Chapter 11
Zach pulled the tattered stuffed fox from where he’d concealed it in the foot of his sleeping bag.
He rubbed Mr. Fantastic’s threadbare cheek against his own, hoping it would help clear his mind of aliens, monsters, the horrible body of the elk, the unidentifiable creature in the woods, his mother’s blurred eyes.
The orange fur and well-worn nose were a comfort, but didn’t prevent him opening his eyes to stare at the ceiling.
He needed to use the bathroom. He pinched his thigh to try to convince his traitorous body it didn’t actually need to go.
Holding him back after class one day, his teacher gently suggested dozing at his desk was interrupting his learning and that perhaps he needed to talk with someone, since this issue had so clearly started after what she obliquely referred to as his “loss.” Zach had assumed the teacher meant he’d get to miss class to visit the school counselor, a soft-eyed woman who had fed him cookies after Geoff had punched him on the playground, and who had somehow ably cut off Geoff’s aggression after a similar meeting with him.
Instead, Bram intercepted Zach at the door when Ximena brought the children home from ski team dryland training that evening.
“They think you need therapy. Therapy! But what you’re going to do is you’re going to go to sleep and be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in class, problem solved. Got it?”
“Yes.”
A pat on the back. “Of course you do.”
So Zach forced his eyes open at school, biting the inside of his cheek to stay awake.
At home he’d put on his coat and claim to be playing outside, then curl up and doze in the plastic shelter atop the play structure.
When he woke to see Ximena balancing on the ladder to peek inside, he asked if she’d tattle.
Ximena told him to nap inside when he needed, and she’d wake him before his father got home.
“Mister Bram thinks obedience and respect are the same, but they are not, little one. You need sleep.”
Yes, Ximena was nice so far. She was probably taking good care of Bonnie.
Maybe despite Bram’s marching orders she’d let Bonnie watch television on her phone, eat mac ’n’ cheese, even have dessert.
Had Bonnie been able to go to sleep without him?
Before, she’d sought refuge whenever their parents argued, but his sister snuck into Zach’s room every night now.
He’d sing her to sleep; stroke her hair when nightmares made her cry out.
Zach inhaled the familiar comfort of Mr. Fantastic. If Bram saw the fox he would probably take it away like he had Blankie. How long ago was that? The beginning of third grade, so he must have been eight, like Bonnie was now.
You should’ve tossed that disgusting thing years ago, Grace, avoided all this fuss. My father would’ve kicked my ass if I acted like this at his age.
A pang of loss traveled through him, and he tightened his grip on Mr. Fantastic.
But the fox was a necessary risk. Without him, sleep was impossible.
Zach could always say Bonnie had hidden the stuffed animal in his bag.
That was the kind of nurturing act Bram approved of when it came to his little girl.
Zach rolled over. He tried to soothe himself by picturing Bonnie at her happiest; running wild, muddy and scraped, grinning as she caught garter snakes, beetles, and crawdads, making them laugh with what his mom called “potty humor.”
Despite being Bram’s favorite, his golden child, Bonnie and their mother hid this side of the little girl’s personality so that Bonnie could deftly navigate his moods.
When Bram was there she’d learned to change into her despised dresses, put bows in her hair, and generally make sure her entire appearance was frilled and softened.
But that was all right. If Zach could be like Bonnie, if he or his mother could understand their father’s expectations for him so that he could conform, he’d do the same.
He sighed. Even now, despite knowing what his father expected, he wasn’t able to just fall asleep, couldn’t just order his body to hold it.
He didn’t want to walk to the outhouse, either, picturing the trip through the storm, the new snow, the dark.
Where the monster could see him. Snatch him, tear away his skin, his tongue, his—
Zach squeezed his eyes shut and told himself he was already asleep. But late autumn flies swarmed in the darkness behind his eyelids, the greedy threads of their forelegs rubbing together over the eviscerated elk.
It might be a dead fly dangling from the diamond earring. Squished and blackened.
Zach sighed. There was no more fighting it.
He had to go, and his dark thoughts wouldn’t let him rest until he did.
Russ, Dave, and his father were all asleep and had been for some time, which at least reassured him they probably wouldn’t wake up as he snuck out.
He tucked Mr. Fantastic into his shirt, the rub of soft fur a warm bolt of courage.
Slowly, careful not to disturb the others, he crawled out of his sleeping bag, grabbed his headlamp, and put on his slippers.
Downstairs the fading woodstove fire painted everything orange and black.
He could avoid going to the outhouse if he went out one of the windows. But the memory of the mothers’ reaction to men having done just that rippled through Zach. And anyway, there was nothing to be afraid of. He put on his coat, his boots, switched on his headlamp, and plunged outside.
The wind sliced through him. The darkness was so complete, the snowfall so thick, that his headlamp illuminated a windblown vortex of thousands of white flakes but little else.
The snow was already a foot deep, slipping into his boots and clinging to his long underwear pants as he bounded to the outhouse.
He shut the door and the wind instantly cut.
After he used the pit toilet he turned to leave, then paused with his hand hovering over the door latch.
Something felt out of place. Had he dropped something, left something behind?
No. His mind had somehow registered before he could process it that there was movement outside.
Zach clicked off his headlamp, heart lapping at his ribs.
He backed away from the closed door, feeling as though a string had cut behind his knees.
When he felt the back of his legs bump into the rim of the toilet, he sat down even though his pants were on.
Had he turned his light off soon enough for it to go unnoticed by whatever stalked on the other side of the wall?
A soft crush. A dragging, punctuated by a squelching—feet or ski poles, paws or hooves, plunging through snow.
The sounds slipped liquid-like through even the smallest crevices of the outhouse, and Zach tried his best to blindly track them.
No headlamp or flashlight shone through the uninsulated walls.
And it couldn’t be another member of the group trudging out to use the toilet.
The noises came from the wrong direction, filling his imagination until it overflowed with images of black helicopters beating silently overhead.
A monster slicing flesh to scapula. Precious things eaten raw. Licked clean.
Zach’s body stiffened then dissolved into a quiver at the sound of an inhuman howl.
He knew instinctively that the sound had traveled through sharp teeth.
It was too similar to the tiger he’d heard at the zoo last year—its discontent simmering in the throat before spreading into a snarl—to think anything else.
Though this sound was lower. Different. And inexplicably, it had come from far away, from some unknowable distance in front of the hut the outhouse sat behind, completely separate from whatever moved nearby.
And the thing dragging through the snow had gone silent, as if it, too, had been frightened by the creature’s cry.
Zach waited, each bit of him focused solely on trying to hear through the wind and the awful pulse of his terror.
Finally, the slippery noises resumed. The thing was moving again, past him and uphill. Slowly, torturously slowly, its dragging softened. Maybe it was gone. Or maybe it waited, crouched in the trees, nocturnal eyes fixed on the outhouse door.
Snow that had caught in the scrunch of Zach’s pants above his boots painfully iced his ankles. He could hardly feel his toes. How long had he been outside? Ten minutes? Twenty?
The wind swelled, its shriek worsening the chill and obscuring any noises the thing might still be leaving in its wake.
Zach partially unzipped his coat and crossed his arms over where Mr. Fantastic snuggled in his shirt, warming his bare hands under his armpits.
He stood, shifting his weight to bring his cold feet back to life.
But he couldn’t stop the trembling that came from deep in his chest, the still freeze of the small room combining with visions of red eyes, peeled and waiting, the dry rasp of a long tongue against the wood of his shelter.
He waited. Nothing came through the whistle of wind, the ragged scratch of his own breath, the pat-pat-pat of his heart.
Nothing wicked dragging its prey through snow.
It had only been the wind. A blown branch skidding across the snow. A mountain lion. A porcupine.
And he was going to freeze out here, hiding.
Wimp. Scaredy-cat.
Zach used the toilet again, and his shame over how much he needed to go again, how little his body seemed to understand itself, cut slightly through his fear.
He needed to take care of himself, because no one else would, no one else was here, and the pain of the uncontrollable shaking, his frozen ankles and toes, was veering into territory that was becoming more real, more palpable, more dangerous, than whatever might stalk outside.
“Okay. All right,” he whispered.
Zach flung the door open and stumbled through the snow toward the warm glow of Pantheon Hut.