Skeleton Mask

Ron Tatum

          

    The five teens stood in a circle around John Plumber his feet dangling inches off the ground, his hands bound to the tall wooden pole where the scarecrow had once stood. He thrashed around screaming under a skeleton mask the three boys had tapped to his face. Melanie McGee looked away seeing the horror in his eyes under the old rubber skeleton mask.

    “ Come on guys he’s had enough.” Shane Bartlet said. He looked around at the other kids Melanie had walked away sobbing the rest stood watching the spectacle cackling and laughing, throwing beer bottles in the air and howling at the full moon.

 

    “ What’s a matter Johnny? You don’t like having that scary old mask on your ugly old face?” Tina Barclay said.

 

    John Plumber thrashed on the pole trying to touch his feet to the ground. His screams muffled by the latex mask. Everyone in the small town of Tall Oaks knew John Plumber or as so many around called him simple Johnny.

 

    For years rumors and whispers had followed the simple man as he roamed the small town working odd jobs and living in a small apartment above his uncle’s garage, a rumor of how on a Halloween twenty-five years earlier he had leapt from a tree in a skeleton mask and frightened a group of small children. And how one girl, Tiffany Moore, had ran out in the street and been run down by a passing car.

 

    It was a story the group of teens had heard a hundred times since their childhood a story that had terrified at first then enraged them as they got older. The legend went that after the accident John had to be institutionalized and when he came out he was no longer John Plumber, a promising student and high school football player, but had become the slow moving, quiet man that the children taunted and the parents feared. And as the legend grew so did the small tidbits of the story that accompanied it. Stories of how John was terrified of Halloween masks. Rumors of a horrible fit John had had when his brother had tried to put a bandana around his face while they were painting their parents home.

 

    John let out a screamed through the mask and tossed his head from side to side.

 

    “ What you need is a drink.” Terry Arbor said. Terry was the dull witted center for the local football team and one of the architects of the Devil’s night plan to string up Simple Johnny and place the rubber skeleton mask over his face. He took a bottle of whiskey from the tailgate of his pick up and tossed it in John’s face.

 

    John screamed and thrashed.

 

    “ Do it again.” Jason Tate said taking a belt from his can of beer.

 

    Terry threw another splash of the acrid liquid in John’s face. John screamed and wailed he stretched to touch his feet to the ground.

 

    Shane Bartlet walked over to the post and took his pocketknife from his lettermen’s jacket. He was about to open the blade when he felt a hard smack against his jaw. His eyes filled with black and silver dots, he had never quite known what people meant when they said “ seeing stars,” but now he did.

 

    “ What’r you gonna do huh?” Terry said leaning over just inches from his face. “ I told you this guy was a wimp Jason.”

 

    Tina and Jason laughed; Jason threw a can of beer and hit Shane in the side of the head. “ Picking him up and put the sissy in the truck.” Jason ordered.

 

    Shane hung over big Terry’s shoulder he looked up from the odd angle and saw Jason standing in front of John. In the light of the bonfire he saw Jason’s hand raise and strike the side of John’s head. “ This is what you get for killin’ a little girl.” Jason said. John’s head slumped over. Jason lifted his head and pulled off the mask. There was a long silence then Jason backed away stumbling over his own feet. “ Oh crap I think he’s dead.”

 

    Melanie ran from the front of the pick up. She stood in front of John Plumber her petite hand rose to John’s neck and touched where his pulse should have been, nothing. She clasped her hand over her mouth and stifled a scream.

Shane wiggled off Terry’s shoulder and ran to Melanie’s side. He looked at John’s face, frozen in horror a huge bruise on his temple. He turned to Jason who stood his arms at his sides, his mouth agape, his eyes wide with fear. Clenched in his fist, covering his meaty knuckles were a pair of brass knuckles.

 

    “ Oh man you hit him too hard.” Terry said. The beefy blonde was white as a sheet.

 

    The five youth stood facing one another. Tina had a cruel smirk on her face unfazed by the events. Big Terry cried and repeated over and over that they were all going to jail. Melanie did not cry or speak she just stared at the dark earth. Still staggered by the blow to the head Shane swore under his breath.

 

    “ We got get out of here.” Jason said.

 

    Shane reached out grabbed Jason on the shoulder. “ What about John? We need to try to get him some help.”

 

    “He’s dead, man! You do what you want. Then you can explain to Sheriff Nichols how you helped us drag him out here, beat the crap out of him, tie him to a post, and tape a mask to his face.”

 

    “ I say we just leave him.” Tina said. Her beauty belied her cruelty. “ By the time they find him the coyotes and the possums will have chewed him up good. No one will ever no we were involved. Hell the old pervert was so creepy half the town will be a suspect.”

 

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