The inert kid looked familiar. Kerrigan couldn’t place him at first; just another young face, like so many that passed his cabin before entering the woods below Bear Mountain. His attention slipped from the article. Tutting, he saved the document and stood up. Buster raised his head for a moment and then went back to sleep, still curled tightly on his favourite chair. Kerrigan stroked him as he passed and Buster let out a growly purr, half pleased to be remembered, half grumbling at being disturbed.
‘You don’t know how good you’ve got it, cat.’
As Kerrigan neared the front door he recalled the kid was one of those who often walked or drove past in groups to party in the forest. He liked to see them enjoying themselves in the outdoors. As long as they didn’t litter or start fires, Kerrigan didn’t care what they did. Youngsters needed to get wild and where better than the woods to do it.
He opened the door.
‘You looking to buy the place or what?’
The boy’s eyes disengaged from whatever they’d been fixed on and settled on him.
‘Is your name Kerrigan?’ he asked.
‘Jimmy Kerrigan, yes.’
‘Someone said you could help me.’
‘Oh yeah? Who was that?’
‘The old lady. I mow her lawn sometimes.’
It all came together. He hadn’t only seen this kid before, he’d arranged over the phone for him to work in Burt and Kath’s garden on several occasions.
‘You’re David Slater, right?’
‘That’s me, so they say.’
Kerrigan walked down off his porch and to the gate where he held out his hand to the boy.
‘Well, it’s good to finally meet you, David.’
As though moving through treacle, David put his hand out and as he shook it, Kerrigan dwelt in him for a split second, seeing himself and the world through the boy’s eyes.
There was something wrong.
‘You want to come in for a second? You don’t look so good. I could make you a coffee. There’s soda. I’ve got beer too. What do you say?’
‘I’ve lost something. That old lady said maybe you could help me find it.’
‘Kath said that to you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What is it you’ve lost?’
‘I — I don’t know.’
‘Do you know where you lost it?’
The boy looked up the road into the woods once again.
‘Back in there.’
‘I guess you want to go take a look.’
The boy nodded. His head stayed turned, his eyes stared once again, defocusing as he gazed along the road into the shadows cast by the trees. Kerrigan looked up at the overcast sky. The clouds were in for the duration by the look of it but it was only midday. If they were quick there’d be enough time.
‘Wait here a second, David. I’ll be right back and then we’ll go take a look together.’
David didn’t move or speak.
Kerrigan threw what he needed into his backpack and took his carved walking staff from the pantry. Back outside, David hadn’t shifted. Kerrigan opened the gate and gestured up the road.
‘Let’s go.’
It was different in the woods that day. No sun broke through the pines to warm them as they walked. Kerrigan couldn’t tell if it was the chill or the silence in the trees that brought the hairs up on his arms and neck. Any joy he would usually have experienced to be walking in the woods was absent. His shoulders knotted and he clenched his teeth, glancing often into the obscured depths of forest to either side.
David, despite his trancelike condition, put on a decent pace. Whatever it was he’d lost, he wanted it back badly. He wanted it back quick. Kerrigan matched the boy’s speed easily.
The road here was much broader than the trails but they kept to the edge in case someone did come driving by. It wasn’t unheard of for kids to race their cars along the road to The Clearing. There was no one today, though. The road was quiet; the trees on both sides statuesque in the unmoving air. There was only the sound of their breathing in time with their steps.
The boy didn’t speak to him and it didn’t seem odd that he expected Kerrigan to help him search for something even though they hardly knew each other. When people passed Kerrigan’s way or fetched up at the cabin, he helped them. He helped them all.
There was a mustiness in the air as they walked, reminiscent of the fungi that grew on rotting fallen branches. It was a damp smell with a sweet note to it. The odour lingered throughout the walk and it wasn’t until they were almost in The Clearing that Kerrigan realised the smell was coming from David.
When the two of them arrived at the border posts of the picnic area Kerrigan turned and spoke to the boy in gentle tones.
‘So, what are we looking for, David?’
‘We stopped there.’ David said and pointed. ‘We passed a joint around. Good shit, you know, from Acapulco or somewhere.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Then she got out and I followed her. I think we must have gone this way.’
He began to walk, retracing his steps. He didn’t stop at the border but walked through it and into the pine trees.
‘Who was she?’
‘Gina Priestly.’
‘I don’t know her.’
‘Everyone knows Gina. She pulled me through these trees. Something hit me here.’
David put a hand to his face but Kerrigan saw no signs of a cut or bruise. He looked the way the boy was pointing and he could see some evidence of disturbance but they looked days or weeks old. It was still possible to see where people might have rolled on the ground, flattening some of the debris from the trees and making bare patches where the black dirt of the forest showed through.
David moved a little closer to the site of the disturbance.
‘Here. This was where she did it. She . . .’
He knelt down and placed his palm on the ground. His other hand went to his forehead as he tried to concentrate. Kerrigan felt he’d seen all these things before. Many times. It seemed both strange and perfectly normal.
‘That bitch. That dirty — I don’t know what she did. She took it from me. Right here. She took it and she . . .’
Kerrigan watched the boy struggle, grasping at memories that were just out of reach. David turned towards him, his eyes those of a wounded animal, pleading and feral at the same time. When he spoke his voice was lost among a host of others. The sound that came from his mouth was that of twenty people whispering a prayer in unison. None of the voices belonged to him. Kerrigan took a reflexive couple of steps backwards, careful not to back himself up to a tree.
‘I remember now.’ David’s voices said. ‘I remember how she entered me; a violation it was, Mr. Kerrigan. Yes, she tricked me. Took what it was she needed and left me.’ The boy spread his arms wide. ‘ Left me like this.’
It was strange to watch the boy alter even though Kerrigan suddenly knew he’d seen it happen more times than he could count. He didn’t really see the change, not on the surface; he just knew it had occurred. Would anyone else be able to notice that inner shift? That ripple? Would anyone else know what it signified? Kerrigan doubted it. Even if they could; afterwards, they would forget. The way David forgot.
The way Kerrigan, too, forgot so much.
He kept his voice low and calm.
‘I can help you, David. You have to trust me.’
‘No more trust.’
‘You let me bring you here. You asked for my help. Don’t you remember?’
David appeared to try and recollect but it was clear he couldn’t.
‘Maybe I do. But no one can help me now. I’ve changed. Forever.’
‘No, David. Not forever. There’s still time to undo this. Will you let me help you?’
Kerrigan watched the savagery rise within the boy like a sudden fever. David’s conscious mind lost its supremacy; his humanity was subsumed. From nowhere, Kerrigan had a name for what was happening to David: Fugue. And he knew things; thi
ngs he hadn’t known only moments before. The girl could have fed without infecting David. Why had Gina turned him? She could have stayed hidden but she had not. Was it just inexperience?
David’s agitation increased. Kerrigan watched him scanning their surroundings for a way to escape. He looked past Kerrigan, back into The Clearing, but it was obvious the boy had no idea what to do or even where he could safely go. David knew nothing about himself.
‘That’s right, David. In this state, you need to stay in the shadows or you’ll die. You’re fine here in the comfort of the trees but you can’t stay here forever. People will wonder what happened to you. They’ll come looking.’
‘If I disappear no one will care. It happens all the time.’
‘It happens occasionally, that’s true, but it doesn’t happen often. The last one was two years ago. Is that what you want? To go on the run and leave your family and your life behind?
David launched himself towards Kerrigan with pure instinct and Kerrigan responded in kind. The boy was quick, one of the fastest he’d seen. They attacked because they wanted him to save them; that was what Kerrigan believed. Because they trusted that he was equal to the task. He was.
He flicked a binder at the boy from where it had nestled in his palm ever since they left his cabin. It stopped David mid air and sent him back with twice the force he’d engaged in his attack. A ratcheted crunch came from the boy; dozens of the joints in his body popping and relocating in response to the tremendous concussion. The sound was that of knuckles against ribs and teeth, the sound of splitting skin. A pall of vapour escaped his body in the moment of impact, as if an old carpet had been thumped with a tennis racket to release a cloud of dust. The vapour was purple. It twisted into eddies and melted away. David hit the ground slack-bodied.
Kerrigan approached and knelt to check him. The boy had been knocked senseless by the force of the binder. It was the one Kerrigan had dug through the compost pile to retrieve. He’d been right too; it was a good one. Not wanting anyone to see him carrying a body along the trails, he slung David over his shoulder and carried him through the tightly spaced trees, creating his own trail to the wellspring.
Half an hour later, they reached the wellspring glade. Kerrigan laid David down, carefully undressed him and placed a binder around his neck to keep him from re-entering Fugue while he worked on him. The boy might continue to look and behave human, but until Kerrigan’s work was complete the disease would be locked deep within him, woven into the double helix of every single cell.
Kerrigan undressed David first and bound his hands and feet tightly with leather braids that had been blessed and dipped in wellspring water when he made them. He smudged them both before he began the purification. It was instinct that guided him — he had no manual for what he was doing, no memory of ever learning the techniques. Yet he watched his hands perform gestures and listened to his own voice utter words in a language he neither recognised nor understood.
Using a handful of spongy moss he took water from the wellspring and bathed the boy’s body entirely from head to toe. This baptism would help to drive the Fugue from his body. He would not be immune in the future but he would at least be healed. While he mopped David’s dark skin, Kerrigan searched for signs of entry and found what he was looking for in the clefts of the boy’s groin. The flesh was withered and dry around the penetration marks. He knew what Gina must have done to distract the boy while she fed. It was always done with trickery and seduction. Every feed was a kind of rape.
David was lucky to know he’d ‘lost something’. Most people never realised. Kerrigan doubted if Gina Priestly was aware of the Fugue in her own blood. There was a good chance she’d never find out. Whilst the Fugue was dormant, as it was most of the time, a human was perfectly safe from sunlight and binders or any other kind of control mechanism. But eventually the infection would surface like a malarial rigor and when that time came the human would recede and let the Fugue rule. For some it happened once every month. For others only one day in the year. But it always came. There was no denying the Fugue or the need it engendered.
Kerrigan himself had always shown Fugue tendencies. It was only when he was hunting that he remembered. When he hunted he remembered it all; every Fugue he had healed, every one he had destroyed, every human life saved. But even when he was awake to the hunter within him, he never recalled where it had all begun or how he had learned the things he knew. His fear of the dark amused him in these moments, but the very next night he would be close to paralysis when the dusk faded into night.
The boy moaned as he finished the anointing.
‘Almost done now.’
Kerrigan placed a binder against the boy’s forehead and stood up. He took hold of the staff and placed its tip against the binder, pressing it hard into David’s skin. He whispered into the top of the staff and felt the vibration move downwards. His voice awoke the blood that generations of Fugue Hunters had drained from themselves and worked into the carved ancient pine. The staff hummed, its resonance passing into the bones of David’s skull. The boy began to shake.
David opened his eyes and screamed. A cry of loss, a cry of triumph. That of the dying and of the reborn. The boy’s tears flowed freely. Kerrigan removed the staff and untied him. David curled into a foetal ball, wracked with sobs.
‘You can cry on the way back,’ said Kerrigan. ‘Put your clothes on. We need to get moving.’
A few seconds earlier the moment of chill that he hated so much when he was human had arrived. As a hunter, the drop in temperature and the failing of the light made his heart beat faster and his senses sharpen. Now that the valley was in shadow, Fugues could walk free. David dressed quickly and without speaking while Kerrigan stashed his equipment and pulled his backpack on. When David was ready he looked pale and weak, like someone recovering from a month of illness.
‘Can you walk or do I have to carry you again?’
‘I’ll be okay. Thanks, Mr. Kerrigan.’
‘It’s Jimmy.’
He started to hand Kerrigan the binder that had been around his neck.
‘HEY!’ Kerrigan shouted.
David stared back at him, wide-eyed.
‘Never take that off. Ever. Understand?’
The boy nodded and slipped the binder back over his head.
‘Come on.’
With the staff in one hand and a binder ready in the other Kerrigan led the boy home through the gradually deepening gloom.
Chapter 9
Reminders: August 19th
Don’t forget Buster’s worm medicine. He’s spending way too much time with his tongue up his ass.
Jimenez family have been gone for four days. With that cheap gear and their city-folk legs, they ought to have given up after forty-eight hours. If they’re not back by tomorrow morning: GO AND GET THEM.
Important: Find out what’s up with Burt. Kath says he’s been acting up all week. Keeps telling her he can see an old man outside the window. If he’s mistaking his own reflection for someone else, he must really be losing it.
Not that I’m likely to forget this but it’s over with Amy. Really freaked her when I pissed the bed, I guess. How’s a weirdo like me going to get laid now, huh? Shop at Randall’s until the dust settles.
CRUCIAL: Take a flashlight for the walk home after dinner tonight
Kerrigan timed his walk down to Burt and Kath’s place so he’d arrive while it was still light. Walking home would be different. If there’d been a cab, he’d have taken it, but there wasn’t any kind of taxi service for seventy miles in any direction.
The nebulous purple twilight was already heavy on the air as he walked up the creaking wooden steps and knocked hard on the doorframe. He took a step back to wait for Burt and turned to gaze out at the street. He looked from side to side along the porch too. Every second drew more life from the sky. In some of the houses on the Terrace, people were already turning on their lights.
He slung off his backpack and reached insi
de, casual at first then frantic. No flashlight.
‘Jesus Christ. You fucking space-case.’
The darkness rose like a flood around him. Burt was taking too long to answer. He banged again, louder, and peered through glass in the door trying to see beyond the fine mesh curtain that obscured the view. There were no lights on inside. If Burt couldn’t get to the door, then why hadn’t Kath come instead? Kerrigan stepped back from the door and looked around again. Gooseflesh rippled under his clothes. Someone was watching him, he was certain; waiting for him to look away before . . .
Unable to endure another moment of the swelling darkness, he tried the handle and was surprised to discover the door pulled easily open. These days, Burt and Kath never left the door unlocked.
He closed the door behind him and stood a moment in the hallway, listening. There was nothing but the ticks and creaks of an old house breathing. The same noises it had made when he was growing up there. Remembering the nights he’d spent terrified in his upstairs bedroom when Kath turned the lights out didn’t help to steady him. This was the place where it had all started.
He reached out for the light switch and flicked it on. Nothing happened.
It had to be a bulb. Surely the power wasn’t out. Maybe a fuse had blown. If anything, the darkness was worse inside the house: more intimate. He knew his folks weren’t there. It was plain enough, but he called out anyway.
‘Hey, Burt. It’s Jimmy. Kath? I’m here.’
There was no answer. He didn’t call again. His voice was hollow and pathetic in all that gloom. It sounded weak, fearful.
He went to the kitchen first, the old boards of the house complaining beneath his soles. When he flicked the kitchen light he found that it was out too. Oddly, there was a smell of cooking, maybe a pot roast or something. He stood for a while smelling the food and feeling no hunger at all. Surely they would come back at any moment. Maybe they were out buying a new fuse. That had to be it.
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