Mark Henry_Amanda Feral 02 (12 page)

He narrowed his eyes, but ultimately nodded his trust. He slid his arm around his sister’s shoulders. “Tell her I’m right here.”

She shook off what appeared to be a chill. The ghost withdrew his arm and sulked.

“Those goose bumps just then were from your brother. He was giving you a hug.”

“Yeah. Whatever. You two are insane.”

The albino chick’s name was Becky—get this—by choice. She was born Granita Graham; Granita … like the delicious ice-cold beverage and not Grenada like the island. Which, if she preferred Becky, why’d she even bother explaining her previous name. That’s just weird, right? There’s just no accounting for taste. For example, I knew this girl in high school named Eliza-beta Von Regens.
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She was this gorgeous exchange student and everyone thought she was royalty. Well, she wanted people to call her Lotus, which, for my
taste, is just way to similar to
lettuce
, which is what I
preferred
to call her. Lettuce, could you get out of my way,
et cetera
,
et cetera
, you get the picture.

She didn’t care for it.

And thus, this chapter’s conversation begins like this …

“So … Granita? How did you get hooked up with the Terminator over here?” I stabbed a thumb at Honey—Hyon Hui had been thusly christened due to a terrible speech impediment of Wendy’s called indifference.

She gulped. “Well … I was really happy with my job at the rubber stamp store—”

I could feel the pit opening and I was ready to drop. “Wow, I’m sure that was going to be very interesting but let’s talk to Honey some more.”

“Ew. Burn,” Wendy said to Granita. Being around these teenage girls was doing nothing for our etiquette.

“I was going to tell you that Mr. Kim, or Kimmy as we call him, seems perfectly happy now, completely at ease with his lot in life … or … death, as it were. And, there’s really no reason for you to worry about him.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but I need to see him again. I really can’t take you bitches’ word for it. Uh. Uh,” she stuttered. “I mean ladies.”

“Oh, Honey.” Wendy stood from the campfire and patted Honey on the shoulder. “You were right the first time.” She slipped past Gil as he dropped out of the camper door.

“I just don’t see a way for that to happen. I’m sorry.” I tapped a cigarette against the metal folding chair’s arm.

I really have to learn to think before I speak, at least in social settings. Back on the Ad train, I can wing it
like nobody’s business, but in these weird seemingly sensitive situations, I find myself at a loss. Take this response, for an example: Honey’s face had gone slack. Mr. Kim’s had soured into an uncharacteristic scowl. I could see it from where he stood next to the Volvo, hand anchored on the side mirror like the base for a game of tag, stretching as close as he could. Sorry, I mouthed.

“That’s not necessarily true,” Gil said, plopping down between the girl and her pale companion. “I’m Gil, and don’t worry, I’m not a glutton like those two hags, just a run of the mill vampire.” He extended his hand and surprisingly Honey accepted it. Granita did not, deciding instead to go with a shocked glare followed by a stroll around the campground. This was, of course, a perfectly acceptable response to meeting her first bloodsucker.

“What do you mean?” Honey asked.

“Well, theories abound in regards to humans interacting with the spirit world. There are mediums that swear they can provide a vessel for the deceased to speak with their family and friends. Surely you own a TV.”

“I’m talking about seeing Dae-Jung again. Not just speaking to someone who could very well be pulling my dick.”

Despite the seriousness of her tone, I had to gig-gle.
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Wendy returned from the trailer, a brown smudge staining her cheek. I motioned for her to wipe and didn’t wait for a response, lest she think I was picking again. It was bad enough that Mr. Kim had outed her eating disorder in front of Honey, who had caught our exchange and was blatant with her smirk.

“Well, we could always find a mystic of some sort,” Gil continued. “Some shaman or witch or kraken, I suppose.”

“Kraken? Like in the pirate movie?”

“Yeah,” Wendy said. “Just like it, they pop up in the weirdest places, in fact …” She pulled out her phone, dialed. “I think there’s a hotspot on our route.”

“Well.” I stood up and dusted off my sarong. “On that really bizarre note, I’m going to brave the Shady Glen Shower building.”

“Oh my God.” Gil gasped. “Are you serious? Do you have shower shoes?”

“What are those even for?”

“So you don’t get a staph infection or someone’s spooge under your toenails, dumbass.”

I recoiled. I hadn’t thought of either of those possibilities. I just knew I needed a shower. Plus, I had to rinse out my bra and panties, at the very least. Those two items are definitely not magical. I’d just have to risk it.

I broke from the group toward the tin-roofed structure in the center of the compound. Closer to the road, Granita had stopped to chat with a couple of clean-cut guys, who were setting up a tent. Both were unreasonably thin and too well cared-for to be a possible food source, not that I was hungry, but you never know when there’ll be a shortage.
⁶²
Plus, their short-sleeved dress shirts pretty much ensured they were carrying a box of
Watchtowers.

Up a few slots was another RV, this one a large buslike monstrosity. Outside, a family was preparing for dinner. A plaid-shirted father-type flipped burgers on
a grill, while a woman wearing capri pants and an apron opened a Costco-sized jar of mayonnaise. Nearby, a couple of adolescents dawdled on a swing set meant for much smaller children and whispered secrets in each other’s ears.

I know what you’re thinking. The whole scene was absolutely disturbing, like the quartet had drifted out of some 50s sitcom and landed at my campground just to taunt me with their … family-ness. Everything about them was foreign, not the least their consensus of smiles.

I needed a shower, or at the very least a toilet to dry heave over.

A single bulb splayed a cone of light around the wash building’s closed door; a padlock dangled from a chain on the frame and a sign reported:

The thought of which reminded me of shakily hovering over clogged muddy holes. Something I was happy not to have to deal with again.

When I pushed the door open, I was accosted by an odor akin to aged and moldy cheddar hanging in the air like a gas attack, mingling with the pungent sourness of urine. A row of stalls lined one wall facing an oxidized mirror and four sinks that spread across the other. At the opposite end, a darkened opening led to another room, probably the showers. At least it was well lit, though the bright white of the exposed bulbs did nothing for my skin tone.

With the door closed behind me, I was taken first by the silence. Except for the occasional crane fly tinging against a light bulb, the space was devoid of sound and creepy because of it. No drips, or tanks running.

Nothing.

I crossed the space in three strides to peer into the darkened area beyond the main restroom. It didn’t seem to be a large space but it was hard to tell. There were no switches on either the exterior or within an arm’s length on the inner walls. From what I could see, the concrete floor gave way to soggy wooden slats a few feet in. It was only once I’d stepped onto those saggy boards that I noticed a grayed string dangling from the ceiling.

I reached out into the shadow, slipping my hand in the murky dark, for a moment. My overactive imagination kicked in and I imagined horrible creatures reaching back toward me from the soggy blackness. Quivering gelatinous digits sticky as label glue, reaching with sharp talons toward my necrotic fragile flesh.

Reaching.

I stumbled back into the light, banking that the retreat might cause the monsters to return to their drains, or at least give me a chance at some sanity. It worked and I focused on the string once more. Gathered my courage and marched straight toward it snatching at it and tugging.

It took two tries but I finally snatched it on, sending a cone of light arcing around the room as though spotlit by a cracked-out carnie. To my right hooks strung with moldy rubber sheets, themselves dotted with mold so thick it had taken on the heavy look of moss. To the left three half walls cut the area into quarters providing for a distinct area of one’s own without all the pesky privacy.

“Shower shoes my ass,” I said aloud, my voice played against the walls, which I could see were tiled. Flip-flops weren’t going to cut it in this room.

I needed a gas can and a match.

As I was turning to leave, I heard a faint scraping. At first it seemed to be coming from the stalls, perhaps through an overlooked vent in the ceiling. How was I to know for sure—I was busy looking toward the door. Unlike so many victims in horror movies, I did not have to be told to run by the black man in the sixth row of the theater. I know what that threatening music means. I grabbed for the knob and pulled. It spun loose in my grasp, rotating in its cuff like a dial.

Broken.

I spun around and collapsed against the door, facing the shower room and the source of the odd noise, listening.

Nothing.

And then a whole lotta something.

An aching squelch that could only be nails scratching against metal flooded the room, followed by a thudding bump against the door. It jarred with such force I was scooted forward across the floor, sarong snagging on the concrete. I winced, not with pain but with the knowledge my skin was being horribly scraped. I rebounded and braced against a second assault.

“Who the fuck is it?” I screamed, forcing my heels into a couple of chips in the floor for leverage.

A low rolling growl responded and a tapping of nails scurried across the metal.

Then the door crept open, not from a ramming thud but a slow methodical pressure. I stiffened and fought to hold my ground. There was no question the werewolves had found us, but had they found the others first? Was there anyone out there to help me?

I felt the scream climbing my throat before I even thought to do it. It echoed in the cinderblock building.

The crack in the door widened and claws as black
and sharp as those I’d imagined were reached for me in reality. Splintered jagged nails curving out of hairy fingers crooked around the door, where they curled the paint off with each scratch. I forced my body against it, catching the werewolf’s—oh … what would you call that?—paw between the frame and the metal corner.

Outside a long yelping reply turned from ear-shattering to distant within a few seconds.

I flung the door open and ran like a retard in orthopedic shoes,
⁶³
arms windmilling and feet stumbling over even the smallest pebbles, twigs and/or Idahoan rodent in my path. I’d reached the campfire before I noticed that both the heels were missing from my Manolos … or were they Louboutins? Jesus! You know I’m freaked out when I can’t categorize fashion.

“What’s up with you?” Gil asked, sipping from a red plastic party cup.

“Didn’t any of you hear me?” I looked from one face to the next. Pina Colada, or whatever, had returned from her stroll with the Jojobas in tow;
⁶⁴
they flanked her on a fireside bench like zealous bookends, but wait … these were zealous bookends with name tags—as if the short-sleeve dress shirts weren’t geeky enough.

Tad and Corey.

Moving on …

Honey and Gil were a bit too cozy for Mr. Kim’s taste. He stood on the hood of the car with his arms crossed and an uncommonly murderous glare. Wendy was licking at the inside rim of her flask.

“Wow. You guys are super helpful. I barely escaped
an horrific death, and here you are chatting and …”— I paused to point out the presumed missionaries— “… flirting.”

“Am not!” Granita yelled and stalked off into the night, Jehovah and Witness—respectively—trailing in her wake. As she rounded the corner of the RV, the two Cleaver kids came into view, for a second—and only a second—I could have sworn they were holding hands. Maybe I’d misjudged their relationship.

Maybe.

“Good evening, folks,” the boy said. His blonde hair was Swedish straight and tossed around his head like a beaded skirt. The girl stood half behind him, a mirror in female form. If these weren’t a couple of Flowers in the Attic, I’d eat my shoes. “I’m Billy and this is my sister, Clare.”

“Hi, everyone,” she said.

His words were so measured, so deliberately polite and polished; I couldn’t help but mock. “Hi, Billy. Hi, Clare. It’s super great to meet you both.”

“Jesus. Could you be a bigger bitch?” Wendy asked, tossing the shiny Chococat flask to the ground and stomping away.
⁶⁵
The kids might actually be useful. If they hadn’t just come from a taboo gropefest, they might have seen or at least heard my scrap with the werewolf.

“She’s right. I’m such a dick. Why don’t you plant your asses?” I motioned toward the log Wendy left. The twins (I was fairly certain) both cringed—possibly due to my course language,
⁶⁶
but followed the direction;
Billy, producing an actual handkerchief, unfolded and shook it out across the bark. Clare sat down on it, mouthing a thank you to Billy.