By the afternoon Allie had come through, and he was meeting her for a movie. It was one he had been wanting to see for ages now; everyone was talking about it. It was about a headless horseman that goes back to the village where he was killed to get revenge. It had a wild age restriction and was supposed to be full of blood and gore and frightening scenes that would keep you up for a week.

Gary saw it and said people were throwing up in the aisle; said the theatre was charging double for the popcorn because people got to enjoy the same box two or three times, and he was there so it had to be true. It was all very exciting.

Allie knew the guy working the projector, and he said he’d get them in even though they were well underage.

It put Charlie in a very good mood and he hummed to himself all the way out the gate and up the street thinking about the movie and trying to pretend that his good spirits had nothing to do with having to walk past Dalia’s house to get there. The thought made him all giddy inside.

He had spent an hour trying on clothes and getting his hair just right, and he even dug out the old bottle of spray he had inherited from his grandfather. It made him smell like a cork, but he felt grand putting it on like he was one of those important people that lived in the city.

The day couldn’t have been any better, with clear skies and just enough of a chill in the air to keep his neck dry. Autumn quickly gave way to snow and winter rain and he felt all clammy for most of the summer, but during October he could go outdoors and climb trees and hunt for crabs along the river banks. It had always been his favourite time of the year.

Reaching the old Campton bridge, he suddenly remembered that he had to pass Bertha’s, and a bit of that panic repeated like the taste of garlic after a burp.

He stopped to study the road ahead, wondering if he should chance it. The road seemed quiet enough.

A lot of people were still at work, which meant she could kill him and drag what was left of his body into the basement, and there wouldn’t be any witnesses. Anyone who did see anything would be too scared to talk. Little drainpipe Charlie would forever be forgotten, and once a year on his birthday, his mum would bake a cake then do what she always did, and wolf it down before he got home from school.

Perhaps Allie would remember that she once had a friend that lived somewhere over the bridge.

On the other hand, Bertha wasn’t anywhere around and he really, really wanted to see the movie. Besides, if he caught movement, any movement at all, he could always run back the way he had come.

Taking a deep breath, he moved to the other side of the street and tried to keep his head low and eyes trained forward. As he approached, her house seemed taller than usual—more looming, like a vice slowly squeezing the life out of those inside. Lace whitened the windows, blocking out everything inside.

“Don’t look at her window, just don’t look at her window,” he repeated, under his breath.

As he passed her house, the curtain moved, and he caught a glimpse of those little beady eyes peering right back. He had to force himself to keep going, and when he looked again, she was no longer there.

Stolen novel; please report.

“It’s okay,” he told himself. “She’s probably moved onto something else by now like crushing cans on her ample forehead. Or—or eating children.”

With his next step, the ground began to tremble. He hoped it was all in his mind, but the tremors were followed by long reverberating booms like the church had replaced its bell with a giant bass drum.

Each one shook leaves free from the autumn trees around him. Alarms went off from the string of cars lining the sidewalk.

The booms seemed to be getting closer. He looked around trying to find the source, and his eyes settled on Bertha’s house.

For a moment the street fell silent, and then with the final boom, her door exploded. The frame ripped free, taking some of the wall with it and scattering wood and chunks of brick across the path. As far away as he stood, some of the grit still blew across his face.

At first, he thought that a bomb had gone off until he saw the thing coming through the hole, and then his heart shot into his sinuses.

He had never seen anything like it: It stood at least half again as high as a man and three times as wide, with limbs as thick as tree stumps. It cleared the short path in two steps and jumped through the gate into the street, shaking the ground as it landed.

The thing looked like an ogre, but how could that be? He had seen pictures in comic books, but—WAS THAT AN OGRE! Its beady eyes settled on him. It roared, showing thick teeth like jagged rocks and spittle sprayed out over its chin.

Charlie backed away slowly. “Good ogre,” he said. “I’m just going to, you know...” He turned and sprinted.

With a roar, it took off after him, running straight through the row of cars parked on the side of the road, casting them aside as though they weighed nothing. A Ford Mustang landed on its roof, spinning across the street, and a brown station wagon hit into a tree on the opposite pavement.

Charlie screamed and ran and suddenly wished he had taken the time to learn to run properly. If he ever made it out of this, he would work twice as hard in gym class—three times as hard. He would drink protein shake and pull muscles and tear ligaments and all those things that he knew nothing about.

As he reached the bridge, a large shadow fell over him like a cloud had covered the sun, but from the smell, that was no cloud.

Charlie looked over his shoulder in time to see the ogre raising its green fist.

Charlie leapt to the side, screaming at the top of his lungs.

Its arm sailed past his head, and the railing splintered into a hundred pieces.

The road fell away, and Charlie slid down the embankment in a shower of stones and landed in the river. He rolled under the bridge and pressed his back up against the concrete support, breathing hard.

What the hell was that thing! What the hell was happening!

The ogre leaned forward smelling the gaps between the boards. Every time it puffed, Charlie’s hair blew across his face. Its breath was warm and smelled like a sewer had gargled with the juice of a rotting potato.

He cupped water over his clothes, hoping the stench of dead fish and dirty water would mask his scent.

The boards above him creaked as it moved to the other side of the bridge. Sand caught between the boards trickled loose under its weight.

Charlie brushed the dirt from his face while keeping his eyes on the dark shape above him.

What if it came down? What if it discovered him under the bridge? There was nowhere else to go. He took a deep breath and slid deeper into the water as though he was sliding into a bath. He held that position for a moment, his cheeks puffed full of air before he realised the water was too shallow to even get close to covering his mouth.

The ogre’s thick fingers slid between the gaps in the beams, and it tested them tentatively.

“Don’t do that. Please don’t do that,” Charlie mouthed. He patted around for a stone to throw somewhere else and hopefully distract it long enough to escape, but his aim was off, and the stone clattered off the bridge above him and plopped right back into the water a foot away from his head.

Charlie bit his knuckles to keep from cursing.

The ogre roared, shaking the bridge violently. With a final grunt, it turned and disappeared back towards the town.

Charlie shut his eyes and allowed his body a moment to relax into the mud. He wondered what on earth just happened. Was that an ogre?

He would have laughed at the absurdity of it all if he thought he could hold his bladder long enough.