The Reaping Of Bobby Ward
I’ve already lived a life full of stories to tell. It’s true that I tend to get repetitive from time to time, though I don’t think that means I’m losing my marbles so soon, or at least I certainly hope not. Subconscious avoidance is more like it. Cut out disturbing memory, copy-paste something else over it. There are times when I wish some of my memories were less interesting. My wife will tell you that they’re all of the mundane variety; she just hasn’t heard them all yet.
Like the one about the Grim Reaper.
Most everyone’s heard of at least of some kind of embodiment of Death. The Grim Reaper’s a top choice for most folks. The guy who carries a big scythe, who we all imagine stands dark and tall, hooded and cloaked, probably with a fleshless skull where a head should be. Maybe he’s got a bony finger peeking out from his sleeve, beckoning you with it or chastising you or whatever he does when he’s pointing at you.
The Grim Reaper’s a scary guy alright, but he’s not exactly the type of scary guy you might imagine running after you with his blade swinging over his head all propeller-like, screaming like some maniac in the night. No, I think most folks think The Reaper’s presence alone is enough to scare the every-living — or ever-dying, as the case may be — shit out of you. Most of the time, in his most frightening form, he just stands there, motionless.
Most of the time.
Summer vacation from high school in the mid-’80s in a small New England town tended to be as boring as watching warts grow on a toad. Outside of watching television, home-based electronic entertainment was a luxury most of us couldn’t yet afford, and without access to a set of wheels other than a bicycle, we were more or less forced to be creative for entertainment.
Dave McGrath was a year older than I and, as far as anyone knew, was relatively friendless. I didn’t go out of my way to befriend the guy to the point of best-friendiness, though I certainly didn’t try to avoid him. Dave had just gotten his driver’s license that summer. That made Dave, to me, a convenient acquaintance. Unfortunately, a driver’s license doesn’t automatically come with transportation, so my celebration of that fact was short-lived.
I’d known Dave for a few years while thoroughly warming the bench together for the Peasley High varsity basketball team. We both had something peculiar in common: We were both tall, and we both royally sucked at basketball. The only reason we made the cut at tryouts was because there were no cuts; there simply weren’t enough kids trying out. Our most useful contribution was helping intimidate other schools by increasing the team’s visible height average.
Sitting on the bench for a high school varsity sports team felt a lot like the summer of Dave’s driver’s license. Facing us was possibility of a marked increase in our popularity, but instead we were met with the halting palm of denial.
Popularity does not always beget desirability. As if to prove to us that point, Dave’s asshole of a neighbor pulled up in his own ’81 Chevy Camaro one summer night, as Dave and I shot hoops in the street. I swear on my sweet mother’s grave, that bastard could sniff out disappointment and despair from miles away and make sure he’d be present in time to enjoy the show, symbolic popcorn in-hand.
Said asshole, Bobby Ward, never left high school life and mentality behind, despite being a first-year at Harlan Community College. He hated the summer, partly because it meant he couldn’t wear his corduroy varsity letter jacket around the Harlan campus without trailing a stream of sweat in his path. He was still convinced of its ability to show he was a hotter shit than you, even though Harlan was half-populated with fellow graduates from Peasley. “Peasley two-point-oh,” they called it. There was little point it trying to bullshit those who were aware of our school’s varsity standards, but he knocked himself out.
Mostly, though, Bobby hated summer because he was a big guy. He wasn’t as tall as Dave, but he pushed close to three bills, a higher percentage of that not being muscle and bone. That didn’t mean he looked any less intimidating; something he took advantage of on a regular basis. Bobby was fond of insults, pranks and overall general discomfort at any level, especially if he was the one administering it. Unfortunately for Dave, living in close proximity to such a lout meant he was one of Bobby’s primary sources of entertainment.
As God is my witness, the bastard was actually eating fucking popcorn when he pulled up.
The Camaro’s tinted passenger-side window rolled down halfway. I took a half-assed shot from the foul line as Bobby leaned across from the driver’s seat. His fat face flashed a shit-eating grin, his full mouth still munching as he called out to us.
“Hey! You guys want to see something wicked fucked up?”
There were three others in the car with Bobby. His much-younger brother, John, sat back in the passenger seat, shielding his face from the spittle issuing from his left. In the back were two others I didn’t recognize, but they all seemed in about the same age-range as the rest of us.
Dave was usually extremely apprehensive to get anywhere close to Bobby Ward, let alone when he was behind the controls of machinery. Getting within arm’s reach of a quintessential bully like Bobby was seen as an invitation for an instant debagging, or worse. Maybe then it was a sudden onset of delirium brought on by the dry summer heat that caused Dave to call back in reply.
“I guess so.”
My jaw dropped, along with my missed shot.
“Let’s go. Get in.”
The passenger door flew open. The two kids in back slid aside to make room.
“Don’t mind those idiots,” Bobby said, motioning to the back seat. “Those’re my cousins, Paul and Greg. We just got back from seeing Fright Night, and these pussies thought it was scary!” He said “scary” as “scaya-wee,” in that “aw, poor baby” tone that’s specially reserved for parents of newborns and demeaning shitheels.
“Nuh-uh!” protested one of the cousins.
The shaming tone of Bobby’s voice seemed to snap Dave back into his usual, hesitant self and take a slight step back. “Why? Where are you going now?” he asked.
Bobby took a break from shoveling seed into his mouth. “You guys ever hear of the Grim Reaper?”
“What, the band?” I asked.
“The band? You retard! No! I mean the guy, The Grim Reaper. The one with the big axe!”
“It’s a scythe,” Dave corrected.
“Pssh! What-the-fuck ever! Scythe; big-ass axe. Yeah, him.”
“OK,” said Dave. “What about him?”
“Let’s go. Get in. You’ll see.”
Approximately thirty seconds later it started to sink in that we’d just crawled into the back seat of this tubby lug’s car and let him drive away with us. Apparently to see Death himself, no less.
The granite quarry was only about three miles from Dave and Bobby’s neighborhood, though the rough ride there felt like twenty. I’d heard of lots of kids sneaking off there to swim, drink and smoke, often times being chased away by town cops. Whether they were rumors or not, stories flew of people from other towns jumping off the fifty-foot ledges into the frigid, spring-fed water below, drowning or never resurfacing. Some said they were diving down too deep, drunk or high, getting stuck in one of the many sunken trucks or various other large pieces of junk. Worse stories told of witnessing seagulls feasting on body parts that had washed up onto stone ridges along the quarry walls. True or not, those tales were enough to keep my ass planted at a beach when I needed cooling off.
Bobby lit a cigarette from a Zippo as he slowed the Camaro to a crawl, taking the turn onto the quarry road. From a cracked and pot-holed road, the car dropped several inches onto the narrow gravel path.
“OK, I have to slow down,” Bobby said. “He’s up along this road somewhere, and we might miss him.”
“Who is?” asked Greg, to my left.
“The Grim Reaper, moron!” said Bobby.
“Bullshit!” said Paul.
“I shit you not! There is this guy, okay? And he walks on this road at night, looks just like him. He’s tall as shit, all dressed in a brown cloak. Carries a big fucking wheat-chopper.”
“Get the fuck out of here,” I said in disbelief.
“Hey, you’ll see. He’s up here somewhere. Keep an eye out. I’ll check the left side. Johnny, you check the right.”
Bobby continued to drive at walking speed while grunting the guitar riff from Smoke on the Water. The rest of us kept our mouths shut and our eyes wide.
Several minutes into the crawl down the path I asked, “Who told you about this guy?”
“Saw him myself,” Bobby replied in almost a whisper. “I took a chick up here last week, y’know, to fuck and stuff.”
Paul burst out laughing at that. “Shyeah, right!”
“Shut up, jerk-off!” Bobby blasted, reaching back in an attempt to swat at his cousin’s head. “Anyway, we come up around a corner, and there’s this huge guy. I mean huge! I didn’t know what he was gonna do — maybe cut my fuckin’ dick off — so I got the fuck out of there faster than Paul spooges beating off.”
“I don’t- Fuck you, Bobby,” Paul said.
“Sshh shh shh! Shut up guys!” Bobby’s brother interrupted. “Bobby, is this the place?
“Oh. Yeah yeah. We’re almost to the spot. He was … right around … “
When reacting to terror, one can be undaunted and fearless, perhaps even brave; you can be cowering and terrified, or just extremely guarded; or you can be “jump-scared.” Regardless of whether or not you are naturally fearless or terrified, if something catches you by surprise, you’re going to be jump-scared. Case in point: The driver of a carload of wary teenagers blasting into abrupt, chaotic cacophony from near-dead silence.
Bobby yelled with such force that his voice cracked.
“HOLY SHIT THERE HE IS! HE’S RIGHT THERE!”
“THERE HE IS! GET OUT OF HERE!” John joined in. “GO, BOBBY! GET OUT! DRIVE!”
In the back seat we didn’t know what the hell was going on, but we were all jump-scared shitless, regardless. This time I mean the term “shitless” literally, as it was clear that someone in the car had loosened their bowels. All of this happened before any of the rest of us had made visual contact with whatever the Ward boys were carrying on about.
Then I saw him. About fifty yards away, abutting the woods on the right side of the road, was the unmistakable shape of a towering, hooded figure. From that distance, he looked to be eight-feet tall, carrying a very tall staff of some kind. The shape of the cloak was tattered and jagged, its hood covering and darkening anything behind. The car’s headlights filtered through the branches close to the road as they blew in the increasing winds. Shadows swept across the tree line, and the cloaked shape appeared to turn its head in our direction. The persistent, loud yelling and overpowering stench of fresh shit in the air made it difficult to think straight. The rush of adrenaline caused my throat to constrict and my eyes to water and burn.
The Wards continued to scream and point out the windshield. The rest of us pushed back into our seats. Bobby accelerated the car forward.
“What the hell are you doing?!” yelled Greg, or maybe Paul. “Turn around! TURN AROUND!”
The Camaro sped through the dirt, closer to what sure as hell looked like the Grim Reaper, big-ass axe and all. He was huge; taller than he appeared from where we first saw him. The wind continued to whip through the trees. The massive scythe shifted in its grasp. Others in the back seat cowered away from the passenger side, as though shifting themselves over by a foot would help save them from something intent on crashing through an already speeding car with its fleshless hands.
I plastered my face against the window in order to see his full height. With the headlights no longer illuminating him, I could only make out its distinct outline, that of a cloak and scythe. As we passed within a few yards of the thing, Bobby pulled the steering wheel counter-clockwise and fishtailed the car to face in the other direction, slamming everyone against the passenger side of the car.
The Ward brothers ceased their yelling almost as quickly as they’d started, as we sped away from the quarry. Then, joining the sound of the Camaro’s engine, came the sound of their snickering. Bobby punctuated the moment with his own coughed-out guffaw.
“You … you,” Bobby managed to sputter, in between gasps for breath and gagging on cigarette smoke. “You guys … shit yourselves! I mean, you literally, honest-to-God shit your pants, you were so scared!”
For a moment no one else spoke. I think the rest us were letting sink in what had just happened, even though we still were not sure what that was.
“I … didn’t,” said Paul, sounding as though he had first checked himself to make sure.
“Me neither,” Greg said. “But, ugh, someone did.”
The two cousins turned to me, their shirts pulled up over mouths and noses, hoping they’d serve as suitable gas masks.
“Don’t look at me,” I said, holding my hands up.
Dave sat motionless, staring at the floor.
Bobby’s ensuing laughter and ridicule was relentless.
To say the ride home was an unpleasant one would be an understatement. Dave silently endured Bobby’s continual indignities; the rest of us fought for room at the open windows. The smell of burning wood and leaves from some nearby brush fire overcame us, to our great relief. There seemed to be enough distractions to take our minds off the question most of us had, though: Who or what was that on the quarry road?
When Bobby’s car pulled up in front of his house, we couldn’t exit fast enough. You’d think a bomb was about to go off, though I guess in some sense one already had.
“My god, McGrath. You’re such a pussy,” Bobby carried on. “And you reek. I better not have to clean my fucking back seat!”
I quickly changed the subject. “Who the hell was that back there?” Dave was already halfway back to his house, with the unmistakable gait of someone with full pants.
“Who was that?” Bobby replied. “Who do you think it was, a giant wizard? It was the Grim-fucking-Reaper, dude, who else?”
“No, really,” said Paul. “Was it one of your wicked-big college friends?”
“Seriously?” Bobby asked. “Out in the middle of nowhere. Near the quarry. In the dark. Just to scare you ‘tards? Please.” He exhaled smoke while he chortled, then with an impressive flick shot his spent cigarette butt sailed thirty or forty feet down the road.
“He’s out there late at night,” Bobby continued. “Every night. You dorks never see him because you’re too chicken-shit to go out there. Probably a good thing though. You get too close, they say he brings that sickle down and BAM! You’re done. Right in half. He throws your bloody body parts down into the quarry. You sink down to the bottom and nobody ever finds you.”
To that, no one had anything to say. We stood around in silence for a bit, probably to let what Bobby said sink in as he flipped his lighter open on his jeans, then struck it lit for the Salem already hanging from his lips.
“Hey, Ken,” John called out to me. “You’d better hurry up and catch up to your boyfriend. He might need his butt wiped!”
“Ha Ha. Screw you,” I said as the others burst into laughter. I had to hold back from laughing myself. While Dave was by no means my best friend, he may have considered me his, and so I felt a friendly obligation to check on him. His situation was funny — at least to the rest of us — but at the same time I felt bad for the kid. As far as I knew, I was his only friend.
Mr. McGrath greeted me at the door. “Hey Kenny. You guys alright? Get in a fight or something? Dave just ran upstairs without saying anything. It wasn’t the Ward kid again, was it?”
“Uh, sorta,” I said, entering the front door. “He and his brother drove a bunch of us out to see something near the quarry, trying to scare us. It scared Dave more than usual, I guess.”
“Hm. The quarry, huh?”
The embarrassment was still cooling on Dave’s cheeks when he came down the stairs, wearing fresh clothes.
“Oh, hey,” he said, eyes darting between his father and me. “I, uh … I’ve got IBS, so … that kinda thing happens sometimes.”
“Okay,” I said. I had no idea what IBS was, but if it was what made the topic drop, I was happy just to let it end with that.
“Bobby Ward took you two out to the quarry tonight?” Mr. McGrath asked Dave.
Dave’s eyes scanned the floor. “Yeah.”
“And you two have never been out there at night before?”
“No,” we both said.
“Hm. So you hadn’t seen the Grim Reaper before, then.”
Two sets of teenage eyeballs were now fixed on Mr. McGrath.
“Wait,” Dave said, holding his hand up. His pinkish cheeks reddened, though now from outrage rather than humiliation. “You know about that guy out there? Why’d you never tell me about him before?”
Mr. McGrath took a seat on the foyer stairs. “You know I don’t like you kids — any kids — going out to the quarry at all, never mind when it’s dark. Too many accidents over there. I know some people who’ve died out there. Always the stupid jocks. I didn’t think I had to worry about you going out there at night until you were old enough to drive. I guess that’s changed now, huh?”
Neither one of us answered. Mr. McGrath took a moment to consider where to begin.
“I was a bit younger than you two when I first saw him; scared the shi- uh, crap out of me. Bobby’s father — Mr. Ward — he was actually with me at the time. This was before he became such a pain in the butt neighbor-from-hell, and we were, believe it or not, friends.
“The quarry was actually functioning at the time, so the only people going out there were stone cutters. Construction workers. There was nobody going there to swim. Adam — Mr. Ward — had an older brother, Richie. Richie had this incredible car — a ’52 Olds Super 88. Always kept that thing immaculate. Anyway, Richie would race people at night for money all the time. Adam and I knew about it, but we never knew when it was happening. But we really wanted to see him race.
“One night, Adam rides over to my house and wakes me up, tells me he overheard his brother talking about a race he was doing on the other side of Peasley, near Eastboro. We thought, ‘Finally, now’s our chance.’ We’d heard that the quickest way to get to Eastboro was through a path by the quarry, but we’d never been out that way before. It didn’t matter. We got on our bikes and we pedaled our butts off, in the dark, down that long, gravely, quarry road. No houses. No lights. Nothing. Just the sound of two kids huffing and puffing, bike chains rattling.
“We get to where we can barely see the outline of some of the machines and buildings up ahead. And that’s when I saw it. I could see this huge, cloaked figure by the side of the road, across from the quarry pit, along the woods. I stopped dead in my tracks. Adam nearly ran right into me. He saw it too. This huge guy, just … standing there. We watched for maybe five minutes, just watching him. Adam wanted to turn back, but I was pretty determined to see the race. So I got back on my bike and started pedaling. The one gear my bike had couldn’t keep up with how fast my legs moved. I could hear Adam behind me, scared half to death. Just as we’re about to pass that giant at the edge of the road, BAM!”
“What?” Dave asked.
“I hit a patch of loose gravel. Went right down and skinned my left palm nearly to the bone. Adam, that no-good coward … he just kept on pedaling. Left me alone. I was out-of-my-mind scared. And then I looked up.”
“Who was it? What did you see?” I couldn’t get the questions out fast enough.
Mr. McGrath leaned in. “No one.”
Dave said, “Wait, what are you talking about, ‘no one’?”
“I mean no one,” his father said. “It was just an enormous tree.”
Dave’s head flung back. “A fucking tree?”
“Hey!” Mr. McGrath said. “Yes, a tree. That big, hulking guy along the side of the road isn’t a guy at all — just an old, rotten, hollowed-out tree.”
Dave’s father continued his story, about how the “Grim Reaper tree” had already been a sort of right-of-passage for newly-licensed teen drivers for years, before he and Adam Ward happened upon it. The tradition eventually tapered off, then seemed to resurface in recent years, likely once Mr. Ward introduced the old tradition to his son. A sadist like Bobby Ward no doubt cherished the opportunity to christen kids to the Grim Reaper.
It was getting late. I said my goodnights and pedaled home in the dark. Though I now knew that the thing we’d seen earlier was a tree, and though I was nowhere near the quarry, I kept to the center of the roads, far away from the bordering woods.
I beat my personal best time on the route home that night by ten minutes.
The rest of that summer was more of the same: Hot, dry, and painfully uneventful. In August, the McGraths helped Dave spring for a barely-working, piss-yellow ’76 Chevette. Its floorboards were so rusted through that Fred Flintstone could’ve started it. Its engine begged for being rebuilt or, more appropriately, being put out of its misery. Dave was desperate to push the car past state inspection and spent the remainder of vacation with his lanky frame working underneath that shitbox.
Bobby Ward gave Dave some respite from further ridicule, thanks only to Bobby somehow landing himself a girlfriend, something I wouldn’t have ever believed possible if I hadn’t seen the delusional girl for myself. There was no more talk of that night in Bobby’s car or of Dave’s IBS, thank the good lord. And there was no more talk about the Grim Reaper tree.
When September and the new school year rolled around, so did basketball practice. And so did Bobby Ward. He slouched in the gymnasium stands during the first day of practice, switching from picking his teeth to repeatedly flicking his lighter open and closed with an echoing “click-snap,” usually timed for when a player attempted a foul-line shot. With the more tolerable fall weather, he once again stuffed himself into his Peasley varsity jacket, completing his usual picture of despicability.
Dave McGrath took the line for free-throw practice. He dribbled the ball three times and took position for his shot.
Clink-snap!
Dave released the ball in what was much more a straight line than an arc. The echo of Bobby’s lighter was interrupted by the thud of Dave’s brick shot against the backboard.
Bobby catcalled from the stands. “Briiick!” His girlfriend giggled in response.
“Keep it shut up there, Ward,” Coach Hancock called out.
Dave took another ball and did his best to ignore the distractions from the stands.
Clink-snap! Clink-snap!
Dave’s shot sailed in a perfect arc toward the basket, though that was the only thing perfect about it. The ball angled downward and well short of the rim of the hoop by at least six inches.
“McGraaath!” Bobby called out, mixed with his usual brand of cackling. “McGrath the giraffe! Air ball!”
“Shut up, Bobby, you fat piece of shit!” Dave yelled through clenched teeth. Only the sound of the air ball’s final bounces killed the ensuing silence, as if to trail Dave’s uncharacteristic outburst with an audible ellipsis.
“Or, what, McGrath?” Bobby finally chimed in. “You gonna crap in my car again? Hey everyone, McGrath the giraffe crapped his pants in my car last summer! He was so scared he shat himself! It’s true! Ask Kenny!”
“Alright, you two, button it up!” screamed Hancock.
“Tell ’em, Ken,” said Bobby. “You were there.”
“Ward!” the coach interrupted. “Out of here! Now!”
As Bobby grabbed his girlfriend’s arm to walk out, the eyes of everyone else were on me.
I am a horrible liar. My father used to tell me that if aliens ever landed on Earth and I had to convincingly lie to them in order to save all humanity from enslavement, we’d all be polishing flying saucers before two words passed my lips. Not that being able to easily determine whether I was lying or not was a bad thing to my father, mind you. If I can’t find a way out of answering a question where lying is in the best interest of either myself or someone else I’m close to, my mouth resorts to stammering and my eyes will drift anywhere other than straight ahead.
I let my shrugging shoulders do the talking this time. Sometimes silence is the only safe way to lie.
I lived only about a mile away from the high school, so most nights after practice I usually hoofed it home rather than wait for my parents or someone else to give me a ride. That night, after I got about a quarter-mile away from the gymnasium parking lot, headlights approached behind me, attached to a car with a muffler so loud that one might have thought an airplane was bearing down on me. The sound slowed as the car pulled up beside me. Slowing down and matching my walking speed, on my right, was Dave McGrath, sitting behind what could barely be called an automobile. A Frankenstein’s monster of machinery, its creator at the controls.
“Hey!” Dave called out from the open window of his resurrected Chevette. It was now more Bondo grey than yellow. He spoke up more than usual, to be heard above the growling, hole-riddled muffler.
“Passed inspection?” I called back.
“It passed my inspection,” Dave said, pulling the car to a stop. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride.”
Against my better judgement, I walked around to the other side of the car and got in. Thankfully the floor was intact, or at least the new floor mats provided a convincing cover-up job. Dave struggled with the shifter as he threw it into gear and brought the accelerator down hard, filling the air once again with muffler racket, joined with the acrid smell of spent, cheap fuel.
“Thanks,” I said, as we made our way up the road. “Listen, I’m sorry about that in there, I-”
“Yeah, no problem,” Dave interrupted, brushing off the rest of my sentence. “I’ve got another thing I have to do first.”
“O … kay?”
“That piece of shit Bobby Ward. I’m gonna make him know what it feels like to shit his pants. Right now. Tonight.”
“How… ?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Roll down your window.”
We’d come to a stop light, and as I cranked the squeaky window down and thought to myself how bad of an idea it sounded to fuck with Bobby Ward, a familiar sound flooded the air and joined that of Dave’s car. Bobby Ward’s Camaro.
“Hey!” Dave called across from me. “Hey, Ward!”
Bobby’s head snapped to look, and his eyes burned holes through the both of us. He rolled his window down.
“The hell you want, McGrath?”
“I wanna see that Grim Reaper again. Meet me there in an hour.”
Bobby’s girlfriend joined him in an uproar of laughter. “What, so you can crap yourself again?” he said.
“Just meet me there. You’ll see.”
Bobby eyed us suspiciously for a moment while the light turned green. “Okay. Alright. I’ll meet you there. I’ve gotta hand it to you, McGrath, I didn’t think you’d have the balls to go out there again. We’ll see if you can control yourself this time. See you in an hour, pussies.”
At that, the Camaro took off ahead of us before Dave could put his own car in gear.
“Um. Well now what?” I asked.
Dave made no answer. Instead of heading straight ahead and toward home, Dave turned left, toward the quarry road.
When we pulled off the paved road and onto the leaf-covered gravel path, I couldn’t let Dave’s silence sit for another moment.
“Hey, what’s the deal?”
Dave stopped the car. “Get out.”
“Wait. What? Get out? Here?”
“Alright, here’s the plan. You’ll stay here and wait for Bobby to show up. When he does, you jump around and wave your arms, panicking. You tell him I wimped out, kicked you out and went home.”
“And…?”
“And he’ll pick you up and take you with him, because he doesn’t hate you like he hates me. And when you guys show up, I’ll be hiding inside the hollow tree. I’ll move it around, make some creepy noises. You start that whole yelling bit he does. He will freak the fuck out!”
“You think that’ll work?”
“Yeah. Well, probably. Don’t worry. Trust me, I’ll be convincing. Later, you can tell me all about his reaction.”
The plan sounded funny, I’ll admit, but I knew Dave would have to be incredibly convincing to scare that lout Bobby Ward. He already knew that the Grim Reaper was nothing more than an old tree, so seeing it move around was more likely to get him curious than scared. But I was up for seeing how it would play out.
With an outburst of screaming metal, my door flew open upon its rusty hinges. I exited the car and Dave drove away, sputtering into the dark. The usual under-tire crunch and pop of crushed stone became instead a white noise of crumbling, dead foliage that swept out in waves from beneath the car’s undercarriage.
I didn’t have to wait in the dark for long. Five minutes later, the rumble of Bobby Ward’s car approached the quarry road. I immediately started waving my hands over my head and jumping, blinded by the Camaro’s high-beams.
“Kenny? What the fuck?”
“Dave chickened out, man! He got pissed because I laughed, then he kicked me out. Can I get a ride?”
Bobby bellowed with laughter. “I knew it. What a pussy. Whatever. Get in.”
Bobby’s girlfriend sat next to him, so I climbed into the back seat. “Hey, can we still go see the Grim Reaper?” I asked.
“Seriously? Man, you’ve got balls, Kenny. Not like your buddy the Giraffe! Alright, let’s go.”
A few minutes later, just before where we’d stopped on my first trip to this same place in August, I saw the Grim Reaper. I started into my act before Bobby could.
“HE’S THERE! OHMYGOD, HE’S MOVING! LOOK!”
Bobby glided the car a few feet more before hitting the brakes.
“He’s what?” Bobby asked. “Did you say moving? Are you high, Kenny? It’s not moving.”
But Bobby was right. The tree was not moving. It remained as still as it had before, with only a few tricks of light to give the appearance that a cloak billowed about in the wind.
“No, no. Look! He’s … he’s moving! Listen! He’s yelling or something!”
Bobby cut the engine and rolled his window down. The only sounds that greeted us were the “ting ting” of a cooling engine and the skitter of blown-about leaves.
Bobby chuckled. “Kenny, you asshole. Are you seriously trying to fuck with me? Really?”
Bobby started the car back up and pulled up to within twenty feet of the towering Grim Reaper. At that distance, it was plain to see the truth of what it was. A familiar wind sent the overhanging branches into a frenzy, sending shadows once again into a dance among the Reaper’s cloak of rotted bark.
Bobby exited the car and strutted over to within a few feet of the Reaper. Even at Bobby’s six-foot height, the decaying thing rose another two feet above him, seeming to stare above his head and into the darkness beyond the quarry. Bobby pulled his Zippo and a cigarette from his letter jacket pocket.
“Here! Now you see, Kenny!” he called out, laughing and turning toward us. “It’s just a dumb, old, rotten stump! That’s all it is! McGrath Giraffe is scared shitless … of a stupid. Fucking. Tree!”
He struck the lighter open. Clink-chick!
Something happened then: The Grim Reaper — the hulking husk of what looked to have once been a mighty oak of Peasley Town Forest — began to move. I was speechless at how realistic it looked, at how well Dave was playing the part. The branches that hung by its sides began to rise, shedding dead leaves and reaching upwards and outwards toward the unknowing Bobby. I had no time to go back into my act before Bobby’s girlfriend started into a frenzy of her own.
“Oh my God! Bobby! He’s right! That thing is moving!”
Bobby had little time to react. He lit the end of the cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was just able to mumble an annoyed, “What?” out of his pursed lips before everything went to hell.
The branches moved quickly. Like giant tendrils, they extended and seized Bobby around his chest, then lifted the fat oaf from the ground. Bobby’s girlfriend shrieked. My jaw dropped. It wasn’t possible for a skinny guy like Dave to do this. There was no way in hell.
Bobby struggled to break himself free, but it seemed his thrashing only got himself further caught up in the vines that entangled the branches.
“Wha- What the fuck?! Let the fuck go of me!”
The branches only pulled Bobby in tighter. In the midst of it all, the two became enveloped in a sudden eerie fog that materialized out of nowhere. I pulled myself together and got out of the car, if for nothing more than to make a run for it. But that wasn’t fog.
It was smoke.
While Bobby tussled amongst a mass of branches and knotted vines, he’d dropped the lit Zippo onto the ground, into the piles of dry leaves at the base of the Reaper. Flames began to lick the bottoms of Bobby’s feet as he remained embraced in the tree-branch hug.
“Dave! Dave, if you’re in there, get out, man! The woods are on fire!” I yelled.
Bobby’s eyes widened. “Dave? McGrath?! You mother fucker! I’ll get you! I’ll fuck you both!”
But there was no letting go. The branches held fast and only seemed to further tighten with every struggle Bobby made. His face reddened with a mix of range and panic, the fire continuing to grow around them.
“Dave!” I yelled again. “Give it up, Dave! Let’s go!”
The engine of Bobby’s Camaro thundered, and gravel and leaves left from under it as it backed away from the scene. Bobby’s girlfriend had taken the wheel. She spun the car around, nearly sending it off into the woods before punching it forward and speeding away down the road. With the car gone, the only sound now was that of crackling brush and Bobby’s strained grunts. Then a voice.
“Wh- What the hell happened?”
It was Dave. He approached behind me, coming out of the forest, his eyes wider than my own. I could say nothing.
A sound of rotten wood cracking, and I turned back to look just as whatever thing the Grim Reaper really was uprooted itself. Like no noise I’d ever heard before, the thing let out what I can only describe as a growl of something ancient and angry, a throaty animal roar that spoke of both torment and fury. Fire draped the entangled two as the ungodly shape lumbered across the ground and toward the deep quarry’s edge. As the flames climbed Bobby Ward’s jeans and began to ignite his corduroy jacket, he screamed. He screamed as one screams not of pain but of pure terror.
Both the roar and the scream died off as a distant echo, as the two tumbled sideways, falling into the quarry and out of sight.
That was not the last we saw of Bobby Ward.
The girlfriend eventually returned with police and fire vehicles in tow. While the fire became contained, an officer began asking us of Bobby’s whereabouts. Bobby’s girlfriend hadn’t seen all of what had happened. It was up to me and Dave to tell.
I started to explain. “He-“
“I was messing around with him and we got caught up in some trees,” Dave interrupted. “Then he dropped his lighter. I got out of there, but … Bobby panicked and jumped into the quarry to put himself out.”
Before we were asked anything more, another officer called out from the quarry. “We’ve got something down here!”
Ambulances were called in, and we saw what had been found. Bobby Ward, barely recognizable. He’d become a twisted mass of scorched, blackened and bloodied skin, naked but for a fragment of his jacket, the letter “P” of Peasley High, adhered to his chest within overlapping, melted skin.
The official assessment of Bobby’s death was severe burns and drowning. An accident.
Dave’s crappy car had broken down that night, far past the quarry. He’d never been able to execute his plan. To become the Grim Reaper. To scare Bobby Ward into shitting his own pants. To this day I’m betting Dave still wonders to himself: Did all that really happen? Was it all just some fucked up dream? Because I know I do.
Why else would the Grim Reaper still be standing there today?
