Patches

I ran into the house and slammed the door behind me. Looking around frantically, I called for my parents. At that moment, I became about four years old in the blink of an eye. My fear congealed in my guts when I realized they weren't home. They were gone, out of town, and wouldn't be back until tomorrow night. That's why I'd been staying at Billy's in the first place. That's why Billy was…

THUMP THUMP THUMP

"Open up, John! I know you're in there." Said a slurry voice, singsonging the words as the owner tried to bowl the door down. I turned and shot the top bolt before backing away from the door as though it might bite me. The wood on the thick old door, solid enough to rattle the windows when it slammed, looked like it was bowing in as whatever was on the other side pushed at the wood. The door warped and twisted and suddenly seemed made of clear film as hands pushed their image into it. It couldn't be; it just couldn't be! My dad had said that door was a foot thick when he'd installed it, and now it was bending and warping like melted wax.

It was too much. I ran into the kitchen and slammed that door too as I threw a chair in front of it for good measure. After I was certain that it was jammed in there good, I backed away slowly with wide staring eyes. I jumped suddenly and shrieked like a tea kettle when my jeans-clad bottom came into contact with something solid. I felt stupid when I realized it was just the fridge; I even laughed a little, thinking maybe I'd exaggerated this whole thing. That's when I heard a terrible cracking sound coming from the living room. It was the sound of wood splintering as its dimensions are violated. He'd be through soon, he'd be through, and then he'd have me.

Patches would be through.

Billy, Randall, Scotty, and I had been friends since we were very young. We'd been inseparable, thick as thieves, and the terrors of our neighborhood since we'd been old enough to walk. I don't get the wrong idea or anything. We weren't bullies, we weren't bad boys, we ate our vegetables, we were in before the streetlights came on, we kept our grades up, and we were polite to anyone we met.

The problem was that we liked pranks.

What child doesn't like to pull a prank now and then? A tack in the teacher's chair? A whoopee cushion in a classmate's seat? A frog in a backpack? We'd done them all, and it had given us a bit of a reputation as troublemakers. When school ended for the summer, and the four of us moved on to middle school, I'm pretty sure the teachers at our old elementary school threw a party to celebrate. We were all just looking forward to a summer of pranks and mischief, but none of us could have foreseen what was to come.

After three weeks of no school, limited parental supervision, and way too much free time on our hands, we'd started to get bored. We'd pulled some pranks, putting mud in Mrs. Laverne's washing machine had almost gotten us caught, but most people were already wary of us because of our reputation as pranksters, so it was getting hard to pull a really good prank like we wanted. One afternoon though, the four of us put our heads together and thought of all the people we hadn't yet pulled a prank on, and only one person in town came to mind; Patches.

The front door crashed open like it had been shot with a cannon, but in the wake of the break-in, I was treated to nothing but a long silence from the living room. No footsteps headed towards the kitchen. No slurry voice trying to call me out. Just a long uncomfortable silence as I sat with my back against the solid old refrigerator and waited to see what would happen. I counted in my head, 1 2 3, and when I got to one hundred, I worked my way up to my feet and took a hesitant step towards the kitchen door.

That's when the knob turn.

It turned left, then right, then left again, and someone pushed against it and swore loudly when the chair stopped it from opening. He slammed against the lame barricade, and I saw one bloodshot eye peek through the crack and train onto me. The eye went wide in mirth, and I heard the water, slurry voice call my name again. He rattled at the door a few more times before opening it as far as he could so I could hear him.

"Johnny," he sang, "Johnny Johnny Johnny! Don't you want to see your old pal Patches? Don't you want to see what you and your friends did to your old pal? Maybe when I get through this door," he slammed his weight against it again, "I'll give you a taste of what I gave the others. Billy squealed like a little girl when I twisted his fat head right off his shoulders!" he screamed through the door as he put his whole weight into the hits and the legs of the chair started buckling as it got ready to give.

I didn't wait to see what would happen. I tore off upstairs as fast as I could, taking the little staircase in the kitchen. Just as my feet touched the bottom stair, I heard the door crash open, and I put on a burst of speed. As I hit the halfway point, something grabbed my ankle, and I fell hard onto the rough wooden steps. I bit my tongue on the way down, and I felt my lip split as it hit the stairs. One look at what stood at the bottom, though, and both of those pains were nothing. His hand, wrapped in the same threadbare mittens he'd worn in life, clutched my ankle, and it looked like his arm had stretched from his body, so it hung halfway down the stairs behind me.

Patches stood at the bottom of the stairs, dressed in his soiled cast-off clothes and grinning his gap-toothed smile which had become decidedly moldy in death, and started pulling on me as I struggled to get back on my feet.

Patches was a tramp, a sort of city pet, and the residence thought he gave our town "a colorful appearance." They'd all grown up with Mayberry and Mayfield. Small towns were expected to have a friendly tramp who stole the occasional pie or was caught sleeping off a bottle at the bus station. Patches never stole any pies, he was welcome to a piece on the front porch of almost any house in town, but he was drunk most any old night of the week as he staggered out of the Jimmer and down to his camp by the river. He never caused any trouble, though, and the police never felt the need to throw him in the drunk tank or hassle him at all.

I would have called us friends at one time. Everybody in town hired Patches to do odd jobs for a little money. He had a rusty old push mower that he'd cut people grass with, and he claimed he'd been a handyman of some sort before the war. He had enough skill with tools to back it up, so most any afternoon, he could be seen cutting grass or shoveling snow or fixing something for a few dollars to feed and "medicate" himself. Medicating is what dad called it when Patches got drunk, and Patches had laughed when I'd told him so. He fixed my bike tire once, and he'd taken Scotty, Randall, and I on a hike in the woods once when we asked if he knew any good camping spots. He was a nice guy, sober or drunk, and I don't think I'd ever seen him in trouble with anyone.

We shouldn't have pranked him; it was wrong, and I wish now that I could take it back.

Pranking him had been Billy's idea, but we'd all gone along with it. Billy's dad owned the hardware store, and he was just about the only person in town that didn't trust Patches. Billy's dad had it out for tramps and vags, and he'd taught his son to be mindful of them as well. "A tramps like a no-good dog pretending to be good." He'd tell us when he saw Patches wandering around, "You might pet him a hundred times and not get bit, but when you take your eyes off him for half a heartbeat, he'll bite it out." I didn't think Patches was like that, but we knew better than to argue with an adult, so we just nodded and said we'd be careful.

Billy had a roach, the rubber kind that you got from the joke shop for a nickel, and he put it deep down in a corned beef sandwich and told me to take it over to Patches.

"Why me?" I asked, not really wanting to prank Patches but not wanting to be seen as a chicken.

"He trusts you, your dad's always paying him to do stuff, and I've seen him talking to you on the front porch. He hasn't gotten work for a few days now, what with this heat, and he's probably getting hungry. He'll bite down on that sandwich, see the roach, and freak out!" Billy said, and we all laughed a little when we thought of Patches freaking out when he saw the roach. We'd have freaked out too if we found a roach in a sandwich, and afterward, we'd all have a good laugh and find someone else to prank.

He looked up from where he was sunning himself and smiled his gap-toothed smile at me, "Well, hey there, Johhny O, whatcha say ole sport?" he asked in his thick southern drawl.

"Nothin much, my mom packed me a corned beef sandwich for lunch, but I'm not really a big fan of corned beef. I thought you might like it." I held the sandwich out to him and tried my best not to smile.

Patches took the bait at once, "Well, say now, that's a mighty fine of you ole sport. Been near a day and a half since I had me any vittles." he took the sandwich and had a big bite, chewing with relish, "By the way, I saw Mrs. Laverne's washing machine." he said and slapped his knee as he gave a big donkey laugh, "I was three hours cleaning the mud out that contraption. I guess I should thank you boys for the work."

He laughed a little and took another bite, and when he did, I saw the gleaming head of the plastic roach sticking out of the sandwich. I started to point it out, but he kept right on laughing and telling me about the muddy washing machine and how hard it had been to get all the mud out. Apparently, he'd had to remove the drum and rinse it in the yard and then put the whole works back together. When he'd finished, and it was time to be paid, he took another bite and said through a mouthful of corned beef, "You know that old skinflint only gave me a dollar for all that work and tells me "Not to spend it all in one place." he brayed more laughter but as he went to bite again something happened.

He wheezed a bit, his throat working to swallow the load of corned beef, and I realized with horror that he'd swallowed the plastic roach too. The mat of corned beef and the hard plastic roach were stuck in his throat, and as he coughed and gasped, I realized he was choking. Billy, Randall, and Scotty broke cover then and ran over to see what was happening, but by then, it was already too late. He had melted to his knees in the dirt, coughing his life out as the wad of half-chewed food hung like plaster in his throat. All the back-slapping in the world couldn't do anything for him.

We sent Scotty and Randall to call an ambulance, but Patches was dead before they ever even left the riverside. His face was a dark purple towards the end as he fell to his knees in the dirt and clawed at his throat. Billy and I clapped him on the back again and again, but we might as well have slapped at a tree trunk. If you've never seen a man choke to death, then you may not know what it looks like, but I'm here to tell you that it's not as clean as it looks on tv. Patches hacked, coughed, tried to bring it up, clawed at his throat until his skin bled, and then finally he gave both of us one final look and pitched over onto his face; a look of terror and confusion stamped there forever.

The hand gripped my ankle hard, and I could feel his fingers trying to twist it through the shoe. Maybe he meant to break it. Maybe he just wanted to make me hurt bad enough to let go. Whatever his intention, I wasn't about to play along. I twisted my foot a little and let the sneaker slip off as it slapped back into his palm like a rubber band had it. Patches howled in rage, but I wasn't going to give him a chance to recover. I sprinted up the stairs and slammed my room door closed behind me.

I shot the lock and pushed the desk in front of the door as I thought about how best to escape. I needed to get out, I needed to escape, but I needed a plan before I went. I grabbed my backpack from the closet and threw some clothes into it, taking the ten dollars out of the desk I'd been saving for a new bike and putting it in my pocket and stuffing my scout sleeping bag in as well. I felt a surge of joy for half a second when I remembered my old rifle my dad and I used to hunt ducks in the fall, but that joy withered when I remembered that it was locked up in my dad's gun safe in the basement. I settled for a swiss army knife and a little firestarter kit that Randall had given me for my birthday and took one last look around. Some baseball cards went in, maybe I could sell them, I thought, and a nice watch my grandad had given me before I stopped and realized it was too quiet outside.

Why wasn't he trying to get in?

I put my hiking boots on and stuffed some socks into the bag before I slung it on and looked at the window. It would be a long drop to the ground, but I could hang off the kitchen roof and maybe not break my ankle if I was careful. My eyes flicked back to the door, and for a moment, I felt the urge to fling it open and confront my attacker head-on. That suicidal urge passed quickly, though, and I crept over to the door and laid my ear against it instead, trying to hear what might be on the other side.

The bang from the other side made me jump back in fright, and Patches laughed his donkeys' bray, "HAHAHAHAHA, come on out Johnny! There's no escape now!"

The ambulance had come, and the paramedics had pronounced him DRT, dead right there. Warner Mads, the fat volunteer firefighter who was on for the paramedics that day, had laughed when he said it, but none of the rest of us found it very funny. We all watched them put him on the stretcher and cover him with a sheet before they slid him into the covered truck they used as an ambulance and took him down to Porter's Mortuary.

We spent the next week in a state of pure dread.

"What if they find that roach in his throat?" Randall would say as we tried to go back to normal, "what if they cut him open and find it, and they decide that we killed him?"

Billy had punched him in the arm after we had all ignored him about a thousand times, "So what if they do? It's not like we meant to kill him. We just wanted to prank him; that's all."

"But what…" Randall started, but Billy had punched him again, and Randall knocked off so he could rub at his arm.

"Shut up, Randy, if we keep talking about it, then someone will ask questions. Why don't you guys come stay over tonight? My dad's working the late shift, and Johnny's parents are out of town, so he's staying with me anyway. We can have a sleepover and forget all this crap."

We all agreed that sounded like fun, and when the sun set Friday night, we were all sitting around a camp lantern in Billy's room telling scary stories. Billy had wanted a fire, but his dad had absolutely forbidden it, and so the best we could hope for was the small lantern in the floor of his room. His mom had gone to bed shortly after dinner, saying how tired she was, and we'd been left to our own devices for hours.

We'd played games, watched a little tv on the living room TV set, and raided the kitchen for snacks before finally deciding that it was time for the traditional scary stories. Billy got to tell first since it was his house, and he told us about the escaped asylum patient who'd killed the previous owners of this very house. He claimed that on quiet nights you could still hear them begging for their lives and the almost inaudible sound of the man dragging his knife along the wall as he hunted for the last of the children in the house. Randy got pretty scared, but that was far from new. After Patches, he seemed scared of most everything.

Thinking of Patches made me think of a story of my own to tell, but I hesitated and let Scotty go first. Scotty told a story about a skinned dog who killed a bunch of boys on a camping trip, and even though a skinned dog "with bones poking out and his jaws full of slobber" sounded a little scary, it was pretty stupid all told. When one of the boys managed to kill it and discovered that there was a whole pack of them that ripped him to shreds, we all rolled our eyes and threw out pillows at him. He laughed and threw his back and one pillow fight later, Billy asked if I had a story.

"I do actually, but it's not really a story. I thought I saw Patches the other day."

Everyone went quiet. Randall looked like a goose had walked over his grave, Scotty sucked air through his teeth, and Billy punched me in the arm in a less than playful way, "That's not funny man, that's not even funny a little bit."

But I told them I wasn't joking. I'd seen him on and off for days since his death. Pressed up against the glass at the grocery store, his gap teeth covered in mold and his face a purple and red patchwork, at his old camp when my dad and I drove past it and even when I didn't see him, I could swear I smelled the odor of peppermint candy and rotgut whiskey; the smells of Patches. But last night was the worst yet.

"I woke up all of a sudden, and there was someone standing at the end of my bed. I thought it might be my dad, checking on me, but then I smelled the peppermints and the sweet smell of alcohol, and I knew who it was. I didn't say anything, but he smiled at me from the foot of my bed, and his mosey teeth glinted in the moonlight. "That was a rotten trick Johnny," he whispered, and his voice was hoarse and cracking, "maybe I'll come to play a trick on you boys some time and see how you like it. Sleep tight till then." and then I blinked and he was just gone."

They all sat there, gape-mouthed for a heartbeat or two, and the Randall started laughing. It wasn't a real laugh, not really, but that crazy jagged laughter that people make when their scared and don't know what else to do. He reached out and grabbed a big handful of popcorn and said, "Good one Johnny." as he stuffed it into his mouth and kept laughing. His laughs turned to gasps, though, as he started to choke on the popcorn.

The three of us got up, wanting to go stop him before he choked to death, but as he knelt hacking, we could see his hands clawing not at his throat but at the black-gloved hands wrapped around his throat.

Patches had leaned around the back of his head then, grinning like a monster in a movie, and Randall's clutching hands had died like two birds in their death throes. We backed away from him, not sure what to make of this grisly phantom, and he stood to his full height so he could tower over us. Randall lay still on the floor then, his coughing done, and the three of us silently wondered who would be next.

"So Billy, you like roaches, do you?" the cadaverous thing asked, turning towards the terrified boy who stood frozen to the spot, "Well here then, have some won't you?"

Billy gagged then, and a single glistening roach fell from his lips. He stared at it dumbly before he retched, and a cascade of them pattered to the floor and scattered like, well, roaches. He went to all fours and kept vomiting up the glistening insects, his body wracked with sobs and heaves, as Patches laughed merrily over his handy work.

It was too much, I bolted for the door and never saw what became of Scotty. I threw open the living room door and ran out into the night, but I could hear the laughter of that mad apparition behind me as I fled for the safety of home. I believed, in my youth, in the talismanic protection of home, and as Patches dogged my heels, I could see it getting closer and closer before me. I found my key and rammed it into the lock, and as the door closed behind me, I was certain I was safe.

Sitting in my room now, I realized I would never be safe again.

Sitting on my sleeping bag and writing this down now, I realize I haven't been safe for the last twenty years. I fled that night with my backpack, and my fear and God forgive me, I never looked back. I later found out that the deaths of my three friends were the talk of our small town, and many believed I had been abducted by whoever had done the killing. I used the money I had to get as far as I could from my home town, and when it was gone, I worked for men who would hire a boy my age to do a day's work. This was 1974, so there were kids on the run all over, and one more didn't strike much interest. When I couldn't work, I begged when I found someone willing to take me in for a few days I stayed, but eventually, I would have to move on again or risk being caught in the shadow of Patches.

Patches didn't stay in my home town after all. No matter where I went, I would see him somewhere eventually, reflected in the window of a store or half hid in the alley between two buildings, or I'd smell that sickly sweet smell of him and know it was time to move on. I took up the bottle early, and as I got older, I came to realize that, in my own sad way, I had become Patches. I had become a living monument to a man I had killed on accident, and I suppose I was just looking for a place like my home town where I could feel safe.

I guess I've found it now. The truck dropped me off by the familiar river I had so often swum in when I was young, and as the sun went down, I found the ragged remains of Patches' old camp. The town has changed, as I knew it would, and the attendant at the corner store gave me a dirty look as I used my last five dollars to pick up a bottle of Irish Rose whiskey. I didn't care; by tomorrow, I'd just be another curiosity piece in the local paper. "Homeless man found murdered by the river," it would likely say, and after twenty years of running, I guess that's not too bad.

The bottle's half gone, and so is the sun as I sit here, making my final notes. I'm sitting in the spot where his camp used to be, and the sounds of the river, the frogs and crickets just tuning up behind me, is almost soothing as I wait for my death to come. He'll find me now, I'm sure of it, and after all this time, it's almost a relief.

A shadow has fallen over me, and a familiar voice asks, "You gonna finish that bottle, Johnny?" as I look up into the unchanging horror of his face.

I hand it up to him and smile, "I guess not."