The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen

by R. T. Lowe

  Mia braked the car, fishtailing through the muck for a ways before finally coming to a stop. They’d only been on the dirt road a few minutes. She checked the odometer: exactly half a mile from Dobbs Highway. But no other cars. Or people. Not even at the campground they’d just passed; the picnic benches and campfire sites were empty. Not surprising. It was too late in the year for camping and the Portland weather had been predictably wet and awful for the past month. She looked all around and smiled as the anticipation bubbled up inside her. Finally, it was time. This was called payback. Payback on an epic scale. She’d waited months for this, and she planned to enjoy every wonderful minute of it.

  “All right, sugar lips,” she said sweetly, putting the car in park and cutting the engine. “Get out.”

  “We better not be where I think we are,” Ethan groused. “If I smell trees, I won’t be happy.”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.” Mia clapped her hands. “Out. C’mon. Chop chop.” She climbed out of the car and went around to the passenger side, her feet squishing into the mud up to her ankles. She opened the door for him.

  “Did you forget that I can’t see?” Ethan didn’t make any attempt to get out, sitting in his seat like a recalcitrant teenager.

  “Did you forget how to use your legs?” Mia looked down at him, shaking her head. “Take my hand, darling.”

  He unbuckled his seatbelt, then he just sat there, stewing.

  She grabbed his hand and placed it on her wrist, then pulled him out of the car and kicked the door shut, leaving a mud print of her shoe under the window. “Ready?”

  “Ready for what?” Ethan said darkly. His chin dropped like he was looking down at his feet. “This doesn’t feel like a sidewalk.”

  “Just hold onto my arm and remember whose birthday it is.”

  Ethan groaned.

  She led him around some seedlings and ferns creeping onto the edge of the road, and then, in the cold and bitter morning air, they set off into the forest. She followed a thin serpentine ribbon of path that was fairly easy to navigate, even with Ethan clutching her arm and dragging his feet like he’d recently had a stroke. Before long, the woods were all around them, closing in on them. The sky darkened. She smiled, her excitement growing with each step. The trees got bigger, the ferns denser. The trail vanished. The ground was soft and dewy, soggy in places. Thick branches and massive logs covered the forest floor like landmines on a battlefield. Ethan stumbled often, but rarely spoke, and then only to complain.

  “Watch your feet, Ethan,” Mia warned. “Got one right in front.” She skipped around a mossy rock as smooth and round as a riverbed stone. He tripped on it and she had to reach around his waist to keep him from falling.

  “Shit!” Mia shouted, annoyed. “When’d you become such a goddamn klutz?” She looked over her shoulder to check for the car. It was now just a sliver of cobalt blue in the distance. “I told you to watch your feet.”

  “How come I think I’m gonna be pissed when I take off this blindfold?”

  “When’d I tell you to start thinking?” Mia snapped at him. “Just keep walking, lover. And stop complaining. You’re bothering me.” They plodded along in silence for a spell. Turning, she looked for the car. She couldn’t see it. Perfect. She stopped. They hadn’t walked long. Ten minutes at most. Without giving Ethan any warning, she shrugged off his hand and silently slinked away from him. Then she stood there, studying his face (the parts she could see anyway), taking it all in like a spectator at a much-anticipated sporting event.

  “Hey!” Ethan said anxiously, his breath puffing out white in the cold. “Mia! Hey! Where’d you go?” He held his hands out in front of his body like a sleepwalker, searching for her.

  “I’m right here.” She watched him, smiling.

  He grabbed at his hat.

  “Not yet!” she shrieked. “Not until I say so! This is my wish.”

  He unclenched his hand, reluctantly, and his arm returned to his side.

  “Where do you think you are?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he shot back bitterly. “Some psychotic woman blindfolded me.” Then he pointed at her. “But we better not be in the goddamn woods!”

  “What do you have against the woods, anyway?” she asked casually.

  “You know I hate the woods!”

  “But why?”

  “Why do I need a reason? I just do. Can I take this thing off now?” He reached up to his head again.

  “No!” Mia tried to sound angry and thought she was doing a convincing job of it.

  Ethan was starting to get scared. She could hear it in his voice. She didn’t want him to freak out or go into hysterics, but she intended to teach him a lesson. “Remember what you did to me on your last birthday?” she said, her voice pleasant. “Do you remember that, darling?”

  “What?” He paused for a few beats, giving his head a dismayed shake. “You mean the scuba thing? Seriously? C’mon, Mia. You planning to hold that against me forever? I thought you’d like it. Once you got in the water and got into it, I thought you’d really like it. I swear. I thought I was doing you a favor.”

  “Is that so?” she said icily. “A favor? You’re such an asshole. You knew what my Nana told me, but you just disregarded it.”

  “About the sharks? C’mon! She was a crazy old lady. No disrespect to her, of course. Rest in peace and all that. But palm reading? She was a superstitious circus fr—”

  “Maybe she was a little eccentric,” she admitted. “But do you have any idea how terrified I was? Do you?”

  “Well, yeah, I do know,” he replied thickly. “You won’t shut the hell up about it. I told you I’m sorry like a million freaking times. I just thought it’d be fun. If I knew Serbians held grudges forever, I’d have never done it.” Ethan was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, squirming like a toddler trying not to pee in his big-boy pants.

  “I was thinking about forgiving you.” She knew that what she was doing was probably cruel, but she was enjoying it too much to stop. And he deserved it. “But then I thought, maybe it’d be good for you if you got a taste of your own medicine. Then you’d finally understand what it was like for me to be in the open water like that.” She raised her arms and looked up to the canopy. “I think this will make us closer as a couple. You know, make our undying love for each other even more undying.”

  “You’re outta your mind,” he murmured under his breath, his jaw flexing with tension. “I’m taking this thing off.”

  “No you’re not,” she said forcefully. “Not until you hear the kicker.”

  “The kicker?”

  “Yes, my tall, dark and handsome prince—the kicker. Not only are you in the woods, you, my love, are presently enjoying my esteemed company in the heart of… Ashfield Forest.”

  Ethan froze. No more shifting of his feet. No more squirming. His hands moved to his face, slowly, mechanically. He peeled away the hat and the blindfold, holding them for a moment before letting them drop to the ground. His eyes were huge, mouth open, face pale.

  Mia didn’t laugh. But she wanted to. After so much planning, this was exactly the reaction she’d hoped for. It was exactly what Ethan deserved.

  “Are you crazy?” Ethan whispered. “Ashfield Forest? Ashfield Forest? Where’s the car!” He started spinning in circles, first clockwise, then counterclockwise, then back the other way. He tripped over something and caught himself against a twisted tree branch. “We gotta get outta here!”

  Mia started to laugh. She couldn’t control herself any longer.

  “What’s so funny? Where’s the car?”

  She laughed harder.

  “Mia, goddammit! This isn’t funny. You know what’s been happening out here! Where’s the fucking car?”

  He was really panicking now. His voice was breaking. He was about to lose it. Time to put an end to this before he ran off into the woods and got himself lost. “Ethan! Hey! Look at me, darling. I was lying. This isn’t Ashfield Forest. That�
��s not where we are.” She stepped toward him, cutting through a thick patch of ferns that came up to her waist. “C’mon, relax. It’s okay.”

  “What?” he said, his frightened eyes darting all around. “We’re… we’re not? This isn’t…”

  “No,” she said, laughing. “Ashfield’s on the other side of Dobbs Highway. This is a state park, you idiot.”

  “Really?” Ethan was shaking, his breaths coming fast and shallow. “It’s not… we’re not…”

  “We’re in a park,” she repeated slowly. “And the car’s like a minute away. It’s just over there.” She cocked her thumb behind her.

  He started to say something, then hesitated, and lifted his eyes to the towering trees surrounding them. “But we’re still in the goddamn woods, Mia. I hate the woods. You know that.”

  She continued to watch him, more amused than ever. Her brave, adventure-hungry, I-stare-death-in-the-face-and-laugh boyfriend was acting like a frightened child trying to come to terms with the bogeyman under his bed. It was hysterical. She laughed so hard her stomach started to hurt.

  “Mia!”

  “Well I needed to teach you a lesson,” she said, wiping tears from the corners of her eyes.

  “Can we go? Please?” Ethan glanced up at the treetops then turned his head to check behind him. “I seriously don’t want to be here.”

  “I don’t know what you’re so worried about. It’s nice in the woods. It’s peaceful. Quiet. What could possibly happen out here?” Mia was trying to scare him—again. She couldn’t seem to help herself. “It’s nice with no one around to disturb you. I feel like I can really think out here. Maybe we should do this more often.”

  “Mia! The car!” His fear was turning to anger.

  “You’re such a baby. Did you learn your lesson?”

  “What?” Ethan said, sounding perplexed.

  “Just be a good boy and nod your head and I’ll show you where the car is.”

  “Mia!”

  “Nod your head!” she demanded.

  “You’re crazy!”

  “Not nice, dear. Nod your head and say, ‘I deserve this and I’ll never make my wonderful girlfriend get in the ocean again.’”

  He gave her a resigned (and most likely insincere) smile. “Fine.” He bobbed his head up and down in a spot on imitation of a bobble head. “I was nodding in case you missed it.”

  “Don’t be a smartass.”

  “I deserve this and I’ll never make my fantastic girlfriend get in the ocean again.”

  “Wonderful girlfriend,” she said, delighting in the correction.

  “Wonderful,” he repeated with a sigh. “The car?”

  “Was that so hard? I’ll even let you drive.” Mia glanced down for a second to unzip the jacket pocket where she’d put her keys. She found them, then she looked up.

  Ethan was gone.

  She stepped back, startled, hugging herself against a sudden gust of cold wind. “Ethan!” she called out uncertainly, her head moving all around. “Not funny, lover! Ethan!”

  No response. The low gray clouds had moved off to the east, yet in the dark of the forest the rain continued unabated, drizzling down coldly, heavily, from the branches above.

  Something stirred in the forest, a whisper of movement across the face of the ancient woodlands.

  A chill raced up her back as she searched for it, but the forest went suddenly quiet again, serenity reigning under the brooding calm of the canopy; all she could hear was her own breathing and her feet lifting and falling among roots wrestling for dominance beneath the rain packed groundcover. She stood still, listening for the sound, her heart thumping fast in her temples. The air felt thin. Her lungs worked harder, quickening to compensate for the tightness in her chest.

  She heard it again and her gaze jerked toward a giant fir; at its base it was wider than the Jetta. A branch snapped and the rustling grew louder, more frantic, like something big was struggling to make its way through the underbrush.

  A voice cried out from behind the tree. She flinched back, her muscles tense and alert. Then she heard her name, followed by moaning, and then her name again. Almost instantly, Mia felt herself relax. Her breathing calmed. It was just Ethan. He was trying to scare her—but it wasn’t going to work. Now she was annoyed. She couldn’t believe he was trying to turn the tables on her birthday wish. Her birthday wish.

  She took a few steps toward the tree and shouted angrily, “Ethan! This isn’t funny, butthead! Joke’s gonna be on you! Guess which one of us doesn’t know where the car is?” A thick layer of bright green moss shrouded the trunk like frosting on a St. Patrick’s Day cake. She reached the tree and stuck a finger into the moss. It was soft and spongy. She peeled off a chunk and played with it. It was strangely tactile, like a stress ball.

  More moaning. Louder and more anguished this time.

  “Gimme a break! That’s some performance you got goin’ on back there. You going for an Oscar, dear? Should I call the Academy and conference them in?” She kept close to the trunk and began circling around to the other side, her anger rising by the second, making her face hot.

  “I’m gonna make your life so miserable! You know that thing you like so much they call ‘sex’? Ain’t none comin’ your way for a long, long time, buddy. You’re gonna be having a real close relationship with your hand, you prick. If you think this is spooking me, it’s not. I’ll leave without you.” The other side came into view. “It’s gonna be a long walk home if—”

  A pack of dogs was eating something. What was it? A deer? She stared at the dogs, watching with morbid fascination as they buried their heads deep into the innards of the bloody disemboweled animal. Then one of the dogs stood—it stood on two legs. It was wearing pants and a shirt. It put something in its mouth. It had hands. Fingers. And then it was no longer there. It just disappeared. There was a pop—like the uncorking of a champagne bottle—and then it was gone.

  Mia’s brain wasn’t processing what her eyes were seeing. Her brain was trying to tell her that dogs don’t walk on two legs, that dogs don’t wear pants and shirts. She looked down at the deer. It was bathed in blood. Another one of the strange two-legged dogs stood up and moved to the side.

  The deer had a face—a human face. And the face looked like… Ethan’s.

  She screamed. The little pieces of moss slipped from her fingers.

  “Hello,” a voice said. “Hello. Miss? Good morning.”

  She tugged her eyes away from Ethan’s ghostly blood-spattered face and searched for the voice. Just off to her right, she saw someone approaching her. She couldn’t tell at first if it was a man or a woman, but the hair was short and the clothes couldn’t be purchased in the women’s department at Nordstrom. Concluding that it must be a man—and not a woman or bi-pedal dog—she noticed his unusual attire: a mixture of nineteenth century English dandy and modern-day street beggar. He was wearing shoddy paint-splotched overalls, a paisley ascot, double-breasted blazer and a feathered fedora. The man stopped in front of her.

  She could hear sounds coming from where Ethan lay on the ground. Terrible sounds. Feeding sounds. She looked down at him again. The dogs? The men? Whatever they were, were all over him.

  “Look at me,” the man demanded in a quiet voice.

  She obeyed reflexively, without a thought. His lips were enviably full and puffy and it made her think of an actress whose name she couldn’t recall. Then she saw his eyes and everything went suddenly haywire. There was something strange about them: large and the color of rain clouds, as she stared into them, she began to feel queasy and unbalanced. Wobbling on her feet, she tried to look away, but it was like an invisible but unbreakable bond had tethered their eyes together.

  “Can I show you something?” he asked politely.

  She nodded, mesmerized, still gazing into his hypnotic eyes.

  He opened his mouth, and she looked on in horror as his jaw descended to the lapel of his navy-blue jacket. Petrified, she stared into the cavernous mo
uth, her heart pounding hard in her throat, the sound filling her ears. What she saw there—rows of triangular serrated daggers—were the teeth of a shark.

  He snapped his mouth shut and smiled. “Does that frighten you?”

  “Yes.” She sounded like a robot, and she knew it. It was like listening to someone else’s voice. “Are you a shark?” Mia was terrified, but it was as if her fear had been de-linked from the fight-or-flight control center of her brain. She couldn’t act on her fear; she could only stand there and wait for whatever was about to happen.

  “No. I’m Number Two.” He laughed. It wasn’t an unpleasant sound.

  Another one appeared out of nowhere, a stringy piece of denim-covered flesh dangling from the corner of its bloody mouth.

  “Get back!” Number Two snarled at the other, enraged. “She’s mine! Know your place, Number Forty-Six.”

  The other one (Number Forty-Six) growled defiantly but backed up a step. “She’s not yours! We shouldn’t even be here. We’re outside the quadrants. What if he learns of this?”

  Mia barely understood their conversation. Forty-Six? Is that what he said?

  “We’ll leave no trace of them behind,” Number Two responded, his eyes moving away from Mia. “He will never know.”

  The moment his eyes released her she was less groggy, and some degree of lucidity came back to her. Her eyes searched for Ethan in the gray light of the forest, but he wasn’t there. The shredded fabric of the coat she’d given him for Christmas last year and one bloody shoe was all that remained of her boyfriend.

  Number Two took her firmly by the chin, pressing his cold fingers into her skin, and twisted her head around. Once again, she was looking into his slate-gray eyes, feeling weak and pliable, like her mind was no longer hers to control.