---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Prayers and Bullets” Down in the Dirt, v181 (the March 2021 Issue) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology Excerpts from the Plague Years the Down in the Dirt Jan.-April 2021 issues collection book		get the 420 page Jan.-April 2021 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

Jason Reeds

Harrison Linklater Abbott

    I had a head injury when I was nine. It was silly and the first time I was ever knocked out. I was helping my dad with his shed. He was trying to fix the tarmac on the roof and he needed help to hold the tarmac down whilst he nailed it into place. I was perched on the edge. I lifted the tarmac up in one spot, when suddenly a huge spider scurried out from underneath. I screamed and jumped back and fell off the roof. The injury was pretty bad and I still have a scar.
    It would be over two decades until I realised that the accident caused me amnesia. And what brought a memory back would be another silly head injury and the second time in my life when I was knocked out. I was walking my dog in the woods. Carla, my dog, suddenly saw a fox and sprinted after it. Whenever my dog sees a fox she just goes crazy. To the point where I have to run after her and bring her back. So this happened again and that day it had been raining for hours. Carla raced off the path after this fox and I sped in pursuit. I ran down a little hillside, slipped on the wet mud, and landed head-first into a tree trunk.
    I woke up cluelessly with Carla licking my face. There was blood on my forehead but it wasn’t that painful. It wasn’t an alarming environment to wake up in – the woodland – and I sat up.
    All I could think of was this scenario from my youth. This memory from boyhood which I hadn’t thought of in such a long time. It happened here in these very woods:
    I was walking along the path and dipped off it into the trees. I’d forgotten my jumper and was looking for it. I heard a noise through the trees and then saw a shape. It was a man. I recognised him. That was Mr Nicolas. The gruff scary neighbour from down the road. I’d never seen him in the woods before. What was he doing here? I crept closer; he was quite far off, doing something in the middle of a circle of holly trees ... He was holding an object and playing around with it. It looked like he was acting to himself, as if rehearsing for a play.
    The object was a toy machine gun. I recognised that as well – the gun. It belonged to my friend Jason Reeds. I was mega envious of Jason’s gun. All of the boys were and we all wanted it. But why did Mr Nicolas have Jason’s gun? Mr Nicolas must have been at least fifty. Here he was, alone in the woods, pretending to be a soldier in a movie. I was terrified of him so I ran away.
    I was going to tell my friends. And ask Jason about his gun. I got home and dad was in the garden. He called me and asked me to help him with his shed for a moment ...
    All of this came back to me wondrously. I got up dizzily and went back home with Carla. My neighbour was a doctor and friend. I told him I’d been knocked out. He examined me and said I might be a bit concussed but I would be fine. Just sleep and I would be right in the morning. And I tried to sleep, but couldn’t. Because I kept thinking about Jason, my old buddy from when I was a kid.
    Jason Reeds went missing when he was a nine-year-old boy in the autumn of 1999. And was never found again. It was a disturbing time period and one which I shut off. Because Jason was one of my closest friends and it was never the same after his vanishing. I blocked his memory out.
    Now there was this rediscovered memory which could be crucial. It meant something. Did it? I saw that man Nicolas holding Jason’s toy gun in the woods, in the same period that Jason went missing. I know it was the same period, because I was in hospital overnight after the shed accident and when I got back in the morning, my friends came to see me at home. They said that Jason was missing and they’d been out looking for him.
    Spooky. But how could I trust the memory? Was it even a real memory? The scene seemed so bizarre that it could’ve been fathomed from the injury. But it sure got me thinking.
    Because Mr Nicolas was a strange guy. Nicolas used to stare at us from his windows when we were playing football in the street. He’d shout at us when he drove past us in his van. Swear and holler at us to get off the road. He lived alone in a small house and his big van often lurked on the driveway. We kept playing football near his abode just to annoy him, but we were wary of him at the same time.
    I wasn’t able to sleep at all because I was thinking about all of this.
    I still lived in Mr Nicolas’ neighbourhood. He had died five years earlier of cancer. The woods beckoned to me. I thought, maybe, just maybe, this memory might be the key. So I got up in the morning. I took Carla back into the woods.
    I dove into the wilderness. It quickly got magical, the ivy heavy and trees thick.
    I remembered the place where I saw him. It was by the old trail which was grown over now and rough underfoot. I followed it and came to the circle of holly trees. They were much taller – but there was still that oval of hollies where I’d seen Nicolas in ’99. I went into the circle and looked around.
    Birdsong trilled in the air. Carla was quiet and hung back. She’d stopped swishing her tail. I looked over the earth. It was winter and the ground was bare and slathered with brown leaves. I noticed that at the end of the area there was a depression. I analysed it from different angles and it was definitely different.
    I found a stick and I began digging into this spot. The ground was hard and cold and the stick wasn’t much use. But I knew I was close to something. So I went back home to get a spade and came back with it and dug more. It was raining all of this time and the water whipped off my face. Carla was still nervous and reluctant. I worked in a frenzy.
    Suddenly a flash of colour came up from the soil. Red. It was a little object with a red dot at the top. Plastic. I reached into the hole and pulled it out. It was Jason’s toy machine gun. The red dot was its muzzle. I was surprised that it hadn’t degraded more. It was muddy and cold but wasn’t broken or anything. I was afraid to keep holding it and I put it down beside the hole. The afternoon was darkening and it would be night within ninety minutes. I used to have nightmares of being left in the woods at night when I was a boy. But I wasn’t a boy anymore and I dug on.
    I found a new colour. Blue, this time. More plastic, but of a different texture. Blue tarpaulin covered around an oblong shape. I lifted the tarpaulin up with the spade. And I jumped back at the sight. Just like I did with that spider on the shed rooftop. But there was nothing phobic about what I saw this time. It was plain terror, sheer fear. There was a little human skull under the tarpaulin. I was surprised at how little it was. That was Jason Reeds. My throat tightened. I lifted up the rest of the tarpaulin and there was this ample skeleton of a human boy, lain out on the tarpaulin. He looked like he belonged in a museum. I would always wonder why Mr Nicolas buried the plastic gun in the grave with him.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...