Palimpsest (Book 2): Of One Skein, Page 8

  “You fat fuck, I’ll haunt you ‘till the end of time!” I scream at him.

  He sits back for a moment and then the forest erupts with another gunshot and what’s left of his face explodes, blowing blood and gore all over my face.

  I feel his weight shift and he falls to the side.

  I waste no time in scrambling out from under him and getting to my feet, and then I see her.

  Jem is sitting on her butt, still holding my .45 in both hands.

  “I told you to run,” I say, as I try to get my breath back.

  She looks at the dead guy and then back to me, confused.

  “I’m glad you…” I start…fuck. “We have to go.”

  I reach down and help her up and then take the .45.

  I ignore the remaining lanterns glowing in the distance as we run under the ledge and back to where I left my backpack and Pixie.

  I help Jem over rocks and through the underbrush as fast as we can go. I can’t believe she found me out there in the darkness. But I’m grateful.

  We should have just run, run, run and never looked back.

  I can smell the stench of — of whatever that thing was — on me.

  I discovered something in the forest, a goddamned epiphany. I’m fairly sure I’m going to die from infection from this knife wound and I can’t imagine what fucked up disease I may have gotten from his blood — so now, in the end, when the choice is gone — I don’t want to die.

  I want to live.

  I don’t know if that makes me a coward, unrepentant or just selfish because I miss Sam’s touch so badly, it hurts more than this goddamned stab wound.

  Fuck me, I want to live.

  We make it back to our stuff with surprising ease. I assumed we’d never find our way again, but Jem, there’s something about her. She’s smart.

  Pixie is lying against by backpack and whimpers when she sees us.

  I reached down and grab my backpack and then scoop up Pixie, laying her against my shoulder, a little more infection shouldn’t matter at this point. I have to get Jem somewhere so that she’ll have a chance. She’s going to be on her own soon.

  I probably don’t have more than a day or two before fever’s going to take me down. I wonder how long it’ll take me to die after that.

  “Jem, I know you’re tired, but can you go a little further?” I ask.

  She looks up and gives me a crisp salute.

  I laugh, wondering where she saw that.

  I hold Pixie and then take Jem’s hand, leading her deeper down the ravine.

  The clouds disappear, letting the moonlight guide us through the forest, over bushes and around boulders and ledges. I have no idea how long we run, but Jem never protests or complains, she stumbles and falls, but we keep up a fair pace, putting a mile or more between us and them. We reach an outcrop jutting from a cliff somewhere in the middle of the night.

  I help Jem keep her footing as we crawl under it and into a natural grotto.

  Hopefully, we’re hidden enough to risk lighting my zippo. I spark it up and then rest in on a stone.

  Pixie crawls from my arms and looks up at me with those same sad eyes.

  Shock is setting in, or maybe it’s just exhaustion. I need to wash my and Pixie’s wounds.

  I pull out fresh water and peroxide from my backpack and try to wash out my wound, but the pain is overwhelming. I’m not sure I can do this and Jem is about to collapse. The wound…should be closed…

  I turn and lean against the smooth stone as Jem nestles up against my shoulder, hugging my arm. Pixie crawls up onto my shoulder, cradled between us, her chin resting on Jem’s shoulder. I have no idea what time it is, but it doesn’t matter, we need to rest, maybe I won’t die in my sleep…and come sun up, I can inspect my wound…and then pray we don’t get sick, and try to find our way back.

  But back where?

  Back up the ridge toward Freemont?

  Or down into the Valley?

  Casey is somewhere down that road, maybe with her friends. Then again, maybe she and her friends are piled up, one atop the other alongside that same road, rotting in the rain.

  If I live, I owe it to their parents, don’t I?

  To find out?

  It was easy enough to kill them, shouldn’t it be just as easy to save their kids?

  But I didn’t shoot first tonight and it almost got me killed, got us killed. All this thinking and reflection is making me weak. If I don’t get my shit together, me and Jem are going to be victims too. Just two more forgotten bodies, decomposing under a blanket of leaves, our stories never remembered — no postcards for us.

  I glance down at Jem and she’s already asleep.

  She shivers against me.

  Suddenly, I’m back at my kitchen window in New York, afraid to look over the sill — afraid to act.

  But I can’t hide. I can’t ignore Casey and her friends.

  Not this time.

  Sam said when my chance came I needed to be ready, needed to recognize it.

  Is this my chance for atonement?

  Or am I being selfish, searching for redemption when I’ve already found it in Sam and Emily?

  Pixie whimpers and shifts, pawing at my arm.

  Cam will protect Emily and Sam. He promised.

  I can’t save everyone.

  I can’t save Pixie. She’s dying because of me.

  But Sam said to save who you can.

  Christ!

  I’m worried about Casey but I’m not even going to live to look after Jem.

  Too much. It’s just too fucking much.

  I feel the tears coming, my throat tightening.

  I’m only sixteen for God’s sake.

  Which way is the right way?

  Sam, please, what do I do?

  My breath catches and I quietly sob.

  “Shhh, they’ll hear…” Jem cries out softly in her sleep.

  Sounds like Jem’s going to have a tough time growing up with this after all.

  I gently pat Pixie, trying to comfort her. She looks up with big blue eyes, sad eyes, and licks the cut on my cheek before resting her head back against my shoulder.

  A laugh escapes my lips and then the tears begin anew as I think about Pixie bleeding out in my arms.

  It’s not fair!

  But fair doesn’t have anything to do with fuck all.

  Just like wanting to live — I have to accept forgiveness when it is given. I can love. I can be loved. I can want to see tomorrow, feel Sam’s warm touch, see her smile, let her everything radiate over me, washing away my pain.

  I can be that guy again and still shoot first.

  That is still the one true way; more than ever…kill or die.

  I don’t have to be ashamed anymore — I don’t have to be the monster.

  I just have to live long enough to save the one’s I can.

  And that means I have to follow this road, I have to make sure, so that I won’t cry out for Casey in my sleep.

  “But if anything happens to Sam, to Emily, I’ll track you down, Cam, I’ll hunt you to the end of the time and when I find you — I’ll make you beg for death.”

  Fuck you Fate.

  “And fuck you God for making me choose.”

  “Shh, He’ll hear you,” Jem says again.

  But I Am a Little Girl

  °°

  The fading and rusting turquoise letters nestle into a windmill spray of dead light bulbs radiating across a white oval sign. It sits impaled upon a primer-red post that reaches three stories down to a weed infested knoll.

  Sam waves up from the pale-yellow convertible that’s parked out front, the one with gleaming chrome bumpers and white-wall tires. She’s wearing jean shorts with the cuffs rolled up extra short and a simple white half-shirt. At the ends of her tan legs are matching white canvas Keds.

  She’s leaning against the front fender like she owns the world.

  I think I’ve seen this postcard before.

  She raises one h
and against the sunset, summer shadows over Ray Bans and glossy lips.

  Her dimples are killing me, smooth, rosy cheeks…

  She reaches up on her tip-toes, her ponytail bouncing as she pulls her shades down and blows me a kiss.

  I can see her blue eyes sparkling from here.

  She’s so happy, so innocent — I must be dreaming.

  Wait…

  I’m not alone, there’s something…I crouch and reach for my knife, looking back down the walkway, past the red motel room doors and into the sepia shadows. Someone is watching me; the chills running down my spine are unmistakable. I take a step toward the rotting steel and concrete stairs as a shadow passes over me.

  It’s the sign, demanding my attention again.

  I glance up. It’s staring me down, coaxing, conning — promising that my stay at the Del Ray Motor Inn will be the best of my summer vacation. They have vacancies, HBO and a pool, but only a few feet of oily, green-tinged water has survived the season. The posts of the chain-link fence surrounding the pool-side beach chairs are broken and bent like candy-canes stabbed into the August asphalt, the connecting mesh twisted into gossamer waves.

  I hear feet shuffling and a girl giggling — memories of home, like dandelions in the breeze. She’s alone too; I need to get to her. I turn and race to the stairs leading to the third-floor balcony.

  But by the time I get up them, she’s gone. I look over the railing but Sam isn’t in the parking lot anymore. Neither is the convertible.

  Northern winds and darkening clouds threaten the sunset with promises of storms and much worse.

  I lean over the railing.

  “Sam?” I call.

  I run further down the walkway.

  “Sam!”

  The giggles return, but now two girls are laughing above me, still one floor up, still bathed in the last, fleeting rays of the sunset.

  I move cautiously up the next flight of stairs, careful of the rebar lattice as I avoid the broken steps and then pause before starting back down the walkway. The red doors are creaking on their hinges; shadows deepen and reach around the jambs, spilling out across the concrete floor, thick and sticky…

  I scramble out onto the higher walkway, expecting to see…

  “Sam?” I shout again.

  I grab the railing for support and glance up, but I can’t see them.

  Instinctively, I look down to the parking lot.

  Two green dirt bikes lean casually on their kickstands amid a gathering fog.

  And again, the girls giggle above me, taunting me — always above me, just out of sight, out of reach — and then, from somewhere deep inside the motel, somewhere behind the red doors, a little girl screams.

  “Emily!” I shout.

  More giggles.

  I race up the next flight of stairs and see a shadow flash across the railing.

  Shit, missed them.

  I run as fast as I can down the walkway, but I hear light footsteps on the concrete above me, running the opposite direction.

  I stop, listening.

  The little girl screams again.

  Echoes upon echoes, rising in pitch with each repeat. I clap my hands over my ears, trying to block the sounds, but they just keep building, growing louder, screaming and screaming and then…

  Silence.

  I look back down the walkway, past the red doors, past the ice machine, past the vending machines, but the stairs are gone, the floor and railing just stop, chunks of concrete hang from twisted rebar, reaching out to a brewing sky.

  I hear Sam running down the floor above me, toward the broken walkway…

  The nearest doors open, and from the darkness, people fall out onto the balcony, crowding around me.

  I try to move back and get away from them but hands find me, clutching at me, pushing and pulling. And as I turn, the broken railing reveals the pool below, and a small body floating face down in the water, her bald head unmistakable…

  “Emily!” I cry, my tears returning.

  I feel myself going down, pulled under by the mob, like I’m being dragged underwater too.

  “I’m coming punkin’!”

  And then a .45 is in my hand.

  It’s warm and cold at the same time.

  The hammer’s cocked.

  It’s familiar, welcoming, smelling of gun oil and blood, just as familiar as the voices that begin to circle me, taunting me like the never ending echo of footsteps…

  “Please, help…”

  “It hurts so much…

  “Please, God, make it stop!”

  And then a squeal cuts through the din, “Please, please, please…”

  Small hands push through the motel guests, and then a shoulder forces them aside.

  And then…and then she’s not in the pool.

  Emily is running to me across the concrete floor of the terrace, holding Teddy upside down by one leg.

  Her arms are outstretched, her face — it’s obscured by the black eye holes and hose of a gas mask.

  She stops before me and salutes.

  Jem?

  She unfastens the clips on the buckled straps that stretch over her tattooed head.

  “I told you I’d take care of her,” Sam chants as she dangles from the bent rebar protruding from the broken balcony above, swaying as she kicks off one of her Keds. She’s acting like everything is fun and games, but her grin isn’t right. Her dimples are gone and her brand is back, moving, changing, squirming under the skin like an infestation, the letters morphing from W-H-O-R-E to L-A-N-E, and then to pulsating wounds.

  I cover my eyes, but the crowd grabs my wrists and pulls my hands away.

  “Please, don’t make me…” I cry out.

  And then Sam drops one arm to her side, now hanging from only one hand. “You promised.”

  “Sam, I…”

  “You promised to take care of me,” she says as her chest begins to bleed through her shirt, cuts opening up and soaking through in crisscrossing streaks and lines.

  “You’re useless, fuck you and your vow,” she whispers, and then she lets go of the railing.

  I break away from the crowd, crawl to the railing and then reach out just in time to see her disappear into a swirling mist.

  “You said you wouldn’t leave me…” Emily cries, but no, that was Jem, wasn’t it?

  I won’t.

  “But you already did…”

  I turn to see Lisa standing behind me, blood bubbling out of her stomach wound.

  “You’re a coward,” she says.

  “No, I’m not, I’m trying…”

  “Then make it right.”

  “No, please, don’t make me…”

  I feel the gun rise to my chin, digging into my flesh.

  Lisa stares at me, her blue eyes relentless, commanding me. “Pull the trigger, for once in your miserable, useless fucking life, don’t be a chicken shit!” she shrieks.

  My hand is tightening on its own. I can see the hammer sliding back, little by little as my finger squeezes, and then — the gun goes off, exploding along the walkway, shattering the last rays of summer vacation.

  The world spins and tilts, slowly coming to a stop beneath the terrifying promises of the Del Ray Motor Inn.

  I’m on my side, cheek against the cold crumbling concrete as the red door darkness pools around my head.

  Emily kneels over me as she slides the mask away from her face.

  But it’s not Emily, or Jem — it’s both, both faces stapled onto one skull.

  Their eyes, I can’t see their eyes, I…

  I hear their mask slap against the concrete floor, it sounds wet — wrong.

  Their faces are tattooed.

  I scream.

  I can’t stop.

  And they scream back at me with a primal rage boiling with blame.

  Their teeth are filed and sharp.

  Their lips, Christ, make it stop — are gone.

  The crowd begins to scream too.

  “Like m
e. Like me,” they chant and then laugh.

  I feel my mind snap as light floods the motel balcony…

  The morning splinters and I gasp for air as I squeeze my eyes closed again.

  “No,” I whisper over and over as I rub at them. “No.”

  But the image of Emily and Jem returns, so I open my eyes to let the sun burn the images away, but they don’t go anywhere.

  “Like me.”

  My shoulder is throbbing.

  I close my eyes again, trying to slow the panting and keep from hyperventilating as the nightmare finally loosens its grip and begins to fade, reluctantly giving way to this new reality — a new reality that radiates out from my wounded shoulder, memories no less fucked up than the promises of the Del Ray Motor Inn: Pixie bleeding out in my arms, Jem, exhausted and traumatized — she killed two people yesterday and I bet she’s no more than eight, if that — and all of us soaking wet and freezing.

  My eyes open when I remember the knife, the Cart fucking Thing that stabbed me, his blood — I’m infected with whatever he is.

  I slump back against the stone wall and sigh.

  I’m already dead, or worse — it’s only a matter of time.

  I run one hand over my bald head and then the other, trying to hold my mind inside.

  Jem is still curled up against me under one of those white hospital blankets I don’t even remember getting out of my backpack. Her breathing is shallow. I don’t know if she’s sick or has a concussion. The morning light has revealed an ugly bruise and cut, like a vertical stripe on her forehead. It must have been the recoil from my .45 when she shot that thing.

  I can’t imagine how terrifying that must have been for her.

  Shit, she’s so brave.

  And so young.

  I kick my backpack and Pixie’s gaze follows my foot and then stares back up at me, her tongue lolling. She’s just sitting back on her haunches, staring at me from the edge of the grotto with those blue-white wolf eyes — maybe curious, maybe — fuck I don’t know.

  I thought she’d be dead by now; there wasn’t anything I could do for her last night, but she’s not dead, or even sick, not even close by the look of her.

  She walks over to me and nuzzles my cheek.

  Her eyes are still sad and her nose is wet and cold. I can’t help but grin.