The Hike (11 page)

Ben did as he was told. Fermona handed him a roll of athletic tape.

“For your fingers,” she said. “It'll help protect them.”

He wrapped the tape around his wrists and the meat of his palms. He taped his forefinger to his middle finger and his ring finger to his pinky, just like he did before football games. He hadn't forgotten anything about the ritual. Fermona walked over to the cage and swung the gate open.

“He won't attack until I ring the bell,” she said. “First one to die loses.”

Ben stepped inside and she locked the cage behind him. No escape now. He tried to contain his fear but it was already eating away at his mind and body. He could see Crab skittering out from the corridor entrance and along the side of the chamber. No one else noticed. Fermona went over to her pile and picked up a bell the size of the Liberty Bell. The peals rang out loud enough to make the limestone formations above tremble.

Focus
.

“Go!” she cried. The dogface ran at Ben and, ever the running back, he juked out of the way and scampered over to the other side of the octagon. The dogface barely spoke. It only let out grunts and moans and horrid laughs, like an ogre. Ben slipped out of his way two, three more times.

“Come on!” Fermona said. “You're ducking him!”

“I'm thinking!” Ben cried.

“Punch while you think.”

The dogface made another charge and this time Ben dropped to his hands and knees and rolled into the maniac's legs, cut blocking him. Then he leapt on top of the dogface and wrapped his hands around his throat.

“That's it!” Fermona yelled. Her mouth was full of peanuts. “Now you're fightin'!”

Ben hadn't been in a real fight since the angry man had punched him, if that could even have been called a fight. He forgot how uncomfortable it was, how disturbing it was. He got into a fight in school once and wanted it to be over the second punches were thrown. It was an overbearing sort of conflict. Tiring, too. Exhausting. Fighting was the most exhausting thing in the world.

Ben pressed down hard on the dogface's throat and began yelling at him, like he was a cockroach Ben was trying to kill. “I fucking hate you,” Ben seethed. “Fucking die. DIE.”

But the dogface grabbed Ben's right arm and bent his forefinger backward. Once he was compelled to let go, the dogface acted quickly, slipping out from under Ben and whipping around him, standing up and holding Ben's arm fast to his chest, trapping Ben in an armlock. He pressed down on Ben's elbow and Ben could feel it begin to snap—the bones and nerves and tendons all on the verge of coming undone. Ben turned toward the killer and dug his free hand into his face, jamming his fingers into the dogface's eyes like he was gripping a bowling ball. He tried to rip away the dog mask and found it impossible to remove. It was either glued on, or it
was
the man's face.

He dug in deeper, pushing the dogface back and mashing his head into the chain-link fencing like he was trying to strain it through a sieve.
The dogface stomped on Ben's foot, then wheeled around and pushed him to the ground, jumping on top of him and exulting at his newfound positional advantage. He grabbed Ben's wrists and held them down to the ground, as if he were preparing to violate him. Then he laughed.

“I've been waiting for this since . . .”

Remembering another trick Teresa had shown him in that ratty gym, Ben brought his knees to his chest and lifted the dogface up in the air, then flipped him to the side and punched him in the face with a solid right jab, his father's class ring opening up a gash above the maniac's eye that half blinded him. The dogface shrieked in agony. Ben quickly held his left forearm to the killer's throat and punched out his other eye with the lethal ring. The bleeding dogface struggled and wheezed as Ben tried to keep every part of the man held fast to the ground. He needed more arms to pin the dogface down. Four arms. Maybe six. But the end was coming now. The struggle grew less and less difficult to contain. He could see the life give out of the dogface's eyes. Eventually, the dogface stopped moving entirely. Still, Ben pressed. He pressed so hard he could have taken the dogface's head clean off.

“Stop,” Fermona said.

Ben fell off the man.

“It's over now,” she said. She reached down into the cage, plucked the dogface's limp corpse off the ground, and bit his head clean off. As she chewed on the head, she tossed the man's body into the bubbling curry stew. Ben wailed in terror.

“Too hairy,” Fermona said, picking at her teeth. “Such a pain to shave you guys down before eating.” She saw that Ben was still inconsolable, so she knelt down by the side of the cage and reached in to stroke his head with her index finger.

“Ever kill anyone before?”

“No,” he whimpered. It was true. He had never killed anyone.
Never came anywhere within orbit of killing anyone. This was not an act that was ever intended for him. There were no other covenants left for him to break.

“You did well,” Fermona said. “You make a fine champion.”

“Why are you doing this?” Ben asked.

“Because it's awesome. Don't you feel alive? I have one more surprise for you.”

“No, please don't. . . .”

“I know I said you had a choice, but you actually don't. You're gonna fight five dwarfs right now.”

“What?!”

She snapped her fingers and here came five men, all three feet tall. They rushed into the octagon and piled on top of Ben, biting his legs and twisting his arms and ripping away at his ears, attacking him like a pack of dogs. He tried to shake them off, but they were dense, powerful little creatures. And they were coordinated. Ben could hear them openly discussing which parts of him needed more punching and grabbing.
“Hey, this shoulder needs more work.”
One man had indeed been the correct choice.

He was rapidly giving in to the pack of dwarfs when suddenly Crab came into the cage and shimmied around and over the mass of stubby, angry arms. He crawled up Ben's stomach and dumped a leather pouch on top of his chest. Ben freed his arms momentarily and opened it.

Inside the pouch were three hard seeds. Ben grabbed one and immediately slammed it down, praying a wolf wouldn't appear. Instead, there was now a gun in his hand.
Ohhhhh, a gun.
Just the sweetest, loveliest gun you could ever want to lay hands on. God bless guns. He had never become infatuated with anything as quickly as he became infatuated with that gun. He raised it and fired it into
the air. The dwarfs instantly ceased their attack and backed away from him.

Ben stood, gun in hand. The door to the octagon was still wide open.

“Get out,” he said to the dwarfs, and they readily complied, forming a single-file line and running straight down the massive stone hallway. He stepped out of the cage and turned the gun on Fermona.

“What are you gonna do with that?” she asked.

“Nothing,” Ben said. “I don't wanna kill you. I don't like feeling what I felt just now.”

“That little gun couldn't kill me anyway.”

“I think it could. I think you're bluffing. I don't know much, but I know that little bullets can do big, big things.”

She said nothing. Ben could have sworn she was about to break into a smile.

“I want you to set everyone in here free,” he told her. “The men in the dungeon, the dwarfs, all of them.”

“The dwarfs won't go,” she said. “I don't even keep them in a hole. They have their own party room in the back. I don't know what they do in there and I don't
want
to know.”

“Fine. Then set the rest of them free.”

“Why would I do that?”

Ben cocked the hammer and smirked at her. Crab crawled up on his left shoulder, like a parrot would.

“Because it'll be awesome,” Ben told her. “I think you're gonna be
great.”

F
ermona crossed her arms and tapped her foot on the floor.

“Let me keep a few guys,” she said. “I don't wanna have to start from scratch. It takes a lot of fuel to keep me going. I eat nine meals a day. Not grazing either. Usually a full man every time.”

“No,” said Ben, keeping the gun on her. “Let them all go.”

“Fine.”

She grabbed her keys and went into the back corridor. Ben could hear her unlock all the massive bolts and swing open the wooden doors. Moments later, a succession of terrified, naked men and women ran out of the corridor like rats scurrying down a subway track. They had all gone mad, babbling in incoherent tongues and sprinting past the lake, presumably out of the mountain. One man was so distressed that he jumped right into the bonfire underneath Fermona's cauldron. Ben covered his ears as the man screamed out in agony like the dogfaces that had been chewed down to nothing by the wolf at the base of the iron tower. The rest of the prisoners were gone before he could even wave to them.

Fermona stomped back into the cavern. Ben kept the gun held high.

“What do you want now?” she asked. “You cleaned out my pantry. That's not what good houseguests do.”

“I want all my stuff,” he said.

“I burned it.”

“Then I need whatever supplies you can turn over.”

She sighed and let Ben scavenge the pile for anything he needed to continue onward: boots, pants, clean socks and underwear, flashlights, shirts, a jacket, a paintball gun (any kind of weapon seemed useful to him), and pounds of nonperishable goods—cans of soup, packaged snack cakes, jars of pickled vegetables, and more. Then, when he was finished pillaging, she plunged a mighty fist down into the pile and pulled out the bag Ben had carried with him into the mountain.

“I did burn
most
of your stuff,” she admitted. “But you can have this back.”

She tossed the bag to Ben and he found the plush fox inside, smiling at him. Flora's fox. He nearly dropped the gun because he was so overcome at the sight of it.

“Thank you,” he said, pointing the gun back at her.

“You don't need to keep pointing that thing at me,” she said. “I get the gist, you know. I do something wrong . . .
gunny gunny shoot shoot
.”

He put the gun back down. “How do I get out of here?”

“Past the lake. Where the mental cripples went. Are you gonna shoot me?”

“Are you gonna eat me if I don't?”

“I'd like to, but there'll be more where you came from. And they won't be as stubborn about not dying as you are.”

“So we're cool, then? Crab and I go, and you don't follow?”

“I was gonna ask,” said Fermona. “What's with the crab?”

“I dunno,” said Crab. “A few days ago I was asking him, ‘Hey, what's with the freaky giant lady?'”

“Oh, he's got a smart mouth on him.”

“If we leave here, will you track us down?” Ben asked her.

“No.”

“Where did you come from?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who are your parents?”

“I don't have any.”

“Do you know who the Producer is?”

“No.”

“How did you get in this mountain?”

“I've always been here. At first, I was nowhere, and then POOF! I was here. And that's how it's always been, you silly little man.”

“But how? Why?”

“I haven't the slightest idea. I simply
was
. What does it matter? I was happy here before you sent all my food running. When you're happy, you don't question how that came to be.”

“What about the people you imprisoned? Where did they come from?”

“From the path.”

“Did they tell you how they got here?”

“No. What do I care? Borrrrrrrrringgggggg. If I'm not eating you, you're boring me. Like now! I'm bored now. And hungry. So go, before I put my grumpy pants back on and take that gun away from you.”

“What's on the other side of the mountain?” Ben asked.

“I don't know,” she said. “Unlike most people, I'm comfortable exactly where I am.”

She pointed them through the cavern and past the eerily still waters of the underground lagoon. Ben could see rainbow swirls on the surface of the water spreading in every direction, like leaked gasoline. Past the lake there was yet another gaping mountain corridor,
wide and tall enough to accommodate a locomotive. Ben backed into the tunnel slowly, his eyes still on Fermona as she let out an annoyed snort and sat back down on her treasure pile. The soft torchlight of the cavern faded away as Ben kept walking backward, Crab on his shoulder. Soon, he turned around and they were enveloped in wet darkness again, walking for miles through the heart of the mountain. Fermona never came after them. She probably could have taken that gun from Ben if she had really wanted to. He couldn't shake the feeling that she had
let
him win, but he wasn't quite sure why.

They made their way through the cavern and finally emerged into the daylight. Ben had to shield his eyes from the glare, but once he adjusted, he could see nothing but a flat, open prairie in front of him. The path sloped gently down the base of the mountain and into the warm, lush fields, lined on both sides by a wooden split-rail fence. Among the clovers and tall grasses and bursting dandelions, he saw herds of wild horses galloping across the grasslands. They were gorgeous animals, with slick auburn coats and visible muscles rippling everywhere. Two weeks ago, he couldn't have given half a shit about horses. Teresa was a fan of them. He thought horses were for rich girls and old men. But Christ, it was nice to lay eyes on them now. The fresh air and sunlight from the prairie acted as a kind of atmospheric Xanax, blunting his trauma, gently numbing the thought that he was now a killer. Not a murderer, per se. But he
had
killed a man with his bare hands. A young foal went up and nuzzled against her mom and Ben had to look away for a moment. It was all too much.

Off in the distance, he saw a house. The path ran right past it, but maybe there was a turn into it. He broke into a run, and Crab nearly fell off him.

“Hey! Watch it!”

The house sat fifty yards behind the fence. No driveway. No gap
in the fence to walk through. It was just there, in the middle of the grass, with no surrounding infrastructure. It was two stories high (three if you counted the basement poking out from below), made of faded white-painted brick, with a red front door. Ben recognized the fuzzy brown couch peeking out above the living-room windowsill.

“That's
my
house, Crab.”

“It is?”

It was very much Ben's house, down to the last detail: the shoddy black rails on the concrete stoop, the black shutters, the small section of the chimney that had to be knocked out and patched back up with fresh red brick, and the neatly trimmed bushes dotting the front—just the way Teresa's mom liked trimming them when she would come over and do some landscaping for kicks. It was all there.

And then the door swung open and there was his youngest child, Peter, in his little crocodile pajama pants and a red T-shirt with a rocket on it. He never changed out of his pajamas. Normal clothing was worthless to him. He would have worn pajamas to a funeral. Every effort that Teresa and Ben made to get him to dress properly was an exercise in wasted energy.

The boy looked like he had just been napping, his face all marked up from the creases in the sheets. His cheeks were red. He looked so warm and soft to hold. Peter grabbed a nearby garden hose and began to water the grass. The boy loved doing that. He could stand outside the house with a hose for hours, drenching the concrete. Now he walked around the airlifted residence, blasting away at the small front lawn and the flowers and the walkway, until everything was saturated and his feet were muddy all over. Then he turned the hose on himself and got drenched. He saw Ben and waved.

“Hi, Dad!”

Ben put his hand to his mouth, aghast. It was really his son.

“Peter?”

“Hi!”

Ben walked to the fence and leaned into it. Peter remained in the doorway.

“Can you come here?” Ben asked him.

“No, Dad. I can't go
there
. I have to stay
here
.”

“Is anyone else in the house? Rudy? Flora? Mom?”

“No, Dad. I have to go back inside now. I'm alllllllll wet. You do work, Dad.”

“Just come here for a second. Let me hug you.”

Ben was standing on the lower rail of the fence now, leaning over.
Oh, why won't this fucking fence just go away?
He swung a leg over the top rail and now he was sitting on it, staring at his youngest child.

Crab whispered into Ben's ear, “Don't do it.”

“Shut up, Crab.”

“It's not real. It's bait.”

“Shut up.”

Peter smiled and waved to Ben. “I have to go, Dad!”

Ben was falling apart now. “Okay. Okay.”

“Love you, Dad!”

“I love you, too.”

Peter shut the red front door. Ben could see the top of his son's head bouncing across the bottom of the living-room window. He ran to the other side of the path and leapt onto the fence rail, screaming.

“FUUUUUUCCCCCKKKKKKK!!!! God damn you, you fucking asshole shithead path! FUCK!”

“It's not real, man,” Crab said.

“
This
isn't real!” Ben cried. “Every bit of this is an insane fiction, and now you're telling me I can't go and hold my son, MY SON, because
he's somehow the only bullshit thing in it? What is this? Is it God doing this, Crab? I didn't even believe in God before this. I just figured if God existed, then He was an
asshole
. This only clinches it. This is cruel and vile, and I did
nothing
to deserve it. I never betrayed a friend, Crab. I never committed a violent crime. I loved my wife and family the way a man is supposed to love his wife and family. I waded through enough shit jusssssst to get where I was before I stumbled upon this godforsaken road. And even then, life was still
brutal
. I had bills and children and a sick mother. I don't even know how I've survived it. I don't know how anyone does. It was already a trial by fire. And now I can't even walk across that field and have
one
moment with my son? What kind of fucking animal God lets that happen? What exactly does He want me to prove? I'll kill Him myself, Crab. I will find this God . . . this Producer, and I will drive a knife right through His fucking brain.”

He grabbed his bag and trudged down the road, still steaming. Crab followed along silently. After a time, Ben's house grew smaller on the horizon, until it vanished entirely. When he turned around and saw it was now gone, he took out the plush fox toy from his bag and clutched it to his chest.

“Are you all right?” Crab asked.

“No.”

“Listen, there's . . .” Crab hesitated.

“What?” Ben asked.

“There's something up ahead.”

“How do you know?”

“Just keep walking and I'll show you.”

Eventually, they came to a grand split in the path, nothing but fences and prairies and horses either way. Crab jumped off Ben's shoulder and walked up to the edge of the fork.

“Which way do we go?” Ben asked him.

Crab turned to him. There was something different in his expression now. Crab was not his usual, well,
crabby
self.

“You have to go to the right,” Crab said.

“Why is that?” Ben asked.

“Because
I
have to go to the left.”

“Why do you have to go left?”

Crab sighed. “Because I've already been down
that
road.”

And then it dawned on Ben. He felt like a complete fool. It should have been so obvious.

“Wait a second,” Ben said. “You've been on this path before.”

“I have.”

“You're not just a crab, are you?”

“Very perceptive. The fact that I can fucking talk maybe clued you in.”

“You were a person.”

“Yes.”

“What was your human name?”

“You don't wanna know.”

Ben took out the gun and aimed it at Crab.

“I'm faster than that gun, muchacho,” Crab said.

“Tell me what your human name was.”

“Hang on. This is not easy for me . . .”

“SAY IT.”

Crab quivered. After a long time, he looked down and said softly, “It's Ben.”

“What?”

“Ben. My name is Ben.”

Ben dropped the gun. He couldn't feel his hands anymore. He couldn't feel anything. His body began to wobble.

“It's not possible.”

Crab reared up and traced his pincer down a faint, virtually invisible line under his eye. Ben had never noticed it until now.

“Ninety-seven stitches. We got ninety-seven stitches from that dog.”

“Oh, God.”

“I'm sorry, man.”

Ben felt as if he had just been sentenced to life in prison. He was going into shock. Knew it, really. This was going to be the
least
painful part of finding out Crab's identity. The pain and despair would soon coalesce and then mushroom.

“What happens to me?” he asked Crab quietly.

“This.”

“How long have you been on this path?”

Crab turned his back to Ben. “I can't say.”

“Has it been a month?”

Crab wouldn't answer.

“A year?”

No answer.

“Five years?
Ten
years?”

Crab turned back around and looked at him with a pity that bordered on unbearable.

“No,” said Ben, shaking his head. “Ten years?”

“More or less. I lost count.”

Ben crumpled to the ground, flopping onto his back. The sky above was utterly empty.
He
was empty. His body, his mind, his whole history: All of it felt vacated.