Why couldn't he just play along?

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“Why couldn’t he just play along?” she hissed at Grace as they dragged the third member of their party along with them.

“I do NOT know, Buckley.” She was hanging onto his arm and she actually shook him as she said it. “We told him often enough.”

“I didn’t know,” he wailed.

“Jeff, you idiot. You should have picked up your cues from us. Did we look like we were about to say something unbelievably dumb?”

“Ah... well... when you put it like that.”

“Walk faster,” Buckley said. “Maybe we should run?”

“It was their faces... did you see their faces?” He looked panicked. His eyes too white and too wide. “They had teeth like needles and they... their faces were-”

“Rotting. We know.”

“How can something be alive and be rotting?”

“They weren’t alive, Jeff. Haven’t you worked that out yet?”

He sucked in a breath. “I think I am going to be sick.”

“We don’t have time,” Grace said. “Oh, thank the goddess, there’s the car.”

Buckley glanced back up the road, the way they had come. “Will the charms hold?”

“They had better, or we won’t be going home in one piece.”

“What?” Jeff squeaked.

She flung the door open and pushed him into the back seat. “If they catch us, we’d be rotting, too, Jeff.”

Doors slammed and the car roared away.

“I am so glad that is over,” he said after a few minutes.

“You shouldn’t be,” said Grace, looking grim, “You offended them and now you have to make reparations.”

He giggled nervously, but when Buckley didn’t disagree he started to look less nauseated and a whole lot more worried.

“And worse,” added Buckley, “Now we have to ask the others.”

“And I hate the others,” Grace said. She glared at him in the rear-view mirror.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

Buckley tried to be conciliatory. “Well, at least he has learnt a good lesson.”

“Uh, huh. I will be amazed if he listens to us properly in the future.”

“So, I get to go out with you two again?” he asked hopefully.

“Next time you mess up, I will just leave you there,” Grace growled.

He went to laugh, but thought better of it. He suspected that she meant it. He huddled down in the back seat and tried not to keep looking behind them to see if they were being followed. Seeing things that he should not be able to was clearly his problem. Or one of them; keeping his mouth shut was obviously a problem, too.

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© AM Gray 2014