The Follower

by Koethi Zan

  So that was it.

  ‘Wrench,’ he said flatly. The woman dug around in the toolbox and handed it over. She tilted her whole body toward him, eyes locked on his face, waiting expectantly for his next command.

  They carried on like that for some time until eventually Julie stopped watching, disgusted by the woman’s subservience.

  Then he paused in his work and Julie snapped to attention, all systems on high alert. There was a problem. Something wouldn’t turn, some nut or valve or gasket, some accursed part whose failure to cooperate could cause a calamity of gargantuan proportions.

  He strained against whatever it was with all his might, cursing quietly under his breath.

  Julie’s whole body tensed in automatic response. His frustration was not a thing to be taken lightly. Anything could happen, especially with a box of heavy metal objects within his grasp.

  The woman was thinking the same thing, she could tell. They didn’t need the words between them. They were battling the same demon, day after day, learning to manage the same beast. The unspoken energy of dread was a link that bound them together whether they wanted to acknowledge it or not.

  The woman furtively glanced over and their eyes met for a fraction of a second. They understood each other perfectly. It was a treacherous bond.

  The room fell silent but for the occasional clink of metal against metal.

  He shifted his weight. Grabbed a hammer.

  Apparently, the thing that needed turning still wouldn’t turn because a long low growl escaped from him. Suddenly, he picked up a pair of pliers and slung them hard against the far wall, leaving a dent.

  Julie and the woman stifled the same shriek and afterwards Julie held her breath, studying his slightest movements for any sign of what might be coming next. The woman edged away from him. Julie could tell she was poised to run, and watched as, without looking, the woman fumbled for a screwdriver that she then deftly tucked under her thigh out of sight.

  He seemed calmer after his outburst though. He picked up the wrench and went back to the job. A triangle of sweat dotted the back of his hole-pocked white T-shirt.

  After several minutes he made one decisive twist of the wrench and sat back on his heels, surveying his work.

  ‘There,’ he said, wiping his brow. ‘The Star-Power within has blessed me on this day with the will and the knowledge, and it is done.’

  ‘Amen,’ the woman whispered.

  At last. The thing had turned.

  Julie let out a long slow breath, thanking all the forces of the universe, even his crazy fucked-up deities.

  He stood up slowly, supporting himself with his hand on one knee as his other arm swung into the air for balance. It was obvious his injuries were bothering him, which gave Julie a tiny jolt of pleasure as she watched him limp across the floor. The ‘star-power’ wasn’t doing much to heal his wounds at any rate.

  The woman, meanwhile, slunk to the far side of the room to collect the pliers he’d thrown. She placed the tool in the box, clicked shut the locks, and hauled it up off the ground. It must have been heavy for she showed the strain, both hands clutching the handle for support.

  Julie tried to make eye contact with her again, but her eyes were riveted to his loping form ahead of her. Her god, her idol, her guiding light. It made Julie sick.

  He stopped briefly in front of her and reached out to touch her cheek, stroking it possessively. It took everything in her power not to flinch. She, for one, hated his fucking guts.

  ‘Good girl. Staying put when I tell you,’ he grinned, self-satisfaction smattered across his face.

  The woman glanced over at her, eyes flashing.

  ‘Like a dog,’ she muttered under her breath.

  The Evil One whirled around to face the woman, and, without warning, lifted his hand up behind him, and delivered a hard slap across her face.

  Julie winced instinctively but the woman, obviously trained to endure, barely registered it.

  ‘You’re no better,’ he bellowed, leaning in close to her, his thick lips puckering out from his splotchy red face. ‘You have no right to judge the Servant at Hand.’

  The woman merely closed her eyes as if anticipating the next blow, but he shook his head with disgust instead and walked toward the door.

  The woman stared at his back with fury in her eyes but exercised, in Julie’s estimation, extraordinary restraint.

  She didn’t get it. The woman had the opportunity to do it right then if she wanted, with the screwdriver or the hammer. Poke out his eyes, bash his skull.

  Why didn’t she? Why did she tolerate this? She’d seen her rage and knew her strength. She was capable of it.

  Julie felt the woman’s gaze on her at last, but now she was the one who wouldn’t meet her eyes. She knew better. Acknowledging her humiliation wouldn’t make things any easier between them. For now, she would save the woman from her shame and pretend she hadn’t seen a thing.

  She was learning, slowly but surely, the internal logic of psychosis. If she had any chance of getting out of there, she must be the excellent student she always had been, practicing vigilance and care, studying them as subjects in the bizarre laboratory of fate. To stay alive, she had to be smarter than they were, mapping the patterns of their insanity and memorizing the intricacies of their dysfunction. She’d been given a gift on this day, reams of data to study and manipulate.

  She was watching and thinking and waiting. They would make a mistake. And she would be there, ready to take advantage of it, ready to destroy.

  CHAPTER 14

  They did go down to the caves the next day after school. Johnny had brought the weed as usual and Joy had shop-lifted a six-pack. With great ceremony, Reed handed out flashlights to each of them; his father had been a miner before the operations had shut down and had managed to sock away several boxes of company equipment.

  The timing of their little adventure had worked out perfectly for Cora. Her father had started out the day with straight vodka, and she hadn’t dissuaded him. She knew his bender would last until he passed out mid-afternoon, and he wouldn’t wake up until the following morning when she’d be safely ensconced in her first-period social studies class.

  She was free for now. And she’d never been happier.

  She tucked the flashlight into her belt, threw her backpack over her shoulder, and joyfully followed Reed across the giant slabs of rock down the hill toward the old mine entrance. The day was quite spectacular, warm for fall, with the wind blowing softly through the white pine needles and orange-tipped oak leaves that swayed overhead.

  From a short distance away, Cora could see the cave opening, a black hole in the rock face lined with huge timbers that looked on the verge of collapse. Sure enough, there was the yellow police tape flapping in the breeze, and a few yards up from the mine, the official danger sign – plastered with the obligatory skull-and-bones symbol – outlining the many perils of entry: rock slide, carbon-monoxide asphyxiation, flooded tunnels, snakes, ceiling collapse. The list went on.

  They huddled in front of the notice. Cora’s heart pounded; she wasn’t sure if it was fear of entering such a death trap or just excitement from standing this close to Reed. The warnings seemed convincing, but she would never be the one to say it. She’d risk everything for Reed’s attention.

  ‘Pretty lame,’ Reed said, making the pronouncement on behalf of the group. ‘They have to say stuff like that, so if we die, they don’t have any liability.’

  ‘If we die,’ said Joy, ‘I’m not really going to care whose “liability” it is. But hey, no risk, no reward. And let’s face it, we’ve done stupider things and lived.’

  Johnny led the way. He’d clearly already had a joint or two so seemed reasonably mellow when it came to the idea of his own death.

  The small flat rocks closer to the entrance had been broken up by repeated landslides and had never thoroughly settled, so the going was trickier. Cora slipped and came close to falling, but Reed grabbed her arm in th
e nick of time and dragged her up the slope to where he stood.

  ‘Whoa there, young lady. Looks like you need a big strong man to lean on.’ He lifted her face tauntingly close to his, but then, as usual, tossed his head back, cracking himself up.

  Nevertheless, when he drew back he smiled and offered her a hand. He looked so hot in his leather jacket, and today he’d added a long, wine-colored scarf that went almost to his knees. Only he could pull that off.

  Her fingers were tingling from his touch as they made their way across the uneven terrain, hands still clasped. She’d never felt so utterly elated. For a moment she’d forgotten her fear, forgotten the danger they were approaching. At the actual entrance, however, she stared into the gaping hole of the mine shaft with trepidation, wondering what the hell they were thinking. It didn’t look safe in there by any estimation and even with their flashlights they couldn’t see much more than a few feet ahead into the penetrating darkness.

  Joy ran her beam along the iron tracks that started a few feet outside the cave.

  ‘Here, let’s follow this. It’ll be like our breadcrumbs,’ she said.

  They stepped carefully between the crossbars of the mine railway, some of which jutted up randomly out of the ground, as if disturbed by an extraordinary seismic event. One that, Cora reminded herself, could repeat itself at any moment.

  Not even ten feet in, she scraped her arm against something in the dark. It turned out to be a piece of rusted rebar poking out of the earth that left a long, thin scratch on her orange dust-streaked skin. This was already not a good idea.

  Unfortunately, the tracks ended abruptly after about two hundred feet, and the cave split off in three different directions.

  ‘Eeny, meeny, miney, moe,’ said Johnny. ‘I pick this one.’ He pointed to the far right.

  The others shrugged and Joy led them down it. After a few feet, the path narrowed so that sections of it were less than a foot wide. Cora felt claustrophobic.

  She closed her eyes and counted to ten, reminding herself it was worth it to be a part of this group.

  Their bodies barely fit through the passageway and her jeans and T-shirt were covered in rock dust.

  She coughed. Was it her imagination or was the air much thinner down here?

  She lifted her flashlight higher, hoping to cast a wider circle of light. There were no other signs of human life in here. No more railway, no left-behind tools, no abandoned carts. Maybe this shaft had been closed off early on because it was too hazardous even for the professionals. Jesus, what were they doing?

  ‘You think there are bats down here?’ came Johnny’s voice from behind her. ‘I fucking hate bats.’

  ‘Shut up, man,’ said Reed. ‘You’re going to freak the ladies out.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Joy yelled back at him. ‘You’d be more afraid of them than I would. You can pretend otherwise, but I know what a little bitch you are.’

  He caught up to her and gave her a playful shove, then kept his hands wrapped possessively around her neck as he trudged behind her. Joy kept glancing back at him, giving him her dazzling smile. They walked like that for a few paces, during which Cora thought she might die. Was there something going on between them? Had she missed that?

  They continued along a path of constricted tunnels, each of which forked into several more. They randomly chose their direction as they went until finally one led them into a large open cavern.

  ‘Whoa,’ said Johnny, gaping at the giant space. ‘This place is awesome. We should totally have a party here in the spring.’

  ‘If we can find our way out,’ Reed said with a chuckle.

  ‘Shh. Listen. Water,’ Joy said.

  Cora stopped. She could hear it. Shining her flashlight around the space, she settled it on a dark horizontal split in the rock about two feet wide. She crossed over to it and slid her arm into the hole, pointing the light toward the bottom.

  ‘Guys, look, an underground pool,’ she said.

  They peered down, but didn’t seem that impressed. Embarrassed for expressing such childish enthusiasm, she quickly moved on.

  She opened her backpack and took out the camp blanket her father had stolen in Nevada last year.

  ‘Shall we sit? Have a smoke?’ she said, trying to sound cool. Reed shrugged his assent and she softly let out a breath. She was one of them now, surely.

  Johnny had gathered a few pieces of wood on the way down that he’d shoved into his backpack. He built a little pile of them and then extracted one of his old school notebooks. He ripped out a wad of pages and shoved them under the sticks.

  ‘Algebra I,’ he said gleefully.

  Then he struck a match, got the fire going, and took out a small plastic bag that held three joints. He lifted one out, sparked it up, and handed it over to Joy with a flourish. They passed it around and Joy brought out the beers.

  ‘This,’ said Reed, holding up his can, ‘is living.’ The flames lit up his face, his beautiful face. It held so much life, so much challenge in his every glance. It was as if he was saying to her, Come on, life ain’t so bad, join us out here in the real world.

  For the first time, she wanted to. She thought there might be something more to her existence than protecting her secrets, barely keeping herself fed and clear of her father’s fists. It occurred to her now, in this revelatory moment, that she could actually be out on her own one day, away from him, out from under his control. Maybe she could even be with Reed.

  She could stay here when her father split town next time. He wouldn’t like it, but if she ran away and hid out for a while somewhere up in these mountains, in the wilderness, he’d get sick of looking. He sure wouldn’t go to the cops.

  She leaned back on her elbows, half fading away into a fantasy of a cabin in the woods.

  Suddenly Reed jumped up. Pot always gave him a lot of energy, unlike the others, who had settled into a languorous stupor around the fire.

  ‘Look where we are, dear friends. Plato’s cave,’ he said with faux-menace as he touched his fingertips to one another in the style of a mad scientist. He walked over to the wall, spreading out his hands over his head to touch the highest spot where his shadow fell.

  ‘So fucking obvious, Reed,’ said Joy. She turned over on her side and lay down. ‘Wake me up when he’s done,’ she mumbled.

  Johnny snickered, always ready for a show. Cora sat up, crossing her legs.

  Then Reed seemed to have another thought, a different idea. He dropped his hands and made his way back over to Cora. He knelt down, gently lifting her foot and cradling it in his lap. He slid down her sock an inch and ran his finger around her ankle, very slowly and in ever smaller concentric circles.

  Don’t stop, she thought. Don’t ever stop.

  She nevertheless managed to keep her features perfectly still. Poker-faced.

  ‘You know the story, yes?’

  She thrilled to his touch and could barely concentrate on his words, but she forced herself out of it and pushed him away by the top of his head. She had to play it cool. Just a little.

  ‘Yes, you moron, I get it. I’m guessing I’m the prisoner?’ She rolled her eyes, following Joy’s lead.

  Johnny snorted and Cora turned toward him. He was hunched over, laughing the noiseless, slow-motion laugh of the very stoned.

  ‘Yes, Laura, yes, you are the prisoner. You are staring at shadows all day. The shadows rule you. You are ruled by shadows. You can never see the truth. Not until you are well and truly blinded by it.’

  He removed the scarf from around his neck. Took her two hands in his.

  She felt dazed with her physical desire for him. Her hands went limp.

  He pressed her wrists together, opened up her hands, palms up. He looked into her eyes and then bent down slowly over her hands, kissing the center of each one.

  Cora closed her eyes, soaking in the pleasure of his soft lips on her skin. She opened them to see him wrapping the scarf around her wrists slowly, his hands lifting over and under. He
pulled them tighter and held the remaining length of fabric in one hand.

  Then he reached down to her feet, removed first one shoe and then the other. He carefully lined them up beside her. He slipped off her socks, slowly, seductively, one at a time.

  She didn’t know where things were headed, but even this would have been enough to last her a lifetime.

  Johnny stifled his laughter behind his hand. Joy, apparently hearing him, sat up and peered over, curious. Cora didn’t dare take her eyes off Reed long enough to see how she was reacting to this odd tableau.

  Reed gingerly wrapped the rest of the scarf around her ankles, weaving it in and out between her legs. He was still staring at her, smiling his dirty smile. His eyes were so enticing to her in that moment, so sly and bold. They suggested that something unfathomably erotic was about to happen. She smiled back at him with what she hoped contained a measure of coyness, but also let him know she was up for anything.

  Still gazing up at Reed, captivated, she could see in her peripheral vision that the other two had quietly gotten up and gathered their things. They were leaving, giving them some privacy.

  Her heart surged. She couldn’t believe her luck. She wondered if Reed had been planning this all along just to get her alone with him. The blood thudded in her ears.

  He leaned over her, even closer. She could smell him, an undercurrent of musk under the sweet marijuana smoke. She opened her mouth to speak but he held his fingers in front of his perfectly formed lips.

  ‘Shhh. Shh.’ He smiled reassuringly.

  ‘But—’ He put his hand gently over her mouth and rubbed her lower lip ever so lightly with the tip of his finger. She nearly fainted.

  ‘Shh. Shhh. I’ll be right back,’ he whispered into her ear. His tongue traced the inner edge of her lobe as he drew back.

  Then he tiptoed out of the cavern silently, leaving her there, bound up, waiting for, longing for, his touch.

  He never came back.