“A chameleon,” Meatloaf said.
“I’m sorry?”
“A chameleon. He changes color in his surroundings, adapts. That’s the most dangerous person of all!”
“Are we almost there? I don’t mean to be a pain, but I walked so much yesterday and I have blisters on my feet.”
Meatloaf gave the chuckle of a villain in a low-production movie. “You shouldn’t apologize so much, little one. The world will never apologize to you. Besides, here we are! Shall I describe it for you?”
“Is it the place where all the golf equipment is kept?”
“Bingo! Has anyone ever told you you’re awfully bright for a little girl?”
“What are we doing here?”
Meatloaf took a deep breath, then blew it out through his lips. “I don’t know. But I mean to find out.”
It was then that Jenny realized she wasn’t the only person waiting for a sign.
Chapter 11
They stopped at the clubhouse and it was here, as she listened to the crash of overturned furniture upstairs, that Jenny expelled the last of the pent-up air that had settled deep in her lungs, accepting with this heavy and long-held-back breath that she was not going to die. Time would tell whether this was a blessing or a curse.
“All life is precious,” Allen had once told her, and though Jenny doubted he had been thinking of lunatics like Meatloaf when he uttered the phrase, she supposed he was covered all the same. This did not stop her, however, from imagining someone arriving to save her and killing Meatloaf if he tried to get in the way. He had done her a kindness by feeding her and keeping her warm, but this did not blind her to what he was: A bad apple thick with rot and wriggling with worms.
And what makes you so different? she thought. Aren’t you a bad apple yourself? Why else did your parents want to get rid of you so badly?
She clenched her eyes against this insinuation, but she could no more shut off the gaze of her mind than she could restore the sight of her eyes. There the thought hung, taunting her, playing chords of guilt on her vulnerable heart, and she wanted very much to find a bed to crawl beneath so she could cry without fear of eyes watching her. There were always eyes watching her, at least in her imagination, and none of them were kind.
There was a shatter of glass upstairs, followed by a litany of curses and grunts as Meatloaf stalked from one room to the next. Something heavy crashed to the floor, doors slammed, a mattress was overturned, Meatloaf cursed as - if Jenny’s ears did not deceive her - he beat something with a golf club.
The terrible thirst still haunted her. Her saliva had congealed to sap in her mouth. She had asked Meatloaf if they could look for water, and he had answered that their “quest” was too important for them to get sidetracked by such a silly distraction.
Yes, those were his words. Quest. Silly distraction. As if he were hunting for the Holy Grail and she was talking about adding to her stamp collection.
Ignoring the sound of furniture tumbling down the stairs, Jenny cautiously advanced across the carpet, her hands raised in front of her face. Her fingertips brushed cloth. She was standing in front of a series of shelves.
Her fingertips traced the curve of a sneaker, and, with a flutter of excitement, she plucked the pair off the shelf and bent down to compare the size.
Too large.
She tried another pair, then another. The fourth pair was serviceable. She slipped out of her sandals and tried the sneakers on. She could hardly believe how buoyant she felt stepping on so much cushion, not to mention how much warmer her numb toes felt.
She found a t-shirt, a hoodie, a baseball cap, and a pair of slacks she suspected were boy’s. Then, as she was drifting around the perimeter of the shop in search of a changing room, she bumped into a spinning wrack that contained ankle socks.
Socks!
She had never been so happy at the prospect of feeling cotton on her feet in all her life.
Armed with her new attire, Jenny slipped behind the sales counter and began changing into her new clothes. She paused every few moments to listen for footsteps on the stairs. It sounded like Meatloaf was still busy trashing the place.
She was perched on the edge of the counter, tying her shoelaces, when she heard a sound come from outside.
Something scratching at the door.
The sound stopped.
Meatloaf’s footsteps pounded overhead, passing the stairs and then moving farther away.
Jenny pushed herself off the counter, landing softly on the toes of her shoes, and crept toward the source of the sound.
Were there windows in the room? There must be windows in the room. If someone was outside, they would just look through a window and see her, a young girl trying to look hip with her fancy shades.
A girl without anyone to protect her.
But why would a person scratch at the door?
She drifted closer. The scratching started again, followed by a soft whimper.
The wolves, she thought suddenly. They tracked me all the way here and now I’m surrounded and they’re just waiting me out.
Unless they decided to come crashing through the windows. Wolves could do that, couldn’t they?
The scratching became more insistent, as if the scratcher had seen her and grown excited. Hungry, maybe. The way Jenny saw it, she had two choices. She could either wait for Meatloaf to come down the stairs and take care of the problem for her, or she could woman up and confront it herself.
But what if it was a wolf?
“Are you a wolf?” she whispered. She was standing just inside the doorway now. Her arm bumped the latch.
The scratching became insistent, joined by a high-pitched whine. Canine, definitely. She didn’t have much interest in canines of any kind, not after being trapped in a car by snarling wolves.
But what if this wasn’t a wolf? What if it was a stray dog looking for help?
“If you attack me,” she whispered as she turned the doorknob, “I’ll…I’ll bite you. Understand?”
The canine on the other side of the door stopped scratching and whining, but it did not answer.
With a deep breath, Jenny pulled the door open. At first nothing happened. Then she yanked her hand back as a wet nose touched her skin. The dog (she was fairly sure by now it was a dog) pressed its muzzle beneath her arm and shoved it upward.
“Hey!” she said, stepping back to balance herself. “What was that for?”
The dog’s only answer was a soft thumping sound that must have been its tail hitting the door frame. Then the dog’s nails clicked on the ground as it trotted away.
“Where are you going?” Jenny called, stepping outside. “Stop! Wait!”
The dog had not gone far. Jenny could hear it lapping water nearby.
Following the sound, she joined the dog at a plastic bucket that must have filled with rainwater. She sniffed the water. It smelled stale, but not foul. Would she get sick if she drank it? The dog didn’t seem to share any such concern.
How much could one mouthful hurt?
She cupped the water in her hands, grateful it was too late in the year for mosquito larvae, and drank. She had intended to merely taste the water before swallowing, but as soon as the liquid touched her swollen tongue, she swallowed.
It was delicious.
She drank another handful, then lowered her mouth directly to the water and drew a series of long gulps until her mouth, her tongue, and her throat all gave her permission to stop.
The dog panted happily beside her.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I’ll die in a few hours, but at least I won’t die thirsty.”
She sat on the ground, and before she could register a protest, the dog curled in her lap. It was not a small animal. Jenny pictured it as a German Shepherd mix, with a golden belly and a black snout.
She tensed. She had never liked dogs—they were sneaky and vicious and you could never tell whether they wanted to lick your palm or bite off the ends of y
our fingers. Usually dogs sensed her wariness and kept their distance, as if her distrust engendered the same feeling in them. This one, however, seemed oblivious to her feelings. It merely panted against her, turning now and again to sniff her face.
“Stop it!” she cried, throwing herself back as the dog’s nose brushed her mouth. She wiped furiously at her lips. Then, as she imagined how foolish she must look, a giggle bubbled up from inside her.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” she said, touching the dog’s snout. The skin was smooth and cold, but the fur was sticky around the mouth. “You need a bath,” she murmured, though to be fair, she doubted she smelled much better.
“What should I call you?” she asked. “My name’s Jenny. Do you have a name?” She felt the dog’s neck for a collar, but found only more of the sticky substance she had encountered on its muzzle.
“What about Cain, for canine? No, that just makes me think of Cain and Abel.” She frowned. “We’ll have to keep thinking about it.”
A cold breeze that smelled of pine drifted past her. She pulled the dog closer and buried her face in its fur, feeling warm in her new soft clothing, feeling as if maybe she ought to cry and maybe everything was going to be alright in the world.
___
When he glimpsed himself in the upstairs mirror, he smashed the glass. Then he saw a thousand faces leering back at him, so he tore the mirror off the dresser and threw it to the ground. It was a large mirror, trimmed with fine scroll-work, an antique that might have been in someone’s family for generations.
Satisfied there were no more eyes watching him, Meatloaf found a clean towel and began to scrub at his face. Dried blood disintegrated into the terry cloth. The more blood he found, the more violently he scrubbed. His arms began to shake in unison like the tines of a tuning fork. He wadded the cloth into a ball, chucked it at a painting of a sailboat, and screamed.
A disgusting burst of tears welled up and dropped from his eyelashes. His mind wanted to remember. Why did his mind want to remember? He struck his fist against the side of his head, commanding his brain to forget, to shut up, to stop playing the same scenes—
The flashlights dancing in the dark tunnel.
The faces that did not smile, the voices that did not laugh at his jokes.
They had wanted him to take Victor’s place (he had, after all, helped Victor escape), but he had seen that routine one too many times, thank you—the bodies huddled in the freezer, the pleading faces. He even remembered how the first ones had immediately dug for their wallets, offering cash or showing him the pictures of their loved ones. Meatloaf would then ask for their address on the off-chance the family lived close by. You could never have too much frozen meat.
What came next…
Once the flashlights fell to the ground, everything dissolved into a disjointed nightmare—snarls, grunts, an elbow to his mouth, someone’s hands slipping along his shoe as he stamped down again and again.
Hitting his head against the wall. Flashes of light. A scream echoing in the tunnel (his own voice?). Biting hard, blood splattering his face.
The strangest part of the game was catching his breath in the darkness and trying to guess who was lying at his feet, crawling through the puddles, moaning incoherently. Did he want to know? It didn’t much matter. One way or another, there was no going back, not even to pick up a souvenir.
He was homeless now. A man without a cause. A ronin.
Standing in one of the upstairs bedrooms of the clubhouse, he tried to make peace with this fact. It felt more like he was an actor in a movie than a person in the real world. He could remember his old life as if it had happened yesterday, and though he had hated many things about that life (not least of all the way his father had treated him), it had been home, hadn’t it? It had been…familiar, comfortable in its own strange way.
Now the familiar world was gone. Like a young bird that has fallen hundreds of feet from its nest, there was no going back for him. The only option left was to explore the forest floor, to survive, to evade the predators that would pounce on him at the first sign of indecision or weakness. And eventually, maybe, when his feathers were full and he could ride the wind, he would become a predator himself, striking fear into the hearts of those who saw his dark silhouette against the sky or heard his keening cry.
Sometime later, his reverie was broken by a dog’s bark. He realized with slack-jawed surprise that he had slipped into his fantasy and lost track of time. The sun was not where he had left it. A fleeting, shadowy doubt moved across his mind like a shark hidden in the shallows (the substance of this doubt was that his mind might be cracking), and then it was gone and he was himself again.
Not Oswald Crumley, the butcher’s boy, but Meatloaf—a young, fledgling predator testing his wings, preparing for the day when he would soar high above the trees, the envy and terror of all the forest creatures below. The day was coming. It was not here yet, but it was coming. And though he could not say for certain what it would look like, he would know it when he saw it.
___
He found, at long last, what he had been looking for.
The boots were scuffed, the edges crusted with old mud. The leather slouched and drooped, while the laces - dotted here and there with paint and primer - were frayed and thin.
Staring at the boots as he had stared at the clothing of so many travelers who had come through his fair town, Meatloaf waited for the history to come to him. He could sense it there, shimmering like a pungent odor, brimming with secrets. Meatloaf was thinking of a story he had heard about the ancient Aztecs eating the hearts of their enemies. According to the story, the Aztecs believed that doing so would fill them with the essence of their enemies, making them stronger.
Though Meatloaf had eaten his share of human hearts, he had never sensed anything sacred in the act. Maybe that was because his father had grilled the hearts and slathered them in barbecue sauce, serving them to the whole group along with fries and sodas. Meatloaf’s most moving experiences had, instead, come from the souvenirs he collected from the people he led to the freezer—watches, jewelry, glasses, articles of clothing. He would wear them now and again, savoring the smells and the little blemishes - scratches, tears, stains - that made them unique. It made him feel as if he had absorbed a part of each victim into himself—which was how he imagined the Aztecs had felt about eating hearts.
In the short time since helping Victor escape, he had wondered if he had made a mistake. Victor was, after all, a rare specimen—a cunning predator adept at surviving. Meatloaf could have absorbed a great deal from him. By letting Victor go, he had forestalled that distinct pleasure, choosing instead to believe Victor’s promise of building an empire together. Victor had lied. Meatloaf had been weak, eager to appease when he ought to have asserted his predatorial dominance, but he would not make the same mistake twice.
The next time he and Victor met, he meant to absorb Victor.
All of him.
For now, however, the boots - with their lingering scents of sweat and old leather, their cracks and creases, their contours shaped to the dimensions of Victor’s feet - would have to do.
He slipped them on. They were a bit too large for him, so he took them off again and stuffed newspapers into the toes. Now they fit perfectly. He laced them tightly, ignoring the top two holes just as Victor had, and then regarded himself in one of the many fragments of the mirror he had broken.
He sensed the strength surging inside him, felt all the personalities he had absorbed bumping and colliding in his chest like debris caught in a whirlwind. Yes, Victor was a special specimen, no doubt about that.
Meatloaf had so many things to learn from him.
Chapter 12
The day fell to darkness, the forest shredding into the long shadows of oaks and maples to which the last straggling leaves of autumn clung, keeping winter at bay as long as they could. The brothers camped that night in the forest, treating themselves to the last of their provisions (along wit
h a shot of Jim Beam to help them forget how empty their stomachs were). Tomorrow was open, untethered, a boat freed of its mooring and drifting wherever the wind and the water conspired to take it, and Victor thought that this was alright.
It was alright because they sat around the fire and talked long into the night. It was alright because their talking broke into sudden flights of laughter at a memory unearthed or an unexpected joke. It was alright because even the darkness brought gifts, the light of the stars and the mournful notes of the owls calling to one another across the great and endless emptiness of the forest.
I can do this, Victor thought as he lay beside the fire, listening to a skunk tramping about in the leaves nearby. There was cold, yes, and it was rising steadily toward its wintry crescendo, but he was nothing if not a survivor. Dante had changed, too. He did not play the victim as often any more, though his swollen ankle gave him good cause. He did not complain about the pain, and when Victor suggested they push on a little farther before making camp, Dante only set his jaw and nodded as if this were a small hardship to bear.
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