The Unwelcome

by Jacob Steven Mohr

  “Déjà vu, huh?” she said. The grin returned, looking strange and awkward with her jaw pressed up against the cold metal of the rifle’s barrel. “Well, don’t do me any fucking favors,” she said. “But we both know I can’t really let her live. Not after everything you’ve done.”

  “Everything I’ve done?” Kait’s teeth ground together. “You murdered my friends.”

  It was a struggle just to keep her tone level. Her eyes fixed on the spot of contact, just where the metal of the muzzle touched Alice’s reddening flesh. Her hands began to sweat, even in the cold, and she moved her shaking finger away from the trigger with bottomless caution.

  “You broke my heart,” Alice replied in the voice one might use to order breakfast. “And I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t murdered anyone.”

  “You didn’t…?” Kait’s eyes bugged. “Riley!” she seethed. “Ben! Cormac!”

  “You shot the Riley-body—”

  “Stop calling them that—”

  “You shot the Riley-body,” Alice pushed through, gesturing with the hand not clutching the barrel of the Winchester. “I didn’t force you to do that. You chose that. Your choices, not mine. And the Ben-body…” She shrugged ruefully. “That was an accident. Honestly. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

  “Cormac, then,” Kait hissed. “You’re not going to tell me he decided to saw his own fucking head off, are you?”

  Lutz shrugged Alice’s shoulders. “It’s property damage at best, Heart-Brecker. I put my fist through a drywall. I’m sorry. Is that what you want me to say? I’m sorry.”

  Kait fixed him with a hard look, struggling to tamp down the white heat surging up inside of her. She could not lose control now. Not when she had so much to lose. She blinked, feeling her brow pop out sweat like beads of mercury. Not with Alice’s bare throat balanced at the point of the gun.

  “Jill Cicero,” she managed. “You told me… You told me she wouldn’t feel anything.”

  Alice looked down the length of the muzzle. “Would you believe it if I told you I actually regretted that?” she said softly. “I thought it would work. I really thought it would make you understand. But you just got more mixed up. I don’t know what goes on inside your head, Heart-Brecker. But you’re the only one like that. That’s what I love about you.”

  Kait studied Alice’s face, again searching for some sign of Lutz, finding none. “You regret it,” she parroted. “Well, all right. Guess what. I don’t believe it. You’re not sorry she’s dead—her, or any of them. I know better than that. You’re just sorry I left. You’re just sorry I won’t play the game anymore.”

  Alice grimaced, her lips pulling down almost in a snarl.

  “Well, it was worth a shot,” she said evenly. “You need to give me the gun now.”

  Kait almost laughed. “Or else what?” she scoffed.

  Alice stared at her incredulously. “Or else I walk out on the ice. Or I stand right here until this body freezes. Or starves. Or I come up with something worse.” She shrugged. “Or… You give me the gun and the bullets you’ve got jangling in your jacket pockets. You get in that car and you drive us where I tell you to go. You come home. Do that, and I’ll let her go.”

  Kait almost stepped back, but stopped when she realized she could not draw the muzzle of the Model 94 out of Alice’s grip. “But you said that wasn’t enough,” she said slowly. “You said we couldn’t go back to the way things were. What is it you want, then?”

  Alice sniffed and stared off to the right, over the frozen lake. “I want to see you, Heart-Brecker,” she said simply. “Face to face. Not like this. Is that too much to ask? I want to talk about the future with my girlfriend.”

  “I’m not—” Kait began to say, then paused, looking into Alice’s eyes. There, at last, was Lutz. Implacable Lutz. Changeable and unchangeable, all in one. So instead she swallowed her protest and simply asked, “If I do what you say, you promise you won’t hurt her.”

  “I don’t have to promise you anything,” came the reply. “We both know you have to trust me anyway. What other choice do you have?”

  Kait’s hands tightened around the stock of the Model 94, white-knuckled, almost bleeding from the tension of her grip. Two monsters regarded each other across the length of the gun. Kait stared into her friend’s eyes, wishing with all her might she could believe Lutz, that there was any sacrifice she could make that would keep Alice Gorchuck unharmed, any price she could pay—no matter the cost to herself. But it was false hope, and she knew it. For the briefest instant, Lutz had revealed himself, and she had peered down into the dizzying depth of his hatred. Maybe he really believed there was no Alice inside that body, but it didn’t matter. He would destroy her just the same.

  She was not brave enough to see that. Her uncertain finger twitched along the loop of the trigger guard. She hoped she would not hesitate. She prayed Alice would forgive her cowardice.

  “What’s your answer, Heart-Brecker?” Alice asked.

  * * *

  She had to move the driver’s body out of the front seat herself.

  She tried not to think about how the bearded man had died. She focused on the physical task of moving the weight, of getting his seatbelt unstuck and hooking her slender arms under his thick, hairy ones to hoist him through the open SUV door. But she could not help noticing that the man had no wounds. His face was bruised, but there was no blood inside the cab, and no bones seemed broken. It was as if the man had been forced out of his body, somehow, or as though it had been empty the entire time. Eventually she had to dump his bulk onto the concrete; her hand slipped, and his weight crashed into the snow beside the front wheel with a wet crunch. Alice watched this from the back seat, holding the big hunting rifle under her own chin now, Kait’s spare bullets bulging in one jacket pocket.

  Kait climbed into the front seat. The keys were still in the ignition.

  “Start it,” Alice ordered. “Take us back the way we came. Up the hill and into the forest.”

  Kait did as she was bid. It took a few attempts, but eventually the SUV’s engine turned over; the headlights came on again, bathing the snowy road in twin cones of yellow light. Kait’s stomach turned when she saw Ben’s stiffening corpse lying in his bloody snow-angel to their immediate left, his head turned away from them staring endlessly, the way Cormac’s head would stare endlessly. The heat began to churn out, and Kait guiltily thrust her hands over the vents, greedily lapping up the warmth spilling out through the slats. Then she pushed the gas and cautiously maneuvered the SUV off the shoulder and onto the road itself, steering around the corpses on the road and angling the spotlights towards the first hill.

  They drove in silence. Soon the air inside the cab was warm enough that Kait didn’t need the heat on full blast. Without its roar, the quiet inside the SUV was maddening. She kept glancing into the rearview mirror, hoping to catch some glimpse of her friend’s face, but the back seat was dark. All she saw, every so often, was the flinty flash of gunmetal, but that was it. Occasionally Alice would give her a direction, a turn to take or the instruction to speed up, but when Kait tried to reply, she was met with hostile silence.

  “I’m going to get you out of this,” she said once, turning to speak over her shoulder. “Just hold on a little longer. I’m—”

  “Stop talking to her,” Alice cut her off in such a harsh tone it made Kait blush. “I’ve indulged that enough, don’t you think? Just let me enjoy the ride.”

  Kait’s mouth snapped shut, and silence returned—but a few moments later, she heard her friend suck in a breath.

  “I always hated this body,” she murmured. “Even before I knew about your… little perversion. The shape of it offended me somehow. I thought about destroying it from the very first moment I saw it. It—or is it ‘ her’, now? Now you’ve got me all confused.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Kait hissed. Her hands squeezed the steering wheel like she would yank it from its post. “Maybe we shouldn�
��t talk after all.”

  Alice sighed. “All right. I don’t want to be angry with you.”

  Kait ignored this and drove.

  “I love you, Heart-Brecker.”

  Kait ignored this too. She could hardly see the road.

  * * *

  They had been driving for perhaps ten minutes. Alice instructed her to turn onto a side path leading back towards the lake, pointing over Kait’s shoulder, and Kait pulled the car into a gravel lot almost identical to the one fronting Ben Alden’s cabin. There were two other cars in the lot: a pricey-looking blue sedan, and a beater Nissan Sentra with two hubcaps gone. The structure beyond was less a cabin than a small house—the front porch was built out of sturdier wood, and sported two rocking chairs and a built-in bench swing, both dusted with snow.

  The front windows were lit, and as Kait put the SUV in park, a boy’s shadow crossed behind one rolled-down shade. The inside of the vehicle squeezed in like a tightening fist.

  “Let’s shake a leg,” Alice said, and kicked open the back seat door, and Kait followed dumbly. She watched the windows, but the shadow did not return, and she was so preoccupied she almost didn’t notice that the wood of the porch under the snow was flecked with dried blood.

  Alice seemed in much better spirits now. As they mounted the porch, she tossed her head and tried to blow rings with her frosty breath, and drew strange markings in the snow with the toe of her boot. “I hope you like what I’ve done with the place,” she mused, flashing a half-smile back at Kait as she led her to the front door. “I’ve had this… nesting instinct ever since you left. I dunno how else to describe it. It’s been fun.”

  Then she opened the door, and the horror within struck Kait like an open-handed slap.

  The bodies were posed as though in freeze-frames of their lives. A man with thick-framed glasses and a wonderful curling, gray moustache sat on a plush, brown couch in front of the flickering television screen, a paperback novel open in his lap. Beyond the sitting area, Kait could see into the kitchenette where a grandmotherly woman bent over the running sink, a blissful smile seared onto her face. The third shape she recognized—the acne-faced youth from the gas station, crouched over a handheld game on a beanbag chair in the far corner of the main living space, under a tall floor lamp. For the first instant, Kait almost couldn’t tell they were not alive. But they didn’t blink, didn’t move… The only movement in the room was the older man’s flyaway hair ruffling in the warm breeze of the heat pump.

  Their clothes were all stained with blood.

  “The place came furnished,” Alice was saying, trotting daintily into the room. “But I added my own little spin to things.” She tapped the carpeted floor twice with the butt of the Model 94. “I’ll be out to join you in a few minutes,” she said. “Don’t touch the thermostat—or Pops’ll get mad.” She cocked her head at the gray-haired man on the couch with a wink and an oafish grin. Then she crossed the room to the far wall, propped the rifle on her broad shoulder, and seemed to switch herself off.

  Kait peered around the room. The sitcom on the television was on mute, so the only sound came from the running faucet in the kitchenette and the gentle thrum of the heating system. Her skin crawled—none of the bodies were looking in her direction, but every time she caught sight of one out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw their heads twist toward her, or felt their eyes at her back. She imagined hearing a scuttling sound, turning just in time to see the pimple-faced youth scrabbling across the carpet towards her on all fours, his face transformed into Lutz’s face, her ex-beau’s lopsided grin full of only slightly too many teeth.

  She kicked off her red Converses, then crept across the carpet floor towards where Alice stood like a tin soldier in her toy-store box. Her friend was just as motionless as the corpses posed around the room—only the gentle rise-and-fall of her breast told Kait her friend was alive at all. She didn’t even rock back and forth, stabilizing herself. She stood as if suspended in clear glass, a girl on display, a museum piece. An exhibit. A charade. Kait briefly considered tearing the gun out of the other girl’s hands, but she suppressed this urge, digging her nails into the palms of her fists. It didn’t matter who had the gun—Lutz still had Alice. Plus, she did not like the mental image of reaching for the gun only for her friend to snap alive like a marionette and yank it away from her, or put the barrel under her chin once more.

  The quiet lasted five minutes, maybe more. The backs of Kait’s hands began to itch. The wind began to moan outside, died away, began to moan again. Then a door down the hall creaked open and shut—and then he was in the room with her.

  The suit was too big for him. Gray worsted with a white shirt and a dark blue-and-gray striped tie, the hems of the sleeves dangled past his fingertips, and the cuffs of the pants dragged beneath his heels, bunching up around his ankles when he stopped walking, his hands on his hips. His mound of loose curls was slicked back with a handful of styling grease, revealing a tight widow’s peak on his forehead that she had somehow never noticed before. His nose, broken by Alice not two days prior, was completely healed, but Kait hardly realized. The lines of her ex-boyfriend’s face had changed, subtly but significantly. He looked trimmer, if such a thing were possible. He looked lean and hungry, like a jungle cat just before the end of the hunt.

  “Bone of my bone,” he uttered, his eyes full of emotion. “Flesh of my flesh…”

  “That suit looks stupid on you,” was the only thing she could think to say.

  “I’ll grow into it,” he replied—then his mouth kinked up in a chuckle. Without waiting for her to reply, he crossed the room in four swift steps and took her hands in his. “It’s really good to see you, Heart-Brecker,” he said. “I’d almost given up hope this would ever happen.”

  “Just tell me what you want,” she drawled, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice.

  His features darkened. “Oh, stop it. Please? Can’t we just talk a while? Like old times. We used to have such great conversations, remember that?”

  Kait snatched her hands away. “You didn’t force me out here just to talk.”

  “I didn’t force you to do anything,” Lutz protested, throwing up his hands. “I can’t—or did you forget that too? That’s another thing I love about you. You’re independent.”

  “Why are we here, Lutz,” she said as evenly as she could manage.

  He stared at her a long moment—then sighed and turned away from her.

  “I had to see it for myself,” he said at last, crossing to a dark window. “When you left, it made me curious. Curious about you. What you were really like when I wasn’t around. Even after all that time together, I still didn’t know very much about you. But I never imagined it would be this serious.”

  “What would be?” Kait asked, curious in spite of herself.

  Lutz glanced over his shoulder. “Your delusion.”

  Kait felt her fists ball. She wanted to break something, but as she cast her eyes around the room, the most fragile things there were all human. So instead she struck out with her foot, kicking the back of the sofa so hard it made her tear up. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you again,” she hissed through the pain. “I shouldn’t have to tell you this. I shouldn’t have to convince you that… that other people exist.”

  Lutz folded his hands, his back still to her. “You’re right,” he said coldly. “You shouldn’t.” His shoulders shook with anger, and for a moment he said nothing, gathering his composure. “I wish I could hate you,” he nearly whispered. “I want to, I really do. It would make this so much easier. But I just can’t get away from you.”

  “All appearances to the contrary.”

  “What do you want me to do?” He whirled, red-faced, and stalked across the room towards her. “I can’t just ignore you. You’re the only other person on this whole empty planet who’s like me. We’re the only two real people in a world of… of imposters. Hollow men. Flimsy facades. Excuses for people. Copies
of copies of copies…”

  “That’s not true,” Kait retorted, but Lutz only shouted her down.

  “It is true!” he roared. “You just refuse to see it.”

  He looked down at the toes of his too-large shoes, seeming to gather his thoughts. “I know you remember it,” he said in a lower voice. “The place before this. The formless place. You couldn’t possibly forget—being ejected out into the cold. Tearing through endless, cavernous darkness, with every star in the void staring into you, through you, gleaming with life… But when I got here, the world had already moved on. The bodies, the flesh, all wandering empty. Hollow trees swaying. A dying world, running on fumes.”

  His fists opened and closed at his sides like anemones splaying their tentacles. “Tell me you remember,” he begged her. “Tell me you saw the stars…”

  Kait shook her head, staring back at her ex-boyfriend almost sadly. “I remember birthday parties,” she replied. “I remember parks. Sleepovers, car trips, holidays. My friends, my parents—I remember being a child. Or something like a child. I remember feeling loved, Lutz. A hollow tree can’t do that.” She glanced quickly at Alice’s form, looming in the far corner of the room. “They can’t love you back.”

  Lutz looked like he might be sick. “You’re right,” he snarled. “They can’t.”

  Kait scowled and turned away, feeling her hands tighten into fists. “I know we’re different,” she murmured. “I’ve accepted that. Of course we’re different. How couldn’t we be? But that doesn’t mean that we’re…”

  Superior, she wanted to say. Better. But instead she simply shrugged her shoulders.

  “I’m not like them,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean I have to be like you, either.”

  Lutz moved into her line of sight again, a pitying look on his face. “You’re mixed up,” he insisted. “You’ve always been mixed up. But I can help you now. I can fix this. Now we’ll never have to be apart. Now you’ll never have to be confused ever again.”