by Jeff Giles
“You don’t want to know,” she answered coldly.
Her father picked up his fishing pole.
“Come into the shed. It’s warmer,” he said. “Let’s not do this out here.”
He turned away.
Zoe thought about just walking away right then and there.
Her father must have known what she was thinking.
“Don’t go,” he said over his shoulder. “You came this far to tell me how much you hate me—so come tell me. I deserve it.”
The shed creaked in the wind. It’d been built out of salvaged plywood and two-by-fours—one of the walls still had Post No Bills stenciled onto it in black spray paint—and sat on runners so her father could slide it around the lake. Inside, there was a thermos, a wooden stool, a copy of some ridiculous self-help book, and an electric heater powered by a small, puttering generator. Where the floor should have been, there was a five-by-five-foot patch of cloudy ice with a dark hole in the center, like a bull’s-eye.
Zoe’s cell rang as she entered the shed.
ME!!! it said.
Jonah was trying to FaceTime her now.
She silenced the phone, but a text popped up a minute later: It’s raining so bad! I need someone to talk to! Me and Spock are UNDER THE BED. Wait—now Uhura is, too!
Zoe frowned, and put the phone in her pocket. She just needed a few minutes with her father, then she’d call Jonah back. In a few minutes, everything would be different. X would be here.
“Was that—was that Jonah?” her father asked.
His voice broke the slightest bit.
“Don’t you dare say his name,” Zoe told him.
Her father nodded. He stood in a corner of the shed, hugging his spindly chest with his arms as if to comfort himself. He looked as if he were going to cry. He was so much weaker than she was!
“How did you find me?” he said.
“You don’t get to talk,” she said.
It was unbearable to be so close to him. The air felt toxic. Even the silence was awful, the way it fed on itself and grew bigger and bigger. And yet some part of her—a part she hated, a part she’d crush if she could—wanted to hug him.
“Zoe,” her father said, “I never meant to hurt you.”
“You don’t get to talk!” she said. “And you definitely don’t get to say dumb bullshit crap!”
But he couldn’t stop himself.
“It would have been worse if I’d stayed,” he said.
“Really?” said Zoe.
She loathed the sound of his voice.
“It would have been worse?” she shouted.
She threw open the door of the shed.
“I can’t be in here with you,” she said.
She stormed away on the ice. Her father followed her. The lake had been shoveled clean. It was glassy and slick. The holes were everywhere.
When she’d put 20 feet between them, she stopped and turned to him. He knew not to come any closer.
“Jonah used to punch himself in the chest to stop his heart from hurting,” she said. “Would it have been worse than that?”
“No,” her father said quietly.
“I almost killed myself in a cave just so the cops would go get your body,” she said. “Would it have been worse than that?”
“No,” he said again.
“Mom didn’t have a life when you were ‘alive,’” she said, “and she has even less of a life now. Would it have been worse than that?”
“No, Zoe,” he said. “No.”
“You don’t get to talk!” she screamed, then took it up like a chant. “You don’t get to talk. You don’t get to talk!”
Her father made a tent out of his hands and hid his face behind it. He was sobbing. It was pathetic. Zoe walked toward him so purposefully that fear flashed in his eyes, and he stepped backward toward the hut.
“Your BFF Stan?” she said. “He murdered two people we loved—with a fireplace poker. Would it have been worse than that?”
Her father looked stricken.
“Who did Stan kill?” he said.
Zoe let the question hang in the air, unsure if she wanted to answer it. He didn’t get to talk!
“Bert and Betty,” she said finally.
Her father shocked her by letting out a pained cry.
He spun away from her.
Suddenly, he seemed consumed with an energy he couldn’t control.
He knelt down on the ice and checked a fishing line that ran into a nearby hole. When he’d finished, he crawled to another, and then another. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, look at her again. He never left his knees. He scrabbled around like an animal. It scared her. She shouted, “Stop!” He wouldn’t. When he’d run out of holes, he finally stood. Still, he didn’t turn. It was like he’d forgotten she was there—or was trying to drive her away.
There was a giant sort of corkscrew, an auger, leaning against the shed. Her father took it and, hands trembling, began to screw yet another hole into the ice. Above them, the sky darkened. Zoe looked up at the hills. The trees were a solid black mass now, an army waiting for orders. X and Ripper stood there, watching. Soon it would all be over.
She didn’t know if she was ready. Had she said everything she’d wanted to say? Had she gotten what she wanted? What had she wanted?
Her father was twisting the auger furiously. The hole was growing. Zoe tried to squash every bit of sympathy, but she couldn’t. He looked like a man digging his own grave.
“I ran from Stan, not from you,” he said suddenly.
He threw down the auger, and walked toward her.
“I grew up with him, did you know that?” he said.
His eyes were wild. It was Zoe who stepped backward this time.
“Yes,” she said. “Mom told me.”
“Did she tell you he was like a virus?” he said. “That he—that he—that he was hateful and merciless and—and—lonely even when he was a kid? Did she tell you how he polluted everything? When we were kids, he did things—we did things—that I’ll never forgive myself for. I left Virginia because of him. Married your mother. Changed my name. Changed my heart. Truly. I mean, look, to be honest, you changed my heart—you and Jonah and your mom. You can laugh, if you want.”
Zoe knew she was supposed to say something comforting. She said nothing. She made her face blank.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket.
More texts from Jonah. It had to be.
“I spent almost—what—twenty years looking over my shoulder,” her father said. “I was terrified Stan would find me. You don’t just walk away from someone like that. They won’t accept it. They’re—they’re—feeding on you. But I got away from Stan. I tried to be a dad. Tried to forgive myself. Tried to make some goddamn money so we could—so we could at least freakin’ live. You all used to laugh at my schemes, but every time I was away—every time I was on the road, every time I ‘disappeared’—I was trying to get something going. I’m not smart like you, Zoe. No—don’t make that face, it’s okay—I’m just not. I mean, look at me. But I tried every legitimate, law-abiding thing I could think of. You think I wanted your mom to work as hard as she did? Be careful who you fall in love with, Zoe. You’ve got a big, big heart. Don’t waste it like your mother wasted hers on me.”
Her father stopped talking as abruptly as he’d started. He picked the auger off the ice once more and began drilling, desperate to do something with his hands.
“Why did you freak out about Bert and Betty?” said Zoe. “You never loved them like the rest of us did. You barely knew them—because you were never around. So why do you care what happened to them?”
Her father seemed not to have heard her.
“Twenty years I looked over my shoulder,” he said.
“You said that already,” said Zoe. “Answer my question.”
But it was as if her father were talking to himself now.
“I was so careful,” he said. “Because I knew Stan would never stop looking for me.�
��
Zoe’s phone buzzed again, jittery as a bomb. She was about to read Jonah’s texts when something caught her attention out on the edge of the lake: the ice had begun to change.
Color was seeping in. It was darker than the time with Stan—more red than orange—and it spread slowly, like a sickness.
Her father was too obsessed with his hole to notice.
“But you can’t hide forever, can you?” he said. “I mean, you found me here. And this place—this place isn’t just off the grid, it’s never even heard of the freakin’ grid.” He wiped the sweat from his forehead. “So Stan found me. Tracked me down in Montana. And he saw, in two seconds, how desperate I was. How broke I was. How ashamed I was of just years and years and years of failure. I mean, I was good in a cave, but—let’s face it—I was always pretty useless aboveground.”
Zoe looked back to the hill.
X and Ripper were sweeping down it now. Ripper’s dark hair was swept up in a bun. Her bare neck was glinting.
Zoe’s father still hadn’t seen them.
“Why did you freak out about the Wallaces?” she said again. “Answer my question.”
X and Ripper came to the bottom of the hill, and, as if they’d planned it, leaped simultaneously over the reeds. They were close now. The red tide beneath the ice was just a few steps ahead of them, like a carpet unfurling.
“Answer my question!” Zoe shouted.
But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t even look at her. He had to finish his story—he had to purge himself of it—just as he had to finish the hole that was opening at his feet.
“Stan had a couple of ideas for making money,” her father said. “They weren’t dangerous, they weren’t going to hurt anybody, but—I’m not gonna lie—they weren’t exactly legal. The first one worked and then the second one worked. Having a little money was amazing. Thrilling. I can’t even describe it. I bought Jonah that ladybug bed, even though he was too old for the thing. Remember? Then, the third time around, somebody did get hurt. An innocent person, I mean. She didn’t get hurt bad, but still. Stan called it ‘acceptable collateral damage.’”
Her father was still crying. He twisted the auger so hard it was as if he were punishing himself.
Zoe was crying now, too.
“Answer my question,” she said.
“Stan eventually ran out of ideas for making money,” her father said. “He told me it was my turn to think of something.”
Zoe was shaking again. She couldn’t control it. It was taking over her body like the red stain was taking over the ice.
She finally understood what her father was about to say, and she didn’t know if she could stand to hear it.
“I didn’t have any ideas,” he said. “But Stan had gotten—he’d gotten rabid, almost. He demanded I come up with something.”
The hole was deepening, widening. Sweat trickled down her father’s neck.
“I told him there was an old couple who lived on the lake,” he said.
The ice was changing faster, the red crawling toward them like a tide. Zoe’s phone was buzzing. Her father still wouldn’t look at her.
“I told him I thought they might have some money,” he said.
Her father dropped his head to the top of the auger, sobbing. He was oblivious to everything but his own misery.
“I feared for those people, I swear to god,” he said. “I told Stan I wanted no part of hurting Bert and Betty. But he went crazy on me—went absolutely ape-shit. You don’t say no to somebody like that. He threatened to tell your mother everything. Threatened to hurt you kids. Threatened to tell the world who I really was. I didn’t care if the world knew—the world never gave a crap about me—but I couldn’t let your mom and you kids down again. I figured I’d rather die than do that.” He paused. “So I started looking for a way to die.”
Her father straightened up now, and resumed drilling.
The hole was nearly finished.
“Bert and Betty didn’t have any money,” said Zoe. “Stan killed them for nothing! He killed them because of you!”
Her father gave the auger one last twist, then fell backward, bewildered.
Red water surged up through the hole, like blood.
twenty-one
X strode toward them, Ripper at his side. He was so close to his bounty that the Trembling had all but taken over his body and begun breathing for him. He never felt more inhuman, more monstrous, than in these moments. He was ashamed that Zoe would see him like this a second time. She’d see him shake and scream and spit vile oaths, all the tenderness she’d awoken in him suffocated by rage.
Could she really choose him? Over her own father?
X looked to her for a sign that she was still committed to their plan, but she was turned away. He couldn’t make himself believe that he deserved her. The sensation of being loved was still too alien and new. He wanted to trust it, wanted to wrap himself in it, wanted to give himself up to it entirely. But this anger coursing through him made him feel polluted. Unworthy. Undeserving of even the name she’d given him. Love felt like a blanket someone was bound to yank away. The warmer he got now, the colder he would be later.
He needed to see Zoe’s face. He needed to be sure she hadn’t changed her mind.
X turned to her father, and found that he was gaping at him in shock. He held a strange, twisted piece of metal in his hands. Dark water was pooling at his feet.
He seemed to recognize X from their moment on the beach the day before. X could see him replaying the conversation in his head:
“Is this your first time in Canada?”
“Is this Canada?”
X motioned for Ripper to stay behind. She made a small, pouty sound, and stopped walking, the hem of her dress waving above her boots. X went ahead alone.
Yet again he looked to Zoe—and finally she turned.
Her face was aflame with anger. X had never seen her features so distorted. She looked ready to kill her father herself.
She rushed toward X.
She embraced him, but for the first time she felt cold and stiff. Utterly unlike herself. She gripped his arm so hard he could feel her nails even through his coat.
She gestured toward her father.
“He’s the reason Stan killed Bert and Betty,” she said.
“Yes,” said X grimly. “He is.”
“Take him,” said Zoe.
X was startled by her fury. Had he done this to her? While she had been teaching him about kindness, had he been teaching her about rage? He tried to banish this new fear—tried to unthink the thought—but it had taken hold. Its roots were spreading.
Nonetheless, he nodded.
“Go to Ripper,” he said. “Walk to the woods. Do not look back.”
Ripper stepped forward. X did not know how she would greet Zoe—he prayed she would not be sarcastic or manic or dance in some outlandish way—nor how Zoe would respond in her present state.
They were tentative at first, but seemed to recognize something in each other. X could not stop studying them. It occurred to him that they were the only two people who had ever held him, had ever praised him, had ever loved him. He could see his entire life—everything that was decent and humane—in their faces. When X was young, he hadn’t understood that Ripper cared for him as if he were one of her own lost children. He understood it now. He watched as Zoe’s rage began to melt in her presence. He watched as Ripper put an arm around her shoulder, like a great, warm wing.
“I feel as if we are already well acquainted, dear girl,” she said. “Perhaps it is because X made me read your letter aloud twenty-five times.”
Zoe smiled weakly.
X watched as they crossed the lake, their arms linked, their heads touching gently. He heard Ripper tell Zoe that the lords were on their way.
“But they’ll leave us alone once X takes my dad?” said Zoe. “Right?”
“Perhaps they will,” said Ripper.
“What if he decides he can’t take him?” sai
d Zoe.
“I suspect they will make X watch as they murder you in some colorful way,” said Ripper in an incongruously sweet voice. “But perhaps that is too obvious? The lords are a mystery, I confess. One never knows when they will feel the need to be creative.”
X turned at last toward his bounty, who was cowering against the shed and gripping the weird piece of metal as if it might protect him. X tried to tell himself that the man meant nothing to him, that his fate was of his own making, that his only name was 16th Soul.
But when he gazed at him, all he saw was Zoe’s father.
All he saw were Jonah’s eyes.
X pulled the metal out of the man’s hands. He flung it across the ice. It skidded to the far edge of the lake before coming to rest in a clump of dead reeds.
“Have you any other toys we should dispose of?” said X.
The father was too frightened to speak. He looked pleadingly at X—and then he ran.
Why did they always run? Every one of them had run! What made them imagine they could get away?
X watched as Zoe’s father raced for the shore, stumbling and slipping as he went. It was a pathetic spectacle. He remembered telling Zoe that her father was not evil, just weak. Had she not believed him? Could she really hate such a pitiful person, or was she just reeling from the shock and rage? Would she blame X tomorrow—and forever after—for what she’d told him to do today?
With a flick of his hand, X yanked the man back—it was as if he were on an invisible tether—and dashed him against the wooden shed. He left him suspended there, his feet dangling above the ground. With a few more gestures, he sent ice crawling like murderous ivy toward the man’s hands and feet. Zoe’s father watched helplessly as it bound him to the shed.
“What do you want from me?” he said miserably. “You can take anything I have. You can take anything you want.”
“Yes,” said X darkly. “I know.”
“So what do you want?” said Zoe’s father.
X unbuttoned his coat and let it fall to the ice in a heap.
“Just your soul,” he said, “which you have made poor use of.”