They got lost three hours into the hike; they each admitted it to themselves at hour four and to each other at hour five.
“I swear to God, if you make one more ‘It’ joke…” Faith said, hoping that her playful irritation masked her anxiety as well as she thought it did.
“All I’m saying is, they didn’t get out of those sewers until they… you know.” Theo said, hoping that his playful teasing masked his near-terror as well as he thought it did.
“There were also, like, six of them and they were being guided by a magical turtle and running away from a giant spider-monster. Through the sewers, might I add.” She put her hand against a tree (the same tree we just went by 20 minutes ago?) and paused for a moment, looking around, trying to quell the stomachache beginning to rise. “Oh, and not to mention, they were twelve.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, drawing up behind her and joining on the other side of the tree, “everyone hates on the King for a little creativity. But you know what doesn’t seem to bother anyone? The fact that it’s fiction. Or, you know, all the – ”
“Child murders, I know.”
She said it absently, eyes scanning the vast array of trees before them, stomach squeezing in yet another cramp. “Theo what are we gonna do if we can’t find our way out of here?”
“Oh, we’ll find our way,” he said, unsure if they would, banking on the fact that it was still only 11:30 and they had at least seven hours of daylight left. “We just need to… ya know… keep moving…” he took his hand off the tree and stepped away from it, moving forward again. It was easier to quell the panic when you were moving. When you were moving, you weren’t thinking
about how you didn’t know which way to go, you were just going. It took him a few seconds to realize there were no footsteps behind him. He turned back and saw that Faith was still leaning against the tree, now looking at him with naked openness, all her anxious thoughts flashing across her face like the home team’s losing score across a jumbotron. He turned back and walked towards her again.
“Hey, hey,”
Tears began to form and then fall in fat drops from her eyes.
“Hey, wow,” he said, his panic converting with the speed of a sinner at a Billy Graham crusade to alarm. He reached her and pulled her towards himself. “It’s gonna be alright, Faith, seriously.” He knew it was lame and felt ashamed of his full-hearted but half-brained attempt at comforting his wife. “We’re gonna find the way and we’ll be outta here in no time.”
Boy, if I keep digging myself this hole of empty sentiments, we’ll be able to get to China and just hop on a plane back home.
“We should’ve listened to her.”
“What was that, love?” he asked, hoping to buy himself a minute to think. Her face was still against his shoulder and the words were muffled, but he heard them clearly enough.
She turned her red, swollen eyes up towards him, leaving two wet blobs on his chest.
“The old lady. Pirate Lady. We should’ve listened to her and stayed off the Galaxy Path today.”
The wrinkled face flashed in his memory momentarily, sending shivers down his spine. He pushed it back down into the depths where such things belonged and put on a brave face.
“Pshh. Her?” He laughed, trying to sound dismissive, “Oh, she was – ”
“She was right, Theo. The storm was horrible yesterday – hell, I wasn’t sure we were gonna be able to get out of the hotel parking lot with all those fallen trees on the street outside –
and you know how storms like that can affect paths like these. Trees fall, branches scatter, leaves gather, paths disappear, and people like us go missing.” She buried her face into his shoulder again and he let out a quick sigh of frustration and thought, of course, I have to be wrong. After all, what would happen if a day went by without me being wrong? The very universe might fold in on itself and –
He stopped the thoughts, taking a deep breath, reminding himself that they were not enemies, that she was not attacking him; she was scared, that was all.
“I know, sweetheart. But what about the other stuff? The stars? The rabbit holes?”
The old woman’s face swam up to the surface once again, her hands joining this time, opening and closing rhythm with her words (all of which were spoken with plenty of “yer’s” and “ye’s”, earning her the admittedly not-terribly-clever nickname of “Pirate Lady”) painting an invisible picture of the doom to come if they took the Galaxy Path today.
Faith stepped back, wiping her face and smoothing her hair.
“Yeah, that stuff was pretty nutty. But the storm stuff wasn’t and we knew that.”
“Alright, fine, you’re right, you’re right.” He held back, like always, but only just.
If she heard the attitude in his voice, she chose to ignore it, and he felt instantly guilty.
“Listen, I – ”
“Shh!”
The guilt dissipated just as quickly as it had come, heated, boiled, and turned to vapor in the split second anger stepped back in. He was opening his mouth to say something else he would probably regret when he realized she was listening to something. He tilted his own head and closed his eyes, listening.
There was near silence, and suddenly, he found that very strange. He hadn’t realized just how silent it had been; there were no birds chirping, no squirrels scurrying, no other hikers
tromping their way noisily by, no –
And then he heard it.
“Is that – ” he said.
“Whistling!” she said at the same time.
They turned toward each other and smiled, the heat of the last few minutes cooling in twin pools of blessed relief.
“We were heading in the right direction!” He cried, a bubble of self-righteous indignation rising in his chest. He popped it, reminding himself that this was no time for “told-you-so”s, knowing on a subconscious level but blatantly ignoring on the conscious to whom the “told-you-so”s properly belonged. “C’mon, I think it’s this way!”
Theo grabbed Faith’s hand and began to pull her along, taking one last look at the scarred bark of the tree, the tree which would stand, as long as it stood, he thought, as a monument to the indefatigability of the human spirit.
A couplet appeared in his mind, something from a poem he had read in high school: I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.
Right-o, he thought, moving towards the whistle with Faith in tow. Ain’t no trail gonna keep me down.
It must’ve been only minutes before they came across her again – after all, how far could the sound of an old lady’s whistle really travel in woods as thick as these? – but it felt like half an hour or more of hiking through a wood path which looked, to both of them, completely unfamiliar; though this is a thing that they would never have said to each other, for fear that any spoken doubt would erase the path before them.
But, however long they had been traveling, their shared relief was unmistakable as they
rounded one last corner and saw the Pirate Lady. She was sitting in the same spot as before: on an old, wooden stool, her arthritically arched back resting against the gnarled bark of an oak at the entrance of the path. The only difference was the bandana she wore over her head; this one was a bright green, instead of the dark blue of earlier.
Probably sweat through the other one. With that post-storm humidity and the thickness of those robes, I’ve gotta imagine she sweats like a whore in church.
“Aye,” She spoke without turning, her hands working busily at rolling a cigarette of something that looked far too green into paper which looked far too yellow. “So close ye are, so close.” Then she turned and smiled a smile that was made less-than-friendly not only by the absence of a few very prominent and very important teeth, but also by a mischievous glint in her eye.
“Yep, almost there!” Theo said, chuckling uncomfortably. “Like I told you earlier – we do a lot of hiking. Pretty rare for us to get lost for more than an hour or two.” Of course, they had spent a lot more of their six or so hiking hours lost, but Pirate Lady didn’t need to know that. “But, anyways,” he said, grabbing Faith’s hand as they passed her, giving her a wide berth, “thanks for the warning. I’m sure you’ll be a huge help to some young – ”
“Ye’ll want to try again. They’ll get ye if ye go out now. They know right away the ones from E1.”
Theo’s heart began to race.
Nutty old bird, this one, he thought.
“Oh, okay!” He knew it was lame and made no kind of sense as a response, but her statement to him wasn’t exactly reasoned discourse either.
Pirate Lady shook her head, smiling again, lifting the cigarette, which, now lit, smelled sickly sweet, like the fresh vomit of a child who had eaten nothing but candy for the last week.
“I’ll see ye soon, then!”
They rode the wave of her cackles to the point where the shoe-hardened dirt of the trail met the pavement of the parking lot and then began to run, only looking back when they were past the first row of fading white lines.
“What a fucking nut!” Faith said, looking over her shoulder as they reached the car and she climbed into the passenger’s seat.
“You’re telling me. You think she lives there, under the old oak? I don’t think she moved all day.”
“I don’t know. All I know is, we are not hiking the Galaxy Trail again. And next time, if Faith says no to a trail, we do not hike that trail, ‘kay?”
He reached for the power knob on the radio, thinking that perhaps some tunes would help mellow him out and perhaps stifle the smart comment right behind his lips fighting to get out, and then the comment took a hike as the radio came on and he saw what was on the display.
“Huh,” he said, and flicked the “TUNE” knob to the right. “Huh,” he said again, more forcefully this time.
“What?” Faith asked, a hint of irritation creeping into her tone as she opened the glove box – the glovie as they apparently called it in this state – and reached for her true beloved, that great brain child of the late Steve Jobs. Nonetheless, she stopped, turning to look with him at the radio.
She squinted, eyebrows furrowing, and then one of them lifted in an expression that said, yeahhhhh, I don’t see it.
“Babe,” he said, “the radio station? Do you see what it’s set to?”
“Yeahhhh,” she said, dragging the word out, “so what? Surprised they have radio out
here in the williwags?”
He sighed.
“No, look at the number! It’s 90, even. Not 90.1 or 90.8, just 90. And check this out.” He turned the knob to the right and the numbers danced upward. He breezed through a few, stopping at each for her to see, and then settled at 94. “Look! All even numbers, no point anything. It’s supposed to be, like, 99.5 and 94.5 and 107.9 and all that, but it’s just even numbers, no periods.”
“Hmm,” she said, turning back to her phone, “weird.”
“Yeah,” he said and sighed.
They had a rule on hikes: no phones allowed (though, perhaps some kind of GPS wouldn’t be such a bad idea after this trip, he had begun to think after hour 3 of aimless wandering). They wanted not only to enjoy nature unperturbed, but each other as well; both of them worked remotely, and though they were both home together all day, they still rarely talked to or even saw each other throughout the course of a working day, and their hikes had become more than just a hobby; their hikes had become reconnection times, the times they would really, actually talk, unburdened by the exhaustion of the work week or by the temptation of simply getting lost in social media or really anything else non-work-related on their phones. The no-phone rule had worked wonders on their marriage and had bettered their hikes unspeakably; the only downside was the car ride after. Pretty much from the moment they got into the car to the moment they sat down to a meal, an iPhone 14, an anniversary gift that Theo often secretly regretted, became Faith’s new husband, and that post-hike car ride, however long, took on an unspoken, Bizarro version of their no-phone rule; instead of a no-phone hike, it was a no-Theo ride.
Theo sighed, preparing himself for a ride laden with the noisy and ever-changing
snippets of instagram reels flying by, and put the car in gear.
Maybe it’s some kind of weird practical joke. Maybe the teenagers of Times Falls, Massachusetts have a sophisticated sense of humor. And some intensely complicated electronics.
“Or maybe it was Pirate Lady,” he said under his breath as he pulled out of the parking lot, checking both ways again for any surprise speeders on the road.
“What the fuck?” Faith said.
Oh, you can still hear me? He smiled at the sarcastic thought but held it back; he was a slow learner, especially when it came to his relationship with his wife, but a slow learner was still a learner.
“Nothing honey, just thinking out loud,” he said.
“No, my phone.” Seeming to realize how rude that had been, she looked up at him. “Sorry babe. It’s just, my phone isn’t working.”
“Well, maybe it’s all the trees. We are kinda in the middle of nowhere. You’ll probably get service when we get back to civilization.”
“But it worked on the way over here and right before we left the car…” She said more to herself than to him.
“Hmm…” he said, frankly, not minding so much. Perhaps a phone-free vacation was exactly what they needed.
They pulled into the Teakwood Motel (which neither smelled like nor contained any verifiable trace of real teakwood) fifteen minutes later, though Faith didn’t notice until Theo tapped her arm.
“We’re here. I could use a little nap. Normally I can’t sleep – ”
“During the day,” she said, her voice dropping an octave and taking on the cadence of her mocking Theo voice, “but I’m so tired, I feel like I could – ”
“Sleep ‘till tomorrow,” they finished together and laughed as Theo hit the button to turn off the car. He got out walked up to their motel door, taking out his room card and his own phone simultaneously and pulling up the AllTrails app to rate Galaxy Trail (he was thinking something along the lines of 2 stars, pretty enough, but horribly maintained, not to mention the “guard service”, which was less than comforting…). He walked absentmindedly, keycard extended at the right height, mind already on shower and bed, when he heard the tiny click of the rectangular card reader handle reading his card.
“Maybe it was because of the storm,” he muttered under his breath, typing as he reached for the handle, “Or maybe – ”
Except, the door didn’t open.
He looked up for the first time and realized that the LED light above the handle was flashing red, not green as it should’ve been.
“Hey, what up there (they-uh), guy?” Faith said from behind him, trying (and miserably failing) at a Boston accent, “can’t wait a minute to post ya review or (oh-wuh) whatevah?”
“Key’s not working,” he said, putting his phone away and trying the card again.
Click. Flashing red light.
“What do you mean?” she asked, dropping the accent.
“I mean it’s acting like we’ve got the wrong card. Or room?” He stepped back and confirmed – “Nope, 217, that’s right. What the hell, man?”
“Let me try.”
Theo pushed down the frustration that reared its ugly head – do you really think I don’t know how to put a card against a rectangle – and handed her the card.
Faith stepped forward and tried.
Click. Flashing red light.
“Damn,” she said, disappointed.
“Damn,” he agreed. He sighed, watching his shower-nap (and who knows, maybe a little something else too; we are on vacation, after all) fantasy circle the drain. “Alright, let’s head to the office and see our old pal, Patrice.”
Faith groaned and Theo couldn’t help but laugh.
“What sweethaaaaaaaaht?” he said, taking on a nasally, smoke-clogged voice thickly laden with a Boston accent that was only slightly better than Faith’s, “if the Lawd doesn’t come back by the time we get they-uh, she’ll get us into ow-uh rooms quickah than you can say chowdah.”
“Stop!” Faith said, hitting his arm and stifling her own laughter.
Her laughter died when they saw the sign on the door: CLOSED 4 LUNCH BACK @ 1 GOD BLESS.
Theo put his face up to the glass, hands cupping on either side to block out the reflection of the sunlight. He could see the life-sized portrait of Jesus on the wall behind the counter and the MAGA hat balanced on top of the old-fashioned cash register’s moveable screen, could see the sign propped in front of it – I voted for TRUMP, don’t blame me!, and a new sign that she must’ve found and put up while they were on their hike reading, TRUMP/CARLSON (Carlson? He wondered briefly), but could not see the signer herself.
Theo sighed and stepped back, wiping the smudges he had left with his sleeve. He turned to Faith.
“Alright. Lunch then?”
Ten minutes later, they pulled into the Goldstar Diner.
“Hungry?” he asked, turning to her.
“Yeah, I’m starving. Or, should I say, stahhhhh – ”
She stopped mid-Massachusetts-accent-mock and stared, mouth still open in an “ahhhh”, at the windows of the diner.
“Wha – ” Theo said, turning to follow her gaze.
Every single window in the diner was filled with pale faces staring at them from eyes under which deep, dark bags hung. Theo’s breath caught in his throat and he leaned back in his seat, pulling his hand away from the START/STOP button as though it were scalding hot.
He blinked.
Now, he could still see people through the windows, but they were no longer looking at him; he could see an old man sitting alone at the barstool speaking animatedly with a waitress who looked to be somewhere in her forties, hair so bright red that it almost certainly had to be dyed, a father sitting in a booth pouring syrup over the pancakes of two young children sitting across from him, a young couple holding hands and staring swoonily across the table at each other; a picture-perfect American diner scene. Theo thought it could’ve been a Norman Rockwell painting hanging on the wall of their hotel.
All it’s missing is a MAGA hat on one of the patrons, he thought and smiled.
“- to the hotel, okay?” Faith was saying. He turned to her.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said, let’s just get back to the hotel. We can DoorDash some food there and then just wait for Patrice to get back and let us into our rooms. I don’t – ” She looked back up at the diner, where the snapshot of American life was still playing placidly out before them through the giant windows, “I’m not going in there. Something’s… off.”
Theo sighed, the image of the staring patrons already taking on the fuzzy sheen of a bad dream in his mind.
“I’m sure it was nothing, babe. I mean, it’s a small town, they’re probably not used to guests coming around in fancy rental cars.” He looked around the parking lot, seeing that the newest car in the lot probably rolled off the line around the time the first Bush was president. He gestured at the cars, turning back to Faith. “See? And then they realized how rude they were being and got back to their business. Just weird, small-town shit.”
Faith began to bite her nails and Theo took her hands gently in his.
“Love,” he said, then paused; “sweetie,” he continued, shuddering inwardly at this pet name which, to him, sounded like the name of a small, obnoxious dog, but which he knew was her favorite, “it’s only 12:15. If we go back to the hotel now, we’ll get there at 12:25, meaning 35 minutes of sitting in the car – probably more, actually, I think the Trump verdict is supposed to come out today and if he comes out guilty, Patrice may need a few extra minutes to recoup before helping anybody – ”
She laughed at that, and he went on.
“Plus, we’ll have already wasted all this time and gas driving here for no reason – ”
“Yeah, all twenty minutes of time and gas,” she said, but she was smiling at him, one eyebrow raised.
“Twenty minutes that could be spent in other, more pleasurable ways,” he responded, sliding his hand up her leg.
She batted it away, laughing again.
“Alright, fine, we’ll give it a try. But if they start acting weird or if I hear even the slightest hocking sound coming from the kitchen – ”
Theo laughed.
“We’re gone like Enron.”
They were greeted by an empty hostess stand and what seemed to be purposeful ignorance from the sparse staff who milled about, hands full of platters of fried food.
“Should we just… seat ourselves?” Theo murmured to Faith after two minutes of standing there and feeling foolish. She pointed to the sign hanging from the station, which read, “PLEASE WAIT FOR SEATING”. Theo sighed and tried to catch the eye of a passing waitress, to no avail.
“What the hell, man?” Theo said, his voice rising slightly above a murmur now.
Just then, the waitress with the bright red hair passed by with a plate of eggs benedict in one hand and a syrup dispenser in the other. Theo stepped forward, appeasing smile returning, hand outstretched.
“Excuse me, we would just like – ”
She jerked back as though his hand were disease incarnate and dropped everything in her own.
“Wow, I’m so sorry! I didn’t – here, let me – ”
Theo stooped towards the dropped items, the only sound in the place his sneakers squeaking on the worn, retro-checkered flooring; only, as he reached for the syrup jar, which had begun to leak its sticky contents onto the floor in thick, brown rivulets, he heard a low mewling sound, like a cat growling in the back of its throat just before the real hissing broke out.
Theo froze, hand inches away from the container, heart stopped in his chest. He looked up slowly and saw the red-haired waitress standing a few feet back, staring at him, her huge eyes filled with standing tears. Her jaw was set, the veins in her neck standing out like badly-placed wires on a stadium floor, and Theo realized the sound was coming from her.
She murmured something as he stared up at her, still unable to move.
“I – I’m sorry?” he asked, hand still stretched out towards the syrup.
“GET OUUUUUUT!” she screamed, and his paralysis broke as she leapt forward, hands stretched out in clenched claws. “GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT!”
The patrons and other waitresses began to join in as Theo stumbled back against the door, sending the bell hung above it into maddeningly merry fits of jingles. Faith grabbed his arm as the chorus of hostile voices urged them away.
“Get OUT!”
“Keep moving!”
“This is not your place!”
“We don’t – ”
They stumbled out into the sunshine and cleared the staircase in one leap, running towards their rental. They got in and Theo, feeling like a guy in a B-horror movie, reached for the lock button which he could not, at first, find. Finally, after an eternal second of searching, he found it and heard the locks chunk down.
But it’s too late, they’re already here, already in the car, already have their hands around our throats, ready to drag us back in and –
And in the heightened panic of his anxious imaginings, he almost could feel their hands closing slowly around his –
“Theo, DRIVE!” Faith shouted.
He looked up and saw –
Nothing. The scene in the diner’s window was back to Rockwell; kids eating pancakes, adults having egg breakfasts, waitresses chatting up old folks. No creepy stares, no screaming ladies; just your prototypical diner.
“Theo, fucking GO!”
Theo started the car and threw it in reverse, peeling out as he backed away from the picture windows of the Goldstar Diner.
He looked up in his rearview as he pulled out onto the street and saw that they were all standing in the window again and his mind flashed back to something he had read in high school English, some Shirley Jackson book, the cover of which was a black and white portrait of a group of people standing and staring directly into the fourth wall, their eyes circled by big, black, raccoon-like patches of darkness, an angry, knowing expression in their eyes.
Then he blinked, and they were gone again.
They got back to the motel in about 6 minutes and now the CLOSED 4 LUNCH sign was gone from the office door.
“Thank God,” Theo muttered, reaching for the car door handle. “You can stay here, I’m just gonna grab a new card.”
She grabbed his arm and he stooped back in to look at her.
“Just – just be careful, okay?” she pleaded.
“Will do, babe,” Theo said and opened the door, sparking a short but intense battle between the muggy Massachusetts air and the cool wind of the car’s AC. His feet ground the gravel pieces in a comforting crunch as he made his way to the office.
As he approached, he could see through the squares of glass a silhouette sitting behind the desk. Patrice had taken up her perch, hopefully ready to serve up a working room key along with her political –
Only, he realized as soon as his hand grasped the sun-warmed doorknob that it wasn’t Patrice behind the counter. It was –
“Pirate Lady?” he muttered, peering through the window into the dark office. He leaned in, trying to shield some of the sun from the glass so he could see through, when he heard the car door open behind him. He whipped his head around, the noise shocking him out of his concentration, and saw that Faith was standing in the open door, her hand a visor over her eyes.
“Everything ok? Is she in there?”
“Yep, everything’s fine! Was just trying to remember our room number before I go in.”
She stood, staring at him a moment longer.
“Honey, it’s fine. Get back in the car, I’ll be out in a jiff,” he said before she could tell him to get back to the car, “I – ”’
BOOOOM!!
The explosion came from behind him. Theo dropped down to all fours, not feeling the sting of the small pebbles against his hands or shins, his mind desperately trying to make sense of the seeming disintegration of the world as he knew it. There was a high-pitched ringing in his ears, and as it began to fade, he could hear two things, neither of which heartened him very much.
The first was his wife screaming; “THEO RUN!!! GET BACK TO THE CAR NOW SHE’S GOT A – ”
The second were the footsteps coming from behind the door, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked.
Theo scrambled in a kind of runner’s start pose and took off like a shot towards the still-running car. Faith was still standing and he made gestures to her to get back in, not wanting to waste the precious breath it would take to shout. Thankfully, she got the hint and jumped in just before he reached the car. He had just swung the door open when there was another of those cataclysmic BOOMs and he hit the deck, slamming the side of his head on the steering wheel.
He heard the woman curse behind him and reload. He did a quick bodily assessment and, finding that she had missed, pulled himself into his seat, slammed the door, and threw the car into gear, not even bothering to look behind him. There was a crunching of gravel, the squeak of the car’s chassis rocking back, and then his wife was screaming again.
“GO GO GO SHE’S AIMING AGAIN SHE’S – ”
And then the windshield became a mess of broken glass and he peeled out onto the empty street, watching in the mirror as the woman, who he could now see was not Pirate Lady at all, but was indeed their old pal, Patrice, stood shaking her fist and screaming at them.
“Honey, are you okay? Are you – ”
He turned and saw that his wife was covered in blood, eyes closed.
His heart stopped in his chest and his vision doubled. He was on the verge of passing out when her eyes fluttered open and she began to scream.
Oh, thank God, Theo thought, realizing just as the words flashed across his mind that they were strange ones for his current situation. But at least she’s not dead.
He checked to make sure they hadn’t been followed and pulled over to the side of the road.
“Baby! Faith, are you okay? Are you hurt?”
She was hyperventilating and reaching up with shaking hands for her forehead, where a piece of glass was protruding like a grotesque halloween costume.
“Oooh,” he said before he could stop himself.
“What? What, is it bad? Am I gonna die, Theo? Am I gonna die am I gonna – ”
“No, no, sweetheart, everything is ok, it’s just a little…” He reached gingerly up for the glass, then paused, unsure if he should pull it out.
“What is it? Did she shoot me? Did she get me, Theo?”
“No, baby, just a – a little piece of glass from the windshield got stuck. It’s gonna be okay, I’ll take it out.” A thought came to him. “Do we have the med kit in the trunk?”
She brightened some.
“Yes! Of course, we always have it on hikes!”
He leapt out of the vehicle and towards the trunk before she even finished her sentence.
“Wait!” Faith screamed, reaching for him. “What if she’s – ”
A spray of bullets greeted him as his head cleared the top of the car and then thought was no more, he was dead he was –
“Fine,” he said to himself, shaking his head. “I’m fine.” The road was abandoned, no sign of any other drivers. Theo took a deep breath as he looked around, taking in the whole scene and further assuring himself. The vision had been so real, he could almost feel the sting of the cheap buckshot digging into his forehead. He walked around to the trunk. He clicked the button and heard the soft thunk of the actuator disengaging the latch. There, next to the probably sparse medkit supplied by the rental company, was their custom-made hiking medkit. He grabbed it, slammed the trunk, and jogged back around to the front. Faith was looking expectantly up at him and he unzipped the case and rifled through its contents.
“Okay, let’s see,” he dug through, putting a few things into the cupholder until he had gotten everything he felt he needed. Then, he straightened and held Faith’s shoulders.
“Listen, babe. This first part is going to hurt. Probably pretty badly. The second isn’t going to feel great either.” She began to bite her lower lip and her hand came up for nail-biting, but he grabbed it gently, pulling it towards his own mouth for a kiss. “But, it’s what we need to do and it’s going to feel much better in the end, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, looking down at the pile in the cupholder. He dropped her hand and
took her chin, guiding her face up so that it was facing his own.
“Okay?” He asked again, smiling gently.
“Okay,” she said a little more firmly this time.
“Okay,” he said, more to himself than to her. “Here we go.”
He grabbed the pair of tweezers and put them on the center console, then dug down and found the antibacterial ointment, a sterile pad, a clean hand towel, and the ace bandage roll.
“Now, I’m going to pull out the glass. There’s going to be some blood and I want you to get as much as you can with this,” he said, holding up the hand towel. “Once it begins to slow a little, I’ll put some of the antibacterial ointment on it and then you’ll hold this to it,” he held up the sterile pad, “and then I’ll wrap the ace bandage around your head to keep it in place. Ready?”
“Ready.” She said in a shaking voice.
He reached up with the tweezers, not giving himself time for psych-outs or doubt, and pulled the glass out. Just before she began to scream, he heard a fleshy pulling sound that turned his guts to goop and he struggled to hold back the bile that was threatening to shoot out of his mouth. Then she screamed, bringing him back into himself, and he shoved her hand holding the towel up towards her face.
“Block it! With this!”
She did so, her screams quieting some, and he opened the window enough to throw the glass out.
As her screams faded to weeping and then to whimpers, he prepared the sterile pad covering it with antibacterial ointment, and waited a few more seconds.
“Okay,” he said, prepping himself as much as he was her, “Let’s see it.”
They had a small suture kit in the med bag as well, but he had never even read the instructions on how to do such a thing, let alone actually used anything like it before. He gritted
his teeth and squeezed his hands into fists as she lifted the towel. His heart dropped as he saw the wound. The bleeding had slowed significantly, but there was no question that it would need more than his level of skill to set it healing right.
He let out a long, slow breath between clenched teeth.
“Okay, so the bleeding has slowed. That’s good.” She nodded expectantly at him, waiting for the next part. “But, you will definitely need stitches or something. The gash is pretty big and I’m worried it will start to bleed again if we don’t.” She began to moan low in her throat. “Listen, it’s gonna be ok, baby, we’ve got a mini suture kit here and I can patch it up until we get ourselves to a hospital – ”
“We are NOT going to a hospital, Theo. Not here.”
“Faith, I understand your concern but – ”
“We ARE NOT going to a HOSPITAL, THEO!” She punctuated each word with a closed fist on the dash in front of her and he sat back, frightened by her intensity. He put his hands up in a gesture of peace.
“Okay, okay. Give me a minute to figure this thing out then.”
He took out the suture kit and opened it up. There was a small, folded leaflet explaining the basics with black and white cartoons demonstrating what the words above told, and below it, some mini scissors, a couple pairs of different-sized tweezers, and a roll of black twine-stuff like a thick, black dental floss which ended on each side in what looked like a fishing hook.
He blew air through his teeth once again in a half-whistle as a sweat broke out on his forehead. He reached over to turn the AC up and grabbed his phone, pulling up Google, hoping for clearer instructions.
He was greeted at first with the comforting normalcy of the multi-colored logo, but as soon as he clicked on the search bar, he was stopped by a pop-up message reading, “YOU
ARE OFFLINE”.
He cursed through clenched teeth and refreshed several times, to no avail.
Ok. Back to the 70’s it is then, he thought and picked up the folded piece of paper. He read through the instructions a few times, familiarizing himself with the various instruments and their roles in the suturing process, and then picked up the forceps and grabbed the threaded hook with them.
“You – you don’t wanna practice first on… that thing?” She pointed to the skin-colored, rubbery practice pad in the kit.
“I think we’d better get that thing stitched up asap. We only have so much suture and it opens up every time you move your face.”
She nodded.
“Okay.”
He brought the needle and tweezers up to her face and, per the instructions, grabbed the skin into which he was going to suture through. Then, uttering a brief prayer to a God with whom he had not been on speaking terms in years, he slid the needle through the skin of her forehead.
She drew in a sharp breath, involuntarily drawing back from him.
“Fuck!” he cried, moving with her. Thankfully, the needle stayed in place, and though her skin was pulled some, it didn’t rip off. “You gotta stay still baby. I know it hurts and it’s hard, but it’s going to be a lot worse if you don’t stay still.”
“I know, I know, I didn’t mean to move, it just – ” she reached up and wiped a tear from her eye, the needle above the right one still hanging there like a grotesque fishing accident. “Sorry. Go ahead, I’ll stay still.”
He looked at her, at her stolid upper lip, at the way she brushed the tears away not like a damsel in a cheap harlequin with great drama and fanfare, but quickly and almost
absentmindedly, and a deep wave of love for her crashing over him.
“Maybe you could talk to me and that would help. Tell me a story from your childhood, or our first date or something like that.”
“Okay, yeah, maybe that’ll help.” Her voice was unsure though, and he worried for the next few minutes. Theo leaned forward, raising up the tweezers to grab the side into which the needle was about to go when she spoke again.
“I saw her.”
His blood turned to ice in his veins and he froze, tweezers inches away from the cut.
“Saw who?”
“You know, Theo. Pirate Lady. She was standing in the window of the diner when we were leaving behind all those creepy, staring people and then she looked out at me from one of the rooms at the motel while you were backing up right before the lady shot the windshield. She’s been… following us, somehow.”
With great effort, he finished the loop, grabbing the flesh on the top part of the cut and guiding the needle through. She winced at this, but only slightly.
“I – ” He paused, considered lying to her, telling her that such things were not possible, that it was merely a stress reaction to a day that had gone from bad to hell in the span of only a few short hours, but quickly decided that this was not the time to live out a crappy horror movie in which the husband was “tough” and “rational” until he was killed by the monster. “I saw her too,” he said slowly as he prepped the next spot, “at the motel, when I looked in the office window right before you yelled to me. She was sitting at the desk. That’s why – that’s why I froze like that.”
He took a minute to examine his work and found that it was not half-bad. He nodded and went on.
“What the hell is going on here, Theo? Did she drug us? Did we, like, leave the woods at a different place or something?”
“I don’t think she drugged us… We didn’t take anything from her.”
“No, but I know I definitely breathed in some of that crap she was smoking.”
“Sure, but definitely not enough to get high. Plus, how would we be sharing the same hallucination?”
She thought about this, started to nod, remembered the operation going on her forehead, and settled on a thoughtful, “Hmm. Good point.”
“And we definitely couldn’t have come out in a different place” he said, speaking slowly as he made the next suture, “after all, we found the car, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, but the radio thing – ”
“Yeah, the radio thing was weird, but, like, your phone was there, right? And our med kit in the back – ”
“So how was the radio changed then? And why aren’t our phones working?”
He sighed.
“I don’t know. There is obviously something weird going on here. Maybe it’s the end of the world.”
He meant it as a joke, but it felt too real, so he quickly grabbed the flesh just below the last untouched part of her cut and brought the needle up for the last suture. “Maybe we need to go back. You know, talk to this lady. See if she has some kind of explanation for – ”
But before he could finish his thought and before she could argue, they heard a police siren in the distance, followed closely by another, and another. They looked at each other, panic rising once again.
“Maybe we ought to get out of here… If the cops are anything like everyone else in this
town,” he said.
“Let’s go.”
He pulled off the side of the road and headed down the street, back towards the entrance of the Galaxy Trail.
He pulled into the parking lot without really even thinking about it, just somehow knowing intuitively it was the right place to go, the natural next step.
“There!” Faith yelled, pointing ahead. “Look, she’s there! In the same place as before!”
He looked and saw that she was right; only –
“Is she… She’s standing up!”
He pushed the pedal further, going much too fast for the parking lot, but needing to keep his eyes on the old woman, needing to see where she went.
“Quick, Theo, she’s going down the path!”
He saw that she was indeed going down the path, taking a glance back now and then.
“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath, pushing just a bit further and then braking hard upon reaching the end of the lot. He leapt from the vehicle before it even settled and began to run down the path towards her.
“Hey!” he yelled, hand outstretched, “Hey, wait a minute!”
He heard the thumping footsteps of his wife behind him and picked up the pace. “Hey!”
But she was so far down, so far into the path –
How in the hell could she have moved that fast, she’s so old, how could she –
He pushed harder, and was almost surprised when Faith pulled up alongside him.
“Wait!” she began to cry, except the old lady was gone, tucked away into the vastness of the forest. They slowed to a jog and then a walk, and then they stopped completely, Theo with
his hands on his knees, gasping for breath, Faith slightly stooped, head tipped forward looking for the woman. “Wait,” she gasped to the empty woods before them.
They went forward for another half-hour after that, not really expecting to find her, but needing to do something, needing to go somewhere, needing simply to keep moving, and then Theo stopped, taking in his surroundings for the first time.
The woods had changed; it was a subtle change, but they were nonetheless different. The trees were the same tall, rough sentients standing at strict attention on both sides of the foot-beaten path before them, the ground was the same packed dirt, but the plant life on either side was different; there were colors in the leaves there that he had never seen before in nature; rich purples, majestic golds, shiny, bloodred hues that he had only seen in movies about islands where dinosaurs still walked and giant apes ruled. He walked further, listening to the sounds; here was a squawk similar to that of a bird, followed by a strange trilling that rose and fell several times before ending in a gargle that sounded like a person choking thickly on something; there was a screech like the sound that used to come from his grandparent’s farmhouse on slaughter day; there was a –
“AHHH!”
Faith screamed from somewhere behind him and he turned, head whipping back in forth in search of her. At first, he didn’t see her and his internal panic went from a pulsing maroon to bright red flashes, but then he saw that she was off to the side of the trail, leaning against one of the oaks.
“I – ” she began, and then began to sway.
“Faith!” he shouted and ran forward. She fell to the pine-covered carpet of the forest floor, one arm spread to the side, the other falling on top of her chest. “Oh, shit, Faith!” he said,
dropping to one knee beside her, “Faith, what – ” and then he heard a wicked hissing and he turned and saw the creature which had bitten her.
Its head had the flat, arrow shape of a snake’s, and its long body was covered in the same scales, but there were thick patches of wiry hair poking up in between those scales and there were six legs spread out along its revolting side.
“Dear God,” he whispered under his breath as he took the thing in.
It reared up in response to his voice, its head rising even further on its long neck and baring a row of fangs sharp as needles, behind which Theo could see another.
Its hiss grew in volume but dropped in pitch, turning into something of a growl, and Theo slid his hand slowly down his thigh, reaching for the pocket about midway down. The creature continued to expand and then suddenly grew rigid.
After an endless second, the snake-thing leapt forward quick as lightning, its jaw opening at an unimaginable angle, its doubled row of teeth seeming to grow as it drew nearer, and just as it was about to latch onto Theo’s throat, he pulled out his knife and plunged it into the soft patch of skin under the things first arm. It let out a high, piercing scream that seemed to double in his ears and mind, and he twisted the knife, making a horrid squelch. He shoved the knife as deeply as it could go, other hand holding the neck of the thing, keeping those snapping teeth back as far as he could as he plunged the knife over and over into the monster that had bitten his wife.
After twenty seconds or so, the thing finally stopped struggling and he tossed its limp body to the side, then scrambled over to where his wife lay at the base of the tree.
“Faith,” he said in a harsh whisper, “Faith, are you okay? Are you – ”
He looked down and saw the jagged tears forming a rough oval on her ankle and hissed a sharp breath at the sight.
“Holy shit,” he muttered and her eyes fluttered open.
“Theo?” She said, her eyes hazy. “Theo, where – ” And then a crazed clarity came to her eyes and she sat up. “Holy shit, Theo, we’ve gotta get out of here, we’ve got – ”
“Wait, baby, wait.”
She stilled in his grasp, but her eyes still shot from side to side.
“Faith. Faith, look at me.”
Her eyes settled on his, then off, and then, as he squeezed her shoulder, settled back on his in a tentative stare.
“Faith, listen to me. You’ve been bitten by a – well, by some kind of… snake, I think. I don’t know if it’s venomous or not – I guess the fact that you can stand and walk may be a good sign, but sometimes these things move slowly through the bloodstream – but we need to get you back out and to a hospital.”
She began to protest, but he put up his hand.
“I know, but we don’t have any other choice. If they’re as crazy as the diner or motel people, then we’ll just have to steal what we need, but regardless, we don’t know what we’re dealing with here, and we need to get the hell out of these woods.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” he said, rising to his feet and reaching out to her.
She got up on unsteady feet, holding onto his arm as she went. She winced a little at first, but after shifting her weight back and forth, nodded, and said, “I can walk.”
Theo looked at her, then up at the sky, which was beginning, somehow to grow dark (it was just 12 o clock, how the hell is it already getting dark?!), and then back at her.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, already walking back the way they had come. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
It was full dark when the whistling began again.
It had been only ten minutes since Faith had been bitten, but the sun had run its course like a lover after their betrothed and was hidden away neatly in the breasts of the treeline, leaving Theo and Faith limping along without any kind of light to guide their path.
They were about to stop and rest – Faith was getting a bit woozy – when they heard the same eerie whistle as before, the four notes ringing out a diminished chord in a dark, looping pattern.
Theo ran forward a few feet – the whistling, the damn whistling, was so close, and was that a shadow just ahead there? Was it the – and then tripped over a root.
“Dammit! Where the fuck are you, you old bitch?! Show yourself!”
He was met only with the whistle echoing against the otherwise-still forest.
“Ahhhhhh!” he screamed, pounding with his fists on the ground. He leapt to his feet, running back to where his wife stood. He grabbed her hand and began to run forward again.
“Let’s go, we’re getting out of this fucking forest! I saw her, she’s just ahead, the whistle is so close!”
“Theo, I’m – I’m not feeling so good, maybe we should just – ”
But he ran on, squeezing her hand tighter, pulling on.
“We’re almost there, Faith, I can feel it!”
His words came out in crazed half-scream half-gasps and Faith felt fear – not only of their situation, but now of him too – begin to blossom in the weeds of pain that were slowly taking over her body, sprouting from her flaming ankle.
“Theo, I – ”
“There!” Theo shouted suddenly, pointing straight ahead, “There it is! Look, her stool is
still there! The old bitch herself is gone, but not her stool!” He laughed and ran on, losing his grip on Faith’s hand without noticing.
“Theo! Theo, wait!” Her voice was getting mushy, even to her own ears, and she ran as well as she could, leg now reaching the size of a tire on a kid’s wagon, pain beginning to pulse with each heartbeat, radiating in red waves up from the two dots on her ankle. With each step of her infected foot, colorful waves splashed across her vision, as though she were just below the surface of a pool in which children were tossing colorful pieces of chalk. “Theo,” she said again, and then collapsed.
Theo ran on, taking the last few feet of the trail in huge, leaping steps, only needing to see the end of it, to see their car, to tune through the normal radio stations, the normal fucking 101.1s and 99.5s and the –
But there was no Nissan, because there were no cars in the parking lot, because there was no parking lot at all. Where they had, approximately a million years ago, parked their Avis rental, there was instead absolutely nothing.
Theo stood slack-jawed at the edge of a snow-covered cliff, looking into a dark ravine, the bottom of which he could not see.
There was no noise, other than the wind; no forest noises behind him, no street noises ahead, not even the whistle of the witch lady to break the silence; there was only the wind, dancing freely across the floor of nothingness before him, ferrying flakes of freezing-cold snow in lackadaisical circles all around.
He stood looking, even as his fingers began to grow white, and then blue, and then purple. He stood listening, even as his ears became cold, and then numb, and then as they began to burn with the onset of hypothermia. He didn’t even realize he had fallen until a face came directly into his line of vision. Had he the strength, he would have screamed, but as it was,
he only wheezed, a single tear drop squeezing out of his left eye and freezing halfway down his cheek. It was joined by another, as he realized it was Faith. Her eyes were now only tiny slits in the center of a red, swollen mess of flesh, but he looked up and saw the still-fresh slash across her forehead, now stretched and warbled like the tattoo of a man who has, since getting it, gained 50 pounds, and he knew it was her.
“Faaah…” he said, trying with all his might to move his hand toward her. He could not feel it, but in the shrinking tunnel of his vision, he saw no hand. “Faaah… I… suh…” Darkness came and what was left of his mind heaved a deep sigh of relief, but then the bloated, poisoned face of his wife was before him again.
“Fahh… I sahhee…”
Her mouth twitched and a jolt of fear crossed his dying heart as something crept into his field of vision; but it was only his hand. It snaked up and rested on Faith’s cheek.
“Fahh…” He said, and then the darkness came, and this time, it did not leave.
EPILOGUE
She sat at the edge of the forest, on a stool that was older than everyone who passed it, rolling ground-up sweetgrass into papers that had begun to yellow dozens of years ago, but which never shriveled or ran out. How They pulled such a trick, she did not know, but she was grateful for it; she asked not, she complained not, and she was thus disciplined not.
She sat and waited for the next ones, waited to make her pronouncements, give her warnings, and receive almost exclusively mock and ridicule; if not open, then dancing only just beyond the edge of their lips, the scent of it, the slime of it veiled thinly behind the hazy veneer of their sarcastic thanks and well, I think we’ll give ‘er a try anyway’s.
She was under no illusion. She knew they wouldn’t listen. In fact, in her innumerable – at
least, to her; she is sure They knew exactly how long she had manned this station, for They knew all – years of warnings, only three had turned back: one mousey young man who jumped merely at the sight of her sitting there and one couple who looked like they had been deep into the bottle the night before and were merely looking for an excuse not to go. But of course, those three did not turn back because they believed her; no, they would come back. Maybe in a month, maybe in a year, maybe only in a couple days, and by then, perhaps, the trail would even be safe, the storm which stirred up those… sensitive places… now long gone, having taken its preternatural powers along with it.
But this fact did not sadden her, or excite her, or make her feel really any particular way. Maybe the sweetgrass had something to do with it, or maybe it was her years of service to The Betters; but either way, Eldra Maethers, also known as Pirate Lady, also known as The Old Bitch, also known as Crazy Trail Lady (all by people who had now passed on to The Otherlands) cared not whether they listened and lived another pitiful 50 years on this precious earth of theirs or whether they entered and died in what, by one of their timepieces (or by one of their pocket-screens) was only minutes but which felt to them like days; she only cared that she had a debt to pay and a well from which to pay it, and she intended to do so until her well of time ran dry and she herself passed on to whatever lay ahead for servants of The Betters.
She had just gotten her cigarette rolled when she heard a distant squeak followed by a slam, followed by another, then another, then another.
Large group this time, she thought casually.
A minute later, two men came into view with three children in tow. Her heart sank some.
Not children, she thought, no, no no, not children.
It was rare that people brought children to the Galaxy Trail – it had quite a reputation as a difficult trail from the chatter she had heard from incoming hikers – but once in a great while,
whether it be due to hubris, lack of care, or simple selfishness, adults did bring young children to the Galaxy Trail, and such were the only times Eldra felt anything than he calm thrum of destiny.
But, a job was a job, and so she lit her cigarette, put it in her mouth and prepared for what was basically going to be a conversation with a particularly animated wall.
“Aye, there. Ye’ll not want to enter the woods today. Quite a storm yesterday, t’was. The trail’s not apt to be safe. Such storms stir up the rabbit holes on these’ere trail. Somethin about the stars, when they align just so over the patch o’woods thar.”
The taller of the two men nodded and smiled at her, the same smile she had received countless times from innumerable others.
“You know, I think we’ll take our chances.”
She looked down at the little boy holding his hand, who was just beginning to hide behind the man’s leg and look back at her with tears in his eyes. She thought briefly then about what might happen if she just stopped them – if she cast a hypnosis and sent them on their way or physically blocked the way or simply chased them off with the knife she kept tucked into the back of her waistband – but cast such thoughts aside, wrenching her eyes with an effort from the little boy and putting them back on his careless father.
“Ye’ll not come out in the same place. Ye won’t find yer way back, I’ll tell ye now.”
It was more than she can ever remember saying to visitors at the gate; perhaps it was the child or perhaps she was getting old, but suddenly she hated this position, hated this damn trail, even hated, deep in her heart of hearts, the Betters for placing her here.
They began to edge around her like they always did, giving her a wide berth, keeping an eye on her while she was still close enough to give chase.
“Well, thanks anyway for the warning! We’ll see you soon!” And then, when they thought
they were far enough; “hopefully fucking not,” followed by pales of giggling, carefree laughter.
Eldra sighed and waited.
It was only three E1 minutes until the children began to scream; the adults joined in on four; there was silence at 5.
THE END
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About
Josiah Furcinitti has been in the business of stories for a long time.
He worked in a small, local bookstore as a clerk and stocker for a number of years, which not only fanned the fire of his love of reading, but also enabled him to spend way too much money buying and reading all the newest and best books as they came out.
After moving to the South Shore of MA, where he now lives with his wife, he became a locksmith, a job in which he has a front row seat to the most interesting characters the area has to offer; you don’t really know someone until you’ve seen them lose all of their most important keys.
He finished his first novel in October of 2023 and is currently seeking representation for it. In the meantime, he has written over a dozen short stories and is working on his next novel!
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