago she’d been a funky, titillating goddess, and now she was nothing more than a gawky, pantomiming fool. Kevin exhaled quietly. He tried again. “How much?”

The girl snapped. She reached behind him, grabbed the vest’s neck and yanked the garment around so hard she almost broke the boy’s arm. She shoved the handful of vest in his face.

The label read: Genuine Suede. Made in Mexico. XXL. Below this had been scrawled in black ink: $39.99.

She smacked him across the forehead and stuck the scrawled price almost in his eye. “Dirty night, nitey-nite!”

Releasing the vest, she grabbed his shirt’s lapel for the third time and hauled him back to the counter.

Kevin timidly pulled out his wallet.

The girl extracted three twenties and laid them out as a fan.

“Hat,” she said, pointing at a twenty. She yanked twice on the vest while indicating the two remaining twenties. “Vet.” She then extracted a ten, slapped the wallet shut, and pulled from behind the counter a gorgeous snakeskin belt with a huge brass buckle. On the buckle’s face were the words DO YOUR OWN THING in raised letters.

It was a steal.

“Bet.” She released Kevin’s lapel. The boy gingerly picked up his belt and wallet and made his way out. He paused to slip on the belt and check his reflection in the display window’s broad pane. A grin cut his face in half. Who was that together cat?

Mike and Eddie were holding their bikes at the curb. The setting sun was tingeing a few streaks of cirri with flaming gold.

Mike guffawed wickedly when he saw Kevin’s new outfit, then, apparently making an effort to stay on good terms, muttered, “Hey, that looks totally cool, Kevin. Really far out.”

Kevin beamed ear to ear. When they were back on the road he went for Eddie’s opinion.

Eddie looked at him feverishly. “I squeezed it, Kevin! I squeezed her tittie, I tell you! I squeezed her tittie!”

Kevin’s grin collapsed.

“Big deal!” Mike barked, with a snappiness indicating this exchange had been going on for a while. “I pinched her a*s.”

Kevin looked one to the other, snarling. “So what? You guys act like it’s your first feel!”

“What do you mean,” Eddie shot back, “my ‘first’? I’ve squeezed millions of t*****s! But it was so round and soft! And she liked it, I’m telling you, she liked it!”

Kevin sneered and looked to Mike knowingly, saying, “Oh, bull! Anybody knows they don’t like it. Only guys like it.”

But Mike, leaning inside as they coasted along, kept one eye on the road and rejoined in a sly undertone, “Yeah? Well, I didn’t wanna tell you guys, but I not only pinched her a*s, I rubbed it man. I could even feel her crack! And she liked that, too.”

Eddie whipped his head to the side. He stared at Mike fiercely. “You didn’t!”

“So what?” Kevin spat. “I don’t give a s**t. Why tell me?”

“I sure did,” strutted Mike. “Not only that, I slipped my hand inside her bikini and felt ‘down there’. Boy, did she ever like that!”

Eddie blew it. He pedaled so hard Kevin had to strain to catch him. Mike, gloating behind, called out, “Hey, Eddie! Wanna smell my finger?” and burst into vicious laughter.

“I’m telling you,” Eddie panted, “Mike never touched her. Never! She didn’t like him, she liked me! She let me squeeze her tittie, Kevin. Twice, I squeezed it twice. No! Four times.”

“Well, what do you want me to do about it?” Kevin demanded. “Throw a parade? Break out the champagne?” He took a deep breath. “By the way, Eddie, I scored us a lid.”

“It was nice and firm. Firm but soft.”

“Eddie--”

“She let me squeeze it, Kevin. I could’ve squeezed ’em both if I wanted, if Mike didn’t have to go and pinch her. No, he never touched her, never. She liked me, not him. I know. She let me squeeze her tittie.”

“And I said I don’t give a darn! Listen, Eddie, I hate to say this, but it really sounds like you never did it before. Otherwise you wouldn’t be making such a big thing out of it.”

“And I,” Eddie shrieked, “said it wasn’t my first time!” He looked away and refused to say another word. As Kevin rode alongside, mute, his frustration did not abate with the miles. He revisited the episode by the postcard rack; only it was he doing the squeezing, and it was the raven-haired girl, her wonders concealed only by a strained silky black bikini top, who was the object of his sensitive palm and pudgy questing fingers. In this fantasy, to upstage Eddie, he went farther than ever, brusquely pulling off the bikini top and ravenously suckling a n****e he pictured as a plump, firm strawberry. He swallowed hard and tightened his grip on the handlebars. The twilight deepened. A strand of fringe, flapping into the spokes of his rear wheel, was torn from his vest with a jolt.

A few miles north of Gaviota the highway twists inland, and for fifty miles remains inland, at last snaking back to the coast at Pismo Beach. This inland section passes through wild, dry country in hairpin curves.

The boys were making for the town of Lompoc, halfway between Gaviota and Pismo Beach. But after two hours of negotiating the endless curves they decided to sleep among the twisted trees just off the road. The area was thickly wooded, full of ankle-turning potholes.

“I heard a story about this stretch of road up here,” Mike said offhandedly as he unrolled his sleeping bag. He kicked away a few pebbles poking up in his intended spread. “There’s supposed to be a guy living up in these hills who comes down here at night to terrorize people who stop in cars--you know, guys necking with their chicks and people cooking at campfires. Anyhow, this guy’s got only one hand, dig? He lost the other one in The War, and now he’s got one of them hooks on the stump. He keeps it sharp as a razor blade, and every night he comes tiptoeing so nobody can hear him, and when he finds somebody he watches him for a long time, then sneaks up from behind and brings that hook down on the back of the guy’s neck as hard as he can.”

“Oh, great!” Kevin said sarcastically. “That’s just what I wanted to hear!” Actually, he just loved a good bedtime story meant to frighten the pants off him, and although he was certain he’d heard this yarn, or one similar, before, he had to appreciate the storyteller’s ability to entertain. So for the time being Mike was okay in Kevin’s book. He lit one of two joints he’d rolled earlier. When he was snug in his sleeping bag he handed it to Mike.

“Yeah,” Mike said, taking a deep draw and passing the reefer to Eddie. “He carries this satchel down with him, right? And in this satchel he’s got all kinds of attachments he can screw onto his stump in place of the hook, and each of these attachments is for a special occasion. Like, if he sees a couple balling he’ll knock ’em both out with this chrome-plated bludgeon attachment, and tie ’em up with this screw-on pulley gadget. Then he’ll take this thing like a telescoping eggbeater, with a handle that turns the blades and everything.” Mike demonstrated, turning an imaginary reel on his fist. “He’s got this gizmo filed real sharp like his hook. So he rams it straight up her p***y and starts turning the handle. The blades whirl around and slowly go deeper and deeper until she croaks.”

“Gawd!” Kevin said. “Where’d you hear about this guy? It sounds like you’re making it all up.” He hugged himself with delicious anticipation, imagining the stealthy crunch of footsteps just beyond his field of vision.

“Cross my heart and hope to die if it’s a lie,” Mike swore solemnly. “I read this in the paper, man! They’ve seen the guy, ’cause a few people escaped. Only a few. But they’ve never caught him. He’s known as The Hook. Just a couple weeks ago he snuffed some Marine, right about where we are now. He killed the guy by taking this long thingamajig like a knitting needle with a spiral ridge on it, see, and using this stump attachment built like an old hand drill to screw it into the Marine’s eardrum real slow, all the way through his brain and out the other side. Then he chopped the guy’s hand off with his hatchet screw-on and took it with him for his collection. He always cuts off one hand after he does in his victim. His way of getting even with everybody with two hands, I guess.

“Anyway, when he catches a couple balling, after the chick cools like I explained, well, then he takes this other attachment out of his bag and, chuckling and talking quietly to the terrified guy tied down butt-a*s naked in front of him, he screws it on his stump. This little number he calls his Nutcracker. What it is is a vise which he sticks the guy’s jewels in. As he turns the handle the two sides of the Nutcracker slowly get closer, squeezing the poor guy’s balls, and as he’s screaming The Hook’s still talking to him, and chuckling all the while. And when the guy’s balls are purple and he’s so far gone he’s almost beyond pain, The Hook pushes this button on the Nutcracker. A spring that was tightening all the time is tripped like on a mousetrap, and the two halves smash together and crush the guy’s goods into gonad puree.”

Kevin moaned and instinctively curled up his knees. Eddie began to whistle shrilly, and they both quickly looked around at the black, ominously shivering bushes. They laughed nervously, in unison.

Mike yawned and stretched his arms. “Well, there’s three of us, so we don’t gotta worry.”

Kevin blinked owlishly. “Whatta you mean? If we’re all asleep we’ll be sitting ducks. Maybe we should take turns watching.”

“Nah. You’ll wake up quick enough if The Hook comes around. I read he’s got something wrong with his throat or his lungs. He breathes real fast and loud. So you’ll know when he’s coming.” He yawned even wider and turned over in his sleeping bag, away from them.

Kevin blinked again. “But then why didn’t the Marine hear…”

Mike raspberried him and yawned warningly.

Kevin and Eddie were quiet for a while. A small animal rustled the brush, momentarily hushing the crickets.

“You sca-a-a-red, Eddie?” Kevin whispered.

“Not rea-a-a-ally,” Eddie whispered back. “I’ve got…I’ve got something else on my mind right now.”

“What…what you got on your mind right now?”

Eddie looked at him directly, eyes ablaze. “I was just thinking about that girl’s tittie I squeezed, about how big and soft it was.”

Kevin groaned. “Eddie--”

“I squeezed it six times, Kevin, over and over and over. It was terrific. I wanted to squeeze ’em both, together, but Mike had to go and pinch her. No…no…no he didn’t! I don’t care what he says.”

“Eddie--”

“They were firm and creamy, Kevin, just like big yummy marshmallows. All soft and squeezy.”

“Okay already, Eddie! Jesus, now you sound like you wanted to eat ’em, for Pete’s sake!”

There was a silence. At last Eddie said, guiltily, “You know what I wanted to do? I…I wanted to suck on them.”

“Oh, Christ!” Kevin shot. “That’s wild, Eddie; I mean like really, really wild! You know what that is? That’s just plain sick, man. Sick! I mean, what are you, some kind of mama’s boy?”

“Heck no! You’re just saying that because you didn’t get to squeeze it like I did. That’s because she liked me. She didn’t like you and she didn’t like Mike. She liked me! She let me squeeze her tittie!”

“Okay! Big freaking deal, mama’s-boy retard. I’ve heard all about it, you little sicko. Now why don’t you just shut up and go to sleep.”

To Kevin’s surprise Eddie clammed immediately, and was soon snoring softly and rhythmically. This snoring had a lullaby effect on Kevin. His own respiration gradually slowed until his breathing was keeping perfect time with Eddie’s. The monotonous chirring of crickets had the same quieting effect, and he was just about to sink completely under their spell when he was roused by a subtle change in Eddie’s breathing. The soft snoring was gone, replaced by a quickening tempo in the boy’s now-gritty inhalations. Kevin unhappily let his eyelids come unglued and turned his head, seeing--poorly because of the darkness, and because his glasses were off--that Eddie was struggling with something in his sleeping bag.

“What’s wrong, Eddie?” he mumbled thickly.

Eddie froze. “Wrong?” he asked tightly, after a moment of uncertainty. “Nothing…nothing’s wrong. I--I have to take a leak, that’s all. Be right back.” He got out of his bag and stole into the bushes. Kevin yawned and prepared to drift off, but a sharp rock directly under his head had to be removed first. He flicked it away, massaged the sore spot on his head with a thumb, shifted in his bag…and found that now he couldn’t sleep. He fingered the new leather of his vest approvingly for a while, wondered what was taking Eddie so long. He yawned again, cracked his knuckles. Grew worried. Wide awake, he listened intently, but there wasn’t a sound. Even the crickets had ceased. He lay on his back with breath held, seeing indistinctly the immense field of uncountable still white stars, listening. The night was a warm, heavy shroud, and it made Kevin feel the world was holding its breath right along with him. Then Mike snorted loudly in his sleep and smacked his lips. Kevin, stepping silently from his bag, realized they had neglected to bring flashlights. Not bothering to don his glasses, he snatched a box of strike-anywhere matches and slipped between the bushes he’d peripherally witnessed Eddie passing. It was likely that Eddie had up and got himself lost, though Kevin couldn’t imagine why his friend should wander so far from camp to urinate. He struck one of the long stick matches on his Levis and held it sputtering beside his head, hoping Eddie would see it. The light, so near his eyes, blinded him momentarily, so he raised his arm. The flame burned his fingertips. Kevin dropped the match, crammed the fingers in his mouth. He listened. Total, utter, all-encompassing silence. Then a car passed on the road, its headlight beams swinging through the trees as the car rounded a curve. The brief glimpse chilled him: the whole area was cemetery-still. But he’d seen a clearing, perhaps a hundred yards away at the top of a rise. He could get his bearings. Kevin struck another match and made for the spot, but, after five more matches, realized that somebody had managed to spirit away the clearing even as he was in the act of hiking to it. That was enough to stop him dead. Kevin struck no more matches. An owl flapped by like a huge clumsy bat, making him jump. He followed with his eyes, turning on his toes, and when he looked back down realized he was hopelessly lost. Immediately he began striking matches in quick succession, turning his head in every direction. He was just opening his mouth to call for help when he heard something that caused his nuts to race right back up their inguinal canals…from fifteen yards behind came the sound of loud, excited breathing, hoarse and shallow. Intense. Mike’s words drifted whispering into Kevin’s mind, as if the words, too, were desperately afraid of being discovered: He breathes real fast and loud, so you’ll know when he’s coming. Kevin spun around. You’ll know when he’s coming. The Hook! And there, dressed to appear as an innocent shrub, crouched a wicked, scheming old pervert with one cunning eye and one trembling hand, his face and shoulders cleverly made up so as to simulate the black, star-speckled sky. His telltale inhalations grew more rapid while Kevin gaped, transfixed. The leaves shook all around him, faster and faster, as he gathered himself to spring, and Kevin could now see that The Hook was carrying his notorious satchel, which, from where the boy was standing, presented the illusion of being merely a large rock. Kevin’s left wrist throbbed with an imagined taste of the phantom pain to come. And just as The Hook’s fiendish breathing reached a frenzied peak, Kevin gave vent to a mighty bellow of raw terror. He whirled round to flee and heard, after a second’s pause, an answering shriek and tumultuous clamor as The Hook set after him. Kevin ran blindly, snarling, screaming and waving his arms in front of his face, straight into a thick growth of brambles. The barbs gouged him, tore his arms and face, ripped long rents down his new vest. As he scrambled free he heard The Hook’s demonic, gasping breath closing in. The fiend came crashing through the brush. Even in his panic Kevin could picture the old man dementedly swinging his long, wickedly curved hook like a sickle, cackling and muttering to himself, his one malevolent old eye fixed purposefully on the flushed nape of Kevin’s naked neck. The scrambling boy tripped on a root and pitched face-first into the dirt. He rolled onto his back with his arms protecting his face, expecting to feel the gleaming tip of the chromed hook come ripping into his throat. But there was nothing, only a heaving silence. He got to his knees, licked his lips. Not far off he could now hear hoarse, rapid breathing. Kevin sobbed, and the breathing stopped. Paralyzed with dread of this new silence, he felt The Hook’s roving old eye, bulging with bloodlust, impatiently scan every leaf, every stone. The stillness was suffocating, as that old eyeball sent out an invisible beam of pure malice, passing over Kevin, moving on, and then, with dazzling speed, whipping back to impale him. Kevin croaked out one terrified vowel-thick syllable. Immediately those ghastly respiration noises began, sobbing with monstrous lust and gore-anticipation. With a soundless shriek Kevin bolted, only to stumble in circles for what seemed hours, getting scratched and scraped to pieces, growing delirious, expecting to encounter one of The Hook’s bizarre cleaving devices at any moment. At last he stopped and looked all around. Every shadow appeared to lurk, preparing to pounce. Rasping, exhausted breathing was in his ears. Wheezing painfully, he sank halfway to his knees, supporting himself by leaning on a blackened, scaly tree stump. And there, lifeless on the ground before his raving eyes, lay a limp, blood-smeared hand, palm up, the broken fingers splayed in dreadful self-commiseration. Kevin tasted vomit, his heart lurched as he tried to rise. With a final gasp he fell into the dismembered arms of the dry, dry shrubbery in a dead, dead faint.