The Edge of Everything

by Jeff Giles

  Zoe had to tell her mom she was okay. She groaned at the thought of expending any more energy—she was, after all, about to fall asleep sitting up, draped in a rug that looked like a giant Danish. But before she closed her eyes, Zoe rallied long enough to do two final things for the day. She checked on Jonah. He lay beside her snoring lightly like a soft little machine. His cheeks were hot, but he seemed basically fine.

  Then she texted her mother a single word. She knew it wouldn’t go through—she knew she’d have to keep hitting Try Again—but she did it anyway.

  She texted: Safe.

  At 7:30, Zoe fell asleep just long enough to have a single violent dream. She was in a white room with a bare wood floor. Animals were chained all around her. She didn’t know what kind of animals they were—maybe they were imaginary creatures that her brain invented—but they were vicious and snarling, all teeth, claws, and saliva. And they were straining at their chains, trying furiously to rip them out of the wall. Zoe stood in the center of the room. They were inches away from her on all sides, howling and screeching. And then snow started falling into the room somehow. She lifted her face and let the flakes drift down on her. She felt relieved for a second. When she looked back down again, Jonah was suddenly beside her. He said he would fight the creatures and save her. She forbade him. She told him to stand still, to stand perfectly still. But the animals were wailing so loudly that he couldn’t hear her and thought she was saying, “Yes, kill them, Jonah. Kill them all.”

  The last thing she could remember was Jonah saying, “Yeah, I’m definitely gonna,” and stepping into all those wet, flashing teeth.

  It took forever to swim up out of the dream. And the howling followed her, because Uhura was at the door making a crazy racket. She barked so loudly it was astonishing. The noise was like a physical presence in the room. Zoe couldn’t think.

  As for Spock, he was hiding under a rug—all you could see was a big quaking bubble.

  Zoe went to the door, afraid to pet Uhura when she was so wired.

  “What’s going on, girlfriend?” she said softly. “Shhh. It’s okay, it’s okay.”

  She reached out to stroke the dog with her palm, but Uhura snapped at her—something she’d never done, not to anyone, ever—and began hurling herself at the door. She thumped against it three times, loud as a monster knocking.

  “Do you have to pee or what?” Zoe said.

  She opened the door. Uhura bolted, and Zoe followed her out, her entire nervous system grateful that the barking had ceased.

  It was pretty dark, and there was no moon, but there must have been light coming from somewhere because the lake was shining. The blizzard had passed quickly. All that remained was a light snowfall. Zoe shivered and noticed again how badly her body ached. The only thing holding her bones together was pain.

  She looked around for Uhura, and began worrying about how she was going to get Jonah home in the morning.

  Then she saw a truck barreling down the driveway toward the house, its tires kicking up snow.

  It was an ugly, banged-up old pickup. Technically, it was black but it’d been patched in so many places that it looked like it had a skin disease. Zoe couldn’t see the driver. All she could make out was an arm holding a cigarette out the window. For a second, she watched, in the semidarkness, as the red dot of the cigarette floated closer and closer. It was hypnotizing.

  When she snapped out of it, she saw that Uhura was flying up the driveway toward the truck—directly toward it, unwavering, like she could block it with her body. Zoe didn’t even have a chance to scream.

  Either the driver didn’t see the dog in his headlights, or didn’t care. About a hundred feet from the house, there was a terrible thud. Uhura’s body was thrown into a snowbank.

  The snow kept falling as if nothing had happened.

  And the driver kept coming. He pulled up to the house. Got out. Left the engine running. Slid a new cigarette into his gross, chapped little mouth and, without even glancing back to see what had happened to Uhura, turned to Zoe.

  He looked like hate. He was middle-aged with a graying buzz cut and acne scars. His clothes—pleated black pants, a white shirt with blue stripes—were clearly bought to impress people once upon a time but they couldn’t have gotten him far, because they were so dirty now that a washing machine would have spit them back out.

  Zoe raced down the steps and knelt over Uhura in the snow. The dog was shaken, but alive.

  The man didn’t say a word. He certainly didn’t apologize. He just stood there, his eyes sliding over Zoe’s body and leaving slime trails like snails. Men had looked at her like this ever since she was 12. When she first talked to her mother about it, her mom had said, “Zoe, sit down for a second. It’s time I taught you the meaning of the phrase ‘horrible lowlife perv.’” Zoe had always loved her for that.

  This particular lowlife was grinning, which made her veins twitch.

  “You hit my dog,” she said. “Are you insane?”

  He laughed, then his eyes got hard.

  “That ain’t your dog,” he said. “Just ’cause a couple old folks get themselves dead don’t mean you can come along and snatch up their dogs.” He flicked his cigarette on the driveway, where it fizzled out in the snow. “And whereabouts is the other one—the chickenshit one?”

  He knew Spock and Uhura.

  “Who are you?” Zoe said.

  “Who am I? I’m somebody who hates standing in the friggin’ cold. Also, I’m somebody who hates questions. Now where’s the other damn dog?”

  “That’s a question,” said Zoe.

  The man barked out a laugh.

  “Well, look who’s got a mouth on her! Tell you what, girlie, you can call me Stan, how about that? As in, Stan the Man. I’ll call you … Zoe. How’s that grab you?”

  And he knew her.

  “Not so goddamn smart-alecky now, are you?” he said.

  Uhura struggled to her feet. She shook the snow off her fur and started to growl again. Stan walked toward the dog with a look that Zoe didn’t like. Uhura growled louder, like a rocket about to take off. Zoe stepped between them. She had no plan whatsoever.

  “Well, she knows you,” she said. “And she hates you.”

  “Yeah, well, this bitch here and I got some history, don’t we,” he said. “And I’m more of a cat person.”

  He stopped a couple of feet from Zoe, close enough that she could smell the cigarette smoke leaking out of his mouth, as well as the sour breath beneath it. Up close, his acne scars were so deep it looked like he’d been hit with buckshot.

  “You gonna move out of my way?” he said. “I came here lookin’ for money, but apparently I gotta kick a little doggy ass first.”

  Zoe was scared and had no idea what to do. He must have seen that, because he didn’t wait for an answer.

  He sprang at her.

  Everything happened at once. Stan shoved Zoe down onto the driveway. Uhura lunged at him and bit his hand so hard that he let loose a shriek. It turned out that Stan was pretty chickenshit himself.

  Uhura refused to let go. Stan exploded with profanity and wheeled around in pain. The dog hung on to his hand by her teeth, even when her feet were dangling off the ground.

  “Mother of god,” Stan screeched, “I am going to kill this thing dead.”

  Then, from out of nowhere, something struck him in the head. A rock. Blood trickled down around his ear. He spat out a vivid streak of curses. He and Zoe both turned to the porch, where Jonah was standing with a fierce look on his face.

  “It was me, Zoe!” he said proudly. “I got him! It was me!”

  Stan lurched toward Jonah, but Uhura still wouldn’t let go. She was furious and wild. It was like watching someone wrestle an alligator.

  Zoe ran up the steps to Jonah. He hugged her hard around the waist, then opened his fist: his pink palm was full of rocks.

  “I’m gonna get him again,” he said.

  “Don’t, Jonah,” she said. “He doesn’
t fight fair, so we’re not going to fight. Okay? Say okay. I want to hear you say okay.”

  “Okay, Zoe. I won’t get him again—but I could.”

  Stan finally threw Uhura into his pickup and locked her in. The dog clawed at the window. Her breath fogged the glass. It was awful to watch. Jonah buried his face in Zoe’s coat.

  Stan was sweating now. He was shaking with rage and rubbing his buzz cut to try to calm down. Blood ran down the right side of his face. What appeared to be mascara ran down the left—he’d apparently been using it to dye an eyebrow. As sweat washed it away, Zoe could see that the otherwise black brow had a creepy tuft of pure white.

  Stan went to the back of his truck, lifted a tarp heavy with snow, and pulled out what looked, in the darkness, like a poker from a fireplace. He walked toward Jonah and Zoe.

  He pointed the poker at them like a weapon.

  “Now where,” he demanded, “is the other … motherfrickin’ … dog?”

  Zoe didn’t answer, but Jonah flew toward the house, which gave it away. She raced after him and bolted the door the second they were inside. She could hear Stan leaping up the steps behind them.

  Jonah was in the living room, pushing a coffee table in front of the doorway, like a barricade. Nobody made better forts than her brother. Well, nobody made more forts than her brother, anyway.

  Within seconds, Stan was bashing at the front door.

  Zoe tried to call the police. She couldn’t get a signal. The text to her mom was still unsent, like a plane that would never be cleared for takeoff. She wished her mom had known they were safe in those few moments when they actually were.

  The next thing Zoe knew, Stan had shoved the coffee table aside and stormed into the living room, his breathing heavy and ragged. Zoe and Jonah raced behind the couch just to get something between them and the intruder. Jonah held a floral cushion in front of his chest like it would protect him, which, even in the terror of the moment, made Zoe’s heart hurt.

  Stan ignored her. He loomed over Jonah.

  “Hey there, little guy, I’m Stan the Man,” he said. “Where’s the other dog?”

  He waited for an answer like he wasn’t going to wait long.

  Spock was still under the rug, the tiniest bit of his tail poking out. If Stan had been any less enraged, he would have spotted him immediately. Zoe willed herself, and Jonah, not to look in the dog’s direction.

  As Stan stood there panting, she noticed for the first time what a big, grotesque head he had—how awkwardly it bobbed on his skinny neck. He looked like a dead sunflower.

  “Don’t talk to my brother,” she said.

  It wasn’t courage. It was disgust.

  Jonah inched closer to her. He wasn’t pretending to be brave anymore. In a moment, he was crying so hard that his shoulders started to shake.

  Zoe smoothed his hair out of his eyes. She told him everything was going to be okay.

  “Now don’t go telling him that,” Stan groaned, his white eyebrow wriggling like a caterpillar. “That is what they call a falsehood. Because it sure as hell ain’t gonna be okay. In fact, it’s gonna be a big ugly mess of not okay if you don’t tell me the location of the other damn dog.”

  He twirled the poker like a baton. He wanted to seem menacing, but nearly dropped the thing on his foot.

  Jonah struggled to speak. Finally he forced the words out, stuttering through his tears: “W-what are you going to d-do to Spock?”

  Stan snorted.

  “Aw, I’m just gonna give him a bath, little guy,” he said.

  “Don’t talk to my brother.”

  “I d-don’t believe you. And d-don’t call me little guy. My daddy called me that.”

  This shut Stan up for a second. But what he said next was the vilest thing yet somehow: “I knew your daddy, little guy. Met him back when we was shrimpy, like you.”

  “Do not talk to my brother!”

  “Your old man never mentioned me, little guy? Well, there was a time when we were blood brothers. But I’m guessing he never said a word about—hell, about the first twenty years of his life, probably! You barely knew who he was. And then he died in some goddamn cave? And nobody even bothered to go get his body? What the hell kind of people are you?”

  “DO NOT TALK TO MY BROTHER, YOU PSYCHOTIC DICK!”

  There was a split second of silence, a stalemate where all they heard was the wind.

  And then Spock sneezed.

  Stan turned to the bubble under the rug and hooted with pleasure.

  “Classic,” he said.

  He grabbed the dog, bound him up in the rug, and stuck him under one arm.

  “Time for chickenshit’s bath,” he said, and gestured out to the frozen lake. “Hope he don’t mind cold water.”

  He bounced the sharp point of the poker on the floor like it was a walking stick.

  “Do not follow me, big sister,” he told Zoe, his eyes crawling over her body once more, “or you’ll get more action than you can handle.”

  Once he’d gone, she and Jonah sat on the couch, stunned. After a moment, she took his face in her hands so she’d know he was listening.

  “I need to go out there,” she said. “To get the dogs back. And I need you to stay here. Okay, Jonah? I need to hear you say okay. Can you say okay for me—and mean it?”

  Jonah wriggled until Zoe let go of his face, then scrunched his eyebrows down, like a teacher had told him to put on his thinking cap.

  “Okay, I w-won’t go outside,” he said.

  “Thank you,” said Zoe.

  “But you can’t go either. That m-man doesn’t f-fight fair, so we’re not going to f-fight. Right? You said.”

  “How about if I just go for five minutes?”

  “No, Zoe.”

  “Okay, how about two minutes?”

  She was trying to calm him down by teasing him a bit, negotiating the way he always did.

  “No, Zoe! No minutes! I want you here.” He stopped and fished around for words. “Even I get scared sometimes.”

  Zoe knew if she went outside, Jonah would follow her, and she couldn’t take the chance. So she did the unheroic thing, which she hated herself for. She sat on the couch with her arm around her brother and made certain he never looked out the window behind them. It wasn’t as hard to distract him as she thought it would be. They found the wicker basket with Betty’s knitting supplies, and Jonah starting fixing the hole at the top of Zoe’s hat. For a while, the only sound in the room was the clicking of needles, though at one point, Jonah paused to scold her: “You really should take better care of your things.”

  Zoe tried not to look out the window either. She didn’t look when she heard Stan walk past them toward the lake, his boots crunching over the snow and Spock whimpering inside the rug. She didn’t look when Jonah began rubbing his eyes and said what he always said when his body was shutting down from too much stimulation and he was seesawing on the edge of sleep: “I’m not tired. My eyes just hurt.” She didn’t even look when he put down the needles and fell asleep with his head in her lap.

  But then she heard Stan hacking at the ice on the lake with the poker, trying to stab his way down to the water. And that’s when she looked.

  He was making a hole to drown the dogs in.

  There were binoculars on the coffee table. Zoe grabbed them. The night was black and starless. A void. The world had just been … shut off.

  Stan was working by the light of his truck’s headlights. He struggled to hold Spock as he chipped deeper and deeper. For a second the dog managed to squirm out of Stan’s arms—but he couldn’t move fast enough on the ice. He slipped and slid desperately until Stan grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and threw him into the hole.

  Then Stan pushed Spock’s head under the water with his foot.

  When he was sure the dog couldn’t climb out, he loped back to his truck for Uhura.

  For the next few moments, he didn’t see what Zoe saw.

  He didn’t see the lake begin
to glow, gradually at first and then—though it made no sense—brighter and brighter until it looked like the ice covered not water but fire.

  And he didn’t see the figure at the farthest edge of the lake moving toward them—moving across the ice, moving calmly, yes, but as fast as a galloping horse.

  Zoe was at the window now, with no memory of having stood up and walked toward it. It was the window, she realized later, that made it possible for her to watch all this without thinking she’d lost her mind: not just because the pane of glass separated her from everything happening out there, but because it was like a screen and, if she was going to be honest, she’d watched a lot of crazy stuff on TV.

  She walked out of the living room. Out of the house. It was like she was being pulled by a rope.

  Stan slammed the door of his truck. He had Uhura locked under his arm—it was her turn for a “bath”—and he’d clamped her mouth shut with one hand. The dog was seething but helpless.

  Zoe had the binoculars trained on Stan when he turned back toward the lake and saw it blazing in the darkness—and when he first noticed the figure shooting toward him, covering hundreds of feet in an instant.

  Stan was terrified.

  But, almost immediately, his face turned cocky and hateful again, as if he believed stupidity could protect him from anything.

  “Now what in the hell is all this shit?” he said.

  Stan had hardly gotten the last word out before the figure was on him. He dropped Uhura so he could defend himself. The dog ran to Zoe, who was standing off in the darkness, and leaped into her arms.