by J L Aarne
Kat was an accountant for a construction company that worked all over western Washington. She probably knew a lot of lawyers, but Wyatt had only ever met one of them. Her name was Darcy and she was Kat’s best friend from college. He wasn’t sure if he was going to need a lawyer though. Most likely what he was going to need was bail money.
Jail wasn’t that bad. They took his clothes and gave him a pair of dark blue cloth pants, a grey T-shirt and a worn chambray shirt. They were a little too big and he tried not to think about all the other people before him who had worn them, but they weren’t uncomfortable. They took his fingerprints, they asked him some questions, which he answered as honestly as he could while keeping in mind the lies he and Silas had told his arresting officer. Then they put him in a big cell with a bunch of other people wearing the same thing he was.
There were four bunk beds in the room and when Wyatt did a headcount he was the eleventh person, which meant that if some of the people in there with him were staying the night, people were going to have to share beds.
At noon, they were all given lunch trays. Lunch consisted of bologna and a slice of American cheese-like substance on dry white bread, a tiny box of milk and some kind of unidentifiable slimy side dish. Wyatt drank the milk and gave the rest to a guy named Earl who looked like he could eat Wyatt without even taking large bites. Earl didn’t talk much but he also didn’t look at Wyatt like he was wondering what he could get out of him, so Wyatt deemed him to be a possible friend.
It was as they were returning their trays that Wyatt noticed the man with the horns. If the horns had been larger or growing from the top of his head, Wyatt would have noticed it earlier, but they were small. Spikes along his brows, down the slope of his nose and on the ridges of his cheekbones. They grew small and flat down the sides of his neck and disappeared into the collar of his shirt. They resembled scales in places but were thick and dense like fingernails sharpened to points. Once he saw them, Wyatt noticed other things about the man: he had wide nostrils, very thin lips and his pupils narrowed rather than growing smaller in the light. He didn’t shy away from the light in fear and it didn’t seem to hurt him, so Wyatt considered the possibility that the horns were implants. Extreme body modification like that was uncommon but did not make the man a monster.
An older man who Wyatt had dismissed as a junkie got up and walked over to sit beside him on one of the beds. “You keep looking over at that guy there. What do you see when you look at that guy?” he asked.
Wyatt shifted uneasily and scooted a few inches away from him. “Nothing,” he lied. “He’s just a guy. Big. Uh… I don’t know him.”
“What else?”
“Maybe a Lummi Indian?” Wyatt said. He was trying to guess what the man was pushing him to see because he couldn’t be seeing the horns.
The older man laughed and scratched his left arm with his right hand. “Okay,” he said. “Now tell me what you really see.”
Wyatt studied him uncertainly. “Who are you?”
“Name’s Travis, but that don’t matter.”
“What do you see when you look at him?”
“I see a thing doing a really good impression of a man with little horns and spikes all over his face and eyes like a lizard.”
It was like Travis had gut punched him. Wyatt had a thousand questions instantly flooding through his brain, but the first one was the most important: “How? How can you see it?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing cause you look real young and healthy,” Travis said. “You don’t look like you’re dying like me.”
“I… I’m not,” Wyatt said. He didn’t know what else to say, so he said, “I’m sorry.”
Travis shook his head, dismissing his condolences. “Nothing to be sorry for. Ain’t nobody’s fault. It’s the cancer. You don’t have cancer, do you?”
“I don’t think so,” Wyatt said.
Travis seemed to expect his answer and shrugged. “It’s a funny old world,” he said.
He got up and went to sit somewhere else and the next time Wyatt saw him, he was asleep on one of the beds, jammed up close to the wall.
No one else paid any more attention to the man with the horns than they did any of the other people in the cell. Most of them were determined to not notice each other, though a few of the meaner, more intoxicated people had tried to pick fights a couple of times. If anyone else noticed the man with the horns, Wyatt didn’t hear them mention it and no one came out and asked the him about them. Perhaps this was to avoid conflict, but he didn’t think so. Wyatt could see what he actually was because he could always see them, and Travis could see because he was dying, but no else could see it. The man caught Wyatt staring at him a couple of times, but he didn’t say anything to him. He didn’t get angry or violent or threaten him. He knew that Wyatt saw him, and he didn’t try to kill him, he ignored him.
It was afternoon before a guard came to get him and Wyatt was so grateful he was being taken out of that horrible, stinking cell that he didn’t even ask who had come to retrieve him. He assumed it was his sister or one of his parents and was hoping for the former because he hated the way his mother always looked like she was about to cry when something like this happened. Not that anything quite like this had ever happened, but when it had something to do with his phobia, with his condition, she got upset.
Instead of Kat or his mother and father, Silas was waiting for him. He had spent a good deal of his morning and part of his afternoon arranging for Wyatt’s release. He’d paid his bail, but he hadn’t been able to get Wyatt’s car back. It had been impounded and he wasn’t going to get it back until he paid the fines and cost of towing.
Silas held himself well and didn’t move like a man with a whole lot of serious wounds beneath his shirt, but when they reached his truck, the façade cracked, and he winced and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Are you okay?” Wyatt asked. “Do you want me to drive?”
“No, I’m fine,” Silas said.
He was lying, but Wyatt didn’t argue.
Silas drove them across town to a quirky little ice cream shop called Phishsicle’s. Wyatt thought it was a mistake until Silas got out of the truck, clearly intending to go inside and order himself a cone.
“Why are we… What are we doing?” Wyatt asked, following him.
“We should have a talk, you and I,” Silas said. He opened the door and a bell tinkled above their heads. “I thought it might be a good talk to have over ice cream.”
“Why?” Wyatt asked.
Silas held the door for him and Wyatt went inside. Phishsicle’s was a busy place. It appealed to a bohemian hipster sort with amateur art on the walls, bookshelves, artsy French coffee house posters and flavors he had never heard of like passion fruit sherbet, black licorice ice cream, raspberry truffle blast ice cream, chocolate covered espresso bean gelato and salted caramel white chocolate mousse frozen yogurt.
“Everyone likes ice cream, right?” Silas said. He ordered licorice ice cream on a cone.
Wyatt ordered strawberry cheesecake, also on a cone. They took their ice cream to a table in the back and Silas didn’t speak for a while. They licked their cones and looked around at the other people in the shop until Wyatt began to wonder if Silas was going to bring up whatever was bothering him or if he’d decided to forget about it.
“So…?” Wyatt said.
“So, about what happened last night,” Silas said. Then he stopped and thought for a minute. “What do you think happened last night?”
“I… Well, it was weird. It was definitely weird,” Wyatt said. “But exciting, too. I mean, I didn’t know there was anyone else. I’ve never met anyone who can see them. Everyone thinks I’m crazy. My mom and dad, my sister… even I think I’m crazy most of the time.”
“You’re probably right most of the time,” Silas said.
“Hey, that’s…” Wyatt frowned down at a line of ice cream melting over his hand. Then he licked it off. “That was mean.
”
“Sorry,” Silas said.
He didn’t sound sorry, but Wyatt accepted it as the only apology he was going to get. “You see them too, don’t you?” he asked. “I know you do. What… what is it?”
“There are a lot of theories about it. Most of them are nuts,” Silas said. “The one I always thought made the most sense is the one most of us believe I think. That doesn’t make it true I suppose, but still. I think it might be.”
“Which is what?” Wyatt asked, thinking, Most of us? There are more?
“A long time ago when people lived in little tribes, in caves and shelters around campfires, some of us guarded them while they slept. They kept watch,” Silas said. “They stayed up all night and only slept during the day. Over time, a lot of time, maybe centuries, these people evolved. They could see what waited in the shadows outside of the firelight.”
“Wait, are you saying… You’re saying that I am one of these… these watcher things?”
Silas finished his ice cream cone, popped the end of it into his mouth and chewed. “You’re a night person, right? You don’t like daylight, it might even hurt your eyes more than it does most people. You prefer the dark.”
Wyatt laughed and reached around to drop his unfinished ice cream in the trash. “Are you kidding?” he said. “You have met me, right? Do I seem like I enjoy moonlit walks and crap like that?”
“No,” Silas said.
“No, of course not. Obviously. I’m scared of the dark,” Wyatt said in a hissing undertone. “It’s a phobia. An intense phobia. So intense that I actually hallucinate. I see things. My therapist says it’s a manifestation of my repressed—”
“Your therapist doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”
“She.”
“Whatever. She doesn’t have a clue. You’re not hallucinating.”
Wyatt swallowed around the lump of his rapid pulse and shook his head. “Of course, I am.”
“No. If you’re hallucinating, I’m hallucinating with you,” Silas said. “What you’re seeing is real.”
“That’s not possible,” Wyatt said.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Silas said. “Are you a night person?”
“I guess so,” Wyatt said.
“So am I,” Silas said. “So are we all. In the daylight, it just doesn’t feel quite right. Then the sun goes down and the moon rises, and you come alive.”
“A lot of people are night people and they don’t see weird shit in the dark,” Wyatt pointed out.
“I know. They’re not like us. Maybe a little, but not enough to see,” Silas said. “You’ve got more. It’s in your blood, passed down from either your mother or your father. You have more of the blood, like I do.”
“But I have a sister. She can’t see them. What about my parents?” Wyatt asked.
He also asked himself if he was truly buying into this, but it wasn’t that crazy. Not when he considered all the things he had been seeing both lately and all his life. Herschel and Ned. Thorn who lived under his bed. When he was little there had been monster named Amelia who lived in his closet, and his mother and father both had opened that closet door to prove to Wyatt that there was nothing living there at least a hundred times. Amelia was always there crouched in the back behind the clothes and toys, peering out at him with her glowing eyes, but after a little while Wyatt figured out that his mom and dad couldn’t see her even if she was right there, so he stopped trying to make them see. She wasn’t very scary anyway, she just had a way of sneaking up on a person and she moved so quietly.
“Sometimes it skips people. I don’t know why, but not everyone has it,” Silas said. “Back in the day, families of night people all had it, they cultivated it, honed their abilities, but these days someone like you grows up afraid of the dark because everyone tells them they’re crazy.”
“I don’t… But that doesn’t make any sense,” Wyatt said.
Silas sat forward and put his hands flat on the table, staring into Wyatt’s face. “It makes perfect sense,” he said. “Listen to me. Your biggest problem with all of this is that you’ve grown up afraid of the dark, the things you see in it that no one else sees, when what you don’t understand is that the things in the dark should be afraid of you.”
Wyatt stared at him without blinking for a few seconds. Then a faint, disbelieving laugh slipped out and he shook his head. “What, like you?” he asked. “I’m supposed to go out and find a sword so I can go around doing battle with… whatever they are. That’s absurd, I’d die in a minute.”
“That’s why you learn,” Silas said. “In another time, you’d have gone out with your father or an uncle or an older brother when you were little. They would have brought you up with it. You wouldn’t have been afraid. You see them. Because you see them, you have an obligation to stand between them and those who can’t. It’s who we are.”
“No, it’s who you are,” Wyatt said, pointing at Silas. “I’m no one. I make really great burgers and grilled cheese sandwiches. I’m a college dropout, I live in my aunt’s apartment and I drive a Volvo. No one wants me standing between them and anything because if I’m their only hope, they’re fucked. I’m not like you.”
“Maybe not,” Silas said. He raised a finger to punctuate a point and said, “But, you could be.”
“What if I don’t want to be?” Wyatt asked.
“Do you really want to spend the rest of your life working for minimum wage flipping burgers, wasting away, afraid of your own shadow?” Silas asked. He leaned over the table on his elbows. “Some people have to do that. For some people, that is who they are.”
“I’m not a hero or anything,” Wyatt muttered, looking down at the shiny top of the table. “I’m not brave. I’m not… I don’t fight monsters. I’m not a big deal, I’m just a guy. Maybe these things are real—I’m willing to consider that, especially after last night—but that doesn’t matter. I just want to be normal. Normal and not afraid all the time.”
“And how do you think you’re going to make that happen?” Silas asked.
“Not by being a hero,” Wyatt said.
“I’m not a hero either. We don’t do it to be heroes,” Silas said.
“Then why?”
“Because we need to. No one else can.”
Wyatt sighed, shook his head and pushed his chair back. “I should go home.”
He left the ice cream shop and Silas didn’t try to stop him or follow him. Wyatt was relieved until he was crossing the parking lot and realized that he no longer had his car. He had no way to get home unless he wanted to call a cab and it was much too far to walk. Cabs were expensive, and he had almost no money on him. Kat had proven herself to be unreliable, so even if she hadn’t been out of town he wouldn’t have called her for help. Or so he told himself.
He checked his wallet and found that he had seven dollars.
Silas had a soda in front of him when Wyatt returned and sat back down at the table across from him. He tipped it up and drank and didn’t say anything.
“So, I don’t have my car,” Wyatt said.
“Nope,” Silas said.
“Can you drive me back to my place, please?”
Silas took a last drink of his soda, set it down, left a twenty-dollar bill on the table and stood. “Sure.”
Wyatt noticed about two miles from the apartment that Silas wasn’t looking so great anymore. He was pale and sweating and gripping the steering wheel tightly. Of course, that made sense; he had only just been injured the night before and as far as Wyatt knew he hadn’t had any real medical attention. Nothing except for Wyatt’s not very skilled attempts at nursing. He had to be in incredible pain, yet he had somehow been concealing it so well that even Wyatt had forgotten.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
They were waiting at a red light at the top of a hill. Silas reached up and tucked some sweaty hair that had fallen out of the tie he had it in back behind one ear. “Fine,” he said.
“Oka
y, well you don’t look fine,” Wyatt said. “You don’t really… I mean, forgive me for saying so, but you look like crap. Which, you know, I get that. Because there was the harpy thing and you were all cut to shit, and I am a lot of things but I’m not a doctor. You probably really need a doctor, Silas. That’s my point. I’m ecstatic to find out that you’re not a figment of my imagination—at least you aren’t—because people can obviously see you, but that also means that something actually did happen to you and you could die. I mean… from infection or something. From venom. Do those things have venom?”
“No,” Silas said. “They’re just ugly and pissed off.”
“Right. But you still need to go to a doctor,” Wyatt said.
The light changed. “I’m not going to a doctor. I’ll clean it up again when we get back to your place. Or I’ll wait until I get home. A doctor would just ask a lot of impossible questions and if they don’t like what I say, they might call the cops.”
“But why? You were attacked by some wild… thing.”
“No one is going to believe that. Come on, kid. How many people your whole life ever believed anything you told them you saw?”
That was a good point, but Wyatt still wasn’t accepting that the creatures he saw (and that Silas apparently saw) were real. He knew that something had happened the night before. Silas was clearly real, he had been talking to people all day and he had bailed Wyatt out of jail. They didn’t let imaginary people do that. But it could have been a bear. They still had bears in Washington.
“Then how are you going to get any kind of medicine?” Wyatt asked.
“I got a lot of stuff already to take care of this sort of thing,” Silas said. “It happens.”
“And you want me to get into this… this… It’s not a profession. Hobby?” Wyatt said. “Why would anyone want to do that? Something you don’t get paid for, that comes with no insurance or benefits, that no one will ever believe is a real thing and will laugh at you if you mention it to them, that comes with the added bonus of horrible maiming and probably, at least one day, violent and weird death. Why?”