I didn’t notice the blood when the woman got into the backseat of my car.
“Thanks for the pickup.”
I glanced back in my rearview mirror. We were still under the bright lights of the hospital’s front entrance, but the reflected glow still only gave me a vague idea of the woman sitting behind me. In her early forties, pretty, with intense eyes that met mine in the reflection as I spoke. “Sure thing. You didn’t say on the app where you wanted to go. Just tell me the address if you can and I’ll put it into GPS.”
She nodded and looked out the window. “Um, I’m still trying to decide I guess. Can you just drive for now? I’ve only used a rideshare a couple of times, but you can do that, right? Just drive around and charge me for the distance or time or whatever?”
I hit the button on my app for roaming tolls before putting the car in drive. “Yeah, sure. It’ll use my phone’s GPS to keep track of how far we go. And it will ding every twenty-five bucks, just so we can keep track, okay?”
When I checked the mirror, the woman was still looking outside, and in a passing beam of light I saw how worried she looked. My general rule was that I didn’t talk much unless the rider wanted to, but given her expression and the fact that I just picked her up from a hospital, I felt like I should at least open the door to chatting if she wanted.
“I’m Marvin, by the way. Good to meet you.”
She glanced my way with a ghost of a smile before looking back out into the passing night. “Carolyn. Good to meet you too.”
“So were you visiting someone at the hospital?” I told myself that would be my last question, my last attempt to pry or be supportive of some stranger without a sign from her that she wanted to talk.
A pause and then: “Yeah. A friend of mine. My best friend when I was a kid.”
“Oh. Well, I hope they’re doing okay.”
“Well…she died tonight.”
I felt my stomach lurch. Why had I even opened this can of worms? What was I going to do or say that could make this lady feel better? Nothing, and now I was just caught in it, and I should just stay quiet, but I could already hear myself saying
“Oh no. Well, I’m sorry to hear that. I guess…I guess it’s good that you got a chance to be there and say goodbye.” If that was even true. What if she’d died before she got there, or she never went in to see her? All I was doing was making this woman talk about something painful for no reason. I was pulled out of my thoughts by a short, harsh laugh from the backseat.
“Yeah, I got to say goodbye all right. Goodbye and hello, I guess.”
I just nodded, forcing myself to stay quiet. Maybe if I didn’t ask anymore questions we could just ride in silence the rest of the way to…wherever we were going. As it was, I was just driving around aimlessly, taking routes I was familiar with that had light traffic this time of night. If she didn’t pick a place by the time we reached the end of this circuit, I’d ask again if she wanted to go somewhere particular or just keep riding. I didn’t mind driving her all night, but I didn’t want to
“Did you play games a lot as a kid? Not video games like people do now, but real games where you run around and play?”
I glanced up and nodded. “Sure. Didn’t everybody?”
Carolyn shrugged. “Maybe most did. But I was an only child, and until I was eight we didn’t live near any other children. When Penny and her family moved down the road, we became friends fast. Her and her brother Jonah were always at my house or me over at theirs, and the big stretch of woods between the two was our playground.”
I laughed. “Yeah, me and my brother used to play war in the woods behind our old school. There were like five or six of us most of the time, and it’s a wonder we never got snakebit.”
Her voice was thoughtful and distant as she responded. “Yeah, we played that once or twice, but we spent more time playing hide and seek or building bases, pretending we were explorers or adventurers. The woods were probably only about a hundred acres of land, but we made the most of it. We knew every inch and felt at home there, you know?”
“Sure, yeah.”
“And then their cousin Elisabeth came and everything changed.”
Elisabeth was a small, shy girl. Four years younger than Jonah and two years younger than me and Penny who were ten, she reminded me of…well…me. Quiet and lonely. And excited and terrified at the prospect of new friends.
But we weren’t mean kids. Even Jonah, who was almost a teenager and could have thought himself above playing with his younger sister and her friend, was always sweet and patient and fun to be around. When Elisabeth came, we immediately included her in everything we did. She was only going to be visiting for a month while her mother had some kind of medical procedure, but we were going to make sure she had a good time while she was there.
At first that just meant letting her tag along and including her in our games. As she warmed up to us, she clearly felt more comfortable and would talk more, but she never lost a certain strangeness. She would sometimes stare off into space, and more than once we lost track of her in the woods and spent a panicked few minutes trying to find her before she’d pop up from behind a tree or clump of bushes. It was frustrating and a bit odd, mainly because overall she seemed very smart and mature for her age. And sometimes…well, sometimes had a little smirk on her face when she didn’t think I was looking. Like she was in on a joke we weren’t or something. It had a sneaky look that I didn’t like.
Still, overall she was cool, you know? And even when she was being weird, she fit in well enough. She went where we wanted to go and played what we wanted to play.
So when she asked if she could pick the game, we said yes.
The game didn’t have a name, or if it did, she never told us what it was. After the first time we played it, we just called it the Game, as it was the only thing we played until…well, until everything was over.
It started with drawing a circle in the dirt. Everyone did it. You stood away from each other and took a stick to draw a circle around yourself. Then you take your rock—Elisabeth was always very clear on this point. You always started with a stick in your right hand held up to the sky and a rock in your left hand down by your side. When Jonah did it wrong the first time…well, it was one of the few times I ever saw their cousin really get mad.
Anyway, you draw your circle and then close your eyes. She said you could spin around with your eyes closed if you wanted but you didn’t have to and you had to be careful if you did that you didn’t leave your circle. Spin or not, when everyone was ready you tossed your rocks and opened your eyes.
The idea was that whoever had one of the rocks closest to their circle became the hunter and the rest were the hunted. At first it just sounded like a more elaborate way of playing tag or hide and seek, but when Penny said something like that, Elisabeth shook her head. Said there was more to it then that, but we’d have to wait and see.
That…that first time, Jonah had a rock at the edge of his circle, so he was the hunter. When he asked Elisabeth what he was supposed to do, she told him to walk into the woods until he had counted slow to two hundred. After that, he could start his hunt.
Looking back, even then it didn’t make sense how we reacted to any of this. I remember watching Jonah walk off into the woods, and I didn’t feel bored or think it was silly. I was excited. No, I wasn’t just excited, I was scared.
I was scared of what might happen if he caught me.
I tried to smooth away my frown as I looked back at Carolyn. “Man. It sounds like an intense kids’ game, I guess.” I let out a weak laugh. “We usually just threw rocks at each other.”
She nodded. “Yeah, right? It was weird. This little eight year-old had this elaborate game and we were not only listening to her, but we were into it. The three of us scattered into the trees, and after finding one of my favorite hiding spots, I hunkered down to wait. The woods…I remember how still everything was. Normally you’d hear birds and bugs, branches falling or being moved by deer or whatever else lived out there. But there was none of that now. Just perfect silence, like everything was frozen or dead.”
And that’s when I heard the voice call out. It seemed far away, and while the words were clear, I couldn’t tell who had said them. Maybe it was Jonah, I don’t know. I just know it didn’t sound like him, and the suddenness of it made me shiver as I fought to not yell or run.
”Bring out the long knives!”
I could feel my heart pounding in my chest as I sat huddled in the hollowed out tree—the same tree I’d used to evade discovery and capture in numerous pretend games before. Penny and Jonah didn’t know this hiding spot, and neither should Elisabeth, which made it hard not to let out a scream when I heard her whispered voice from close by.
“He’s coming this way. I hope he doesn’t find you!”
She ran off with a giggle, moving out of my narrow field of vision inside the tree and somewhere further to my left. I was about to shift to try and see her again when movement to the right caught my eye. It was Jonah, but…something was wrong.
He wasn’t smiling or laughing like he usually would be while playing a game—even when he was focused, his darkest look was usually one of stern concentration. But now…he looked cold and hard as he raked his eyes across the path in front of him, stalking forward a few steps before pausing to look and listen for a second and then prowling again. Still, as jarring as how he looked and moved was, it really wasn’t the main thing I focused on.
It was the sticks in his hand.
He had two long, thick sticks, held upright and rigid with grips so tight that even at a distance I could see the muscles standing out in his arms. We rarely ever used sticks or stones in our games except as building tools, and these were clearly being held as some kind of weapons.
Jonah stopped again and looked in the direction of the tree I was in. My heart stopped as I froze in place, wishing I had stayed further back, praying to somehow become invisible. This wasn’t the normal fear of losing a child’s game. It was terror. And as I realized how scared I really was, a strange thought slipped into my head like a stranger’s sigh.
Those aren’t sticks. They’re his long knives.
I shuddered then, but he had already turn away, his attention now focused on something outside my view. Shifting quietly, I watched as he moved forward, his whole body tensed now, like a snake ready to strike. He was about to move out of my vision again when Elisabeth let out a scream and ran back in my direction.
Maybe she was just running away, or maybe she was going to lead him to me, but either way he didn’t give her a chance to get far. He struck her once across the back and she fell down, and then he used the second stick to dig into her back even as I started crawling from my hiding spot and yelling for him to stop.
He didn’t look up until I was close by, and even then, there was a long moment when I was afraid—afraid of how strange he seemed, even afraid he might turn his sticks on me. But then his face cleared and he dropped his weapons. Penny was already running up by this point, her face red with anger.
“What the hell, Jonah? Did you knock her down?”
Frowning at him, I stepped over and offered a hand to Elisabeth. She took it and got to her feet quietly as I looked past him to his sister. “He was using sticks. He hit her with them.”
Jonah flushed with embarrassment. “I…I wasn’t trying to hurt her. I thought that’s how it was supposed to be played.”
Penny was next to him now, jabbing him in the ribs. “We didn’t say that. Elisabeth didn’t say that. You just wanted to be a mean shithead.”
He backed away shaking his head. “I swear I didn’t. It was like I just knew that was part of the rules.” His eyes lit up as he remembered something. “And…and when you guys yelled that about the long knives! I knew what that meant somehow. I found the sticks then and started looking for you.”
I felt my eyes widen. “I didn’t yell that. It didn’t sound like Penny or Elisabeth either.”
Jonah frowned. “I mean, it didn’t sound like you either I guess, but I swear it wasn’t me. I just…” He was tearing up now. “I wasn’t trying to hurt her. I thought it was part of the g…”
“It was. You played it the way it’s supposed to be played.”
We all turned to look at Elisabeth as she regarded us calmly with a smile.
“I’m not hurt, guys. And he did what the hunter is supposed to do. He hunted one of us down with the long knives.”
Penny stared at her. “But who said that about the knives? How would he know what to do?”
Elisabeth shrugged. “I yelled out the knife part. I guess he’s a good guesser because he figured out the rest even though I didn’t remember to tell you that part.” She grinned. “I’ll do better next time.”
I blinked as I turned onto the freeway that led to the airport. “Next time? You didn’t play that shit again, I hope.” When there was only silence, I glanced at Carolyn’s reflection. “Did you?” She was rubbing her hand in the shadows of the backseat, seemingly lost in thought for a moment before answering.
“We did. I…it’s hard to explain. I could just say its because we were dumb, bored kids, but it was more than that. We were all scared after that first time, but it didn’t stop us from coming back and doing it the next day and then a few days after that. We all got turns as the hunter, we all had times when we got hunted down. And Elisabeth had lied. The sticks hurt plenty.”
I frowned into the mirror. “Then why did you keep playing? Or why be so rough?”
I saw her dark silhouette shake her head. “It was different when you were playing. It’s like there was nothing but the game. And then when you were out of it, it never seemed as bad as it really was. And that was just when you were hiding. When you were the one hunting…it felt like being in a dream. You were somewhere else. Someone else. And all you wanted to do is find your prey. I…I’d like to say it was scary…and it was. But it was exciting too. It didn’t take long before we were addicted to it. Playing it every day, and going home hiding bruises and making excuses for how we got the scrapes and cuts our parents did see.”
I puffed out a breath. “Shit. Weren’t you worried about really hurting each other?”
“Maybe a little. I know I worried about it some—not just us getting hurt, but the strangeness of it all. But it was like all of that, that worried voice inside that was really me, it was kind of muffled. And that voice didn’t start really screaming until I saw Elisabeth meeting with the man in the woods.”
Like I said before, she would sometimes disappear. And even with our new obsession with the Game, we didn’t play it all the time, so there were days where she would suddenly go missing for a few minutes or more. We’d gotten used to it over the last three weeks, but as my unease continued to quietly grow, so did my paranoia about Elisabeth. She was the one who had taught us the game, after all, and despite her age and seeming perfectly nice and innocent overall, I still felt like she was the one in control. So one day, when I noticed her slip off, I followed her.
She walked for a good distance before turning down into a marshy area toward the back of the woods. The trees were darker and twisted there—swamp cypresses that didn’t exist in the rest of our playground. Against the grey-black of their bark, it took me a moment to even see the man standing there.
He wore a long, black coat that was sleek, reminding me of something between a cowboy’s duster and the kind of seacoat I imagined a sailor wearing during a terrible storm. He towered over Elisabeth, inclining down a massive head topped with a crooked stovepipe hat of midnight black that glistened with something that might have been rain or dew, but looked darker and thicker, with bits of moss from the tree sticking to the wide brim.
Below that brim, I could only see a small patch of grey skin—between the angle I was at and the high collar of his coat, there was little space to see the man inside, but when he crouched down next to Elisabeth, the bottom of the coat pushed back, and I was able to see dark leather boots coated in white mud or clay, black pants leading up to a brown belt with a metal buckle and straps that trailed to…holsters I guess? Or maybe when its not a gun, its better to call them sheathes.
Because on both his hips, polished to a high silvery sheen with points that bit sharply into the moist earth when he crouched down and whispered to the girl, were a pair of blades. Too small to be swords maybe, and too big to be daggers…but of course, I already knew what they were.
They were his long knives.
I glanced up from them to find Elisabeth looking at me. Looking at me and laughing. I jumped up and ran. I didn’t understand any of this, but I knew it was dangerous. No more than that, it was deadly. And whatever spell I had been under, it was at least temporarily broken. I had to get Penny and Jonah and get us out of the woods.
“Bring out the long knives!”
The sound no doubt came from behind me, but it seemed to air from every direction. Shaking, I kept running, screaming for my friends, yelling for them to come on, we had to get out, that something was after us. When I made my way back to where we’d been hanging out, only Penny was there, looking confused and terrified. She said that Jonah had gone to the house to get us some snacks, but that had been a few minutes ago. Not waiting to waste a second, I grabbed her hand and told her to come on. That we had to get to their house.
To her credit, she didn’t question me, but just ran. We made it out of the woods and headed toward her house, calling for Jonah the entire time. We never saw him, and it wasn’t until we’d made it to the front porch that we heard him screaming from the woods. Penny wanted to go back for him, but I made her come inside, told her I’d call somebody and get help.
And that’s just what I did. I called my mother, then her dad, and then the police. They all got there about the same time, and within a few minutes half a dozen people were out in the woods looking for Jonah and Elisabeth.
“They found Jonah quick enough. He…he’d been butchered. Cut to pieces. Elisabeth, they searched for hours in that small patch of woods, but it wasn’t until late that night that someone found her. She was hungry and dirty, but otherwise perfectly fine.”
I didn’t know what to say. Or how any of this could be true. Finally I just offered, “I’m so sorry. That’s terrible. Did they ever find the guy? Did you ever find out what Elisabeth was doing talking to him?”
The bitterness in the woman’s laugh was palpable. “Oh no. Penny’s parents were devastated by Jonah’s murder, and in less than a month they had moved back to the west coast. And I never saw Elisabeth again, though I did talk to her once years later.”
“You did? How?”
“When I was in college, I was telling my roommate about some of this—not all of it, just a watered down version that didn’t make me look crazy. And it made me kind of nostalgic. No, that’s a lie. It made me feel guilty. I could have done more to try and stay in touch with Penny, but honestly I was terrified. Terrified of what had happened, of her cousin, and by extension, anything to do with her. So I’d never written or called her, and the couple of times she wrote me, I never responded.”
I puffed out a breath. “Well, I mean, you were a kid. And anyone would be scared after all that.”
“Yeah, maybe. But it was still shitty and I felt bad about it. So I called home, got my mother to dig up her old number, and I tried calling it. I didn’t know if she still lived there or not, but when a young woman answered, I got excited. I asked if it was Penny I was talking to. She said it was Elisabeth. Actually, no. What she said was, ‘No Emily. It’s Elisabeth. Penny can’t come to the phone right now.’” I heard her sigh. “I…I should have argued, or tried calling back. But I felt that old fear again at hearing her voice, and I chickened out. A couple of years later my parents heard that Elisabeth had died, and I thought about reaching out to Penny again, but something kept me from it. The fear in my stomach wasn’t dead I guess. It was just asleep.
“So jump ahead to two days ago. I haven’t talked about Penny to anyone in…well, probably more than twenty years, when I suddenly get a call from her. She’s in the hospital. The hospital you picked me up at tonight. She’s there and she’s never going to leave, because she’d dying. She’d dying and wants to see her best friend again before she goes.”
I go to say I’m sorry again, but she’s still talking, her voice louder and quicker now.
“I fly out here this morning, and when I go to see her, she’s all alone and deep asleep. I feel so bad, and she looks so worn down and old compared to the little girl I remembered. How bad had things gotten for her that she needed to reach out to a childhood friend who had abandoned her? I watched her quietly for better than an hour before she woke up, and when she did, the smile on her face…it was both so beautiful and so sad. We hugged and cried for awhile, and it was in the midst of all that I realized she was saying something.”
I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.
“I pull back, confused, and that’s when I see her hand. It’s freshly cut and bleeding from a razor blade she has in her other hand. Before I can react, she grabs my wrist and slashes the back of my hand, pressing her bloody wound against mine as she screams out.”
Bring out the long knives!
“I…I pulled away then, just trying to distance myself, planning on going to get help. Penny wasn’t even looking at me, but at the corner of the room. At something only she could see. When she looked back at me, she was still crying, but her eyes were full of terror. Yanking her head back, she ran the razor across her throat fast and deep. They…tried to save her, but she slipped away too fast.”
“Jesus.” It just slipped out before I thought. “I mean, that’s terrible. I’m sure they tried, but if she was already dying…”
Carolyn gave a laugh. “That’s the thing. She wasn’t. I talked to one of the nurses that wrapped my hand up. She was in for an elective. She only had to check in that morning because of her blood pressure. They wanted to monitor her for a day before putting her under anesthesia. It…It was all a trap. For me.”
I slowed the car to a stop at a red light. We were in the shipping district near the airport now. Just empty roads and storage warehouses for the next few blocks. I turned around to look at her. “This is all…I don’t understand. How is it a trap for you?” I almost stopped there, but then I added, “And why are you telling me all this?”
The woman leaned forward and met my eyes. “I didn’t understand it all at first either. I knew some things from what she’d written in her letters as a child. She’d talked about Elisabeth and the thing that was with her. How they still made her and others play the Game from time to time. I think she’d had a hard childhood, and when Elisabeth died, however she died, this thing got passed on to Penny.” She sniffed and sat back in the darkness. “Penny was always a very good person. She tried to not give into it. I think it’s been years since it really got to play the Game or even just hunt someone. But fighting it all the time…I guess she just wanted out, but it won’t kill you if you’re the one its bound to, and it won’t let you hurt yourself. That’s why she had to bind it to me before she could die. I want to feel betrayed, but I never tried to help her, and I can’t imagine what a lifetime of…this will be like.”
I frowned. “But…even if I believed all this stuff, how would you know all that? Some from the letters when she was a kid maybe, but the stuff about it not killing the one its bound to or how long its been since it got to kill anybody? Did she tell you that tonight?”
She leaned forward again and shook her head, her eyes moving past me and out into the night. “Not her. Him.”
I felt a chill go up my spine as I turned around and looked in the direction she was staring. There was nothing there. It was just a patch of poorly-lit sidewalk on a rundown street between blocks of ware—
“Bring out the long knives.”
The sound was a whisper, her breath curling against my ear as she said it, almost like a lover’s promise. I went to turn in her direction, but then I stopped. There was something out there now. It was murky at first, like a camera that was out of focus, but as I stared in horror, it came fully into view. A tall man in a black, shiny coat wearing a dirty, crooked top hat. I couldn’t make out his face in the shadows, but I saw something glittering there—hard, cold eyes that were boring into me as he moved long-fingered hands to his waist and…
He was pulling out his knives.
“Fuck this.”
I gripped the wheel and stomped on the gas, shooting forward as I tried to watch the figure recede in my side mirror. All I had to do was get somewhere populated, maybe the airport, and then…
“You can’t run from him. He has to kill. It’s been too long, and if I don’t let him…well, just because I can’t hurt myself doesn’t mean he can’t make me suffer. He showed me enough in the hour before I ordered a car to convince me of that. I-I’m sorry, but you should just stop and let it happen.”
I gripped the wheel tighter as I barely made a turn. Thank God this part of the city was dead at night. “This has to be a trick…or…”
“You’re in it now. You can see him. You know it’s not a trick. I really am sorry, but I don’t have a choice. It’s out of my hands.”
She was right, and worse, every time I looked in the mirror, no matter how far we went, I could usually catch a glimpse of him close behind, standing somewhere and staring, as though he was just waiting for us to get tired and stop. Then something occurred to me. “What about other people?”
“What?”
“You said you can’t hurt yourself. But can other people hurt you?”
“I don’t know what you…”
“Let’s find out.”
Stomping the gas as far as it would go, I kept straight at the next turn. It was a brick security wall, but my hope was that the seatbelt and airbags would be enough to…
When I woke up, the air smelt burnt and stale, and everything seemed to shimmer as I pushed back on the airbag and shoved my door open. Looking into the backseat, I could make Carolyn out enough to see that she had a fresh gash near her ear, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to reach in to check for a pulse. A line of blood began to drip into my eye from a cut on my forehead. Better I just get away from here and then call 911. Maybe by then I would be safe. That thing would be gone or…
It was across the street staring at me.
“Oh shit.”
I took off running, and when I looked back, I saw it was chasing me, knives out again as it charged down the street after me. Fear and survival instinct flooded my brain, pushing out all my questions and doubts. I had to get away. I had to hide and then call for help. Patting my pockets as I ran, I realized I’d left my phone in the fucking car. This…I’d hide then. Or if I couldn’t find a place to hide, I’d try to circle back around and get to my phone if I didn’t find another person to help me first.
The man kept pace with me for the next two blocks, and by the second left turn, my side was already burning. I had no doubt he could run me down if he wanted. He was enjoying the chase. Playing with me. And I had to do something different before he got tired of it.
Pushing myself harder, I rounded the last turn and saw my smoking car in the distance. I looked back a last time. He was still back there, but he had let me get a bit farther ahead. Maybe it would buy me a few seconds, but not enough time to make a call and get help. I needed to find some other…I saw the rear door open as Carolyn stepped out of the car and looked around. She seemed shaken up, but was fairly steady on her feet as she looked my way and then began walking quickly in the opposite direction.
I shifted my focus from the car to her, and despite her attempts to speed up, the wreck had taken too much out of her. I caught up, and when I grabbed her from behind, she was only able to fight back a moment before we both fell to the ground hard. I wanted to threaten her, get her to call it off, or at least apologize for what I was going to try. And maybe it wouldn’t work anyway, but it was the only thing I could think of and oh shit, it was still running towards us and…
I rolled on top of Carolyn and grabbed her head, ignoring her fists as they hammered into my ribs. Bending down, I pressed my split forehead against the trickling wound below her temple. My eyes were squeezed tight as I screamed all of my fear and anger out into the night.
“Bring out the long knives!”
I heard the heavy sounds of boots on the asphalt next to us, and when I rolled off of the woman, I was staring up into the thing’s face. It wasn’t a man. Nothing like a person at all when you saw it this close. What was it? Oh God, what was it and why did it keep staring at me? Its eyes shifted, moving to the gasping woman that was trying to catch her breath as she crawled away on her back.
“Y-you…stay away from me. You said you wouldn’t hurt me, remember?”
It followed her, and when she reached the sidewalk, she gave up pleading with the monster and looked back at me. “Please. Tell it to take someone else.”
I sat up as I forced myself to meet her gaze. “I’m sorry. It’s out of my hands.”
As I turned away, I heard the long knives begin to do their work.
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