Tony said, “We like you as a person-”
“Oh, please…” Sarcasm ran deep in my voice.
Again Ben spoke up. “Greg, hear them out.”
“But if you continue living here among us it’s going to tear our group apart. Some of us won’t be able to accept the uncertainty. That one day you’re going to be our pal-”
“The next our executioner.” This came from Zak. “But we realize that you’d be an asset to us. You’d be able to screen strangers for Jumpy.”
“That’s why we don’t want you to leave.” Michaela looked at me. Her eyes, compassionate and yet…
“You mean,” I said, “I’m like the old-time nuclear deterrent. Can’t live with me, can’t live without me. Well, that fills me with a warm, rosy glow, I can tell you. Many thanks. I feel like a leper.. . a leper with a sack full of marijuana at a dope fiends reunion party.” OK, so that comparison didn’t make a hat full of sense, but I was too angry to speak with any clarity, or logic, come to that.
“So what we’ve decided is,” Michaela pressed on despite my scornful remark, “is that we’re going to stay here for a while. We’ve food to last a week, there’s a fresh water well in the back yard, we’ve got a roof over our heads and there aren’t any hornets close by.”
“Sounds sweet. Go on.”
She continued, “You might not go along with what I’m going to suggest next. You might tell us to go to hell, but we think it’s as fair as it possibly can be under the circumstances.”
“Well?”
“There’s a house about five miles down the road. It’s been burned out, but the garage is still in once piece.”
“You want me to move in there?”
“If you agree… then we can still be of use to each other, but you’d be far enough away to remove this sense of danger that some of us feel when you’re with us.” She paused. “What’s your answer, Greg?”
I looked at the dozen or so faces watching me expectantly in the firelight.
“It stinks,” I told them. “It stinks like a mountain of crap.” Then, sighing, I shook my head. “But until we can figure out something better I’ll go along with it. For now.”
Home is a garage with one window, a lawn mower and an open-topped Jeep so old that the dirt crusting the bottom could be pure Danang delta mud. Zak, Ben and Michaela delivered me to the place the morning after I blew off the stranger’s head. They left me with supplies, my rifle, plenty of ammo and instructions that they would call on me-not the other way ’round, you’ll note.
Zak shook my hand. “Sorry it has to be this way, Greg. But you have to be a walking time bomb.” He smiled in a good-natured way. “We’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Don’t be a stranger.” I meant it, too.
In the back of my mind I still harbored a suspicion they’d quietly leave without telling old Greg Valdiva, the guy with the Twitch that might just turn out fatal- for you.
Ben’s hands shook. I half wondered if he’d offer to camp out here with me, but this was the wrong side of paradise. The house, which had been burned to its foundations, lay at the edge of dark forest that looked sinister enough to be the lair of any number of murderous demons. In a dried-out swimming pool human bones lay in tangled heaps. A place of breathtaking beauty it wasn’t.
After they’d carried my gear into the garage, said some complimentary things about my new home (in the way I suspect parents spoke when depositing their kids in new rooms at college) they climbed onto the bikes and fired them up.
Michaela called me closer to speak to me. She rested her hand on my forearm as she spoke in a low voice so the others wouldn’t hear above the sounds of the Harley motors. “Greg, they’re frightened of you. And this is all new to them. Give them some time to come ’round to the idea of what’s inside you.” She squeezed my arm. “Listen to me; they’re going to realize soon that you’re special, and that they’re going to need you.”
I gave that you-might-be-right-you-might-be-wrong kind of shrug. “Drive carefully, Michaela.” Then I called out to the others, “See you soon, boys.”
Ben saluted and Zak waved his cowboy hat.
As they rode away into the misty morning light I found myself wondering if I’d ever see them again.
Thirty
“Twat!”
The ancient profanity erupted from my mouth as the wrench I was using to slacken the nuts on the Jeep slipped and my knuckles slammed into the wheel arch. “You sonnafabitch. You twat!”
After three days of waiting for hornets to find me (not one showed) I’d finally gotten bored enough to start work on the Jeep. I figured if I could get the machine roadworthy it might come in useful. Also, it gave me something to do. Those summer evenings alone had started to stretch out to something little short of infinity.
So, welcome to the Valdiva home. The garage was clean, dry and rat and bug free. I rigged up a bed in the corner. Rummaging through boxes at the back, I uncovered a barbecue and charcoal that served as a stove. I also found a hammock that I strung between a couple of trees not far from the bone-rich swimming pool. A box full of paperbacks provided light entertainment. They were mainly old thrillers, but what the hell?
When I became too restless to work on the Jeep or lie reading in the hammock I walked miles through the woods. There were no sign of any hornets, or anyone else come to that. In fact there was something eerie about the forest. I guessed it was ancient woodland where there’d been no tree felling to speak of. They just seemed to go on forever. Densely packed trees, thick canopies of branches overhead that roofed you in so completely you wouldn’t even catch a glimpse of sky. I walked deeper and deeper into them. It was almost dark beneath that ocean of leaves. Silent, too. A silence so strong you half believed you could reach out and sink your fingers into it.
Every so often the breeze would catch the leaves. Then there’d be hissing sounds. A thousand snakes sliding out of the earth all around you. At least that’s the image the hissss put into my mind.
The strange thing is, there was something compelling about the forest. It hypnotized you. Pulled you in. You longed to walk deeper and deeper and lose yourself there. Never come back. Never see the outside world. But keep walking among those trees, with that whispery hissss all around you… everything still… peaceful. I recalled that some Native Americans said the Wendigo haunted forests. That was the spirit of the forest. The Wendigo had the power to creep into your brain. Slowly it possessed you. Once it had control you suddenly ran away into the wilderness. Never to be seen again.
That forest did it to me. Maybe there was something in the old Wendigo legend after all.
Anyway, after taking a strip of skin from my knuckles as I tried to loosen the wheel nut rusted to damnation, I decided to take a lungful of fresh air. The late afternoon sun slanted down across the wood. Again it was silent except for the call of a lone bird in a tree. Despite the demon wheel nut, I’d put some good work into the Jeep. I’d cleaned the plugs, filters, topped up the oil from a sealed can I’d found in the garage. Once I’d replaced one badly worn tire with the spare all I’d need would be the gasoline. Then I saw myself roaring along those country roads in the rugged little Jeep, the breeze blasting through my hair. Sounded good.
After shouting “ Twat ” at the corroded nut a good half dozen times I was ready for a break anyway. There’d be little chance of Michaela, Ben or any of the others turning up now. They’d called by early morning to say that they were out on a gas search that would take all day. Of course, I offered to go along and help. They thanked me but passed on my offer. Some in the group were still uneasy about me. But then, witnessing the goatee guy having his head exploded by buckshot must still be as fresh in their minds as his mess of brains sticking to the fence.
I circled the barn two or three times like a restless dog. In my mind’s eye I found myself picturing Michaela’s face. She hadn’t spoken about relationships, but had she formed an attachment to… attachment? No, this was a visceral world now. Had she mated with Zak or Tony? Yeah, mated; that’s the word. I counted skulls in the swimming pool. Got bored by the time I reached eighteen… and I’d seen the telltale holes in the tops of the skulls where fractures radiated in a sun-burst affect-that was a sure sign that hornets had rounded up everyone in the neighborhood, then killed them with a blow to the head. I guess a pathologist would describe the injury that killed
