But before she could speak again, Riley’s tongue froze in her jaw. The heat inside her, however briefly it had been suppressed, now blazed up with indignation. Her hand flew to her face, nearly poking her eye out as she snatched the cigarette from her mouth, holding it still smoking down by her hip.
“Listen,” she heard herself say, her other hand laying a finger across her lips. “Do you hear that?” For the first time, the voice that spilled from her mouth did not sound like her own.
Benjamin picked his face up from his hands, twisting his neck to follow her pointing finger. Through the trees came a high, piercing cry from a long way off—at first it could have been a bird, but the second time it rang out, the sound could only be human.
It was a scream. A girl’s scream.
“That’s Alice!” Benjamin bellowed, lurching to his feet. He nearly tripped over the pine’s root, but he maintained his momentum, already in motion towards the source of the cry. “Christ, we’re far off. Come on!” He only looked back once to see if Riley was following him, but then he vanished behind the scrub of dry brown needles, his footsteps thundering up the incline.
So close, Riley-Bear. How does it feel to be the silver medal?
Riley shivered, tracking the sound of his footfalls with her eyes. The cigarette was still between her fingers, smoldering but not yet forgotten. At last she followed, but first she pulled down the collar of the down overcoat and twisted the ember-end of the cigarette into the soft exposed flesh just above her collarbone. The pain was sharp and instant—the ember hissed against her skin, and the smell of that small spot of girl-flesh cooking tickled her nostrils.
But she could not scream. She could only grin, the whole world cold against her exposed teeth while thin wet lines trickled down from her unblinking eyes, and the fire scorching her from the inside out burned hotter than Hell itself. Her phone vibrated against her hip; she fished it out, didn’t even bother to read Alice’s latest panicked message, typed out three words in a series of staccato, mechanical clicks:
SEE – YOU – SOON
Chapter 13
Welcome Wagon
There was a boy Cormac didn’t know in the gravel lot in front of the cabin.
He punched off the music inside the Jeep with his thumb, then tilted his neck one way, then the other, touching ear to shoulder to feel the stiff vertebrae pop in sequence. The other guy, he’d come up through the trees on the other side of the gravel, kicking red sneakers through fallen pine needles. Now he loafed on the steps, chin in his hands, half-hidden behind the wood-paneled station wagon with the propped-up hood. He was close enough to hear Cormac’s Grand Cherokee idling, but he didn’t so much as turn his head: He kept staring off into the forest, cold as a sphinx, occasionally shutting his eyes and angling his face as though listening for something, some otherworldly signal coming through the trees.
Cormac watched him through the windshield, drumming nervous fingers on the steering wheel as he weighed options against each other. He’d hoped he’d see Riley first, make contact before he tried to smooth in with the rest of her crew. Her last two broadcasts had him scrambled: the first, a shaky cell cam video inside the cabin, audio all blown out, a wash of shouts and squeals as the camera swung around a ring of flushed, laughing faces. He’d begged the address—then, silence for two hours. And then at last, when he’d started kicking himself for blowing so much gas money on nothing, her strange truncated reply blipped in:
BEN’S PISSED I ASKED Y—
He’d mulled that one the rest of the night. There had to be more to it, he figured—he’d fired off half-cooked late-night texts himself after an O-Lambda boozer wound down… But instead of getting a straight answer out of her, he’d lolled in bed another two hours, thoughts chasing round and round like slot cars, until at last he sank into tossing, hot-breathed dreams. That ring of red faces circled him in his sleep, faster and faster, their laughter distorted into animal screams and grunts and cries.
She sent him the address in the morning, but by then he’d had time to question the position of all the stars in his sky—and now he was here, staring over the steering wheel at who could only be Benjamin Alden, his wind-tossed hair piled like lint in a dustbin, and he felt those old scratching anxieties come clawing back to surface. He thought about squeezing off a quick text to Riley, Hey, come outside, I’m here, but thought better of it.
You’re here now, Caveman. You got this far. Go bang rocks together.
Make nice with the big dog.
He feather-footed the gas, pulling into the lot at last, gravel grumbling under the Jeep’s tires. Benjamin’s head whipped towards him like a bird’s—no surprise on his face, just a level studying gaze. Cormac killed the engine, slid his seat back, and swung out the driver-side door, wary of eye-contact. The cold hit him like a wall of force, but the silence hit harder. Icy dread splashed against his innards: Where were the others? Riley, Alice, that Kaitlyn girl? Benjamin’s face stayed coolly neutral as he stood and began striding towards the Jeep, and panic scrabbled inside him, but as he thought about slamming the door and gunning it for the coast again, the other boy’s face broke out in a broad, almost sheepish grin.
“Hey,” he called out, “you’re not supposed to be here!”
Then he put out his hand, grinning broader still. “You’re Cormac, aren’t you,” he said. “I’m Lutz. Lutz Visgara.”
Cormac reached, and nearly fell out of the Jeep. By the time he steadied himself, clumsily catching his weight one-handed on the car’s roof, the other boy, Lutz, had already pumped his hand twice before retracting his own and stuffing it in his pocket with a sly look on his face. “It is Cormac, isn’t it?” he asked, laughter creeping into his voice. “I didn’t just fuck that up, did I?”
Cormac brushed something that wasn’t there off his flannel button-down. “My friends call me Caveman,” he mumbled. And then, unnecessarily: “I’m not supposed to be here.”
Lutz finally bust out into laughter, which he smothered behind one hand.
“I bet they do call you that,” he said, nodding. He rubbed his eye, shook off a yawn. “That’s all right,” he continued. “I’m not supposed to be here, either.”
“Where are the others?” Cormac peered over the other boy’s shoulder. The cabin’s windows were dark and cold, but the front door had been left ajar, moving slightly when the wind picked up. “I’m at the right place—aren’t I? Riley gave me the address, but my GPS crapped out a few miles ago. We’re kind of in the middle of nowhere.”
“Yeah, yeah. Middle ‘o nowhere.” Lutz mooched his lips in a weird lopsided smile. “We’re playing a game of hide and seek,” was his response. “They’re looking for me, out in the woods, but I gave them the old run-around. They’ll catch on soon, though.”
Strange vibrations from this guy. Cormac couldn’t figure the smirk in his voice. Every smile showed half his teeth—it unsettled him, somehow, set his own teeth on edge. But he seemed friendly enough, and this reception was a far shout from the unfriendliness he’d braced for on the trip over.
“Riley didn’t give you the address,” Lutz said. “I did.”
Cormac blinked, once, twice. “I don’t understand,” he protested—but the other boy had already turned his back, ambling toward the porch, his sneakered feet making almost no sound on the gravel. Cormac pursued. “I don’t understand,” he repeated. “The message came from her phone. She gave me the number.”
“That’s true,” came the reply. “Or, it may be true. I really don’t know. But it was me that gave you the address, just the same.” Then he turned again to look at Cormac, his face thin and grinning and flushed with cold. “Tell me, Caveman—what do you know about girls?”
Cormac felt his back stiffen. What do you know about girls? A locker-room challenge, leveled at his manhood—or something else? Only seconds to decide. He studied the other boy’s face, nearly a foot lower than his own. He’d gotten jabbed for it his whole life: his huge frame, the meat hanging he
avy on heavy bones; his feathery voice, his joy and rage forever jammed in his throat; the way his eyes would glaze and cross whenever he got lost in a daydream… Sure, in high school he’d grown into himself, sculpting his bulk into sports-hardened muscle, learned he was as fast in the water as he was slow on land. But he never forgot the feeling of eyes on his back, never managed to shake away the weight of a thousand cold assumptions.
Not until six days ago. Not until Riley.
You need to guess my name, she’d told him. And if you don’t get it right, you need to tell me something about you. Something nobody else at this party knows. House Rules.
“I know they don’t play fair,” he said at last, smiling in spite of himself.
Lutz raised an eyebrow. “She’s a riot, isn’t she? Riley, I mean,” he continued, off Cormac’s stunned look. “You and her, huh. Very nice, Caveman, ve-ry nice.”
“Lucky guess…” Cormac rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly shy. “Why’d you ask?”
“Nah.” Lutz shook his head, the grin shrinking to a smirk. “I’ve been around these people forever. Feels like forever. No secrets between us, that kinda thing. She says you’ve got a dick like an Italian sausage. First thing she said to me this weekend.”
The red shot all the way up to Cormac’s crewcut. “She said that,” he mumbled, a dull admission. Damn it all—that’s just the kind of thing she would say. Even as a joke.
“Like I said—no secrets.” Lutz shrugged. “It’s kinda creepazoid, when you really think about it. What do you think? Are we a freaky cult up here, or what?”
“Hey, look. When are the other’s getting back?” Cormac glanced past Lutz’s head at the darkened windows of the cabin, his teeth beginning to chatter. This was the furthest north he’d ever been, and he hadn’t dressed for the wind or the cold.
“D’you love her, Caveman?”
Cormac felt the hackle-hairs rise on the back of his neck. He’d only taken his eyes off Lutz for a second, but now he was across the gravel lot, kneeling on the porch, facing him almost in supplication. The skin on Cormac’s back began to crawl, a small patch down near his hip. The vibrations were getting stranger, like ocean waves rolling in reverse. Sand crashing against the water again and again and again.
But still he thought of Riley. Of a dark room in the back of Lambda house, a door discovered in a drunken fumbling, of the two of them sitting cross-legged on an unmade bed, the ember-point of Riley’s cigarette the only true light source other than the milky moon coming through the half-cracked blinds. She never touched him, save for an instant her fingers brushed across his leg as they positioned themselves on the bed. The noise of the party was only a dull pulse through the walls—music and laughter and the occasional tinkling shout of breaking glass.
I’m going to tell you something about yourself now, she’d said. Maybe something you know about yourself, maybe something you don’t. But if I get it wrong—I drink.
He heard, but could not see, frothy beer sloshing in a Solo cup. And what happens if you get it right? he’d wanted to know, his voice still guarded.
Nothing, she’d replied after a small silence. Then I know something about you I didn’t before. Then I know you a little better. Isn’t that enough?
“I’m sorry?” It was all Cormac could work the nerve to say. It was getting hard to think, all of the sudden, like the air was too thick, like gauze filling his head and his lungs.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Lutz huffed. “Not in, like, the Biblical sense. I mean truly: Do you want the best for her? That’s all love is, you know. It’s a conscious thing. It’s a choice. It’s—” Then he paused almost mid-word, perking his head up like a dog after a chipmunk, angling his nose out towards the forest. Cormac followed his gaze, but only the trees stared back. “Well, do you?” he asked at last as if coming out of a trance.
“I mean … yeah! Or, I guess so. Like, if that’s all it is—”
Lutz tsk’ed over folded hands. “Such commitment. Weren’t you listening? She needs your support, Caveman. That’s all a woman needs from a man, my guy.”
Almost unconsciously, Cormac was stumbling across the gravel towards the porch, not taking his eyes off the kneeling Lutz. “Aren’t you cold, dude?” he mumbled. And then, out of the corner of his eye—a blob of white canvas, a flash of dull crimson ichor… “Muvver of God,” he blurted, lips already numb with cold. “What happened to the engine?”
“She needs your support,” Lutz repeated, his voice oddly hollow. Cormac whirled clumsily just in time to watch the other boy rise from the porch as quickly as if he’d been jerked on a string fixed to the top of his head. There was something in his hand, concealed behind his hip and by the drape of his hoodie jacket. “That’s all a woman needs from a man.”
“Whose blood is it?” Cormac asked, though the words felt ridiculous now—as though he knew the answer, as though he’d known all along…
Lutz snorted. “That’s just something I picked up on the way here. You don’t need to worry about that. It’s not really important anymore.”
“I… I think I’m gonna go inside and wait…” Cormac said, tried to say. But his legs were like wood posts, his thoughts turning slow and heavy in his head like taffy. His lips had moved, but he could not be sure if he had really spoken. “Are you sure… you’re okay out here?”
“Aw, now, see? There’s the concern! There’s the commitment!” Lutz took one step toward him, then another. His hand came up into view—he held a small hacksaw by the handle in his clenched fist. There were wood shavings on the blade, which refused to reflect light. “I’ll be fine, Caveman,” the other boy said in an even voice. “Like I said, you don’t need to worry about this. In fact—you don’t really need to worry about anything. It’s just not worth it.”
Every muscle in Cormac’s towering frame struggled to move. But it was shadow-boxing: There was nothing to fight against, no bonds to break. Only the cold—and this was quickly seeping away, replaced by fear that spread inside him like a warm pool of honey. Lutz’s smile was no longer a smile. His lips were stretched tight around his mouth, ringed around a grin that was only two parallel lines of perfect white teeth.
“You know, I didn’t plan any of this,” he was saying, peering at Cormac through squinted eyes, gauging the distance between them. “I’ve already got a fish on the line, so to speak. But I love her, Caveman. And I guess this is what you do when you’re in love.”
A horrible thought stirred, cutting through the coiling terror. Cormac’s lips moved again, sticking in the cold, sticky and slow as though they might never move again, all to form one single, desperate, terrible word:
“Riley?”
Lutz’s face darkened like a thundercloud. He raised his fist, pressing the handle of the saw into Cormac’s own hand, closing the fingers around it. “Actually, ” he sneered, “that’s none of your fucking business, friend-o.”
And then Cormac’s hand raised the saw, turning the blade around, and he tilted his chin up towards the sky, to accept it, as though he was going to shave. But his hands did not shake. He felt liquid heat shoot up his arms and legs like agony as he sank backwards, being siphoned away by this warmth, drawn down into a deep and grasping darkness. Now there could be no more fear in him. Now there could be no more him at all. This moment seemed to suspend itself, juddering slightly like a videocassette on pause.
The teeth of the saw touched his neck, paused there, pressed against the skin.
Then somewhere through the shadow, a car horn bellowed out a single lusty note:
Hey. Come outside. I’m here.
Chapter 14
The Outsider
Alice reached the tree-line first, puffing from the descent, with Kaity close at her heels—and when her scream tore out across the gravel lot, at first she couldn’t tell that the sound had come from her at all. It struck her numb, like a sour note struck hard in the middle of a complicated piano piece. At first there was no fear at all. Only that
automatic shriek, and the echoes of it ringing back from the forest, and the sound of her friend’s footsteps coming up the deer path behind her, and the terrible juddering beat of her heart in her ears.
When she looked down across the gravel, all she could see was red.
Behind the front left wheel of the station wagon was the beginnings of a grisly tableau: a pair of Timberland boots lay together on their sides, the ankles twisted at bone-snapping angles. Beyond that was what remained of the body. Lying stomach-down and almost completely naked, arms splayed drunkenly, broad muscular shoulders glazed with glistening blood, redder than red could be. And above that, the white pulp of the head…
No. She’d got it wrong.
There was no head at all.
Alice thought her lungs would bust. Affixed to the corpse’s shoulders was Mister Face, the rust-colored painted grin twisted upward to face the bright noonday sky, the long wooden spike thrust down into the oozing stump of the severed neck. Now there was pus-colored stuffing pushing through split seams all over the ball, and the whole affair had deflated, caved in, with dents like finger-holds on a bowling ball almost forming a second face where large strong hands had seized hold of it.
She could almost hear the drone of flies gathering.
Alice stared, not trusting herself to blink, horrified at what her imagination would conjure behind closed eyelids. She listened to the sound of Kaity not breathing behind her. In a sudden flash, the urge to laugh surged like madness inside her—to throw back her head, to bay at the high, white sun and let the red creep in at the corners until it swallowed her up.
Lutz killed this person. Left him here for us to find.
Left him here because he wanted us to see.
“It’s Cormac,” she heard Kaity say behind her. “It’s gotta be.”
Alice turned, unconsciously reaching behind her to take hold of Kaity’s hand—but when she looked in her friend’s face, a new wave of confusion rolled through her. There was no dismay, no disgust, no fear that she could project onto that mask. Only boredom in the eyes, and something deadly close to mirth in the up-tilt of her chapped lips. Kaity was staring past her at the body with an expression dawning on bleak fascination, and Alice realized she had actually retreated a step backward, yelping at feeling a branch goosing her in the small of the back.
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