Chapter Two

Author's Note: Well, it's that time of the year again. Happy Halloween, everybody! The ancients believed that this was the new year, the time when the world of the living and the ghostly plane of the dead intersected and anything could happen. The time when consensus reality broke down and the things that went bump in the night grew long, sharp teeth. Nonsense, of course, science tells us that monsters don't really exist. But imagine yourself in the time of Mael Mag Och. There is no light in the world brighter than the campfire you huddle around. There is a forest just outside the ring of light, an old-growth beast that sprawls and clutches at your hair and sucks at the ground like a needy beast. That forest goes on forever--it is the whole world outside your meager fire ring. It's dark back there, truly dark; anything could hide in those shadows. Two days ago you watched the moon be eaten by the night, you watched it turn bloody red: it never did that before, you think. You move a little closer to the fire, just to stay warm. The night is pulsing with the sound of frogs and crickets but it's the things that make no sound at all, you think, who are truly dangerous. A branch snaps in the fire and you look up, feeling foolish but there: yes, over there, no, now it's moving--there! A pair of eyes like hot coals, burning just beyond the reach of your light. You reach for your knife. If it comes down to you and the thing in the dark, will you have the strength to defend yourself? Will you have the speed? You don't know what that thing is. But you know it's hungry. It watches you like it has all the time in the world. All night to wait, and watch. It doesn't sleep. It doesn't blink.

--David Wellington

Limit: Two Gallons of Water per Person, due to Emergency, Please! [Handwritten sign posted at a CVS Pharmacy, Carefree, CA 3/28/05]

Nilla nestled back in the upholstery of the Toyota’s back seat and chewed on a candy bar when she really wanted to swallow it whole. It was the closest thing the kids had to food.

“We were heading down to Hollywood, but the radio said you shouldn’t.” The girl, Shar, craned around in her seat to look back at the hitch-hiker. “You’re… you’re not supposed to pick people up, either. You’re not even supposed to drive unless you have to.”

It was an apology. Nilla’s mouth was full, so she gave the girl a closed-mouth smile.

“Damn, woman, if I want to go somewheres I’ma gonna do it,” Charles swore, striking the steering wheel with the flat of his hand. “I got my mind on my drivin’, and my drivin’ on my mind, you know what I’m saying? Shit, that’s just what freedom is all about. For reals. Now see if you can find something on the FM.”

“I just get scared, is all,” the girl said, slumping down in her seat again. She didn’t touch the radio. “They say there’s sick people down there. They say they’re violent.”

Nilla gave a polite shrug. The girl was still looking at her in the rear-view mirror.

“They say they have glowing red eyes,” Shar finished, and then looked away. “I get scared, is all.”

“Unh-uh, no way, I told you already, woman. I’m psycho-killer crazy. I’m mad gangsta dangerous. I’m a hard man, baby, hard enough for both of us. I’ll keep you safe, Shar. I already told you that.”

He grabbed her around the shoulders with one arm and held her close, kissing the side of her forehead before he let her go again. He switched the radio on himself and they couldn’t talk any more, not and be heard over the blare of hip-hop that came out of the speakers by Nilla’s head. It made a strange soundtrack for what she saw out her windows—flat land covered in spotty green and yellow vegetation in the perfect rectangular fields of big truck farms. They passed the occasional abandoned oil derrick like a tired animal bending down for a drink of water and unable to get back up. Nilla saw a couple of houses that had collapsed down the middle. It looked like the ground itself had fallen away from beneath them. Nobody had bothered to repair them. She was a long way already from the bustling little town by the sea where she died and came back.

“There’s a place to stop up ahead,” Shar said, sitting up in her seat. “Are you still hungry?”

Nilla nodded hopefully. “I don’t have any money, though.”

Shar sat back down. “Can we stop, Charles? Just for a minute? I need to pee?”

They rolled in over the sudden shockingly-blue ribbon of the aqueduct and into a tiny town bleached by sun into a uniform brownish-grey. There was no sign welcoming them to town but judging by the names of half the stores they had arrived in Lost Hills, California. As they glided through the cracked streets Nilla got a bad chill down her back and she realized that everyone they passed was staring at them. They were normal people—she saw faces with bad acne scars, old women with hair like frozen cumulus clouds, mothers carrying babies and brushing dark hair out of their eyes to stare. She got another shock when she realized that it wasn’t the car garnering all that attention. The eyes didn’t track the counter-rotating hubcaps or the handmade spoiler on the back. They were looking in the windows. In the back windows.

At her.

They knew. The people of Lost Hills knew what she was. They could sense it. If she closed her eyes she could see them all, their golden auras, and she knew they were all looking back and seeing her darkness. Surely not as vividly, certainly not consciously but they could sense her energy just like she could sense theirs.

She wanted to get out, but she didn’t want to leave the safety of the car. She wanted Charles to just keep driving, to speed up, even as he began to maneuver into a parking space on Tulare Street. She wanted to make herself invisible—but that would surely spook Charles and Shar and she couldn’t risk that, not when they were her only way out of town.

Charles switched off the ignition and the three of them got out. The stares intensified and on the corner a woman in a red cardigan called out something in Spanish. Nilla had no idea what she was saying. Well, at least she knew one more thing about herself than before: she couldn’t speak Spanish.

They headed into a little convenience store—the sign out front said “bodega” in amongst the signs advertising cheap cigarettes and powdered milk—a dim room with a low ceiling of stained acoustic tile and metal racks full of off-brand merchandise. The candy was all Mexican, the newspapers up front were full of words and even punctuation Nilla didn’t recognize. The proprietress, a middle-aged woman in a blue print dress, could barely be seen behind an enormous lottery terminal and a display of artificial roses each sealed in its own plastic case.

Charles headed over to talk to her while Nilla and Shar roamed the aisles, looking for snacks. Nilla had a pretty good idea of what was going on and she kept her mouth shut. “So excuse me, ma’am? Do you sell condoms? No? Ma’am, I need some help here. What about the flavored kind, do you have any of those?” The woman behind the counter couldn’t conceal her horror at the question. For the first time since they’d entered the store she looked away from Nilla. “What about those ones? They have little bumps on them, you know, excuse me, Ma’am? They’re ribbed for her pleasure?”

“Boomps?” the woman asked, her eyes hard.

In the aisle just out of view Shar grabbed a link of plastic-wrapped salami and handed it to Nilla. “In your pants,” she whispered, “there’s plenty of room. Five-fingered discount.”

“Yeah, bumps. Ribs, I guess,” Charles suggested. He held up his hands about a foot and a half apart from one another. “In this size?”

“Boomps,” the woman said again. “Ribs?”

“I think they call them French ticklers.”

Shar sputtered with laughter even as she handed Nilla a block of cheddar cheese and a bag of potato chips. She just couldn’t help herself. It was all over as soon as the laugh came out of her, though. “Thieves! They are thieves!” the woman shrieked. She started to crawl up onto her counter, clearly intending to seize them in the act of shoplifting.

“What do we do?” Nilla asked, but Shar had already dropped half the things she was carrying and was at the door. Nilla followed as close behind as she could, unable to move as fast as she might like both because she was, well, dead but also because her pants were full of cold cuts. Charles came up behind her and pushed her bodily into the door of the bodega until it flew open and they spilled out into the sunlight. The proprietress was still coming up and over her counter, her knees up on the smooth surface. They headed for the car, intending to make a clean getaway.

“Que estas haciendo? Ai! Malvado fantasma, es peligroso!” a man on the corner shouted and Nilla pulled up short, guilt flushing through her body. Shar and Charles kept running. The man came closer—an old, weathered guy in overalls and a baseball cap. What could she do? She felt pretty lousy about shoplifting but she would feel worse, she knew, if she were caught. The people of Lost Hills wouldn’t give her a chance. They knew. She bolted for the car.

“Hice por ayudar,” the old man said behind her. She got maybe three strides down the road before she realized he’d been trying to warn her. Charles and Shar were behind the car, huddled in its shadow.

A crowd of men had gathered in the middle of the street. Some of them had farm implements—pitchforks, shovels, she saw a long-handled trowel—and others just had steel-toed boots. They had gathered around a girl who was maybe fifteen years old, lying curled up in the street, and they were kicking her to death.

No. Not death. When Nilla got closer she closed her eyes and saw the golden fires of the men in a ring around a huddled shape of fuming darkness. The girl was already dead. The blows the men rained down on her weren’t stopping her from reaching for their ankles, trying to grab them and tear them apart.

No wonder the people of the town were so sensitive to her energy. The sickness had already come upon them.

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