Chapter 11
A hard jostle jerks me awake.
Opening my eyes is a mistake. The world spins and spins and the only way to make it stop is to close them and take slow breaths through my nose. There’s grit in my mouth and a chemical cleaner taste on the back of my tongue.
“Hey, kiddo. Take it easy, alright?”
That voice. I open my eyes a sliver because I know that voice. Ellis is looking at me from the driver’s seat of his car; his face is blurry yet somehow still concerned. Relief is a wave that washes through my body, followed closely by another intense urge to throw up.
I scrabble to unbuckle the seat belt before I hurl all over myself and his car, then yank the door handle. It’s locked.
“Whoa, whoa!” Ellis says. “It’s okay. You’re safe.”
I gag and slap a hand over my mouth, trying to keep the hot rush of bile inside.
He catches on and unlocks the door. I’m falling out of the car as soon as the locks click.
There’s nothing in my stomach to throw up but a throat-scorching mix of water and stomach acid.
I heave until I’m panting and tears stream out of my eyes.
A door slams and gravel crunches. Jeans and hiking boots stand in my peripheral vision.
“Here.”
Ellis holds out a handkerchief. I take it and blow my nose. He hands me a second handkerchief. I don’t know why it’s funny, but it is. I huff a laugh and wipe at my eyes. Who carries a handkerchief? Let alone two?
The world is still swirly, but not as bad as it was. I take deep breaths and try to figure out what’s going on.
We’re still in the woods, but on a road. No looming monsters in the trees. No crosshairs either.
“I am so sorry.” Ellis crouches next to me. His hands hover over my body, like he’s afraid to touch me. Makes sense since he just hit me with his fucking car. “You hit your head when you fell. Probably a concussion if the vomiting is any indication.”
Sure enough, there’s a wet spot on the back of my head. Even the slight brush of my fingers over the pulpy skin makes me catch my breath.
“Where’s—” I clear my throat. “Where’s Ripley?”
“She’s in the back.”
I try to stand, but the waves in my head slosh and roll. An involuntary groan pushes out of my mouth.
“You can take your time—” Ellis stops when he sees my face. “Okay.”
“No,” I want to say. I have to see her. I think if I open my mouth again all that’ll come out is another groan.
Vertigo has me clutching his arm as soon as I’m standing. It takes an embarrassing amount of effort to peel my fingers from his biceps when it passes. Even more embarrassing is how grateful I am that he continues to keep a steadying hand on my back.
Ripley doesn’t respond to me opening the door. I put a hand on her side. It takes a moment, but she lifts her head to look at me. My stomach drops. It’s clear she’s doing her best to look at me. Despite that, her eyes roll in their sockets and her eyelids drift down.
She flops her head down like the effort of holding it up even a moment is just too much. There’s something under her nose. More black gunk? I use one of the many loose, crumpled napkins in Ellis’s car to wipe it off.
It’s not black. It’s red.
A sob gets stuck in my throat. I don’t know if the blood is from the car or that black crap, but either way it’s bad. This is so, so bad.
This time the sob makes it out of my mouth just fine.
“I’m so sorry,” Ellis says. “I shouldn’t have been going so fast. I was rushing.”
“It’s not just the car. She got something on her. It was this black … gunk. I was cleaning it off when I got scared and we ran. I thought…”
Remembering the thing in the trees makes my stomach flip.
“What?” Ellis asks when I look to the tree line.
I don’t see anything. I don’t hear anything. That doesn’t stop the persistent feeling that if I reach my hand out, I’ll touch it. Whatever it is.
“It’s unfortunate.” He speaks slowly, carefully. “But illegal dumping is common out here. Some of it is extremely toxic. In combination with something internal from the car…”
What we found in that hollow didn’t feel like a by-product of industry. How it felt, how it smelled, was of decomposition and rich, dark dirt.
Regardless of what it is or where it came from, we need to leave.
I tell him so and he says, “No kidding. We need to get you to a hospital.”
We’re going to an emergency vet first. That discussion can wait until we’re back on asphalt. I indulge in feeling Ripley breathe under my hand, then let Ellis help me back into the car.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
He reaches over me to buckle my belt. Before, this would have been thrilling. Now, I’m just tired.
“You never called. I tried your cell but it didn’t ring.
The property owner has a trail camera on the gate.
I asked him to check and he said your truck was still there.
It was a slow day.” He shrugs. “I thought I’d drive down to my cabin in Hocking Hills for the weekend.
Decided to pop over to check on you on the way.
Hit you with my car instead. I’ll probably have to throw my ‘#1 boss’ mug away when I get back to the office, huh? ”
“I’ll buy you another one if you can get us out of here. I tried to leave, but my truck wouldn’t start. And then … everything just kept getting worse.”
“You are having a rough day.” Ellis squeezes my knee. “Hey, want to drive?”
He jangles the keys in the air. He laughs at whatever face I’m making. “Joking. Extremely joking. You shouldn’t be walking, much less driving.”
It’s a terrible joke, but it does make me choke out a watery laugh.
“Lou.” His face is serious, and then he’s cupping my cheek. He leans in close and meets my eyes. “You have done so well. I should have never sent someone down here alone. This is my fault, not yours. I’ve got it from here. I’ve got you.”
The words don’t process. My brain literally can’t make the idea of someone having me compute.
Sometimes, when things are very bad, I’ll daydream about an alternate life where the moment I turned eighteen I got on a bus and never looked back.
My mom doesn’t call. I don’t have a dog.
Not even a houseplant. The only weight I’m carrying is my own.
Reality floods in every time.
Maybe I’m not a woman, but I am a daughter, and being a daughter is its own horror story.
The walls are splattered with blood and guilt and righteous anger and, most important, love.
Horror is nothing without love. The weight of it stoops my back until I’m curled in on myself like some fucked-up fiddlehead fern.
Something I’ve never been proud of and that feels almost impossible to admit is that, honestly, I don’t want to be strong enough to carry my weight and someone else’s. I want to be rescued.
“You’re safe now. I’ll keep you safe. Okay?”
He shuts the door and moves around to the driver’s side. Relief is instant the moment the car gets going.
“How’d you know where I was?” I ask.
“I didn’t. This is the only other road near the property. Figured I might as well check.”
The rearview mirror shows Ripley lying on the back seat. If I focus, I can see her breathing. Ellis is such a pack rat. There’s junk everywhere. We go over a particularly large pothole. The pile he must have shoved over to fit her on the seat shifts.
The shift reveals a box of loose Ascent trifolds. The only reason I don’t roll my eyes is because it’ll make me throw up. I wonder how the leaders at Ascent Discovery Weekend would make this my fault. Something about negative energy attracting bad actors, probably.
I close my eyes to block out the scenery moving by outside. That makes the dizziness worse, so I focus on the handle to the glove compartment instead.
A wordless, voiceless whisper brushes against the shell of my ear. I flinch away from it like a dog from a fly.
“What is it?” Ellis asks.
There’s no one in the back seat but Ripley. I look forward to the glove compartment, and ignore the feeling of a hand hovering just above my shoulder.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine, if I’m honest. Can you tell me what’s going on?”
I hesitate. What if he doesn’t believe me? On the other hand, how is he supposed to help me if I don’t tell him what I need?
“Someone drilled a hole in my gas tank while I was on the property. My phone wasn’t working, so I walked to one of the houses on Harmon. The man who lived there, Clarence, called the sheriff. Sheriff Cory.”
I take a long, slow breath. “The sheriff, when he got there, he said he’d drive me to the station.
Clarence was gonna follow us. But the sheriff—he shot Clarence in front of the house.
We were already in his vehicle. I didn’t know what to do, so I used my pepper spray.
We crashed. I walked back to the house and called 911. ”
We come to an intersection. The perpendicular road is asphalt—old and cracking—but asphalt all the same.
Every second we’re getting closer to a vet and away from this property.
Soon the feeling that a specter is trailing after me will go away and everything will be fine.
I’ll never have to think about something too tall and looming watching me from behind the trees again.
“Also, there was a rabid coyote on the property. It chased us. I haven’t seen it since.”
He shoots me a look as though this is the part that’s surprising. Wait until he hears about the maybe-monster. That is, if I decide to tell him.
“Huh.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Did you talk to anyone else?”
Ellis is not smiling. He’s frowning. As soon as he notices me noticing, his expression goes back to concerned. There’s something perched on the tip of my tongue. It’s a song I know the tune of but not the name.
“I’m not criticizing you. I’m just trying to get the full picture. This is a lot to process.”
Try living it, I want to say. Instead, I motion to the water bottle in one of the console cup holders. “Can I?”
“Of course! Please do.”
Half the water is gone in a few swallows. Once I’m done, I breathe through my nose to curb the urge to throw it all up. I try to put the bottle in the cup holder closest to me, but there’s something in it already. What I pull out is the same dark black as the interior of the car.
A small, stone cicada.
“Neat, huh?” Ellis says.
I don’t say anything. I can’t. All the pieces of information I’ve tacked up in my brain are connected. I just couldn’t see it before.
It’s the way that Leah and Greg spoke. Phrases like “emotional parasites” and acronyms like “FT,” Frank Talk.
It’s the way that, when we spoke this morning, Ellis said he’d be in constant meetings, but just now he said it was a slow day.
It’s the box of brochures in his back seat despite him telling me he’d never taken a class.
A beat. Two. Ellis unspools. His back goes from straight to relaxed. His left hand drops from the steering wheel to his thigh. His posture says he’s never been touched by tension, never been overcome with anxiety once in his life.
My hatchet—
Is in my backpack, which I am no longer wearing. The holster is snug on my belt. The gun, however, is gone.
My eyes burn—not from tears but fury. I didn’t even think to check if the gun was still there when I woke up.
I lay my head back on the headrest and watch the canopy move by through the sunroof.
“Smooth.”
“Thank you. I wanted to be a magician when I was a kid. Sleight of hand, distraction, the works.”
“I wanted to draw comics. How did you know where I was?”
He’s smiling. “I’ve got trail cameras all over the property.”
There’s anticipation in his silence. He’s leaving an opening for me to jump in with questions and accusations. He wants me to ask so he can tell me. No one loves a story more than Ellis. I don’t ask. He says it anyway.
“This would have been so much easier if you behaved like a normal person. Who chooses some hick’s house instead of the nice one next door?”
Click, click, click goes the turn signal, and then we’re back on Harmon Road.
Branches scrape against the car. The sound covers my seat belt unclicking. This isn’t a cop car, so unless the child locks are on, all I have to do is press one button to get out.
Ellis tuts. He reaches down between his seat and the door to bring up the gun. It rests on his thigh with the muzzle pointed at me.
“None of that.”
We pass Clarence’s place. I don’t look in the yard.
Click, click, click goes the turn signal, and then Ellis is pulling into the driveway of the new-construction home I chose to pass. That I was right to pass.
Three people emerge from the front door as soon as the wheels touch the driveway. Two men and a woman. All white, each wearing bloodred scrubs. I recognize the woman and one of the men. Leah and Greg.
Greg’s nose is swollen and covered with a bumpy gauze bandage. The third is older. Late fifties, white and the sort of tan that lets everyone know he went on vacation this year. He could be any one of the businessmen with two-hundred-dollar haircuts walking around Downtown Columbus.
Ellis puts the car in park.
“Was it real?” I ask. The need to know is overwhelming now that we’re stopped. “That thing in the woods. Was it real?”
Ellis turns his handsome face to look at me. The gun on his lap, a soft smile on his lips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Greg and the guy who I’ve decided to call Haircut approach the SUV. Haircut opens my door. Moist summer heat and the drum of cicadas roll over me. Haircut smells like the on-sale cologne kids buy for their dads on Father’s Day.
Ellis lifts the gun in an out-of-the-car gesture, then sends a look back at Ripley.
“You behave and we’ll take good care of her. If you don’t…” He shrugs.
Slime, says the goblin.
The tendons in my jaw itch with the urge to bite down, to eat him.
I flinch, making him smirk. I’m no stranger to violent thoughts. But this animal urge to eat him? I don’t know where it came from; I just know it wasn’t me.
Haircut puts a hand under my arm to help me out. I think he might have a chance at being charming if I knock his teeth down his throat. That thought is 100 percent mine.
An arm wraps around my chest from behind, and a wet cloth is smothered over my nose and mouth. I inhale, startled. Mistake.
My mouth and throat are flooded with the familiar smell of chemical cleaner.
The cicadas stop singing. My limbs go numb. The world shifts. I’m not falling; I’m being lowered.
The last thing I see is Ellis looking at me from above, one corner of his mouth quirked.