The bears supposedly were not interested in people ... But there had been cases of attacks. Maulings. Killings.
He quickened his pace. As he pumped his legs, he tried to remain peripherally aware of the surrounding mountains. He didn’t sense any movement. But he still had the uncanny feeling that something was keeping pace with him, following his every footstep.
Finally, he halted, and whirled, bringing up the flashlight like a weapon.
He didn’t see anything. But he felt it.
“Who’s up there?” he shouted.
A cool wind whistled through the mountains, rattling the underbrush.
“Come on out, motherfucker!” Lee said.
Something clattered down the mountainside. Something small. Lee chased it with the flashlight, but it was too tiny for him to make out what it was. A rock, maybe?
The thing skipped down the shelf of the mountains and bounced onto the shoulder of the road. Lee stepped forward, panning the light beam across the ground.
When he found the object, a gasp escaped him.
It was a gold hoop earring, covered in fresh blood.
They pulled off Anita’s plan without a hitch. Late that night, they found a lake at a secluded park, south of Milwaukee. They emptied Gary’s pockets, and ripped the stereo out of the Jaguar for good measure. Then they took the car to a knoll overlooking the lake, shifted into NEUTRAL, and sent the car rolling down the hillside, over the shore, and into the water.
Several minutes later, the car had sunk into the murky depths, out of sight.
“Later tonight, I’ll call the police and give them an anonymous tip about seeing someone robbed here,” Anita said. “It’ll be fine.”
“You’ve got to promise me you’ll never talk about this,” Lee said. “This is some serious shit. Both of us could go to jail.”
Anita looked at him as if he was crazy. “Why would I do that when I plan to file for the life insurance money?”
“Huh? How much insurance?”
“One million dollars. I took out the policy on him years ago.”
Lee licked his lips. The engine in his mind was revving. “Can you share some of that with me?”
“What?” She gave him a bug-eyed look.
“I helped you do this, didn’t I? I deserve a cut.”
“Hell to the naw. I was married to him for eight years. That money is mine.”
She started to walk away from him, heading back to the car. He grabbed her arm and spun her around.
“Look, bitch—”
That was when she pulled a gun out of her purse. He recognized it as a .32.
“Get your hands off me,” she said.
“Okay, okay, be cool.” He released her and stuck his hands in the air. “Put that thing away, girl.” He forced a laugh. “You don’t need that on me.”
“Go back to ATL,” she said. “I don’t wanna talk to you again.”
“Are you crazy—”
“This night never happened,” she said. “You say anything about what went down here, I’m going to the police and saying I saw
you
. I got your fingerprints all over the tire iron, baby.”
“You can’t do that.” He stepped forward. “That’s bullshit!”
She cocked the trigger and aimed it at his chest.
“Don’t try me,” she said. She smiled sweetly. “’Bye, ’bye.”
She went to her Mercedes coupe and drove away, leaving him out there, alone. Fortunately, a gas station was only a mile away.
By the time he’d reached the gas station, he’d decided that he would have to kill Anita. He couldn’t trust her not to turn him in, and he deserved a portion of that million-dollar insurance payout. If he couldn’t have it, she wasn’t going to get it, either.
He’d never considered himself a murderer. But she had left him with no choice. He had to protect his ass.
He returned to Atlanta, to make plans and prepare.
Two weeks later, he broke into her house in the middle of night.
But Anita was already dead.
She lay in bed, her face bloody and bruised and smashed ... as if by a tire iron. It looked like she’d been dead for several hours.
Lee didn’t hesitate. He holstered his .38, wiped down the doorknob with a handkerchief, and got the hell out of there. He hit the highway and started driving back to Atlanta.
He didn’t know who had murdered Anita, and he didn’t want to know. He wanted to forget all about her and her husband and his own crime.
He was swearing off online dating for good.
But shortly after two o’clock in the morning, as he was driving through Tennessee, his car broke down.
Lee’s heart knocked. Kneeling, he used the flashlight to flip over the hoop earring in the gravel.
There was no doubt. The earring had belonged to Anita.
It was probably covered in her blood, too.
He pulled out his .38 and directed the flashlight into the hills above.
“Who are you?” he shouted. “What do you want?”
His voice echoed hollowly through the stillness. No one answered him.
But someone was up there, and it was not a bear or an animal of any kind. It was a human being. The person who had butchered Anita.
Now, whoever he was, he was stalking Lee.
Lee tried to think of anyone he knew who might be motivated by revenge. He could think of only one person: Anita’s husband, Gary.
But he’d killed Gary.
He remembered the grisly sight of the man’s battered face, eyes drooping from their sockets, nose mashed like a piece of misshapen clay ...
“I’ve got a gun,” Lee said, to the darkness above. “I’ll bust a cap in your ass!”
Once the echoes of his voice faded, quiet claimed the night.
A gritty, metallic taste—the taste of fear—lay thick on his tongue. The person hunting him was cunning. That much was clear. He was toying with Lee, using the darkness and the mountains to his advantage.
Lee crossed to the other side of the road. He started walking quickly.
Then, he started running.
He hadn’t run in years—making runs to the liquor store didn’t qualify—and within a couple of minutes, a painful stitch had developed along his side. He ignored the pain and kept pushing, sucking in great deep breaths. He kept his attention focused straight ahead. He was afraid that if he looked behind him, he would see his pursuer, and it would be the ghastly face of Death himself.
He raced around a bend in the road.
There was a service station about a quarter of a mile ahead. Moonlight glimmered on the windows.
Lee lowered his head and willed all of his remaining stamina into his leg muscles.
He ran across the gas station parking lot, his feet swishing through the weeds sprouting from the cracked asphalt. As he neared the building, he saw that slabs of plywood covered the front door and many of the windows. The gas pumps looked as if they hadn’t dispensed gasoline since 1970.
The station was closed, and probably had been for years.
“Shit!” he shouted. Pain wormed through his stomach, and he bent double, gasping. He wanted nothing more than to lie on the ground and catch his breath.
But fear kept him on his feet.
He swung around, to see if anyone had followed him. But he saw nothing, only the hulking mountains and the silent road.
A pay phone stood at the edge of the parking lot. Lee went to it, holding his aching belly. He lifted the handset off the cradle.
The phone was dead.
“Dammit, ain’t this a bitch?” He slammed the phone back onto the cradle.
What next? Only one answer: keep walking.
He heard the hum of an approaching car. His heart skipped with excitement.
Then he spotted a pair of headlights, weaving around the curve in the road.
He’d been afraid of hitchhiking before, but he’d take his chances. Nothing could be worse than walking out here in the dead of night being stalked by Anita’s unknown killer.
He sprinted to the shoulder of the road, waving his arms.
“Hey!” he yelled. “Hey, I need a ride!”
The car—it appeared to be a black sedan—began to slow.
“Hallelujah, thank you, Jesus!” Lee cried. He loathed church, but he swore that he was going next Sunday and would drop a hefty offering into the collection plate.
Lee pulled his shirt over his belt, to hide the gun. No sense frightening his rescuer. He wiped his face with a handkerchief, removed his cap, and ran his fingers through his short hair, to make himself presentable.
The car drew to a stop.
In the process of walking closer, Lee stopped, too.
It was a Mercedes. With Illinois license plates. The plates read: ASMUV1.
It was Anita’s car.
The passenger door swung open.
And in the backsplash of the interior light, Lee saw Anita. She sat behind the steering wheel, face bashed in and crusted with blood, ruptured eyes rolling in their sockets, like a Halloween mask.
Anita’s busted lips twisted in a grin. Something—a loose tooth—rolled out of her ruined mouth.
It’s a mask, makeup, this is a joke, this isn’t real ...
Gagging on his own fear, Lee stumbled backward. He fumbled for the gun in his waistband, though a rational part of his mind—the only rational part left—asked him why bother using a gun against someone who was already dead?
He backed into something solid. The old gas pumps. Then a putrid stench filled his nostrils. He turned, hands trembling on the revolver.
Gary stepped around the corner of the island.
He looked as battered and dead as Lee had left him when he’d pushed the car into the lake.
Lee couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. He felt something warm streaming down his leg, and realized, vaguely, that he’d pissed on himself.
“I got to that bitch before you did,” Gary said, in a water-choked baritone. “Got her behaving like a proper wife again. But you didn’t think I’d forget about you, did you, Lee?”
Gary gripped a tire iron. He raised it.
Lee regained his motor functions again. He aimed the gun at Gary and squeezed the trigger.
A bullet drilled into Gary’s forehead. Dark watery fluid poured from the wound.
But Gary kept coming.
“My turn,” Gary said.
Lee spun, and ran.
He got maybe fifteen feet when Anita drove after him. The Mercedes smashed into his legs. He fell to the pavement, screaming. He tried to get up, but his legs wouldn’t obey.
Gary shuffled toward him. Malice shone in his yellow dead eyes.
“Please,” Lee said. “I’m sorry, man, I never meant to kill you. Oh, God, please, don’t kill me!”
Gary swung the tire iron at Lee’s head.
Lee blacked out.
Lee awoke sometime later.
How much later, he was not sure. But it was dawn—a sunrise crested the ridge of the mountains. Looking at the sunshine made his head hurt. He felt a knot throbbing on his skull.
He lay on the ground, on a bed of thick grass. His hands were bound behind him, and ropes bound his legs, too. He had been stripped down to his boxer shorts.
Something sticky and warm had been smeared on his chest, arms, and thighs. It smelled like honey. A cloud of insects buzzed around him, alighting on his honey-smothered flesh.
What the hell was this? Where was he? How had he wound up here?
He rolled onto his side, and saw a bloodstained tire iron.
Jesus, that was all real? I thought it was a nightmare ...
In the distance—but not too far away—something grunted. Something big.
What would make a grunt like that, in the Tennessee mountains?
He didn’t want to think about it.
A minute later, he didn’t have to. Branches crackled and weeds crunched, and an enormous black bear emerged through the maples.
Lee began to laugh. It was the braying cackle of a man who had lost his mind.
“Ain’t this a bitch?” he asked. “I’m left up in some mountains by a dead man to get eaten by a bear! Come on over here, Smoky! You ever tasted dark meat?”
Grumbling, the bear lumbered toward him. Drool dripped from its large, yellow teeth and spattered like warm butter on Lee’s stomach.
“I’m dipped in honey!” Lee cried. “Eat up, motherfucker!”
The bear roared.
The Monster
It was half-past two o’clock in the morning, and what frightened Jared more than anything in the world was having to get out of his bed in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom. Most times, he’d rather pee on himself. But he was ten and couldn’t pee on himself any more. Mom would get upset, and Dad would ... well, he didn’t want to think about what Dad would do to him.
But the thought of getting out of bed was actually worse than thinking of what Dad would do to him if he peed on himself. See, there was a monster under his bed.
Jared lay under the covers, his bladder throbbing. It was way too dark in the room; the curtains were closed and Dad wouldn’t let him sleep with a night-light. The only light came from the clock on the nightstand. The clock digits gave off a ghostly, greenish glow.
He rose, his eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. He held his breath. Listened.
He heard the monster, breathing softly. It might be asleep. Did monsters sleep? He didn’t know. He had never even seen the monster, really. But it was real. It crawled under the bed only at night, and he always heard it breathing, shifting around, or whispering in a strange language that he didn’t understand.
The monster had begun living under his bed a few months ago. He remembered when the monster first arrived. It had been the night that Mom and Dad had gotten into the worst fight they’d ever had (until then). Crouched under his bed covers, Jared had heard every turn of his parents’ battle: the shouts, the breaking dishes, the cries, and the scary sound of flesh smacking flesh. Jared had wanted to do something to help Mom, but he was afraid. Later that night, Dad had left the house, and that was when Jared realized that he hated his father—well, stepfather, really. Mom taught him that it was wrong to hate people, but Jared couldn’t help the way he felt. Sometimes he was sure that Mom hated Dad, too.
And in the middle of that unforgettable night, unable to sleep, Jared suddenly became aware of deep breathing beneath his bed, as if a big dog had crawled under there and fallen asleep. Summoning his courage, he peeked underneath the bed. He saw the faint glimmer of a pair of bluish eyes.
The sight had sent him to his parents’ room, screaming. Mom thought he was upset about the big fight and let him sleep in the bed with her. Ordinarily, he never would’ve wanted to sleep in Mom’s bed because that was for babies, but he was too scared to go back to his room. He didn’t tell Mom about the monster. She would never believe him. Adults never believed anything that kids his age talked about—especially when the subject was a monster.
When morning finally came, he crept into his room and checked under the bed. Nothing was there. He wondered if he had dreamed up everything.
That was, until the monster returned a few nights later, when Mom and Dad had another fight.
There was one thing Jared knew for sure about the monster: it came around only in the late night hours, after his parents had fought.
He began to believe that the monster was there to keep him company. The monster scared him, but in a strange way, he sort of felt safe when it arrived. Kind of like Mario Jenkins, the biggest, baddest bully at his school, who seemed to like him for a reason he didn’t understand. Mario frightened Jared and he was careful not to upset him, but he felt that whenever Mario was around, he was protected. It was weird.
Mom and Dad had been fighting again that night, so the monster was there. But Dad hadn’t left the house. Jared thought Dad was sleeping on the couch downstairs. During the fight, Jared heard Mom run upstairs and lock herself in the bedroom, and Dad had been crashing around downstairs, making so much noise Jared was sure the police would come. But they never did. After a while, Dad finally got quiet and probably fell asleep in front of the TV like he usually did.
Jared looked at the bedroom door, which was open just a crack. The white door seemed to be far away, like the other end of a whole basketball court. But things were always like that at night, in the dark. His senses got screwy.
His stomach was starting to hurt, he needed to pee so badly.
Slowly, he pulled away the covers. Cool air wrapped around his legs. Dad always kept it so cold in the house that Jared sometimes slept with socks on. He didn’t have socks on then. He wished that he did, to protect his feet in case the monster grabbed a foot.
He would have to be fast.
He got an idea. Instead of swinging his legs over the side of the bed, and risk getting snared by the monster’s tentacles (he figured the monster had to have long, ropy tentacles, like an octopus), he stood on the mattress; it creaked a little beneath him. Quietly, he walked to the end of the bed. He checked the surrounding carpet to make sure that nothing waited to trip him.
Then he leaped off the mattress.
He landed on the floor with a soft thump.
He looked behind him. Nothing rushed out at him from under the bed. He didn’t see a tentacle, or glowing blue eyes. Everything looked normal.
But he heard the monster breathing. Its breaths were not as slow and deep as before; it drew shorter breaths, as if it was awake. Alert.
Maybe it planned to catch him when he returned to the bed. If that was what it really wanted to do. He didn’t know. He hadn’t even begun to plan how he would manage to climb under the covers. He couldn’t think about it yet. His bladder was aching.
He flung open the door and rushed down the hallway to the bathroom. He could barely get his pajamas down fast enough to keep from leaking all over himself. Nasty.
It seemed like he peed forever. He’d drunk a lot of Pepsi before he went to bed. Mom had ordered a pepperoni-and-cheese pizza for dinner and a twelve-pack of Pepsi, and soon after the pizza got there, she and Dad had gotten into the argument. Jared had taken the cola to his room and sipped it nervously while he listened to them battle. He must’ve drunk four cans’ worth. Mom would’ve been upset if she had known.
Jared had just finished relieving himself and was washing his hands when he heard Dad’s heavy footsteps on the stairs.
Jared frantically dried his hands on a towel. He reached to switch off the bathroom light ...
“Jared, what the hell are you doing up?” Dad asked.
Jared froze, hand poised over the light switch. Dad emerged like a giant from the darkness of the hallway, entering the arc of light that spilled from the bathroom. He wore his normal sleeping gear: white underwear. That was all. Dad had been living with him and Mom for three years, and Jared had never gotten used to the sight of the man strolling around in his underwear. There was something disgusting about it.
Dad carried his black leather belt loosely in his hand; it resembled a dormant snake. Both Mom and Jared knew the belt very well.
“Speak up, boy,” Dad said. Leaning against the wall, he dug his hand into his crotch and scratched. “Damn, why you always act like you can’t talk?”
“Umm, I was just using the bathroom,” Jared said. “I’m going back to bed.”
“Slow down, little man.” Dad raised his hand. Jared smelled whiskey and funk rolling like hot steam from Dad’s body; he coughed into his hand. “You know what me and your Mama were tangling about tonight?”
Jared shrugged. He chastised himself for not escaping back to his room before Dad appeared.
“Don’t act dumb, Jared. It was about your sorry-assed daddy. I don’t want him calling my house. I don’t care if he’s only calling for you. This is my crib and he’s disrespecting me.” Dad suddenly farted loudly, and the nauseating sound was like an exclamation point. Jared grimaced.
“The next time he calls here, you hang up on him,” Dad said. “You don’t say a word to him, and you don’t tell your mother. Clear?”
“But ...”
Dad sprang from the wall. “But what?”
Jared chewed his lip. “But ... he’s my father. You aren’t.” The words slipped out of him, and the instant they did, he knew he’d made a mistake.
Although Dad had been drinking, he moved toward Jared with startling speed. The next thing Jared knew, Dad had seized him by his shoulders, hefted him in the air, and pinned him against the wall. Terror ran like hot oil through his veins, and he felt himself needing to pee again.
Dad’s face, twisted by fury, floated like a death mask in front of him. Spittle sprayed from Dad’s lips as he spoke.
“You listen to me, you little bastard. I’m your daddy. That nigga that you think is your daddy—forget him. He ain’t here. I pay the bills and take care of you and your Mama. If I ever hear you disrespect me like that again, I’m gonna break my belt over your ass. Clear?”
Jared could barely breathe. When he tried to speak only a thin whistle of air came out.
Dad shook him, making Jared’s head knock against the wall. He felt dizzy.
“Hear me? Is that clear?”
Tears leaked from Jared’s eyes. His throat was too tight for him to say anything, heart pounding so hard he felt like he was going to choke. He felt warm pee streaming down his leg, and the shame that burned through him made him cry harder.
“Put my baby down right now!”
Mom’s enraged voice cut through the haze in Jared’s mind. His mouth flew open, and all he cried out was, “Mama, help!”
Dad dropped him, and Jared hit the floor on numbed legs. He stumbled, tears blurring his vision, but not even his tears kept him from seeing Mom in her nightgown, coming at Dad with a hammer.
Bust his head wide open, Mama, bust it open like a watermelon, he wanted to shout at her. But she was so tiny compared with Dad. Even with a weapon, she couldn’t beat Dad. He was just too big, too strong.
As Mom swung the hammer at Dad, he snagged her arm in midair. He backhanded her across the mouth. She cried out, spun around and struck the wall.
“I’m the king of this house, goddammit!” Dad said. He took the hammer and smashed it against the wall, paint chips crashing to the floor. He whipped the hammer around in another wild arc, clobbered another wall. Jared was sure he was going to hit Mom. Mom cowered under Dad, holding her lip.
Jared couldn’t stand back and act helpless anymore. He just couldn’t. He had to help Mom.
He fled to his bedroom.
Dad whirled. “That’s it, run, you little bastard. This is all your fault anyway, you know that? Everything would be fine if you hadn’t been born!”
Jared made it inside his room. Had to get his hands on something that could keep Dad away from Mom. He could get his baseball bat. Mom had bought him a nice Louisville Slugger for Christmas last year.
He looked back and forth across his room. He didn’t see the bat. Where was it ... ?
He remembered that he’d left it under the bed.
He’d put the bat under the bed months ago, in anticipation of something just like this happening. But that was before the monster had arrived.
There was no way he was going to reach under the bed with the monster there. No way.
Outside in the hallway, he heard leather snapping against flesh, Dad cursing, and Mom crying softly. She endured Dad’s belt whippings quietly.
He felt sick. He wanted to cover his ears and crawl back under the covers, like he always did. But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t take this anymore. Bat or no bat.
He rushed to the doorway. Dad’s back to him; Mom was sprawled underneath Dad, her delicate body trembling as Dad popped the belt against her legs and arms in smooth, rhythmic strokes.
“Get away from her, you crazy motherfucker,” Jared said. It was the first time he’d ever used the “F” word, and it felt strange coming from his lips. “Get away from her right now.”
“What?” Dad looked at him. “What did you say, boy?”
“I ...” Jared couldn’t finish his sentence. He couldn’t believe what he’d just said. Oh, was he in for it now.
Dad charged after him. Jared backpedaled into his room, fists balled at his side.
He wanted to hide, but there was nowhere to go. The only escape was through the doorway.
And now Dad was there.
Dad chuckled, winding the belt around his hand like a whip. “You think you’re a big man now, huh? I’m gonna beat the black off your ass. This is my house, dammit.”
Jared backed all the way up against the wall. Cold sweat had glued his fingers together. He couldn’t have held a baseball bat if he’d had one.
“Leave him alone,” Mom said from the hallway, but her voice sounded frail, beaten. There would be no rescue this time, Jared realized. He would endure this beating like a man. No more crying.
“Trying to be brave, little man?” Dad asked. “We’ll see how brave you act when I start popping this belt.”
Jared breathed so hard and fast he was light-headed. He felt like he could be dreaming. He wished he was dreaming and he would wake up and everything would be okay in the morning, and it would be only him and Mom in the house (they’d lived there before Dad, though Dad always called it “my house”), and Dad was gone forever. But that was only a dream. He wasn’t dreaming. This was real, and Dad was going to get him.