by Jack Kilborn
“I’m not falling for that shit twice, Georgia. It wasn’t funny the first time.”
Georgia’s lips began to tremble, her face crinkling in a prelude to a scream. Cindy had no idea Georgia was such a good actress. She hadn’t been this good the previous time.
And for that very reason, Cindy suddenly understood this wasn’t acting. Georgia really was seeing something behind her, and she really was terrified.
Cindy didn’t want to look. The fear crawled over her like ants, and her legs felt like they weighed a thousand pounds. Georgia had lost all color now, and she was whimpering like a puppy.
Look. You have to look. Just do it.
Eyes wide, mouth dry, knees knocking together, Cindy slowly turned around, expecting to see some horrible ghoul with huge teeth grinning inches from her face.
She looked.
There was nothing. There was nothing there at all.
Cindy spun, pissed off she fell for the same trick twice, ready to give Georgia another cuff on the shoulder.
But Georgia was gone.
Sara frantically pushed against the person pinning her legs. She knew judo. Hell, she taught her kids basic self-defense at the Center. But with a baby strapped to her chest—a baby that was now squirming and crying—all Sara could do was push.
She felt breasts beneath her palms, a neck and chin, and higher up, closely-cropped hair.
“Laneesha?”
“Sara!” The teen’s breath was warm on Sara’s face, and then she was rolling off. “Couldn’t find my way back, so I ran toward the flashlight. What happen to it?”
Sara tried to get her breathing under control. The darkness screamed at her, making her voice sound hollow, far away. “It… flew into the woods.”
“Shit. Dark as hell out here. Feels like we got swallowed up by somethin’.”
Sara sat up, heart hammering, squinting into the blackness all around them. “It’s a Maglite.” She forced herself to swallow, her fingers absently digging into one of the sling’s pockets and finding the pacifier, which she popped into Jack’s mouth. “Those things don’t switch off accidentally. It probably rolled under some leaves so we can’t see it.”
“So how we find it?”
“Couldn’t have gone far. You stay where you are, keep talking to me. I’ll go around you and feel for it. Can you hold Jack?”
“Yeah.”
Sara pulled him out of his sling, handing him carefully over to Laneesha. Without him next to her belly, Sara felt even more frightened.
“You gotta talk to me, or I’m gonna freak out.”
Me, too. But I can do this.
Sara crawled off, slowly circling the girl. By judging where Laneesha’s voice was coming from, she should be able to cover the area in a widening spiral, without missing any spots or getting lost. In theory, at least.
“If y’all remembered, I voted for horseback riding for our last trip, not camping on some scary ass island. I’ve never been on a horse before. That will be one of the first things I do when I get out of juvee. Sara, you there?”
“I’m here.” The ground was rough under Sara’s palms, sticks and rocks poking her, cold dirt wedging beneath her fingernails. She went counter-clockwise, gradually orbiting away from Laneesha.
“I don’ wanna go to juvee, Sara. I feel like I been making progress, y’know?”
Sara couldn’t hold the darkness back. She had to focus on something else. On finding the light. On finding Martin. On Laneesha.
Focus on Laneesha. Be there for her.
“You’re doing great, Laneesha.”
Laneesha was making progress. Sara had no doubt that when she was allowed back in society, she’d do well. After getting pregnant at sixteen, Laneesha began stealing to make ends meet. When she got arrested at a department store for attempting to steal several thousand dollars worth of jewelry, the state took her daughter. Since coming to the Center, Laneesha had worked hard, studied for her GED, and showed impressive determination to go straight and get her child back.
“You’ve only got a month left until your next hearing, Laneesha. It will fly by. You just need to stay out of trouble until then.”
“Y’all be at court with me?”
Sara touched a bush ahead of her, feeling through the branches, shaking them to see if they were hiding the light. They weren’t. The darkness seemed to get thicker.
“Of course I’ll be there.”
“Martin, too?”
“Martin, too.”
“Even though y’all are getting’ divorced?”
Sara stopped and looked in Laneesha’s direction, even though she couldn’t see more than a few inches in front of her. “Divorced? Where did you hear that?”
“Didn’t hear it. Takin’ a guess. You both don’ look at each other like you used to. Figure now the Center is breaking up, y’all will too.”
Sara chewed her lower lip. She and Martin had been growing apart for a while, but when the government cut the Center’s funding he withdrew completely. That was the definition of ironic; two psychologists specifically trained to understand human nature and communication, unable to save their marriage even though they still loved each other.
The only thing left was for Martin to sign the divorce papers. But he hadn’t yet. They arrived yesterday, but instead of getting it over with he chose instead to ignore them, and her.
Sara knew their marriage was over. Once communication failed, so did intimacy. But she still entertained the fantasy of miraculously patching things up over campfire stories and sleeping bag snuggling.
That fantasy faded when Martin pulled this stunt and disappeared into the woods. This trip could have been their chance to really connect, to talk it out, to mend. Instead, she was crawling around on all fours, sorry she ever met the guy.
Scratch that. She could never think that way about Martin. They might not be able to live together any more, but the love was still there. Sara knew the love would always be there.
But right now, she wanted to stab the jerk in the eye. Figuratively, of course.
“Sara? Where you at?”
“I’m here.”
“You sound far.”
“I’m only a few yards away, Laneesha. The flashlight has to be close. Shit!”
“What? Sara, you okay? Sara!”
“I caught a nail on something. Damn, I think I broke it off.”
The pain surged, sharp and hot. Sara parted her lips reflexively, ready to suck her injury. She stopped before her hand reached her mouth, a horrible stench wafting up from the ground. It blanketed her tongue and invaded her nostrils, rank and vile and forcing her to gag.
The unmistakable smell of rot.
“Sara? You okay?”
“I’m fine.” Sara coughed, spat. The odor brought back memories of her college years, coming back to her dorm after Christmas break to find her goldfish belly-up in the aquarium. When she lifted up the tank cover, the smell of decay was so bad she gagged and spit up.
That was just from a tiny little fish. This stench was coming from something much bigger.
Sara backed away, and her other hand locked onto a large branch. She gripped it, instinct telling her a weapon would be good. She yanked, but it was wedged in the dirt.
The smell got worse, so bad it was like being immersed in spoiled milk. Sara could feel it in her eyes, her hair, all over her skin and on her clothes.
Another tug and the branch broke free from the ground, her fingers clenching it tight.
And then the same instinct that made her grab it told her to throw it away. But Sara was too frightened to open her hand.
The smell was coming from the branch. Because it wasn’t a branch at all.
It was a bone.
They waited. They watched. They had the man, but they didn’t kill him. Not yet. First they needed to know if the group had weapons. They were many, but they knew that many were no match for guns.
The man moaned. It made their stomachs rumble.
&nb
sp; Still they waited.
Not far away, they heard sounds. The woman and the girl, talking to each other. They sounded frightened.
They would be even more frightened, very soon.
They poked the man, made him moan even loader.
He was the bait. He would bring the woman and the girl closer.
And then they would attack.
And then they would eat.
When Tyrone was a little boy, he wanted to be a cop. But not a cop like the cops in his neighborhood. Everyone hated those cops. They hassled kids, and never came fast enough when they were needed, and everyone called them pigs and 5-0 and they got no respect at all.
Tyrone wanted to be a cop like the cops on TV. He watched a lot of TV, on account he stayed in a lot. The neighborhood where he grew up had a bad element, his moms always said.
“Being poor don’t make people bad,” she would tell him. “But it makes some people desperate.”
He didn’t get to play outside very much, because desperate people might try to hurt him, so TV became his best playmate. His favorites were the cop shows. The cops on those shows, they got respect. They actually helped people, and people liked them, and no one on TV had to live in a house with bars on the windows like Tyrone did so the bad element couldn’t break in and steal his stuff.
When he told his moms he wanted to be a cop, she patted him on the head and gave him a big kiss and said he could be whatever he wanted to be when he grew up, as long as he got out of the neighborhood. And Tyrone promised her he would, and every night, when he said his prayers, he asked God to make him big and strong so he could someday become a cop and take Moms and Grams out of the neighborhood and to someplace really nice, where he got respect, and no one had bars on the windows.
Tyrone frowned as he lost another marshmallow to the fire. It plopped onto a burning log and melted down the side, solidifying in the heat. He watched as it went from bubbling white, to brown, to black ash.
“This sucks.”
Tom was pacing again, but he paused long enough to ask, “The woods? Or the Center closing?”
“The woods.” Tyrone smacked at a mosquito on his arm. “The Center. Shit, both. Don’t wanna spend the rest of my sentence in no detention center. An’ I don’t wanna spend the night on no freaky ass island. I’m street, not woods. Holla back.”
Meadow tapped his fist. “Hells yeah.”
Tom laughed, but it sounded clipped and forced. “So you guys are scared?”
Tyrone felt the challenge and narrowed his eyes. “Ain’t scared of nothin’. You sayin’ I am?”
Tom squatted next to Tyrone. He picked a pine cone up from the ground and chucked it into the fire. “You don’t have to sell me. I know you’re all bad ass. But when you saw that guy get shot when you were eight, did you look into his eyes when he died?”
What is it with white people? Tyrone thought. Why do they feel the need to talk about stuff like that?
He shrugged. “Naw, man. My moms hustled me inside soon as the shots were fired.”
Tom stared at Tyrone. He had a pretty intense gaze.
“I was holding Gram’s hand when she died, looking her right in the eyes. I know this sounds shitty, but we weren’t really close. I mean, she was my Grandma. She was always there, for my whole life, giving me money and shit for holidays, babysitting me when I was a kid, going to church with us every Sunday.”
Tom seemed to be waiting for a response, so Tyrone said, “Me ‘n my gramma are tight. She’s a good lady.”
“So was mine. But we weren’t tight. When she got sick and moved into our house, my parents made me sit with her. I didn’t want to. She smelled, you know? Had diapers on and shit. Plus she was on so many drugs she didn’t know where she was most of the frickin’ time. Or who I was. Or what was going on. But right there, at the very end, she could recognize me. She knew who I was. And she said something.”
Tom looked around for another pine cone. Instead he found a small rock and tossed that into the flames.
“What did yo gramma say?” Tyrone asked.
Tom’s face pinched. “She said, ‘There’s nothing, Tommy. Nothing.’ Then, when she was still staring at me, her eyes went blank. I mean, they were still open, still looked exactly the same. But blank. Like something was missing. Like she wasn’t a person anymore.”
Tyrone stared at Tom. The skinny kid got busted for jackin’ a car and joy riding. No damn purpose to it. Wasn’t to sell it, or strip it for the parts. Just for shits and grins. Tyrone thought it was a real stupid-ass crime. But maybe it made sense. When people were scared on the inside, sometimes they did things to show they weren’t scared.
“My moms, and my grams, they say your soul leaves your body.”
Tom shook his head. “Naw. There was nothing spiritual at all. One minute she was a person, the next she was just, I dunno, meat. There wasn’t any soul.”
Tyrone didn’t like that explanation. He remembered having to say his prayers every night before bed. Soul to keep, and all that. If men didn’t have souls, what was the point?
“You can’t see a soul, dog.”
“It was scary, Tyrone. Like a light turning off. And her saying there’s nothing. I mean, she went to church every week, never missed it once, and she was about a hundred years old. I thought there was supposed to be a bright light, and clouds, and an angel choir. That’s how it is supposed to be, right?”
“Maybe there was,” Tyrone said.
“So why’d she frickin’ say that?”
“Tom, you said she was on drugs, acting funny. Maybe she saw all the lights ‘n clouds n’ shit, but her words were all messed up. You don’ know for sure.”
Meadow guffawed. “Man, this conversation is wack.”
Tyrone stared at Meadow. “Don’t you believe in God?”
“If there’s a God, what he ever done for me? I grew up poor, my moms spendin’ the welfare on drugs. I joined a gang just to keep my belly full. God? Bullshit.”
“God’s up there.” Tyrone looked skyward, up at the big orange moon. “He just prefers we work this shit out ourselves.”
“Ain’t no point in having a god, man, if he’s just a slum lord never does nothin’.”
Tyrone turned to Meadow. “How do you know? You ever pray for anything before?”
“Naw.”
“Maybe you should try it once, see if it—”
The scream cut Tyrone off. High-pitched, piercing, coming from right behind him. The scream of someone in absolute, complete agony, so shrill it seemed to burn into Tyrone’s head. Tyrone twisted around, feeling his whole body twitch like he did back in the day when something bad was going down. He automatically reached for his belt, his fingers seeking out a knife, a gun, a bike chain, anything at all to defend himself with. They came up empty. So he stood up and stumbled sideways, bumping into Tom, steadying himself even though his legs were jonesing to run him the hell out of there.
His eyes scanned the tree line, seeing only random shadows flitting across the trunks. Beyond that, a darkness so vast it seemed like the forest was opening its giant mouth to eat them all.
“The fuck was that?”
Meadow was standing next to Tyrone, also slapping his pants in search of a weapon he wasn’t going to find. Tom was on Tyrone’s other shoulder, holding out his weak-ass marshmallow stick like that would protect them.
Tyrone held his breath. Crickets and silence. This island was too damn quiet. Never got this quiet in Motown. Never got this dark, neither. Tyrone could survive on the street for weeks when he had to, but out here in bumblefuck he knew he wouldn’t last a day. Can’t B&E for duckets or pop in a homie’s crib for food when you’re in the middle of the woods. And if something was chasing you, where were you supposed to hide?
“It’s one of the girls, messing with us,” Tom said.
Tyrone felt a stab of concern for Cindy, then dismissed it. This scream came from the opposite direction. Tyrone didn’t know what exactly it was about the girl t
hat he liked, but he just liked her, is all. He never did anything about it. Never even said anything. Both he and Cindy were in the Center to improve themselves. That was a big enough job without adding all that relationship baggage to the mix.
Still, she was a sweet girl. Strong too, in her way. And getting better looking every day since kicking meth. Maybe one day they—
Something flashed, in Tyrone’s peripheral vision. He spun toward it, squinting into the dark trees.
“You dudes see that?”
“See what?” Tom said. He looked left, then right, then, comically, up into the sky.
“Some kinda light. Same direction as the scream.”
“Someone’s gotta be messing with us.” Tom rubbed his palm back and forth over his scalp, so quick it looked like he was going to give himself a rug burn. “Lights and bullshit screams. Trying to scare us.”
Meadow shook his head. “Didn’t sound like no bullshit scream. Sounded real. And close.”
“You maybe wanna go check?”
“You go check, white boy. With your little stick.”
Tyrone shushed them. “Quiet. I hear somethin’.”
He recognized the noise, because they all made the same noise earlier, on the hike to this clearing. It was the sound of people in the woods, trampling over dead leaves and twigs, pushing branches out of the way.
And the sound was moving toward them. Fast.
“Somethin’s comin’,” Meadow whispered.
The trampling was too noisy for one or two people to make. It sounded like at least half a dozen folks, rushing through the forest, getting closer.
The bushes at the treeline shook like a bear was caught in them. Tyrone couldn’t move. He couldn’t even swallow. He knew, knew, that some crazy Civil War cannibals were going to burst out and start chomping him, and he was too scared to do anything about it.
Then, all at once, the bushes stopped moving. The sound of approaching footsteps ceased. All Tyrone could hear was crickets, and the thumping of his own heart.
“Are they still there?” Tyrone had never heard Tom speak so quietly.
“Dunno.” Meadow’s voice was just as soft. “Didn’t hear them leave. Might still be there, staring at us.”
