by Kavich, AC
Suddenly nauseous, Billy ran from his room and down the hall. His legs and feet were heavy, as if made of lead. He heard the floor groaning as he stumbled through the bathroom door. He fell to his knees with a surprising thud. He was too busy flinging open the toilet seat to notice the floor straining under his weight. When he finally vomited, none of the food came up. Only a thick red fluid that looked suspiciously like blood. The sight of blood in the toilet bowl caused Billy to gasp and clutch his stomach in a panic, but then he remembered.
He remembered the fruit. The juice from the fruit.
He struggled to his feet and stood over the sink, leaning forward to study his face in the mirror. His irises were normally pale blue, but they had gone dark blue. And the color was darkening still. The skin on his face was taking on the same scaly appearance as his limbs. His pores were gaping, and thick black hair had begun pushing through them.
Disgusting!
He turned on the faucet and snatched up his father’s razor, desperate to scrape away the dark hair.
William must have sensed that Billy was touching his things. He lumbered down the narrow hall and pounded on the bathroom door. “Get out of the bathroom! If you’re gonna wake me early with all that stomping and groaning, at least let me take a piss in my own toilet!”
“I’ll be out in a minute!” Billy hollered back, still trying to scrape off his new whiskers. They were stubborn little bastards. He couldn’t cut them with the razor. He could barely bend them.
“Billy, I got six cans of beer in my bladder that want out! Get out of there right now or I’m taking a leak in your closet!”
William was tugging on the bathroom door now. Billy frantically locked it.
“I’m on the toilet! Give me a minute!”
The bathroom didn’t have a window, but there was a tiny ventilation shaft near the ceiling. Its slats were just wide enough to let in the first morning light as dawn broke and a new day began.
Billy was staring at his arms when the transformation halted, then reversed. Before his eyes, the scales that had spread across every inch of his body began to fade. In a matter of seconds, every frightening new detail of his appearance was gone.
William finally yanked open the bathroom door. “Are you gonna let me pee or aren’t you?”
Billy was so relieved to look like himself again he couldn’t help but smile. He nodded eagerly and slipped past his father. He was halfway down the hall when he started laughing nervously.
“Hey Billy!” William yelled through the closed bathroom door. “Since you can’t go to school, you might as well work. If the foreman at the timber site okays it, I’ll call Al and tell him to pack an extra sandwich for you.”
“Okay pops. Thanks.”
He was exhausted after a night without sleep. But he was hungry too.
Food costs money, he thought as he pulled on jeans and a flannel shirt. Gotta work if you wanna eat.
And he did. He did want to eat.
CHAPTER FIVE
Hiroki first fell in love with cameras when he discovered his father’s Polaroid as a four-year-old. Every chance he got, he snagged the camera and started clicking. The photos slid out of the camera immediately, but you still had to shake them a few seconds before you could see the image. Those few seconds were almost unbearable for Hiroki. His parents laughed at their precocious toddler as he frantically shook photo after photo like his life depended on it, then squealed with pure joy when the image at last appeared.
He still had his father’s Polaroid camera. More than any particular photograph of his father or any other object Reiko kept in the house, it was the camera itself that helped Hiroki remember who his father was. Ten years after the car accident that claimed his father’s life, Hiroki still found himself gulping back tears when he laid eyes on the Polaroid.
For Hiroki’s father, photography was nothing more than a hobby. But for Hiroki, it had become an obsession. He saw the world through his viewfinder, and he felt more at home here – in the Alpine High School darkroom – than anywhere else on the planet.
“Yes, I know a Japanese guy with a camera is cliché you prick,” muttered Hiroki as he stooped over a row of chemical baths. Billy wasn’t in the room with him – no one was – but Billy’s words kept popping back into his mind uninvited.
The darkroom wasn’t as dark as its name suggested. There was an eerie red light from a bubble light affixed above the door. The same light fixture was outside the door as well, to warn anyone who thought about entering that they better knock first. Too much light at the wrong moment and the photos would be ruined.
Hiroki was developing the photos from his good camera. His film camera. He prized it even more than his beloved Buick. When Billy’s horseplay sent the camera sliding over the cliff face the day before, the sight was almost as painful to Hiroki as the news that his father would never come home again.
The tension had remained in Hiroki’s gut until now. The camera didn’t appear damaged, but who knows how many rocks it had struck on its tumble down the cliff face before snagging on the tree branch.
This was the moment of truth. These photos would tell him everything.
The photos were… perfect.
There were more than a dozen photos of Eva standing regally at the edge of the cliff. Her raven hair was floating on the wind. Hiroki momentarily forgot his concern about his camera and focused on her contemplative expression. What was she thinking about while she stared at the ocean.
Was she thinking about Hiroki? Was she thinking about… Billy?
With a sigh, Hiroki moved on to the next chemical bath. He used tongs to remove the photos submerged in the toxic fluid and hung them up on a line to dry. It normally took as long as an hour for the photos to develop in full, but Hiroki’s teacher had shifted to fast-acting chemicals and the images were born much faster.
He could already see that these photos weren’t his. The framing was terrible and the contrast was worse. It gave Hiroki great satisfaction to notice that the photos were even upside-down.
“Anybody can take a photo, dude,” he mocked, in his best Billy impression.
It was hard to make out first, but the subject of these photos was a tree. Its sinewy trunk extended down through the frame of the photo rather than up; its dark branches mostly reached down as well. Large black leaves on the branches were sticking out in all directions, offering no clue as to which way was up and which was down.
Hiroki picked up a loupe lying on the counter and inched closer to the pictures. He leaned in close, the loupe an inch from his eye and an inch from the still-wet photo dangling from the line.
There was a detail in the background of the photo. A bird in flight.
The bird was right side up.
Then the photos were right side up too.
Hiroki moved the loupe an inch to the left and took a closer look at the branches of the tree. They were as black as Billy’s description, sure enough. As twisted and tangled as he described. And hanging from the branches were dark objects the size of ovular tennis balls.
Billy was right, thought Hiroki bitterly. I hate that guy.
But his bitterness was soon an afterthought when he lowered the loupe and looked at the photo in its entirety. He had to back up a few steps to make sure he wasn’t imagining things. But no, he wasn’t.
Oh my god.
***
Eva was sitting in her History class across the aisle from Aidan. He was scribbling on scraps of paper and tossing them in the general direction of her desk. So far none had actually landed on her desk, so she pretended she didn’t notice them.
Mr. Windsor was in the middle of a lecture on World War II that had put most of the class to sleep, but Eva loved every school subject and history was in her top three.
“Most people in the United States were so frightened of our enemies abroad,” said Mr. Windsor in his signature drone, “that they didn’t raise any sort of protest when stores owned by German immigrants went up in flame
s and Japanese immigrants were shipped to internment camps all along the West Coast. The complicity of the American public in these disgraceful acts remains, in my mind, one of the darkest moments in the history of our great country.”
That moment, one of Aidan’s notes landed squarely in the center of Eva’s desk. She couldn’t very well ignore this one, so she glanced at Aidan. He was smiling as he gestured for her to open the note. With a heavy sigh, she did just that.
Whatever I did to upset you, I’m sorry. Forgive me?
Eva refolded the note and tucked it into her pocket. She forced herself to turn Aidan’s direction a second time and offered him a tiny nod. He melodramatically wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, mouthed “phew” then flashed his absurdly white smile. But his smile disappeared when he caught sight of something at the classroom door.
Eva followed Aidan’s eyes and saw Hiroki standing in the hall. He was staring right at her and waving his arms. She shook her head to let him know she didn’t understand, but he shook his head right back and beckoned her into the hall.
With a quick glance at Aidan, Eva wandered to the front of the class and asked Mr. Windsor for a bathroom pass. Without stopping his lecture, he rummaged in his desk for the pass and sent her on her way.
Hiroki was carrying a folder against his chest. Even though the hall was empty, he was protecting its contents like he would protect an infant in a jostling crowd. He was so excited as they walked that Eva had a hard time keeping up with him.
“There really is a tree down there,” said Hiroki, speaking at rapid pace. “Billy was telling the truth about that. And it looks just like he said it does. Black branches all twisted together to form a trunk and other branches going all over the place. Lots of fruit like that nasty fruit he ate. And yeah, the whole thing is upside-down just like he said! I thought the pictures were upside-down since he’s such an idiot—”
“He’s not an idiot,” Eva interjected.
“Okay, he’s not an idiot. And he didn’t take the photos upside down.” Hiroki had to speed up to match Eva’s pace, now. She was headed straight for the girl’s bathroom. “What are you doing?”
“I actually do have to go,” said Eva as she walked into the bathroom. “Are you coming?” she hollered from inside.
Hiroki looked up and down the hall to make sure no one was watching, then gulped and followed her in the bathroom.
Eva was already inside a stall, so Hiroki leaned against the row of sinks.
“Don’t listen to me pee!” Eva pleaded. “And don’t look through the crack in the door!”
“I’m not… I wouldn’t—” Hiroki protested weakly, but his protests sounded to him more like confessions. “You have to see the photos, Eva. That tree. It isn’t a normal tree.”
“Yeah, I get that you’re impressed by this tree. I get it. But calm down and take a few deep breaths.” She flushed the toilet inside her stall and stood to pull up her pants. “It’s still just a tree.”
“You haven’t seen the pictures yet!” Hiroki insisted. “You have to see the pictures.”
Eva opened the stall and stepped out. “Fine, show me.”
Eva froze in place and tilted her head toward the bathroom door. There were two female voices in the hall, and it sounded like their owners were headed toward the girls’ bathroom. Hiroki was frozen where he stood. Eva grabbed his shoulders and dragged him across the floor. He struggled to hang onto his folder as she pushed him inside one of the stalls, dove in after him and slammed the door.
Hiroki landed hard on the closed toilet seat. Eva sat down on his lap and cleverly lifted her feet.
Hiroki was holding his breath. He was experiencing a strange blend of abject horror that he might get caught in the girls’ bathroom and utter elation that Eva was sitting across his legs with her arms around him. The elation was getting the better of the horror, until he peeked through the stall crack and saw an 8”x10” photo lying on the bathroom floor.
Hiroki looked down at his folder. Half of the photos were hanging out from between its covers. He had dropped one! He gasped aloud, but Eva slapped her palm across his mouth to keep him quiet.
Penny Hobkins and Grace Delaney sauntered into the bathroom, their cheerleader’s skirts swishing on their skinny thighs. They went straight for the sinks and mirrors where they started unloading their purses: lipstick, lip balm, lip glitter.
Grace had planted one white shoe directly on top of Hiroki’s stranded photo. “After practice I just like, hung out at the field for like an hour. I was on the bleachers, but like, I was standing instead of sitting to make sure, like, the boys could see me.”
“Oh my god, did they see you?” asked Penny in her shrill whine.
Grace nodded as she applied the first layer of product to her lips. “And guess who saw me the most?”
“Aidan?”
“Totes,” said Grace with a satisfied smack of her redone lips. “And I mean totes. He was glancing over at me so much he like, totally messed up throwing the ball. I was like, kind of honored.”
“Did he come over and talk to you after practice? Oh my god he totally did, didn’t he? He totally did!”
Grace turned to face Penny, pivoting on the shoe that was planted on Hiroki’s photo. It crinkled audibly under her heel, but neither girl noticed. “Of course he came over after practice. I mean, of course. The poor guy has been dealing with Eva’s cold fish routine for so long he’s ready for a little heat.”
Penny hooted and shook her head, leaning forward to apply her own lipstick in the mirror. But she stood up straight suddenly when she saw the reflection of a pair of shoes under a stall door. She latched onto Grace’s arms and turned her to look at the stall.
Inside the stall, Eva was shifting her weight uncomfortably in Hiroki’s lap. She was having a hard time keeping her feet off the ground, and not sure she could take much more cheerleader babbling. Hiroki was struggling as well, his thin legs quivering under Eva’s weight.
“Did you enjoy eavesdropping?” said Grace in the direction of the stall. “Hope you did!”
Giggling, Grace headed for the door with Penny right behind her. As soon as they were outside of the bathroom, they resumed their cackling conversation.
Eva jumped off Hiroki’s lap with a groan and threw open the stall door. He followed her out, rubbing life back into his thighs.
“Sorry you had to hear that,” said Hiroki.
“Whatever, I don’t care. He can talk to other girls.”
“He’s a jerk,” said Hiroki as he stooped to recover his damaged photo. It was torn on one corner and creased diagonally. “Please just admit that he’s a jerk.”
“Are you gonna show me this amazing tree or not?”
Hiroki folded the damaged photo and slipped it into his pocket, but handed Eva the folder. She opened it with a frown, expecting to be unimpressed. But the top photo immediately captivated her. She moved it closer for a better look then held it at arm’s length.
“That looks like a face,” said Eva. “Like eyes and a mouth and… teeth.”
The trunk of the tree was heavily knotted. It played tricks on the eye. There were strange protrusions that gave the impression of a jutting jaw and gaping throat, pitch black at its deepest point. And thorny protrusions along the edge of the knot that looked like a row of shark teeth.
“Like the face of an animal,” added Hiroki. “The face of a creature.”
Eva flipped through the other photos, shaking her head unwittingly as the images washed over her. The eyes that seemed to look out from the trunk of the tree were the most haunting feature of the image. She closed the folder slowly and handed it back to Hiroki, who couldn’t help but smile at her reaction.
“We have to go back to that tree,” said Eva.
She didn’t look happy about it.
CHAPTER SIX
Billy and William had driven up the mountain for more than an hour before they finally reached the top. Billy couldn’t believe the view. The
peaks and valleys unfolding before them were so completely covered with mature timber that they looked like a sea of frozen green waves.
Billy was still rattled by the strange transformation his body had undergone during the pre-dawn hours.
“If you’re gonna heave,” said William, “roll down the window.”
Lumber work was grueling work.
A team of men had already gone through the slope with heavy buzz saws to fell hundreds of trees. A follow-up team led by William patrolled the ravaged slope in hard hats and waited for the men at the top to send hooks zipping down heavy wire lines. They wrapped the lines around severed logs and fixed the hooks, then signaled for the men up top to trigger their heavy machinery and haul the massive logs up and out.
At the top of the hill, another team of men helped guide the cut logs into stacks. They used smaller saws to cut away any protruding branches and to cut clean both ends so the logs weren’t too long for the semis they would ride back down the mountain all the way to the processing plant.
There were other minor jobs to be performed at the site. Due his total lack of experience, Billy was given the worst job of all: scrap collector.
The steady arrival of new logs at the top of the hill left a mess of loose branches and leaf litter on every inch of ground. It was Billy’s job to wait for the few moments between logs then dart out into the “landing zone” and snatch up all the garbage he could.
Billy was still exhausted, but he found his second wind by mid-morning and put in several hours of fleet-footed work. He ate lunch with William and a burly machine operator named Al – all three men downing hoagies made by Al’s wife Helen – and suffered through a half hour of aimless football conversation.