The Unwelcome

by Jacob Steven Mohr

  Then his vision cleared somewhat, and he blinked once, twice, letting the wheeling room settle itself. There was a circle of faces staring down at him: Alice in center frame, flanked by Riley on her immediate left—it had been Riley holding his head straight, he realized. Kait looked down on him as well—sidelong, and from farther back in the room. She’d stopped brandishing the rifle, but she still had it tucked down in the crook of her elbow, her other hand white-knuckle tight around the barrel. Her face was flushed up to the roots of her brown hair, and her mouth was set in a short, hard line.

  “Pig,” she mumbled without moving her lips much, and Alice let out a low wail.

  “Shush,” Riley barked, steadying him as Ben tried to thrash out of her grip. “Easy, soldier. You’re not bleeding so much now, but you might have a concussion. What’s your head feel like? You took a bad fall—and a bad hit, too, from the sound of things.”

  Ben tried to reply, but all he could manage was, “Alice…”

  “I’m here!” She pushed Riley aside, taking his head in her hands. Her face was bright red as well, streaked under her eyes, and her voice quivered. “I’m here, baby,” she said. “I’m here. Talk to me.”

  “You…” You look like an angel, he wanted to say. With that light behind you, you look just like an angel. But instead, all he could gurgle out was, “You… look… good.”

  “Well, you look terrible,” Alice replied, laughing through tears. “You look…” She wiped her eyes on a pink pajama sleeve, sniffing. “I’m just glad you’re gonna be all right,” she said. “We’re gonna take care of you, okay?”

  Then her face darkened; her eyes flicked away, to Kait, then back to him. “I just need to hear you say it. All right? Just say it was all a mistake, and—”

  “So ask him about it,” Kait demanded, scowling.

  “Kaity…”

  “Ask him!” It was almost a scream. Ben winced; Alice wilted, her face drooping as though it would melt off her skull. Even Riley took a step back, her face, smeared with makeup, set in a mask of alarm. But Kait—instead of pressing forwards, she had actually shrunk back into the far corner of the bedroom, holding the rifle across her body like a shield. Her face was still red with rage, but the look in her eyes was all wrong. Wet, staring, almost quivering in their respective sockets. Like she was under a spell.

  Like she was afraid of him.

  “I want to hear him say it,” she said in a voice that trembled. “I want to hear the bastard say he didn’t…”

  She trailed off. Alice hesitated, looking around the room, but finding no respite from the faces around her, she returned her gaze to him and spoke quickly and breathlessly:

  “Did you do it, Ben. Did you attack Kait in her bed.”

  He opened his mouth to deny it. He wanted to deny it. The pain written out on Alice’s face—he would have said anything in that moment to take that pain away from her. But the moment she said those words, it was as though there was a flood inside him. His head still throbbed, but now there was a peculiar feeling rushing up his torso, down his arms and legs and into each toe and finger, pushing up to the surface of his skin. And with this new, terrible sensation came memory—not words or pictures, but memories of motion, of touch, of muscular contractions and nerve-responses and reflex actions. His body, it remembered what it had done, even if his head could not.

  His body remembered everything.

  A sudden wave of emotion squeezed the water to his eyes, and for a moment, he could not speak, simply weeping into the silence of the room. His face did not move, only the water flowed from beneath his half-closed eyelids. The ring of faces, rendered in watercolor by his tears, all looked down on him, but nobody spoke. Nobody moved. The stillness in the room was unbearable, and it only made him weep harder. His head ached abominably.

  You should have seen this coming, Benji-Boy.

  “Ben, I know—” Alice began, but he cut her off. One last time, his lips betrayed him.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I did it.” And speaking those four words made him wish with all his heart that Kait had shot him after all.

  Chapter 8

  Under the Gun

  Kait had waited for the explosion, for the room to erupt with sound, voices crashing against voices in dense, crowded harmonies—so the lull that followed struck her cold. Ben lay belly-up on the bed, his face glistening with tears and sweat, breathing shallowly, his eyes half-shut and full of water. Alice kept hold of his head, but her face had gone rigid, like it might slip forward and slide off in one piece. Riley had interposed herself between Kait and the bed, her arms outstretched as though she would embrace her, but Kait knew from the look on her face that Riley was protecting the boy on the bed from her: the stock of the big hunting rifle had once more nestled itself into the hollow of her shoulder, and though the rest of her body felt like it could shake apart at any moment, the hands gripping the gun were steady as stone. Something flashed in Riley’s eyes—a warning and something else besides, something softer, indecision perhaps, though Kait couldn’t tell from such a brief glance. But the message was clear, nonetheless: Nobody moves.

  But I’m faster than her, Kait thought, the alien bit of her, the dark half showing her face from the back of the theater. If it came down to it, I could be faster with the gun. The memory lived, cool and quiet, in her fingers and wrists, of how to draw up and fire in an instant, from the hip if necessary, how to be deadly from the word go.

  But, no, she reasoned. She wouldn’t let it come to that. Mad as she was, angry as she was, she was not going to push things that far. She had not come here to kill anybody.

  Liar, clucked the whispering voice. You’re holding the gun, aren’t you? And you loaded the shot in. If you didn’t want to dance, you wouldn’t have put on your dancing shoes.

  Alice broke the silence first, her stiff face beginning to crumple. “Ben,” she began haltingly. “Ben, please…”

  She let her voice die away, choking on the rest of her words. But what remained unspoken was abominably clear: that one word, that “please”, held a whole life in its trembling, butterfingered grip. Please don’t say things like that. Please don’t be the person they’re saying you are. Please, oh God, please let there be some mistake. Kait had been to services with Alice when they were both small, and she could almost hear the big girl praying with all the strength in her heart, though her mouth did not move silently like it did in church.

  And in Kait there sprung up an outlandish compulsion to recant. Watching her friend’s face fold in on itself was like watching a priceless Ming vase tumbling end over end towards a hard stone floor in slow motion. If Kait could throw out her hand and stop the disaster, catch Alice before she shattered on impact, that would be worth the lie—wouldn’t it? She wouldn’t have to say much, just enough to start the ball down the hill. The others would jump over themselves filling in the chinks in her story: That they did not want to believe her accusation went without saying. After all, nobody wanted to doubt Kait Brecker more than Kait Brecker.

  But Ben offered no defense, no protest. His blubbering cut through the air, and every time he could catch a breath, all he could say was, “I did it, it was me, it had to be me,” over and over again as though he were committing it to memory. Alice had finally broken out into bubbling, body-wracking sobs, and Riley had dropped her arms, looking defeated and drained and maybe even a little bored, fighting back yawns by flexing her jaw.

  A strange sense of awkwardness took hold of Kait then. The Model 94 was suddenly heavy in her arms, but she was grateful for its weight: without it, she would never have known what to do with her hands. The urge to bolt, to flee the room, plop down on the couch or, better yet, in Alice’s bedroom and dive headfirst into her music library was almost overpowering. What more could she do here? She’d weathered the assault already, and born what witness she could. Surely her being there, her physical presence in the room, was no longer necessary.

  And Ben’s mewling was starting to work
her over—she was actually beginning to feel sorry for the bastard, a fact that made her almost as uncomfortable as his hands on her. She felt no fear, now, even being so close to him; the man who had climbed into her bed only minutes ago seemed leagues away from the wretched creature quivering in a heap on the sheets. Compared to that specter, Ben hardly seemed there at all.

  “Kaity… What am I gonna do?”

  Alice had sunk to the floor in a tangle, her face cast in shadow by her cloud of red hair, and when she turned her head up to speak, her face was demolished by anguish—yes, demolished was the correct word. Or ruined. Like acid scarring on a stone statue, the features present but blurred, almost nonfunctioning, a mere shadow of what beauty had been.

  “We have to call the police,” Riley said quietly. “That’s what comes next here. I had a little cell reception last night, I can make the call, but you’ll have to tell them what happened in your own words sooner or later. We can talk that through first, if—”

  “You’ve done this before,” Kait interrupted.

  Riley shrugged, and answered simply, “Yes.” Then she stepped forward, and Kait barely had time to lower the rifle to her side before she found herself wrapped up in a tight embrace that pinned her arms at her sides.

  “You did the right thing,” Riley said. “You came through. You survived. You—” She broke off; the hug convulsed tighter, and Kait heard her shaking voice say close in her ear, “I should have been there. Been in the room, been listening, heard him go past me in the dark, I should have should have should have…”

  She continued on in this fashion for several moments, and Kait, who could think of nothing to say in reply, simply let herself be hugged until it became difficult to breathe, at which point she shifted her shoulders to signal that she wanted to be released.

  “Maybe we should get out of here,” she said when Riley’s grip slacked at last—but then, over the other girl’s shoulder where her chin was wedged, she saw Ben rock forward as though he would rise. His body twisted, the muscles of his bare torso flexing, and he got up on one elbow, swiped at his wet face with the back of his other hand, and blinked, first at Alice on the ground, and then at the two girls grappling near the bedroom door. His face had been rosy before from crying, but now, under the tears, all the color had gone out of his cheeks. His eyes were perfectly round and seemed to protrude aggressively from his skull, and they swept around the room, searching for something seemingly only Ben could perceive.

  “Where are you?” he cried out suddenly in a great hollow voice.

  Alice picked her head up once more, but before any of them could react, Ben was on his feet and stumbling forward, his eyes now locked on Kait. Kait shook loose of Riley’s embrace and on instinct hoisted the Model 94 to her shoulder, but instead of recoiling, Ben seized the barrel of the hunting rifle in both hands with supernatural swiftness—and pressed the muzzle right between his eyes.

  “BEN!”

  The scream tore loose from Alice’s lips—or maybe the scream was Kait’s own, such was her shock. Alice scrambled to her feet, but Kait was only dimly aware of the motion. Ben sank to his knees, pulling the rifle down with him, nearly yanking Kait off her feet. She quickly adjusted her grip, keeping her finger quite clear of the trigger. Blood roared in her ears.

  “I need you to listen to me, Kait,” Ben said very slowly.

  “All right.” Kait’s heart turned over once, like a cold car engine, heavy in her chest. “You’ve got my attention. What do you want?”

  “I know you don’t… care for me much,” he began, his eyes locked on hers, staring up the oiled length of the gun barrel. “I know you don’t. And it’s no secret I don’t like you either. We’ve been at each other’s throats this whole trip. Alice’s been on me for that, and I’m willing to take blame for it. But you’ve got to believe me—Kait, I would never hurt you like this. You understand that, don’t you? That I’m not… not capable of—”

  “But you are,” Kait interrupted, suddenly feeling as though the world had turned itself upside-down. “You did. You came into my room—you admitted it, we all heard you.” She looked around the room at the faces of the others, half-expecting them to shake their heads, to deny it—or worse, have their faces transformed, Lutzes all, like the faces of her dreams.

  “I know I did,” Ben replied, nodding against the gun. “And, yes… I came in here, but I wouldn’t do that, you understand? Not consciously.”

  “Jesus Christ—then you were sleepwalking?” Kait sneered. “Is that what you want me to believe?” At this, Ben’s grip loosened around the rifle barrel and he nearly burst into tears again.

  Maybe I should shoot him, she thought. Put him out of his misery.

  Or shut him up, at least.

  “Not that,” came the reply at last. “Not sleepwalking. Not exactly. I only mean that I wasn’t in control…”

  “Bullshit,” Riley murmured from a far corner.

  “I mean it wasn’t me!” Ben pleaded. “I can’t describe it. But you’ve got to believe—”

  “I don’t have to believe shit,” Kait roared, flame rising in her chest. “You threatened me, remember? Just as soon as we got out of the car. I thought you were gonna pull some shit right there, you sick freak, but you waited. You bided your time. Why? What did you think was gonna happen, that you’d break into my room in the middle of the night and I just wouldn’t tell anybody? That I’d forget?”

  Suddenly her face mirrored Ben’s: The tears welled up and spilled over before she could blink them away. Their weight on her face seemed enormous. “I promised myself…” she choked out, but a full-body shudder cut her words in two. “I promised myself, never again. That I’d never get this low a second time. That I wouldn’t let anybody, and I mean anybody, put me back here again. And you made me break that promise, you son of a bitch…”

  Kait shook her head, wiped her face on her shoulder, and pressed the muzzle of the hunting rifle into Ben’s forehead so hard she was sure it would scar his flesh.

  “So here’s my deal,” she told him. “You’re going to stop talking, right now, right this second—because if you don’t, on God, I will put a bullet in your head, Ben Alden. Do you understand that? I will shoot you like a dog.”

  Now the tears were really streaming. She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them, squeezed them shut again, trying to clear her vision to no avail. Looking down the barrel of the Model 94 at Ben kneeling on the floor, through the film of water his form shifted and blurred, becoming something like out of a dream, a dream she’d learned to savor each time it visited her. Her holding the rifle in her hands—and in the dream it was always a rifle, her hands not on the guard but flush to the trigger itself, full of deadly confidence—and instead of Ben Alden crouching at the other end of the gun…

  “It was Lutz!”

  Kait froze, her finger flexed tight against the trigger-guard. “I told you to stop talking,” she said, but now all the heat seemed to have been sucked out of her voice. She couldn’t understand the feeling that stirred inside her. Maybe it was that name, or maybe there was something in the boy’s face, written in the dried blood caked onto his mouth. It turned her blood cold, whatever it was. A thought, a horrible niggling doubt squirmed in her brain—she tried to shake it away, but it dug in, chewing into her, insidious and burrowing. “You don’t get to say that,” she breathed. “Not here. Not after what you’ve done to me.”

  But Ben ignored her, continuing on breathlessly as though the gun pressed against his skin didn’t exist. His expression changed, all fear gone; in fact, he sounded almost surprised at the words coming out of his mouth—and each word struck home in Kait like a blow from a fist.

  “I know it sounds insane,” he said to her, “really, I do. But Lutz—he made me do it. Don’t ask me how. Like he slipped me on like a sock and walked around the cabin, wearing me. Do you think I’d say something that looney unless I had no other choice? Are you listening to how crazy I sound? I could hear him, Kait. In my
head. Like his voice was part of me. And when he talked…” Ben paused, a mote of fear returning to his features. “There are parts of yesterday I don’t remember,” he said, quieter now. “Parts of last night. Whole big chunks of memory, whole hours of my life, just… gone. But he left something inside me, too, and I think… I think maybe he left it there for you—”

  “Shut up,” Kait snarled. “You’re lying. That’s… That’s impossible.”

  “I called you Heart-Brecker—”

  “And you’d better not say it again. ”

  “But how did I know to call you that?” Ben protested. “That didn’t come from me. You know it didn’t come from me. Is that what he called you? A, a pet name, or—”

  “You heard it at the gas station,” Kait fired back. “You were there. Maybe you listened at the door. Or you could have guessed it…”

  But he couldn’t, whispered the dark little voice from the back of her mental theater. He couldn’t have, Heart-Brecker. You know what this means. You know what’s coming now.

  “It’s a stupid joke,” Kait insisted, shaking her head so that her hair whipped at her cheeks, her knuckles going white. “You wouldn’t have to think that hard to figure it out.”

  “What about your ticklish spot? There, near your elbow—how did I know about that?”

  The world flashed dangerous red. “You got lucky,” Kait snarled.

  “Then…” For the first time Ben seemed to flounder. “Then…” Suddenly his eyes grew wide. “Then how do I know the name Jill Cicero?” he said, infuriatingly triumphant.

  In one lightning motion, Kait yanked the Model 94 from Ben’s grasp and smashed the stock against his face. Blood squirted up in a high red arc, and he slipped back silently, mouth open in a silent cry. Alice and Riley both lunged forward, but Kait was already moving as well, tracking Ben’s fall, planting her heel on his bare chest and pressing the muzzle of the rifle into his forehead once more. Rage and confusion and sheer, overpowering terror flooded every unlit corner of her mind—and the little crawling voice inside her was laughing, laughing, laughing …