I looked up every time the bell chimed at the diner’s front door, my stomach tensing and then dropping when it was just some stranger coming in or heading back out after a greasy hamburger or a milkshake. I was nibbling at a plate of cold fries, checking my phone every few minutes, wondering if she was going to show up at all. It was already after two. Less than eight hours left, and I didn’t know who to call if this didn’t work.
In fact, the only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to die.
Sighing, I stuffed the phone back into my pocket. Either way, I needed to stop wasting time waiting for…Wait, there she was. Thirty minutes late, but that was okay. There was still time.
Ella met my eyes and headed over, her smile awkward but friendly as she sat down in the booth across from me. Setting her bag down, she rolled her eyes as she shook her head. “Sorry, Travis. I know I’m like super late. Fucking work, you know?” She glanced around for the waitress. “I ate something earlier, but I wouldn’t mind a milkshake or something I guess.”
She caught the attention of the woman at the counter and waved her over. After ordering a strawberry milkshake and onion rings, heading to the bathroom, and then checking her phone, Ella let out a long sigh and grinned at me. “Okay, so hi.”
I smiled awkwardly at her. “Um, hi. How’re you?” I gestured at her. “You um, look good. Look happy.” It wasn’t a lie. She’d been beautiful when my brother Bryan had dated her, and fuck if she wasn’t even better looking now. Beautiful and yeah, fucking happy.
She blushed prettily and nodded. “Yeah, yeah I guess so.” Her eyes widened slightly. “I mean, things are still hard. I…I think about Bryan every day, of course. I just…I’ve been trying to focus on me, you know? Doing work on getting past the hard stuff I’ve…that we’ve been through.” Ella nodded to the waitress as the milkshake and onion rings arrived. She sipped at it for a minute with her eyes down before glancing back up at me. “What about you? How’re you doing?”
“I’m okay. In my last year at Uni. Been planning on going into grad school in the fall. Not here…east coast probably.”
She smiled again. “That’s so cool! Look at you. I’m jealous. It’ll do you good to get away from here. Too many painful memories.”
I felt my face growing warm and I tried to keep the anger out of my voice. “What about you? I’d have thought it would be too hard for you to stay around here too. Did you ever move?”
Ella shifted uncomfortably as she bit into an onion ring. “No, not yet. The house is rent-controlled from when my gran lived there, you know? And it’s so close to work.”
I fought the urge to scream in her face, And Bryan killed himself in your bathroom.
Instead, I forced a smile as I nodded. “Sure, yeah. That’s important.”
She seemed to relax a little, but I could tell she was getting antsy. She wanted to get rid of whatever guilt had motivated her to come and get out of there. Get back to her beautiful, happy life. “So Trav, what’s up? You said there was something you needed to talk to me about?” She frowned slightly. “Is it something about Bryan?”
I shook my head. “No, not exactly. It was about something that happened a couple of nights ago. When I was headed home from school. It’s going to sound weird at first, but I want to tell you about it. Make you understand.” Thinking, I reached out and touched her hand. “Okay?”
She started to pull back, but stopped herself. Giving me an uncertain smile, she nodded. “Yeah, tell me.”
So I did.
I drive back home every couple of months. I visit Mom at the home—she never knows I’m there I don’t think, or at least not that it’s me, but I know, and that’s what matters. I go to the house to sleep for a night or two—sometimes less if Dad is actually there, though he’s usually at work or out drunk or both.
Going and coming, I always take the same route. Backroads until I get to Jessica’s Resolve, then the highway all the way until the edge of town. It’s a boring way to go, but quiet and peaceful. You can go half an hour without seeing another car some nights, especially when the weather’s bad.
This weekend, the rain was terrible all the way down, and I didn’t leave my apartment until after eight. I could barely see half the time—I just kept an eye on the white fog lines and relied on my memory when I needed to slow down or make a turn. I didn’t even see the hitchhiker until I was almost past him.
I know what you’re thinking. You shouldn’t pick up a hitchhiker, especially with how people are nowadays. And you’re right. Mom and Bryan always told me that, and the couple of times I’ve seen one, I’ve always just kept on going.
But I…I guess I’ve changed some in the last couple of years. Changed a lot, really. I don’t want to be scared like Bryan was…no, it’s true, he was. And I don’t want to be anything like my father. So I try to help people when I can. Take a chance on people being good, and accepting it when I see they’re not. Stop trying to dress things up, right? That’s what got Mom in that home as much as what…as what happened to her. She could never accept things as they were, and it…well, anyway, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that when I saw that guy walking along with his thumb out in the pouring rain, I felt bad and decided to take a chance. I stopped the car and let him in.
He seemed nice enough, if a bit strange. He had long, black hair and a thick beard, and between them were eyes so deep-set I could barely see them at all in the lights of the car. And he was wet and a bit smelly, sure, but I figured he’d been out in the storm for quite awhile.
Still, he didn’t seem crazy or dangerous, just grateful for the ride. When he got in, he wiped his hand on his grey overcoat and offered it to me. Told me his name was Scott Czern and he was happy for however far I wanted to take him down the road. I told him I could take him as far as Jessica’s Resolve, and that seemed to suit him just fine.
We rode for miles in silence after that. I was nervous, sure, but I was also proud of myself for helping him out. Another couple of hours and I could drop him off, and if he wanted to spend that time in silence, that was okay with me.
That, of course, is when he began to talk.
“It’s hard to get a ride these days. So many people are afraid, and those that aren’t…well, they often bear watching, no?” He gave a deep, throaty chuckle as he nudged me in the side unexpectedly. I jumped a little, but tried not to let it show. Instead I just laughed at his joke and kept my eyes on the road. His voice was odd. Rough and smoky, maybe? And older than he had looked when he first got in.
I glanced over at him. “Yeah, I guess so. But I’ll promise not to murder you if you promise not to murder me, okay?” I gave him a glancing smile, but he didn’t respond, just staring ahead at the road as though he hadn’t heard me. Looking forward again, I saw my knuckles whitening on the wheel. He just wasn’t paying attention or was trying to fuck with me. And I was the one driving, right? If he got too weird, I’d just drop him off early.
“Do you pick up strangers often?”
I flinched slightly as I pulled myself from my thoughts. “Um, no. This is the first time. Normally I wouldn’t, but I…I guess I felt bad not stopping with it raining like this, right?”
Another throaty chuckle from the shadows beside me. “Yes. It would be bad luck to be so unkind.”
Deciding he must want to talk, I offered, “So what about you? Do you hitchhike much?”
I heard a soft crackling sound like he was chewing on something, though I hadn’t seen any motion out of the corner of my eye. “Oh yes. I go where others take me quite often.” He raised his hand, seesawing it back and forth like the deck of a rocking ship. “I’m like a hornbeam seed, rolling this way and that, until I find a bit of fertile soil.”
I glanced at the clock. It was after nine. I should be over halfway, but with the weather, everything was taking twice as long. I thought again about making an excuse for letting him out early. It wasn’t that he was doing anything wrong, not really, but I still felt myself growing more nervous the longer he was in the car. Still, I was better off just sucking it up and dropping him off where I’d said I would. Less likely to piss him off or come across as a jerk, and really, what was the…
“I think I’ve found that with you, Travis.” I saw him idly scratching at his forearm through the coat, his face hard and unreadable as he stared out at the road ahead of us. “I think that’s just what I’ve found. You stink of it, you know.”
I jerked slightly at his words. “What? I stink? Um, I don’t know what…”
“The blood and the anger. The death. I can smell it coming off you. It’s delicious.”
I took my foot off the gas as I clenched my teeth. Okay, so this guy was a fucking nutjob. Time to get rid of him, rude or not.
“Don’t do that, boy. Not unless you want me to spill your guts where you sit.”
I felt pressure on my stomach and looked down to see a small crescent moon blade gleaming green in the ambient light of the radio. Shuddering, I put my foot back on the gas. “Look, I…just tell me what you want. If you want me to ride you wherever, I will. Just please don’t…” The blade dug into my stomach slightly and I sucked it in with a shaky breath.
“No begging. We just have to play this out, one way or the other, right?”
I nodded shakily. “Sure. Whatever you say.”
Czern chuckled again. “What a polite and soft boy you are.” His chuckle returned, drawing out into a raspy snicker. “Or so you seem. We’ll see, won’t we?”
I glanced at him again, careful to keep my speed up. I couldn’t say for sure, but I guessed I was still at least half an hour from the nearest gas station or other place where I might get some help. Plenty of time for him to kill me and take the car. “What…um, what will we see? Like, what’re you planning on doing?”
For a moment I thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he muttered. “Offer you a choice. Just drive.”
Anger flared up in me. There was contempt in his voice. Contempt and dismissal. It reminded me of when I’d confronted Dad about what had happened to Mom. When I asked him how she’d fallen like that, hit her head like that? Was he sure he hadn’t had something to do with it? We’d been standing out in the hallway at the hospital, just outside her room. The doctor had just told us they were moving her to a “care home” for people with permanent brain injuries. When I’d asked if she’d ever get to come home, the doctor had just patted my shoulder and said they’d do everything they could. That miracles did sometimes happen.
I’d heard Dad snort at that, and when we stepped outside, I’d started crying and yelling, demanding that he just admit what he’d done to her. What he’d been doing to her all along, especially since Bryan died. For a moment he’d looked angry, but then he’d just laughed.
“Look at you, crying like a little pussy. Just head on back to your fancy pussy school, boy. We don’t got need for you here.”
I stomped on the gas as we headed for the next curve. I couldn’t see the trees straight ahead, but I knew they were there. I remembered something else too.
Czern hadn’t ever put on his seatbelt.
The world exploded into glass and screeching metal, and a moment later the driver’s side airbag inflated, slamming into my face even as I tried to keep my head straight. I had to stay awake. I had to get out of the car and make sure he was either dead or hurt too badly to come after me.
My vision swam as I pushed back against the hot, white bag, but after a moment of flailing I managed to open my door. I tried to get out but couldn’t…I had a second of terror—I was pinned somehow, maybe by the engine or steering wheel, maybe my legs were crushed and I just couldn’t feel it…but no. It was just my stupid seatbelt.
Gasping, I undid it and fell out of the car. Looking back inside, I could see past the deflating bag now. I didn’t see the other man at all, but then I realized why. The passenger side of the windshield had been blown out, sending the hitchhiker out into the trees somewhere.
I considered just going back up to the road. Trying to walk or crawl for help until a car passed or I made it to the nearest house or store. But I had the image of Czern coming up behind me, crescent blade in hand as he hugged me close and began to slit my throat.
No. Fuck that. I needed to find him. Make sure he was dead. Grunting, I pushed myself to my feet and started toward the front of the car.
It wound up being easy. The engine was dead, but the headlights were still going, and in their glow I could see where he’d been thrown against another tree a few feet further ahead. His body was bent backward at an unnatural angle, but I still needed to check. I needed to be sure before I turned my back on him.
When I got closer I picked up a stick, using it to poke him with no reaction. His neck looked broken and his head was misshaped from hitting the tree, but it was hard to tell how bad he was hurt in the shadows from the headlights. I stayed tensed and ready for any sudden attack as I bent down and grabbed his arm. It was limp and lifeless, and when I pushed back the sleeve of his coat and felt his wrist, there was no sign of a pulse in that pale, wet skin.
But there was something else there. The edge of a marking…some kind of tattoo maybe. I should have been too afraid to do anything but leave, but something wouldn’t let me. Instead I pushed up his sleeve further and saw the black words that ran all the way up his arm.
Not just words, but names. The names of people, one after another, coiling around his forearm in a tight spiral like the scales of a snake. All of them connected by a red line that ran through them like a thread of blood, all but the last one, the freshest one, just below his wrist.
Travis Stanhope
“Yes, you see now, don’t you?”
I let go of him and jumped back as I found his face shining up at me from the dark. He was alive, alive and laughing as his head pulled itself back into shape and his neck straightened from its deadly angle. It was impossible. I just needed to get away and…
“Don’t run, boy. You’ve seen enough to know it won’t go well for you I think. And you’re not a stupid boy, are you?”
Shuddering, I shook my head. “No, I’m not. But I don’t want to die, either.”
He chuckled as he pushed himself up against the tree. “Few do, not that it matters in the end. But maybe you don’t die yet, eh? Maybe you want a chance to put some bad luck on someone more deserving.”
Czern stood up suddenly, and I resisted the urge to run again, if just barely. There was no sign of his knife now, just the pale, black-haired man in the storm, looking three times bigger, or maybe just making me feel three times as small. He studied me a second, his mouth working again as though he was chewing over a rough bit of gristle or bone. After a moment he reached up and pulled something from his lips. Two somethings actually.
A pair of black iron nails.
I didn’t hesitate as I gripped Ella’s hand tighter and drug the second nail across the back of her wrist. She gasped with surprise and pain, yanking free even as I saw a thin line of blood begin to well on her perfect skin. Eyes wide, she looked at the scratch and then at me.
“What the fuck?”
I didn’t bother smiling this time. “He told me I had a choice. Either he would take me or two others in my place. Two others of my choosing, so long as I marked them before two days passed. The first one was easy. Dad was passed out when I finally made it home. He never even felt it.” I put the nail back in my pocket. “But you? You were always unreliable.”
Her face began to darken with anger. “Look, Travis. I don’t know what your fucking problem is, but you need help, all right? I’m sorry for everything that happened, but this…I mean I’m going to have to get a fucking tetanus shot or something. And so help me, if you ever…”
I leaned across the table, my voice barely above a hiss. “You’re sorry? You’re fucking sorry? It’s all your fault!”
Ella was already shaking her head. “No. Bullshit, no. Bryan was sick. We just didn’t know how bad…”
Stabbing my finger at her, I cut her off. “He knew you were cheating on him. That you were going to dump him. He told me about it. And then you did, and he killed himself.”
Her mouth was hanging open now. “What…no, what’re you talking about? I didn’t break up with him.”
I snarled at her. “Liar. He texted me that night. He must have already been in the bathroom, but I didn’t see it until later. Until…it was all over.” I could hear my voice growing thick, but I didn’t care. “He texted me that you had ended it. That you’d admitted to running around. And that he was sorry.”
Ella was crying now too, but I knew it wasn’t for Bryan. It was for herself. Her precious guilt she needed to hide away so she could pretend she wasn’t to blame. “I…it was complex. Trav, I know he was your big brother and all, but he wasn’t perfect and…”
I blinked away rain as Czern offered me the nails. “What do I do with these?”
He waved the nails as though for me to take them, and only when I had did he answer. “You mark two others to take your place. Just a scratch will do. If you do, you will not see me again. If you do not, you will. Either way, two days from now, your part will be done and I will be fed…” He chuckled. “At least for a time.”
I wanted to make excuses for what I was seeing, for what he was saying, but there was none. For some reason I didn’t doubt his word and I didn’t question his ability to do exactly what he said he would. But I was still terrified and unsure of what I was really agreeing to or with what.
“Who are you? Really?”
He grinned at me. “Call me Czernobog or Scotus. Rapture or the Eater of Saints. They’re all just names stupid apes call out when they want to name something in the dark.” Leaning down, he brought his face close to mine. I could smell the same things he’d told me back on the road. Blood. And anger. And death. “Or maybe I’m none of those things. Maybe I’m just a mirror you found on the side of the road.”
“He was the one that protected her.”
Ella stopped, looking surprised. “What?”
I glared at her. “Our mom. He was the reason Dad didn’t hit her more. Bryan had kept him off her and me for years. When he died…things got worse.” Lowering my eyes, I forced myself to go on. “I was at school and wrapped up in my own pain and…and I was afraid of him. So I ignored it. And then he broke her.” I met her eyes. “Just like you broke Bryan.”
Standing up from the table, Ella wiped at her face. “It’s not my fault your crazy fucking brother killed himself, or that your alky daddy beat up your mom. And it’s not my fault that you’re crazy too. You just…I don’t ever want to see you again.” With that, she turned and ran out of the diner.
Reaching down, I patted my pocket. The nails shifted under my fingers, and then they were gone. Looking out to where Ella was getting in her car, I didn’t mind the chill in my heart or the hatred in the smile on my face.
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