Strays

by Matthew Krause

“Hmm.” He cocked his head to the side, trying to look up above the bus although that was impossible. He cupped his hands about his eyes, peering into the night. He pressed his nose to the glass. Finally, he said: “About four hours ‘til sunrise.”

  “Then we’ll be there.”

  “Yes.”

  “Where is there exactly?” she asked.

  “A place I know. You’ll be safe. We’ll both be safe.”

  Sarah was silent. That settled it for her. If Tom said she’d be safe, she would be safe. As a cat, he had already rescued her twice, and as a boy—man, really—he had done nothing but look after her. She barely knew him; it had been less than 24 hours since they met in the woods. And yet she knew that if Tom promised her safety, it was a set-in-stone guarantee. “How long can I stay there?”

  “For awhile. But not as long as you’d like.”

  “Why not?”

  “You have another place to be,” he said. “There are things you have to do.”

  “What kind of things?”

  Tom shook his head and looked out the window again.

  “Why won’t you tell me?” she asked.

  “Because I’m not supposed to. I’m just supposed to get you there.” He turned to look at her. “You should get some more sleep.”

  “I have nightmares,” Sarah said.

  “Here.” He settled into his seat and pulled up the blanket so that it fell across Sarah’s lap. He reached up with his right hand and patted his left shoulder. Sarah did not hesitate, leaning over to lay her head on his shoulder. Even through the pullover he wore, she could feel the electric prickle on his skin, and his hair had the pleasant scent of pine needles. She closed her eyes.

  “Tom?” she asked.

  “Mmm.”

  “How does that happen?”

  “What?”

  “The way you change.”

  He said nothing, but Sarah felt his shoulder lift under her head in a gentle shrug.

  “I had this science teacher in school,” she said. “Mr. Hall. He was my favorite.”

  “Mmm.”

  “He used to talk about movies and stuff. Break down the physics of everything.”

  Tom was silent, but she knew he was listening because listening was one of the things that he did.

  “He’d have a problem with what you do,” she said. “With the science of it.”

  “You need to try to sleep,” he said.

  “I told you, I have nightmares.”

  His hand slid out from under the blanket and touched her head. “You won’t anymore.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “Because I won’t let you.”

  They were silent for awhile. Sarah did not want to close her eyes.

  “So tell me,” Tom said finally. “About your dreams.”

  Sarah took a deep breath, held it a moment, and spoke. “I was in a bad place,” she said. “There was a bad thing after me.”

  “What kind of bad thing?”

  “The worst bad thing in my life.”

  Tom grunted his acknowledgement, allowing her to continue.

  “He was coming for me,” she said. “And there was this boy.”

  “What kind of boy?”

  “I don’t know. But he was trying to protect me.”

  Tom shifted, and she felt the tension in his muscles. “What did he look like?”

  “He was tall, and he was kind of skinny,” Sarah said. “He didn’t look like he could take care of himself let alone me.”

  “What else?”

  “He had dark hair, I think. It was longer, and it hung in his face.”

  “Hmm.”

  “He was there, and he tried to save me. But he couldn’t.”

  “That sounds like him,” Tom said.

  “Who?”

  “I can protect you, Sarah. I don’t know why they can’t see that.”

  “Who can’t?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Wait,” she said, sitting up. “Tom, what are you talking about?”

  Tom looked at her, and his eyes were wide but very sad. At last he looked away.

  “Never mind,” he said. ‘This boy. You’ll see him soon enough.”

  “How do you know?”

  “If you’re dreaming about him, it means it’s time,” Tom said. “He’s probably leaving right now to meet us.”

  Blacktop and Bottles

  Somewhere on I-70, the Impala grinding it out at just under 80 mph, Kyle learned more about Molly than he wanted to know.

  They had taken a day prior to get ready, or rather Kyle had, packing clothes, emptying the $2200 from his passbook account, and acting the model son around his parents so they wouldn’t know what was up.

  That next morning, Kyle had gotten up early as usual, somewhere around 4:30 or so. Two time zones away, Sarah Smallhouse was on the last leg of her journey, waking from a nightmare on a southbound bus, but for Kyle the day began like any other but for one small difference: when he left the house just before 5:00, Molly was there by the curb, leaning against the hood of his car, smiling at him. Kyle smiled back. He had a full tank of gas, a pocket full of money, and the most beautiful girl he had ever seen waiting for him to take her on a very long ride. It was the most exquisite moment of his life.

  “Where are we going?” he asked, and Molly simply said:

  “Drive toward Denver.”

  He took 135 north, and the sun was already up and in full bloom on the starboard side of the Impala by the time he hit Salina, Kansas. Once he had turned west on I-70, Molly stretched her arms above her head and back, pressing them against the roof of the car and arching her back to lift her hips off the seat. She groaned in a pleasant way that reminded Kyle of the morning they kissed and he touched her breast.

  “I need a nap,” she said. “All right if I crawl in the back seat?”

  “That’s fine,” Kyle said, but it was anything but fine. He had gone weeks without seeing her, weeks of withdrawal from her scent and her touch, weeks far worse than any hangover he could muster. All he wanted was to have her close, to just be able to look over every so often and see her. But he also wanted her to be happy, and he feared that if he was less than agreeable, she might leave him again. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said.

  Molly leaned over and kissed his cheek, then waited a moment and kissed his ear, breathing into it gently. Kyle felt the skin on his neck quiver, but then she was gone, crawling over the backs of the Impala’s front bench seats, her lovely black-jean-clad backside thrusting in the air as she did so. She was intoxicating, and Kyle had to shake his head to keep his eyes on the road.

  Once she was in the back seat, he heard her shuffling a bit. He tried to watch her from the rearview mirror, but she had disappeared below his site line. A strange chill came over him, a tingling on his skin that was nevertheless warm. It reminded Kyle of mornings walking the route, drinking from his thermos, and that wonderful heat that spread through his body as the drink got smoother.

  But even this passed too.

  When he saw the exit for Hays, he slowed for gasoline, and the tingling came again, this time seeming to fill the entire car, as if he had driven through a strange electrical field like you saw on old episodes of Star Trek. When he took the off-ramp at the 183 exit, he heard Molly stirring, and by the time he pulled into the Kwik Shop just south of I-70, she was sitting up. In the rearview mirror, Kyle could see her adjusting her clothes like a teenager being caught in a make-out session, and for a moment he wondered if she had been naked as she slept.

  “Where are we?” she said.

  “Just stopping for gas.”

  He filled the tank in silence, and she sat in the back seat, blinking and rubbing her eyes. When he got back in the car, she leaned forward, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him. “Okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Mind if I sleep a little more?”

  “Sure,” he lied. “Where are we going?”

  “Just driv
e toward Denver. I’ll let you know when we get there.”

  He started the car and pulled back out onto I-70. The road rumbled below the Impala, and Molly lay back down, disappearing from view but making those weird shuffling sounds again. That strange electricity hovered over Kyle’s body again, this time almost cold, like those strange chills his mother got in the middle of the dog days of summer.

  About 20 miles down the road, he started thinking about his bottles.

  He knew he had two of them left under the passenger seat, for he had counted them before the trip. He was not sure if he would be able to get more, and in fact hoped he would not need them (Molly had been better than any morning spent with the thermos), but here he was now, westbound on I-70, coming up on the 147 exit to a tiny blink-and-you-miss-it borough called Ogallah, and he suddenly needed a drink. Badly. He could not explain the craving, but it caught him like a door slamming on his foot. Deeper and deeper, it wormed inside, nibbling away at his worst fears, and he had to grip the wheel to keep his hands from trembling as the questions came.

  What was he doing here? How could he up and leave without so much as a word to his parents? Who was this girl, this Molly, anyway? Why of all people would a beautiful girl want to be with him?

  And worst of all, what if she were to leave again?

  Almost on auto-pilot, he bent to one side and tried to reach under the front edge of the shotgun seat. He was leaning at almost a 45-degree angle, his eyes peering just above the dashboard at the road, his left hand struggling to keep the car between the lines, and his right hand groped and clawed. He thought he could feel the neck of one of the bottles wrapped in a towel, and he pinched it with his fingers and tugged. No dice. The bottle was wedged in from behind and would not come out on the front. No, he would have to go in from the back side.

  Kyle sat back up in the seat, steadied the car as it mounted a hill, and the maneuvered it through a northwesterly curve. Once the road straightened out and he could see asphalt for at least a mile—with little more than a car or two this morning—he pressed himself up with his legs and draped his arm over the back of the seat.

  It was a pity this car didn’t have cruise control. That would have made it so much easier, for he could have taken his foot off the gas pedal as he worked his arm into the back seat to reach for a bottle. But without cruise control, Kyle’s quest became something of an experiment in human origami. He had to twist his torso, then move his left foot over to man the gas, cocking his right leg up onto the seat, the tips of the fingers on his left hand barely touching the steering wheel to keep the car on the road. He stretched his right shoulder, pushing with his right leg to lean back just a little bit further, and at last his right arm was behind the seat, far enough to touch the floor. If he could just move a few more inches, he would be able to get under the back seat, able to get that bottle, and with a little bit of care and no small amount of luck, he could have that drink while Molly slept.

  His fingers walked their way along the back of the seat, clawing at the fabric, pressing themselves down to the carpeted floor behind the shotgun side. He twisted his shoulder, his left hand guiding the steering wheel by the tip of the middle finger now, the toe of his left leg extended as far as it could to keep the gas going. His right arm slithered back, and the fingers stretched to find purchase … and that was when they brushed through something soft and warm and covered with ample amounts of fur.

  Kyle poked the furry thing, not sure what could have been left in his car. He remembered in high school when Bran the Man and his crew had pried open the door of a Principal Spalding’s car with a coat-hanger and put a dead skunk in the back seat. They never got caught, although everyone in the school knew who it was. No one came forward because the idea of Spalding driving home with that stench all around was just too priceless. But this thing now, this creature in the back seat of Kyle’s Impala, felt like an animal. Could Bran the Man have found a way to prank him as well the day before he left town for good?

  Just then, the furry thing moved. Oh my god, it was alive! Kyle’s hand recoiled, and he heard it shuffling about. Something padded his hand, a rubbery paw as the thing on the floor batted at him. With a yelp and a spastic flailing of limbs he pulled himself back into the front seat, driving his right foot down on the brake. The tires screeched, and the backside of the car snapped to the left, and then the thing was up on the back of the front seat now, digging its claws into the upholstery and hissing in Kyle’s face.

  Kyle screamed then, a fierce little shriek that caught in his throat and made him cough. He snapped the wheel to the right and drove the car into I-70’s shoulder, and the ridged asphalt grumbled beneath his tires. He stopped on something even smaller than a dime, his body snapping forward and the black furry thing was thrown off the seat-back and into the dashboard. Kyle snapped open the driver-side door and tumbled out of the car as if it were on fire.

  A Honda Accord with three boys Kyle’s age roared past him on I-70 just as he slammed the door. If the boys in the car had been paying attention, they might have distinguished the gangly, dark-haired boy from their graduating class, the “little faggot” who had spoiled their afternoon of fun with Seby Lee some six years prior. But Bran the Man and his two best friends (who had all left Landes in the Accord about half an hour after Kyle and Molly) were preoccupied, rocking out to the new Van Halen tape, the band’s first album without David Lee Roth. Bran the Man had purchased it for the trip, and they were jamming with the stereo cranked to capacity. They did not recognize Kyle Winthrop.

  Kyle jumped as the Accord passed. He rolled over the hood of the Impala and tumbled off the other side, in the grass just beyond the shoulder. At once he was back on his feet, backing away from the car but watching wide-eyed as the furry black thing in his car poked its head up and pressed its nose against the glass on the passenger side.

  It was the cat, that damned stupid black cat. Somehow, Seby’s cat had gotten in his car and ridden this far with him. It was if the cat was intent on cursing his one chance at getting away from Landes.

  But then something horrible happened.

  The cat stared at Kyle. Its paws came up and pressed against the glass. Its blood-colored eyes widened, and as it shook its furry head the fur seemed to retract. That weird tingling sensation came over Kyle, the air filled with thousands of invisible sparks that tickled the flesh. The cat’s face grew wider, and the black fur grew thinner, revealing cream-colored flesh below. The ears flattened back as if it were angry, and the fur on its crown lengthened, spilling out about its face, which was now large and hairless and somehow less cat-like. At last, it reared up, and the grey-soled paws pressed against the glass began to lengthen and extend, the claws retracting, the hair sucking its way into her skin, and then she was Molly, blinking but not smiling, her dark eyes boring into Kyle.

  “Oh my god,” Kyle said, taking a step back. “I can’t believe I kissed you.”

  And that was when he fainted.

  * * * *

  “I didn’t want you to know,” Molly said. “Not yet.”

  Kyle paced about in the grass, running his right hand through his hair. One of his bottles, the one he had opened three days earlier to replenish his thermos, swung at the end of his left arm. “What are you?” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter what I am,” she said. She had gotten dressed and was leaning against the car, arms crossed and watching him. “What matters is that I’m here.”

  “Why?” he asked. “Why are you here?”

  “At first because I was supposed to be,” she said. “Later because I wanted.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Molly turned her head to one side, thinking, and something made her smile. “I guess that’s not entirely true. I wanted to be here from the beginning. As soon as I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “About you.”

  “What do you know about me?” Kyle stammered. “What could you possibly know about me?”


  “I know who you are,” Molly said. “And I know who you’re supposed to be.”

  Kyle stopped in mid-pace and stared at her. Molly smiled back, and it was an amazing smile, almost toxic with invitation. It was the same smile she had given him months ago, a smile that promised more pleasure than he could possibly fathom. It had given him hope during the summer, given promise of a life less lonely. He had once heard Seby Lee lament about the fear of living without a friend and dying without a witness, and when this fear became Kyle’s fear as well, the thought of Molly—sweet, beautiful Molly—had taken all of that away. All he wanted was her, but now he realized that she knew that was all he wanted, and she was working that, throwing that smile out like food before a dog.

  He had no answer. He unscrewed the cap of the bottle and took a pull of the vodka, loving the burn in the back of his throat. This, at least, he knew. This he could trust.

  “I really wish you wouldn’t do that,” Molly said.

  “I really wish you weren’t Seby Lee’s cat,” Kyle said. “For God’s sake, Molly, you’re his cat! Is that what I'm seeing? I’m not completely crazy here, am I?”

  “You’re not crazy.”

  He shook his head and took another pull from the bottle.

  “Kyle, please don’t do that.”

  He did not answer. He finished his swig, capped the bottle, and turned to grin at her. He could feel the grin stretching across his face, wide and demented like the Joker in one of Seby’s Batman comic books. Without thinking, he slapped himself.

  “What are you doing?” Molly asked.

  Kyle only grimaced and slapped himself again. A second time. A third.

  “Kyle, stop it!”

  “It’s a dream,” he said. “It has to be. Wake up now.”

  “Kyle.”

  “What was it my Dad used to say? It’s only a movie, only a movie.”

  He slapped himself again, and that was when Molly came to him. She placed her hands on his arms, squeezing them hard, and her eyes were the color of crude oil as she studied him. “Stop,” she said. “Stop now.”

  It was all he could manage not to turn away. Molly’s hands, so soft when they had stroked his hair, now squeezed his arms like wood clamps.