A Hawk in the Woods

by Carrie Laben

  One of the younger men drew a gun. His hand was shaking but his jaw was set. Abby forgot whatever subtle charming plan she’d been starting to form and grasped his will in her own so hard she was almost hurting herself.

  “Buddy!” Abby flinched and twisted, Martha’s voice stinging her ear from right behind her. She’d never known Martha could yell that loud. She caught the stranger’s intent and got hold of him again just in time to relax his finger from the tight edge of pulling the trigger. Buddy galloped by her and back into the house, almost knocking her off balance, and she loosed the man on purpose this time—it was a risk, but now he had to lower the gun or look stupid anyway. His companions were staring at him, a little shocked. Behind her, Martha was sobbing, from the sound of it crouched down, probably caressing Buddy and putting on a good show of being helpless, harmless, the pair of them.

  A smile wouldn’t be quite right now, but if there was one thing local news in Buffalo ever gave her it was a thorough schooling on how to look serious, even sad, and attractive at the same time.

  “Could everyone just please calm down,” she said, wobbling her voice enough to not sound like a ballbuster. “I’m sorry Buddy scared you, but he’s harmless.”

  “I apologize, ma’am,” the driver said. “Mitch gets nervous around dogs.” He turned a little and glared at Mitch. “And you surprised us. There’ve been some cabin break-ins lately. You never know who you could run into.”

  Jesus Christ, did they take her for a meth cook or something? Could three days on the road and one bender have messed her up that badly?

  “Well, I apologize for the mix-up. You see, I own the cabin and I was told no one was booked for this week, so…”

  She hadn’t even thought to check, actually, both because that would have given their location away back when she’d thought this would be a real jail-break and because she just hadn’t thought—fall was when hunting accidents popped up in the news and she didn’t know anything about fishing.

  And who was to say these men were telling the truth? Who was to say they were not the meth cooks, meth cooks with fishing rods?

  She was distracted by all this at the moment the hawk screamed out of the air from over the cabin, straight into the driver. He screamed in turn and twisted away from the impact but he was bleeding like crazy and Mitch whipped the gun up in one startled movement and managed to shoot his buddy in the face while only knocking a few feathers from the bird. The third man, the quiet one, yelled something incoherent now and jumped on Mitch.

  Abby backed through the door, crowding Martha and Buddy to safety behind her. “Get down,” she said. “Stay away from the windows.” For herself, she ignored her own advice and peered around the edge of a curtain.

  Blood was sluicing down the driver’s face but he was still on his feet, barely, leaning against the truck while the other two men wrestled on the ground. The fight might have been about possession of the gun only seconds ago, but now they just wanted to hurt each other in their fury and confusion. The gun was knocked to one side, no one’s mind on it.

  And then the driver’s mind moved. His attention, a moment ago clustered and roiling around his own head, his own pain, reached for the gun. Then his hand did.

  Beyond the truck, the hawk landed heavily on the ground and blinked as though it was confused.

  The driver leaned too far and stumbled to the ground belly-first, but he didn’t flinch or try to catch himself. Instead, he grabbed the gun with one hand, propped himself up with the other, and fired the gun at the still-grappling men three times. The repeated noise started Buddy howling. Great. A Lab that didn’t like guns. A genetic defect.

  However good a hunter this man once was, the mind controlling him now couldn’t access his abilities, so couldn’t aim; or maybe he was blinded by the blood gushing from his former face. His targets were still alive, although in one case Abby could only tell because of the tiny flicker of will that remained, a flame that would snuff out on its own in a second in the cool damp of the morning. The other one, Mitch, couldn’t seem to get up but he was yelling his lungs out. There was no one to hear him. Grandfather bought enough land to make sure of that.

  The driver’s body scrambled to its feet, then turned towards the cabin and raised the gun to point at the window. Abby, energized by the energy the men had poured into her moments before when she was all they had to worry about, didn’t flinch.

  The driver’s body didn’t have intent, now, so much as a murky wad of hunger and rage. She wasn’t sure if that was because his grip was weak, or if that was the way he existed all the time, forever a wailing infant. It didn’t matter why though, only what.

  “Get in the pantry, lock the door, put a chair against it or something.” It was the only place in the cabin with no windows. Martha grabbed Buddy by the collar and his howls crescendoed as she dragged him away. Abby waited until they were out of sight around the corner before she reached for the doorknob. Mitch’s screams had died away to whimpers. The driver kept shuffling in her direction.

  She’d thought right, he couldn’t see. He didn’t even raise the gun before she was on him, and no wonder, one eye was basically gone and the other was completely shrouded in blood from the gash the hawk had left on his brow.

  Behind her, there was a dull rustling thump. She risked a glance backwards but it was just the hawk, with whatever remained of the driver’s consciousness now shunted inside, trying to figure out how its wings worked. A farce that wouldn’t last long, a pity she wouldn’t be able to enjoy it.

  First thing was to get the gun, but this body was strong. She pushed at the incoherent hungry mind and threw it into confusion while she grabbed his thumb and bent it back sharply, an old self-defense class trick from college, and it worked, for a moment. Until something lurched into her from behind.

  She was so confused and shocked that it took a moment for her to realize that the body attacking her was the third man, the one who’d flickered and died just a moment ago. He was just as incoherent and clumsy as the driver, but together the two bodies were stronger than she was and besides that she was sick and besides that she was stunned. How could he be managing two bodies at once?

  He couldn’t manage them well, though. Slippery with blood, she wrenched out of the third man’s grip, and the two bodies clawed at each other for a moment as they all dropped to the ground. The third man knocked the gun from the driver’s grasp. She kicked it backwards towards the cabin, and now it was just a matter of forcing him out of the body. Bodies. She had the advantage there. A dead form was easier to take over but it was harder to hold against any opposition, with the physical structure of the brain already broken.

  She head-butted the driver’s body—she was going to be covered in blood no matter what she did, she already was though she hadn’t had time to notice yet, there was no sense in being squeamish. As he reeled from that she turned to the third man and kneed him in the groin, and then twice for good measure. He jerked backwards and fell, and she pinned him to the ground. The blinded driver groped in the wrong direction.

  After that it was a piece of cake. Keep the body confused and in pain and work on the mind until it loses control. As soon as the body started to slacken, she dropped it and turned for the gun.

  Too late. The driver went limp on his own and the hawk took off.

  At least she had a gun now. Among other things, she could put Mitch out of his misery.

  Leaving campus and stomping down to McDonald’s wasn’t an option anymore. Luckily, she found Carl and Kristen in the library. It was never hard to find a good excuse to be in the library, and Mrs. Warren was too nice to bother checking hall passes much anyway.

  They shot the shit a little as though things were normal. It wasn’t hard. Carl had discovered the works of Dean Koontz a few months back, and he loved describing the plots to any available audience. He almost turned electric again when he did.

  Abby didn’t mind listening. He wasn’t paying any attention to her when he s
poke, of course, but as far as she could tell Carl barely paid attention to anybody any more, even himself. Certainly not Kristen, which kept Abby from getting jealous or feeling like she should try to grab Carl for herself. He just cared about books and lists, worlds that didn’t exist yet or never would or never could together. When he got to college was a big one. And when he got revenge.

  And it wasn’t like she had to put any effort into what he was saying about the latest book, either, until he got to what he’d inevitably describe as “the really kickass part” where the monster or the serial killer or whatever cut someone up. Then he’d get so excited that his energy would just spill all over the place. It was almost obscene. Tapping into that, somehow, the energy that people spent on their obsessions, making that into energy they focused on her, that was the key.

  As if she had any idea how to do it.

  But in the meantime, free of the need to be alert, soothed by the flow of words from Carl’s mouth and the familiarity of Kristen’s company, she could worry about her own problems.

  Such as, what was Mom even doing? And how could Abby pry her off of Martha, and Martha off of Duane, for good?

  “You know,” she said once Carl was out of mayhem to recount. “Duane’s being weird with Martha. Have you noticed?”

  Carl frowned, and she pushed, and in a moment it was his own idea. Kristen even helped, chipping in. “He is totally weird with her. It’s not right. I can tell it’s freaking her out.”

  “He can’t be one of us if he’s not behaving honorably towards Martha.” Carl was big on honor, although what that meant in practical terms was always nebulous. Pissing off the rest of the group was generally dishonorable, though, unless Carl was the one doing it.

  “So what should we do?”

  She wanted to hear that he’d go on the list, that he wouldn’t be around at lunch or in the newspaper room anymore, that she wouldn’t have to deal with this and could just concentrate on the Mom problem. She pushed too hard. Carl’s thoughts, that she’d thought she had well in hand just a moment ago, shied from her question like crayfish darting backwards. “I’ll talk to him. Girls make him nervous.”

  “I’ve noticed,” she said wryly, and then Carl went back to the book. She didn’t know what she’d expected. Of course other people were useless.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Three bodies were two more than a person should try to bury with a hangover and no breakfast, using a little camping shovel not much bigger than a hand trowel, but there wasn’t much choice. Leaving them out in the open was just begging for the hawk to recoup its strength and come back for another shot. Shot, haha. And Abby didn’t know how to reload the gun, although Martha had already uncovered a box of ammo in the course of raiding the newcomers’ truck for the food and cooking gear they brought along.

  At least that took a trip into town for food off the to-do list. And Martha seemed to have forgiven Abby for whatever was eating her last night; Abby had felt the shift when she saved Buddy, and now it was fully set like concrete or a stain.

  Still, letting Martha occupy herself with the dead men’s groceries was better than making her help with the burial and unsettling what was set, or worse having her screw it up, either with sulking and time-folding or just through sheer ignorance. Abby was the only person left alive who’d read enough of Grandfather’s notebooks to know what happened with some of his early, misguided experiments in burying people on this land. There were some things you didn’t want the coyotes to dig up.

  At least she was able to find a good-enough vacant spot near the house, overlooked by Grandfather’s ambition to always have the best. Dragging all this mess through the woods, with brush and little creeks and changes in elevation every few yards, would have been almost impossible right then. As it was, she’d only managed to dig the first hole halfway deep enough, and the sun dress already wrinkled with drunken sleep and grimed with blood was now soaked with sweat as well. A nagging thought kept telling her that she’d be better off eating breakfast, as quickly as possible of course, and then returning to finish the job with some strength. She suspected that thought was a push from outside, though, and ignored it. Besides, after she ate she’d still have a rotten stomach and a pounding head.

  If Martha was any kind of decent sister, though, she’d at least have thought to bring Abby a cup of coffee by now.

  What if she just buried them all in one hole? There was nothing in Grandfather’s notes about that; it was rare he’d get three in a summer, let alone a day. But that would mean a hole three times as deep, into the hard-packed foundations of the earth.

  Or three times as long, along the direction of the ley line. More of a trench. Yes, that could work. She could do that.

  Buddy, who’d been sticking close to Martha ever since the gun went off the first time, had recovered enough to trot cautiously around the truck a few yards from where Abby was working. The smell of blood-soaked earth seemed to have him stuck, the good-dog part of his brain fearful and the wolf underneath intrigued. He avoided the bodies themselves, but he wouldn’t stop sniffing and pawing.

  The inspiration hit Abby all at once. Why not? He ought to be good for something besides entertaining Martha.

  She picked a shallow spot between two tree roots and sat down, arranging herself for stability and comfort.

  “C’mere.” She patted the ground next to her feet and Buddy looked up from his smells. “Come.”

  The good-dog brain took over at once and he trotted up to her.

  “Sit.” He did. Good. “Stay.”

  He curled at her feet like a lamb on an old tombstone, without her pushing at all.

  Swapping was harder than pushing, even with a compliant-minded creature. She was tired, and for a flickering moment she and Buddy were both inside the dog body and his intentions, though not visible through these eyes, gave the strong sense that they were cocking their head at her. Or that was just the way she pictured it, because then the physical head did cock, and she got vertigo, and forced Buddy all the way out so she could take control.

  A quick few steps to make sure she could use the unfamiliar legs—muscle memory did stay with the body when you did this after all, no matter what Martha said, and four legs didn’t prove that much harder than two—and then she bounded to the weak beginning she’d made of the trench and started digging, sending dirt flying into the air behind her with an abandon that a camping shovel could never match. She felt incredible, elated, though she suspected that most of that was being out from under the hangover and the rest was pleasure at her own cleverness. Her tail started to wag on its own authority. Maybe being a Labrador retriever was just a naturally happy state.

  It was a bit harder to judge the length of the trench from this close to the ground, but not very. Anyway, the digging was now so easy she’d have kept doing it for hours just for the sense of accomplishment. But the most important work was yet to come.

  She approached the first corpse, the driver, and yes, the blood smell was a strange thing in these nostrils. Repugnant but living at the border of appetizing, like a scent she’d caught in certain airport bathrooms that was a bit too close to the smell of strawberry yogurt. And the training not to put her mouth on a human, even a dead human, was strong in her borrowed mind. But her own mind was stronger, and did what needed to be done, dragging the bodies to the trench and lugging them in, then kicking the dirt back over the top of them until they were good and deep.

  The last step was too delicate for paws, so she returned to her own body. Buddy had almost managed to stay, although he’d flopped the body over on its side in his confusion.

  The whimpering noise coming from what should be her mouth was disturbing. She wondered how Grandfather ever got used to it. And… my god, she stank. It was definitely shower time when she was done.

  The switch back was easier, as always. Buddy, back in his own body, tucked his tail between his legs and retreated to the truck before he remembered he was still supposed to stay; h
e sank to his belly and watched her with upraised eyes.

  “Goddamnit.” In standing up, she found that Buddy went and wet himself while she left him in her body. She pulled the damp panties down and off of her ankles and flung them into the trees. Not a pair she liked anyway.

  Despite that, she tried to make reassuring noises to the dog as she searched for the right stick for her next task. He’d served his purpose well. By the time she found a stick of the right diameter and convenient length, Buddy had perked up enough to thump his tail on the ground a couple of times and then lower his head to sleep.

  The symbols she drew in the dirt over the trench—three times, just to be safe—weren’t so elaborate. A stranger might think they were natural, if he didn’t look very close, the scratches and footprints of some foraging bird perhaps. But they did need to be precise, or they wouldn’t work. She couldn’t get cocky like Grandfather did, and she couldn’t allow her exhausted, uncaffeinated hand to shake as she drew. So it was slow going, and she was sweaty again when she was done.

  Definitely shower time. The last thing she did was look around until she’d spotted a good sturdy hand-sized rock to take inside with her.

  Back in the house, Martha was just spooning Folger’s crystals into two cups. Of course those assholes wouldn’t have brought real coffee. Abby was glad she didn’t waste time digging separate graves for the cheap bastards. Still, it was better than nothing once it was in her hands, under her nose, and then down her throat to her bloodstream.

  “That was fast,” Martha said. She was wearing the necklace again, Abby noticed.

  “It’s not as hard as it looks. Did you find anything good?”

  “They had the biggest log of summer sausage I’ve ever seen,” Martha said, and smirked just enough to let Abby know that she’d done it on purpose, that she wasn’t freaked out anymore, that she was going to try to jolly things back to normal. “And all the usual camping stuff. Eggs, bacon, potatoes, cheese. Looks like they were planning to make fajitas one night.”