by J. Thorn
“Where the fuck is she?”
Jasper turned and spit into the gravel. He smiled at Ravna, the tobacco juice leaving brown stains on the few teeth still in his mouth. “Sir, I ain’t seen nobody here—”
Ravna rushed forward and grabbed Jasper by his shirt. The smell of motor oil mixed with his overwhelming body odor made Ravna sway. The boy stood still, absorbing Ravna’s anger and yet not backing down either.
“Stop this hillbilly horseshit and tell me what the fuck is going on.”
“Sir. You’re gonna take yer hands off of me and step back so I’m not provoked into using force to resolve this here situation.”
Jasper’s vocabulary caught Ravna off guard. He released the boy’s shirt and stepped back as suggested. “Karen. Karen and the fucking car. What is going on?”
“And you wonder why we still fly that flag? A hundred and fifty years later and we’re still your bitches.”
Ravna stood. He folded his arms, realizing that the young man in the ball cap doused with axle grease was now in control of the situation.
“I just got tired of it. Got sick of the condescending attitude y’all bring down here with you. You roll through here on your way to God-knows-where. Shit, wasn’t much of a decision when it came.”
“What are you talking—”
“I ain’t done, sir,” Jasper growled through his teeth, interrupting Ravna’s question. “Shut yer goddamn mouth if you ever want to see your little tart again.”
Ravna stood, beads of sweat breaking on his forehead in the cooling night air.
“Mercedes. Lexus. BMW. Soon as I see ’em coming I know they’s got potential. Most of those fucks have the fucking attitude ridin’ shotgun with him. Yours wasn’t one of those European sports cars and ya had the lady next to ya, but you brought the attitude just the same. I ain’t got no remorse for it. Y’all chose your fate.”
“Where is Karen?” Ravna asked. He did so with a brief whisper.
“The first couple of times, I did have to bury my conscience. I had to lie to myself. I said, ‘Don’t worry, Jasper. They’re evildoers from Sodom and Gomorrah. They deserve it.’ Maybe they was running or maybe they was already the pillar of salt. Don’t matter none to me.
“My pops, he was the one that told me I had to kiss yer ass. He said that there weren’t never gonna be enough locals to support our business. Hell, most of them ain’t never had cash anyways. Folks ’round here barter. They ain’t got no real money. When Pops left, I knew he was right. Knew I had to strike the deal and by that time, I wasn’t all that upset ’bout it no more.”
Ravna shuffled his feet. He looked down and saw the tire tracks in the gravel. They came from the road, and another set went past the pump and back out toward it. He took a step backward and saw a pair of footprints heading from the pumps to the women’s room on the right side of the building.
“Nah, you ain’t goin’ nuts. Some of the Yanks ain’t as bright as you, sir. Some of them got themselves shot right where you’re standing. They either couldn’t piece it together or were too busy panicking. Don’t leave no time for the small things, ya know?”
Jasper reached into his back pocket and pulled out a book of Sudoku. He flipped through the pages, enjoying the act of pretending to understand what to do with it. “Ain’t never seen no crossword puzzle with numbers before.”
“I’ve got money. What do you want?”
“Y’all got money. Y’all had it since you skimmed notes off the tobacco trade in the colonies. Had it since you sold us the Negro slaves to work the cotton fields and then let ’em have their goddamn freedom. Yep, I’m sure you do have money, sir. You know what they say about money and happiness, don’t ya?”
Ravna closed his eyes. He heard the crickets come alive in the rolling peaks of the Blue Ridge Mountains. He could feel the breeze pick up as the September night began to disperse the heat of the day. He saw Karen’s face in his mind. He blinked again and looked back at Jasper, waiting.
“Now that you know I ain’t some dumb hick kid, maybe we can talk? For real?”
“What do you want?”
“It ain’t about what I want, sir. I get my delivery fee one way or the other. Don’t matter to me what he does with the package.”
Ravna waited.
“So here’s how it’s gonna go down. You see that path over yonder?” Jasper nodded at a trailhead to the left of the garage. Ravna’s eyes followed and then turned back to Jasper. “Good. All you gotta do is walk that. You’ll meet up with your new business associate and then you and I is done with our end.” Jasper tossed the Sudoku book at Ravna’s feet.
“I hope you rot in hell,” Ravna said to Jasper.
“Where you think I am now, sir? You the one that turned into my service station. You remember that, sir.”
“You’d better hope I don’t come back.”
“Ain’t something I’m gonna lose sleep over, sir. Nobody ever comes back.”
Jasper turned his back on Ravna and strolled toward the office door of his gas station. He whistled “Yankee Doodle Dandy” as he walked, throwing a wink and a nod of his baseball cap at Ravna as he walked by.
Ravna looked at the highway and felt an icy sensation creep through his stomach. He picked up Karen’s book of Sudoku and put it in his pocket, drawing a deep breath and walking past the garage to the edge of the parking lot. Ravna stood in the dirt, tinged gray by the light of the moon rising above the rounded peaks. The forest buzzed with nocturnal sounds at a volume not possible anywhere but the remote wilderness. He gazed once more at the dilapidated gas station, his eyes catching Jasper sitting on a stool behind a cash register that had not opened in years. The boy nodded toward the trail, a smile splitting his face into a sickly grin. Ravna turned away and stepped into the black, gaping maw of the forest.
***
Every limb reached out to grasp his arm. Some of the trees had already dropped leaves during late summer, and those that were dead appeared to have had their bony appendages pushed by the wind. A light fog descended to the forest floor, making it difficult to see the path more than ten feet ahead. The air smelled of decomposing leaves and mold, all doused in a fine scent of pine. The crickets chattered, a symphony of insects rising and falling into a slow, rhythmic march.
He considered calling out to Karen, but realized it would be useless. If Jasper was telling the truth—and Ravna had no reason to believe he was not—someone else awaited his arrival, someone holding Karen. Someone waiting to extract a price for their freedom. He knew who it would be. Ravna laughed. The situation was tailor-made for a budget horror film: The clueless city slickers invade the domain of the apparently slack-jawed hillbilly only to realize that he is the one in control. A snap came from his right, destroying his attempt to distract him from the gravity of the situation.
“Who’s there?” he asked.
Ravna decided it was best to keep moving, to accept whatever the night brought and to do it without delay. He loved Karen and knew they had a future together, whatever that meant. He would do anything to keep her from harm. He didn’t hear the noise again, and the crickets resumed their symphony. Ravna knew who he would meet at the end of the trail. He knew they would come face-to-face again, but now he had put Karen in jeopardy as well, and that felt worse than anything the creature might do to him.
The moon rose higher, its face now leering at Ravna, taunting him as he walked deeper into the mountain wilderness. He tried not to think about the others who had made this march before him. Jasper had clearly sent many on this descent into doom. He had enjoyed it every time. Ravna hoped he would have the opportunity to return on this path with Karen, reclaim their car, and rejoin a life he had tried to rebuild. The creature had stolen that normalcy from him, but Ravna had been the one to pursue that knowledge in the first place. He had pursued ancient desires, and now he would pay for his curiosity.
Ignorance really is bliss, he thought.
The path forked, and Ravna stopped. He glance
d in both directions until something caught his eye. Something hung from a branch several feet off the trail, toward the left side of the fork. Ravna stepped over a fallen tree and reached out. His hand felt the smooth, soft fabric, and his heart lurched in his chest when he realized he was holding Karen’s torn bikini bottom.
***
He stood fixed to the spot, wondering if the message had been delivered or if the act had yet to be fulfilled. The fog had lifted with the rising moon, laying the forest bare of all its secrets. Ravna heard a distant noise that made him turn his head toward the left path. At first, the sound barely survived through the swelling chorus of crickets, but with each second, the sound intensified as if it represented the second hand on a watchtower.
Clack, clack, clack.
Ravna imagined the sound being created by someone smacking two stones together. He shivered as his thoughts went to a low-budget horror movie that predated reality television. Ravna remembered the way the filmmakers had shot the movie on a handheld VHS camera as the teenage characters became lost in the woods. The unseen evil had used stones to foreshadow their inevitable fate.
He’s summoning me, Ravna thought, breaking through his memories. Pulling me in.
Ravna tucked Karen’s bikini bottom into his pocket and tried not to think of all its implications. He pretended not to think about the situations she may have been in that ended with it being torn from her body.
“I hear you,” he said, talking the left path and walking toward the summoning.
Ravna felt the forest close in upon him. He had spent many hours as a child running and playing in the trees. He knew the solitude of the woods and the unspoken mysteries that fascinated him. Ravna understood why so many stories imbued the setting with magical happenings and fantastic creatures. Life sprang forth and yet remained mostly hidden. Brushing aside a simple pile of leaves would reveal an entire ecosystem within. Ravna remembered his time alone in the forest, hours spent sitting and thinking. Through all of that, he had never really been fearful.
There was something different about this forest, and it was more than the sounds and the demon creating them. These trees stood like malevolent warriors, forcing him to walk the gauntlet and face the unthinkable. He considered Jasper’s role and could not determine whether the boy had brought the infection to the forest or whether the forest had tainted him. It was the universal question, the one most religions asked but could not answer. Ravna contemplated the origin of this evil, this disease. He looked down and questioned whether it seeped from the rich, dark soil or whether the entity had brought it forth, turning a vibrant place into a killing floor.
He walked down the path and began to notice red pinpoints hovering in the air. Ravna laughed, knowing that he was beyond the point of controlling his own fate. Those lights belonged within the eyes of minor demons that would deliver him regardless of the actions he took. They increased in number and hovered closer to the trail, careful not to reveal their identity.
“Where else do you think I can possibly go?” Ravna asked. He shook his head and kicked at a lone shoe sitting on the trail. “I always thought it’d be the other way around. I was sure I’d be hunting you.”
The eyes danced and darted, their movements seemingly spurred by Ravna’s words.
“But I guess we never know quite what to expect, do we?” Ravna stopped. Despite the cool evening, he began to sweat, running a hand across his forehead. He felt as though he had not been walking far, yet his bones ached. The path crossed a dry creek bed and angled up and around a rise of the forest floor. He saw flickers of light flashing from the trees ahead. After taking several more steps in that direction, Ravna recognized the light as torches. Smoke curled and rose as if the trees themselves were on fire, casting a bitter, burning smell into the air. As he came closer to the clearing, Ravna passed remnants of past lives, articles of clothing that had once been worn by others who had walked the same path. Ravna had to assume they had been left behind when the corporal body no longer needed them. He knew what it meant to find a shoe deep inside a primordial forest.
As Ravna came closer and the light from the torches spread to the dark trunks of the ancient trees, he caught a glimpse of something swaying against the sky. Like insects pinned to a board, corpses hung lifelessly from the trunks. Ghastly faces drooped in immortal screams, strands of hair lying on bare skulls. He guessed that some had been there for decades while others pulsed with insects burrowing beneath rotten flesh. A fire pit raged in the middle of the circle. Straight, white lines originated from beneath the fire, each one connecting to the base of a tree holding a body. Ravna thought that if he had been able to view the clearing from above, the lines would undoubtedly form some type of profane symbol, a disturbing image recognized across eons. The clicking grew louder, and Ravna knew he was close to the source. He spun to his right and detected movement. The floating sets of red eyes had dissipated into the dark, and had been replaced by shadows running through the clearing. He blinked and shivered as if each movement stole a sliver of his sanity.
At the opposite end of the clearing, on the other side of the fire pit, stood a black mouth that threatened to swallow him whole. The entrance to the cave jutted outward as if a tremor deep inside the earth had spit it up. The opening devoured light, leaving a black void of despair. The clicking noise emanated from it, warning Ravna that his journey would not end in the clearing surrounded by decaying bodies. He would have to go beyond, to the infernal source, if he had any hope.
“Come out, you fucking coward,” he muttered, and waited. He felt a tremor in his chest, and a piece of him hoped there would not be a response. His mind raced ahead, picturing the noise created by an animal digging in the earth. Ravna could imagine the sunrise bringing the truth, illuminating trees covered in leaves and moss, not human remains. But his intellect knew better. He had accepted this gauntlet and knew it had not ended in the closet of that room, the one that had reeked of institutional mental care and rotten body odor. The message left in blood was not one of finality, but rather a delaying of the inevitable. Ravna knew he would face the creature again, but was not prepared to do so like this. If he survived and Karen did not, Ravna was not sure he could live with that guilt.
He shuffled along, thinking that the creature was not there. He had almost convinced himself that there would not be a response when it came, as if rolling off a greasy tongue.
“I knew you would come.”
The words oozed from the cave and raised the hair on Ravna’s neck.
***
The phone rang though the cord was cut, frayed, and lying on the edge of the filthy carpet. Jasper looked at the handset and the dial beneath it. Layers of grease covered most of the numbers. It rang again, forcing Jasper to drop the magazine to the counter, where the young woman on the pages lay naked, unfettered, and unashamed. He took one last look at her spread legs, at the finger tucked into the corner of her mouth while she eyed the camera in a way that made the heat rise within his pants.
Jasper reached over and yanked the receiver from the cradle, a snarl grabbing his lip and pulling it upward. He slammed the other fist down, knocking the dirty magazine to the floor, where it landed like a dead bird.
“Bad timing,” he said. He heard breathing on the other end, a wet, gurgling sound like tuberculosis. “You know I don’t like being interrupted when I’m spending time with my ladies.”
The breathing on the other end continued. Jasper waited. The instructions were not always the same. Once, he had made the mistake of hanging up and doing her like he had the one before. But he only made that mistake once, as the creature’s retribution was something that Jasper would never forget. He realized that the demon would tolerate his anger, impatience, even his grotesque sexual fetishes, but beneath that acceptance was an understanding that the ultimate goal would be realized, and if Jasper strayed from that again, it would mean his last breath.
“It is in motion.”
As soon as Jasper heard the
voice, he shoved a finger inside his ear. The words stuck there like sloppy earwax, becoming an annoyance that would eventually lead to pressurized pain. He looked out of the windows smeared with grime and lost hope as a pair of headlights pierced the office. He held his breath, waiting to see if they would continue or stop. When the lights spun away and Jasper could see the red eyes of the brake lights disappear into the mountain’s curves, he took a deep breath.
“Thought I might get me two in one night!” Jasper chuckled. “Two-doe limit in these parts, eh?”
The creature on the other end remained silent at first, his breath bubbling through the wire. “This one takes precedence over any other.”
The command had been given, and Jasper dispelled with the jokes. “What’s so special ‘bout this one?” he asked. “Had my way with pussy that was way wetter than this one.”
Another flash of headlights caught Jasper’s attention. He held his breath as the car drove past like the one minutes before. Two in one hour, he thought. Worth checking into. When Jasper’s attention returned to the phone, the creature spoke again.
“None other than this one shall be taken this evening. All others pass without mark.”
Jasper leaned back on the ratty office chair, the one armrest dangling toward the floor at an unnatural angle. He spit into the corner, where he presumed a family of mice had taken residence inside an empty cardboard box.
“Two went by as we was talkin’, hoss. Not sure what that’s about.”
“None other than this one shall be taken this evening. All others pass without mark.”
“Yeah, I heard you the first time.” Jasper waited, fearful that his last remark would push the creature beyond its capacity to tolerate him. He paused, a hand rubbing the stubble on his chin.
“You must deliver her.”
Jasper smiled, knowing exactly what would be permissible during the “delivery.”
As if reading his mind, the voice responded, “Untouched.”
“Goddamn it!” Jasper shouted. “You know it ain’t fair to ask me to work without pay. That fucking sucks!”
