by Chris Page
After more than an hour, she arrived at last upon a link with a collection of maps from a website titled Hikers Guide to Willow Brook Trails, A Comprehensive Manual. It was apparently the digitized version of an old book, with the various pages scanned and pasted onto the internet. It was perfect, she surmised, clicking through the various sections. Some were hard to read, and upon zooming, only grew blurry, but the information was there for her study. She could work it out. With these and a new map together, she could piece it together.
She copied the various images of the book’s maps into a document and hit print. She peered over the edge of her cubicle towards the printer where she expected to see the pages rolling into the tray. She held an intense stare with the machine, awaiting its action. A few minutes had passed without anything coming through.
Then, suddenly, it pulled a clean, white page from its stack and sucked it up into its machinery, quickly spewing out pages from the top. Carrie felt an excitement rise in her chest that lifted her out of her chair to approach the hardcopy version of the maps she’d tracked down. On her way, however, a young man, likely an intern in college the way his clothes hung baggy on his stringy body, swung around in his chair towards the printer to swipe the pages away. Carrie stopped mid-distance. She could see from her vantage the contents of the pages were all text. No maps. It wasn’t hers. But the printer was working. And her computer had said the job went through. Carrie felt her excitement sour into frustration until a hand laid roughly over her shoulder, quickly accompanied by the sound of a throat clearing.
Carrie turned in place to find Maddie standing behind her, lips pressed tightly against one another. In one hand she lifted the pages of maps Carrie had printed.
“Looking for these?” Maddie asked.
“I—” Carrie began.
“We rerouted the printers,” Maddie explained, “all assistant computers print to East-1, not East-2 anymore. That’s for the interns. The ones who’ve been helping out with your workload since you’ve left. Carrie, can I speak with you in the conference room a moment?”
Carrie could discern the suppressed but nonetheless astringent tone in Maddie’s voice. She didn’t want to accompany her to the conference room, but understood the question to be a command. Before giving a reply, Maddie began leading the way, Carrie following behind.
The door shut to the rest of the floor behind them. Sound closed off to a gentle hum, voices dimmed to muffled versions of themselves. Maddie rounded the ovular conference table, pulled back a leather chair and seated herself. She looked up at Carrie, still lingering by the door.
“Carrie,” she spoke, then gestured to the chair across the table.
Carrie felt her face flush as she took the seat. She laid her hands in her lap and kept a foot distance away from the table. She hated being reprimanded. It felt like being a little girl all over again. She’d lived through those years, had no interest in returning to them.
She wanted to get ahead of the conversation. “Look,” she began, “Maddie—”
Maddie lifted her hand, white palm facing Carrie. It eclipsed half of her face and for a moment Carrie considered it like a mask. Like Maddie was donning a helmet. “Listen, Carrie. I think maybe you coming back wasn’t the best idea.”
Maddie lowered her hand and laid it out on the table.
“Maddie, I’m ready to come back, I apologize for this,” Carrie signalled with her eyes to the pile of old maps she’d printed laid out beside Maddie, “but truly, I’m ready.”
Maddie closed her eyes very slowly, in a manner Carrie thought could either insinuate empathy or headache. “I think perhaps you need more time.”
Cautious before deciding which mood her boss may be in, Carrie opted for a cool, collected, yet firm reply. “No, but thank you.”
“No,” Maddie retorted quickly. Carrie cocked her head back. “Carrie, this isn’t a discussion.”
Carrie felt the air expel from her lungs. She felt cold in the woman’s presence. She didn’t know Maddie had this side to her personality, she’d only ever witnessed passive aggression. Her snap was entirely unpredicted. She didn’t know what to say or do, she felt out of options. “Alright,” Carrie ceded. “When will you let me—”
“Carrie,” she uttered, head now lowered, fingers lifted towards her temples. As she spoke Carrie’s name, Carrie felt the tone tip towards sympathy, but how could it? How could she care, while she eliminated Carrie’s well-being?
“Wait, are you firing me?” Carrie had to hear it. She needed it spoken. She wouldn’t believe it without that much.
Maddie folded her hands atop the table between them. She slowly lifted her chin so that her face was upright and her eyeline was even with Carrie’s. She took a breath in through her nostrils, and released it slowly while flaring them. Carrie observed the woman, who she’d known nearly always to be cordial, accommodating, and, at least in all outward appearances, kind. She watched Maddie transform before her into something much less than that. She removed her mask. She’d proven herself a demon. “Yes,” Maddie spoke. “You’re fired, Carrie.”
Carrie felt like leaning back, throwing herself backward into her chair like a blow had been dealt to her body. Her chest felt tight like it was true. Her face felt numb, and the room, despite its sterility, its lack of character, its stillness, felt spinning malevolently around her. Her breath shallowed and she wondered if she was going to faint.
Instead, the moment passed, Carrie was left with the painful realization that the firm she’d poured years of her life into was turning its back on her. All at the hands of this monster before her. Wolf in sheep’s clothing. The metaphor came shrouded with emotions, bubbling up from an indeterminate place deep within Carrie, casting a red light across her eyes as she stared down her now former manager.
“Fuck you,” Carrie muttered. She wouldn’t cry. There was no reason, given the ugly truth she was presented with. Apparently, she was losing nothing but close ties to the devil. She’d severed those before. She would see herself through it again. The thought of saved up vacation days occurred to her. “You’ll be paying out my vacation days on my next check,” she stated, though it appeared Maddie took it as a question.
She wholly ignored the prior insult. “Yes, you’ll get those in your final paper check.”
Carrie squinted, glaring at the beast. Then the object in her periphery drew her gaze down to the table. The sheets she had printed lay beside Maddie’s pale hand. “May I have my maps?”
Maddie scoffed. “Fuck you, vacation days, and may I have my maps?”
Carrie thought to tell Maddie she had no other business with her than those statements, but she only offered a scowl, stubborn and statuesque. Don’t waste breath, she thought consciously. Subconsciously, a recognition that another utterance might break her.
The moment lingered in the forefront of her mind long enough to obscure the memory of having left the building, returned to her car, and driven out onto the street. It wasn’t until she spotted a red light in her field of vision and slammed on the breaks that she returned to the present moment. The seatbelt dug into her chest, catching in its machinery to sting the inside of her left breast. The remnants of fury overwrote the pain while her eyes focused on the glowing red circle dangling above her.
“Fuck Maddie,” she muttered to herself, hoping it would be definitive enough to dismiss her rage. Her hands clung to the wheel tightly, forming little white ovals around each of her knuckles. The stillness around her had a pregnant quality to it. She could feel the air, the car, and her own body poised to sprint. Then she felt the air, cool, fresh and damp.
She saw the man.
He had his back turned. His hands were off of her. She stood freely, and out of sight. He’d said he’d find her if she ever ran. But the manic quality of his rants and insistent lessons clued her eight year old mind into an instinctual recognition. He was unhinged. He spoke of being lost, of not understanding. It was he, she surmised, who was lost, who didn’t under
stand. She stared into the back of his head. His shaggy hair had grown matted, unwashed and filthy. The back of his neck beneath his hairline was covered in soot. His jacket had multiple tears in it from colliding with trees in haphazard steps on hills’ declines while Carrie had bounded down them with ease, save the tether of his arm keeping her in tow.
She heard the wind rise. She watched the man shiver. She didn’t shiver. It felt inviting. And then she heard it. At first, it was only a whisper. Then, however, in concert with the wind, it rose in volume. It was a voice. Or perhaps, young Carrie thought, many voices, in chorus. They spoke directly to her, their words landing only within her ear canal, and uttered nowhere else. The man was oblivious to their instruction. And they told Carrie to flee.
Without a second thought, she turned away from the man and launched into a sprint. She didn’t care for the sound of her footsteps, if, as they padded along the earth, made enough sound to alert the man behind her. She’d been told to run by a higher force, one whose voice superseded her own thoughts. The man, for all his sermons, had never wielded the same power in his voice. She didn’t know the identity of the voice just yet, only that it had her best interests in mind when it had told her to run. It knew the opportunity had arisen.
The forest passed by her with a speed that blurred it into an abstract mural of greens and browns. She could feel her own body, white skin and green jacket and blue pants, swirling into the mixture, flowing in the direction of her salvation.
The light turned green. Carrie remained still beneath it for a moment. The intersection was clear, and suddenly too was her mind. The road straight led back to her home.
Instead, she twisted the wheel and drove out beyond the edge of town, down the county road, out towards the forest, old maps laid out in the passenger seat beside her.
8
_________
Jake gathered up his work laptop despite having no intention to reboot it again that evening. Despite the needlessness of the action, he had to take it with him, contend with the necessities of his perception at work. The lie was that his wife was sick. She needed care from her husband. He would work the second half of the day at home so he might tend to her, the good, caring husband he was. It kept suspicion at bay.
Sean stood in the doorway to his office watching over Jake as he coiled up the accompanying cords. He wore a face that seemed to want to communicate concern, but Jake couldn’t help reading it as inspection. Regardless, he knew he’d adequately sold the lie to his boss and there was nothing more to say. Perhaps Sean Buchanan had an interest in understanding human empathy. The man was unmarried, Jake attributed that fact to the man’s total lack of natural human affect. Had he stopped to ponder the question, he’d probably decide his boss was borderline sociopathic. Of course, his mind was on other things, like how he would spend the free time he had secured for himself.
Willow Brooks First Hardware was located a short drive away from the Trinity Mortgage offices. Jake knew this, he’d mapped it out for himself. He also knew, however, the way he would have to take to the store would wind him around the downtown area, circumventing his job to fake like he was going home. He couldn’t risk any detail of the lie looking wrong. He knew, from the vantage point of Sean Buchanan’s office, that his first turn could be seen. It was important that he’d fake going home. It sold the entire narrative. He would take a left, travel a pair of blocks until the street was no longer visible to the sixth floor, then hang another left, travel down past the back of the building, then another left to travel back up towards the store from behind his office.
He felt calm for the duration of the ruse, making the necessary turns in the event his boss was peering down at him. Confidence swelled.
Then he made the left around the back of the office building and he began to feel a shake introduce itself to his fists, wrapped around the top of the wheel. He averted his gaze a moment to view them, tight around the leather, fingertips nearly numb from the pressure. He took a deep breath. There was nothing to be anxious about, he told himself. Still, the unsettling feeling remained in his fists, and he could feel it gradually creep along his arm towards his chest, where his heart thudded against his rib cage.
“Goddamnit,” he muttered to himself, passing through a stop sign.
A high screeching horn blared from his left and he slammed on his breaks. A passing car swerved to his rear, narrowly missing contact. “Fuck!” he shouted within the confines of his sedan. The driver, as he receded down the intersecting street, stuck out his middle finger through the open window.
The intersection was otherwise empty, and Jake had a moment to gain his bearings. He peered over his shoulder at the stop sign he’d blown.
“Jesus.” He pulled forward, thought to pull the car over to the side of the road on the next block, but proceeded towards his destination. If he permitted the shake additional time, it might consume him, cannibalize his resolve and leave him stranded with his aborted intentions. He couldn’t imagine the cowardice. He rolled down his window, let the fresh air woosh over his reddened face, and paid better attention to the road.
By the time he rolled into the parking lot for Willow Brook First Hardware, the shake had settled softly into his bones, where he could more or less ignore it. As he stepped out from his car, he felt it once in his legs, but was immune to its doubts by the time the automatic sliding doors parted for his entry.
He slowed his pace as he entered the building. The hardware store was relatively small, nothing in comparison to the behemoths out by the mall thirty minutes from town. It was old and small, likely subsisting on locals that patronized for the sheer principle of loyalty. Willow Brook was a small enough town to have a community willing to support businesses like this. Despite some of the developments creeping into their borders, a contingent of residents ensured Willow Brook retained its identity as a small township, content to uphold its image as a quaint, forested place where life remained simple, small, safe. Where you didn’t talk about abductions and murders of young boys, because they didn’t happen here.
Jake passed the register where a younger woman awaited customers, fiddling with her phone. He stalked the aisles, glancing over their collection of hammers, screwdrivers, thoughtlessly gazing over their power tools section. He wanted to look like a curious customer. He needed to seem authentic, to be bate.
“Good afternoon there!”
The words slithered along Jake’s spine from behind him. He had to take a moment before turning to greet the man who’d snuck up on him. He was light on his steps. Jake took note. “Hey there,” he returned, pivoting to face a heavier set gentleman with a round, childlike face, small brown eyes peering through thick, square framed glasses. His wispy black hair laid draped over his shiny scalp and his mouth seemed inset between his cheeks. He appeared approachable, harmless. He wore a nametag over his right breast which read David.
“Is there anything I can help you with today?” His voice was higher in pitch than most men. Jake guessed his age at thirty five. The man’s smile pushed his cheeks into red balls on the sides of his face just beneath those small brown eyes.
Jake felt the shakes in his bones immediately lift and a warmth filled his body. He was comfortable, as a predator hunkered into tall grass. “You know, as a matter of fact, there is,” he allowed his eyes to drop emphatically to the name tag, “David. My name’s Jake, by the way.”
David nodded. “Pleasure to meet you, Jake.” The voice was almost comical, if not upsetting.
Jake thrust his palm towards David, who replied with a modest surprise of “Ohp,” then chuckled and took the hand into his own. Jake felt the clammy interior of his fist as they shook, balmy and hot, slippery, but firm.
“So, David,” Jake continued, releasing David’s hand, “I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about these power tools here. I’ve got to be honest, I’ve never much cared for them, always been an old school elbow grease kinda guy myself, but my wife, she’s nagging me about a number of
things falling apart in our house. You know, we’ve been there going on fifteen years now.”
“Oh, yeah,” David said. “Bound to have a few loose screws.”
Jake tapped David’s chest with the back of his hand. “Exactly.” He observed David’s reaction, something of a tiny jolt mixed with some kind of rush, and Jake felt thrown. He regretted the forward gesture, unsure what his intention was, whether to offset his prey, or prove friendly. He stuffed his hands into his pockets while a light shade of crimson rose into those balls beneath David’s eyes. “So, I’m thinking I should pony up for one of these drills to help cut the time in half. I’m not the young man I used to be, I don’t enjoy hunching under the kitchen cabinet or a table with wobbly legs for extended lengths of time anymore.”
David laughed, more red filled his cheeks. “Sure, sure. Well, I’d be happy to assist, we’ve got a collection of wonderful models here from all the top brands, one of them is bound to be the boy you want.”
Jake blinked. Boy. For a split second, he considered the word’s utterance a retaliation for his chest pat, which he now interpreted as a small, patronizing gesture. He quickly whisked the thought away, the product of nerves, overthinking. Still, it evened Jake’s perception of the playing field, as though they’d made eye contact from across the prairie. David was unfamiliar with the threat, that didn’t mean he was unaware of one. Any strike would become a chase. “Great, great,” Jake nodded.
David’s small, pudgy hand made contact with the first model on the right. His fingertips played across the top of the drill bit, riding along the metal towards the base. “This one here’s got the power, real torque. Of course, it’s wired, so you’d need to be within five feet of a power source, or get an extension cord. Which of course we sell here as well.”
