by Jeff Vrolyks
Holly shrieked.
I went to turn away but only my top half complied. I looked to Holly, who stood in the glowing circle of the lantern, and I saw what was keeping us immobile. Roots twisted up around her legs and gripped her, ensnaring her. They slithered up my calves and constricted, though I couldn’t feel it. I tried prying them off but they were too strong, too tight.
Holly reissued the harrowing scream, splicing in the names of Alison and Nawien. We were stuck and they were closing the gap. They were void of mass, just as they were in my memory. A luminescent glow traced their silhouettes. They were taller than I remembered, perhaps because I was two feet deep in water. One had a pair of goat-like horns, and they were as black as its body. The other was nearly identical, varying only by its solitary horn.
They stopped ten feet before us. Something broke through the right shadow-sleeve of two-horn, and the left shadow-sleeve of one-horn. On the former, two sickle shaped bones extended a forearm-length from wrist to fanged tips. On the latter, a spinal chord-like thing slithered out of the sleeve and wormed around with a single fanged tip. They continued toward us.
Holly silenced her screaming. The scythe wielding figure plodded the surface of the water to Holly. The other took its last few steps before me and stopped. A luminescent dot of fluid broke through the bony tip. The toxic yellow ooze volumized into a droplet and fell before my eyes, sizzling and dissolving at the water’s surface. Holly dropped the lantern into the lake and cowered as the thing towering over her wound back its arm.
This can’t be happening. This isn’t real.
The one before me hunched down to meet me at face level. If It had a face I couldn’t see it, but I sure as hell could smell it. The writhing appendage coiled back like a snake preparing to strike. A fresh droplet appeared and clung to the tip. The black hand of the figure thrust forward and grappled my throat, choking off my airway.
Holly shrieked.
Thud.
My turn.
Thud.
Chapter 50
Holly shrieked. Alison awoke and sat bolt upright, grazing her head on the A-frame ceiling of her pup-tent. She thrashed out of the sleeping-bag and with a push of the tent flap she was outside in the clear night. With the lunar glow on the lake and well-adjusted night-eyes, Alison immediately saw what had me by the neck.
My eyes blinked open. I couldn’t breathe. Pain seared my throat. The first thing I saw were fists hammering on whatever gripped me. Teeth. Jaws. Release.
My constricted airway opened and sweet cold air jetted into my lungs. Holly was shouting and screaming at the top of her lungs, ice-picking at my eardrums. A wolf was back-stepping, being pounded on, pummeled by Holly.
Alison knelt at my side, examined my neck wet with blood and punctured from teeth, pressed her sweat-shirt against the wound to stop the bleeding.
“You fucking monster!” Holly raged. Mike was out of the tent and approaching Holly. “How? How could you!” There was no mistaking who it was. The wolf had a white bib.
Mike pulled Holly back, who continued to beat on the wolf in a flurry. The front of her shirt was bloody from her own lacerated throat. Nawien cowered, wide-eyed as she back-stepped. Mike turned Holly around by the shoulders. Nawien ran off. Holly shouted obscenities at the wolf over her shoulder. Words I never fathomed to hear out of her mouth, like demon-fuck, unholy maggot-shit, and the one that struck a chord in me above all others: bitch-bastard-Brutus. The infamous pit bull of Holly’s childhood.
Mike hugged her: she tried to push away. Then at once she yielded to his embrace and bawled into his chest. Mike looked over to me with brooding eyes.
“What happened?” I asked Alison.
“I don’t know but we need to leave. Now. They are almost here.”
They. There was no need to ask who they were.
* * *
Mike merged the Mustang onto Highway 128. The top was up and the heater was on. Holly rested against me in the back seat, trembling with emotion. How did things turn around so fast? I was having the time of my life.
Mike pulled into the twenty-four-hour Fairfield Walmart. Ali said to stay put while they went inside for what seemed like an eternity. Holly and I began a discussion. Neither of us were clear about what happened, but I now know what set her off:
Holly was lying submerged in the shallows of the lake when she was awakened from her nightmare. Nawien had her by the throat. She panicked and flailed, Nawien released her and went to me. I was lying a few yards down-shore, also submerged. Holly swiped her neck and found a thick coat of blood and torn flesh. When she found the wolf to now be biting my neck, she saw red (literally and figuratively) and snapped.
It was the perfect storm sparking her rage, concocted from the memory of her mauled-to-death sister, the idea that Nawien likely tore-out the throat of the runner at Brenner’s Pass, and now she and the man she loved were about to suffer the same fate. I could hardly blame her.
Of course the situation made no sense. There had to be a reason. Cool heads prevail. The hot heads of our bunch had driven away without our tents, sleeping bags, and most importantly, Nawien. She was hiding when we left the lake. We suspected she was either ashamed of herself or afraid of Holly (hell, even I was intimidated by her fury) and ran away.
It wasn’t long before Holly had mixed feelings about the ordeal. In the parking lot of Walmart, Holly wondered to what degree she overreacted. After all, Nawien was our protector (when she wasn’t busy biting into us). She had torn the flesh of our throats with what she did. They weren’t severe injuries but they were the kind of flesh wounds that would make permanent scars. Or so we thought. By the time we’d reach the hotel there would be no signs of injury; our throats healed impossibly fast. It was proof to me that what the wolves did with Alison the night of the fire probably did save her life.
Now Nawien was on her own and so were we.
If only we had discussed our dream before our rash decision making. But the truth is, Alison was running the show from the second she awakened. It wasn’t until the next evening when we were driving to Yosemite that we discussed the nightmare, and soon came to the realization that we made a dear mistake. The mother of all mistakes. It wasn’t a coincidence that we shared the same nightmare, just as it wasn’t a coincidence we shared the Yosemite dream. We had wandered off into the lake. Nawien must have known what was happening, or at least suspected it. Aside from ripping many layers of skin from our throats, we had puncture wounds on our wrists. Nawien must have pulled us closer to shore to prevent us from drowning. As to why she bit our throats, we weren’t sure. I guessed it was as simple as trying to wake us up. Why being submerged in water or hearing screaming or being dragged by the wrists didn’t wake us, well, I couldn’t say. Regardless, it was becoming clear that we fucked up royally.
Chapter 51: Gestation, Tribulation, and the Land of Vacation
Our situation went from difficult to just plain shitty. Our lives weren’t just turned upside down, they were punted back into a previous century. As we drove the BMW to Yosemite, I wondered how we would manage eight months in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I suppose if we had to be somewhere tucked away from society for the better part of a year, it was as good a place as any. I just couldn’t see how we were going to get through it, and get through it alone.
Alison was the key. Alison was one of the reasons we made it out of Lake Berryessa alive (we’ve come to realize Nawien was the other reason). How demoralizing it was to conclude that Nawien was beaten and abandoned because of a major oversight on my part. I could try to shift some of the blame on the frumpy old man at Conoco Gas for having such high prices, but I should have taken cash from the car to pay the bill instead of using my Visa. By the time we left Lake Berryessa someone was coming for us, according to Ali.
It turns out while Holly and I were dreaming seriously nasty things that night, Alison was doing some dreaming of her own. When she was barking orders at us such as “Get in the car and let’s go! Now!” a
s well as, “We’re taking the long way out of here because I fucking said so!” we had no idea that she was following Wheels instruction. In ‘the most incredible dream I’ve ever had,’ Alison learned much; a hell of a lot more than we were made aware of. Our whining and begging fell on deaf ears and we came to accept that there were some things we would never know. Maybe it was for the best. From the moment she awoke from the dream, she was unabashedly in charge. Holly, accustomed to being in charge and dealing with every aspect of managing VonFurenz, was impressed by Alison’s own capabilities (over the next eight months, we came to be humbled and in awe of them).
Kloss was months away from resolving his legal nightmare, but he would get through it with the best attorneys money could buy (and a trifle thing called ‘insufficient evidence’—no trace of Jack and Peaches were ever found). He faced illegal weapons charges, but that was small beans in the scheme of things. He wouldn’t see Holly again until after our baby was born, or so the plan was. He played an important roll in our moving to Yosemite: funding.
Normally Kloss would have been able to supply us with weapons. Those days were long gone and he would get two years probation because of them. However, this was a problem overcome by Alison. Without explanation she brought us a care-package a few days after we set up camp outside of Wawona, in Yosemite. The care package would be better referred to as an arms cache. I would have plenty of time to familiarize myself with the guns when I wasn’t busy reading books on home delivery (babies, not pizza). It was out of the question to see a doctor, leaving me to fill the role. You can bet your ass there were a few dozen buts and what ifs, but Alison was unflappable.
In the modern age of GPS and cellular phones, we were to live without them. Phones can be traced and would be traced. Our only communication was to be with Alison, and only on her terms. A pay-phone at the Wawona Hotel (a ten minute walk away) was to be used to contact Alison in case of an emergency and on the first and fifteenth of every month at ten P.M. The phone number given to reach Alison was to a mobile phone that didn’t trace back to her name. But just to be safe she would be changing phones and phone numbers between every two week interval, leaving us the next phone number following every conversation.
Food and water were the largest obstacles we’d face (or so we hoped). Water was to be taken from the stream and filtered through a Brita pitcher. We were given a multi-pack of filters. Food was non-perishable and mainly canned. We had a small two-burner range with two dozen propane bottles. I used a telescopic fishing pole to catch trout when the minutia of eating Spam, anchovies, and Vienna sausage had reached a boiling point. Most of these items, including a tent and sleeping bags, fit in the spacious BMW trunk. What occupied much of the back seat seemed exaggerated: hundreds of rolls of toilet paper. I guess we take for granted how much toilet paper we go through when its used one roll at a time and shopped for regularly.
Holly’s absolute favorite thing, added to a care package, was the baby clothing. The cute little outfits were a corrected oversight; indeed our newborn would be better off not being naked. Alison was able to directly or indirectly answer the majority of our questions and concerns. Two things she couldn’t answer because she didn’t know were will we get any help from the surviving wolves, if there are any? And when is this shit going to be over!
Alison thought it would be over once William Reed is born. She probably went off the logic that this shit started just before she got pregnant, so why not end after childbirth? Seems logical. Did I spend hours a day worrying about it? At least.
It was disappointing that Ali didn’t know anything regarding Nawien. It seemed to me that Nawien would have been a tool provided to us at any cost. Ali only had the one dream with Mrs. Wheels and she didn’t mention wolves. When we considered that the dream took place just before Nawien was pounded on and cursed into retreat, it made sense that she didn’t mention them. I felt horrible for Nawien. It wasn’t right what we did to her. I longed to apologize to her—she really was the sweetest thing. Holly never mentioned her. Maybe she didn’t think about her (that of course is pure Grade-A bullshit—if I felt this bad, how must she have felt?). In bed I would hear her crying softly nearly every night, though she tried to conceal it. Was it because of Nawien? I don’t know, Holly didn’t want to talk about it. That she never mentioned Anne was no big surprise, she liked to keep her misery to herself, bottled up. I prayed every day for our safety and for forgiveness, so that we might get another chance with Nawien. Not for me but for the woman I loved increasingly with each passing day.
Chapter 52
The first campgrounds inside Yosemite National Park is Wawona. A week each summer, from the age of six to thirteen, this was my stomping grounds. Holly’s Yosemite trips were spent a half hour drive away from Wawona, in the valley. The majority of tourists zip by Wawona and head straight for Yosemite Valley. The Victorian style Wawona Hotel shares a meadow with a nine-hole golf course nestled in a forest of black oaks, firs, and innumerable giant sequoias. The only other place of business in Wawona is The Mercantile. The urge to buy real food from The Merc was ongoing and merciless.
A mile or so from the meadow and into the omnipresent shade of the sequoias are the Wawona campgrounds. It would have been the ideal place for Holly and I to stay but Alison disallowed it for it was too public. Along the western perimeter of the campground is a brook. On the other side of the brook are thousands of acres of bugs, trees, bears, deer, blue jays, squirrels, us, and little else. We pitched our tent about a hundred yards from the brook, and occasionally we could hear the laughter and music of vacationers. After a few months with no human contact (other than Alison and Mike dropping off a care package every eight to ten weeks), we began welcoming the sounds of happy campers.
The two calls a month to Alison were critical in maintaining our morale. It wasn’t long after moving to Yosemite that our phone call to Alison incidentally included a conversation with Mike. Together they rented an apartment in Fairfield under a fake name. It wasn’t likely that Holly’s seekers would put much effort in locating them, but if they did it wouldn’t be easy tracking them. Alison put in place several safeguards and used cash for everything and all but abandoned her real name. Mike had to meet Ali at diverse locations outside the base when he got off work, where she would pick him up and take him to their apartment after she was positive they weren’t being followed. They wouldn’t allow anyone to see where they lived. Holly and I were ecstatic our best friends were progressing their relationship. They were a couple so unlikely that it simply had to work out.
We spent a lot of time around the campfire, roasting marshmallows and making s’mores, fantasizing about a double wedding and a shared honeymoon. Our kids could go to school together and be best friends. The future was looking bright, assuming we made it through this. Days were spent playing Scrabble and Boggle, chopping firewood, fishing, doing laundry in the brook, cross-stitching (Holly grew an affinity for cross-stitching Winnie the Pooh characters), cooking, reading, and familiarizing myself with my .38 Police Special and Remington 12 gauge shotgun. Some days, in her early pregnancy, Holly and I would hike a couple miles into the dead of the forest and have target practice (the first time we did this we nearly got lost).
I read more than anything. I had a stack of How To and medical books that I wanted to know inside and out come February seventh, give or take. The more I learned, the more I sympathized with Holly for putting her through a natural child-birth. Unless the authors of these books grossly exaggerated the pain of birthing a child without an epidural, she was going to feel the wrath of a watermelon being pushed through her hose, or something similar. As per request, Alison’s third and final care-package included more shotgun shells, opiate pills (to be taken only when she went into labor), a cellular phone (only to be used in the case of an emergency), more cross-stitching thread and patterns, and some medical instruments that I had specified.
Alison figured she would need a little time to procure the pills, but it turned
out that having rock star connections had its advantages. We were surprised that she agreed to give us a mobile phone. I suppose going seven months without incident was enough time to loosen a few rules and conclude we had this thing all but wrapped up. Having a phone was a huge relief. I’ve read too many horror stories in my recent studies to not worry about labor complications. The last thing I wanted to do was go for a mile run to a pay-phone if something went wrong. Cell phone reception was poor but not bad considering where we were. The park rangers must have lobbied for a cell tower.
It was early winter and chilly in the day, freezing at night. Yosemite’s elevation spans from four-thousand feet to thirteen-thousand feet. Wawona lies in the former, and we wouldn’t see much snow. We wore sweaters in the day and jackets and thermals by evening. When we first set up camp eight months ago, the evening campfires weren’t necessary. Now they burned all day and I was traveling farther each day to find dry wood to burn.
Seven days before Holly went into labor, Alison and Mike arrived in Wawona in a rental car under the name Keisha Myass. It was the best visit yet and the only one that lasted longer than an hour. We threw caution to the wind and had them stay the afternoon and evening with us. We cooked filet mignon and lobster tails (every care package contained a small amount of perishable food) and sipped our way to the bottom of an ’89 Perrier Jouët, and then another. Holly drank sparkling cider. We played gin-rummy and smoked Montecristo No. 2’s—the best thing to come out of Cuba.
Nightfall was on its way. The few mosquitoes remaining in the winter forest all enjoyed whining in my ears. Mike needed to pee and asked me to come walk with him. After distancing ourselves from camp, he un-pocketed a black velvet box and showed me the diamond ring he bought for Ali. I was dumbfounded. It was impressively large and infinitely more elegant than Mike. He would be making payments on it for five years. I couldn’t wait to tell Holly. Or maybe I wouldn’t have to, I thought. I gave him a hug and pat on the back. He asked me to be his best man and I emphatically accepted. I promised that he would soon be my best man, too. I planned on buying a ring and proposing as soon as we reentered civilization and the world of overpriced mall jewelry stores. His grin was poorly suppressed. He wore his excitement on his sleeve.
