Dark Matter Presents Haunted Reels, page 29
Still chewing his food, he said “I’m Egg… I mean, Edgar. My cousin is the only one who calls me Egg.”
“Hi, Edgar, I’m Heather. I’d like to hire you.”
God must have been listening, Egg thought. Alright, be professional.
His mind raced as he tried to remember the pitch he and Chauncy had rehearsed. He found it and switched to his professional voice.
“Extreme Outdoors International can cover anything you require to make your outdoor adventure an authentic experience. We provide all the gear, and we take you through all the basics—starting with small game and working all the way up to the big leagues. We offer a slew of packages, from our Tenderfoot beginner’s package to the Warrior of the Wild package. Extreme Outdoors International is here to give you everything you need to become the ultimate outdoorsman,”—he paused, then corrected himself—“outdoorswoman. We put you in the crosshairs!”
As soon as he finished, he shrunk into his coat. He knew he sounded like a cheap salesman, and he felt stupid. It wasn’t him.
The woman studied him through her dark glasses.
“Great. Can you help me kill one of those?” She pointed to Chester.
Egg looked to the grizzly and back to the small woman beside him. “You serious?”
“Yes. And I’d like to start tomorrow?”
Egg didn’t know what to say, so he just blathered. “But it’s winter, and grizzlies hibernate. Plus, it’s dangerous as all hell out there, even for a really good hunter. Have you ever hunted before.”
“No, but I’m eager to learn.” She slapped a wad of cash onto the bar. “Five thousand. And five thousand more when the job’s done.”
Egg stared at the cash. The solution to all his problems was right there, wadded up and wrapped in a rubber band.
“I…uh… It’s illegal to hunt a grizzly without a permit.”
She slammed another wad of cash onto the bar. “Fifteen K.”
Egg swallowed hard at the sight. Then he heard Chauncy’s voice in his head. Never look desperate! Let her know who has the bigger pair. Fifteen grand was fifteen grand, though, and Egg liked her. Even though she looked sick, she was strong like his mom.
“I’m going to level with you, Edgar. I don’t have long, and this is on my bucket list.”
Egg heard his mom in his head. “The moment you start to wonder if you deserve better, you do.”
“Twenty. My cousin and I work together, so ten thousand each.”
That’s my Egg! Chauncy’s voice cheered.
Heather nodded an affirmative and offered him her hand.
They shook.
“We at Extreme Outdoors International are happy to make your greatest wilderness dreams come true.”
6.
“Let It Snow” played softly from somewhere. The radio is still on, she thought, as the world filled in. Gentle snowflakes drifted down onto her face. She touched her cheek and felt the broken flesh beneath her eye. She rolled onto side, which caused her chest and stomach to explode with pain. Her clothes were blood-soaked and shredded. It was hard for her to tell what was fabric and what was skin.
Ellis!
Her husband lay dead in the snow, his lower legs missing. She wanted to weep, but coughed blood instead. Her stomach wounds were serious.
Then it hit her.
“Remy?!” she screamed. Panicked, she snaked her wounded body through snow in search of her daughter.
Then she noticed it. Stuck to her bloody wound were the shredded remains of Remy’s blue blanket. Heather wailed alone in the snow. The pain was unbearable. She wished for nothing more than to succumb to her own wounds as quickly as possible.
Bright light flared as headlights crawled up her face.
A plow truck.
No! She was going to be rescued! But she had nothing left to live for.
• • •
She woke.
Still here.
A dirty gas station bathroom, she remembered.
Very classy, Heather.
After leaving Egg at the bar, she took refuge here, locking herself inside so no one would come across her.
Heather snatched her sunglasses off the piss-stained floor and looked into the dingy mirror, studying the sick woman before her. This story would end soon, one way or another, and it wouldn’t be a happy one. She pulled the wig from her head, revealing her patchy scalp and the stringy remnants of her red hair. Remy had always played with her red curls when they watched movies on the couch. She fought back the tears that now welled in her eyes.
She could feel the changes inside, but something else was different now, too. She leaned in close to the mirror.
It was her eye. It glowed amber, with a dilated pupil. Anger burned inside of her, and like the vomit coming up her throat, she couldn’t stop it. The hair along her back stood up and suddenly she could hear everything for miles. She could feel him out there, out past the woods, deep into the mountains.
North.
Her senses were sharp, but her emotions even sharper. I do have a reason to live, she thought. One reason. It’s all I have.
I’m coming for you, whatever the fuck you are. This story ends with you and me, both dead in the snow.
Midnight: a series of letters
A. T. White
March 11th(?)
I packed my bags, filled-up with gas, and that was it—I was gone, out, out the door, into the horizon and gone, and I didn’t think twice about it.
A single note left on the kitchen table in case anyone should come look for me. Probably never to be opened and soon layered in dust.
You told me once that dust was mostly dead skin. I’m not sure if that’s true. I hope I never find out. I like the idea of it too much—a world covered with the people we used to be.
Please don’t ask me to justify what I’m doing. Or what I’ve done by the time you read this. I could tell you it’s because I miss you so much that my bones won’t settle.
I could tell you how everything that’s left here, in California, has become a faded version of itself.
I could tell you about the food shortages, the choke-hold police-state that has tightened around the last groups of us, the gradual encroach of apathy.
I could tell you that it’s a chance to breathe some new life into this life. Before I sleepwalk it all away.
But the truth is…there wasn’t any other choice. I was simply compelled to—
I had a dream last night and I can’t shake it. If I hadn’t left that house, that street, that city behind today, then I don’t think I ever would have.
And while I can’t find you in the hills and mountains, the deserts and canyons, forests and coastlines of this cavernous country…I can share them all with you.
So, this will be the first. The first of many letters I will send you. I’ll try to document everything as honestly as I can. And I’ll try to share as many glimpses into the world that’s left as our remaining postal system will let me.
Who knows when each will get to you. I know you can’t reply. I just hope that they bring you a tiny window into the World.
I would say, ‘With Love,’ but that feels obvious.
Please look after yourself. Listen to what the doctors say. They’re there for a reason.
Oh, and the dream, (I hear your voice ask in my head); “tell me about the dream.” Maybe next time. For now, it’s just for me.
—Ashley x
March 19th or 20th
It’s incredible to me that I didn’t do this sooner.
It’s only been a week and my head is already so much clearer. I can feel my eyes widening. My lungs filling. Even within hours of leaving, the landscape had shrugged my old life off behind me.
Before the ‘Visitors’, before the War, it would have been easy to drive an hour out here without seeing another soul.
Now it’s days.
Only to you can I say that a tiny part of me enjoys that.
I’m enclosing in this envelope some of the sand from where I slept last night. It’s so soft it feels like rabbit’s fur.
And no. I’m not quite ready yet. But I’ll share the dream soon.
—Ashe x
End of March
It’s been a few days since I wrote the last letter. Something happened.
I was moving through a small, abandoned town, barely a few streets thrown together, when I heard a helicopter come down about a mile away.
I’m ashamed to say that for at least a minute I considered ignoring it. Just moving on. But you enter my brain so often these days, and I wanted to make you proud.
So, I drove out to where it’s carcass lay: Torn, erratic blades like broken fingers grasping from the dirt.
There were two dead bodies. And one that was, incredibly, alive. A woman in her early twenties. Her name is Alex. Another ‘A,’ like us.
She’s a courier for the army and while she won’t tell me what—I think she’s carrying something important.
She needs to get North.
For now, our direction is the same. And she came with food. So, we’ve decided to travel together.
I can’t say that I’m happy about the decision. She has a handgun. It makes me nervous. And she talks about the ‘Visitors’ with a vitriol that doesn’t sit right with me. One of them brought down her chopper. As if that speaks volumes. She doesn’t see them like I do. Despite all that they’ve done…I can’t believe they’re all one thing.
Anyways, we’re heading up into the canyons now. I’ll write more.
I struggled with whether to tell you this, but I think one of the Visitors is following me. I don’t say this to alarm you. It’s actually strangely comforting.
I felt it before I even left home. But increasingly since then. ‘Home.’ That’s not the right word anymore.
And yes, I know what you’ll say, what anyone would say…did it start after? After I lost them? The correlation can’t be coincidence, can it? Well, perhaps it is. I don’t feel the two are connected. But even if they are, I’m fine with it.
I wish I hadn’t written that last part. I know you’ll worry. But I promise—you don’t need to. We’ve both always had a sense about these things.
And if I’m right, and it is following…I don’t believe it means any harm.
—Ashe x
?
We tried to move through the valley today. It would have kept us away from the deserts where groups have fled to, and it would have helped us avoid the straightest route—through the mountains—where the ‘Visitors’ have taken up residence. Or so Alex tells me.
She has a map that was updated two weeks ago. It’s all we have to go on.
But only an hour into the hills and we spotted a group of scavengers with prisoners. Alex wanted to help.
There was a clawing in my belly that wanted to do the same, but I’m both ashamed and happy to say that I’m not ready for death. Not yet.
So, I stopped her. I pretended to care about keeping her package safe and getting it to the base. It’s important to her. She thinks it can change the tide of war against the Visitors.
All she wants is to make a difference. It’s inspiring in a way. But in another—it just makes me feel nauseous to hear her speak.
That much naivety. That much hope. It’s too much for my stomach.
If I could, I would dissolve into the ground and move through its soil, like nutrients in the roots—unseen. The slightest of tremors. Nothing more.
There’s not a night that I don’t think about quietly packing my bag and disappearing into the darkness. Leaving her behind.
I can’t quite tell you why I haven’t yet. She’s less than a decade younger than me, but she feels more alien to me than the Visitors.
I’m certain now that one is following me. Sometimes I wake at night and think I see its tall, willowy figure, standing quietly in the corner of the room. Billowing. Like a match that’s been blown out.
But it truly doesn’t feel threatening. It feels like looking through a mirror. At a different version of myself. From somewhere far away but right next to me.
Anyways. Tomorrow we will try a different route through the valley. It’s just time. The world isn’t so scary when you have no reason to be anywhere else than where you already are.
Alex would disagree.
—X
(I’m not sure which day it is anymore. I’ve been told—April)
I ran and my feet almost slipped as skin-to-rubber-to-tarmac slid effortlessly to wet grass.
My arms ratcheted back-and-forth-and-back-and-forth violently. But my mind was burnt with the imagery of the dead body I’d just seen. The heavy eyes and matted hair.
I could hear the footsteps, a dozen yards behind me. More? It sounded like more. But their soles were heavier. Their breathing louder. I can outrun them. I can. It’s not debatable. It’s science. And time. That’s all. I’m thankful I had the presence of mind to take those afternoon runs when the sun was dipping, and she wasn’t quite home from work yet.
I’m thankful that I’m fast.
But then I saw Alex ahead of me, turning, her eyes suddenly wide, her arms raising, gun pointing past my shoulder at those pursuing.
Lightning from the back of my skull to the roots of my teeth and up my nose like a wire through my eye sockets.
And black.
I woke to the realization that I wasn’t dead. And that I was wrong. I couldn’t outrun them. Hadn’t.
It took me a full day to comprehend the space that was now missing, in between that blow and the worried faces that now keep appearing above my bed.
We were pursued by Scavengers, that much I remember. They caught up with me, Ashley tried to shoot, but then something happened… Visitor’s appeared… A fight… Ashley pulled me to safety, and we hid below a dusty rock… I might as well have not existed… These are all paintings someone else put in my mind… I was an apparition. Bleeding out into the dry, sandy grass.
A scout from a nearby group found us.
They have taken over an abandoned Motel out in the desert. A couple dozen of them. Men. Women. Children. Different races. All of them have lost people. Family. Loved ones.
But there’s a strange peace here. Everyone is working together. It’s odd to see some things improving. That doesn’t mean they’re all happy to have us. Some of them don’t trust us. Some feel we bring unwanted attention. Some are excited just for a new face. Most are indifferent.
I had another letter for you. But I lost my bag in the struggle. The scavengers must have taken it. How ridiculous. They have a tiny slice of me now.
Sorry. I’ve been told I have concussion. I know you know what that’s like. One blow can change the fabric of your entire life—The movies lied to us. A fucking shameful lie and we all went along with it.
It’s been a few days here, already. But sometimes my thoughts feel like catching spaghetti. Alex. Alex. I was relieved, when I woke, that she was here. That she made it. That she hadn’t left. I’ve decided my inescapable fondness for her is because she reminds me of myself. Or of who I once wanted to be.
Before I knew better.
Her package, her oh so important package—it’s gone.
But somehow, she doesn’t seem phased. Still determined. Focused. She’s immediately tried to connect with the people here.
Sometimes I sit on the porch and watch her walking amongst them, and I see myself there: Smiling. Talking. Comfortable.
But the truth is my feet are like weights on the corners of my desire.
Fuck I miss you. I’m sorry. Why can’t you reply. It seems so unfair. Sometimes I forget that this isn’t just a journal because I can’t fathom not knowing if you’re getting to read these.
Do you wait, eagerly, to hear some news from me? Do these stories bring you any escape? Any joy?
Please stay strong. Please stay strong. You are the catalyst to my strength and the moment from when we last stood in the same room, to when we do again, is just a dreams length. I promise.
Stay with me in everything I do. I’ll try to be braver. I’ll try to make you proud. I’m enclosing a photo. The cook here has a Polaroid. So here I am, with Alex.
My friend, the Visitor, seems to have been with me more often these days. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep at night, I think I feel its hands gently take my palm, and an immense calm flows through my veins and the back of my eyes roll over with sleep.
Do you remember me saying something similar? When I was a child? It’s awakening memories inside me. Something… Or maybe that’s the concussion speaking.
I’m not sure what comes next.
—Ashe
April
I’m going to tell you my dream now. The one that made it so I had to leave. The one that led to all of this.
I feel far enough away from home now that it’s safe to share it…
I’m in the desert. The ground is cracked. Flat. The sound of distant thunder. But no rain. Not yet, at least. An abandoned water park. Simple and faded. Decades old.
There’s a metal stool with turquoise upholstery. A small girl sits on it. Maybe 10 years old. She looks like me. Could be me.
At her feet is a large blood stain.
For a moment, it is quiet. Still for the briefest of moments, but in a way in which doubt is already waking in my chest that perhaps there’s never been sound. Not once, not ever in the history of the world.
She opens her mouth:
“I’m going to start by telling you when you’re going to die.” I just stand and listen.
“So, you can stop worrying. There’s no reason to be sad. Or scared… You were always going to die.”
She takes her time. Dust blows along the desert floor and past her ankles like starlings swarming in unison at dusk.
“Then I’m going to tell you when you’ll be forgotten. So, you can stop trying to be remembered. There’s no reason to feel lost… You were always going to be forgotten.”
