by J L Aarne
Wyatt had Saturday off from work. He spent most of the day in his pajamas watching TV from the big easy chair and eating junk food. The two cats had watched him eating for a while until they realized he wasn’t going to share, got bored and curled up to sleep. He didn’t know how they could sleep through a show as noisy as Alaska State Troopers, but they were cats.
Alaska State Troopers wasn’t Wyatt’s all-time favorite show, but it was in the top ten for sure, maybe even the top five. He did not, however, have any desire to ever visit Alaska because after watching it for a couple of years he had concluded that Alaska was a very pretty place, populated almost entirely by mentally unstable, drunk nudists who were armed to the teeth.
There was a marathon on and Wyatt was watching with a large bowl of instant kettle corn popcorn in his lap, propped up by a sleeping Hedges, and a nearly finished lukewarm beer on the table beside him when there was a knock at the front door. It took him a minute and a lot of maneuvering, but he got up to answer it without waking the cat or spilling his popcorn.
When he opened the door, Silas was standing there, and Wyatt was surprised by how glad he was to see him. In his mind he heard Doctor Graham asking, Do you wonder if perhaps your friendship with Silas is moving a bit fast? He knew that it probably was. That it had. He also wasn’t sure he cared too much about that anymore. Monsters wearing the skins of dead people and creepy little girls with black eyes predicting doom had a way of putting things like that into perspective.
“Hello,” Wyatt said. He couldn’t think of anything else, so he held up the bowl of popcorn. “You want to watch TV?”
Silas smiled and only then did Wyatt notice that he looked like shit. “Sure,” he said. “What are we watching?”
“What happened?” Wyatt asked. He stepped back from the door so Silas could get by him and he could close the door. “You look like someone beat you up, but that’s not right. Wait, Silas, did someone beat you up?”
“I… sort of,” Silas said.
Wyatt set the popcorn bowl down on the table. “Is this the part where you say something like ‘You should see the other guy?’ Because I gotta tell you, unless the other guy’s dead, I don’t think it matters. You’ve got a black eye. Kind of. It’s more of a… blackened forehead-eyebrow thing, but still, it looks painful.”
“It’s dead,” Silas said shortly. He sat down in Wyatt’s recently vacated chair and sighed. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it. Sit back down.”
“Don’t worry about it?” Wyatt said. He went to the sofa and sat down. “Do you do this? Just show up at people’s houses with bruises and tell them you killed the guy who put them there and then what? Is this why you don’t have any friends?”
“Who says I don’t have friends?”
“Well, do you?”
“Not many.”
“Okay.”
Wyatt didn’t have friends either, so he couldn’t criticize much, but it wasn’t because he killed people.
“It wasn’t a person. I didn’t get in a bar fight or… disagreement at the gas pump or… it was a fleshgait. This is almost healed now, you should have seen it yesterday.”
“Right, in a day,” Wyatt scoffed. He ate some more kettle corn and studied Silas with a frown. “How did you get in a fight with a fleshgait?”
“It killed my neighbor,” Silas said. He reached over and took some popcorn from Wyatt’s bowl, ate a piece then just held it in his hand, staring blankly at the television. “Miss McCrea. Sandy. I liked her.”
“You found her body?” Wyatt asked.
“No, and no one probably ever will,” Silas said. “I just found the skin.” When Wyatt only stared at him in quiet horror, Silas explained, “The thing was wearing it.”
“Oh,” Wyatt said. Then he remembered the way the thing in the park had been inside of Ned. Inside Ned’s body the fleshgait had been a withered little parasitic grandfather looking monster. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“But… how did you know? I mean, how did you know it wasn’t just your neighbor lady acting kind of funny?”
“I knew.”
“Okay, but how?”
Silas turned his head and looked directly at Wyatt. “What difference does that make? You’re useless, remember? Why do you care?”
Offended and a bit hurt, Wyatt drew himself up and glared at Silas. “I am not useless, I’m—Oh, oh, I see what you did there,” he said, pointing at Silas. “Just now. Reverse psychology. Well, it’s not going to work. I’m curious, that’s all.”
Silas smirked. “Then it already is working,” he said.
“Just answer the question,” Wyatt said. He put some popcorn in his mouth and chewed. This was more interesting by far than Alaska State Troopers. “How did you know?”
“The usual way,” Silas said.
He picked up the television remote and put the TV on mute so he wouldn’t have to talk over it. Some guy in a bathrobe (and nothing else) was shouting at the troopers about his rights.
“They feel wrong, that’s something I can tell you, but you’ll never really know what I mean until you feel it yourself. They just do. Instinctively, they feel wrong. But if I went around killing people based on feelings alone, I’d kill a lot of annoying people.”
Wyatt snorted laughter. Silas didn’t mean to be, but sometimes he could be funny. “So, what else?”
“They don’t talk to you, you can’t have a conversation or even ask them a simple question and get a straight answer. They mimic what you say, they repeat it. They’re learning from you. From every word you say, they learn how to be more like you. More human. They don’t understand simple things, like Sandy… I saw her pick up the water can she uses for the rhododendrons along the sidewalk and she looked at it like it was the strangest contraption she’d ever seen. Then she grabbed up her little shih tzu and bit him on the back of the neck. Little dog never had a chance. His neck was broken and ripped open before he knew what was happening. Must have tasted bad, she spit the meat out, but… I knew.”
“Gross. That’s horrible and creepy. How do people not know that they’re… you know, them more often? I think I’d know,” Wyatt said.
“Maybe you would,” Silas said. “That doesn’t make it easier. I asked her if she was all right. She kept repeating it. ‘Sandy, are you all right?’ ‘Sandy?’ ‘Miss McCrea?’ I hate that shit, but I still had to know.”
Wyatt suspected where this was going and sat forward. “Silas, what did you do?”
“What do you think I did?” Silas asked. “I killed it.”
Wyatt took a deep breath and let it out. “Was it… It was, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, of course it was,” Silas said. “Do you care if I smoke in here?”
“I…” Wyatt didn’t smoke, and the question threw him. “…don’t know.”
“All right,” Silas said. He took a pack of cigarettes from an inside pocket of his jacket and lit one. “So, you’re off today?”
“Yes,” Wyatt said. He thought that was rather obvious what with the popcorn and the PJs and his total lack of interest in showering. He considered Silas for a moment, thinking he knew what was going on, but also thinking maybe he was wrong and maybe even if he wasn’t wrong that maybe he shouldn’t say anything about it because guys like Silas typically took such things as insults to their masculinity. “Did you just come over here to tell me about your neighbor?”
Silas was watching the troopers on TV handcuff a man in a bathrobe and didn’t seem to be listening to him. He exhaled smoke through his nose. “I think I needed a friend,” he said. “As you’ve pointed out, I don’t have many of those, so you’re it.”
“By default,” Wyatt said dryly. “I feel so honored.”
Silas smiled and glanced over at him. “You’re not a bad listener.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
There was a loud knock at the front door and Wyatt jumped. He started to get up to answer it but before he could, the door opened, and Kat walked in.
>
“Is your phone broken?” she demanded the moment she saw him. “Because if it isn’t, you better have a really good excuse for not calling me for over two weeks.”
Wyatt sat back down and crunched on a piece of popcorn. “Is your phone broken?”
“No,” Kat said. She crossed her arms and glared at him. “So?”
“So, it’s a phone. It works both ways.”
“Oh, no. It was your turn this time,” Kat said, pointing at him. “This time you call me. I called last time.”
“But I am mad at you, so it was actually your turn—again,” Wyatt said.
“No, it wasn’t—Why?”
Wyatt sighed impatiently. “Because you were a bitch. You hung up on me and left me stranded in the dark in a broke down car.”
“I was out of town!”
“And you called me a baby.”
“I did not.”
“You did, too.”
“I did not.”
“Yes, you did.”
“Who’s the hot guy sitting in your chair?”
The change of topic from Kat didn’t throw Wyatt as much as it would have if she had been almost anyone else; she did that. ‘Deflecting’ was what Doctor Graham would have called it.
“That’s Silas,” he said. “He helped me that night after you abandoned me.”
Kat turned from her critical (and appreciative) study of Silas back to Wyatt, put her hands on her hips and sighed with an exasperated huff. “’Abandoned’ implies that I was there with you and in some position to get up and leave you behind, but I wasn’t,” Kat said.
She smiled at Silas, who smiled back.
Wyatt looked between them and he did not like what he saw. Not a bit. It made no sense and he knew that, but it didn’t matter. Usually he would want Kat to like someone he had made friends with. Usually Kat was a test for such people. She was his best friend as well as his sister and he trusted her judgment, often more than he trusted his own. It didn’t last, no matter what Kat thought of his friends, because ultimately everyone, no matter how patient they were or kind, reached a point where they couldn’t take it anymore. Unlike Kat, who shared blood with him, they could leave, and they did.
Kat liked Silas though, that was clear. Silas had responded in kind, but with Silas that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
Except it was Kat and people loved Kat.
“So, you stopped and fixed Wyatt’s car the other night?” Kat asked Silas.
“Actually, I gave him a ride and they towed his car,” Silas said. He finished his cigarette and sat up, looking around for a place to put it out.
Wyatt offered him a nearly empty water glass with some orange juice at the bottom and he dropped it in with a hiss.
“They towed your car?” Kat asked, turning back to Wyatt.
“Then they showed up here and arrested him,” Silas added.
“Don’t help,” Wyatt told him as Kat’s mouth fell open in surprise. “Why are you helping?”
“It’s what I’m here for,” Silas said.
“You were arrested?!” Kat said, nearly shouting.
Wyatt glared at her. “Yes.”
“I bailed him out,” Silas said.
Kat turned back to him with a smile. “You did?”
“My hero,” Wyatt muttered.
Kat didn’t hear him, but Silas did. His soft smile became a grin.
“That was nice of you,” Kat said.
A little annoying voice spoke up in Wyatt’s mind and accused him of being jealous about the time Kat shifted to turn her body more toward Silas and tucked her dark hair behind her ear. Which was stupid and ridiculous and absolutely not true. Silas was his friend, but that was all, and yes, Wyatt was grateful that he had come along when he had that night and saved him, but that didn’t mean he had anything to be jealous of. They had been spending a lot of time together since then and he liked Silas, and more than he was grateful for being rescued from the harpy, he was glad to have found someone like himself. Someone who saw the things in the dark and gave him hope. But that didn’t mean he was jealous.
“I am not,” Wyatt said.
He didn’t realize he had said it aloud until he noticed both Kat and Silas staring at him and Kat said, “Not what?”
Wyatt’s mind went completely blank. It was like an old television screen showing nothing but static on every single channel. “An octopus,” he said, picking something random from thin air. “I am not an octopus.”
“Well, obviously not,” Kat said.
She started to sit down, but Wyatt stood up before she could and said, “You need to leave.”
Kat stopped. “Wyatt, I—”
“No, I don’t care,” Wyatt said. He stepped toward her, moving to the door, and Kat had to back up for him. “I was arrested, I should have called a tow truck or Mom or anybody but you, fine. I get that, I do. But you need to leave now because I’m not ready to pretend everything is okay yet. Or that I’m the dumb one who fucked up.”
Kat stopped backing toward the door and tried to reason with him. “Come on, Wyatt, I’m sorry, but—”
“No, I don’t care!” The shout surprised even him. It seemed to come out of nowhere.
They stood in the middle of his living room staring at each other, hardly daring to breathe, and Wyatt knew that if she said one more thing to him about how she was sorry but, he was going to lose his temper. If that happened, he might never forgive her. She might never forgive him.
“Okay,” Kat said. “I’ll go.”
She went to the door and opened it. She stood there thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “I’ll call you later.”
Then she was gone, and Wyatt stared at the closed door feeling guilty. “Damn it,” he said with a sigh.
Silas was watching him when he turned back around. “She seems nice,” he said.
“Shut up,” Wyatt muttered, his face going hot.
He sat back down on the sofa and picked up the bowl of popcorn, but he didn’t eat any more, he just held the bowl. “I’m sorry,” he said after a few minutes of watching the TV on mute.
“It’s okay,” Silas said. “Do you feel better?”
“No,” Wyatt said. He felt worse. “You were telling me about your neighbor.”
“She’s dead,” Silas said.
Silence fell again and, for Wyatt, it felt awkward. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That you had to do that. That would be… hard, I think.”
“Sometimes it is,” Silas said.
After another long silence, he got up, carefully moving one of the cats off his lap, and said, “I think I’m going to go.”
“No, you don’t have to,” Wyatt said. He wanted him to leave, but he didn’t want to be rude and say so.
Silas smiled. “It’s fine. I need to get back to work anyway.”
He left, and Wyatt sat where he was for awhile just holding his popcorn. He finally got up and turned the sound back on the TV, but he couldn’t get back into the show. Benson curled up in his lap and Wyatt petted him while he purred and that made him feel a little better, but he started having the fight with Kat all over again in his head. He muttered to himself and said everything under his breath he wished he had thought to say when she was still standing in front of him. He did it again and in his head, she broke down and cried. She said she was sorry and didn’t tack “but” onto it like she wasn’t. She swore she didn’t mean the nasty things she had said, but he didn’t believe her.
An hour later, he was still sitting there doing this when his cell phone rang. It was on vibrate and he looked at it, saw Kat’s name on the screen and let it ring.
Ten minutes later, it rang again. He watched it jitter on the glass topped table and glared.
He had a hundred things he would like to say to her, but he did not want to talk to her. He didn’t trust himself yet.
It stopped.
Then it started again.
With a grumble of annoyance, Wyatt snatched the phone off the coffee table and
answered it. “Why are you calling me?”
“No reason,” Kat said cheerfully. “Hey, so I left before we really got a chance to talk. I wanted to tell you, I talked to Mom yesterday and Dad’s feeling a lot better. He’s been taking it easy like all the doctors said and I guess Doc Greene said it would be okay if he and Mom wanted to go camping. Dad asked because, you know, fishing and whatever else they do up there.”
“I hate fishing,” Wyatt said. “They make those faces and flop around suffocating on air. It’s horrible. Also, well… the woods.”
“Yeah, well, you’re not invited,” Kat said. “Because you scream and cry a lot. It pretty much ruins everyone’s fun.”
“Good. I hate nature anyway.” He wanted to argue that he did not scream and cry about it, but she was goading him, so he let it pass.
“So, anyway, Mom and Dad went on a camping trip for the weekend.”
“It’s December, isn’t that a bad idea?”
“I thought so, but apparently he’s fine and they took the camper. As long as he doesn’t try to wrestle a bear or something.”
“That still sounds like a bad idea. He just had a stroke.”
“Fresh air though. It’s supposed to be good for you.”
“That’s stupid. What if something happens?”
“They have phones.”
“What if something happens and their phones don’t work?”
“They have like… camp rangers or park rangers or something I’m sure.”
“What if he has another stroke?”
Kat sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
“They’ll be okay,” Wyatt said. He wasn’t sure if he believed that, but it was what you were supposed to say. There were unimaginable horrors in the woods, especially at night. “They’ll be fine.”
“Probably,” Kat said. “I mean… of course, they will. It’s just fishing. It’s not even like… ice fishing or anything dangerous like that.”
She didn’t sound too sure about it either. Their father had been known to go ice fishing and late December was not the most ideal time for camping, but if he was careful and they took the RV, it was sort of like not camping, just doing it out in the woods.