Hitchhikers (11 page)

The movement has woken something in me and I
begin to shiver.

It’s too much it’s too cold

She’s still tugging, yanking with her teeth.
In the flashes that follow sometimes her teeth and sometimes human
hands haul me to my feet. When I am finally upright it is just my
mutt Lila beside me. No one else.

so hungry

All around me is dead, dead grass, dead
leaves swirling in the dead wind, dead earth. The wind is too cold
for my nose to smell anything.

Blindly I follow Lila.

Time slips in and out. I hold myself,
pressing against the emptiness inside of me.

And then it comes: a wisp of scent, delicious
meat smell, tender and young and fresh

and I am lost

A screaming wail wakens me.

Full, I am warm and full and sleepy with that
fullness. I lick my lips. Blood drips from my chin but I don’t
care.

Then I look down.

How is Kayla here? Why is she screaming?

(It’s Kayla screaming not the child’s
mother)

“What have you done, Daniel? How could
you?”

I’ve run away, following my own trail
automatically, grabbing my clothes from where they are piled
carelessly on the ground, still running, that familiar voice in my
head, screaming at me, “How could you? How could you?” Kayla isn’t
here. Just her voice in my head.

I keep going until I get to the car. I brace
myself with a hand on the rusted frame. It’s not right, none of it.
I threw up when I saw what I had done to that old couple in the
farmhouse. Yet now I cannot even summon tears. I am blank.

little legs with the flesh gnawed off

little fingers bent and broken

blond hair on a little skull, held back with
a purple barrette

I’m a monster.

My clothes make no sense as I try to put them
on. It’s like I exploded out of them when the Other Me took over. I
stare at the ruins of fabric and make this my mission: to put
myself back together again.

little body in pieces that will never fit
back together again

The miles all look the same. Barren,
dead.

look what you done you little monster

I don’t know why I keep walking. Sometimes I
stop, staring at the road in front of me, unable to go on. Other
times it feels like something else is making my body move. My legs
keep walking because I don’t care enough to stop them.

I wish my legs would just walk me right over
the side of a cliff.

monstermonstermonster

I walk through darkness. I veer off where
there are no roads. I don’t want to be near people. I don’t want to
eat. I don’t want to sleep.

I drag myself onward.

The night is like the empty expanse inside my
brain

like that black hole inside of that baby’s
skull

my entire head opened up and immense spinning
wildly overhead. It’s too much, it’s too big.

(make it stop stop stop)

I close my eyes and see that little body
there, what I did to it

you monster

I open my eyes and still see

monster

It’s too much for my head to hold.

I can still feel her blood on my face.

“Daniel, stop.”

Gentle hands I don’t deserve. I am pushed to
the ground as easily as a blade of grass, away from the tree trunk
I’ve been smashing my head against.

I’m not entirely sure how I got here, but
it’s as good a place as any to die.

There are lots of beams overhead, and I’ve
found a rope.

With more energy than I’ve had in weeks, I
throw the rope up and over, secure a knot that will hold my
weight.

Through the soaped over windows, light
gleams, a milky twilight. When I was in grade school, one of my
classmates showed us how to tie a hangman’s knot. “You have to wrap
the rope around thirteen times,” he said. In a corner of the
playground we watched him wrap the rope around and around,
mesmerized by the repetitive action.

around and around and around

There is a rickety chair in this abandoned
warehouse. I drag it through the dust on the floor and step onto
the seat. Slowly, to keep my balance, I stand up straight and hold
the noose out in front of my face.

Through the loop Lila sits, watching me with
sad eyes. I see her, and I see my father, and my uncles, and a
small child, and hundreds of other who are shades, waiting for me
on the other side.

“I have to,” I tell her.

Her eyes accuse me.

“You’ll be fine on your own. Better than
fine. You’re better off without me.” I take a deep breath. “You’ve
seen what kind of monster I am.”

She has seen. She knows what I am. And still
she is here.

No. I’m a monster.

“It’s better this way,” I say, and slide the
garrote over my head, pulling it tight like a dog collar, pulling
it tighter so it’s hard to breathe. I don’t deserve such an easy
death. I should die in terror, my limbs torn apart like those of my
victims. I should die with sharp teeth coming after me, feeling my
flesh being eaten and ripped from my bones.

That is what kind of monster I am.

Now Kayla stands before me as I struggle to
breathe, nude, her long toffee-colored hair draped over her. “It
isn’t your fault, Daniel,” she says.

your fault your fault your fault

Her voice stabs me.

“I can’t control it.” My eyes blur. “It’s
better this way. For everyone.”

“No.”

She steps forward. She has a shadow. Her
musky woodsy scent drifts up to me, fills all the air I breathe.
“You’re not even really here. I’m imagining you.”

“They should have told you,” she says.
“Warned you. But that is the way of the pack. The men face it
alone.”

There is a darkness crowding in. I blink, try
to see what is real. Where is Lila? Is the sun really setting so
fast?

Her soft hand reaches up and touches my
face.

“It is forbidden to tell you. You have to
figure it out. See what is in front of your eyes.”

Kayla.

Kayla is here.

it’s too much it’s too big

I try to step off the chair. There is no one
here who can stop me. There is no one here except in my
imagination.

A very real hand presses on my chest, keeping
me alive.

“Listen to me,” she insists. “It happens on
your birthday. Remember your birthday?”

my birthday

Today is my sixteenth birthday.

happy birthday to me

happy birthday to me…

Humming low so no one can hear over the
truck’s roaring engine. My uncle Red was driving; my father and my
uncle Buck filled the rest of the front seat. I was crammed in the
back with the spare tire. Not a real seat, just a blanket thrown
over the wheel well in the six inches of space.

I didn’t complain, because this was special.
I could feel it. Usually my birthday consisted of my mom laboring
over a cake, and my cousin Kayla coming over. My presents were
usually clothes, stuff I needed. My mom tried hard to make it
festive, but Dad and Uncle Red were never around. It was like Dad
always forgot, or just didn’t care. This year, my thirteenth
birthday, Dad woke me up real early. “We’re going on a trip,” he
told me.

“A trip? Like a hunting trip?” Lots of kids
at school went on hunting trips with their fathers. Maybe now that
I was thirteen Dad would take me on one. Maybe Dad was always gone
because he was off hunting.

“Yeah, something like that,” he said. “Get
dressed. We’re leaving in ten minutes.”

So I pulled on my jeans and a flannel shirt,
my boots. I was a bit surprised to find my uncles in the truck
already, but it made sense. It was a hunting trip. All the men were
going.

We drove until there were no more houses and
trees crowded against the windows. Then Uncle Red parked and we
started hiking. None of them had guns or anything. Uncle Buck had a
flask that he passed to my dad and Uncle Red.

The hiking was hard. “Get a move on,” my dad
snapped at me when I’d fall behind.

If I tried to get ahead, one of them would
grab me by the collar of my shirt and yank me back. “Age before
beauty,” Uncle Buck said once, and my dad and Uncle Red roared with
laughter.

The way the three of them were carrying on,
it was almost like I didn’t exist. I kept my head down and tried
not to feel sorry for myself. It was my birthday and Dad was barely
paying attention to me except when he’d put a foot on my ass and
kick me forward. “We’re not there yet. No rest stops.”

I wasn’t entirely sure how they knew where we
were going. I vacillated between thinking they must have been here
a million times and thinking they were drunk and we were never
going to find our way home. There was no path that I could see.
They ducked through the brush and trees, splashed through tiny
streams and climbed up rocks. I checked my watch. It was well past
lunchtime. My stomach growled. We’d eaten breakfast on the drive
out, but that was five hours ago.

Finally, sometime around three, I asked if we
were going to stop to eat.

“It’s best if you’re hungry,” my dad said,
not even looking at me.

I wanted to ask if wasn’t he hungry, and why
didn’t they bring any food if they knew we were going to be hiking
so long. But I still wanted to trust my dad. He knows what he’s
doing, I kept telling myself. I just wished I knew what he was
doing.

The October sky had begun to darken by the
time we stopped. I could barely walk anymore, although I could tell
my father and uncles weren’t as tired as I was. Once I had caught
my breath and sat up from where I had collapsed on the ground, I
saw that we were in a clearing. The forest loomed up around us,
filtering the orange sun into long shadows.

My father and uncles were just staring at me.
I tried not to be self-conscious about this as I turned my head
this way and that to try to figure out where we had ended up. There
was no cabin, no hunting blind. Nothing. It was just a patch of
dirt in the middle of the woods.

“Now we wait,” said my father to my uncles.
They all hunkered down and started talking quietly, passing the
flask back and forth without offering me a sip. I was mighty
thirsty.

I didn’t have the energy to ask what they
were waiting for. I flopped onto my back and stared up at the jewel
tones of the sky. After a short time I must have fallen asleep.

When I woke up I was disoriented. The dark
was so dark. I looked around wildly for my dad but I couldn’t find
him. My watch had a glowing face and I looked at the time. Almost
midnight. Once the glow disappeared, my eyes started to adjust to
the darkness.

In the light of the moon, I could see the
eerie green eyes of my father and uncles, watching me.

That was when I started to feel really weird.
My stomach cramped so bad I bent over double, and my skin became
slick with a sheen of sweat. I thought I was going to throw up. My
vision swam and tilted, making the nausea worse.

I can’t be sure what I saw then.

I can’t be sure, but it still wakes me up in
terror and cold sweat some nights.

With my pulse pounding in my head and my
vision gone, I only felt this struggle to stay in one piece as my
body felt like it was being torn apart. The darkness interceded for
a time that was still painful, and when it all cleared I lay for a
long time staring up at those same stars, gulping the fresh woodsy
air and feeling better than I ever had.

That feeling lasted until I sat up and saw
what I’d done.

They were dead. All dead. Torn apart. I
gagged and spun away but it was everywhere. Entrails strewn about
the clearing, dripping from the bushes. I couldn’t even tell what
was my father and what were my uncles. Even the shreds of their
flannel shirts were black with soaked blood. Pale bits shone
through the dark liquid, and it took me until I was crashing
through the forest several minutes later to realize those were
bones.

I had completely destroyed three grown
men.

Early morning sunlight is filtering through
the soaped over windows of the warehouse when I come to, stiff from
the cement floor. I rub my cheek. How did I get on the floor?
Behind me the chair is smashed into splinters and there is no trace
of the rope.

Lila is not here. Nor is Kayla. I sit up,
sitting up and wrapping my arms around my knees. A violent shiver
passes through my body.

I’m alone.

Around me are prints in the dusty floor. Paw
prints from Lila, shoe prints from me. And footprints. Bare
footprints.

I’m not sure how long I sit there staring

see what is in front of your eyes

when someone enters the warehouse.

Senses alert, I determine that this is not
Lila

(or Kayla)

but someone else, human. Female. There is
another room to this warehouse, and this is where she enters. Her
footsteps on the concrete do not hesitate. She has been here
before, many times. She closes the door behind her and scrapes a
heavy object in front of it. Her high heels click along. Things are
moving.

I could sit here in this dusty room where she
must not come very often, hidden. I could keep her safe from my
Other, the killer side of me. And yet…

After last night I feel like a barrier has
broken. I stand, brush the dirt off my pants. Then I walk to the
door separating me from this person, and push it open.

There is a gun pointed at my face.

“Who the fuck are you?” she demands.