Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories (7 page)

It’s true,
Greta thinks, irrationally, in the darkness.
She grew up. She carried on. She didn’t die.

She imagines the professor, waking in the night and listening to the noises coming from the old applewood wardrobe in the corner: to the rustlings of all these gliding ghosts, which might be mistaken for the scurries of mice or rats, to the padding of enormous velvet paws, and the distant, dangerous music of a hunting horn.

She knows she is being ridiculous, although she will not be surprised when she reads of the professor’s demise.
Death comes in the night,
she thinks, before she returns to sleep.
Like a lion.

The white witch rides naked on the lion’s golden back. Its muzzle is spotted with fresh, scarlet blood. Then the vast pinkness of its tongue wipes around its face, and once more it is perfectly clean.

DOMINION

Christopher Coake

Friday night they all camped by the lake, as planned, and then what happened with Mason happened, and the next day, Saturday, while the others hiked up a nearby ridge, Hannah lay alone in her tent, trying to think of a way out. She came up with nothing. Would anyone even believe her, if she told? Kyle was Mason’s older brother, and Beth was engaged to Kyle, and constantly stoned. Hannah was in the middle of the Nevada desert, a hundred miles from Reno, and her cell phone didn’t get coverage, and instead of figuring out any kind of plan, she kept falling back into telling herself how stupid she was, how she’d made all the dumb choices she’d spent her life trying not to make, and now what could she even do?

When the others came back from their hike, she rose, reluctantly, to meet them. Mason grabbed her around the waist and kissed her cheek, smelling of sweat and dust. Maybe Beth saw the dismay on her face.

Not feeling any better? Beth asked. Hannah had told them she was hung over.

Say it, say it, Hannah told herself. But instead her mouth opened and out came, I guess.

Kyle grinned. I told you to go easy on the booze, but did you listen?

She said nothing, and so she watched, sick at heart, as they went ahead with their plans. They packed their tents into the Jeep, and Kyle drove them down from the lake, then farther into the desert, toward the abandoned town, where they were going to explore and camp a second night, where Hannah would be even more alone.

In the back seat, Hannah curled around her backpack and pretended to sleep, her face to the window. Mason sat beside her, and she swore she could feel it every time his eyes landed on her, like fingers touching her, hands pressing her down.

***

She was younger than the others: seventeen, though she’d been told she looked—acted—older. Mason was nineteen; Kyle and Beth were twenty-five. The three of them worked together at a restaurant downtown, but Hannah figured they made a lot more money moving drugs; they certainly never lacked for good weed, or molly. She’d been proud of herself for figuring it out. (She was smart—people told her that, too.) When Mason had invited her camping with them for the weekend, she’d been even prouder, had felt a fierce and soaring freedom as they hurtled east out of Reno, hip-hop they let her choose playing on the Jeep’s stereo, Mason’s hand on her thigh. This, she had thought, was how she wanted her life to be.

She’d met Mason three weeks before. He had come up to her at a house party, walking past girls who were older and prettier. He was beautiful: full-sleeve tats and laughing eyes; a beard thick enough to twine her fingers into. He knew how to dance. His presence seemed to make her high.

When her mother met him, she said, That boy’s bad news.

But her mother hung out with bikers, and was sometimes gone for days at a time; her life was a mess, her judgment worse. Hannah had sworn to do better. She got okay grades; she liked to party, sure, but she was—had always been—careful with boys. Her girlfriends made fun of her for being a virgin, but, god—Hannah knew better than any of them that if you weren’t careful, you’d end up living in a shitty apartment in a shitty Reno neighborhood, with a teenager of your own, dealing blackjack, your life never again your own. Hannah was going to graduate high school; she was going to go to Portland State, study design.

Last weekend, she and Mason had fooled around a little on her bed. When she’d told him she wanted to take things slow, he’d laughed and said, Really?

Really, she said, re-buttoning her blouse.

An old-fashioned girl, huh?

She didn’t tell him about her virginity; she didn’t like people, let alone boys, knowing she was afraid of anything. She pushed him back on the bed and gave him a hand job—she knew how—and that seemed to make him happy.

After kissing her goodnight, though, he said, I’m not a very old-fashioned guy, you know?

I know, she said. She kissed him again, made up her mind, and said, Soon.

***

The abandoned town was named Dominion, and was a long way from anywhere inhabited—they’d driven for eighty miles on two-lane blacktop without seeing any life but a couple of distant ranches, and big rigs headed north to Idaho. The town wasn’t even marked by a sign. Kyle simply turned off the highway onto a rutted dirt road that curved slowly away to the east, around the base of a craggy mountain. Dominion was two miles farther along, a small clump of structures and trees circled by a high chain-link fence and bullet-pocked NO TRESPASSING signs. Kyle parked in front of the fence’s gates and turned off the engine. To the west were the mountain’s abrupt gray cliffs; to the east was a vast, bone-white playa, followed by another swell of mountains, all of it as empty of people as an ocean.

Hannah knew about the town—a few Reno kids every year came out here to get drunk or stoned and scare themselves, or camp overnight, or both. It was a thing to do, and now they were doing it too.

It’s spooky, but it’s cool, Mason had told Hannah, when he’d invited her along. He and Kyle had been there before. You can find all kinds of weird stuff out there in the houses.

He told her the town had been built by a mining company in the 1950s, after they’d discovered a gold seam, a big one, under the mountain. The mine hired a few dozen men from Reno to work the vein, and built a suburb for them, with its own school and churches and store and golf course, so the men could bring along their families.

Then in the 70s the gold had dried up, and just like that the town was dead, the residents moved out. The company cared enough about the property to erect a fence around the entire town, and the mineworks another mile away, but not enough to guard it. A liability thing, Mason had told her, in case some idiot dies out there. Every once in a while a highway patrolman might drive by and report damage to the fence, but that was about it.

Hannah climbed now out of the ticking Jeep, looking at the decay on the other side of the fence, hearing—behind the noise of Kyle and Mason unloading—the deeper silence of the desert, the uncanny absence of motors and electricity.

People had died in Dominion, Mason had said. A couple of kids who OD’d on something; and a lone hiker, who’d fallen while exploring a house and had broken his back.

Sounds like a blast, she’d said.

Hey, he said. Don’t worry. I’ll protect you. You’ll have a good time.

***

But he’d lied.

They’d spent all day yesterday at a little mountain lake a couple of mountain ranges southeast of Reno, swimming first and then setting up tents for the night. They’d all gotten drunk and stoned around their fire pit, and then they’d gone to bed.

In their tent, she’d made out with Mason, laughing and tickling at first, then on to more serious stuff. One of the ways she ached, now, was remembering that she’d been ready, for a little while there, to go all the way. She’d gone to bed intending it.

If she had, would she have ever found out what Mason was really like?

While kissing her he’d said, Shh, and laughed against her neck, and Hannah heard it too: soft moaning, coming from the other tent. Beth’s voice, thrilled and tender.

She heard more than moans, and she realized: they’d be able to hear
her
, too.

She told Mason, I can’t, not here, and he’d laughed, as though she was joking. She pushed his hand away.

Christ, he’d said, seriously?

He was sulky after that. Her head swam with drink; she curled up alone and tried to sleep, and Mason left the tent; later she heard him talking with Kyle, the two of them popping beers and flicking lighters; their laughter sounded cruel, and she imagined Mason telling Kyle how skittish she was, how young, how
old-fashioned
.

Even so, she went to sleep.

Then Mason was back in the tent, and he was kissing her, hard, his mouth tasting of beer and something else metallic and awful, and she kissed him back, but then he had his hands under her t-shirt. He was panting through his nose, a heavy shadow above her. Then he was pulling off her shorts. She yelped, suddenly terrified, but he pressed his mouth down on hers and spread her legs with his knees.

Shh, he said, during, a hand over her mouth. It’s okay.

Afterwards, he said, God
damn
, and kissed her cheek. Thank you.

Soon he was asleep, snoring, and she lay aching beside him, pinned beneath his big arm, too hurt and terrified to move, even to wipe herself off.

In the morning, when he’d gone hiking with the others, and she was alone, she’d waded into the lake—it was the closest she could get to a shower. Shivering in the silvery water, she’d found bruises on her wrists, each one the size of his fingertips.

***

Kyle and Mason cut a flap of the fence open with bolt cutters—they were suspiciously good at it—and shuttled their things inside the town. Soon they’d set up camp behind Dominion’s old, dark, boarded-up church, not far from the gates, near a fire pit some past visitors had made out of old sheet metal. Mason filled it with branches and boards they pulled off the walls of the church; the fire was now catching, rising and flickering. The sun had dropped behind the mountain, and the playa outside the fence was golden, deepening into mauve. On the other side of the fence, up on the mountainside, a coyote let out its liquid, gulping cry, and was answered.

They were in what had once been the downtown. Next to their church was a small, boxy brick school building that still had the word
Dominion
painted in yellow above its entrance.
Home of the Nuggets!
Across the street from the school was an old store with a gas pump. Every building had its doors and windows boarded shut, though here and there boards had fallen, or been pried away, leaving dark holes.

Past the school, to the north, the old neighborhoods began, dozens of sagging, shuttered bungalows clustered around culs-de-sac; that was where Kyle and Mason wanted to explore, later.

In the meantime, Hannah sat cross-legged on an old door, just outside the tent. She didn’t want to go exploring, but she didn’t want to be left alone, either. Or, later, to be alone in the tent with Mason. Unless she told them she was sleeping in the Jeep, or in one of the houses, that was her fate.

Beth had given her a headlamp on an elastic band; she put it on, but kept the light off and watched the fire.

Mason dropped down beside her; she froze.

He said, Dude, please tell me what’s wrong. You’ve been weird all day.

Like she should confide in him, like she had a problem they could just talk through.

Beth and Kyle were standing close together in the tall grass beside the school, smoking and laughing, too far away to hear.

I just can’t believe you did that, she said.

He kicked at the dirt with his Tevas. Did what?

She was stunned.

He laughed, but it was a fake laugh, an acting-laugh. He reached for her hand.

Are you talking about last
night?

What do you think I’m talking about?

What—didn’t you like it?

She pushed away, stood, walked quickly through the grass, toward Kyle and Beth. The fire behind her threw her shadow across the schoolhouse’s faded, dusty bricks.

Hey, kiddo, Kyle said.

She was angry, now. She’d never been so angry before in her life.

Beth studied her face, then held out the joint she’d been smoking. You want a hit?

Mason had followed her; he joined them, his face shadowed by the fire. Hannah took the joint and turned her back to him, then pulled the smoke in deep. Maybe, at least, her hands would stop shaking.

Easy there, Kyle said. Special blend. It’s laced with some extras.

What extras? she said.

Kyle laughed. Not sure, exactly. Got it from a chemist at Burning Man, said it was proprietary. You’re gonna feel real good, I can tell you that much.

Hannah looked at the joint, then at Beth, who smiled, kindly; she was already stoned. So was Kyle. They were no help. Nobody was going to be any help.

God. She took another hit, and then another, thinking about the way her mother put back beers, and Beth laughed.

When Hannah turned around Mason had returned to the fire, his shoulders tight, his hands in his pockets. He seemed hurt.

Good, she thought. She exhaled smoke.