by Laura Bickle
“I’m glad school is going well,” she says. “Are you doing Geometry this year?”
“Yes. I’m liking it so far,” I say. I remember, at least, not to speak with my mouth full.
Ryan drenches his potatoes with butter. “Are you doing any extracurriculars?”
“Cross-country,” I reply. “I’m pretty slow, but getting better.”
Renee savagely slices her meatloaf. “I would like to do cross-country.”
Mrs. Carlton’s smile is tight. “There’s a nice track down at the community center, dear. And you play softball with the intramural team.”
She makes a face. “I’d like to be able to run cross-country. Get a trophy or something that everyone else doesn’t get.”
A wave of jealousy hits me. I stare at my meatloaf. I’ve never gotten a trophy. Not ever. And definitely not for cross-country. But now doesn’t seem like the time to tell her this.
After dessert and dishes, I slip away to grab my book bag. Ryan catches me at the front door as I’m putting my shoes on.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“I really should be going home,” I blurt. My gaze is all fuzzy and glossy. I can’t explain to him about how I have the urge to just run run run away from all this. My lame apology isn’t enough. It’s just words. I can’t really make things right with Renee, and I don’t belong here.
“I thought you were going to stay. We were gonna set up for a game of Munchkin…”
“I gotta get home. Please tell your parents and Renee thanks for everything.” I try to smile, but I can tell I’m failing, so I just slip out the door and into the darkness.
The night air is cool, bracing. It’s like a relief, washing over me. I suck in deep breaths and begin to run back to my house. I know the way through the fields and stands of trees. Thankfully, I wore flats today.
There’s something about running that I love but can’t describe. The air pours into my lungs, and I feel alive. I also feel weightless, as if I can move beyond my problems, charging into the wind and the blackness. The shadowy figures of deer watch me as I slice almost soundlessly through the dimness. I can shut off all the worry and fear and focus only on my breath burning in the back of my throat. I surge over drainage ditches and gopher holes effortlessly, as though I’m more than human. My hair streams behind me and my fists pump ahead. When I run, I feel unfettered. Free.
There’s a wire cattle fence ahead of me. I gather up my strength and jump, soaring over it as easily as if it were a hurdle on a well-groomed track. My hair slips into my mouth. I spit it out and grin. I stick the landing and turn left toward the creek. The Milky Way spreads out above me, a river of stars tangled in the inky branches of trees.
I hesitate for an instant when I reach the creek. I can feel it not as a thought, but as a warning twinge in my gut. I know that I have enough speed and momentum to jump from bank to bank. I know it, and yet…
…the doubt chews in my belly. I falter. I take the jump, but too slowly. I land with a splash, two feet shy of the far bank. Shockingly cold water rushes through my jeans and into my shoes. The sound frightens the bullfrogs into silence.
I am no longer flying. I’ve come back to Earth, in my usual unspectacular way.
I swear, stumbling forward, when I catch myself on a mass of tree roots. My backpack slides from my arm down to my wrist. Swearing some more, I try to hold my book bag above the water and clamber up the muddy bank. The mud sucks at my shoes, claiming one of my flats.
I chuck my backpack onto the grass and turn, reaching into the creek after my shoe. My fingers squish in the opaque muck, as I search for it. It’s probably ruined, but maybe I can salvage it.
The skin on my neck prickles as my hand closes on my lost shoe. Dry leaves crunch behind me. My face burns, and I whirl, expecting to find Garth or my father out looking for me.
“Don’t—” I snap, but my voice breaks.
It’s not Garth. It’s not my dad. It’s not any of the neighbors.
Black eyes burn in a pale white face. Chalky hands chew into a sweatshirt—my sweatshirt.
“Amanda?” I whisper.
CHAPTER TEN
SHE DOESN’T MOVE. SHE JUST stares at me, eyes dark and cavernous. There’s no light within them, nothing at all but a peculiar hollowness I’ve only seen at the bottom of wells and the rot inside tree trunks.
I shrink back. My head is telling me that I’m crazy, completely and utterly batshit. Maybe I should have taken those meds the shrink prescribed for me, rather than spitting them out when no one was looking.
But my gut feels like it knows what’s happening, that I am prey, confronted by a predator of some kind. Something that can hurt me. Even kill me.
“Amanda?” I ask again, clutching my shoe as if it’s a weapon.
She cocks her head toward me. “I’m hungry.” Her hands chew on something she’s holding at her waist.
My gaze drops, and my heart hammers. She’s holding what looks like road kill— a silvery opossum with dead glassy eyes and a ratlike tail—wrapped in the hem of my shirt. Her stomach growls, sounding as if she’s smuggling an angry tomcat beneath my sweatshirt while she’s wearing it.
Bile rises in my throat. “Amanda…” I feel myself edging back. I’m calculating how fast I can run back through the creek, over the fence, to the neighbors…
Her dark brows draw together. “Help me. Please.”
I freeze, exactly like I did when Renee was getting beaten. When I didn’t help her. My pulse pounds under my tongue, and I swallow back my gorge. I struggle to breathe.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I will help you. But you can’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me.”
“No. No, I wouldn’t,” she says. “Not ever.” But I’m not entirely sure.
I slowly climb the bank and put on my soggy shoes. Amanda is motionless, watching me as she cradles the dead opossum in her arms like a baby. Her expression is confused, oddly childlike.
I scrape wet hair back from my face. “Amanda, where did you find that?”
“By the side of the road. I know it’s gross, but…I was so hungry.”
“I’ll get you something good to eat. But you have to put that down.”
She gently, almost reverently sets it down by the side of the bank. “You know…I’m a vegetarian. I guess not anymore.”
“Amanda, are you alive?” I have to know. “Are you real? Where have you been?”
Her brow knits, and the pools of her eyes expand, as if they’re taking in all the available shadow. “I feel real. I’ve been…walking. Hiding. Sleeping. But I don’t…I don’t think I can be alive. I woke up in the morgue. That’s not…that’s not normal.”
I can see her struggling with this. “Do you want me to get you a doctor?”
“No. No one can know that this has happened to me. Please.” She dredges her hands through her hair, and it’s filled with leaves. “I just need to find somewhere to sleep, figure this out. Something to eat.”
“Okay. Okay. Come with me.” I adjust my backpack on my shoulder and take two steps toward my house.
She looks rooted in place, like a half-rotted tree. But she seems to make up her mind, because she slowly falls into step behind me. I reduce my pace so that she’s walking beside me.
“Where are we going?” She sounds like a little girl.
“Someplace safe. Where nobody will find you. I think.”
I can see the black roofline of my house against the lighter dark of sky. There are no lights on inside yet, and only the porch light is on. I lead Amanda to the house, to the back door of the Body Shop. It’s my first instinct, not to track mud into the front door of the house. But I feel Amanda quailing beside me.
“It’s okay,” I try to reassure her. “Nobody’s home, yet.”
I unlock the back door and flip on the overhead lights, which immediately start to buzz. The phone is already ringing. I snatch it up.
“Hello?”
“Charlotte? This is Mrs. Carlton.
Ryan said you left and I wanted to make sure you made it home all right.”
“I’m fine,” I say. “I just…I just needed to get home. Do my homework and stuff.”
“Okay, sweetie.” Mrs. Carlton sounds dubious. Her voice is muffled, and I imagine her hand cupped over the receiver. “Renee didn’t say anything to upset you, did she? She…she still wants to be your friend.”
I feel a pain deep in my chest. The pain of regret. “No, she didn’t do anything. Really. I just…I just needed to work on my history project.”
“All right, hon. Just…please take care of yourself. And come back over soon. We miss you.”
“I miss you guys, too.” My voice is thick with unshed tears. “Especially Renee.”
“I’ll tell her. Good night, sweetie.”
“Good night.”
I put the phone back into its cradle. I feel bad for making Renee and the rest of the Carltons feel worse. Dammit. But I can’t worry about it now. I have bigger problems. Much bigger.
I turn around. “Amanda…”
The door to the cooler is open. Cold air leaks around my ankles. Amanda is standing before it, exactly as one might stand before the refrigerator. She’s holding an arm like a turkey leg, gnawing on it, her eyes closed, an expression of bliss on her face. She’s chewing, swallowing. She opens her mouth to take another bite, and I see that her teeth aren’t normal. They’re rows of tiny, serrated teeth. Like catfish teeth.
I am home alone with a monster. Unconsciously, my fingers dive into my pocket for the charm.
A strangled squeak escapes my lips.
Amanda’s eyes snap open. They’re still black as night, but she watches me in horror. Not the arm she’s chewing, but me.
“Oh, hey, look…I didn’t mean…” She glances at the arm. “I can explain.”
I back toward the door to the house, my wet shoes squishing on the floor. My hand scrabbles behind me for the handle.
“Charlie, wait…”
The door clicks open. I stumble back, over a blur of dachshund fur beneath my feet as Lothar charges into the room. I think he means to attack Amanda, rescue me from the threat, like my knight in furry armor. He rushes up to Amanda, barking, his claws clacking on the tile.
Amanda looks down at him. Lothar looks up.
And then he parks his furry ass on the floor and sits up to beg.
Amanda gazes at the arm in her grip.
Lothar puts his paws together and whines.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” I sag against the doorframe.
“So, um, can he have some?” Amanda asks.
“Sure. Why the hell not.” I sink to the floor in a soggy heap, watching Amanda whistle through her inhuman teeth and toss tidbits to Lothar. He catches them before they hit the floor. Every one of them.
I press my hand to my mouth. “I’m losing it,” I mutter. “I’m totally losing it.” None of this is real. I’m likely locked up in a white room somewhere, and this is a hallucination. I might as well roll with it. I’ve always been more comfortable with the dead than the living. This is the same as talking to corpses in the cooler…right?
Amanda smiles at Lothar, displaying her serrated teeth. “Hey, how do you think I feel? I woke up dead.”
I stare at her over my fingers. “You said you could explain. Are you a vampire or something?”
Amanda looks at her pale palm. “I don’t think so. I took a nap in the sunshine. I haven’t burst into flames yet.”
I have completely lost it. I may as well play along with my delusion. “So what are you?”
“I think…I think I’m a ghoul of some kind? Dead flesh is just…it’s like how I remember peanut butter and chocolate. Amazing.”
“Have you tried to eat something else? Like actual food?”
She wrinkles her nose. “There was a meat delivery truck at your neighbor’s house yesterday. Steak. I snagged one from the cooler and it was just…meh. The opossum I found on the road was like that, too. Tasted like cardboard. But this….” She holds up the arm. “This is my peanut butter cup. I need it. Crave it. Just…” She closes her eyes. “Om nom.”
“Fantastic.” I stare at her. “So what’s stopping you from turning me, or my family, into dessert?” I have to know that her hunger is under control, that I haven’t let a monster into our house to murder everyone I love.
She sets the arm down, deliberately. “I can control it. I promise. When I was alive, I didn’t go stealing peanut butter cups at the convenience store.”
I squint. That sounds like a somewhat rational argument. “I’m not convinced.”
She points to Lothar, happily smacking his lips. “Look. Your dog loves to eat dead things, right?”
“Yeah…”
“He wouldn’t attack you in your sleep, would he?”
I look at Lothar. “Um, no. But I know him. And I’m pretty sure if I were dead, he would eat me.”
“Yeah. Well, I promise not to eat anyone who’s alive in your house.” She lifts up three fingers. “Scout’s honor. But the dead…well. I can make no promises there.”
My resolve wavers. She seems on the level. My belly is churning with emotions. I want to be a good person, to help out someone who needs me and not ditch them the way I did with Renee. This might be one of those tests of character, or it might be monumentally stupid. And if it’s a hallucination…it may not matter, anyway.
I glance at the clock. “My brother and grandmother will be home anytime now. We need to hide you. Get you some fresh clothes.”
“And more food,” she adds, tossing another bite to Lothar.
Lothar devours it. She crouches down, and he bathes her undead flesh in dog kisses. She giggles and pets him.
I shake my head. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
*
I run to the laundry and grab some clean clothes for Amanda. I strip off my own wet clothes and throw them into the washer with Amanda’s filthy ones. They smell like moldy leaves. That part of this hallucination is pretty real, and it’s the smallest problem I can solve right now. I put an extra scoop of detergent in and slam the lid, then dress in a hurry.
On the other hand—if this is real—I don’t want my folks to know anything has happened. I feel drawn to Amanda, deep in my anxious gut. She needs me, like nobody else has ever needed me. Helping someone—helping her—gives me a warm feeling in my gut that drives out a bit of that nervous churning.
Still, I’m harboring a fugitive. Sort of.
But a fugitive…from what? The police? Her own hole in the dirt?
I resolve not to think of that now. Instead, I manage to get the most of the rest of that arm away from Amanda and stuff it back into the suit where it belongs. Thankfully, this is a corpse getting ready for burial, so I don’t think that anyone is going to notice some gnawing on an upper arm that’s covered by a suit sleeve. I let her keep the upper bicep, though.
“Come with me,” I order her. My voice sounds much steadier than I feel.
“Where are we going?” she asks, hopping around to get her foot in a clean sneaker. I gave her some of the only dark clothes I own—jeans in a dark wash, a gray hoodie, and one of my brother’s black T-shirts that I’m sure he won’t miss. My bright pink ones would make her too easy to spot.
“We’re going to hide you.”
I can help her. I know it. That confidence flickers through me. I’m afraid that if she’s found, she’ll be blamed for the disappearances of the other bodies. I’m afraid that she’s going to be locked up in a cage, stared at, experimented on…and god knows what else. It seems to me that turning her in is a decision that can’t be undone, and I need time to decide what to do. A few hours, one way or another, shouldn’t matter. Maybe I can figure out how to fix this. Fix her.
“Hide me?” she asks. “Where?”
“Well, I suppose that you’re not squeamish, so I thought you could camp out in the crematorium.” I fold some blankets and a pillow over my arm and stuff them into a laundry basket.
&
nbsp; “No shit? You guys have a crematorium?” She blinks at me through fringed eyelashes.
“Yeah. Nobody really goes in there, so you should be safe. At least it’s out of the rain. Until we think of something better.”
“Hey. Beggars can’t be choosers and all that.”
I lead Amanda out the back door. Lothar gazes adoringly up at her, following at her heels like a love-sick puppy. I turn on a flashlight and lead the merry duo across the field.
The crematorium is a good distance away from the house. It’s not visible from the road or even from the house, except from my top window. It’s a brick building that was built a long time ago. It looks like it could be an old carriage house, stable, or maybe even a summer canning kitchen. Wild honeysuckle has been allowed to grow berserk around it. It’s downwind of the house, and for good reason.
I dig out the key to the rusted lock on the door. After a few tries, I finally get it open. Something scuttles inside.
“Is anything in here?” Amanda asks.
“Just mice. Maybe bats.” I sweep the flashlight around. The windows are shuttered, and the floor hasn’t been swept in at least a year. There’s an old wooden worktable, some bellows, piles of random junk, and what looks like a giant brick pizza oven on the far wall with iron doors. Garth wanted to try to make pizza in there at one point, but my dad said absolutely not…that despite the sterility of the ash, it would violate all kinds of rules and standards and the sky would come falling down if we tried.
“Is that…where you cremate people?” Amanda asks.
“Yeah. They go in. The heat gets really intense, and there’s some crushing that goes on. After a day or so, there’s enough powder to shovel out and put in a cardboard box.”
“Wow.” Amanda gazes at the furnace. “Thanks, uh, for not cremating me.”
I think she would have been less happy if we’d gotten the autopsy started, but I keep my lips zipped. “No problem.”