by Glenn Rolfe
“Far out,” Ian said.
Connor watched him and Jack holding back their laughter.
“So, man, when do we play?” Connor said.
Craig slumped down on the couch closest to them. He reached behind it and pulled out a big green bong. “I figure we can drink and smoke until everybody shows up and then you guys can rock the house.”
“Fuck yeah,” Jack said. He walked across the open space and grabbed the seat next to Craig.
Ian punched Connor in the shoulder as he made his way to join them.
“Don’t worry guys, I’ll load in.”
“Plenty of time for that, man,” Craig said. He produced a lighter from his dirty jeans and sparked the bowl.
“That was a long ass drive. I’m just gonna go out and kick some rocks for a while. Stretch my legs.”
He went out the door and sucked in a lung full of the clean backwoods air. The sun hid somewhere behind the ash-colored clouds.
He walked down the steps and around to the back of the van. He opened the door and grabbed a warm Bud from what remained of the 30 pack. He closed the van door, cracked opened the beer, and started back the way they’d come in.
There hadn’t been a house for miles. He figured that it must be mostly hiking and camping up this way.
He’d always wanted to be a hiker. His younger brother Danny had always done it. He was one of those extreme sports and nature freaks. At least he was before he lost his leg in Afghanistan. He pondered his own station in life. The old Danny would have kicked his ass for being a thirty-two-year-old in a punk rock band. Danny would have tried one of his youth-filled hyper-motivation speeches. Now, that guy just lived off his disability, played video games, and drank tequila all night and day. He could care less what his older brother did or didn’t do. The dark side made Connor pity him and all that he should have been. The bright side was at least Danny hadn’t blown his own head off yet.
He downed the rest of his beer and went back for another. He popped it open and caught movement in the woods. A shadow.
“Hello?”
A crow cawed. Connor jumped. He couldn’t help but laugh at himself. He took a sip of the beer and stared into the darkness beneath the canopy of pine needles. Whether it was from whatever he thought he’d seen, or the loudmouthed black bird in the tree, he wanted to be back around his friends. He took another sip and headed inside.
***
He’d watched them for the last two months. Girls and guys gathered every few days. Loud music poured from the cabin. People screamed against pounding rhythms. Laughter and sex. The moans and squeals of ecstasy were the hardest for him to hear. He could take them out one-by-one, make them scream, make them moan in a different way. And he would. But not just yet. He picked up the copper pipe and started around to the path that led to the back of the property. He had killed a rabbit on his way in. He would need to eat to keep up his strength for tonight’s fun.
Chapter Four
Mike Russell finished his cigarette. He tossed the butt out his window and stepped from his Grand Am. He was off tonight. He decided to spend it with Derek and Heather. Ever since Jesse’s disappearance they’d been a mess in every way. He couldn’t pretend to know what they were going through. He was divorced and never had children, but he had plenty of heart. These were two of his best friends. He needed to make sure they didn’t tear each other apart in the aftermath.
He heard Heather going off like a rocket before he made it to the door. Derek had mentioned that he suspected that she’d found out about Melody, the ditzy, brunette waitress down at the Hole in the Wall. Mike held his tongue. Internally, he thought Derek was getting what he deserved. Still, the fighting wasn’t helping either of them.
He gave the trailer door three heavy knocks and waited.
Heather answered. Her red, tired eyes gazed into his. She stepped onto the front porch, wrapped her thin arms around his neck, and cried.
Derek stepped into the living room and raised his hands and shook his head. He’d been crying too.
He picked his motorcycle jacket up from the recliner, pulled it on, and slipped past the two of them.
Heather raised her head.
“Where the hell are you going? Back to your piece of ass?”
“I’ll be back later.”
“Fuck you, Derek. This isn’t fair, you know.”
Derek’s bike kicked over. He revved it a few times, clicked it into gear, and rolled off into the oncoming twilight.
Heather wiped her eyes as she watched him ride away.
“Sorry about that. I suppose he told you.”
“Today, actually. Mentioned it this morning.” Mike didn’t see any sense in keeping it from her.
“You want a beer?”
“Sure.”
He followed her inside. Jesse’s last school photo stood on the coffee table. Its space on the wall sat vacant beneath the family photo taken five years back when Jesse was still just a cute kid. The hollow space made the situation all too real.
Heather opened the fridge and pulled out a beer. He accepted it, twisted the top, carried it over to the kitchen table, and took a seat. He sipped the beer and waited until she was ready.
She picked at the edge of her thumbnail. Her bottom lip plumped out. She was normally beautiful. The last two weeks were wearing on her. It wasn’t fair, but she looked more like a prize fighter taking shots at a kid who entered the ring two years too soon.
“I thought I heard him last night.”
Mike rolled the cold bottle between his palms.
“I was almost asleep, it was maybe three this morning, and I could swear I heard the back door open and close. Derek was passed out next to me on top of the covers. Jesse’s always sneaking in and out after dark. I figured he just got back from being out there with Davey. Maybe they hitchhiked down to Boston, or some dumb thing. I got up and went to the hallway…”
Her lip quivered. Her eyes glistened.
She sucked in a deep breath through her nose. “Ahh, God.”
She turned to the sink and wiped at her eyes with the sleeves of her cotton shirt.
Mike started to get up, but sat back down when she slapped her palms down on the counter, snatched her beer up, and chugged it down. She brought it away from her mouth, screamed, and threw the bottle across the room. It shattered against the wall.
Mike ducked from the few shards of glass that flew his way.
Fuck you, Derek. How could you do this? Of all fucking times.
***
The cold air whipped the tears streaking down his face. His fingers were numb. Derek headed to the edge of town and turned right. Mount Vernon Road. He knew he’d lost his son. Heather wanted to pretend that their boy was still alive, but he could feel the loss. He knew he was gone. It was only a matter of time before the police came knocking on the door with the final say so.
Heather had smelled the waitress on him this morning. He should have taken a shower, washed his hands, and threw the clothes in with his oily work clothes, but he was too tired, too beaten. Melody was an awful mistake, but it was one he kept making. Their affair had started before Jesse disappeared. Then, it was too many drinks, too much flirting, and too little impulse control. Now, it felt like something he needed to get to tomorrow. He planned on going to her tonight, but the look in Mike’s eyes had rocked him. Goddamn Mike.
He opened the bike up. After a few minutes, he let off the throttle. He slowed to a stop near Cobb Road. He knew the boys liked to ride bicycles out here and cause the old guy trouble. Ghosts. They always said they were chasing ghosts. Derek never liked it much, that they came here, but he never believed all that stuff they said about Zachariah Cobb, either. Besides, boys will be boys. They need something to keep them busy.
It was the last thing his boy had said to him before going out. He’d asked his son where he was going and Jesse had said, “chasing ghosts.”
Jesse had also let him know that he knew he was seeing someone else.
He’d been under the kitchen sink fixing a leak. Sweaty as hell and talking to Melody on the phone. Jesse tried to storm out. He had asked where he was going. When Jesse answered, it felt like an intruder had entered his home after midnight. He chalked the chill up to the fact that Kip Nelson, and his idiot cousin, Gunner, had found Cobb dead out that way not two weeks earlier.
That same skin crawl effect traced his flesh now. He stared down the cracked and forgotten road. There was a cabin Jeff Marston rented out year-round. Derek put the bike in gear and drove down the road. He eased ahead, tempering his pace. He gazed along the edge of the encroaching forest.
Now who’s chasing ghosts?
He wasn’t quite a mile down the road when something moved up ahead. Off to his right. He slowed to a stop and cut the engine.
Jesse?
“Hello?”
His voice was swallowed by the dark. He glanced up. Overhead, the tree tops leaned into one another like a steeple of skeletal limbs. He thought of Cobb again. He wished the moonlight could penetrate the veil.
Something scraped across the crumbled road.
He dropped his gaze. Twenty feet ahead, a shape crossed his vision. Sparks trailed from the instrument being dragged behind it.
It wasn’t Jesse.
A hiker maybe? The person didn’t respond when he called out. Maybe they hadn’t heard him?
The scraping noise stopped as the thing causing it left the road. The hiker continued to the trees and disappeared.
Derek started to call out again, but his voice died in his throat.
He sensed the person standing there, just beyond his sight. Watching.
He wanted to crank the bike up and leave. Go home to Heather or flee to Melody. But what if this person had information on Jesse? Another thought slipped to the front of his mind too, what if this is the person who took him?
“E-excuse me? I- I’m looking for my son.”
A trail of sweat rolled down his back. His mouth ran dry.
“My son, Jesse, he came out this way last week. He hasn’t come home since.”
The silence made him want to scream.
He turned the handle bars and guided the headlamp toward the trees.
“Hello?”
Leaves crunched off to his left. Much closer than where he had the light aimed.
It felt like someone was fondling his balls with icicles.
He stomped the kick start lever. The bike didn’t respond. He tried again. Nothing.
“No fucking way,” he said.
On the third try, it started.
Suddenly, the shadow figure emerged from the woods. Whatever it had dragged across the road was now thrust out before him like a javelin. Derek straightened his handle bars and cranked the throttle. He shot forward. He wasn’t about to try and turn around now. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the figure standing like a statue in the center of the road.
He faced forward. His blood was ice cold. He thought of Jeff Marston’s cabin. He just hoped to hell that somebody was there.
Chapter Five
“What’d you do with my cord?” Jack said. Intoxicated and barely able to keep his head up right, Jack leaned on Connor’s shoulder and wretched.
“Fuck, man. Don’t yack up on me.” Connor shrugged him off.
“I’ll… uhh… be right...”
He watched Jack run for the back door. He made it past the couple making out in the doorway before Connor heard him vomit at the back railing.
“Ha!” Ian stood with their host, Craig, and stared as Jack stumbled off the back deck.
“You think he’ll be all right to sing?” Connor said.
“Fuck yeah, he’ll be fine. Just get him another drink when he comes back in,” Ian said.
“He’s gonna fuck up all the words.”
“Ah, man. I wouldn’t worry about that. Nobody will be listening to the words. Long as you guys keep the music coming.” Craig raised the joint in his hand.
“Fuck it.” Connor caved. He hadn’t smoked in over a year, but he needed something to keep him from wanting to strangle Jack.
He took a hit and held it in. The smoke burned his throat and hit his chest like a ghost pepper. He coughed. The burn stung twice as much.
“Heatseeker, dude,” Craig said.
“This shit is gonna fuck you up,” Ian said.
Connor handed the joint back to Craig.
“Have another,” Craig said.
Connor shook his head as Ian took it from his hand. He could already feel the buzz creeping in like a fog over the lake.
***
Jack flopped onto his back. His chin and nose still slick with puke. He watched the dark sky swirl. The spins. Some people hated them. He was not some people. Within a minute, his stomach had had enough. He turned over and spewed in the knee-high grass.
He was snatched by the hair and yanked forward. He barely got his hands to the person’s wrist before they were surrounded by the towering pines.
“Hey, hey, what the fuck?”
The person continued to drag him away from the cabin and deeper into the forest.
“Arrrr,” Jack’s lower half lifted off the ground and slammed back down. He wanted to clutch at the burning in his thigh, but didn’t dare let go of this creep’s wrist. Something hard had pierced his leg. He could feel part of it still in the muscle. What if it was a rusty piece of metal? It was a completely stupid thought but his scrambled brain went straight to tetanus.
“Come on, man. I’m with the band.”
The guy just grunted as he hauled him along. Whoever he was, he was strong. His pace was brisk and hadn’t hitched since they made for the woods.
Jack realized through his drunken high, that this wasn’t someone from the cabin. This guy didn’t care about the party or that he was the singer in the band.
This is fucking Koko’s fault for booking them in the goddam woods.
The woodsman stopped cold. Jack’s body lifted off the ground again. He was swung outward. His legs whipped around. The hand in his hair released him.
He was in free-fall for a second before his arms and face smacked and tumbled down a series of rocks. His body parts each got a turn at banging into one rock or another as he cascaded down a decline. He hit the bottom and his legs splashed into cold waters. A stream. He could hear its melodic trickle as it taunted him with the promise of escape.
His elbow burned, and so did his collarbone. He knew enough to know they were more than likely broken.
He moved his legs. The sharp pain in his thigh was still present, but at least he hadn’t busted his legs.
He wondered where the creep was that had tossed him down here. Was he alone?
The guys would notice he was gone. They’d come looking for him. But how far out was this stream? What if that psycho got them, too?
Jack tried to listen over the sound of the rushing water. It was pitch black out here. He couldn’t hear or see a damn thing. He stared up, but couldn’t see the twirling clouds. The trees were thick here. They almost seemed to be purposely leaning into one another to block out the light.
He closed his eyes and tried to will the spins to return.
Instead, he felt lightheaded. He thought he should get up and move. He was out cold before he could make the effort.
Chapter Six
Marston’s cabin was a beacon in the night. Derek rolled up to the driveway, crowded with beat up cars and a van that had The Kip Wingers spraypainted over a poorly designed skull and crossbones. He could smell the weed in the air. There were young people chilling on the front lawn, drinking and smoking right in plain sight. More of them lined the porch steps. A few were making out. Two of the men were holding hands. They’d probably get called faggots in town. Walt Hanson, the chief of police in Naples, was good friends with Jeff Marston. He wondered what Walt would say if he got a look at this? Derek doubted if Walt or his boys would venture out this far though. Eddie Ho
oper would probably turn red as the devil if he saw these boys. Derek could give a shit what people chose to do with their lives or who they wanted to love. They could be having a drug-induced orgy out here and he wouldn’t care. No one was watching but the birds, so why not?
He wasn’t sure what the hell he was going to do. He wasn’t in a hurry to ride back the way he’d come in. Not yet anyway. Maybe he’d grab a beer and get calmed down for awhile.
He wondered about Jesse again. He thought of Davey Schneider and the new kid who never came home. The Howard kid. He and his mother, a thirty-something widow, had just moved to Naples. He thought he and Heather had it rough, but this mother was here not even a month and had lost the most important thing in her life.
He walked his bike over behind a station wagon, put down the kickstand, and started toward the cabin. He received curious looks, some smiles from some crusty, hippie types, and a flower from a girl with green, spiked hair.
A tall good-looking guy with his hair pulled back in a dark ponytail stepped forward and put his hand out.
“What’s up, man?” the guy said.
“Hi, uh, I’m just out riding around. Kind of came down this old road by accident. Got turned around somewhere back a ways. Is it all right if I hang here for a bit? Catch my bearings?”
“Sure, man. I’m Dallas. You want a drink? Smoke?”
“Sure, man.”
He followed Dallas up onto the porch. A couple of blondes looked him over. The one with the lip ring looked disgusted by his presence. Her friend with the pretty face smiled on the other hand. He gave her a once over and spied the trail of scabs, and what looked like bug bites, running up and down her scrawny legs.
“Here you go, man.”
Dallas handed him the joint first. He took a hit. It was good, strong stuff. He took another toke and handed it back, then exhaled and took a swig of the beer.