Ghost Hand

by Ripley Patton

  I shambled along behind Marcus like a pet zombie, a mindless creature no longer connected to my body. I was exhausted, but I didn’t have the energy to admit it. I was just thinking about letting my knees bend, about how nice it would feel to curl into a ball in a pile of leaves and sleep, when an awful smell hit my nostrils, black and bitter and cloying. Marcus stopped in front of me, and I stopped too, just barely keeping myself from running into his back.

  To our right, next to the road, two round, silver towers rose into the air, a pond of thick, putrid blackness pooling at their base. Under the moonlight, it was like something out of a dark fairy tale. In the light of day, I knew it was just two leaky oil tanks from the lumbering days, long forgotten. I’d written about them in my history paper. I’d even written a letter to the editor of the Greenfield Advocate, the town newspaper, demanding to know who was responsible for the land, and thus the clean-up of the spill. But they hadn’t even printed my letter, which probably meant whoever owned the land also sponsored the newspaper. If this was Marcus’s safe place, I wasn’t impressed.

  “This isn’t it,” he said, “but let’s rest.”

  I limped to the base of an old tree, upwind from the oil pools, and sat in a pile of leaves just like I’d imagined. After removing several acorns from beneath my butt, I was actually comfortable, though painfully thirsty.

  There was an old tin shed just off the road and Marcus walked over to it. I knew it was locked. And rusted shut. But I didn’t want to waste my breath telling him.

  Marcus reached out, pulled the door open, and disappeared into its little box of darkness. Before I could even grunt my surprise, he was back out, still carrying my bag of clothes with something else in his other hand. When he got closer, I could see it was one of those hydration packs. He must have broken into the shed earlier and stashed it there.

  “Here, have a drink,” he said, handing me the pack and sitting down next to me. As I sipped luke-warm water from the plastic mouth piece, he removed several acorns of his own from under his backside and pitched them in the road.

  “Leave some for me,” he said, taking the tube. He didn’t even wipe it off before sticking it in his mouth. He had nice teeth. Nice lips.

  He gave me another turn to drink, and there was something intimate about it, me watching him sip, him watching me. He was staring at my lips now, his eyes dark and serious. I handed him the tube, but he didn’t reach out to take it. He just kept staring at me, and I wanted him to slide his hand to the back of my neck, and pull me to him. I wanted his breath in my mouth. I wanted him to kiss me. And I was terrified he’d kiss me.

  But then my stomach growled, and we both laughed, and the moment was gone.

  He took the tube and clipped it onto the backpack.

  “Got any food in there?” I asked, eyeing a zipper on the outside of the pack. My head was starting to buzz from hunger.

  Marcus unzipped the pouch of the backpack, reached in, and handed me a handful of almonds.

  My hunger trumped my sore throat, so I popped one in my mouth.

  The buzzing was getting louder. Not my head then. Probably the blades.

  The blades.

  Which meant CAMFers.

  Except I didn’t have the blades anymore.

  I jumped up, finally recognizing the growing sound for what it was. Lights barreled down the road toward us, engines revved, male voices shouted. The CAMFers had found us.

  I spun, trying to figure out which way to run.

  Marcus stood up and said something, but the noise of the engines drowned him out.

  The CAMFers converged on us, three of them, all riding ATVs, all in a dark hodgepodge of leather and motorcycle gear, like hoodlum farmers. They circled up around us, trying to block off our escape. The only way left to run was toward the oil tanks and their pool of poison.

  One of the ATVs pulled up, only a few feet from where we stood.

  The man seated on it wore a full-face helmet. As he turned off his machine, all the other drivers followed suit, until the forest was silent again, except for the sound of three hot engines ticking in the darkness. The lead driver reached for his visor.

  I didn’t wait to see what he looked like. I hurled my handful of almonds right into his face, aiming for his eyes, and leapt at the ATV. My right foot hit the back wheel-well just behind the seat, and I pushed off, intending to jump over the ATV and beyond it. With their engines off, I’d have been able to make it into the thick trees before they could start them up again. And it would have worked too. If my foot hadn’t slipped. If my right knee hadn’t come crashing down on the metal back panel of the ATV with a crescendo of pain. If I hadn’t taken a tumble right over it and done a header in the dirt on the other side.

  I crumpled into a fetal position, cradling my throbbing head in my arms. Through a fog of pain I could hear the CAMFer swearing at me from up on the ATV.

  “Olivia, are you okay?” Marcus asked, kneeling next to me, putting his hand gently on my back.

  “What the hell was that about?” yelled the guy on the ATV. “She pepper-sprayed me. My eyes are burning.”

  “Shut up, you pussy!” Marcus yelled back. “She threw almonds at you. You’ve got salt in your eyes. I think you’ll live.”

  Marcus was yelling at the CAMFers. He’d just called one of them a pussy. Like he knew them.

  “Well, what’d she do that for?” the CAMFer asked.

  Marcus just ignored that question. “Olivia?” he said again, tugging at my arms which I was using to shield my broken head. “Can you hear me?”

  “Head—hurts—bad,” I managed to say between skull-piercing stabs of pain.

  I felt Marcus move away. He demanded that the CAMFers produce a first aid kit, which they promptly did. He came back, knelt next to me, and slipped one of his hands between my arms. “Take this,” he said, his fingers playing against my lips and shoving a couple pills between them, followed immediately by the hydration tube. I took it between my teeth and sucked, which caused an explosion of pain and stars inside my head. I must have gasped or sucked in a breath, because suddenly water was pouring into my lungs and I was choking, coughing, hacking. For a moment things went black and I didn’t even know if I had swallowed the pills or not.

  Marcus moved away again, and I wanted him back. Someone threw a blanket over me and slowly peeled my arms away from my head. They flashed a light in my eyes and it hurt, and I turned my head to the side and threw up. There were voices. Marcus talking to the CAMFers. Them answering back. I knew they were talking about me, but the words held no meaning beyond the shape of the pain they made in my head.

  “Hey, stay awake.” Marcus was back, lifting me in his arms. “You have a concussion, and we still need to get you to that safe place I was telling you about.”

  “It hurts,” I protested, wishing he would just put me down.

  “I know. Just a little further. Don’t sleep.”

  Something hard was under us, his arms still around me. I pressed my throbbing head into his chest. Somehow, the Thu-bump of his heart was soothing, throbbing in sync with my pulsing temples. I felt his arm and chest muscles tighten.

  A sound like a roar rumbled under me, around me, through me, filling my head with excruciating pain, rattling my teeth and making my eyes water. Another roar joined it, and another, grinding my thoughts into oblivion. I wrapped my arms around the only solid thing left and tried to bury myself against Marcus to escape.

  The world jumped backward, and we jumped forward, as the ATV sped through the dark woods toward someplace safe.

  * * *

  I drifted, slipping between dreams and moments of consciousness the way wind slips through the seams of a tent and out again.

  The whisper of rippling canvas.

  The gentle creak of tent poles.

  The tick and hiss of a camp stove.

  I was dreaming of camping with my dad at Bluefly Lake when I was seven. But in the dream I wasn’t seven. I was older, and I was holed up in
our tent with the window flaps and screens and doors all zipped up tight because the lake had turned to PSS. I was afraid (no, terrified) to go outside because the lake was calling to my hand, and I knew, if I went out there, my hand and the lake would become one. And I would become nothing.

  But my dad was out there too. I couldn’t see him or hear him, but I knew he was standing just outside the tent. I could sense his artistic soul swelling and marveling over the beautiful, swirling, glowing lake, and I knew he wanted me to come out there with him, even though he wasn’t saying it. He wanted me to come out there and let my hand join with the lake. He wanted to see it, and paint it, even if it meant his daughter would become nothing, because what was life without risk and art and beauty? Which was easy for him to say because he was dead. And I felt angry about that, because I wanted to be safe. But what I wanted more than anything was to have my dad back in the tent with me.

  The murmur of voices. Who was he talking to?

  The crunch of someone’s foot just outside. Was he going to come in?

  The rustle of tent flaps being brushed aside. He was. He was.

  I opened my eyes to slits and tried to focus on the dingy green blur in front of them. My head was pounding, and the light felt like it was jabbing at my eyeballs. Finally, after a few minutes, whatever I was looking at coalesced into grainy green fabric with a dark stain shaped like a dog’s head splashed on it. I blinked, trying to clear my vision, but the image stayed put. There was a soft, rushing sound from outside and the dog’s head rippled.

  It was a tent. I was staring at the very-up-close inner wall of a canvas tent. Hadn’t I been dreaming about tents? About camping with my dad, but our tent hadn’t been canvas. It had been bright blue and made of nylon or something. Who even used canvas tents anymore? The military maybe. The military, or the militant.

  I suddenly had the sinking feeling I’d just woken up in a CAMFer tent. And then I remembered the confrontation on Old Delarente Road with the CAMFers. Marcus had talked to them, bossed them around like they worked for him. Most of it was a blur in my head. And the parts that weren’t didn’t make sense.

  I glanced down at myself, half expecting to find my arms tied or my hands bound. Instead, I was lying on a cot wrapped in an old quilt, as if someone’s grandma had just tucked me in for the night. I started to turn my aching head to look around, but even that slight movement sent pain shooting through my temples to collide in a crescendo of dazzling sparks behind my eyes.

  Oh right. Marcus had said something about a concussion. I was just trying to determine the least painful course of action when someone touched my shoulder. I flailed, rearing up and turning on the cot, adrenaline temporarily overriding the explosion of agony that caused.

  “Hey, it’s just me,” Marcus said, looking down at me, his eyes full of concern.

  “You,” I said. It came out as a groan. There was some bright light shining from behind him, blinding me and making him look like an angel.

  “I’m glad you’re awake,” he said, sounding relieved. “How’s the head?”

  “It hurts,” I said, closing my eyes, but I still saw the outline of him standing there, a blue boy-shaped bruise burned on to the inside of my retinas. “Where are we?”

  “A camp in the woods about three miles outside of town.”

  “What about the CAMFers? The ones on the ATVs?”

  “Those weren’t CAMFers,” he said. “Those were my friends.”

  “Your friends?” I asked, trying to wrap my aching head around that.

  “Yeah, I called them, back on that hill by the hospital, and asked them to meet us on Old Delarente Road.”

  “Wait,” I said, trying to sit up, and quickly realizing that was a very bad idea. “I thought they were CAMFers. I freakin’ dove on my head so you could get away.”

  “Oh, is that why you did that?” he asked, grinning. “Because it looked like you slipped.”

  “I thought they were CAMFers,” I groaned.

  “I told you they were my friends.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did,” he insisted. “I yelled, ‘Hey, they’re friends’ right as they pulled up.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said, glaring at him even though it made my head spin.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, and he even had the decency to look a little sheepish. “It sort of slipped my mind that I hadn’t told you until Nose’s wheeler was right there.”

  “Did you just say Nose’s wheeler?” The words coming out of his mouth weren’t even making sense anymore. Something was seriously wrong with my head.

  “Yeah. Nose is his name. And we call the ATVs wheelers.”

  “You have a friend named Nose?” I just wanted this confusing conversation to end, but I couldn’t seem to keep my mouth from asking.

  “Sort of. His real name is actually Trey, but he goes by Nose.”

  “God, my head hurts,” I said. It didn’t matter whether I closed my eyes or opened them. The pain just kept getting worse. On the bright side, my body seemed to have completely forgotten about my smoke inhalation.

  “Oh shit! I was supposed to give you more pain killer,” Marcus said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a tattered bottle of pills. “And I’m going to have to wake you up every hour through the night, just to make sure your symptoms aren’t getting worse,” he said, opening the bottle, pouring two white tablets into his palm and handing them to me.

  “Oh yay,” I moaned, wondering why I’d even escaped from the hospital if Marcus was just going to turn into the night shift nurse.

  “Take them,” he said gently. At least his bedside manner wasn’t terrible.

  I opened my hand for the pills, and he dropped them in my palm. Then he crossed behind the bright light source somewhere beyond my vision. I heard the sound of water being poured, and he came back with a blue enamel cup full.

  He crouched next to the cot and helped me sit up, his arm warm against my back.

  I drank the pills down, ignoring how they scraped my throat as they went.

  “So we’re not in a CAMFer camp?” I asked, lying back. Even with the incessant throbbing in my skull, I was so tired I couldn’t keep my eyes open. From outside the canvas walls, I thought I heard the rustle of another tent being opened and someone entering it. Maybe it was my dad.

  “No,” Marcus said softly, tucking the quilt gently back under me where it had come loose when I’d thrashed away from him earlier. “You’re safe. I promise.”

  16

  DAVID'S LIST

  I woke up slowly, my head still aching, but it was better. Way better.

  This time the dog-shaped stain on the tent’s interior seemed to greet me, and by the way burnt orange and murky green shadows danced on the canvas walls, I thought it must be dusk.

  Marcus had spent all night taking care of me, waking me up at intervals, giving me pain medicine, bringing me water, and tucking me in. By morning we’d both been exhausted, and he’d finally promised I could sleep without interruption. Apparently, I’d taken him up on it and slept all day.

  I glanced around. It didn’t hurt as much to turn my head. At least I could do it without feeling like I was going to hurl.

  The tent wasn’t huge, maybe ten feet square. It had a pitched roof about six feet at the peak. Right next to my cot was the orange camp chair Marcus had sat in all night. As I looked at it a memory flashed in my mind—Marcus asleep in that chair pulled up next to me, his long arm stretched over mine, his hand cupped protectively over my ghost hand.

  Beyond the camp chair on the far wall was a square flap covering a screened window. Below the window was a small folding table with a laptop on it. Surrounding the computer were neat stacks of papers and what looked like maps weighted down by a compass, a lighter, a Swiss Army knife, and a rock. Pulled up to the table was another orange camp chair.

  In one corner of the tent was an old trunk, the sleeve of a shirt and a sock hanging out from under its mostl
y closed lid. The top of the trunk was doubling as a table as well, sporting a large plastic jug of water, some enamel camp ware, a coil of rope, an old camp lantern, and the hydration pack we had drunk from on Old Delarente Road.

  Beyond the foot of my cot were the door flaps, tied shut but billowing a little in the wind. Just inside the door was a welcome mat that read “GET OUT” in bold black letters.

  It was a cozy place. A safe place, just like he’d promised.

  Carefully, I sat up, pushed the quilt away, and swung my legs over the side of the cot. The walls of the tent were growing dark, but my ghost hand lit up all but the corners of the interior.

  So far so good. My head wasn’t spinning or hurting much more than it had when I’d been lying down.

  From outside, I could hear the occasional murmur of voices, the clang of pans, the slosh of water, all the sounds of a camp cleaning up after dinner. Dinner. At the mere thought of the word, my stomach gave an audible and very unladylike growl. When was the last time I’d eaten?

  Marcus had given me something that morning, saltines accompanied by the instructions, “Don’t puke in my tent.” Before that, there had been the almonds, most of which I’d thrown in someone’s face, or thrown up. Before that, mushy hospital food. No wonder I was starving.

  I glanced at the door of the tent. I could go out there and look for Marcus, or some food, or both. There were probably leftovers from dinner, and the smells that still hung in the air were enticing. My stomach growled again, but I just couldn’t bring myself to leave. Maybe it was the lingering memory of that weird dream of my dad and Bluefly Lake. It wasn’t rational, but it was there. Fear. Fear of the unknown. I knew what was in this tent. Knew I was safe. I had absolutely no idea what was out there, who was out there. Marcus had claimed them as friends, but what would they be to me?

  Maybe there was food stashed in the tent somewhere. I’d seen the way teen boys ate at school—like ravenous, insatiable dogs. Had Marcus gone out to get the crackers last night, or was there a stash in his tent? I couldn’t remember, but that was nothing a little snooping couldn’t solve.