Hitchhikers

Published by Kate Spofford at Smashwords

Copyright © 2013 by Kate Spofford

Cover design by Kate Spofford

Cover background image by Margus Saluste
(
http://www.sxc.hu/gallery/msaluste
),

used with permission

Cover foreground image by Amir Kurbanov, used with
permission

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First eBook Edition: September 2013

Rain is drumming on a tin roof overhead when
I open my eyes to darkness. My nostrils inhale the scent of wet
hay, dust, and a far gone hint of manure: a barn. I am up high, in
the hayloft. Below I catch small noises–dripping water, scurrying
sounds along the walls. I sense no humans, no large animals. I
exhale in relief. Animals always seem to know.

I can’t have been sleeping here long; my
muscles are sore and my eyes grainy. I burrow into the moldy straw,
trying to curl around this temporary safe feeling. Shivering, I
pull my torn ski jacket tight around me and squeeze my eyes shut.
They pop back open.

As always after my blackouts, dread sits in
my stomach. Something bad has happened. I’m not going to be able to
go back to sleep until I know what.

Still, I try.

Listening to the rain, I have no idea what
time it is, and my cracked watch is no help. The hands point to
quarter past twelve as they have for the past three years – almost
three years, I remind myself, then shudder.

don’t want to remember

I try to think of nothing, but my senses
won’t allow this, so I focus on the smells, and catalog the scents
in my head. There are crops nearby, corn mostly, also tomatoes and
sunflowers, cucumbers and snap peas and peppers. Traces of
hours-old car exhaust. A bit of fuel left in a can down below. I’m
thankful for the rain, which drowns out most noises and washes away
heavier traces of scent.

My eyes are half-closed, staring into a
darkness which slowly grows clearer.

The last thing I remember is hitchhiking.

“
Where you headed, son?”

The man driving the rusty blue pickup is
older, his hair mostly gray and covered with a worn cap, his paunch
straining the stomach of his flannel shirt.

Regarding him warily. “As far as you’re
going.”

“
Hop in.”

Hesitating a beat, glancing at the heavy sky
before climbing into the truck cab. Keeping to my side of the seat,
my hand on the door handle and my senses on the alert. Perverts
have a smell about them, a dirty semen smell masked by something
minty. This man at least smells honest.

“
You from around here?”

“
No.”

“
You’re lucky it was me who picked you up.
Lots a trucks comin’ down this road. Lotsa men who’d take advantage
of a young boy.”

Saying nothing, staring out at the
countryside passing by the window. The houses here far apart, the
landscape lonely and isolated. Rolling over the miles in
between.

“
You’re young. I know you’ll tell me
you’re older, sixteen or eighteen or whatever you think I want to
hear.” Fat raindrops splatter on the windshield and the man flicks
on the wipers. “You oughtn’t to be out on the road alone.”

Still I remain silent.

“
What’s your name, if you don’t mind me
askin’?”

“
Dan.”

Wishing briefly that he would stop talking,
and a wave of nausea hits me like a wall.

Gripping the door handle.

“
Good name. So many kids these days with
weird names. Parents namin’ their kids after soap opera stars or
fruit or some shit like that…”

Shut up, old man…

My stomach lurching.

There’s a dark farmhouse up ahead, deserted.
Good. “Can you let me off here?”

“
I’m not going to leave a young boy
stranded on the side of the road in this weather. Not this close to
the city. Hey, you okay?”

“
Fine.” Black spots dancing across my
vision. “Here’s fine. It’s fine.”

“
You can stay the night with me, eat
something. Look at you. You’re nothing but skin and bones. You can
stay at my place, and head out in the morning. It’s only a couple
minutes up the road.”

Blinking hard, swallowing, but it doesn’t
help.

“
Please, sir, let me off?” My voice a
croak.

“
Seriously, kid. Two minutes.”

Can’t you feel it coming, old man?

The pressure in my head increasing, and I
surrender myself to the darkness.

My stomach growls.

Crouching low to avoid the roof, I hunt for
the ladder down from the hayloft. I crawl along the edge, feeling
with my hands. No luck.

It could be that I somehow knocked the ladder
over when I climbed up. I peer down over the edge of the loft. I
can see through the darkness clearly enough to see that there is no
ladder down there on the floor.

How the hell did I get up here? It’s at least
a ten foot drop to the floor. I don’t even see a stack of hay bales
or a box or anything to climb up on. Over the past three years I’ve
woken up in strange places, but this is definitely a first.

One lap around the hayloft later, I determine
that there are two ways to get down: through a small door at one
end, through which hay would have been loaded back when this farm
was busy and prosperous, and the straight drop down into the barn.
Twenty feet down through the small door, ten feet inside.

I lay with my legs hanging over the edge of
the loft and inch backwards until I am dangling. One movement and I
am hanging from the loft by my fingers; a deep breath and I let
go.

The floor hits me and I roll with it, but the
fall has knocked the breath out of my lungs. I lay for long moments
on the dirt floor of the barn, until the hunger forces me to my
feet again.

A search of the barn turns up only moldy hay
and a small bag of rotting grain.

The barn door is slightly ajar. I peek
outside into the sheets of rain pouring down.

Beyond the barn door stands that dark
farmhouse I’d seen from the road. The house, the back of it anyway,
is white and old-fashioned and rambling. The windows are dark, but
it is still night. If the occupants are asleep, it might be
possible to sneak in and raid the kitchen.

I take a deep breath and dash into the rain,
hoping to avoid getting wet but failing miserably. I take a moment
on the back porch to wring the wetness from my jacket and the
frayed cuffs of my jeans. I am not sure why I do this kindness for
whoever owns this place, but I do.

The back door is unlocked. I drip into a worn
carpet in a hallway that smells of old people. My sneakers
sloshing, I creep to the front of the house, to the kitchen.

The house is not abandoned, as I had hoped.
Though devoid of the numerous knick-knacks that appear on every
shelf and table in the place, the small kitchen is stocked with
food.

I am reaching into the refrigerator when I
find myself in blackness.

Sometime later I awaken on the linoleum
floor, surrounded by opened cans and boxes and bags, all empty.
Gripping the countertop for support, I pull myself up, feeling weak
and disoriented. A stray glance out the front window into the
coming morning shows me the man’s truck.

It is the worst omen I could have
received.

My nose finds the trail of blood from the
front door to the stairs; my eyes follow it up and up until finally
my legs follow. I drag myself up each step, trying not to breathe,
not to inhale that sickly scent like rusty death.

I must do this. I must face what has been
done. Perhaps it is not my fault, but I feel that it is. I climbed
into that truck. I put that man in danger.

Only one door stands open at the head of the
stairs, and the blood leads me there anyway, but there is a
stronger trail, one of decay and rot and a wet animal scent.

For a long time I refuse to look. My gaze
rests on the brass doorknob of the room and the smear of blood
marring its reflective surface. The smear does not look like a hand
print. Could there be any trace of me here?

Finally I jerk my head away and see.

They lie on the bed, the man curled around
the woman, or most of her. The lower part of her body is missing,
replaced by the tentacles of her intestines dripping onto the
quilt. I know without looking where her legs are, and bile rises in
my throat.

The man’s face looks back over his shoulder,
still wearing an expression of shock. Or perhaps that is only
because his jaw has been ripped loose of its mooring and hangs
open.

I cannot be certain, because I have begun to
vomit through my fingers, but it looks to me like his jaw had been
gnawed with very sharp teeth.

Vomit pours onto the now hopelessly stained
carpet until dry heaves wrack my body.

All I can think, as I lie with my sweaty
forehead pressed into the grit on the rug, is
Now my stomach is
empty. Now I have nothing to keep the darkness at bay.

My sneakers sink into each mud puddle. Even
the dirt wants me to stop and surrender. I plod along, determined
not to give in to the dizziness, the weakness, or the
weariness.

The best I could do was to cover the old
couple with another quilt. With no food in my belly, it’s pointless
to waste my energy on burying them. I am tempted, if only because
it means the police might show up in the meantime and arrest me,
and lock me up someplace safe. But I have the feeling that the
first visitor would not be the police. It would be a neighbor, some
kindly old woman bringing over a plate of cookies, or a son or
daughter with their toddling children in tow, and then there would
be a mess.

There is no way I could begin to remove
evidence from that room. After all this time it blows my mind that
the police haven’t caught up to me yet.

I’m a monster.

I slump along, like the beast toward
Bethlehem, soaked through by rain and mud and tears. The desolate
countryside accompanies me.

“
You little monster.”

A hand grabbing me, jerking my arm up at an
impossible angle.

“
Look what you done!”

My face pushed into the shards of glass.
Cutting into my cheek. Glass and tears and a child’s blood.

“…
little monster…”

My first memory. Where was my mother when my
father was grinding a four-year-old’s face into a broken mirror? I
don’t even remember if it was my fault or not, the mirror. Somehow
it was broken and somehow it was my fault.

Anger begins a slow burn deep inside me but I
tamp it down. The drizzle is cold. Drizzle cold over my anger.

I can keep it away. I can control this.

Breath hot in my face. “You’re a little
bitch, just like your mother.”

Stay out. Stay out of my head.

If only there was something other than this
flat Midwestern landscape to look at, to keep my mind from those
thoughts. Rolling waves of grain all the way to the horizon,
ramshackle buildings dotting the fields. A tree! I run stumbling
toward it. I’ll climb it. I’ll sleep in the branches like a
bird.

Behind me, a trailer truck rumbles past. The
earth quakes beneath my sneakers.

I run out of energy long before I reach the
tree. The mud slows me down, and the tall stalks of wheat.

It’s like an ocean, the wheat. I’m drowning
in it, barely keeping my head above water. It’s too much. I lie
down where I am, the wheat enveloping me. Blue skies and amber
waves of grain. Reminds me of second grade, the school concert at
the end of the year. My class sang “America the Beautiful.” Second
grade, back when things were safe.

Safe. Ha! Just because I wasn’t homeless back
then doesn’t mean I was safe.

I was never safe. Any small infraction could
cause my father’s wrath, or not. I never knew what would set him
off. The only sure thing was if my father was drinking and my
uncles were around, I stayed clear.

Blackness.

A flash, a darkening of the bright blue sky.
I knew it would happen sooner than later. The hunger often does
it.