by Abe Moss
“There was something in the room with him that didn’t want me there. I don’t know what to call it. I’ve never seen anything like it. But that’s not so surprising here. Anyway, I couldn’t get to him. I had no choice but to leave him, unless the doctor was to catch me.”
It wasn’t long before they passed the fork in the road that led to the upper cliff where Nuala had taken them. Addie passed it without a thought.
“How much farther do you think we can get?” Joanna asked.
“Another hundred miles at least, I think.”
“Think that’ll be enough to get us anywhere?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
✽✽✽
“I think I saw something back there!”
Addie didn’t slow. She looked at Joanna, then in the rearview mirror. But she didn’t slow. She wouldn’t.
“Saw what?”
“In the trees back there. Something moving.”
“There are animals out here. I’ve seen them. It was probably that. A deer or something.”
“Maybe.”
“It was.”
She didn’t say anything else. Not for another several miles or so, anyway.
“Addie, I’m scared we won’t make it.”
Make it where? was Addie’s first thought, but she didn’t voice it.
“There’s nothing to be scared of. We’ll find something. Someone.”
“Who knows how far we’ll have to go before we do. We only have so much gas left… and we didn’t bring anything to eat or drink.”
“We’re going to be fine, Joanna.” It felt strange, comforting someone when she didn’t feel an ounce of comfort herself, or any faith in the words she spoke. “The hard part is over.”
✽✽✽
“Do you think my parents will be happy to see me again?”
Addie blinked her eyes. She yawned.
“I wonder if they are looking for me right now…”
Addie found it hard to concentrate for long. Her eyes were heavy. The road ahead never changed in any way but direction. It winded from left to right, straightened, curved again. The trees grew just the same on both sides of them all the while. There weren’t any clearings or fields. Not since the doctor’s.
“What about you?”
She stretched her neck from side to side. “Huh?”
“What will you do if we make it home?”
“Oh. I don’t know. I… don’t have family or friends. I don’t have a boyfriend anymore. I won’t have a job.” Thinking about it made her head hurt. “I’ll figure it out when I’m there.”
Joanna agreed that was the best outlook. “Best to hold off hoping for anything. Who knows how much more of this we have to go through.”
This referred to the endless road through the endless trees in the endless woods they found themselves wandering through. It could go on forever for all they knew. Addie was beginning to think it just might. The gas tank was less than a quarter full now. They would need to find something before too much longer or else they were doomed to walking the rest, and who knew how far their feet would take them.
✽✽✽
Joanna expressed her need for a bathroom break, so Addie stopped the truck. Joanna got out. She stood in the road, looked around them. She turned and leaned inside the truck.
“Don’t you need to go?”
She didn’t yet feel the need, but she could see the fear in Joanna’s eyes, the desire for company. She got out as well. Together they walked a few paces away from the truck and stood near the edge of the road facing the woods. They looked into the trees a good while before exchanging nervous glances.
“There’s no need to go too far in, right?” Joanna said. “It’s not like there’s any danger of other cars driving by…”
“For privacy’s sake, how about you go on this side of the truck and I’ll go on the other. Does that work?”
Joanna thought so. So Addie ventured around the truck and stood just off the road in the grass, not going beyond any of the trees if she didn’t have to. The urge to pee wasn’t immediate but she thought she could manage something. She pulled her shorts down, squatted. It was quiet. When she was finished she pulled her shorts back up and looked over her shoulder to see if Joanna had finished yet.
“You done over there?”
For a moment there wasn’t an answer. She was about to ask again when she heard something in front of her. Another sound, rustling in the trees. When she scanned the darkness it stopped, became silent again. A nervous tremor started in her hands, her shoulders. She opened her mouth to call for Joanna a second time and was interrupted by yet another sound, this one different. She strained to hear it. Soft, breathy voices. Whispering.
“Is that…”
“Are you who…”
“Am I seeing what I…”
Multiple voices, all in the trees.
“I’m ready when you—”
Addie nearly jumped out of her skin as Joanna spoke over her shoulder.
“Shhh,” she said. “Listen.”
The whispering grew louder, came closer. There were several of them, all speaking in low, barely audible tones.
“Do you hear that?” Addie whispered.
Joanna shivered. “I can see them.”
Addie still couldn’t see anything. It was just the trees.
“I don’t—”
No, she was wrong. They were there. Shadows, several of them, dozens of them, standing between the trees like dreamy silhouettes.
“Jessica?” a voice called out, very clearly. “Jessica, is that you?”
“No, that’s not. That’s Annie. That’s my Annie.”
“Miranda?”
“Is that really you, Yvonne? Can it be?”
“I can’t believe it. It’s you. I can’t believe it’s really you.”
“Where have you been?”
“Catherine, where are we? Where am I? How did you find me?”
“What are they, Addie?” The terror was thick as syrup in Joanna’s voice. Her hand sat like a block of ice on Addie’s shoulder.
The shadows edged closer, more and more of them peeling away from the shadows of the trees, forming out of nothing but the dark until there appeared to be a small army of them, all faceless. At any moment Addie expected to hear her own name, and she’d know the voice it came from. The voices grew louder and more numerous by the second until they spoke over each other and they could barely hear what any of them said. Not once did she hear her own name in the sea of it. Not once did she hear her father’s voice.
“I’ve seen it before,” she said. “We should leave.”
The figures never ventured beyond the trees. They pooled at the woods’ edge and waited there, calling and shouting, desperate and lost. Addie and Joanna returned to the truck. The truck started and Addie put it in drive. With the windows closed she could still hear their voices calling. They begged for acknowledgment, begged for reassurance. But she had nothing for them.
They drove on.
✽✽✽
“We’re almost out of gas.”
Joanna sighed. “Don’t say that…”
“Well, we are.”
The needle on the gauge reached the red portion of EMPTY. They would be out in another ten to fifteen minutes, Addie figured.
“How long have we been driving?” Joanna asked.
It was hard to say, as the missing center console left them without a clock.
“Maybe a couple hours. Close to three, possibly.”
“We have to be close to something. We have to be. There’s no way they make a trip this long every time they need something. Where does Nuala buy the groceries, remember?”
She can fly, Addie wanted to say. But even then, she wasn’t sure that was answer. Something else, maybe it was cynicism, told her they were going about their escape all wrong. They were going the wrong way. The road led nowhere. Maybe it even went in a giant circle. The road just went on. The trees went on. The night w
ent on.
Eventually they did run out of gas. The truck stuttered and slowed. Joanna whimpered like a helpless loon. Addie moaned, felt her exhaustion getting the better of her. Everything irritated her to no end.
Stupid fucking truck is out of gas. Stupid fucking road hasn’t gone anywhere. Stupid fucking Joanna with her worthless worrying and her stupid fucking dog in its stupid fucking blanket.
The truck stopped.
“That’s it,” she said. “No more driving.”
“We can’t go out there again. Not right now.”
“Why not?”
“Those people in the woods. We should wait until morning.”
“We can’t wait until then, Nuala or the doctor might catch up with us somehow. We can’t stop.”
Joanna whined. “We’re never getting out of here…”
“Come on. We have to walk.”
Joanna reached down to pick up the wadded up dog at her feet and she screamed.
“What is it?”
She screamed again. She picked her feet up off the floor onto her seat.
“What? What are—”
She leaned over and saw it, what Joanna saw, and felt a strange lightheadedness wash over her, a familiarity, a feeling of déjà vu. It was a strange time to be feeling déjà vu, she thought.
The blanket was moving. Something kicked and rolled inside of it. Joanna scratched and clawed for the door handle, unlatched it, pushed her door wide open with a groan. The blanket unfurled. Both Joanna and Addie shrieked. Addie threw her door open and climbed out onto the road. Together they both slammed their doors shut and retreated toward the hood of the truck.
“What was it?” Addie asked.
Joanna couldn’t speak. She shook her head in disbelief, muttering nothing intelligible.
It was like a bomb went off inside the truck. A loud pop, a splat, and the windshield was soaked in pink. They backed away, eyes bulging. The truck rocked from side to side. They retreated down the road, watched in captivated disgust, and the truck continued to wobble as the thing within it floundered. Something wiped away the gore on the glass, a long clean streak down the windshield. Then another, and another. Several somethings stroked and wiped at it. Joanna screamed as the glass cracked.
“Run,” Addie said. “Run!”
They turned and followed the road in a frenzy of pumping arms and legs and panting lungs. The truck disappeared behind them around a bend. Still they ran. Joanna slowed and Addie slowed to stay with her. Behind them the glass continued to crunch until suddenly it didn’t anymore.
“Addie! Please… slow down…”
Joanna dragged her feet. She had the appearance of running, though her pace was closer to that of a crawl. She clutched her belly with her arm under her breasts, wheezing. Addie knew she’d seen her run farther and harder before. She slowed to stay next to her.
“We have to keep moving…”
Around the dark bend something massive and formless rumbled into view. It squirmed under the shade of the trees. It stood tall on several legs, pillars of disjointed flesh, struggling to stay upright under the weight of a melting, shapeless body. Addie listened to its tired, raspy breathing.
“Come on, Joanna!”
Joanna never saw it. Too tired to look back, she obeyed Addie’s instruction and they staggered together, side by side as the gargantuan crept ever closer to them.
“We need… to go faster,” Addie said, doing her best to propel Joanna with a gentle hand on her back. “Come on.”
“I can’t breathe…” Joanna wheezed. “I can’t breathe…”
Addie screamed internally, willing Joanna to hurry with her mind, but nothing worked.
The creature was truly something to behold if you could keep your eyes on it long enough, but Addie couldn’t. She took cursory glances over her shoulder, checking its distance, and caught brief eyefuls of something sinewy and loose, unraveling on itself like a plate of microwaved leftovers. That it had once been a tiny, lovable dog was a long-forgotten dream.
And despite its gruesomely awkward nature, it gained on them.
“Joanna, I can’t die out here. Please. You have to go faster.”
Joanna tried. She really did. Her feet dragged and scraped across the hard dirt. She clutched her belly as though her insides might spill out at any moment. Her tired gasps for breath sounded like a lawnmower failing to start, a deep, guttural sound in the back of her throat. Addie wondered if she’d drop dead before the mutant at their backs had its chance. When she looked over her shoulder again she shrieked. It was right there, erected in all its slimy, glistening glory, its tangled legs doing a nightmare jig in their honor. Joanna’s legs gave out and she toppled forward and Addie fell with her. The abomination loomed over them, gurgling. The sound which emitted from Addie’s throat then was unlike anything she’d heard before, and the foreignness of it, the confusion that it could possibly be her own scream, shocked her back into silence.
Just then, out of the woods to their right something erupted, dark and quick as a breeze—a flurry of feathers. There was a solid, spongy impact and the creature huffed as it was pummeled over. The newcomer, whatever it was, carried it across the road and into the dark trees on the other side. They disappeared there together momentarily.
“Joanna,” Addie said, hovering over her facedown body. She pushed under her arm and rolled her onto her back. “Joanna, are you all right?”
Her eyes were closed but she appeared to be breathing. Addie searched the trees for them, could hear an uproar of scuffling and snapping branches somewhere within.
“Joanna, are you awake?”
She didn’t respond.
After a moment the sounds died. The dark figure returned to the woods’ edge. Addie made out its shape, shaded by the trees—tall and thin, feathered like a crow, with a misshapen lump of a head on top… and the signature white, glowing eyes.
“Leave us alone,” Addie demanded.
“You know I can’t. And you’re lucky I showed up.”
The figure stepped out from the trees, and when it did the tall, gangly, feathery form was suddenly replaced by that of a naked woman.
“Lucky?” Addie checked Joanna again, spoke from the corner of her mouth as she did. “So you can take us back and… and we’ll meet the same fate anyway.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Of course you do. You’ve done it several times already.”
Nuala came to stand next to them. She looked down on Joanna in Addie’s arms and frowned.
“Is she all right?”
Ignoring her, Addie went on. “You’ll take us back to the doctor now. The doctor will say we’re hopeless. Then we’ll die.”
“Did Lyle tell you that?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s the truth.”
“Lyle—”
“Lyle saw the documents on the others, the ones you hid someplace else when you knew I’d come looking for them. I didn’t need them, though. I saw the vases in the doctor’s wardrobe. I can connect dots.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
Addie opened her mouth to further argue her point, but Nuala’s lack of denial shocked her.
“You can come back with me and continue your treatment. I’ll convince the doctor you’re willing to try again. All of this was a simple mistake. Emotions get the better of us sometimes. I know that very well.”
“I don’t want to finish his treatment, Nuala!” She climbed to her feet. “I don’t need it. There’s a reason I’m out here. There’s a reason I don’t want to go back.” She took a step toward Nuala, who wrinkled her nose distrustfully. “I want to live. I do, I truly do. What for, I don’t know yet. But if I had any desire left in me to end my life, going back with you to the doctor would be an easy ticket out, and I don’t want that.”
Nuala raked her eyes over Addie time and time again with that same look of doubt. Her gaze wandered to Joanna in the dirt on the road and her features softened.
“I don’t fucking care.”
“He’d say you’re not right yet. He’d say nothing you say can be trusted because you’re still under the influence of your condition.”
“You promised me,” Addie said, and shook her finger in accusation. “You told me you wouldn’t let him hurt me.”
“He won’t hurt you.”
“He’ll kill me.”
Again, Nuala didn’t challenge her. Addie stepped away, withdrew out of arm’s reach.
“Maybe you don’t know any better because you’ve been with him for as long as you can remember. Maybe he doesn’t know any better either. His treatment hasn’t helped anyone yet, has it? Lyle was the last on a list of all the others, wasn’t he? The doctor doesn’t really know how to help us. Please believe me.”
She knew Nuala wouldn’t, and her face said just as much.
“If you take me back to him, you’re only adding me to his wardrobe.”
Nuala’s expression never changed. Finally she said, “I don’t know what else I can do.”
Addie was again reminded of Lyle’s words, his beliefs, and it was harder than ever at that moment to shake any falsehood from them.
She hasn’t chosen any of this.
“Help us. Show us the way home.”
Just then Nuala stiffened, cocked her head toward the trees. Addie followed her lead and did the same. Soon after, she too heard the sound.
“Is it you?”
“Hey! Catherine! It’s me!”
“Yvonne! That’s you, isn’t it?”
The voices were returned. The tall shapes formed out of nothing, meandered toward the road through the darkness, calling.
“What are they?” Addie asked, frightened.
Nuala stepped closer to her, guarded her behind herself. “Lost.”
“Will they hurt us?”
“No.”
“Yvonne, please say something.”
“Don’t leave me again. I’ve been looking all over for you.”
“Come with me. Everyone’s worried about you.”
“What are they? What do they want?”