Husk

by Dave Zeltserman

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The next day I was busy constructing one of the walls for the house we were building when Carl came to me with a perplexed look on his face.

  ‘There’s a cop wants to talk to you,’ he said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. What’s it about?’

  I shook my head as if I didn’t know. I left Carl and found a large man in an ill-fitting suit waiting for me outside the construction site. He asked me if I was Charlie Husk, and I told him I was.

  ‘I’d like to ask you a few questions about Ethan Kensil, if you don’t mind.’

  ‘Sure.’

  I followed him to a spot where we’d have a little more privacy.

  ‘You know that Mr Kensil is missing?’

  ‘Yes, Jill told me.’

  ‘Jill Zemler?’

  I nodded.

  ‘How well did you know him?’

  ‘I didn’t know him at all. I’d only seen him twice.’

  He scratched above his ear as he squinted at a small notepad. ‘But you threatened him?’

  ‘In a way,’ I admitted. ‘This was the second time I saw him. He had forced his way into Jill’s apartment. She asked him to leave. He refused. When I approached him, he tried jabbing me with his forefinger. I grabbed it and gave it a little twist, and warned him if he didn’t leave of his own accord he’d be leaving in pieces.’

  ‘Did you mean that?’

  ‘At the time, yes. His forefinger could very well have left before the rest of him.’

  If the detective was at all surprised by my candor, he didn’t show it. ‘Were you in contact with Mr Kensil at all after that day?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You never called him to arrange a meeting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Where were you the night of September twenty-sixth?’

  My kind isn’t used to using calendars, so I was trying to recall which day that would’ve been when the detective mentioned that he was asking about a week ago from Saturday.

  I nodded as if I were recalling that night. ‘I was staying at Jill’s apartment, and I spent the night quietly reading before going to bed.’

  ‘Can anyone verify that?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but no.’

  He grunted as if he expected that answer. He squinted again at his notepad, and asked, ‘Were you upset when you found out that Mr Kensil had assaulted Ms Zemler at a nightclub? In fact, assaulted her violently enough to send her to the emergency room with a shoulder injury?’

  ‘Of course I was upset that Jill was hurt. I was very upset.’

  ‘Yet you convinced Ms Zemler not to file charges against Mr Kensil?’

  I laughed at that. ‘That’s what Brittany told you? No, that’s not what I did. I supported Jill’s decision, just as I’ll support any decision Jill wants to make.’

  This time he seemed surprised by what I said, at least enough to raise his eyebrows. He closed his notepad. ‘Why do you suppose Ms Hennessey called us about you?’

  I shrugged. ‘I can’t say. All I can tell you is that Brittany didn’t like it when Jill dated Ethan, and she doesn’t like it any better that Jill’s now dating me.’

  ‘She thinks you might’ve buried his remains somewhere in New Hampshire.’

  ‘I know. She barged in on Jill and me last night, and made the same bizarre accusation. Detective, I can promise you I didn’t do that. If Ethan’s ended up buried somewhere in New Hampshire, he wasn’t buried there by me.’

  His attitude toward me had changed from aloof to apologetic, maybe even somewhat friendly, as if he understood the kind of trouble having an enemy like Brittany can bring.

  ‘Mr Husk, I hope you understand why I had to speak with you. With a case like this we have to follow up on all leads, but I’m sorry for wasting your time. If you want me to talk to your boss and make sure he understands the situation, I’d be happy to do so.’

  ‘No need to bother with that.’

  We shook hands, and on my way back to my work I explained to Carl that the police detective’s visit was a misunderstanding and nothing more.

  ‘You’re not in any trouble?’

  ‘No, just a misunderstanding. The detective apologized for wasting my time.’

  I went back to finishing the wall I was building, and as I did so I wondered how much more trouble Brittany was going to try to cause me. A short time later, Carl came to me again, this time to tell me that a beautiful young girl wanted to speak to me and said it was urgent.

  I met Jill outside the chain-link fence surrounding the construction site. She looked tense as she stood absently pulling the fingers on her left hand.

  ‘I would’ve gotten here sooner, but I was in the middle of teaching my freshman class and couldn’t leave campus until fifteen minutes ago. The same police detective who spoke with me called wanting to know where he could find you.’

  ‘I know. We talked a few minutes ago. Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Why did he want to speak to you?’

  ‘Brittany called the police and said I murdered Ethan, so the detective had to speak with me. I didn’t kill Ethan, the detective knows that, and he also knows why Brittany said what she did.’

  A white-hot anger burned in Jill’s face as she processed what I’d told her, which was nothing more than what she already suspected.

  ‘She’s nuts,’ she said. ‘Certifiable. I’m so sorry, Charlie.’

  I smiled at her and told her it was OK, and we made plans for later.

  THIRTY-NINE

  The clerk finished gift-wrapping the box. She smiled at me. ‘It’s a beautiful necklace,’ she said.

  I agreed. I knew little about jewelry, but when I saw it a week ago I wanted to buy it for Jill. It just seemed perfect for her. Delicate like her, also. The freshwater pearls had this pinkish hue to them that reminded me of the color of her skin when we made love, and the flower-shaped gold pendant seemed so finely crafted.

  ‘Is this for a special occasion?’ the clerk asked.

  ‘The two-month anniversary of when we officially started dating.’

  She laughed at that. ‘Were you unofficially dating before then?’

  ‘In a way.’

  She handed me the box. ‘Your girlfriend’s going to love this.’

  I smiled at her and said I hoped she was right. Even a month ago, I would never have done that. It was nearly unimaginable how much my life had changed. Most nights Jill and I slept together, either at her apartment or at mine. The cravings had completely gone, and have been for seven weeks now. I know it hasn’t been very long since I left the clan, but whenever I think about how my life used to be, that just doesn’t seem possible. Almost as if it was just a bad nightmare I dreamed. Something unreal that never really happened. I try hard not to think about it.

  Sometimes when my thoughts drift, I find myself wondering about the cravings. I still didn’t know whether they were the result of mass hysteria and were never real, or whether they were an actual physical disease that I managed to recover from. It was possible that smoking the weed cigarettes allowed me to relax enough so that the exercises I concentrated on were able to work. Or it could be that there is some chemical in the weed I smoked that cured me. Sometimes I find myself thinking about going back to my clan and letting them know there’s another way, but I stop myself whenever I realize I’m doing this, because I know they would never listen to me. Or rather, the elders would never let them listen to me. They’re too content with their lot. They especially like feeling as if they’re the top of the food chain, and that the rest of humanity exists only to be hunted by them and to serve only one purpose.

  I don’t look at anyone as them anymore. I haven’t for almost six weeks, and I know I never will again. Along with the cravings disappearing, my bestial self – or what I used to think of as my true self – has vanished. I no longer have anything to mask when I’m around people. What I’ve always shown Jill, and now show the rest of the world, is my true self.
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br />   It sickens me when I think about how I used to see people, and even more so when I think about all the innocents I collected for my clan. But I try hard not to think about that. I was a different person. A different breed. In my heart, I know that’s true. That my past life doesn’t exist for me anymore. I keep telling myself this whenever my thoughts drift.

  I’m happier now than I ever would’ve thought possible, and I know Jill is mostly, too. There’s a sadness, though, that I know weighs on her at times. She can’t forgive Brittany for sending the police after me, and refuses to have anything to do with her. I know that’s not good for her, and as much as I’d like to never see Brittany again, I’ve decided to try to reconcile the two of them.

  The only thing that worries me these days is that clan in Brooklyn, although not as much as you might think. It’s more that I know I have to be cautious about them. Five weeks ago, they spotted me while I was working and later I saw them waiting for me. They thought they could follow me and see where I was living, but they were in their truck so it was easy enough to lose them by taking the subway. They showed up the next day also, and like the previous day I lost them easily. They didn’t show up after that, probably because they realized it was pointless. I saw them another time, a week later, driving near The Cultured Cannibal – I have no interest in that restaurant anymore, and was simply walking past it on my way to meet Jill at her college – but I’m almost sure that was just a coincidence and I don’t think they saw me. But if they were looking for me in Queens, I wonder whether Jill and I should move, especially since we’re talking about living together once my sublet finishes next month? I would like to move from Queens entirely, but that’s not possible because of Jill’s college.

  I should’ve been more alert as I walked to my apartment, but I was distracted, thinking about the wine and flowers I wanted to buy before I met up with Jill. This has to be why I didn’t immediately notice the van parked in front of my building, and why I thought only vaguely about how familiar it looked. I realized too late whose van it was and why it was there, even though it was from a different lifetime ago.

  Before I could react, something very hard hit me on the side of my head, and I was swallowed up by a sea of blackness.

  FORTY

  I don’t know how long I was unconscious. When I started to come to, my thinking was too muddled for me to make sense of anything. At some level, I knew how badly my head was throbbing. My hands were tied behind my back and I’d been gagged, but I didn’t connect that with what had happened. Then I remembered the van that had been parked waiting for me and felt even sicker inside, knowing what I would see once I opened my eyes.

  It took a while before I was able to force my eyes open a crack. At first my vision was too blurry to make out much, other than a soft haze of light in the midst of darkness. As my vision cleared, I realized that the haze of light came from an electric lamp, which gave just enough light for me to see that my brother Daniel was sitting across from me. Of course, I was in the back of the van. Even while I’d been mostly out of it, I’d felt the bumps in the road and the sensation of traveling.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you to wake,’ Daniel said. ‘Only reason you ain’t in a sack is the elders didn’t want you put in one. Otherwise you’d be in that pile with the rest of them. Only reason you ain’t dead is the elders told me to bring you back alive.’

  I didn’t need to look at the burlap sacks piled up in the back to know they were filled. I could hear a soft moaning coming from inside them, and I could sense them quivering as those trussed up inside tried fruitlessly to wriggle free.

  Daniel watched me for a long moment. For what, I don’t know, since I couldn’t speak because of the gag in my mouth. After several minutes of only road noise breaking the silence, he told me that ‘she’ was in one of the sacks.

  ‘She was easy to get,’ he said. ‘That little one with the yellow hair. We knew where she lived so we waited, Clement and me, and we took her easy. I made sure not to hit her too hard. Elders wanted her alive, but me and Clement wanted that even more.’

  I’d been trying to prepare myself for what he was saying, because I’d expected it. Daniel and Clement knew where to find me because the Brooklyn clan had spied on me and had gotten word back to my clan. And to do that, they must’ve also spied on Jill. The elders were such a mean-spirited bunch I had no doubt that if they knew about Jill, they would order her to be picked up along with myself.

  Even though I had expected what Daniel said, the pain which welled up in my chest was so great all I wanted to do was die. But I fought against that feeling, and fought even harder to keep from sobbing, because I could see the hate burning in Daniel’s eyes. He was clutching a brick – most likely the one he’d clobbered me with – and if I had cried out or shown any tears at what he said, his hatred toward me would’ve gotten the better of him and he would’ve beaten me to death with the brick. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t let myself die. The only chance Jill had was if I stayed alive.

  The full moon was large and bright in the night sky. Daniel and Clement both carried sacks over their shoulders, while I plodded along ahead of them helpless to do anything. When Clement untied the ropes binding my ankles together, I’d seen that the hatred burning in his eyes was every bit as intense as the hatred in Daniel’s, so it didn’t surprise me that he had left me gagged and with my hands bound behind my back.

  I’d forgotten how quiet the nights could be in the New Hampshire wilderness, especially in late November when the insects are mostly gone. There was a biting chill in the air, but snow hadn’t fallen yet and a carpeting of leaves and pine needles covered the path. In the gloom of the night, the wilderness we trekked through seemed more like a godforsaken wasteland than a land I used to think of as home.

  My head was still woozy from Daniel clobbering me with that brick, and as they padded behind me he and Clement were so quiet that at times I found myself imagining this was just a bad dream and none of it had actually happened. But the path we walked on was overgrown with thorn bushes and overhanging tree branches, and you had to be careful walking along it. Whenever I began imagining none of this was real, I’d get careless and soon afterwards be brought out of my daydreaming by a tree branch or overhang of thorns whipping me across the face.

  As we hiked toward the clan’s homestead, the cold night air helped clear the fog in my head and I was able to concentrate better. I tried to think only about what was going to be happening soon, and what I might be able to do to save Jill.

  In half an hour we would arrive back at the homestead, and some of my kin would trek back to the van to bring back the other sacks. The elders wouldn’t wait long to commence the slaughtering rituals. Would they keep me gagged and my hands tied behind my back as a way to further shame me? Or would my nightmare from months ago turn out to be a prophecy? I had to hope it would be the latter – because if I was handed the truncheon to strike the silencing blow, I would use it instead to kill as many of the elders as I could. And I would use the slicing knife to cut Jill free, and I would fight off the rest of my kin for as long as I could. They’d overcome me soon enough, but I hoped I could fight them off long enough for Jill to escape. I had to hope that would happen. That was all I had left. As long as they cut my hands free, I’d have a chance to save Jill.

  As we approached the homestead the clearing became wider, and in the twilight I could see wreckage where I had built one of the houses. Soon I could see that all the houses I built had been reduced to rubble. The generators and other equipment I brought back to the clan had also been smashed. Daniel saw me noticing this, and he told me with self-righteousness filling his voice that all the books had been burned also. ‘Nothin’ from their world is goin’ to poison us like it did you.’

  As we entered the homestead, I was surprised to see others of my kin waiting outside for us. They were there because they wanted to see me in my humiliation. The elders stood with them, but I didn’t see my ma and pa with th
em. Nor my baby sister Olive, although, since she was only twelve, it was unlikely she would’ve been married off to another clan during my absence.

  None of my kin said anything as I was marched through the homestead. Daniel and Clement dropped their sacks by the sacred hall, and then took me to my parents’ shack. My ma and pa were waiting for me there, too ashamed to have joined the rest of my kin outside. My pa stared at me with stony contempt, but I was surprised by the worry and compassion I saw wrecking my ma’s face. I never thought I’d see that from her. I stumbled toward the hearth, my head bowed.

  ‘Sit yerself down,’ my ma ordered. ‘I need to cut that rope.’

  I fell to my knees. My pa continued to stare stonily at me as my ma used a knife to fray the rope. Daniel had wrapped several loops of rope around my wrist and tied the knot as tightly as he could manage, so it took my ma a while sawing the knife back and forth before she was able to fray the rope enough for me to pull it apart. With my hands freed, I took the gag out of my mouth and proceeded to rub the numbness out of my arms.

  ‘Pa, it doesn’t have to be like this,’ I said, imploringly.

  His lips curled with disgust and continued to stare at me in that same stony manner.

  ‘The cravings can be cured. I cured them in myself. We don’t have to live apart like this.’

  The look on his face made it clear that he didn’t care what I had to say. All at once I started sobbing uncontrollably. I couldn’t help it. I’d made the mistake of letting myself imagine what Jill was going through, and the pain flooding through me had become unbearable. As I sobbed, I tried pleading with him, telling him how important Jill was to me, but even as I did this, I knew I was only disgracing myself further in his eyes. Still, I couldn’t help myself, and when I reached for his hand to further implore him, he stepped forward and struck me a hard blow above my ear that drove me to the dirt floor and left me lying on my face.