Rites of Extinction

by Matt Serafini

  “Help me, will ya?” the squatter screams. Another shuffling body joins in the back and forth and the sheer weight of the intruders wins out, stuffing the door back into its jamb.

  “What are you doing in my fucking room?” Rebecca screams, but the conversation’s over.

  This place is stuffed full of guests. Even Paul’s old room is seemingly occupied. A flush of light surrounds the drawn curtain there, and a bunch of silhouettes are beyond it. Rebecca presses a curious ear to the door and hears nothing.

  She goes down to the manager’s office to let him know she’s been evicted and he’s nowhere to be found.

  Instead, a man she’s never seen before stands behind the desk. His posture’s straighter than an arrow and detached eyes glare off into space. His joker’s grin is oddly permanent. Rebecca crosses his line of sight and his eyes flick over to her while his expression remains unmoved.

  “Hello?” she says.

  No response, but those eyes continue to stare.

  Rebecca spots her duffel bag on the storage rack across the room. She takes it without any protest, finds nothing missing. The book sits right atop a wrinkled ball of clothes. She’s evicted because Bright Fork is suddenly the hottest destination in the state. Rebecca fishes her last handful of Advil, mined from the bottom of her pocket, and steals a bottle of soda from management’s mini refrigerator. Remembers the days when she used to worry about ingesting all this aspartame and dealing with the cancerous fallout.

  At least her mom had the luxury of dying like an everyday person.

  Rebecca checks her phone on the walk to the car. Part of her wants to go home more than anything else, but she realizes she no longer remembers what she’d be going back to. Flashes of that life exist in her mind, but it’s about as real as living someone else’s memories.

  Rebecca sits behind the wheel, staring numbly at the orphaned Sheriff’s car parked where Cortez had left it. Then she remembers Paul’s face and knows she’ll never have another day’s rest if she quits now. Gets lost inside the death wish daydreams that carried her this far.

  “You’re welcome to stay with us.” Three people surround the rear of her car, spaced out like they’re posed for an album cover. Two women are hidden in the shadows of overhanging trees and a man stands closer. He’s young, early thirties, carries a look that says he was birthed in billions. Clean-cropped hair, rimmed glasses, a tailored suit that probably cost as much as Rebecca’s apartment. “Small town,” he says. “Limited places to stay.”

  “I’m okay,” Rebecca tells him.

  “Why? ’Cause we’re strangers?”

  “Sure.”

  “Ollie,” he says. “There. We’re not strangers anymore.” His feet scrape gravel as he moves closer, leans in. “Come on. Stay with us.”

  The girls giggle. Rebecca feels self-conscious around them.

  Ollie reaches through the opened door. His fingers are manicured, cut with precision right down to the quick. “We’re all wondering, you know? And if this really is the night . . . well, we just think maybe it’s healthier for you to wonder in the company of others. Right, ladies?”

  The ladies don’t bother to answer. They pass a few muted whispers back and forth, sprinkling in mean girl giggles so Rebecca doesn’t get any ideas about becoming part of their clique.

  “Do you really believe in this?” Rebecca asks, vulnerable in the moment and hoping the answer’s no.

  Ollie’s hand recoils a bit. How could a true devotee ask such a skeptical question? “What do you mean?”

  “Tanner Red,” she says. “I want it to be real.”

  Now he smiles like everyone here’s getting away with something. “I know what you mean,” he says. “He’s been nothing but whispers, just a pile of rumors for so long. Hard to believe we’re on the verge of finding out.”

  “I’m scared, you know?” Jaime’s insecurities come tripping past Rebecca’s lips. “Like, what if it’s all for nothing?”

  Ollie flashes a philanthropic smile. “Why don’t we learn together?”

  Rebecca closes her eyes and mumbles, “Yes.”

  Ollie opens the door like a chauffeur and ushers her out. The girls follow behind them, moving together through the darkened parking lot to their room at the end of the first floor.

  The girls giggle again and Rebecca feels their eyes on her back, judging her age and her clothes. Her demeanor. Everything. She wonders how she’s supposed to blend in to this. Can’t ask many questions because she’s supposed to be on the same page.

  I’m on the same page, Jaime says. You don’t have to worry about it.

  Ollie opens the door to his room and everyone piles in.

  Rebecca spots the mirror against the wall before he can flick the lights. The glass seems to wink in headlight glare from passing traffic. Jaime goes into panic overdrive, seizing Rebecca’s movements. Jaime tears the comforter off the bed and drapes it over the mirror without looking at it.

  “What are you doing?” Ollie laughs.

  Jaime doesn’t answer. Too busy taking care of business. She pulls Rebecca’s coat off her shoulders and storms the bathroom, hanging it up over the mirror to blunt the knocks that have already resumed.

  “Listen to me,” she says. “Do not uncover these.”

  “Hard to look at yourself sometimes, right?” Ollie says. The girls give ‘ain’t that the truth’ nods. Then it’s just the four of them standing in fragile quiet listening to the taunt of muted knocks.

  “Looks like we picked the right person to offer our companionship,” Ollie says. He points at the glass. “That’s a sign.”

  Rebecca points too. “That’s not what you think.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Ollie says. “But I hear there’s evidence of the crossing in this very motel.”

  “There is,” Rebecca confirms.

  Ollie’s eyes turn the size of quarters. He takes her hands in his. “What did you say?”

  “There are signs.” Rebecca points to the ceiling. “In a room just upstairs. They’re allowing small groups of people in to see it.”

  “Someone has given their body to Tanner Red.” Ollie smiles. He goes to the mirror and the bedspread covering it starts to rise. “Is this . . . Him?”

  Jaime laughs at his ignorance.

  Everyone looks to Rebecca as the adult in the room. For the first time, the younger girls care about what she has to say. Rebecca realizes now that she recognizes at least one of them, and maybe both. Singers? Actresses? Never one to be star struck, she can’t care enough to ask, but their fashion and jewelry suggest money, though Rebecca stopped paying attention to that stuff decades ago.

  The brunette clears her throat and lines the desk with trails of coke from a little vial nestled between her breasts. Oh, Rebecca thinks. Definitely Hollywood. The brunette slides her dress off at the shoulders and it shimmies down her legs without a hint of modesty.

  The four of them chase away the lines. Rebecca’s nose tingles at the burst of alertness even as her nostrils go numb. She’s never used before, but it turns out Jaime’s no stranger. Rebecca is too far beyond betrayals at this point, can’t help but wince at this. She always figured her kid would be one of the good ones.

  The blond girl begins to undress as she sniffles. “Shit,” she says, catching a few blood patters as they drip from her nose. The brunette caresses the blond’s body anyway, licking the little driblets off her small breasts with a gentle giggle. Both women reach out for Rebecca to join them.

  “No thanks,” Rebecca declines.

  They couldn’t care less about being rejected, kissing and groping without a drop of curiosity for the tapping mirrors.

  “It starts with the flesh,” Ollie says, brushing fingers over the naked bodies. “A display . . . for Him.”

  “A tribute to His generosity,” Rebecca adds with Jaime’s knowledge.

  Ollie has a trace of disbelief in his smile and Rebecca thinks it’s because, to him, this whole thing is probably thi
s month’s trendy religious cult.

  Rebecca slumps into the chair and positions away from the action, wondering if she’s this desperate for company. Realizes that Jaime’s been keeping her here. The amorous noises grow loud enough to draw Jaime’s curiosity. Ollie is naked now, sliding into the brunette and thrusting without any rhythm or emotion. Her natural breasts sway in hypnotic circles while she eats the stick-skinny blond squatting over her mouth.

  Ollie glistens, instantaneously sweaty and pumping behind an expression of forced concentration. The girls groan like bored porn stars, both of them looking like they’d rather be anywhere else. Every thrust is obligatory, each moan, perfunctory.

  Ollie says, “Come here” while continuing to push deeper inside the brunette. The blond never looks up at all. Just buries her face against her forearm, writhing along because that’s how this has to start.

  Rebecca shakes off his invitation, but Jamie isn’t so repulsed. She leans into the action, watching the bodies spend themselves. They’re right, she thinks. They need to show Him.

  “Please,” the brunette cries. She watches Rebecca with an expression of beautiful agony no different than the mugging faces she’s made in a dozen music videos. Her stretched and wiggling fingers beg for companionship.

  Rebecca remembers her now. Ten years ago, they’d gone to see her in concert for Jaime’s birthday.

  Rebecca continues to refuse, though both mother and daughter are witnesses to the show.

  Ollie seems tired. Almost pained. He reaches out for her, too, his eyes begging for mercy. As if Rebecca can stop any of this.

  Though maybe she can.

  That means finding Paul.

  If this is real and it is happening then there’s only one way to do that.

  No guarantees, Mom, Jaime tells her.

  There never are.

  26

  REBECCA RUSHES TO THE SHERIFF’S car. The doors are locked and Cortez’s keys may no longer be in this world.

  “Okay,” she mumbles and goes back to the manager’s office. The smiling man is still there. Still smiling. His head remains motionless, though his eyes are active, following her wherever she moves.

  There’s nothing of use in here. Rebecca slams her palms on the counter, ready to force some answers, when the sight of this stoic freak up close brings second thoughts. His eyes bulge, and while his mouth ticks up in a frozen smile, there are no age lines on his face. His skin is smooth, coated with a careful application of foundation. Whatever the hell’s underneath that, she doesn’t want to know.

  She inches past him to the manager’s small personal space out back. The smiling man never turns, though Rebecca half expects to see his eyes peeking at her from the back of his head.

  The manager is back here. Wedged all the way against the far wall, mounted atop a swivel chair his killer was able to roll out of sight. He’s the color of chalk and an axe juts from his chest. Every drop of blood that lived inside him has relocated to the floor.

  Rebecca crosses the small space like she’s moving through rain puddles. Closes her fingers around the hilt and rips the axe free like she’s been chosen to wield Excalibur. Something about the weight of the blade in her hands is satisfying, makes her flush with power.

  She almost hopes the freak show in the next room will try and stop her on the way out.

  I want to kill him, she thinks.

  But nope. His back’s to her as she leaves. Once she’s through the front door, Rebecca steals one last look and finds only his eyes are watching her go.

  Cries of ecstasy are muted in the parking lot. Thumping furniture combines to make a strange and deliberate rhythm. Those muffled sounds are the only noises haunting otherwise silent air. Seems as though each room is invested in proving their willingness to Him.

  That thought brings goose bumps to Jaime’s arms.

  “Stop it,” Rebecca growls, but her daughter only laughs.

  Rebecca marches to her car, drops the axe across her lap and cranks the ignition. It stutters but never starts. She tries again. Jaime’s laughter fills her head, thinking, Wow, this is some really bad luck, Mom.

  Rebecca doesn’t believe in luck. The stench inside the car is terrible. She flicks the cab light and turns toward the backseat. A scarecrow lies slumped against the window. The burlap sack has no eyes, looking instead like an executed hostage in an ISIS video.

  The body is sheathed inside a lace gown. Fabric split down the center, leaning far enough to one side to reveal the hay-stuffed stomach cavity.

  “The innards,” Rebecca says as she steps back out into the lot. Cassie was eating her mother’s innards. The scarecrows on the outskirts of town had lost theirs, too. It’s part of the ritual.

  Jaime plays dumber than a dog. Pretends not to understand what Rebecca’s talking about. Even that’s a tip off because Jaime says I don’t know and then keeps repeating it.

  Rebecca isn’t biting. She lifts the axe and rushes across the parking lot, hammering the Sheriff’s car window and cracking the glass into a thousand pieces. “You think this is going to scare me off?”

  The axe head clears away the rest of the jagged pieces as motel guests begin opening their doors, whispering to one another. Nobody seems to know what to make of this.

  The town of Bright Fork is so desperate to stop Rebecca. And yet nobody’s made a move against her.

  Rebecca circles Cortez’s car, chopping the side mirrors clear. Does her best Dukes of Hazzard to get inside. Tears the rearview mirror free and hurls it into the parking lot. Uses the axe head to chop through the steering column and pull a handful of wires free so she can hotwire this thing to life.

  She hits the flashing lights. The hotel guests lift their forearms to their faces in perfect unison.

  They’re waiting for the sign, Jaime says.

  “Let them wait.”

  But I want to speak to them. Jaime tries wrestling control of the body. She uses enough force to make Rebecca feel as if she’s suddenly outside herself, watching helplessly even as it’s Rebecca who reaches down for the shifter.

  “What did I just say?” Rebecca screams in the tone of a scolding parent.

  Jaime recognizes the emptiness of the threat, laughs.

  “Okay,” Rebecca says. “When I find Paul, I’m going to chop him to pieces.” She smacks the axe head with the back of her hand. She builds images of Paul’s splattered and broken corpse. Vivid enough for Jaime to relinquish all control, stunned by her mother’s ferocity. Because Jaime never thought her mom would try and kill him out of spite.

  Right, you little bitch, Rebecca thinks. It’s not a threat. I’m killing him if it’s the last thing I do.

  Rebecca hits the road.

  27

  REBECCA LAYS IT ON THE table on the way back to the Fork Connector.

  “You know you ruined me, right?”

  Jaime greets that with cavernous silence.

  “Yeah,” Rebecca says, taking grim pleasure in the truth. “You know, and you don’t care.” The logical extension of motherhood Rebecca always knew was coming. No matter what you do, it’s going to be a thankless end. “Did you ever care?” she asks aloud, adding, “About anyone other than yourself?”

  I care about Paul.

  “What have you ever done but take things from me?” Rebecca demands.

  I love him, Jaime says.

  “You used to take twenty dollar bills out of dad’s wallet when he wasn’t looking, as if we didn’t know. You were in grade school. We dealt with that, knowing you were going out for burgers and shakes at the bowling alley.”

  Yeah, I’m a monster.

  “Remember how you used to shoplift . . . even things you didn’t need? Or want? And when you got caught, I bailed you out and convinced the store to avoid pressing charges. Only to have you turn around and do it again the very next day? And when I told you that you were going to have to accept responsibility for your actions, you told me I should die.”

  I was a teenager. Awful, r
ight, Mom?

  “Maybe you are.” This is cathartic. The sudden freedom to condemn an ungrateful child. “I tried giving you space,” Rebecca snarls. “Tried debating your worst ideas in order to show I was interested in you. None of it mattered. You never cared about me at all.”

  That’s a lie, Jaime says. Doesn’t bother to elaborate.

  Marci Rooker’s roadside memorial is up ahead. Rebecca cuts the wheel and skids across the entire street. She leaves the car there with flashing cherries to throw pulsing blue and red lights on the tree line. Make the motel followers think the jig’s up if they ever figure out to come here.

  So now you want to go out there? Jesus, Mom, make up your mind.

  “I’ll go,” Rebecca says. “If it’ll end this.” She steps to the edge of the road and spots those dancing torches still burning. A beacon lighting the way.

  The trees standing on either side of the thin trail somehow sway heavily in dead air. The hillside slope descends forever. Muck swallows Rebecca’s shoes with the sound of a plunger. The flat field seems like it’s just another foot or two away, but she’s always descending toward it, never reaching it.

  I, uh, think we need to go back, Jaime says.

  Rebecca weighs that suggestion, decides Jaime isn’t interested in her mom’s well-being. The girl’s scared. Actually scared of what Rebecca’s fixing to do. “Oh, I don’t think so,” Rebecca growls.

  What do you think you’re going to see out there?

  “You tried very hard to get me down here just a few hours ago.”

  Jaime thinks, Shit, then catches herself—remembers she’s on the same circuit as old Mom. These wires every kind of crossed.

  It’s not that I wanted to go out there, Jaime tells her. It’s that I’m finally learning how to control you. I thought I needed to climb my way out . . . literally. And you know how close I almost came? But it turns out that’s not it. I only need to settle in. Become you.

  “Lock me away inside my own body,” Rebecca whispers. “Not going to happen.” They both trudge willingly toward the torchlight. Rebecca lifts the axe as if to solidify her determination.