by Kody Boye
“Hey,” Dakota said, leaning over Jamie’s sleeping form. “Wake up, sleepy-head.”
“What time is it?” Jamie asked, setting an arm over his eyes.
“Ten, I think.”
“Shit. I slept in today.”
“You sure did,” Dakota laughed, pressing a kiss to the man’s lips.
“What’re you doin’ up?”
“The kids woke me up earlier. The older boy wanted me to walk around the property with them.”
“How come?”
“I dunno. Just for something to do, I guess.”
Jamie threw his legs over the side of the bed, grabbed his shirt and tossed his head back, a yawn escaping the expanse of his chest as he pushed his arms into the air. He smiled when he caught Dakota’s gaze. “What?”
“Nothing,” Dakota laughed. “Just watching you.”
“I can tell.” Jamie stood, knocking Dakota’s shoulder with his own. “We supposed to go downstairs?”
“I guess. I thought I heard someone moving around down there. That must be where Kevin and Eagle are sleeping.”
Jamie tapped on the support beam. “Hey, kid, wake up. We’re goin’ downstairs.”
“For what?” Desmond yawned.
“To eat, most likely.”
Desmond shimmied down the ladder and started to get dressed.
“You feel comfortable here?” Jamie asked.
Dakota smiled. “I do.”
“Gonna rain again today,” Eagle said, parting the curtains in the living room’s bay window to watch a flash of lightning crest the sky. “No cigarettes until tonight, Jessiah.”
“But… Eagle, it’s only one.”
“Listen to him,” Kevin said, pressing a hand against his oldest son’s back. “I don’t want you getting any sicker than you are.”
“Dad—”
“I’ll take your cigarettes away if you don’t listen to me.”
Jessiah said nothing. He bowed his head, reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the carton of cigarettes. “It’s more tempting if I have them on me,” he said, passing them into his father’s hand.
Kevin offered a nod and a pat on his back before looking up at Jamie, Dakota and Desmond. “Good morning, gentlemen.”
“Morning,” Jamie smiled. “Still raining?”
“Sadly,” Eagle said, pulling the curtains back into place. “You don’t want to send them off in this, Kevin. It’s going to get worse.”
“I didn’t plan on sending them away,” Kevin replied. “They can leave when they’re ready to.”
“We won’t keep you,” Jamie said. “We know you have a family to take care of. Your hospitality is much appreciated.”
“I feel at ease with more people around us, Jamie. Don’t ever feel as though I think otherwise.”
“You’re welcome to come with us when we leave.”
Kevin sighed. “I appreciate it, but it’s not right for us to leave. Not now, not when my family’s safe here.”
Jamie seated himself at the dining room table and kept silent as Kevin went about his business, gathering the morning’s breakfast and making his way to and from the kitchen. Dakota watched his frantic scurrying for a brief moment before settling into the chair to Jamie’s right, allowing him a perfect view of the curtained-off windows and the occasional flash of lightning that managed to pierce through them.
“How you doing?” Jamie asked.
“Huh?” Dakota asked.
“You look pale,” Desmond added. He took his place in the chair opposite Dakota and set an elbow on the table.
“I do?”
“Yes, you do,” Jamie said. “You sure you’re ok?”
“Might just be the lighting.”
“Could be the weather too, I guess.” Jamie set his hands over his head, turning his attention toward Jessiah. “Where’re your brothers?”
“Who knows?” Jessiah said. “I told them to come in, but they never listen to me.”
“That’s brothers for you.”
The door burst open. A gust of air tore through the house before it slammed shut and the boys came tearing into the house.
“Shh!” Jessiah hissed, jabbing a finger to his lips. “You guys gotta be quiet.”
“We are being quiet,” Mark said.
“That’s not quiet enough.” Jessiah raised his hand and started to cough. When the fit didn’t end for a good three minutes, Eagle stepped into the room with a glass of tea and pressed his hand to the boy’s upper back.
“There,” Eagle said, kneading the bones at the base of Jessiah’s spine.
Jessiah coughed three more times. He slipped the glass off the bowl in Eagle’s hand and downed a few swallows of the contents within. “Thank,” he coughed, “you.”
“Drink. Slowly. Then suck on this.” The Indian set a cube of caramel before him. “It’ll help your throat.”
Nodding, Jessiah bowed his head and took a moment to regain his composure. When he tilted his head up, Dakota caught tears rolling down the sides of his face and lines crossing the surface of his eyes. Blood trailed down one side of his lip.
“Jessiah?” Dakota frowned.
“I’m fine,” Jessiah said. He reached up to brush the blood away from his lip. “Really. I am.”
Dakota cast a wary glance in Jamie’s direction, receiving a shrug in response.
“Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes!” Kevin called out.
“Thank you,” Dakota called back.
He caught sight of Jessiah’s bloodshot eyes as he rose and made his way out of the room.
“You don’t think he’s got it, do you?”
“Got what?”
“It.”
Jamie paused in midstride. He laced his fingers behind his head, turned, then gave Dakota an uneasy look that could have easily broken a mirror into three pieces. “You think he got bit, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“If he got bit, he’d have died a long time ago.”
“Maybe he only got nicked.”
“What?”
“You know, nicked. Only just barely bitten or scratched.”
“Where the hell did you get that from?”
“I heard it on the radio back when me and Steve were still in his apartment.”
“It’s an infection, Dakota. It doesn’t matter if you get only a little nick or scratch. It works all the same.”
“I don’t know,” Dakota sighed, seating himself on the bottom bunk. “Goddammit. Now I’m worried about this.”
“It’s a good thing to be concerned about.”
“But these people opened their home to us.”
“It’s not like we’re staying forever.” Jamie fell to his knees in front of Dakota. He braced his hands against the younger man’s thighs and leaned forward to look at him. “It’s gonna be ok. I swear.”
“You’ve never let anything happen to us.”
“And I never will.” Jamie paused. “Look, if something goes wrong, we’ll just leave, simple as that.”
“Maybe you should get the map from Kevin tonight.”
“I will.”
“Just in case we have to make a quick exit.”
“I get the impression that Kevin’s not a bad man. Concerned for his family, yes, but not bad.”
“I didn’t think he was bad either. I’m just worried about Jessiah.”
“We’re behind a locked door every night while we sleep. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“I know,” Dakota sighed. “I just…I just don’t want anything to happen.”
Jamie wrapped his arms around Dakota and pulled him close. “I know,” he whispered. “Neither do I.”
A single knock at the door woke him from sleep.
“Dakota,” Jessiah whispered. “Dakota.”
Dakota rolled out of bed and opened the door.
“I want you to come with me,” Jessiah said, before Dakota could even speak. “I need to show you
something.”
“Show me what?” Dakota asked, taking a moment to examine the boy’s red eyes and his hollow cheeks. “You don’t look good at all.”
“I feel like shit. Come on.”
“Give me a minute.”
Closing the door, Dakota made his way over to the bed, grabbed his shoes and pulled them onto his feet. He took a moment to look at Jamie and reconsider his actions before he left the room and started down the stairs, following close behind the younger boy’s heels.
Should I go alone with him?
Though he could easily understand the younger boys’ childish excitement of having new and possibly-exciting people in the house, he couldn’t fathom why Jessiah, a boy only one year younger than him, would want the attention.
Maybe he’s lonely.
Regardless, his unease at the young man’s quickly-deteriorating condition didn’t put him in any heightened frame of mind. If anything, it made him all the more uncomfortable being around him.
Maybe you’re just overthinking this, he thought as Jessiah opened the front door. Maybe he really does have bronchitis, like he said he did.
Jessiah coughed. Dakota froze. “You coming?” the younger man asked.
Dakota stepped out of the doorway as Jessiah shut the door behind them “Where are we going?” Dakota asked.
“Out to the barn.”
“What do you want to show me?”
“You’ll see.”
The hairs on Dakota’s neck stood on end. It was like something had just taken its finger and drawn it slightly over the skin, just high enough to where he could barely feel the sensation of being touched. He took a moment to consider the fact that it could have been the wind or just his imagination playing tricks on him, but after a moment, he stopped in place and refused to move any further.
He just wants to show you something. He watched the boy continue to make his way across his field. He’s sick and probably losing his mind from not having anyone his own age to talk to.
Jessiah stopped moving.
Dakota swallowed a lump in his throat.
“Are you coming?” the younger boy asked.
“How do I know you’re not going to hurt me?”
“You think I could hurt you?” Jessiah laughed, turning, the effects of sickness more than clear on his face in the paling light. “You’re joking, right?”
“Why won’t you tell me what we’re going to see?”
“Why won’t you tell me about you and Jamie?”
It’s always obvious, something said, when you’re trying to hide the thing that can hurt you the most.
“What?” Dakota asked, a laugh escaping his chest.
“Just because Dad’s too stupid to see it doesn’t mean I can’t.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I know what’s going on, Dakota. I know you and Jamie are more than friends.”
The same finger that had graced his neck moments before returned, this time complete with its fellows. Five individual fingers waltzed up his neck and slid into his hair before encapsulating the base of his scalp within their palm. The tips of each finger stroked his head as though they were his mother and he were her child, a bad boy sulking after he’d just been punished for doing something wrong.
“I don’t understand,” Dakota said. “What do you mean?”
“You reach to hold each other’s hands, then stop before you do it; you look at each other differently than how two normal guy friends would; you’re almost always too close for comfort.”
“What are you getting at?” Dakota asked. “What’s the big deal?”
“That’s what the people who came here before you asked, when they tried to steal a few cans of food before they left. ‘What’s the big deal if we take a few cans of food? It’s only a few.’ That’s what she said. Dad shot the bitch in the face when her boyfriend pulled a knife and pointed it at my little brother.”
With nothing to say in response, Dakota let the breath he’d been holding escape his chest and allowed his hands to ball into fists at his side. It took more strength than he imagined to keep himself from shaking.
“You still coming?” Jessiah asked, turning to start toward the barn.
“What if I don’t?”
“I’ll tell Dad. He probably won’t shoot you, but he’ll sure as hell kick you out. He doesn’t like it when people keep secrets from them, especially when those secrets can turn out to be bigger things.”
Dakota said nothing. He simply started forward and continued on toward the barn.
“I need you to listen to me before I do this,” Jessiah said, turning to look Dakota straight in the eye.
“Ok.”
“Whatever you do, don’t make any loud, sudden noises. Keep your hands away from the stall and don’t get any closer than you have to. She may be blind, but she can still hear your footsteps.”
She?
Jessiah narrowed his eyes, waiting for a response. Nodding in acknowledgement, Dakota steadied his posture and allowed himself a deep breath before the younger man stepped forward and undid the two latches that made up the top half of the stall door.
“Quiet,” Jessiah warned.
The young man pulled the door open.
Dakota braced himself for what he might see.
Does Death hide in dark places, or is He all around us?
Darkness shrouded the inside of the stall.
“Diana,” Jessiah whispered. “Come out.”
A flicker of movement shifted inside the hollow, dark place.
When the thing known as Diana stepped forward, revealing herself to the world in brutal, ugly detail, Dakota felt as though the last shroud of innocence had faded from the world like a moth slowly dying once caught in a candle’s flame.
“What is she?” Dakota asked.
“My horse.”
Her face had lost most of its beauty during the undetermined amount of time she’d been locked in her stall. She would have been beautiful during her life, glorious in the face of creation and remarkable in the aspect of pride. Sterling, they would have said, a creature marked for her soft white fur and her gorgeous black locks. Death had not treated her kindly, though he had spared her mercy. Her eyes were no longer existent, long-since gone into the back of her head, and her nostrils had dried out and resembled nothing more than cracked paint on a dirty wall. Perhaps the most ominous of her features, however, were her lips. Bloated, drawn away from her teeth to reveal porcelain-white bone tipped with flecks of grey, she appeared to be a fly poised at the funeral of her feast, her lips puckering and retracting in the shadows of her glorious night.
While looking at her, heart trembling and eyes slowly beginning to weep, Dakota felt sorrowful. Just the sight of such a beautiful creature ravaged in undeath was enough to force tears from his eyes. “What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Jessiah said. “I thought she was sick, so I brought her into the stall the first day we came up here and tried to get her to go inside. She wouldn’t cooperate with me, so I thought something was wrong. I’ve had her since I was thirteen and thought I knew everything about her. It turns out that I didn’t know she’d died and come back to life sometime before we got here.”
“She bit you, didn’t she?”
Jessiah popped the first few buttons on his flannel shirt and parted its collar, revealing a slowly-blackening bite on his shoulder.
“Does your dad know about this?”
“Dad doesn’t know anything,” Jessiah said.
“You’re putting your family in danger.”
“She bit me nearly two months ago. She doesn’t have what they have.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s…it’s not whatever makes them come back.”
“You’re saying this is something different?”
“It has to be. It doesn’t affect animals. Nothing has brought the animals back to life. I should be dead by now.”
“Is this the reason
you’re so sick?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was healing, Dakota. I’ve been treating it since I got bit and it looked like it was getting better. Then the skin started to turn black and I got this weird chest cough…my god. It hurts so fucking much.”
“It’s ok,” Dakota said, stepping forward. “You’re gonna get better.”
“Don’t touch me!” Jessiah cried, pushing Dakota back when he came too close. “Don’t touch me, Dakota. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t want to die!”
“You’re not gonna die,” Dakota said. “Don’t think that.”
“It’s kind of hard to believe when you look that,” Jessiah said, pointing. Dakota turned his head. Diana’s nostrils flared at the sound of his breath passing from his lips. “You better go, Dakota. Someone’s gonna get suspicious if we’re both gone.”
“What about you?”
“They’ll just think I’m out smoking. Besides, I need a moment alone.”
Unsure what else to say or how else to comfort the younger man, Dakota turned and made his way out of the barn, but not without taking one last look back at Jessiah and the dead creature that had once brought the young man happiness.
Upon returning to the cabin, Dakota crept through the front door, took his shoes off, and made his way up the stairs, all the while cursing the wood beneath him and its seemingly-endless protest against him. It was as though they were alive and trying to scream the secret that so desperately wanted to be told, but couldn’t because it was trapped beneath the floorboards.
For a brief moment, Dakota entertained the notion that it was ghosts underneath the stairs making all the racket.
Help us, they said. We want them to know the truth.
When the image became too powerful in his brain, he shook his head and pushed open the door to the spare bedroom. It took less than a minute for him to crawl into bed and curl up alongside Jamie.
“Hmm?” Jamie murmured.
“Nothing,” Dakota whispered, turning his head up to look at the man. “Go back to sleep.”
Jamie’s featured softened almost immediately.
He didn’t hear me come back in.
Then again, there was always the distinct possibility that Jamie could have heard him leave earlier. Dakota didn’t dwell on it though. His thoughts kept returning to the barn, to that cold, dark place festering within the slowly-rotting structure and the morbid creature inside it.
