by Brian Hodge
A romantic vacation was something far long overdue for us, and since a nasty case of the flu had eliminated all the pleasures of our honeymoon five years ago, we realized that our very last opportunity to make up for lost memories would be right here and now, no delays, no hesitation. So we packed our bags, cashed in our vacation time and hit the road, Florida bound.
“I’m hungry Brad.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re craving pickles. Or ice cream.”
She laughed. “No, not yet. A sandwich or something fast will be fine.”
I switched to the right lane, slowed to the minimum and began looking ahead for signs of a rest area or town. There was nothing, and cautioned myself against impatience as the vividly-shaded trees and soft blue sky surrendered their colors to the dull-gray cast of dusk.
An eighteen wheel Mack and trailer roared past my car in the passing lane, a burly man in a blue denim jacket and mirror-lensed sunglasses eyeing me from the passenger’s seat. The driver blasted the horn as he sped by, and the truck left us in a spew of blue smoke. When the smoke cleared, an exit sign for came into view for a town called ‘Harper’s Bane’. I thought it strange that I hadn’t seen it before.
I slowed the car, signaled, and drove onto the off-ramp.
Trees immediately surrounded the car. Mostly pines bunched together, pushing against the sky like tall buildings, limiting my vision. If indeed there was a Harper’s Bane, we couldn’t see it from here. I grew uncomfortable when the off-ramp, instead of veining onto a main road, became a road itself, taking us away from the highway.
“Where are we?”
“Damned if I know.” I sounded calm, but the looming trees and gathering darkness gripped me with claustrophobia, threatening to take my deeper breaths away.
“Brad—maybe we should turn around?”
I nodded and was about to voice my agreement when the trees fell away from the right side of the road a short distance ahead, revealing a small farm with an unpaved road leading to rows of vegetable crops. The path twisted left at the forefront of the field and pointed its way farther ahead toward an adjacent house.
I slowed and pulled down the windows as we passed the house. The place was in shambles, an age-old wrap-around porch platforming shattered glass and rotting woodbeams. The immediate property was surrounded by a low fieldstone wall and wrought iron gates, witch grass growing tall and wild behind the wall, nearly obscuring the stone pathway leading to the porch. A million crickets chirped in an unfluctuating chorus.
I drove on, cotton-dry air seizing my mouth. There were a few more houses along the ‘main road’, and a bar called Razzmatazz. It looked closed, the windows dark, a rusted pick-up with a flat tire parked in the dirt lot outside.
“There’s nothing here,” Lisa offered. “Brad…this is no town I want to visit.”
I couldn’t have agreed more. “Next driveway, I’ll turn around and head back toward the high—”
“Brad!”
My eyes had only wandered for a moment when Lisa screamed my name, and when I looked back at the road I saw something like a flash disappear below the front right bumper. I struggled to find the brake pedal as a dreadful thump shook the car, first at the front tires, then the rear. The car skidded across the thin road onto a dirt shoulder, and Lisa put her hands against the dash to avoid colliding into it.
“Shit!” My heart was screaming.
Lisa fell into an immediate panic, her face drained of color. “An animal…it was an animal, right Brad?”
Hands still glued to the wheel, I could only sit and stare at Lisa’s trembling face, in denial of what I knew I saw.
I hit a kid.
Lisa clawed the door handle, opened it and staggered out of the car. I looked into the rearview mirror and saw her lumbering towards a twisting heap that resembled something like a beached sea creature. She looked weak and powerless at the moment, a woman stripped of all her elegance. Given the surreal predicament, I felt equally dazed.
I crawled from the car and tentatively faltered back toward the scene. My mind raced: I’m going to jail, a city boy in no-man’s land where the law is a fat Sheriff named Earl just chomping at the bit for a little action in his otherwise ho-hum town.
Lisa knelt next to the body, a hand over her mouth, sobbing. “Brad,” she cried, “It’s—it’s a boy.”
Driving down here I’d fantasized about her saying those exact words to me—but not for another eight months. Now, as her sobs turned to cries I commiserated over the cliché statement, my wife in near hysterics and unsure of what to do at the moment as her shadow bathed the body—the naked, bloody body—of a young boy no older than six or seven years old.
Clouds floated in like spaceships, masking the brightening moon. The scene went dark, the pool of blood tiding out from beneath the boy stripped of its luster. I noticed an emergence of mosquitoes—they were in droves and buzzing about the victim as if dispatching reports of discovered treasure.
“We have to get help,” Lisa said.
“Is he alive?”
“How should I know? I’m not a damn nurse!” She pinned me with wild, accusatory eyes, features taut with panic. Her skin was as white as paper and she looked as if she might throw up.
I took a deep breath then kneeled down next to the body just as Lisa stood up. We both stared helplessly at him, unsure of what to do.
I gently nudged him.
No response.
“Close your eyes.” I grasped the boy by the shoulder and turned him over.
Lisa gasped.
His dirty face stared back at us, eyes wide open and blinking, mouth gurgling blood.
“He’s alive!” she yelled.
“Lisa, keep your voice down!”
“A-are you okay?” She kneeled back down next to him. Tears filled her eyes.
The boy didn’t answer. He just stared up at us, eyes glassed over, ruby lips trembling.
I stood up, took an indecisive step backwards, my poise quickly escaping me. I felt suddenly hysterical. I wanted to laugh, yell, cry, scream, take my heart, rip it free from my chest with my trembling fist and toss it into the nearby woods. Instead I forced myself to say, quite calmly, “He’s in shock.”
That’s when I nearly collapsed. I felt the world spin around me, and as my body began to totter, Lisa stood up and wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me tightly.
“Brad, please, we need to get a grip. Both of us. We’ll be in a shitload of trouble if we don’t.” When the world came back into focus, she squeezed my face with both hands and said, “Let’s find somebody to help.”
I nodded. Jesus, I just wanted this sudden nightmare to end.
“Go to the car and get the blue beach blanket in the trunk.”
“Yeah,” I answered, releasing a deep breath.
She squatted back down next to the boy. On weak legs I paced back to the car, somewhat relieved that Lisa was taking control of the situation. I turned off the ignition then came around the side of the car and opened the trunk. I dug past our suitcases, retrieved the blanket, and returned to Lisa, my eyes searching the road for someone who might be able to help us.
It was at this time I realized that we hadn’t seen a soul since taking the exit. Nobody had emerged from the nearby homes. None of the lights were on inside them.
I kneeled next to the boy and for the first time got a good look at him. White, brown hair, eyes gazing blankly and moving back and forth between Lisa and me. His nude body was bleeding in a dozen places.
He started wheezing heavily, leading me to believe that he’d broken a few ribs and punctured a lung. I’d done a damn efficient job in running him over.
“Where are his clothes?” I wondered aloud, placing the blanket over his body up to the neck. I wedged my arms beneath him and scooped him up. His weight nearly slipped through my grasp, and I had to clutch him tighter as I plodded to the car.
Lisa opened the back door. I gently slid him in head first, and wrapped the blanket aro
und him. “Don’t worry, we’ll find you some help,” she promised.
Pulling the keys from my pocket, I got back into the car and started the engine. Lisa was crying. I ignored her, distracted from the filthy odor rising from the back seat. Seemed the kid hadn’t taken a bath in some time.
“Those houses over there—let’s see if we can’t get someone to help us.”
A minute passed and we were in the dirt driveway of a simple cape-style home with a screened-in porch minus the screens. The lawn out front was in poor condition, the battle long lost to neglect. A littering of soda bottles and plastic dog bones were spread about the yard like lost remnants.
We both got out of the car and walked up to the house. I heard a yip behind us, and when I turned I saw a mutt pacing lazily about the street, sniffing the road with blank disinterest. Must be the owner of the plastic bones, I thought.
I knocked on the frame of the screen door. “Hello?”
No answer. I smelled something foul, like rotting tomatoes.
“T-they didn’t hear you,” Lisa stammered.
I knocked again. Nothing.
“Why don’t we drive a bit farther into town? Maybe we’ll find a police station there?”
“You want to spend the night in jail?”
She bit a knuckle. After a pause, she said, “So then what in God’s name are we going to do?” She walked back across the front yard and examined the upstairs windows. “Hey you inside! We need some help out here! Please! There’s been an accident!” Her yells echoed throughout the sparse neighborhood.
I could only hang my head in denial at what was happening. I felt spent and defeated, wanted to just scream out loud. Or cry. Something. Maybe toss the kid on the front lawn and hightail it back to I-95.
My heart was pounding furiously, the dreadful silence in this neighborhood spawning eerie feelings of being watched from all the shadowed points around us, from the black windows in the houses, the copses between the trees.
“C’mon!” Lisa called, her voice cracking. She marched around to the side of the house. “We need help out here!” No one came.
I turned and gazed at the house across the street. It was set back from the road about two hundred feet, the shrubs out front well overgrown. For a moment I thought I saw a face in one of the upstairs windows, but when I turned to get Lisa’s attention, it was gone.
“Let’s get back in the car, Brad. We’ll find the town, a police station, just drop him off somewhere. There’s gotta be someone around who can help.”
Someone who can help, I thought, realizing now that I’d be damned if there wasn’t something really wrong here in Harper’s Bane, Virginia. There’s no one here except the naked boy in my back seat. I peered again at the house across the street, then at Lisa. Her face was drawn, pale. It frightened me to think that she might be as helplessly scared as I was at the moment.
“Brad!” she screamed, pointing towards the car.
When I spun around I had a real tough time absorbing the scene: the sniffing dog from the street was in our car, its front half probing the back seat where I left the boy, its hairy-tailed rump and rear legs clawing spryly at the windowframe. The mutt was growling. The smell of something warm and organic assaulted my nose, making my gut go cold.
Somehow I found the strength and fortitude to stage an attack. I grabbed a large plastic bone from the assortment on the lawn and brought the makeshift weapon down upon the hindquarters of the dog—a total of six fast whacks just above the tail. Before I managed a seventh, the dog fell from the window.
I stood poised with the bone drawn like a gun, lungs gasping for air. I didn’t move. Neither did the dog.
Holy shit. It was dead.
Even if my assault had caused some damage to the mutt, it hadn’t been the make of its ruin. Its throat was gone, ripped out and gushing. I looked back at the car. Blood dripped down the car door like spilled paint.
I looked back at the dog. Its stomach was swollen like a balloon, shredded throat still tossing blood in spurts. I bit my fist, beating back a wave of nausea, then pulled my eyes away and bulleted a glance at the surrounding houses. Jesus Christ, why wasn’t anyone coming to help? I started to tremble.
“Brad…” Lisa cried, voice breaking up. “The boy, the boy…”
I looked at the car. “I-I can’t.”
“Come o-on,” she sobbed unconvincingly, pulling me by the arm. “We’ll go together.”
I tried to resist her lead, but had no control. I was a slave to circumstance. We baby-stepped past the dead dog to the car.
From a two-foot distance, we peered into the back seat.
The boy was gone.
My eyes explored the plush interior of the back seat, once brown, now blackened and saturated with blood, a jagged path of it leading out the open window on the other side. In the middle of the back seat, like a strange growth, lay the dog’s throat—a hairy hunk of flesh—wet, jagged, and matted. Lisa put her hands to her neck. “Oh my god. Oh my god! Brad, I’m so scared!” She buried her face in my chest, tears dousing my shirt. I could feel her trembling.
“We’ve got to get out of here. Now.”
“What about the boy?”
I clenched my fists, was about to yell, Fuck him, let’s get the hell out of here, when a terrible voice broke the silence surrounding us.
“They…won’t…let…you…leave.”
The tone was low and raspy, like the voice of a man on a lifetime of Marlboros. I looked up and saw an ancient face looking down at us from the darkness in the upstairs window of the house, the skin old and withered, overcome with wrinkles. The eyes were black and wet, staring in my direction.
Lisa—brave Lisa—stepped forward and started yelling, arms spread in question. “We needed help down here! You must’ve heard us knocking!”
The old man looked at Lisa, then back at me again. “We don’t ever come outside.”
“What?” Lisa shouted. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Lisa, please, don’t. Let’s just get out of here.” I didn’t give a hoot if we had a witness. The guy looked at least eighty, probably had the memory of a turtle. And the boy was gone now.
They bring us food from the farm,” he said. “That one’ll go back and tell the rest of them about you two. They’ll never let you leave.”
“The rest of who?” I asked. A sharp lump formed in my throat, hot and painful.
“The children. Her children.”
“Whose children?” Lisa shouted.
My heart slammed against my ribcage. I clutched Lisa’s arm. I wanted out of here. Now.
“Barlidas. The witch. Lives on the farm you passed. She makes the children there.”
In the distance a wicked scream sounded, a howl nearly animalistic in nature, yet clearly produced by human lungs. Both Lisa and I flinched simultaneously.
“They’re coming! They’re coming! Barlidas’ children!” The man’s eyes searched the distance, spittle flying from his lips. He ducked down, disappearing into the darkness of his home.
“Damn him!” Lisa screamed, charging the house. “He’s got to help us!” She climbed the three wooden steps, pulled the door open, and hurtled into the screened-in porch. I followed her, not wanting to do anything about the situation, but just grab my wife and get the hell out of Dodge.
At once a foul odor met my nose and I saw a head of cabbage on the floor by the window, brown and rotting. The door inside was boarded over. Lisa slammed her hands against the wooden barricade, yelling, lost in a bout of temper.
“Lisa, please, stop it. We need to get out of here. Now.”
The scream sounded again, then another. Closer now. Lisa backed away from the barricade, helpless, her own cries now shredding the night’s silence. She ran from the porch and bounded outside. I slammed the wood with my fist in frustration or anger or fear and followed Lisa out of the porch. My feet tangled and I spilled down the wooden steps. I threw my hands out to absorb the shock of my fall, which
traveled to my shoulders with a jolt of pain. I lay sprawled in the soil for a moment, breathing raspily, shivering coldly, realizing now that time was short, and that we needed to leave now.
I stood and saw Lisa scrambling into the car, in the driver’s seat, both hands immediately glued to the wheel, her head rocking back and forth, from me to the right and back again.
Her eyes were wide with fear. “Brad! Hurry! Please!”
I looked to the left and saw them. They were racing into the yard, a mob of…children. They were all very young in age, ranging from toddlers to the oldest, perhaps twelve years old. Some of them were wearing jeans and tees and sneakers that looked as if they’d withstood generations of hand-me-downs. Others were completely naked. They all possessed shrewd weapons of some kind, pipes, knives, baseball bats, and were on the car like piranha in a goldfish tank.
I fell into a panic, paralyzed as the crazed children swarmed the car with Lisa inside, their weapons falling upon it in a symphonic cacophony. A pipe found the driver’s sideview mirror, baseball bats dented the hood. Axes punctured holes into the doors, deflating the tires. I couldn’t see Lisa anymore as the thirty or more children crawled all over the car, covering it like maggots on meat.
Glass shattered: the rear windshield caving in. The car tipped and swayed. The horn blew once, interrupting Lisa’s unremitting cries of dread. I watched helplessly as filthy greedy hands reached in and grab her by the shirt. I saw her fists, stark white against their dark assault, striking back against them. Then I saw the passenger door swing open, and three boys no older than ten years old dragged her out onto the dirt.
One of them was the boy I’d run over. His mouth and chin was slathered with black hair and blood.
I finally broke my paralysis and stormed toward the car, picking up a 2-liter plastic soda bottle along the way. It wasn’t much of a weapon but I knew it would hurt pretty badly if I connected. I encountered a naked girl seven or eight years old with gold locks spilling across her shoulders in a flow of grease and dirt. She turned and caught my approach, mouth scowling, brow downcast, arms animated in preparation to claw me. I swung the bottle and smacked it into her jaw.