“I didn’t flinch,” he replied adamantly.
“Yeah, okay. Whatever makes you happy,” she said as they arrived at her car. She tapped once on the handicapped sign that loomed over the parking space and pointed back to him. “You’ll really be upset to learn that you earned this parking space,” she said as she held in her hand the temporary tag that was decorated with a stick figure in a wheelchair.
“Ah, geez!” Crush grunted as he opened the passenger’s side door. Then he looked inside to find the round webbed sack resting on the front seat. “Hey! You did keep it. You know while I laid there in the hospital, I couldn’t remember if this thing was part of one of my bad dreams or not,” he said as he held it in his hand. Then he gently shook it, and something inside rattled.
“Are you going to look inside it?” Dr. Tatum casually asked as she sat in the driver’s seat and pulled out her keys to start the car.
“Maybe. I think I have some unfinished business, something from my past, that I need to sort out,” Crush said as he buckled his seat belt.
“Do you need my help?” she inquired sincerely before starting the car. Crush paused for a moment and then answered.
“No. I appreciate the offer, but I think I need to do this on my own,” he said thoughtfully. As he sat there in the car next to Dr. Tatum, Crush’s thoughts drifted to their recent experience with Drakthos, and he considered Dr. Tatum’s difficult challenges in relation to his own. “You know, I believe that we will see Sherry Lance again,” he said as he held the webbed ball in his hands. “We just have to keep our eyes and ears open.”
**********
The next day, Crush drove out alone to the Baltimore National Cemetery, and he parked at the lot near the office. Carrying the webbed sack and a small hand shovel in his backpack, he walked out to a familiar gravesite on the property, far out of sight of the office, and he kneeled down next to the headstone.
“Corporal Dan Chowder, ----, --, 1963” the headstone read, and after looking over his shoulder to see that he was alone, Crush began to dig a small hole in the earth. With a foot-square hole dug beneath the surface of the grass, Crush broke the seal on the sack and poured out the skeletal remnants that were contained within.
“Just the bones, Dan. Just the bones,” he repeated to himself as he said a short prayer and then pushed the dirt back into the hole to cover the remains. In the distance, the wind howled across the hillside, and Crush thought that he heard the whisper of a last breath before the breeze died. Then he packed the web sack and shovel into his backpack, slung them over his shoulder, and saluted his old friend one last time before walking back to the parking lot with one less burden to carry.
A fuzzy little spider, no larger than a grain of salt, crawled out of the backpack and sat unnoticed on his shoulder as the autumn breeze moaned once again over the cemetery.
I’m trapped upon your lonely street
The tar, it holds onto my feet
It snares me in your lonely way
With only my friend’s shell to greet.
You fall upon me, here I am
You nudge me like a little lamb
I twitch the blade as I lay
And point it through the silky jam.
It happens as you take a bite
You fall upon the point so bright
And now begins the last decay
Of the spider’s power in the night.
###
For More Adventure!
Follow the exciting further adventures of Crush, Pound, and the DAM in the titles below available at eBook retailers:
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound Annual 1
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 1
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 2
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 3
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 4
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 5
Uncanny Tales of Crush and Pound 6
About the Author
Christopher Carter is an engineer by day, and transforms into a writer and artist by night. He lives with his wife and two cats in central North Carolina.
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