by Sara Clancy
Nicole almost leaped with joy as the person before her moved aside and she could rush forward to the counter. Just putting in the few feet between them would help her feel slightly more at ease. She ordered two large coffees and some fries. Then the couple was right behind her again; still, on either side of her. Still perfectly positioned in her blind spots.
“Is that for your boyfriend?” the girl asked.
“My mother,” Nicole was quick to reply.
She figured that would sound more imposing, especially if they had seen her with Benton. By physical appearance alone, Benton just wasn’t an intimidating guy.
“Is she waiting in the parking lot?” the man asked.
“You know, it is still pouring out there. I was so lucky to get a spot close to the door,” his girlfriend said. Her voice went up, becoming soft and sweet, but the words still made Nicole’s stomach drop into her shoes. “You know, we can give you a lift to your car.”
As quickly and politely as she could, Nicole rejected the offer. Her order arrived and she began to gather the items.
“Are you sure? I’d hate for you to catch a cold,” the woman said as she put her hand on Nicole’s shoulder.
Nicole didn’t have time to flinch away from that touch when, as she reached for one of the coffee cups, a hand shot up from under the counter. Slick with mud and muck, the grip was as firm as steel. The hand around her wrist clenched, until she could feel each rough grain of dirt grind against her skin. Nicole released a startled, pained cry and pulled back with all of her strength. Within an instant, the hand vanished, and she was sent toppling back.
The man caught her and tried to hold on, but Nicole hurled herself around like a wild cat. She pulled herself from their grip. The crowd within the store had begun to take notice. Nicole didn’t dare risk reaching for the coffee again. She just turned and ran for the door, her wrist throbbing in pace with her racing heartbeat.
***
All three stalls of the bathroom were occupied. Benton didn’t mind. He would endure the embarrassment of changing in public if it meant that he wasn’t alone in a bathroom again. Dumping his few plastic bags onto the counter, he hurriedly set about stripping off the layers of saturated fabric that covered him like sheets of ice. Water sprayed from his shoes as he dropped them onto the tiles. When he peeled off his socks, he found that his toes had already begun to wrinkle. Suppressing a spike of bashfulness, he opened his zipper and peeled his jeans from his damp legs. Bruises littered his skin. They had darkened with the course of the day, until each one looked like they were made from wet ink.
His new sweatpants were the cheapest pair the store had offered and they felt incredibly decadent against his legs. A sharp crack of thunder shook the walls as he pulled his shirt over his head. Water dripped out of it with the slightest bit of pressure and trickled onto the tiled floor. He discarded it onto the growing pile of clothes and it landed with a loud squish. As he struggled into his jumper, he caught the soft sound of the door being scraped upon.
Already on edge, Benton glanced over his shoulder. It wasn’t exactly a comfort to find Zack standing in the threshold, but still, it was better than another visit from Allison, of course. But the expression on Zack’s face was dark and ripe with the promise of violence. Benton had seen the expression too many times, and had endured the fallout not to be instantly on guard. Seemingly intent on reminding Benton of their vast size difference, Zack crossed his arms over his broad chest and flexed. The silent threat was heard loud and clear. Benton felt as small and vulnerable as a child.
Keeping Zack in the corner of his eyes, Benton focused on pulling the cheap, thin sweater over his head. The sharp spikes of pain reminded him too late of the damage that criss-crossed along his spine. He tugged and pulled but it was too late to keep Zack from noticing the bruises. In the seconds that it took to get the material over his head, Zack burst forward. His wide hand gripped Benton’s shoulder and shoved him deep into the corner, forcing him to spin so he could get another glimpse of Benton’s back before it was hidden.
Rage burst within Benton, filling him until his hands shook from it. He whirled around and smacked Zack’s hands away.
“What the hell is your problem?” Benton spat.
Zack recovered quickly from his moment of shock and narrowed his eyes. “We need to be talk.”
Benton scoffed and moved to walk around him. With one hand flattened against Benton’s chest, Zack shoved him back into the corner. The edge of the counter felt like knives as they drove against the bruises that plagued his hips and he couldn’t keep in his pained gasp.
“You’re not leaving until you answer some questions,” Zack said in a low whisper.
Still, no one seemed ready to come out from the stalls and intervene. For some reason, Zack was under the delusion that Benton would play along. Instead, Benton made sure that his laugh was loud and abrupt, hoping to draw some attention.
“That’s not a weird thing to say to a half-naked guy in a public restroom.”
“I’m not kidding, Benton. You can start with how you got those bruises. They’re messed up. People don’t bruise like that.”
With a dismissive snort, Benton tugged down the end of his sweater and turned back to the counter. It was hard to keep himself looking casual as he searched through the plastic bag for his socks.
“Aw, I didn’t know that you cared.”
Zack slammed his hand against the counter, but the heavy thump was lost under another crack of thunder.
He kept a tight hold on his casual air. “What do you want from me, Zack?”
Zack’s response was immediate, and he grabbed for Benton’s shoulder. While he was ready for Benton to smack his hand off him, he wasn’t ready for the thin boy to rush at him. It took both hands and a full assault of his weight, but Benton managed to make the towering teen stagger back a few steps. Huffing each breath, Benton shoved a finger into Zack’s face.
“Don’t ever touch me again,” Benton hissed.
“Or what?” Zack challenged, his rage keeping him from remembering that they were possibly being overheard. “You’re going to do to me what you did to Victor?”
Benton couldn’t contain his surprised laughter. “What are you talking about? Victor committed suicide. It’s tragic, but it wasn’t my fault.”
“Suicide? You found in him in hole with a dozen other bodies and you want me to believe that’s suicide?”
“I found him, but that doesn’t mean I know anything more than you do.”
“What I know,” Zack said in a threatening whisper, “is that he was never violent until you came along.”
“That’s correlation, not causation.”
“You’re the only person he attacked and you just happen to find his body? Yeah, nothing strange about that.”
Benton balled his hands until his knuckles strained. The muscles along his shoulders twitched as they readied for a fight.
“He attacked Nicole, too,” Benton said. “She was also with me when we stumbled across the mass grave. Are you going to corner her as well? And, while we’re remembering facts, and not just things that fit your theory, according to the cops, most of those people were dead before I was even in Alberta. So, unless you think my parent’s overlooked the heap of corpses piled into the moving vans next to the sofa, you can’t pin this on me.”
The slew of facts didn’t deter Zack at all. “And it was just coincidence that you were also there when Kimberly died?”
“Who told you that?” Benton challenged. “What about all the other people that happened to be there, too? You know, the ones that can attest that I never even got near her? Fun fact of the law and logic, I’m not guilty just because you don’t like me.”
“And yesterday? What was that in the bathroom?”
“Maybe a creepy guy cornered me and started yammering on about insane theories of me being a – I don’t even know what to call this – Psychic killer?”
Zack’s jaw twitched as he tried
to keep his temper in check. “And what about the trip here?”
“To the bathroom?” Benton tried to deflect.
But, as if he could smell blood in the water, Zack pressed forward. “What happened to you on the bus?”
“I got cold.”
“You looked close to death. I have eyes, Benton. Something is really wrong with you.”
Feeling cornered in more ways than one, Benton pushed forward. “I’m sick of this!” Benton proclaimed with every bit of rage he could muster.
Zack tried to grab him again and this time he raised his voice into a major bellow, one that would be impossible for the people in the stalls not to hear. Or the people outside.
“Don’t touch me!”
One of the toilets flushed and Benton wasn’t about to let that kind of distraction slip by. With his socks in hand, he snatched his shoes off the floor and bolted for the door. He left everything else behind without so much as a glance. Not even when he heard the door open again allowing Zack to follow him.
“Okay, guys!” Dorothy yelled from the front of the store, her authoritative voice gaining the attention of almost everyone in the store.
“This storm is getting worse and we need to get back on the road. We’re not going to be stopping, so if you have to use the bathroom, do it now. You have three minutes left until I want everyone around me for a headcount. Once we’re all together, we’ll be heading straight out to the bus. Understand?”
“Yes, Constable Rider,” the small group chanted in near unison.
A few people passed by Benton before he could catch sight of Nicole standing with the twins. She lifted her hand to pass him a cup of coffee before she noticed the expression on his face. Within a second, her smile vanished and she was raking her eyes over him with open concern, looking for any trace of physical damage.
“What happened?” she asked.
He saw Meg open her mouth, but didn’t wait to hear whatever she had planned to say.
“If Zack puts his hands on me again, I’m going to kick him in the head.” He knew that he had bellowed the words but he didn’t care. It was obvious that Nicole wasn’t sure how to respond. She didn’t have time to figure it out before Zack came hurling toward them.
“I’m not done with you, yet!” he roared, also giving up on any hope for subtlety.
It made his skin crawl and his muscles tense. Forcing people to own up to their theories in public was a good way to get them to back down. No one wanted to look like a ranting lunatic around their friends. The few times people stepped up to that kind of challenge from Benton, it had ended as a mob. Passing by Nicole, just enough to keep her out of the line of fire, he pointed back at her and then Zack.
“Keep him away from me.”
She was already jumping between the two of them, arms outstretched, like she could physically keep them separated.
“One of you needs to start making sense right now,” she said with so much authority that Benton almost mistook her for her mother.
“He attacked me!” Benton spat the words out with the solid push of his anger and fear.
“What? Zack?” Nicole didn’t seem to know which one of them to look at, quickly turning her head side to side between them before settling her gaze onto Zack. “Well?”
“I just asked him a few questions,” Zack said. “He’s freaking out because he doesn’t want to answer them.”
“What questions?” Danny asked.
“He accused me of being a serial killer who also has some kind of time- twisting abilities!” Benton had hoped that the offense attack would leave any of Zack's coming accusations sounding like a tone of madness.
But he still didn’t back down.
“There is something wrong with him,” Zack accused, looking from Nicole to Danny to Meg, searching each pair of eyes for an ally.
“Zack,” Nicole said in a warning tone. “You’ve been acting weird ever since he showed up. You’re skittish and secretive. Hell, you skipped out on us last night. You’ve never done that.”
“Benton got sick,” Danny said.
“Yeah. Like on the bus. Did that look in any way normal to you?” Locking his eyes back onto Benton, he spoke loud enough for them all to hear. “I know you had something to do with Victor’s death.”
“What is going on here?” Cheyanne snapped as she hurried over.
Benton recognized the fear that lurked in his mother’s eyes and quickly looked away. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “Just a misunderstanding.”
“Okay, both of you, apologize to the other, right now!”
Zack hesitated. But, for all his certainty, he apparently wasn’t ready to voice his suspicions to an adult. With a stern look and a firm hold on Benton’s shoulder, his mother forced the apology out of him. Zack mumbled something that might have been mistaken for words, but Benton didn’t care. The matter was apparently settled since Dorothy bellowed over the crowd again and began to encourage them to get closer. Zack shoved past Benton, his elbow easily finding one of the bruises that littered Benton’s body. The spike of pain forced a grunt out of him but he refused to double over. Nicole lingered on, waiting for Benton to catch up. He only managed to take one step towards her when Cheyanne caught him by the arm.
“Go on ahead,” she dismissed Nicole easily as her fingers tightened around his arm.
“It wasn’t my fault,” Benton said the moment that they were relatively alone. “He attacked me.”
“You’re to stay away from Nicole,” Cheyanne said without looking at him.
“She’s my best friend,” Benton defended.
Still, she refused to look down to meet his gaze, but her words were clear. “People like you can’t have friends, Benton.”
And with that, she released his arm and walked away agitated, leaving Benton to wonder once more if she thought him a freak or a madman.
Chapter 9
The night came early under the influence of the coming storm. Shadows had gathered across the thick grass and between the tree trunks, churning through the mist until it was nearly impossible to see farther than a yard beyond the side of the road in any given direction.
At first, the bus ride was tense. The rain struck the roof and sides of the bus like hale, muffling the whispering conversations. News of Benton and Zack’s confrontation made a quick round, allowing Nicole to pick up the bits and pieces of a dozen conversations. From what she could tell, not many of them seemed to take Zack’s accusations seriously, but it had been enough to make them recall some of the odd things they had noticed about Benton over the last few months. Nicole had waited it out, and soon the conversation had naturally drifted to other topics.
It felt weird to not have Benton next to her. She wanted to tell him about the strange couple and, more importantly, her encounter with Allison. She could practically feel the words on her tongue. But he wasn’t on the seat beside her. The second they had set foot back onto the bus, Cheyanne and Theodore had kept a secure eye on their son. It had been a tight squeeze, but they had forced him to sit between them on the narrow seat of the front row. At first, it had been an annoyance. But as time passed, her frustration had grown into deep resentment.
They were now entering the Highway of The Lost and Benton was struggling.
Slight shivers had turned into near violent quakes, his color going pale. She had only managed to catch a few glances of his face as he shifted to find a more comfortable position. When they had only been about half an hour in, his lips had shown the bluish tinge, she had seen before. Soon after, the dark circles under his eyes looked like sooty smears. His parents had noticed. It would have been impossible not to. Their son, squished between them, was deteriorating into a living block of ice.
When Nicole couldn’t take it anymore, she gathered up the blankets she had bought and hesitantly approached them. Her hope had been that the gesture would break whatever strange tension that had come between them. It hadn’t actually worked that way, but at least Theodore and Cheyanne accepted
the blankets. With a forced smile and a reluctant attitude, they had insisted she head back to her seat. Benton looked miserable, with sheets wrapped around him, but at least he had his headphones on. He always handled the weirder things better when he had a decent song to listen to.
On the way back to her seat, her eyes had met Zack’s. He wasn’t joking along with the others around him. His usual smile was gone. Instead, he was seething, his mouth turned down into a deep scowl. She tried to give an apologetic look, yet it wasn’t clear if he understood her or not. Either way, he wasn’t ready to accept it. Danny and Meg weren’t in any mood to talk either. So she sunk into her seat, against the bus wall and focused on the pouring rain that sprayed down the window.
She had been so lost within her thoughts and concern that it took her a moment to realize just how bad the storm was getting. As the bus had climbed up from the depths of the valley, the rainwater had gathered into a near waterfall that rushed back down the slope. The bus’s engine groaned as Dorothy forced it to go faster around the slick, twisting roads.
Time dragged on and the shadows became thicker, transforming the encroaching fog from a dull slate gray into an impenetrable darkness. It consumed everything around them until only the bus’s headlights could gouge a path through it. The deluge limited even that feeble visibility. It steamed the windshield faster than the windshield wipers could force it aside. Nicole watched, with rising dread, as the night took a firm hold, swallowing up the world, allowing it only to reemerge when bursts of lightning lashed out at the sky.
They had to be nearing the motel, but Nicole wasn’t sure how much more she could take; or, more precisely, how much Benton could. Hunched under the layers of his blankets, his interval moments of discomfort had become a state of constant squirming. It seemed no matter how he tried to position himself, in the limited space between his parents, he couldn't get comfortable. Having to sit there and not help was steadily driving Nicole nuts. Her fingers ached from gripping the back of the seat in front of her and her forearm began to steadily throb. If her painkillers wore off causing her pain, she couldn’t even begin to imagine what was happening within Benton's skull.