by Jeff Giles
Stan tried to look tough and raised his fists. Instead, he just looked ridiculous. He hopped around the stranger like an old-timey boxer.
The stranger was X, though Zoe wouldn’t call him that for days.
X was so pale that his face seemed to give off a light all its own. From a distance, she couldn’t even guess at his age, though she could see he had beautiful long hair that was actually messy and uncared for, not just styled to look that way. He was wearing a long coat—deep blue, with an iridescent shimmer like a soap bubble. He didn’t have a hat or gloves or a scarf, but the cold seemed not to touch him anyway. His face had a thin sheen of sweat, as if he were feverish.
X didn’t say a word. He took Stan by the coat and hurled him onto the glowing ice. He didn’t do it in anger. He didn’t do it like an action hero. He just did it like it had to be done.
He never once looked at Zoe, but she could tell that he knew she was there.
Stan skidded across the frozen lake, toward the hole he had made. He came to a stop, one side of his face clawed red by the ice.
In a flash, X stood over him.
Stan looked up, trying to understand what was happening—and how he’d lost control of the situation.
“I don’t know what you want, superfreak,” he said, “but whatever it is, you ain’t gettin’ it. This is my party.”
X still didn’t speak. It was clear to Zoe that he wasn’t going to bother until somebody said something worth responding to.
X walked toward the hole and pulled out Spock. The dog was wet and shivering, like he’d just been born, but he warmed instantly in X’s arms. Then Spock did something he’d only ever done to Jonah and her: he licked X’s cheek. X patted his head tentatively, as if he wasn’t sure how. It was a tiny gesture but because of all the pain and weirdness of the last few hours, it made Zoe’s eyes fill with tears.
She dropped the binoculars into the snow and went closer. Somehow, she wasn’t afraid. She wanted X to see her. Who was he? Why was he here? Why wouldn’t he look at her?
While X was comforting Spock, Stan tried to stand.
X merely shook his head no, and Stan’s feet went out from under him. He fell back onto the ice.
X removed his coat. Beneath it, he wore a rough short-sleeved shirt, though (to be honest) all Zoe saw were his arms. They were ropy with muscles and covered with primitive tattoos of, among other things, animals she didn’t recognize.
He wrapped Spock in his coat and set him down gently. The coat shimmered in the darkness, like a dying fire.
He turned to Stan, who was still clinging absurdly to the idea that he could talk his way out of this.
“Okay, superfreak,” Stan said. “Tell me what you want and maybe you can have it. I’m a reasonably reasonable person.”
What happened next was like a ritual from some secret society in the woods or from the Middle Ages, maybe—a trial where everybody knows ahead of time that the verdict will be “guilty.”
X was shaking, but everything he did, he did calmly and methodically. He seemed to regret that he’d been sent to the lake. And that was the feeling Zoe got—that he’d been sent here, maybe even forced to come. He still hadn’t looked at her, but the way these thoughts suddenly took root in her head, not as theories or guesses but as facts, as certainties, made her think that he’d somehow put them there himself. How was that possible?
Stan was on his knees now, struggling again to stand.
X put a hand on his shoulder and in an instant Stan was immobile, conscious but frozen still.
X walked a few feet, turned his back to Stan, and pulled off his shirt. His shoulders were broad, his waist slim as a swimmer’s. Unlike the bruised skin of his face, X’s back was smooth and untroubled. A blank canvas. It occurred to Zoe that someone or something had spared it—and for a reason. She honestly didn’t know if she came up with this idea herself or if he gave it to her.
X spread his arms wide. His shoulder blades flashed in the darkness and his back became broader still.
Zoe couldn’t help it: she took a photo to put on Instagram later.
X seemed to be summoning something up. He let out a sharp cry, like he was trying to force a sickness out of his system. Then his back came alive with images.
His skin became a screen.
What played on X’s back looked almost like a home movie, jittery, dizzying, chaotic—and unearthly somehow. She and Stan watched, transfixed. Stan remained immobile. It was as if he were bound and tied by the air itself. Zoe stood in the dark not far away. They watched in shock, and then horror, each for their own reasons.
Suddenly, it occurred to Zoe that Jonah might have woken up—that he might be watching from the living room. Her eyes flew to the house.
The windows were black. Her brother might have been standing at one of them—there was no way to tell.
Zoe turned back to the movie. Bert and Betty were in it. They were cowering in the living room in the very same capital A by the lake. They were rigid with fear. Someone was circling them. Someone who’d burst into their home.
Zoe couldn’t see much of the intruder’s face—just a sliver of it, like a crescent moon. Still, she recognized the ugly buzz cut and the pitted skin. She saw the intruder walk to the fireplace, saw him hoist the lethal-looking poker and test its weight in his hand.
Stan tore his eyes away from X’s back, unable to look at what he had done. He turned to the house, hoping for relief.
X expected this. He extended his palm toward the long sloping roof of the A-frame, and in an instant the images were flashing there, too. Stan was shocked. He cast his eyes down. X knelt, pressing his hand to the ice. The orange glow disappeared, and for a second the world was black. Then suddenly the movie was playing beneath them—all around them—the figures giant and distorted, the voices booming.
Zoe couldn’t understand what anyone was saying. She couldn’t even figure out where the sound was coming from, though it was everywhere now. But she could see that Stan, Bert, and Betty were screaming. One of them in anger. Two of them in fear.
Then, suddenly, Uhura was in the movie, trying to protect Bert and Betty. She was barking wildly, like she had when Stan’s truck pulled up. Spock, amazingly, was howling, too.
In the movie, Betty took Bert’s hand and pulled him toward the door, toward safety. Bert looked bewildered. Childlike. As Betty tried to rush him outside, he stopped, as if he had all the time in the world, and took a peppermint out of a dish on the coffee table.
They burst outdoors just a few seconds ahead of Stan. Seeing them escape even for a moment made Zoe’s heart leap. She didn’t know why—she knew there was only one possible ending.
Stan went after them, clutching the poker.
Bert and Betty stumbled to their car, and Betty started the engine, but the tires spun uselessly in the snow. By the time they’d gone a hundred yards, Stan was close behind, shouting and gesturing savagely with the weapon.
The car struck a tree.
Zoe watched as Stan yanked Bert and Betty out of the car, and went after them with the poker.
She saw Betty in the snow. She saw Bert crying like a kid. She saw the dogs snap their jaws at Stan’s legs and she saw the psycho snap back at them sarcastically and then kick them in the stomach.
She saw the poker flash up and down.
Zoe saw Betty die.
She died trying to shield Bert’s body with her own.
Then Zoe saw Bert die.
He died sobbing over Betty. He died hiding his face behind his hands. He died pleading over and over in a high, terrified voice, “Gimme a break, I’m just an old codger. Gimme a break, gimme a break, gimme a break.”
Stan slid the Wallaces’ bodies, one after the other, into the lake.
When Zoe realized what she was seeing—when the evil of it really sunk its long fingernails into her—she looked back at the house, praying again that Jonah was still asleep.
Then she fell on her knees. She held Uhura to her ch
est. And she threw up into the snow until her throat was on fire.
By the time Zoe could stand, X had let his arms fall to his sides and tugged his shirt back over his head. The movie had sputtered to a stop. The lake glowed fiercely once more. X, looking sickly and spent, reached down and dragged Stan closer to the hole in the ice.
Stan hadn’t said a word while they watched the killings, but Zoe could see from his expression that something had been building inside him. It wasn’t guilt or sorrow—or even fear, anymore.
It was rage.
“This the part where I’m supposed to say I’m sorry and so forth?” he shouted at X. “Well, don’t hold your breath, superfreak. Them people were old as dirt. They was no damn use to anybody.”
X still hadn’t spoken. He looked down at Stan patiently, as if he knew everything he would say before he ran out of words.
Stan started up again, more quietly this time.
“Lookit,” he said. “I wasn’t aiming to hurt them—didn’t even bring a weapon. I was just looking to borrow one or two valuables. I expected them to be all meek and mild, because their brains were applesauce, correct? Yeah, I knew about that. I was real meticulous about that robbery. Took me nearabouts a month to plan it. I mean, I really did my homework. Which is ironical because when I was in high school? Never did my homework.”
In his terror, Stan had begun to babble.
“Anyway,” he said, “the whole thing coulda been a pleasant experience for everybody involved. Relatively speaking. But that old broad was a fighter—she was trying to keep me away from her man. Scratchin’ at my eyeballs and whatnot. Can’t say I predicted that. So things got more, uh, contentious and acrimonious, than I planned on. Joke is, I didn’t find anything worth a shit in that place. Been out here two or three times since and still ain’t found where they hid their damn money.”
Stan spat noisily on the ground.
“All right,” he said, “I got nothing else to say—except that you gotta hate god if you’re really fixing to drown me.”
And that was the thing that made X speak.
His voice was deep, but scratchy from lack of use. Zoe couldn’t tell what country he was from or even what century.
“Mark me well,” X said, then stopped to clear his throat and wipe the sweat from his forehead. “No one respects god’s love more than those of us damned to the Lowlands—for we know what it means to live without it.” He took Stan by the collar. “Now you will, too.”
He bent down and, though he looked too tired now to manage it, lifted Stan into the air.
Stan fought him, clung to his neck, scratched at his face.
X winced and, with what seemed like his last bit of strength, pushed Stan into the jagged hole in the ice.
Then he paused, turned—and looked straight at Zoe.
His eyes were overwhelming.
A wave rose inside Zoe’s chest. X seemed to be asking her a silent question. She thought maybe he wanted her permission to end Stan’s life.
Stan hadn’t even been aware that Zoe was standing there. He saw her now and gave her a sickening smile.
“Call him off, girlie,” he begged. “Please. Hell, I knew your father!”
X reddened, furious that Stan would dare to address Zoe.
“Stop your mouth,” he told him, “or I will plug it with my fist.”
X looked to Zoe again, and again she was shaken by the force of the connection. His eyes still held a question, but it wasn’t what she’d thought it was. She could see that now. He had no intention of sparing Stan, and wasn’t looking for her opinion. So what was he asking her then?
It came to her. Somehow X knew how much she had loved Bert and Betty. Somehow he knew that a lot of what was good and right about her was their doing—and that her hatred for Stan was like a fever under her skin. He was asking if she wanted to kill him herself.
Zoe felt a surge of something she couldn’t name. She didn’t even know if it was pain or relief. But it electrified her.
She walked across the ice toward X and Stan.
Stan was writhing spastically in the lake. The freezing water lapped into his horrible mouth. It was what he deserved, Zoe knew.
She walked as fast as she could without sliding sideways, planting her feet hard on the ice. She gained speed with every step. X never stopped looking at her, never stopped holding her with his eyes. Zoe still didn’t know what she was feeling, not exactly. She searched around in her mind for the word, and—though it didn’t seem possible—she could feel X inside her brain looking for it, too.
They found the word in the same instant.
It was not rage or vengeance.
It was mercy.
X’s eyes flashed with surprise. He pivoted away from Zoe and hurriedly put his boot on the top of Stan’s head, just as Stan had done to Spock.
He was about to push him under when Zoe hurled herself at him.
X was exhausted. Zoe was fierce.
She knocked him onto the ice before his boot came down.
three
She didn’t expect X to fall, but his body collapsed under her, and they went sprawling onto the lake. For half a second, they lay entangled. His skin smelled of pine and campfire smoke.
Zoe waited for him to spring up again, but he lay on his back, twitching with pain. He was more feverish than she’d realized. She got to her feet, and turned to Stan, who was sobbing in the water, his skin turning blue-gray. The thought of touching him repulsed her, but it wasn’t right that he die that way, no matter what he’d done.
She reached out with both hands and helped him out of the water. He stood in front of her shivering, his clothes soaked against his body. He looked scrawny and pathetic, like something that’d been pulled out of its shell.
“Hallelujah, girlie,” he said. “Your daddy’d be proud.”
It felt disgusting to be thanked by him.
Zoe said nothing. She just watched as he raced for his truck, the pale soles of his boots shining as he ran.
The engine coughed but wouldn’t start. Zoe knew what an engine sounded like when it wanted to cooperate. This one just wanted to be left in peace. After thirty full seconds of profanity—in which Stan strung together curses that she was pretty sure had never been strung together before—he got out of the truck, pulled a blanket from the back, and ran into the trees like an animal.
X sat up on the ice. She expected him to be in a rage, but he just stared at her, mournful and confused.
“What have you done?” he said.
Zoe didn’t answer—she didn’t really know what she’d done, other than act on instinct.
X turned to track Stan’s progress into the woods.
“Don’t go after him,” Zoe said. They were the first words she ever said to him and, though she often encased even the most sincere statements in sarcasm, she dropped her guard now. “Please. It’s wrong.”
X weighed her words.
“Yet if I do not go after him,” he said, “someone will surely come after me.”
But still he didn’t move. He lingered on the ice with Zoe, listening to branches break as Stan scurried up the hills in the dark. Why wasn’t X chasing him, Zoe wondered. Why was he doing what she wanted? Why would he care what she wanted?
“If you kill him, you’re as bad as he is,” she said. “It’s not our job to punish people.”
X lowered his head.
“Perhaps it is not yours,” he said.
Zoe stumbled back to Bert and Betty’s house to retrieve Jonah, pausing just long enough to take a picture of the license plate on Stan’s diseased-looking truck. Spock and Uhura followed her. X did, too. Zoe didn’t look back, but she could hear him wading through the snow behind her. He didn’t follow her inside. He stayed on the porch out of respect—or shyness, maybe. He hushed the dogs when they whimpered so he must have known somehow that Jonah was sleeping. Spock and Uhura lifted their heads and eventually X figured out that they wanted to be scratched under their chins. He knel
t and rubbed them cautiously and whispered their names. Zoe set a candle on the windowsill and watched for a long moment.
Jonah was still lying on the couch. He appeared to have slept through the chaos. But when Zoe went to lift him his body seemed tense, not the floppy mass of bread dough it should have been.
Holding Jonah made Zoe’s arms ache—she’d never get him home this way. Still, she couldn’t bear the thought of rousing him and forcing him to march back through the woods. He deserved to wake up in his bed, the nightmare over and his Nerf guns and Stomp Rockets right where he left them. She wanted innocence and forgetting for Jonah—all the more because she couldn’t have them for herself.
She laid him on the couch again, her palm cradling the back of his head like he was a newborn. Then she stood and waited for a solution to appear out of the ether.
Through the window, she saw X sitting with the dogs on his lap. His face was damp with sweat, and the snow on his coat was turning translucent as it melted. Spock nipped at him playfully, which seemed to startle him. Had he never played with dogs before? At last he understood what Spock wanted. He pretended his hands were birds and teased the dog by making them swoop and dive just beyond his reach.
X must have known he was being watched. He looked back at Zoe through the glass. She was struck again by how sick he’d become. But he seemed not to be asking for help but to be offering it. Did he have some plan for getting her and her brother back to their house? Because that was the only thing in the world Zoe wanted right now. She met X’s eyes. She didn’t move, she didn’t so much as mouth a word—but he nodded.
After that, she saw flashes of sky and what seemed like a video of the trees blurring by on fast-forward.
X was dizzy and staggering and in the grip of some sickness that Zoe had never seen.
But he carried them home.
Even in the darkness, Zoe could see that the snow in the driveway was untouched, and her heart sank at the sight of it: her mother hadn’t made it back yet. She was desperate to see her, but it was just as well that she wasn’t home. Zoe couldn’t have explained the strange figure who had delivered them and who—after refusing water, shelter, gloves, a hat, a blanket, and even veggie jerky (but then who said yes to veggie jerky?)—was now retreating in the direction of the woods.
