by Jeff Ross
“I want to talk to her because I was there, that’s all.”
“Sure.” We drove in silence for a while. “She’s a bit on the kooky side,” Officer Cain said.
I nodded and shifted in my seat. “She’s okay though, right?”
“Physically she’ll be okay. A couple of broken ribs, so she’ll be sore for a while. Her ankle got messed up and will likely need physio. That kind of stuff. The concussion is worrying. They always are. But she’s actually incredibly lucky. It could have been a lot worse.”
We drove a while longer in silence. I started to wonder what I was doing. What was I going to say to this woman? It was so awkward, and I wasn’t even there yet.
“That’s a good video,” Officer Cain said. “It looks real. You had me fooled. Not that I thought it was some monster coming out of the woods. But for a second I wondered what was going on. Like, my brain said—maybe… Then I thought, No way.”
It was pretty weird getting a play-by-play of Officer Cain’s viewing. “So how’d you do it?” he asked.
I looked out the window. We were almost to the hospital.
“I wasn’t trying to trick you. Just curious,” he said.
“Those videos aren’t that hard to do, from what I hear,” I said.
“From what you hear. Yeah, okay.” We turned into the hospital parking lot and found a spot. “I’ll go in with you.”
“Like, in the room?” My mind was revving up. I could feel it. Something was going to force its way to the surface soon.
“No, but you’ll need to get access. They don’t let just anyone visit people.”
As we entered I tried to remember when I’d last been in a hospital, but I couldn’t. I didn’t do anything risky, so I hadn’t broken any bones in past years. The halls were mostly empty as we walked through them. Jeff kept talking as we went. Telling me about the different people who were in there. The car accidents, skateboard accidents, accidental stabbings while making dinner. It was a horror show, to be honest.
“Here we are,” Officer Cain said, stopping at a door. “Her name’s Amanda. She’s got a nice cut across her face, so try not to stare at that. And like I said, she’s a bit kooky.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Talk to her. She wants to thank you for what you did that night.” He pulled the door handle down but didn’t open the door. “A bit ironic, isn’t it?”
The room was dim. The woman, Amanda, turned as soon as I stepped in.
“I know you,” she said. She rose up slightly in her bed. “You were there that night. You were the boy.”
“I was,” I said. “How are you?”
“I’ll be okay,” she said. “Have a seat.”
She looked really excited to see me. It felt weird.
“So you know ChurChaw?”
“I—”
“I’ve been remembering. Remembering a lot. I didn’t first see him in a dream. I saw him for real. Have you seen him for real?”
“I—
“I was ten. Sorry to interrupt, but I have been waiting for someone to talk to. Someone who understands. I was ten, and we were camping. I’m an only child. Are you an only child?”
“Yes—” I managed before being interrupted again.
“Maybe he only comes for children. I don’t know. But we were camping, and I had to go pee. It was the middle of the night.”
She turned and looked at the blinds covering the window as if she could see outside. It was weird to hear this woman talk about having to pee.
“I didn’t see anything on the way there. It was bright. One of those nights where the moon is high and there aren’t any clouds. So the trees and the branches and everything were casting shadows. I think that would scare some people, but for me it was so much fun. I loved being out there where it was so quiet.” She turned to me. “What’s your name?”
“Rainey,” I said.
“I like that. Like a rainy day.”
She kept looking at me. I was about to say, “Yeah,” but she went on.
“I had my pee. You know, in the outhouse-type thing. There are always lots of spiders and stuff in there. That I don’t like, but if you don’t bother them, they won’t bother you. So I’m walking back to the campsite, and I take a wrong turn. Did you say you go camping?”
“I’ve been.”
“So you know those twisty trails. You sometimes end up walking right into someone’s site. I got on the wrong trail, though, and when I figured it out, I turned around and there he was.” She smiled at me.
“ChurChaw?”
“ChurChaw. I named him that right then. He gave me the name by making this noise—churrrr chawwwww. And you’d think I’d have been scared. All alone in the woods like that. But I wasn’t. He wasn’t threatening or anything. He just stood there and made that sound. Churrr chawwwww. His head, the big triangle thing, it moved back and forth. When I stepped toward him, he disappeared. But the thing was, I felt so at peace in that moment. Unlike I’d ever felt before. I wasn’t a troubled child or anything, but I often had…not voices, but conversations in my head. They’d come out of nowhere and were about nothing in particular a lot of the time. But they were there. And in that moment, I had the feeling I wouldn’t have that anymore, and I haven’t. Can you believe it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.”
“What’s your story? What’s your connection to ChurChaw?”
I thought about it. Amanda stared at me. She looked so hopeful.
“The thing is,” I said, “what you saw out there wasn’t real. I don’t mean when you were ten. I mean the video. I made that.”
“Sorry?”
“We were doing this thing. To get a viral video, really. Seeing how far it would go. Me and two of my friends made it and put it online. When you ran off the road the other night, we were out doing another shoot. But what you saw was just a guy in a costume with a foam triangle on his head.” It sounded so stupid to say it all out loud.
“No,” she said. “It was him.”
Even in the darkness of the room, I could see she’d gone a paler white.
“I’m not saying what you saw when you were a kid wasn’t real. It totally could have been. But we came up with that costume and—”
“Get out.”
“Sorry?”
“Get out. If you’re going to lie to me. I have enough people lying to me. You can leave.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“For what happened.”
“You had nothing to do with it.”
I stood and walked to the door. “I am sorry though. I hope you get better soon.”
Amanda had turned away from me. I couldn’t be certain, but I thought she might have been crying.
Chapter Twelve
I came clean that night.
It wasn’t easy.
I’d lied to my parents, and I didn’t know if they’d ever look at me the same way again. I mean, I know parents know their kids lie to them. But they expect little white lies. Nothing this big.
“I didn’t want to say who was out there with me,” I told Dad once I’d said the whole thing.
“Who was it?”
“Jordan Hawley and this guy Rowan.”
“The Hawley kid.” He tilted his head. “I can see that.”
“We never meant for anything to happen. We wanted to make a video that would go viral. It was really to see how to do it. To make it work.”
“And it did.”
We were in the living room. Mom was out for book club.
“It did. I didn’t mean for that woman to get hurt. But she’s going to be okay.”
“Physically,” Dad said. “Not likely mentally.” He let that sit. “Your mom’s brother, your uncle Henry. He had a car accident when he was twenty-two. A bad one. He’s never driven again and is, well, you know, a bit of a shut-in.” I must have looked worried because Dad went on. “I’m not saying that this Amanda woman will have the same
issues. Not at all. But just because your body heals doesn’t mean your mind will.”
I had been sensing a tic coming on since I’d sat down with Dad. It wasn’t that I ticced out whenever I got nervous, but being nervous certainly didn’t help.
“I know,” I said. “I guess we didn’t think of that.”
“Who could? Right? I want you to remember that you’re a good kid. You meant no one any harm. What you did was potentially dangerous. But at the same time, everyone has to take responsibility for their own actions.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve been through all this in my head already.”
“I imagine you have.” Dad stood up. “I’m about to go out. I’m disappointed in you for lying. But I understand. Rainey, please know that you can tell us the truth. Always.”
“I do, but the police—”
“I know. I get it.”
I whistled and twisted my head three times and then felt better.
“You okay here?”
“Yeah.”
Dad put on his coat and opened the front door. Before he stepped out he said, “Don’t be too hard on yourself, son.”
I nodded and felt like I was going to cry. I’d never thought my parents would get really angry with me about this. But I’d had no idea they would be so fine with it either.
When the house was quiet I went up to my room. I’d lost a lot of stuff when I wiped my computer. I’d thought I had backed it all up and could likely find most of it on one cloud or another, but I started to think maybe it was better to begin again. Start something new. I’d learned a lot with the fight and figure videos. I mean, I was no great film director or anything, but it had been a start.
I dug through the videos I had on one cloud server. I’d filmed a lot before. There were endless shots of people in parks, out by the river, even in school hallways. I started meshing them together for no real reason and then brought some CGI into play. Explosions, reptile heads replacing real heads, people talking in different voices. It was so easy.
I went back to the figure video. It was still gaining more views. I wondered how long it would go on like that. Someone had put a link in the comments to a site I didn’t recognize, but it seemed legit enough to click on.
The site was one of those ones that investigate fakes. It was really just a cluttered page filled with videos. The first one I clicked on had an actor saying something about another actor. He was laughing as he spoke. But his voice didn’t sound quite right. It was close, but not exactly right. Someone had posted that it had to be a deep fake, but they hadn’t been able to tell how it had been done or be certain. I downloaded the video and looked at the properties. Everything had been stripped, which was a good sign it wasn’t real. I moved through the video in super slow motion, looking at every frame. It all looked really legit until it didn’t.
The actor’s head turned to one side, and there was a stitch there. A space where you could tell the video had been altered. There were two faces, almost as though one was wearing a mask and it had slipped.
I took a screenshot and then advanced further. Four other spots weren’t right. It was a two-minute video. I collected the pictures and posted them under the video. Proof. This is fake.
I looked at the clock on my computer. I’d been staring at that video for over an hour.
The responses came in quickly.
Thank you. I knew it.
Reposted to social media. Thanks.
Awesome. CNN posted this. Going to look soooooo dumb.
I had no idea the video was already out there. And it seemed fairly easy for me to find the seams. You just had to look closely. And know what to look for.
My computer binged. I looked at the page and found I had a message.
Hey, good work. Can you look at this one? I can’t figure out where it’s been edited. There was a video attached. It showed a politician. He sounded okay, and he looked okay, but after a minute I could tell something had been edited. There was a stutter in one word. The video clicked a couple of times. This is fun, I thought. And could actually be useful.
Acknowledgments
A huge thank you to everyone at Orca. Although I know everyone there does an amazing job, I’d like to single out two people this time: Tanya Trafford and Vivian Sinclair. I could go through a manuscript a hundred times and still not catch everything you two do.
Chapter One
The place was called Minnesota’s, a cavernous room beneath a strip mall full of respectable suburban shops. The sign outside continued to inform that Halloween was upon us, even though it was the end of February. Inside, rows of pool tables ran the length of the room, buffered from the walls by pinball and vintage video-game machines. The soundtrack was classic rock, balls clacking off one another and bursts of excited cheering. The fragrance: spilled beer and cigarettes smoked a decade before.
It felt, in every way possible, like home.
I found Minnesota’s when my mom, sister and I moved here a month ago. The regulars were cool and always looking for a game. The owner was happy to give the odd free ginger ale when I’d been there a while. But best of all, there was absolutely no betting permitted.
I had sunk the three and the five when I noticed this guy watching me from a couple of tables away. He was tall, thickset, with an unruly mess of hair on his head and an equally untamed beard on his face. I’d never seen him before. His clothes screamed biker—the leather vest over printed T, extremely blue jeans cinched up with an extra-large buckled, studded belt.
“Am I going to get to play this game?”
I looked across the table at Hippy. He was tall and thin, dropped into a vintage Pearl Jam shirt and cargo pants. Sandals over thick socks in the dead of winter. He was the day manager but always found time for a couple of games.
The one and the four were left on the table for me. Plus the eight ball, of course. The one was an easy shot. The four, way more difficult. I was challenging myself to not take the easy shot. I lined up the four, and Hippy clicked his tongue. He did this every time he saw an easier shot available. I figured he’d catch on to what I was doing someday.
The four bounced off the edge of the corner pocket and sat there spinning.
“Yes,” Hippy said. “I shall now destroy you.” He pulled his long hair from his face and leaned over the table.
I sat on a high stool and, pretending to watch Hippy take his shot, glanced over at the biker guy. He’d gone back to playing alone on one of the large snooker tables.
“Come on fifteen, don’t be cruel,” Hippy said, leaning low to the table. It looked like he was attempting to send the ball into a pocket by sheer force of will. But the fifteen just sat there, right on the cusp of the pocket. Hippy stood to his full height and rubbed his stubbled chin. “All right, Shark, finish me off.”
I leaned over the table and focused on the four, which was now an easy shot. Or, at least, no more difficult than the one.
“Shark?” I looked up to find the biker guy at the end of the table, looking right at me.
“It’s just a nickname,” I said. I didn’t want to get into the whole thing. My name’s Mark, but when I was younger my little sister put an S on the front of a lot of her words, and so to my family I became Shark. I’d told Hippy this story one day and instantly regretted it.
“Looks earned to me,” biker guy said.
“Hippy,” a waitress called from behind the bar. “That thing’s backed up again.”
Hippy shook his head and set his cue into the wall rack. “You play him, War,” Hippy said. “I have to take care of this.”
“War?” I said.
“Nickname,” the biker guy said. “Name’s Warren.” He stepped forward and extended a hand. I shook it, then got low to the table again to finish the game Hippy and I had been playing.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to play War that evening. The whole feeling of the pool hall changed for me the instant Hippy walked away. Everything got heavy, if that’s a way to describe it. I don’t kno
w—I’ve never been that good with words.
“Good to meet you,” I said.
I finished the game easily. The one and four found pockets, and after bouncing the cue off two bumpers, I sank the eight.
War began racking the balls into the triangle. “Where’d you learn to play?” he asked.
I sat on the high stool again and took a sip from the ginger ale I’d been working on.
“My dad,” I said, leaving it at that.
“Basement table?” He wiggled the balls in the triangle until they were tight, then slowly lifted the frame off the table.
“Mostly pool halls,” I said.
War picked up his cue. “So,” he said, leaning down to set his aim on the cue ball. “Where’s dad now?”
“Not around,” I said. War was drawing his cue back and forth. It was my table though. Whenever you win a game, you own the table. If someone wants to play you, they have to let you break. It’s etiquette, but the kind of etiquette that is pretty much a rule.
He hammered the cue ball into the triangle of balls. I watched as they spread out across the table. The fifteen and twelve dropped, but the cue ball settled in right behind the three. In eight-ball, you’re either low ball or high. That means you either have to get balls one through seven in, or the nine through fifteen. And then, of course, to finish it off, the eight. When you break and sink a couple of balls, you have the advantage of taking a follow-up shot to decide whether it’s the low or high end you need to play.
“That’s too bad,” War said. I thought he was talking about where the cue ball was sitting, but then he continued. “My dad ditched when I was twelve.” I let him take his shot. He decided against the four, which was perfectly lined up, hoping, it seemed, to get the eleven in and play the high balls. Instead, he tapped the eleven into the perfect position for me to sink it.
“You’re low ball,” I said. I didn’t want to talk about my dad. I went to pool halls to feel close to him. Playing pool was the one thing we had done together that hadn’t ended badly. It was the time I had felt most connected to my dad. But that was all in the past, and if I’ve learned anything, it’s that it’s best to leave it there.