by Chris Page
David’s small, brown eyes didn’t bother with the knife, only inquired of Jake the purpose of his battle stance. The question soured on his face into bitter disappointment. His hands reached down to conceal himself. His eyes welled without affecting his expression, a stoic face made wet with tears. His cheeks looked like porcelain.
Jake had miscalculated. He felt a churn growing in his stomach. He turned towards the door and heard David begin to beg, pleading for him to stay. He slipped his feet into his shoes, ignoring David. He proceeded to his car, leaving the door open behind him. He sat behind the wheel, turned the key, pulled the gearshift, and by the time he had turned the car around, he heard a single pop from within the house that he suppressed in his mind, along with all other thoughts of David Marko as he drove away.
11
_________
The fog had displeased Shelly the first time she’d encountered it, slowing her pace for fear of the unseen surrounding her. But on the third occasion she was forced to jog through it, she felt more comfortable, permitting her legs their natural speed, almost enjoying the wet coating of her nasal passages. Still, it stole the beauty away from the forest, obscuring the picturesque with a milky white diffusion she didn’t enjoy in her periphery. A man appeared in the path before her, walking with an urgency in his step. The fog had obscured him until it was too late, and she brushed his shoulder as she passed him. She thought to apologize, but what was he doing walking in the middle of the path? Maybe I’ll return to the gym, she thought. She didn’t like working out in front of the other fit women there, the comparisons, but if this was the alternative—
Her foot caught and Shelly’s face slammed against the cold ground with a dizzying crack. At first she felt nothing, heard nothing. A few seconds passed before it all came rushing in. The pain stretched out along her skull. She felt the soreness in the bridge of her nose which her fingers ventured to cautiously inspect. The slightest touch of her index caused her to shriek. She tasted her own blood pouring over her lip. Her vision almost balanced once she lifted herself onto her elbow.
“Looks painful.”
She twisted her head to find the body the voice belonged to, but the motion returned the spinning to her sight and the forest fog blurred everything into a monotonous, white cloud. “Can you help me, please?!” she replied to the space behind her, uncertain if she faced the male voice. She listened for a reply, but none came. Only footsteps, drawing near.
“Hello?!” she shouted.
He didn’t answer, only walked at a steady pace closer.
“I think I’m concussed here! I really need help,” she spoke, her voice beginning to tremble. “I don’t think I can make it on my own back to the trailhead, I—I’m so dizzy…”
The footsteps came to a halt.
“Are you there?”
His reply came in a whisper so close she felt his words play in the loose strands of her hair. “I’m right here.”
Shelly felt a swift, broad strike against the back of her head, then she felt nothing at all.
FOREST
FULL OF
TREES
12
_________
Night fell quicker now. Weeks passed, and with them went several hours of daylight. It was dark when Carrie pulled into her driveway. She hadn’t felt tired all day, but then she turned the engine off and the silence of her car, unaccompanied by birds and frogs and breeze, left only her weary body to occupy her thoughts. She swiveled her legs out of the car and onto the concrete, groaning slightly as she placed her weight back onto her soles. She made her way slowly to the front door. The lights were off. The darkness of the interior allowed her mind to play back the scenery of the day over the shadowed foyer. The forest had been littered with its own shedding. Leaves collected in smashed layers along the pathways. Autumn set the woods’ colors ablaze with orange and red that filled the air with the scent of October. It grew stronger the further from the path she ventured.
Carrie passed through the dining room. Through the window, into the backyard, she saw the lights on in the shed. She proceeded towards the bedroom. The light was off. She left it off. She shuffled her way over the carpet towards the mattress where the unmade bed awaited her collapse. She snuggled her face into her pillow with a blank expression. In her canted vision, she saw the dresser littered with clothing, a drawer pulled open, and the floor between them tracing a line of undergarments in need of washing.
Her face smashed hard against her pillow, her lips pushed to the left, her right eye buried. It was neither comfortable nor uncomfortable, merely necessary. She had to lay. It was what her body demanded. For a week, she operated on this base level of need. She ate only when she began to feel a migraine teasing at her temples. She slept for six or so hours until she awoke and rolled herself out of bed. There seemed little point to care for anything. Anything beyond her mission.
She felt lost. She no longer heard the voice, saw its intent. Its guidance left a void. She had only the unprodded obsession in the man she’d seen. He waved. She waved. She needed to know more about him and it was that simple. He was there at one particular moment, and something about that alignment mattered. The voice went quiet then, but in its silence arose a new lead. So her walks focused on the same area. Methodically, she wound her way around it, establishing a perimeter by subconscious appeal to logic, following her feet as they in turn followed a plan unconsciously arranged.
She didn’t have thoughts about her actions anymore. She didn’t think. She knew this, though even the knowing was absent-minded, a recognition without direct address. She just subsisted, and that was all she could do, hold out, survive. As she knew Benny would. And in their mutual drive for survival, they would inevitably return to one another. It was just a numbers game. They had to beat the odds with repetitive motion. Like orbits, mindless and set by unknown hands, they flew through the same space. Collision was bound to happen. It was just statistics now.
But she had to keep going, she had to keep living. That required some care, some maintenance. Without a job, with dwindling funds, she considered her options. Her husband still worked, presumably. He disappeared during the same hours. Money was coming in, but she saw none of it. It was hard to inquire when their trajectories never crossed.
Her eyes drooped, then snapped back. Her body was given to its exhaustion. She was tired earlier and earlier now. She wasn’t eating enough.
Upon the dresser, between shirts with arms dangling over the edge, sat the folded leather wallet. She lifted her head from her pillow and eyed it through dreary eyes. The room bobbed left and right with each step as she drew herself in towards the wallet. With a bony hand she lifted it nearer her face. She opened it and inspected. He kept no cash. In the various sleeves, she found an assortment of credit cards. She began to tug at one, but found it was stuck in place. She plucked it with one swift motion and it came twirling out. It bounced off the wooden edge of the dresser and fell into the open drawer. She bent forward and retrieved it. Jacob’s name read in faded, raised letters across the front.
Carrie turned around, leaving the wallet open behind her, and returned to the bed. She stuffed the credit card into her purse on the bedside table, believing the issue resolved. She wouldn’t run it out. She would use it for necessities. Everything was just out of necessity now. It was the long game. The numbers game. When they came out in her favor, eventually, it would all return to normal. She need only have endurance to weather the intervening time.
13
_________
It was Saturday. Some Saturday in October, Jake was certain, and late in the day. In his sober moments, he could say, with some conviction, the date and time of the moment, despite being afloat in uncertainty between them. They weren’t what mattered, save for their indication of lost time. He had wasted a good deal of it with David Marko. Now he was catching up. The network of thoughts that manifested on the wall sprawled like messy webbing, layered and intricate, navigable only by its creator. The
faces of the men he’d researched stared back at him. A blood red sunset spilled in from the shed’s window, painting everything in Jake’s vision. He was tired. He hadn’t slept in days. It didn’t bother him. He continued with his work, intent on discovering his next lead. It was close. Just around the corner. At the end of his next string, draped all along the walls. He followed it with his eyes, then his feet, pivoting in place to pan his vision across his investigation. He turned, and his vision twisted. He paused, trying to focus on a pinpoint stabbed into corkboard, nailing a photo of the forest between two suspects, released convicts he’d never met. They shook in place, transposing themselves over the trees, as if disappearing into them, then into one another. It all became a blur that passed into the darkness of unconsciousness. Jake passed out.
Jake came to sometime in the night, his body sprawled painfully on the concrete floor. His head ached, though more from interrupted sleep than its collision with the floor. A dream had come and gone, leaving no trace, but depositing him back into full consciousness, the alcohol having run its course to a final stage of upset stomach. He rolled to his side and pressed his palms against the floor. He felt it then, the hangover extended to his extremities. His whole body now reacted to his habits, no longer contained to his throat, stomach, bowels, and head. It was time to rerun the remedies. Then he could get back to work. Perhaps back to drinking, dependent upon his recovery.
Jake retrieved his bucket from behind his desk. He knelt before it and lowered his head inside. The flecks of dried vomit were invisible once his head entered the bucket and blocked the light, but the smell wafted into his nostrils still. He inhaled to expedite the process. He felt the nausea conspire with the wretched scent to force his first heave. It rose up the familiar tubing, and he knew just when to open wide and release, sparing his teeth. It tumbled from his lips and sloshed into his bucket. A second wave, and a third, were largely dry, as expected. Only a trace of mucus came up to rest on his tongue, which he then scraped away by dragging his upper teeth along the surface of it. He wiped his teeth off on the back of his shirt sleeve.
Red. He squinted and lifted the sleeve nearer. Blood. He tilted the bucket towards the light and leaned his head back so as not to cast his shadow inside. Contained within the rejected contents of his stomach was a thin line, snaking its way through the bile, of bright red. He felt a sharp pain in his gut looking at it. But then he admired the clear-headedness that always followed his puking and he set the bucket down. He leaned back in his kneeling position, lifting his head. The blood filtered down producing a sensation of lightness that tingled.
When he opened his eyes, the room was still, his breath was even, and his mind clear.
He spotted him then. The face that prior eluded him struck him with peculiar insistence. Jake rose to his feet and approached it. A newspaper clipping featuring the grinning visage of Aaron Burrell. His shaky fingers rose to the fragile paper and plucked it from its pin. It was small, one by two inches in size, black and white, wholly unremarkable. And yet.
Aaron Burrell was a star loan officer at Trinity Mortgage where Jake worked. He rode his family name, trading on its prestige for personal gain. They amassed wealth through real estate. Connections served a career in home finance well. The Burrell family lingered in Jake’s thoughts. He knew more about them. What else was there?
He kept the picture in one hand while he rushed to his desk and went rummaging with the other. He pulled open the drawer to the right of his chair and fished out a large scrapbook from among other folders and clippings. He dropped it onto the desk and began flipping its pages. He passed over chapters he’d compiled, little stories he crafted on each one of his suspects. Each concerned itself with one target, an exploration of a psyche, winding towards analysis. The pages passed over beneath his eyes. This man was less likely. This one more. This one had been a top suspect. This one new.
Jake arrived at the chapter for Aaron Burrell and discovered he had collected very little. However, the faint trace of a memory proved true, he did have more information on the family. “Burrells Eye Western Expansion For Luxury Units” read a headline. He’d pasted it onto a blank page, beneath which he wrote “killer’s territory.” The land the article referred to contained the woods in which the boys had been murdered. In the middle of the parcel, evidence of Benny was found. He’d cut the article to keep for sheer mention of a pertinent location. That was his method. Collect anything within a sphere of relation to his suspect. It may be important later. The spheres grew. He lived within them.
But he didn’t have much to go on regarding the character of Aaron Burrell. Among the list of suspects, his name was recent. Hence the lack of entry in the book. Yet something about him, as Jake’s mind navigated its recovery, drew him in. The picture remained within his palm, curled and growing soggy from his sweat. He recalled, from his own unrecorded memory.
Aaron Burrell was a prick. Jake had interacted with him via email, perhaps a phone call, certainly seen him pacing about the office. Yes, certainly he’d seen that. He remembered now, the short stature of the man. He would drift between rooms, no matter their occupants, barking into his headset with customers, appraisers, lawyers, the like. He had black, curly hair, pale skin, and wild eyes. Bright green irises with dark rings around them. He was fit, but his height drained his physique of intimidation. Jake always had the impression Aaron was a privileged son of a wealthy family, given his entitled attitude. Yet, there was something else there. Aaron’s posturing belied a vulnerability. There was a desperation, maybe a pain?
He opened his eyes and snatched a pen from beside the book. He took to writing on the page opposite the clipping. He wrote two words. “Abusive privilege.” He set the pen down on the page beside them. In a flash, Jake came into an understanding. His study of men had provided these little flashes. He would think of them, bury himself within thoughts of their minute expressions, then, suddenly, he would come into an understanding. The one about Aaaron broke down like this.
Aaron didn’t work for his family. He had taken a different job. He was a black sheep. In the eyes of those who knew him most, there was something askew.
Aaron thought of David Marko for a moment. He had been scarred.
Aaron Burrell was scarred.
Aaron Burrell was troubled.
Aaron Burrell didn’t have a close relationship with his family, those that refused to include him in their business, who had ostracized him.
Aaron Burrell had a mean streak. He shouted in his cell phone regardless of present company. He used profanity with disregard. He treated others at Trinity Mortgage like his slaves.
Aaron Burrell was nasty.
Aaron Burrell was broken, and in his brokenness, he formed shards. His shards were directed outwards, used to impale and cut others.
Aaron Burrell was like David Marko, perverse, broken, and destructive.
Aaron Burrell didn’t like other men to touch him. Jake had noticed this on multiple occasions, to the point where it became an office joke. Don’t touch Aaron, not even a shoulder tap. He would launch into a fit.
Aaron Burrell had been abused.
Aaron Burrell was now externalizing the pain and suffering visited upon him in his youth onto other young boys, destroying them as he himself had been destroyed. In the land where his family sought expensive development.
Jake took a breath and saw the facts surrounding him. He swiped up the pen again and began feverishly jotting down his sketch. He could see it. On the page, it all made sense. The scent of his breath, the swollen flesh around his eyes, the dried sweat in his armpits and along his legs and in his crotch didn’t distract. He saw Aaron Burrell and knew he had his man. Certainly he had a bad man. A man who deserved—
Jake felt his stomach burn. He snatched a nearly empty bottle of antacids from off the edge of the desk and popped the remaining tablets into his mouth. He gnashed them and swallowed.
Aaron had money, he had professional contacts he spoke with every day,
and he had a large profile. Jake couldn’t do this alone. He knew he would need professional assistance.
He shut the book and slid it back into its cupboard, then laid himself back onto the floor, curling inward to finish his sleep. He had work tomorrow, and the process of boxing up his disintegration each morning was growing longer.
14
_________
“Can’t you understand, I’m worried about you,” came the fuzzy little voice through the cell phone speaker held at two inches’ distance from Carrie’s ear. There was a shake in it, a desperation that caused Jackie’s voice to nearly crack. She could see the tears on her old friend’s cheeks. She didn’t attach any emotion to the visual. Her mind was trying to focus on other things. Or, rather, nothing at all. Focus had led her to a dead end. Focus was an enemy.
She ducked beneath a low branch and dropped her phone. It fell into the dead leaves beneath her, and she groaned bending to retrieve it. She brushed off a bit of dirt from the screen and placed it back against the side of her face. “What was that?”
“I dropped my phone, sorry,” Carrie replied in monotone. She continued traversing the grown over trail, marching towards the post where she’d seen the man.
“I hear wind.”
“There’s a breeze.”
“Where are you?”
“I told you, I’m—”
Jackie raised her voice. “You can’t keep doing this, Carrie! You need to stop. You need to reconnect, you can’t stay checked out like this. I can be here for you, if you need...if you need to mourn, Carrie. You’re not alone.”