Hitchhikers (10 page)

For now I am safe, but I don’t know when the
focus will move from the soccer ball to the playhouse. I can
continue to hide out and wait for a better time, or make a run for
it before I am discovered and police called.

Three red-haired heads swivel toward me as I
emerge from the playhouse, but I am in the front yard and jogging
down the street before a word is uttered. That word comes from the
youngest: “Puppy!”

I can only hope the mother, busy at her
computer, didn’t see me well enough for a description.

Although, “teenage boy and dog” would still
get me stopped by a patrol car.

At a gas station I stop in to pick up
something to eat: a sandwich if this is one of those deluxe gas
stations, or a Power Bar at least. Before I even reach the
refrigerator cases at the back of the store, the latest newspaper
grabs my attention.

Those howls last night – my irrational
anxiety – were these the same dogs?

Quickly, and under the scrutiny of the
acne-covered clerk (she doesn’t really care what I’m doing, but
teenage boys don’t usually read the paper and who knows what my
hair looks like or how strongly I smell), I scan the article.

The body of a tenth grade student at the
local high school was found in bushes in a new development.
Apparently he had been out late, over a friend’s house, drinking on
Halloween, and had taken a short cut home. His body was torn apart,
and the numerous paw prints around the body indicated at least five
different animals. The authorities weren’t sure if these were wild
coyotes, wolves, or feral dogs, but the paw prints were smaller
than a wolf’s and larger than a coyote’s. There had also been
reports of a pack of wild dogs in the area.

The article went on with tips about what to
do if approached by a wild animal, and information about rabies,
even though the possibility of the wild dogs having rabies had not
even been mentioned by the animal control officers who were
interviewed. I suppose it makes sense that the reporter would
assume something like that – what other reason would make a pack of
wild animals attack a human?

As I select a sandwich from the deli case, I
wonder if that new development was Mist Valley Estates.

Days pass by in monotony, ever headed north.
In the nights I dream. In dreams I run alongside Lila on all fours,
baying at the moon, driven on by the scent of blood.

Libraries can be tricky. Some are small, and
if you look school-age and the librarians see you hanging around
all day, they start to ask questions. Others are big, and have
security guards there to keep people from stealing stuff and taking
baths in the men’s room, and they’re pretty alert for truants and
homeless people, of which I am both. An adult they’d just kick out,
but me they’d have to call the police.

There are some libraries, though, that don’t
ask questions and don’t mind me hanging around all day reading,
libraries where the bathrooms aren’t locked and I can wash up,
libraries that let you use the computers even if you don’t have a
library card.

These are the libraries I like.

Normally I don’t like spending a lot of time
around other people, especially places that would eventually notice
me. Gas stations, diners – these places are full of anonymous
faces, passers-through. Libraries, on the other hand, are full of
local people who notice if you’re not from around here. But in
those quiet spaces I don’t have to worry so much about blacking
out. I’m calm and the beast sleeps.

My first winter on the road I spent a lot of
time in libraries. It was warm, and even though my stomach was so
empty it felt like a cave between my ribs and my hipbones, I could
pretend for a few hours that I was normal. Lost in a book, I was a
normal kid with normal problems like a school bully or a suicidal
friend or anorexia. I never found a book where the kid has my
problem: waking up to find that he’s murdered a bunch of people and
possibly eaten them. Then again, I never read horror books.

On some really bad days, I hid in the library
all night rather than face the cold winds and seeping wetness and
the certainty of blacking out.

I arrived in Broken Bow, Nebraska late last
night via a trucker who offered his bed to share at the truck stop
motel. He was lucky that he made this little proposition after he’d
pulled into the parking lot, when I could just jump out. He was
lucky that he was just a sad man offering out of loneliness and not
perversity. He had also been willing to take Lila along.

I chose instead a bed of trash bags beside a
dumpster, located outside of a Chinese food restaurant, with Lila
as my blanket. My pillow smelled of dim sum. The trucker had bought
me dinner at a fast food window several hours back, otherwise I
might have ripped open that garbage bag and made a meal of it.

Nights like that make early mornings.
Although I’d like to lose myself in a book after the pace Lila has
set for me, I need some answers, and there’s only one place I know
to get those. Lila has disappeared, but somehow I know that she
will find me.

The library is only a block away. I sit on
the stone wall that surrounded the building, watching people come
and go. It’s a quiet place, or maybe just a quiet morning. I only
know the days when I look at newspapers. I decide to take a chance
and walk inside.

Bathrooms unlocked, that is a good sign. I
wash off the odor of trash, then decide to use a computer.

It’s been a while since I used the internet.
When I first hit the road, I checked for news about what I’d done.
I was sure there was going to be a manhunt, or at the very least a
missing persons report. There was. It was worse than I could have
imagined, headlines splashed on all the newspapers about the
massacre, although it had taken the police three days to find the
bodies. By then, I’d gotten out of Montana and was halfway across
South Dakota.

They weren’t looking for me yet, but I was
sure soon they’d make the connection, find some DNA evidence and
then there’d be wanted posters. I stole a box of hair dye from a
CVS and dyed my brown hair black in a gas station bathroom. I
stopped going near people.

Today, however, I’m not checking for
news.

The trucker last night had rambled some story
about his wife and how she found a tumor and diagnosed herself on
Web M.D.

I open up Google, then type in “web md” and
click on the site.

I select my symptoms: headache, dizziness,
nausea, blackouts.

The website pops up a list of possible
afflictions. Most I can immediately rule out: migraines, sinusitis,
heat exhaustion, diabetes. I click on labyrinthitis and
cryptococcosis, but the illnesses are not nearly as mysterious as
they sound. I doubt that anemia or kidney disease would cause what
I have. That leaves the psychiatric sicknesses like panic attacks
and anxiety disorder.

I stare at the screen until I grow concerned
that others are watching me, thinking me crazy, as I now think
myself crazy. I close the internet browser, move to a catalog
computer and type in “psychiatric disorders.” I get a Dewey Decimal
number, which I copy onto a slip of paper and head into the
stacks.

I never knew there were so many ways a person
could go crazy. My fingers graze over the spines. Finally I find a
thick book, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders. This will take a while.

There are comfortable looking chairs in the
periodicals area, where several people sit reading newspapers. One
is an old man with half moon glasses. Another man sits with a
newspaper over his face. His clothes are dirty and he smells like I
did this morning. If the librarians are letting him sleep, perhaps
they will not notice me sitting here, either.

Each disorder has a checklist of symptoms. It
is long past lunchtime, as my stomach reminds me, when I come
across Dissociative Identity Disorder.

“The primary characteristic of this disorder
is the existence of more than one distinct identity or personality
within the same individual. The identities will ‘take control’ of
the person at different times, with important information about the
other identities out of conscious awareness.”

Though the only physical symptom is
blackouts, this sounds more like what is happening to me than panic
attacks. I sense no panic until I feel the darkness coming.

“Often triggered by physical or sexual
abuse.”

Check.

“Patient may experience blackouts or missing
time, but are usually aware of having done things during these
blackouts.”

Check.

There’s no mention of the other personality
sometimes being a psychotic killer, but I’m sure it’s very
rare.

Unfortunately, the manual doesn’t explain how
to get rid of a multiple personality. Years of expensive therapy,
probably – nothing I can ever afford. If I get arrested maybe they
can use the insanity plea, and then I could get therapy for
free.

I was hoping for something easy, like a
lobotomy or an exorcism. At the very least, some idea of how to
control the other personality.

Suddenly I feel tired. There are no answers
here. I drag myself to the fiction section and listlessly browse
through the books. What am I doing? I’ve done this before. Stolen
library books. Usually I end up returning them at some other
library down the road, once I’m done reading, yet I still feel
guilty. My eyes flicker toward the librarian at the desk until I
give up. I can’t do it. I am about to leave empty-handed when a
title jumps out at me.

Wolf Point.

I snatch the thick paperback off the shelf
and shove it into my jacket pocket.

Then I wander around the fiction section.
That is the key to shoplifting: never hurry off. They will always
suspect you if you run away. By lingering, they can’t imagine you
would stick around when you have just committed a crime.

When I see Lila’s face through the glass
front doors, I head out. She wags her tail at me before she bolts
off toward the north.

The last of Paul the Perv’s money runs out
just before Lila and I enter the Nebraska National Forest.

It is five days after the library, and I
haven’t been able to hitch another ride. I’ve only allowed myself
one meal per day, and still the money disappears. I buy myself a
pair of mittens and a fur-lined hat with ear flaps and a thick
scarf at a thrift store. With my last few dollars I buy a loaf of
bread and a jar of peanut butter.

All that’s left now is a fistful of
coins.

It’s just as well, since Lila has led me deep
into the forest where there aren’t any stores. It’s not like the
forests in Montana. The ground is flat between the clumps of trees,
which are sparse enough that I don’t get that claustrophobic
feeling. Still, the shade of the pines blocks out any warmth from
the sun. On our first night sleeping in the forest, I wake up
covered in a light layer of snow.

Lila leads me along a lonely path, and I
follow, as I’d prefer not to run into the forest rangers or
campers. I can smell their traces, a whiff of exhaust from the
rangers’ four-wheel drive vehicles or the smoky stench of a
campfire that burned out many nights before. I’m most nervous when
I hear the sounds of reckless youths riding ATVs through the
wilderness trails, or when I smell that faint predatory scent I
caught that night of the wild dogs.

I feel like we are running away from
something.

My dreams are getting stranger. Kayla appears
almost every night. “Only you can save us, Daniel,” she tells
me.

“Save you from what?” I ask.

I never get an answer. Winds blow up and wrap
that awful dangerous scent around us and then I’m running, we’re
running. Or she starts to tell me but then I can’t hear her. She
gets angry and screams at me. “It’s a part of you! It’s who you
are!” That I hear, but I can never figure out what she means. Some
part of what she’s said has been lost.

I often think about the hitchhiker inside of
my head, that Other who steals my consciousness from me and uses me
to kill. Does he know about me? Or am I an annoyance to him, making
him come awake in random situations, hungry and angry and sometimes
handcuffed to a bed with a predator looming over me?

The three of us hike through the forest. At
night I collapse wherever Lila has found us a shelter. We walk
until I have no more food left. And then, at night, after I fall
asleep wishing for something to fill my stomach, curled up and
shivering, I run.

The dreams of running are more than dreams. I
wake up tired, in different places, having slept until the sun is
high overhead. Yet in those running dreams I’m not running away.
It’s freedom, flying faster than any human could go. Sometimes
Kayla runs beside me; sometimes it’s Lila.

There comes a night when we run out of the
forest. The moon overhead watches as we fly over roads and across
vast fields covered in snow. I wake up in an abandoned car buried
in bushes. I am so cold that my breath is not even a cloud in the
frigid winter air. I am so hungry I am numb to it. Euphoria has me
wondering whether I am awake now or asleep.

Lila licks at my face. Her tongue is warm but
once it’s gone I feel her saliva turn to an icy crust on my skin. I
don’t want to move. The ripped vinyl seats, their smell of decades
of rot and mouse droppings, are the most comfortable bed I’ve had
in more than a week. My limbs feel too heavy to lift.

My eyes slip closed.

Some time later, I’m not sure how long

(seconds, minutes, hours? days?)

Lila becomes more insistent. Aggressive. How
did the car’s rusted door open? I didn’t hear it. Did I do that? I
stare at it vacantly until I realize that Lila’s teeth are digging
into my arm. She’s pulling me. Without the strength to pull away, I
fall out of the car and onto the hard, frozen earth.