My real problem was I didn’t have good reaction time. I didn’t know how to make myself look graceful when confused. I didn’t know how to pretend like nothing was the matter or how to seem at ease even though everything we did seemed so scripted. People traded words that meant nothing for more words that meant nothing, and you had to do it if you wanted to be considered a member of the group. How are you doing? I’m fine, and you? Beautiful weather today, isn’t it? Good morning, good afternoon, hello, see you again, be good, behave yourself, have fun! Take care! You all come back now, hear?
Click, squeak, click-click.
It’s hard to believe these words mean much of anything. They’re just another part of the sham. People say this stuff automatically, and how can words mean anything if you don’t think about saying them, if you don’t feel them as you say them? And for some reason people think these are the most important words in the world. If you say them, you’re normal. It’s funny how people are so shocked when they find out their neighbor is a serial killer. With the standards of normality being whether you say good morning or comment on the weather, why are they so surprised? Maybe the shock is part of the act too. Maybe they just don’t want to draw attention to their own weirdness. If it’s someone else, it’s not you.
So I’d compromise on taking Mr. Highsmith’s crackers, but I’d never take these sorts of words unless I felt them for real, and they’re the hardest ones to feel when no one in the world can feel them with you. That’s not stupid. That’s just having principles.
Gracie came back a few days later with more food, even though I hadn’t eaten much of what she’d brought the first time. She stayed only a couple of hours and went straight home after we sat around and talked for a bit because her parents were totally on her back because of her recent strange behavior, which really just amounted to them not liking it one bit that she made decisions and did things that had nothing to do with them. Sometimes parents are more selfish than little kids and they justify it by saying they’re concerned for you. They probably even believe it themselves when they say stuff like that because it sounds good.
Gracie came back a couple of days after that, though, and then after a while she was coming back every afternoon because a week had passed and she hadn’t stolen their car or disappeared in a while, so they were beginning to trust her again. The saying goodbye to Jamie at his grave lie had worked. Gracie said their marriage counselor told them it was a good sign, so they felt they could ease up on her a little and worry about themselves again.
We spent our afternoons huddled on my cot. Gracie brought blankets and a pillow to make it a bit more comfortable. She didn’t understand how I could stand the cold. She was always shivering. When she said that, I looked around and realized all the leaves had fallen and that we were halfway through December. I’d been gone for nearly a month and somehow no one had found me.
The days passed like this and even though I was totally bored in some ways—wanting my computer back so I could play Nevermorrow, or wanting to be able to use the school track so I could go for a decent run—I was also pretty calm for once. I didn’t miss my family and I definitely didn’t miss school and all the idiots like Matt Hardin. Between the hours of boredom and calmness, though, I still couldn’t help but think of Jamie and wonder where he was, what had become of him, how he could side with that crazy girl who murdered her parents. Even though I was on my way to dying, I didn’t understand the dead that well yet.
I took my notebook out of my backpack and wrote:
14. For everything you understand about the dead, something else is always unknowable.
One day I sat on my cot with my back against the wall, my arms folded behind my head, and tried to have a conversation with Charlotte. She was eating something she’d caught in her web, but she listened carefully as she sucked. “Charlotte,” I said, “if you were in my position, what would you do?” She only shrugged and kept on sucking, though. I had a feeling she wouldn’t have ever got into my position in the first place. She sat in her web and let others get tangled up in it. Too bad, so sad. Now you’re my dinner. That’s the way the food chain goes, pal, deal with it. I wished I had her ability to accept the unfairness of reality so easily.
As I sat there talking with Charlotte, a strange fog began to pour into camp, drifting into the shack, pooling around my feet. I perked up, wondering if Gracie had been caught going home the previous day and now the SWAT team had come back to gas me out of the shack into their waiting arms. But when I stood and looked out the door, I couldn’t hear or see anyone. So I went down the path to the covered bridge and crossed over, walking along Sugar Creek in the shroud of fog. Then suddenly I heard voices and saw two silhouettes coming toward me in the white mist from the opposite direction. Fuck, I thought. Someone knows I’m here.
I ran behind an old brush pile as quick as I could. The brush was all wet black and covered with huge shelves of white fungus. Kneeling down, I peered through the branches to watch as they came by. And when I saw who it was, when I saw them together still, my mouth parted and my breath steamed in the fog, a thicker white, drifting through the sticks and branches into the brush like smoke, as if the brush were kindling and in the center a fire was building.
It was him. And her. Together. Jamie and Frances. They came walking by, him holding her hand while he talked to her in that low, soft voice he used whenever I got upset or scared and he tried to make me feel better. I couldn’t hear exactly what he was saying, but I wanted to run out and push him down and beat the shit out of him like I did my brother in our driveway. Who was she that he’d abandon me after we said we’d never leave each other?
“It’ll be okay,” he was saying as they walked in front of me, his thigh at my eye level. He was still wearing my clothes too. “There’s nothing you can do now,” he said. “You have to. Or else you’ll be like them.” He stopped walking when he said that and turned his head from side to side, as if he sensed me. Then he said, “You don’t want to end up like them, do you?” and I knew he hadn’t spotted me.
Frances sniffed. She wiped at her face with one of her dirty paws and said, “I know. You’re right. I just—I’m scared, that’s all.”
“Me too. I can’t believe he did that. I’m sorry, Frances. I’m so sorry.”
She shrugged and said, “I told you, Jamie. The living are so ignorant. It’s not your fault. You didn’t have much choice either.”
They kept on walking then, hand in hand along the bank of the creek. I followed, moving out from behind the brush pile, sneaking from tree to tree. Ice, rock, air, breathe, I thought. Don’t let them see you. If he turned and saw me, I didn’t know what I’d do. Maybe I’d rush him like I’d thought at first, or maybe I’d rush to him, hoping he’d want me by his side again.
I stayed behind enough to watch them walk along Sugar Creek until they came to the old covered bridge, and it was then that I realized how dark it had become. The only light was the moon sitting in the branches of trees above me like a white egg in a nest.
Shadows had come out too. They lingered near the entrance of the bridge, moving back and forth, mumbling, shaking their heads sadly. One sat on a tree stump and sobbed to herself. Another muttered, “How much longer? A day? A week? A month?” One leaned against the arch of the bridge entrance and smoked a cigarette for a while before finally flicking it into the creek and going inside, disappearing into the fog that filled the corridor.
I stood behind my tree and watched Jamie take Frances to the bridge, where he bent down and gave her a kiss on the cheek. I saw him squeeze her hand. Her fingers trailed across his for a moment, but when she moved toward the entrance finally, she stopped to look back only once before going in.
The fog devoured her as she entered. And when I couldn’t see her any longer, Jamie turned in my direction.
I pressed myself against the tree, trying to make myself a part of the bark and the moss. I closed my eyes. You don’t see me, you don’t see me. I said a prayer to d
arkness right then, I said, “Make him not see me,” and when I opened my eyes he walked right by without noticing me.
I waited a while, not wanting him to know I’d been there, and soon I couldn’t see him walking along the moonlight-rippled water. He’d gone far enough ahead that I could start back to the logging camp without worrying he’d find me.
I didn’t know what I’d just seen, but I knew it felt weird and wrong. It was like that word people say all the time, but don’t really mean it. Goodbye. Lots of people use it without thinking about it. It’s just one of those click-squeak words that mean nothing most of the time. I didn’t want to say it unless I was mad, but even though he’d told me to leave the Wilkinson farm I somehow wasn’t angry with him. Not really. I’d left the farm when he said to, but I never did say that word. I couldn’t.
I was thinking maybe I should catch up and apologize for being a jerk and burning down the Wilkinson house. I mean, when I thought about it that was a pretty bad thing to do. Not for the reasons most people would think, though. I didn’t care what the living thought about me burning down an abandoned farmhouse that hadn’t been lived in for decades and decades. I felt bad because the house belonged to Frances. It wasn’t mine to burn. I should’ve known better. If she wanted to kill her parents every morning, who was I to stop her?
Maybe it wasn’t too late. I could still say I was sorry. So I took my hands out of my pockets and lifted my head up and started running in the direction I’d last seen Jamie go, and even though it was a foggy dark and shadows patrolled the woods like storm troopers, I didn’t fall, not even once.
Instead, I ran into something. Or someone. It was hard to tell at first because I slammed right into someone way bigger than me and I knew it wasn’t a tree because it was soft and squishy. And sticky. When I picked myself up from the ground, I still had to look up to meet its hollow eye sockets and dark, vein-filled face. I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Not even the scream I felt in my stomach.
“Help me,” it said at first. And then when I didn’t move and just kept looking up at it with my mouth open and my eyes probably bugging out like crazy, it said, “Just a word. Something you can spare a fellow. Please.”
Then I heard another voice in the distance, calling my name over and over. “Adam!” she called. It was Gracie. I saw the light around her before I saw her body burn through the fog. She glowed like one of those angels from the illuminated manuscripts Mrs. Motes once showed us pictures of in English class. I wanted to tell her to stop yelling because we weren’t in our woods anymore. I’d realized that finally. And if I wasn’t ready to be in dead space, Gracie definitely wasn’t. But as she came toward me and said, “There you are!” and walked right up to him, I realized she wasn’t able to see the man with no skin. She only saw me.
I put my finger to my lips and shook my head, trying to make her understand. But she gave me a weird look, furrowing her brows, cocking her head to the side. She stopped talking, but the man with no skin had lost interest in me. He looked at her now, rustling as he turned in her direction. He held his hand out for her, and when his bloody fingers brushed across her cheek, Gracie started to shiver. Then her face twisted and she screamed.
I ran over and got between them, held her arms to calm her down a little while she said, “Fuck, fuck, fuck! What the fuck was that?” Her legs buckled and we dropped to the ground and when I looked back up he was reaching down for us.
“Gracie,” I said, “I love you,” and he stood straight up and sighed. “Ahhhhhhh,” he hissed, as if he’d drunk something cold in the heat of summer. A thin layer of skin began to grow over his body, but I still saw his insides beneath it. When I looked back up at his face, a few tufts of black hair grew out of his head like buds unfurling, and his eyes were back as well, roaming in their sockets.
“More, please,” he said. “Just a little something. You can spare something, sonny. Something sweet and nice.”
He reached down and I hugged Gracie tight while she sobbed and said, “Adam, what’s wrong? What’s happening?” I closed my eyes, not wanting to feel him pull out any more of the things he wanted. A moment passed, though, and I didn’t feel anything other than Gracie’s heart beating hard against mine. Then I heard another voice I knew, like I knew Gracie’s and my own.
“Stop,” he said. “They’re mine. You can’t have them.”
I looked up and there he was, standing between us and the man who had made a new skin out of the words I’d tried to give Gracie, my I love you. He’d taken those words, and now he narrowed his new eyes at Jamie, as if he were an insect buzzing around him. “There are no claims in these woods,” he said.
“You already took something that doesn’t belong to you. Leave,” Jamie told him.
“I could take more,” the man said, lowering his head like a bull.
“You barely have enough skin to keep yourself together,” Jamie said. “Don’t make this difficult.”
The man glowered down at me and Gracie huddled together on the ground in a heap. He took a big breath, sniffed and coughed, but finally he took a few steps and shuffled away, muttering to himself like any other shadow.
Jamie looked down at us now too. He held his hand out and said, “Come on. Let’s get you guys out of here.”
We followed him along the creek for a long time, away from the covered bridge, going in the direction of the old railroad tracks toward home. And when I saw those tracks and thought about home again and everything that was waiting there for me, I opened my mouth and said, “That’s not where I live now.”
“What do you mean?” he said.
“I live in the woods now.”
“Oh, that,” he said. “I knew that. But we have to go this way to get out. Then we can go back again.”
“What the hell is happening?” Gracie said, trudging along behind us. “Adam, where were we a minute ago?”
“You were in dead space,” Jamie answered.
“I didn’t ask you,” said Gracie.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Jamie knows more than I do.”
“Everyone knows more than you do, McCormick,” Gracie muttered. When I looked back, I saw she was walking with her head down, watching her feet go one in front of the other.
“What’s the matter, Gracie?” Jamie asked.
“What’s the matter?” Gracie said. “What’s the matter is I told you I didn’t want to see you anymore, but here you are anyway. That’s what’s the matter.” She looked at me and shook her head as if I’d somehow betrayed her.
When we reached the tracks, we walked toward Fisher Corinth Road for a while, where Gracie lived just around the bend in the rails. As we walked down the tracks, the fog and dark began to lift, and I could see that it was still just late afternoon. As we came closer to her road I thought that Gracie would just keep going, would just head home after what happened, but instead she turned around with us and walked back down the tracks again and into the woods.
I said, “I should have known walking this way and then walking back might get us out.”
“But you need to go a different direction on the way back,” said Jamie.
I looked up, surprised to hear him say that. “That’s what my grandma always said you have to do,” I said. “Where did you hear that?”
“You pick things up along the way,” he said.
Gracie said, “Along the way to where?”
“Along the way to dying,” I answered.
We were silent after that. Jamie led us back to the covered bridge by a route I didn’t know, and when we finally got to the shack, we all sat down on the screechy cot and looked at the floor for a while. Gracie sighed. She was exhausted, I could tell.
“Nice place,” Jamie said, standing up to look around. Gracie snorted. “Did I say something funny?” he asked.
“Nice place?” said Gracie. “Well, I suppose it is a step up from the Wilkinson farm.”
“Let’s not talk about that,” I said.
>
“Okay,” said Jamie. He looked back at me, his voice low and sweet. “There are better things to talk about anyway,” he said, which made Gracie snort even harder.
“Like what?” she said. “Like the fact that you’re dead and still insist on hanging around?”
“Stop it, Gracie,” I said. I didn’t say it in a mean way, but she still made a face like I’d just slapped her.
“Me?” she said. “Adam, this is all a mess. It’s all ruined. Can’t you see that?”
“It’s not ruined,” I said. “We can fix it. Together.”
Gracie furrowed her brows again, like she had when I’d tried to shush her in dead space. “Adam, this can’t be fixed. It’d be great if it could, but it can’t. I’m worried about you. Please.”
She didn’t say anything more. Just that. Please. Please what? What did she want me to do? What she did? Abandon him? I couldn’t look Jamie in the eye and tell him to go, not even after he’d done it to me at the Wilkinson farm.
“Fuck,” said Gracie, “it’s already getting dark. My parents are going to kill me. I have to go.”
The cot screeched as she stood up. After she stepped down out of the shack, she looked back and said, “I’ll be back tomorrow. Okay, Adam?”
“Okay,” I said. “Be careful going home.”
“Bye, Gracie,” Jamie said after she’d already started walking away. She didn’t turn around, though, just lifted her hand in the air and waved.
After she left, Jamie and I stayed up talking. He told me I’d misunderstood, that he’d been angry but not so much that he never wanted to see me again. When he’d asked me to leave the Wilkinson farm, it was because he didn’t want any more trouble between me and Frances. It hadn’t been because he sided with her. I told him I’d seen them in the woods, how I’d hidden from them while they were at the covered bridge. “What were you two doing there?” I asked. But he only shook his head. “Is she still mad at me?” I asked. But he only shook his head again.