Much of what had happened in the past couple days came whirling back to Reggie in a torrent of confusion. The appearance of the killer out of the woods. The fight with Johnny Witte. His mom slapping him. Holding Ivan’s gun, squeezing the trigger, and watching the bottles disappear. Kneeling before his dad’s gravestone. So many images, sounds, smells, fighting for centre stage in his mind.
All Reggie knew for certain was that when he’d climbed the tree house earlier in the day and had seen it empty, he’d also felt empty.
Something had been happening between him and the killer. What it was, he wasn’t sure. They’d both said they were friends, and Reggie thought they were, to a degree. But that wasn’t all there was to it.
Reggie knew that like himself, Ivan hadn’t spoken to anyone about anything important in a long time. What the man did for a living didn’t give him the luxury of friends. Then they’d come upon each other, talked of things, and it had felt right. They’d listened to each other and there was no judgement, no condemnation.
The times Reggie and his mom had spoken about things since his father’s death there’d been a hesitancy, an underlying worry about what could be said. What would she think if he said what was really on his mind? And no doubt she’d held back as well, reluctant to give voice to the quiet, insistent murmurings in her own head.
Certain thoughts just weren’t supposed to be spoken aloud.
But that’s not how it’d been between Reggie and Ivan.
They’d said anything and everything that came to mind. The other had listened and there’d been an exchange of things beyond words and thoughts. That was it, Reggie thought. That sounded right. The two of them had made an exchange, bartering like patrons at a market.
But unlike the mall or a grocery store, there’d been no credit cards or receipts passing from one to the other as a register beeped and tallied their trade. Instead, it was something intangible, unseen, but wholly necessary despite its ethereal nature.
Then Ivan had left.
And all Reggie knew was that it wasn’t done yet, this thing between them. He had to go after his friend, the killer. There was something else yet to be done, and if it wasn’t done there’d be an incompleteness, an unfinished part of him that he’d carry forever.
Much like the hole in him his dad had left.
He didn’t know if he could live with two of those holes. Gnawing on the inside of him, ready to swallow him entirely. So he’d followed Ivan into this other world of deep forest and deeper night. But he was small and it was large, and Reggie felt inadequate and terrified by his smallness.
He’d undertaken something too big for himself.
He was in the unknown. All was mystery. He didn’t know what lay ahead.
At home, in his dull pain, he’d known what each day held.
Now it was all new, and it was frightening.
He got up and looked through the canopy of trees above him. The stone finger blocked out some of the stars, defining itself against the further blackness. It beckoned, and Reggie followed.
5.
He saw the campfire from a distance. He heard the singing coming from it. He approached with caution, each step slow and deliberate. As he drew closer, he could discern three shapes around it. The red and orange tongues of the flames lit the faces but nothing else, so that there seemed disembodied heads afloat and singing. Perhaps of previous lives and old regrets.
He crawled to the edge of the light, peering in from the darkness.
The figures were bundled in coats or blankets or both, mummy-wrapped for warmth. Their singing was slow and deep and melodic. Reggie had never heard the tune, wasn’t sure he could repeat it, but he liked it. He smelled coffee and cocoa and felt the heat of the fire. It crackled and made little sounds like sharp handclaps.
He inched closer, stopping behind a pine and bush.
One of the figures raised a hand and the singing stopped.
‘Come on out,’ it called in a man’s voice. ‘We can hear you out there.’
Reggie froze. His heart skipped a beat. He thought about running. He thought about staying still. Maybe they were bluffing. Maybe they’d heard something else, not him.
‘You, behind the tree,’ the man said. ‘Come on out.’
Which left only two options: run, or go to them.
He thought about vagrants, the squatters his mom had warned him about. He thought about child raping hillbillies. He thought about backwoodsmen, grizzled, gruff, half savage. He thought about hunters, maybe not hunting deer but something else.
These were all shitty options, and he knew it would be best to avoid them all. And the best way to do that was to avoid people until he got to where he was going. Until he got to Ivan.
Yet his goal was beyond them. He had to pass through or around their camp to continue on his way. Or he could turn around.
Which wasn’t really an option at all.
Reggie got up, dusted himself off, and strode into the firelight.
The three spectral heads turned to watch him, their attached bodies coalescing out of the night as he drew closer to the light of the camp, but none of them rose. The one that had spoken gestured to an open spot near the fire, across from them, and Reggie took it. He sat down cross-legged and felt like an Indian in a sweat lodge, maybe, starting a vision quest. He saw the tent behind them, like a little black pyramid in the night, the front flap open and waving a bit, a come-hither motion, and Reggie thought about being dragged in there, stripped, violated.
The three men sat side by side across from him, the fire between them, like a shadowy tribunal. What he was being judged for he didn’t know, but the judgment – and the sentence to be carried – were nightmarish possibilities in his imagination.
‘You’re kind of young to be out here alone,’ said the one on the left, even in his bundle of blankets slightly smaller than the other two.
‘Maybe we ought to call his parents,’ said the one on the right, wide and large. ‘Or take him home.’
‘I think he’s just old enough to make his own decisions,’ said the one in the middle, the one who’d called him out from behind the tree. ‘Isn’t that right?’ he asked, directing the question at Reggie.
Reggie didn’t answer. He thought about the butcher’s knife in his backpack. He both wanted to hold it, and yet thought it entirely inadequate if these three should turn out to be the redneck child rapists his mom had warned him about.
‘What’re you doing out here?’ asked the small one, his face blurry over and through the fire. Through the distortion of the fire, he could have been a demon shaping a human face over its true hellish visage.
‘What are you doing out here?’ Reggie asked, knowing he shouldn’t be talking to adults like that. Especially if they were inbred adults anxious for molestation.
‘We’re camping,’ said the large one. His voice was deeper than the other two, and his lips smacked with certain consonants, so that he seemed hungry and slavering. Reggie thought again about the tent and being dragged in there, but instead of rape this time he thought of cannibals.
‘I’m camping too,’ Reggie said.
‘Where’s your family?’ asked the one in the middle, his voice rich and smooth, so that Reggie knew this had been the singer whose song had drifted ghost-like through the woods.
‘They’re back a ways,’ he said with a nod of his head, indicating where he’d come from. The lie was weak even to his own ears.
‘Won’t they be worried if they find you gone?’ said the singer.
Reggie didn’t respond.
‘Where are you really going?’ the singer prodded, his tone insistent yet not unfriendly. He reminded Reggie of a long-suffering teacher at school, pressing a student for the truth about the spitball that had just smacked the blackboard.
Reggie still didn’t say anything. He wasn’t a good liar, and thought it better to keep his mouth shut.
‘There’s animals out there,’ said the smaller one. ‘Mountain lions. Ra
ttlers. It’s dangerous being out here alone. Never know what might find you.’
Reggie thought about the beast that pushed through the forest. The deep rumble of its low roar. The firm slaps of its footfalls.
‘People can get hurt out here,’ said the large one.
Reggie thought about the man at the bottom of the cliff. The hound strung up and slashed ribbon-like.
‘We really shouldn’t let you wander about,’ said the one in the middle, the singer, who only moments ago had said Reggie seemed old enough to make his own decisions. ‘We’re out here hunting someone,’ he added, this second statement not seeming to logically follow the first, and yet somehow it did at the same time. ‘There’s someone dangerous out there,’ he said, and turned his head a little each way, as if listening for that dangerous somebody.
‘Haven’t you heard?’ said the smaller one. ‘It’s been in the paper and on the local stations. There’s a criminal out here. Escaped from the police. Real dangerous sort. Killed lots of people.’
Reggie’s heart beat faster. He thought they must be able to hear it, how fast it slammed against his chest.
‘The police are strapped for manpower out here,’ said the larger, hungry man. ‘We’re doing our civic duty, helping out.’
‘Plus there’s a reward,’ said the singer, ‘for any information leading to his arrest.’
A posse, Reggie thought. He’d seen enough westerns to know how that turned out, when a group of vigilantes went out in search of the outlaw. Usually lots of bullets and bodies were involved.
He wanted away from these men. But he didn’t know how to do so without raising their suspicion. He didn’t know if they’d even let him leave.
‘You haven’t seen anything strange?’ the middle one asked, leaning a bit towards the fire, towards Reggie. The man had a bushy mustache that wriggled like a live thing when he spoke.
Reggie shook his head.
‘No strangers around town?’ he asked, mustache quivering caterpillar-like.
Reggie shook his head.
‘No one acting suspicious?’ he pressed.
Reggie shook no again.
The man leaned back. He took a deep breath, the sound of it going in and blowing out like a dying wind.
‘We really should get you back to your family,’ he said. ‘Would you like some hot chocolate?’ the man asked, gesturing with a pale hand appearing out of his blanket at the pot over the fire.
Reggie nodded, though there was nothing he wanted less than to drink anything from these three. He thought of poison, or some drug that would knock him out, and waking up in the trunk of a car or in a shallow grave, buried alive.
The smaller posse member leaned forward, used tongs to take the pot from the fire, and produced a mug. The splash and swirl of the liquid into the mug could be heard, like the current of a small stream. He stood and leaned around the fire to offer Reggie the mug.
Reggie had the urge to flee from the nearness of the man, but fought it down. He took the mug and held it on his knee. They all looked at him over the fire, and he slowly lifted the mug and took a sip. It was hot and delicious.
He waited to feel weak and dizzy. He waited for his limbs to slacken and grow heavy. He waited for his vision to go blurry. Nothing happened and after several seconds he took another sip, and another.
‘Thank you,’ he muttered.
‘Maybe you should stay the night,’ said the one in the middle. ‘And bright and early we’ll walk you back to your family.’
Reggie had no way to answer that to save his lie. He had only the truth, and he thought that might work for now.
‘I’m out here alone,’ he told them. ‘I live a couple miles back that way,’ he said, gesturing again behind him with a nod of his head. ‘I’m looking for the killer too.’
Across from him, the spectral heads nodded knowingly.
‘The reward?’ the middle one asked.
Reggie nodded, suddenly finding that a bending of the truth was the easiest of lies.
‘Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money,’ the man said, still nodding his head. ‘How’d you plan on taking him back if you find him?’
Reggie slung his backpack off and unzipped it. He reached inside and pulled out the butcher’s knife. He knew for such a task it looked pathetic, something a child would think of. An assessment he now counted on.
‘Your heart’s in the right place,’ said the fattest of the camping trio. ‘But you’d need something a bit more than that to get a cold-blooded killer to go back with you.’
‘That’s why we brought these,’ his smaller companion said, and as deftly as he’d produced the mug from his bundled form, he brought out a shotgun from behind him. The weapon was large and sparkled darkly in the night.
‘If he’s out here,’ said the singing man, ‘we aim to find him.’
Reggie put the knife away, set his backpack aside.
‘It’s a task for adults,’ said the singer, ‘not for children, however brave they might be. Do you understand me?’
‘I’m not a kid,’ Reggie said, feeling like a kid for having to say that. ‘I’m almost fifteen.’
But he nodded. He was still looking at the smaller man’s shotgun, held across his lap. He took another swallow of the hot cocoa and looked back at the fire.
‘We have an extra sleeping bag,’ said the singer. ‘Sleep here tonight and tomorrow morning we’ll walk you home. You’re not afraid of the dark, are you? It can get pretty dark out here. Especially when the fire goes out.’
Reggie shook his head, but as he finished his hot chocolate and spread out the offered sleeping bag, he looked cautiously at the edge of the woods around the clearing. He thought of the beast out there, roaming around in the shadows, perhaps even circling them. Wondered if he should tell the three-man posse about it.
Instead, crawling into the sleeping bag and stretching out, he pretended to sleep, his mind’s eye on the shotgun and what he could do with it.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1.
Bumblebee snores not unlike his mom’s let Reggie know when it was safe to get up. The sleeping bag hugged him snugly and made his worm-like motions to slide out difficult and awkward. When he was out of it, he rose to a crouch and looked about the campsite at the other three sleeping forms.
The campfire was down to embers, but the men had left their lanterns burning low. In the dim light, with the full moon above, Reggie could make out forms and shapes in some detail.
All three men had their shotguns nestled beside them, like little babies with comfort toys. Reggie eyed the smallest of the three, thinking if there was a struggle he had the best shot at wresting the gun from that man.
But then the trees about them moved. Pushed aside like stalks in a field. A deep rumble-roar accompanied the slap falls of monstrous feet. Twin yellow orbs like headlights blinking to life swept the camp.
Only yards from him, the enormity of the thing melting away from the rest of the night froze Reggie in terror. A shadow from the other shadows, the mountain lion seemed not a mere animal, but something otherworldly, a dark emissary crossing the space between realities. Emerging from the woods nearest the smallest bundled man, it stood over him, eclipsed him.
The beast chuffed and sniffed at the sleeping form. Little plumes of mist puffed from its nostrils like dragon’s breath.
Reggie wanted to cry out, wanted to warn the man, and at the same time that was the last thing he wanted to do. Lest those glowing eyes turn upon him.
In his terror, his mother’s words of caution from days ago came back to Reggie: You have to be careful out there, Reggie. There’s coyotes, bobcats, mountain lions.
Now they seemed not merely motherly words of caution, but a warning, a threat. Something that would most definitely happen to stubborn, disobedient boys who disrespected their moms.
The bundled, sleeping figure stirred.
The beast pounced.
There was a scream unlike anything Reggie had eve
r heard. The man who’d given him hot chocolate earlier in the night was swung side to side like laundry being shook out, up and down, his head caught between massive paws like catcher’s mitts. There was a crunch and snap like twigs broken underfoot as the monstrous cat’s head darted forward, the jaws grasped, and the teeth clenched.
The other two men snapped awake. They bolted up from the tangles of their bedrolls. They grasped their shotguns. Turned, sought the source of the thrashing, aimed.
They were too slow.
A tearing, ripping sound joined the crunching and snapping under the thing’s paws. The smaller man’s screams rose an octave, transitioning from scream to shriek, lowered to become a brief whimper, and then ceased altogether.
Somehow Reggie stirred himself to motion, found his pack, opened it, found the flashlight, and turned it on, aiming at the struggle before him. He saw the thick hide, torn and battle marred. He saw claws like daggers, painted red. The jaws worked like a machine, showing teeth as large as spikes from wrought-iron fences.
He saw all of this in a moment. The cat-thing from the woods, its jaws clamped on the small man, turned, was there, and then was gone, dragging the limp form with him. Trees and shrubbery parted and then closed around beast and prey, like earthen lips slurping.
Reggie remembered when he’d taken aim and shot the water bottles in the woods with Ivan. How, when hit, they seemed to have been snatched out of the air, yanked out of reality. There and then not.
The other two men – the large one and the campfire singer – were shouting, swinging their weapons side to side, but there was nothing to fire at.
They were confused. Where Reggie’s light pointed there was nothing.
‘What the fuck was that?’ asked the fat one. The shotgun in his hands trembled, and Reggie backed up a couple steps, in case he should reflexively pull the trigger.
‘Mountain lion?’ Reggie offered, speaking softly, reverently, as if at the scene of a miracle. A dark miracle; violent, irrational. The cleared circle of their camp could have been the gathering place of ancient man come to worship the old gods. Gods of blood and death.
Are You Afraid of the Dark? Page 12