The Trail

by Brian Francis

  The old woman began screaming at Martin. “Why? Why did you kill Jerry? Why would you kill him?”

  Martin considered for a moment, still sawing the knife back and forth. He would have killed anyone that stopped on the road. “Jerry” was just a name. A thing. Another thing to be killed in this season of death. An easy kill, at that.

  He thought again about the campers. And the black-haired girl having sex in the tent. He tried to remember her breathing, her pleasurable moaning. He tried to remember every detail. He felt himself getting aroused.

  Then reality smashed his fantasy. You almost got caught, he thought. She touched your face. You’re so fucking stupid. Can’t get caught. Can’t get too close.

  He stopped cutting and pummeled a fist against his own head. Not satisfied with that, he exhumed the hunting blade from the old man, and drove the knife into his own thigh.

  The old woman scrambled for the door handle and thrust herself out of the vehicle. She made a wobbly attempt for the woods, but lost her footing only a few seconds later and crashed into a thicket of thorns.

  “Oh, God!” she shrieked. “Leave me alone! Leave me alone! There’s money in the car! Just leave me alone!”

  Martin had no use for money. He hated it and the people it attracted. Hated this old woman and her wealth. Hated the ones that left Crenson to get rich. Hated more the rich folks that flocked here, to the woods, every summer. Hated their belief that they could buy everything…including their lives.

  Martin walked toward the wretched woman. Suddenly, he heard a car approaching. He hoped the driver wouldn’t see the blood in the interior of the car. He dove on top of the woman and clasped his palm over her mouth. He was about to go for the knife, to end it there, but he enjoyed the pathetic shaking of his victim beneath him. It felt like holding a small deer before the slaughter. Tiny whimpers escaped from her. He tightened his grip to stifle the noise.

  As the car passed, he pressed her head into the ground and looked up. A white van went by without slowing.

  The woman twisted her head away from his covering hand. “Please don’t,” she managed to sputter. Martin thought about the black-haired girl having sex. He looked down at the old woman. He grabbed a nearby stone and smashed it into the side of her head. Her eyes drooped shut, blood escaping from the corner of her mouth.

  Satisfied with his work, Martin stood up, glanced around, then hiked back into the woods.

  The woman on the ground rolled over.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Sheriff Adams approached the Chevy Suburban with trepidation. The call had come in as an “abandoned vehicle,” but ever since Nicole had mentioned the priest and the old stone church about an hour ago, Adams had felt edgy.

  He hadn’t told Nicole what he knew about the church. About the grainy video footage he’d seen of what happened inside. With the talk about her husband’s suicide and Nicole’s breakdown, it was all too much for one day.

  He thought about the church. The damp, moss-covered walls. The cold drip of rainwater. The dead echoes. It had been the sheriff’s first year on the force. He knew about the renegade religion that defected from Crenson—some sort of freak cult that set up base deep in the woods. But he hadn’t known about the church. It wasn’t until a hiker accidentally stumbled upon the crumbling mausoleum that the place became known.

  At first, the police set up a surveillance team to observe and record Father Glick’s secret forest masses. Adams was not a member of this team because of his inexperience on the force, but later he saw the hideous video footage. Glick proved elusive, and the services were held sporadically, after midnight, illuminated only by candles and moonlight. After a few months of fruitless observations, the surveillance team finally witnessed a mass. Adams found the ceremony appalling.

  The service began with roughly ten to twelve Crenson residents silently filing into the church. They dressed in black robes, wore various animal masks, and held staffs. Once inside, Father Glick emerged from a side sacristy and welcomed the congregation. Due to the vantage point of the surveillance team, the majority of the ceremony was obscured by the slick, stone walls of the building and the dim illumination. What Adams did see made him sick.

  Naked young boys served as “altar boys” in a vile, fun house mirror ceremony that mimicked the rhythms of the Catholic mass. At a high point in the service, parishioners passed a rusty dagger around the church. Each member slashed the dagger into his or her own forearm and collected the blood in a golden chalice. The congregation passed the goblet around the room, as each took a drink and solemnly sent the mixture to the next parishioner. This act continued until the last drop was drained. When the chalice was emptied, the congregation disrobed and proceeded to engage in an orgy. Fathers copulated with daughters while mothers engaged with sons.

  The surveillance team remained under strict orders not to interfere with the proceedings. To interrupt now could hinder the prosecution, and the police wanted Glick executed.

  After the orgy, a woman presented a small white dog to Father Glick. He placed the dog on the altar, and three or four children began stabbing the canine to death. More shrieking. More blood. With the sacrifice complete, the parishioners passed the chalice around again, this time overflowing with animal blood.

  The next night the surveillance team attempted to record more footage of the mass for evidence, but the stone church had remained empty. For twelve straight nights they sat in the dark, waiting for the gathering, but no one appeared. Over the course of a year the surveillance team returned again and again, but only witnessed that one mass. Sheriff Adams was convinced that the church still held ceremonies. Just because we don’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there.

  Adams looked in the windows of the vehicle. An old man was slumped into the space between the two seats, his head pitched forward into the gearshift. Blood covered his face. His shirt was saturated with a deep crimson liquid. The old man’s left eye remained open, but the pupil revealed no sign of life—just the blank gaze of the dead.

  Adams stumbled away from the vehicle and put his hands on his knees. He sucked in the cool air of the woods. As he fought for breath, he saw a shoe. About ten yards behind the truck, in a thicket of thorns, a white sneaker wiggled on the ground. Adams lumbered over and found an elderly woman with a massive head wound.

  “Are you hurt, ma’am?” the sheriff asked, to test her comprehension. She nodded slowly.

  “You’re going to be okay, ma’am,” Adams said, crouching closer to the woman. “I’m going to help you.”

  The elderly woman said nothing.

  “Do you know the person who did this to you?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “Could you describe the person that did this to you?”

  The woman closed her eyes and exhaled deeply. Then she looked at Adams with sudden focus. “Yes.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Scott had to give Jack credit, it really was a great campsite. A small brook ran past their tents, while giant sycamores offered cool shade. He sat back in his collapsible camping chair and relaxed. He propped his feet up on the elevated leg extension and cracked open a cold beer. The firewood was collected. The tents pitched.

  Nothing left to do but relax, he thought. And maybe look at Kim.

  Kim was over by the brook, flipping stones into the cool water. He watched her bend over. Scott studied her tight jeans and the black tribal tattoo on her lower back. He knew Kim had been screwing Jack when she screamed for help. Her hair had been disheveled, and she’d emanated that pungent, feminine smell that always accompanied sex.

  Wait a minute, Scott thought. If they were having sex, than the bear story was bullshit! Something happened while they were in the tent that made Kim scream for help. What was it?

  He shrugged it off, his mind drifting back to the topic of smell. He believed that scent was highly erogenous. He often inhaled deeply when a beautiful woman walked past him. Working at the magazine meant that he inhaled
deeply almost every day. Beautiful woman everywhere. Blondes. Brunettes. Shy ones. Wild ones. Foreign ones. Homegrown beauties.

  The beautiful people, he thought. He worked around the most beautiful people in the world, but he could never have them. Forbidden fruit. He often wondered why he had ever gotten married.

  Susan was a good girl, certainly. A good wife. But Scott didn’t want a good wife. He wanted a good time. Susan had been fun in college, but he should’ve broken it off with her after they’d graduated. He could have pleaded that their lives were going in opposite directions—and he would’ve been right! They were. Instead, he’d allowed their relationship to slide into a boring limbo, whereby they followed their peers lockstep into marriage. Everybody else was doing it.

  During their engagement, Scott had considered coming clean about his numerous infidelities while on assignment. The crazy redhead in Rome. The twins in Sydney. He smiled to himself, remembering the times. Sometimes he would try to remember every detail of his lovers. What color panties they wore. What they said during sex. The sounds they made.

  Scott’s fantasies dissolved when he heard Jack begin chopping a tree limb with an ax. Jack was sectioning off the firewood for tonight’s campfire.

  “Looking good, buddy,” Scott said. He enjoyed this rare role reversal, where he was the one sitting and relaxing and Jack was working.

  “Thanks, man,” Jack responded.

  Scott was starting to warm up to Jack again. The joint during the car ride had pissed him off. But that was Jack’s way. When you dealt with Jack, you had to deal with the whole package.

  Although there was something that bothered Scott about Jack. Something new. Something he couldn’t quite remember. Scott took a long pull off his beer and looked at a cluster of trees. What was it? What was it? Susan! Yes! Scott didn’t like the way Jack looked at Susan. Nor did he like the way Susan looked at Jack. Like she admired him or something. Like they were on the same team. Like they both knew something that Scott didn’t. Scott remembered how Susan had wanted to follow Jack’s hiking path rather than his own.

  What’s there to admire? Scott wondered. I’m a successful travel writer. Jack’s a lazy burnout.

  Scott studied his old roommate more closely as Jack smashed at a limb with the ax. His blue tee shirt was almost black with sweat. Jack drove the ax into the limb over and over again. Relentlessly. Wood shards exploded with each blow.

  Just then, Jack stopped, wiped his brow with his forearm, and asked Scott causally, “Where’s Susan?”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Dreadlocks. That’s the first thing people noticed about Benny, and that’s the way he liked it. Blond dreadlocks on a white dude. He’d caught a lot of insults for his hair. Caught a lot of stares from cops. Benny didn’t care. They could judge him all they wanted. He just wanted to be himself. Express himself.

  He’d been hiking the trail for the past three months, and now that he’d entered the Pennsylvania section, the insults had increased. The guy in the little general store had said, “Damn boy, that’s some coon hair you got there.”

  What was the name of that store? What was the name? Benny stopped hiking for a minute and threw his head back. Tucker’s Store. That’s it! Tucker’s. Even the name sounded racist.

  He didn’t like the Pennsylvania section of the trail. Yeah, it was rocky and hard on his feet. But it was something else. Something almost creepy. The locals were all small-minded and mean. Their eyes sat a little too close together. He couldn’t wait to get out of Pennsylvania.

  My graduation present, Benny thought, looking around at the plush woods. He pushed his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose and tightened the sweaty blue bandana that held back the wild tendrils of his hair. Money his parents gave him for graduating college had funded his six-month hike on the trail. Other guys got a new car, but Benny wanted a real experience.

  So he had set out three months ago, hiking south with his tent, trail essentials, and a paperback copy of Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums. He finished the book on the third night of the trip, and now he wished he’d brought another novel. The nights were getting pretty lonely. He’d even asked at Tucker’s Store if they sold any books.

  “Books?” The proprietor lifted his orange hunting cap to scratch his short-cropped hair. “Shit, boy, what you think this is…a library?”

  In truth, Benny wanted to stop hiking. Wanted to get off the trail. It was boring. It was painful. It was wet. And it was dark.

  Pride wouldn’t let him quit, though. He’d made too many speeches to his friends before he began his journey. Speeches about his new all-natural lifestyle. Speeches about his stance against capitalism. Speeches about his yearning for something greater than a wife, two kids, and a house in the suburbs.

  As a gray mist began to fall, Benny thought of his parents’ house in the suburbs. He wouldn’t mind being there right now.

  He wondered if he could simply stop hiking and go home. Would he really look like a fool if he didn’t finish the trail? He could ask his friend Matt to pick him up in Pennsylvania. Maybe he could crash on Matt’s couch for a few weeks, lay low, and then return to civilization with a big victory party.

  He saw a man in a red shirt walking towards him on the trail. The man stumbled a bit, as if from fatigue or injury. The red shirt made Benny feel uncomfortable. It was part of the hick uniform, just like that orange mesh cap. The shirt was another signpost saying that Benny was in for trouble—or at the very least, a comment about his hair.

  It’s funny, he thought. You spend all this time in the woods trying to become enlightened, but all you do is bump into a bunch of ignorant assholes.

  The man in the red shirt stopped on the trail and stood staring at Benny. He was about fifty yards away, and Benny could see that the man was rocking slightly from side to side.

  “You lost or something?” Benny asked.

  The man in the red shirt said nothing, turned, and marched directly off the trail and into a dark thatch of dead branches.

  What the hell, Benny thought. He couldn’t wait to get out of Pennsylvania. He continued up the path slowly, watching out for the strange man.

  Suddenly a stone hit Benny in the face. Another. “What the fuck?” he yelled. A third stone knocked his glasses off. “Ugg…what the fuck?”

  Benny scrambled around on the forest floor searching for his glasses. When he found them, the right lens was completely shattered. As he straightened, the next rock hit him hard. In the throat. A larger rock broke his nose.

  Blood poured from Benny’s face. Another rock grazed his backpack. Another smashed into his right ear. Benny spun around, confused. The assault appeared to come from all directions. He careened off the trail and fell down into a dry creek bed. He looked up and saw that the man in the red shirt was standing directly over top of him. The man had a crooked grin and held a massive rock above his head.

  “What the fuck, man! Stop!” Benny screamed.

  Martin thrust the rock at the hairy kid’s head. Brain matter oozed out of his cranium and into the creek bed.

  Martin lingered for a minute and examined the carnage. Then he turned and hiked away toward the campsite.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Father Glick examined the body behind the altar. Blood coagulated in dark puddles near the priest’s feet.

  Dammit, Glick thought. Not here. Not here! He turned away from the body and strode down the center aisle of the church, his footfalls echoing through the dankness.

  He pondered what to do with the body. This wasn’t the first time Martin had left him with a mess to clean up. There were many bodies. Too many bodies. Martin killed, Glick cleaned ‘em up. It was a system of sorts.

  But Martin, with his dumb ideas and his stupid hillbilly brain, would screw up the whole system if he brought victims back to the church. Glick detested Martin’s lack of foresight. His sheer dimwittedness. Even his foolish red shirt.

  Glick struck a match and lit a candle. The flame sparked t
o life with a hiss. He hated dumping the bodies. It was getting increasingly difficult to find the space. Even in the endless woods of rural Pennsylvania, Glick was running out of land. Lately, he’d begun disposing corpses in the lake, hoping the water would deteriorate the flesh and leave nothing behind but bone.

  He tossed animal carcasses into the water, too. Wretched, abused animals, the broken aftermath of black masses. Glick thought of the people he’d discarded in the lake. That little blonde college girl. So sweet. The two Asian tourists. The busboy from the Pine Meadow Diner. Now this man would join them.

  He thought back to the Crenson of his youth, of earlier days, of the time of the great illness. The dead bodies. So many dead bodies, then and now.