Chapter 21 #2
There’s always one way to get blood, if I’m willing to become a monster.
There’s another way too, if I’m ready to burn the last of my bridges.
But not yet. My mom comes first. Finding the flayed man comes first. His scent pulled me north, into the desert, but the Mojave stretches half the state and into the next one.
If I was a creature of famine and viciousness, if I burned in the daylight and stalked through the night, where would I hide?
Where? I demand it of myself until the word starts to lose all meaning. Where, where, where?
And then, the question biting into me—why us?
What did we do to deserve this?
What did I do?
Underneath the anger, the sense of injustice, is a terror that I did this, somehow. With my ingratitude, with my disbelief. My mom was the one who ripped through Joanne’s throat, but I pushed her to it, and now she’s been stolen from me because I was too distracted by my girlfriend to keep watch.
Well, Veer’s not my girlfriend. I like her, and we fucked once. That’s not the same thing.
The truth is, there probably isn’t a reason. He was just hungry, and we were closest. But maybe we weren’t always. I pull up Reddit, and stare at the message I sent about Martina Revelle. I saw her car was found near Corn Creek, but do you know exactly where?
Martina Revelle, whose last days devolved into paranoia, who drove to the desert and ditched her car, a crime scene spattered with someone else’s blood.
Uncle Bill too, his car abandoned on the highway en route to Mount Charleston.
Was he looking for her? I think of the way he always swallowed his words, like there were secrets he wanted to tell me but didn’t dare.
I remember the way Brian said so casually, “Bill thought it was real.”
He wasn’t looking for Martina. He was looking for the flayed man. Of all the stupid, self-absorbed—how could he? We needed him, and he left us to play at true crime, to hunt down a monster. Don’t you know that we’re the monsters? Don’t you know what you owe us?
Back to my phone. The poster never responded, so I send another message, just in case: Can you help? It’s urgent.
My joints throb. For a second, I think it’s from the way I’m wedged cross-legged in the back seat, but when I unfold my legs, the thrum of it only intensifies.
Hunger.
I pull out a fresh syringe and inject more pig’s blood.
It dampens my hunger even less this time.
The insistent burn like a firmly held pinch worms its way into my gums. MR and RV both 2017.
RV must be another person who vanished the same year, or in similar circumstances.
If Uncle Bill used these disappearances to track down the flayed man, I can too.
I try searching a list of people who died or disappeared in the Las Vegas area last year, but all that turns up is an LVMPD page explaining that hundreds of people are reported missing each month, and if you want to know where someone is, try calling the jail.
I try the Review-Journal’s crime section, but it’s mostly burglaries and crooked cops.
The burning sensation expands, sending shivers through my sinuses.
I stretch my jaw to stop myself from clenching my teeth around nothing.
What else might be part of the pattern? Martina’s supposed psychotic break? That must mean the flayed man visited her. What else? Her hiking trips? Her abandoned car? Last time I searched Mount Charleston disappearances, there was an abandoned car story too.
I search the phrase again. My hands are a little shaky, my wrists and elbows shivering in their sockets.
An abandoned pickup truck, a white Chevy Silverado, found at the Mount Charleston trailhead a couple months ago.
The article’s only a few paragraphs. Was there blood?
Did they find out who the truck belonged to?
I try Mt Charleston Silverado abandoned, then Mt Charleston abandoned truck February 2018, and find a few more articles.
The truck belonged to Craig Willard, who’d been staying with friends in Vegas for the winter but didn’t seem to be from anywhere in particular.
Drifter. Could be one of us. One article mentions a history of mental illness.
There’s no mention of blood in the truck, only that the windows were smashed. But it might have been there.
It also might not have been.
This Craig Willard isn’t RV, but Mount Charleston and Corn Creek are both north of the city, on either side of Highway 95.
Same direction my curse pulled me in. Same area where Uncle Bill’s truck turned up, deserted, a grave marker on the side of the road.
I massage my cheekbones, then pinch the bridge of my nose so hard my fingernails leave marks.
The pig’s blood isn’t enough now, and it won’t be enough to sustain me through a night of searching, and doing whatever I need to do to get my mom back from the flayed man.
I unlatch the glove compartment and reach for the Swiss Army knife I keep there for emergencies. It’s not going to work, we can’t drink our own blood. But do I know that for sure? It’s just what my mom told me, and she lied about all sorts of things.
I press it into my forearm. The skin depresses but doesn’t break. When’s the last time I sharpened it? When’s the last time I even thought to ask? I keep trying, and all I get is a series of dull red dents in my arm.
I brought one weapon with me. At the bottom of my duffel bag. I push aside T-shirts and socks and ziplock-bagged toiletries as I dig for it.
Our chef’s knife. Thick as my wrist, biggest one in the kitchen. I unroll the sweatshirt wrapped around it. I’ve Been To Oklahoma! it shouts in proud pink letters. One of my mom’s sweatshirts that became mine as a half hand-me-down, half gift.
I cut myself with the knife meant for my mom’s heart, that final thing I owe her, and press the incision to my lips.
It tastes like nothing. Like less than nothing.
Like tap water with too many minerals, like disappointment, like failure.
I dig a Band-Aid out of the glove compartment, press it over the seam in my forearm, and bury my face in the sweatshirt.
It smells like my mom. I wish that were comforting.
I want to call Veer. It was so easy, when it was just us and the road. When we sped down Highway 95, was the flayed man already watching? Was my future already carved into the lengths of his claws?
I wipe the knife on my jeans and return it to its place at the bottom of my bag. Despair thickens into a searing fog that threatens to burn my throat. I can’t put my hunger off any longer.
I’m not quitting my search. I just need to do this in order to carry on.
I desperately don’t want to do it.
Time to light up the last bridge left to me. There’s always work for a nurse, I’ll find somewhere new. I just need to survive long enough to find my mom.
I pack away the medical supplies and climb back into the driver’s seat. Then I type Sunrise Hospital into my GPS and head for work.