Put Me in Coach by Paul Wilson

Timmy Mitchell was hit by a Ford Mustang. Because the car was red, Timmy’s blood didn’t show up on the chassis, but when EMS arrived on scene, the boy’s fluid was streaked neon against the tinted glass.

That car didn’t just kill Timmy, it tore him apart. His neck was pulverized. When they pulled him off the asphalt, his head swung round like it was on a wheel. He didn’t come up quietly, either. So much of what was in his head had splattered the pavement that Timmy pulled off the road in a wet, gooey rip. The ambulance driver puked in the bushes.

But Timmy came back. I saw it. I was there. So was half the town. And when Timmy came back, he didn’t go home. He returned to the place he loved. Timmy came back to the baseball field.

It was the first Saturday in August and filled with the sticky humid funk that Summer works up in the South. Timmy’s little league team was playing that night and progressing nicely. The kids were scattered on a deep green field with orange dirt for the baselines. Coach Sands was standing in front of his team’s bench and watching his boys go into field position. The sun made its final dip, and the land took on the magical quality of dusk. Stars twinkled against purple velvet. Crickets sang. Thunder grumbled behind the pines. Parents talked and smoked and drank on the bleachers.

Then Coach Sands saw him. Timmy lurched down from the hill in the far outfield. When he reached the ground he fell, but kept coming, dragging himself along. Timmy tried to talk but the words came out mushy because his head was all fucked up. He had only one foot. His other leg ended in a ragged stump with jagged bone poking through. Still, he came. The third baseman caught sight of Timmy and screamed. The rest of both teams followed suit.

The next night I talked with Coach Sands. He told me he understood what Timmy was trying to say as the players cleared out of the way. Sands said Timmy was repeating the same thing he said so many times from the bench. “Put me in the game! Put me in, Coach!” The words were obvious agony for the boy, but he kept saying them over and over like he didn’t know he was dead. I was sitting on the bottom bleachers and heard Sands call on God, but the sight of that dead boy crawling through the grass was enough to make you think He had checked out for the night.

Somehow Timmy had gotten hold of a baseball glove. He pulled himself along with his free hand, holding the glove up as if to catch the rising moon. He kept begging Sands to put him in the game.

Timmy’s dad caught sight of his boy and screamed, tearing to get to him. He struggled hard. Two of the stronger coots had to hold him down. He tried to throw them off, but those country boys held him fast. I understand. That was his only son out there. No matter how he looked or why, Jeb wanted his boy back. Poor bastard.

Me and my cousin Agnue grabbed two bats from the rack behind shortstop and headed towards the mess. Timmy had gotten flipped over on his back and was splashing around in the grass. I told Agnue that we’d have to pull the boy away to finish him. It was a sorry situation, but Timmy had to be put down. Didn’t matter if he had brought me the paper for the last year or that we could hear his Daddy screaming himself hoarse. There was a job to do, and it had to be done.

Me and Agnue dragged Timmy easily. We took him over the hill’s edge so people wouldn’t have to witness. They had seen enough already to fill a lifetime of nightmares.

You put on weight in death but apparently you get light as straw in resurrection. Timmy came easy enough. People were keeping far back except for the same third baseman who had started the screaming. He had regained his courage and came over the crest for a closer look. That’s when Timmy reached out and grabbed him. I watched as the corpse took a mouthful out of the baseman’s leg. His skin and meat and pants pulled like taffy. Agnue yelled in revulsion, a sound like he wanted to puke and talk at once, but he collected himself and popped Timmy in the face. The dead boy’s teeth broke with a crunch. One was still in the baseman’s leg. The baseman stumbled back, his eyes rolled up, and he dropped. A boweevil landed in his hair. It was hard for me to take my eyes off the gray bug and join Agnue’s efforts, but some how I managed to raise my bat and do my part for Timmy. Above us the thunder boomed, a kettledrum in Hell.

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Paul Wilson lives in a suburban neighborhood much like the one he turned into a horror playground in his novel Hostage. He lives with his wife, daughter, son, and three cats, one of which actually likes him. He has worked a spectacular list of jobs including retail district manager, a 911 operator, and the head of a college security department.