For Want of a Hunter, Pt. I

ISSUE #125

For October, I decided to try something that terrifies me—writing fiction. Each week will unfold a new part of a scary short story I've written for the Halloween season. You'll still find autumn delights in the playlists attached, from kitschy costume songs to soundtracks for walking through piles of leaves, all giving a crisp mood to each chapter.

I'm driving north. I'm driving north, again, but everything feels fine. South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky. Moods like this come sometimes, trending toward bleaker moments, the narcotic flood of freedom pressing against misery just as cold flattens its nose against my Ranger's windows. The lanes of I-75 shoot through the trees like stainless steel carving a pie filling.

Every ten minutes, we pass (I pass—shit) a small town no larger than an intersection. Diesel signs reach from the dark crimson leaves beside the thin fingers of church steeples. Something tempting in their glow, both the signs and bone-white crosses, but I don't stop. I don't stop.

Woods blur, a curtain growing black with fading light. Leaves blow just ahead of me like parades of ducklings down the interstate. I let down the window, just a little, to smoke again—an intermittent thing, but now that no one is around I've been picking up old selves like dusty jackets off the floor. It all feels fine. It all feels fine until it steps out in front of me.

It's hard to tell which of us does the actual hitting, me or this oily vacuum of space. We connect at a perfect right angle. It sucks me in, striking its cheek on my headlight, swerving, bouncing off the side of the truck. Hummingbird vibrations flutter up my arms. For a short moment, I wonder if this isn't what I'd asked for, and I let go of the wheel to let it spin. The back left tire swings over the ditch and the truck finally finds its peace.

Blinking, my hands check my head, rub my eyes—I feel, oddly, no different. There's nothing wrong. My fingers go up to my nose and I wipe. A strip of blood, no thicker than yarn. I open the door and step into a wind that's thick as whipped cream. The highway's bright silver is now stamped with that thing, that large black mass, a pile of soot. The trees wag their hairy orange fingers my way. My legs walk to whatever it was I had hit.

This must be a bear, I think, gazing down—it's big as a feeding trough, black as onyx. Aren't bears usually fatter than this? It was slender, all sinews, veins large enough to see even under thick fur. So black that I couldn't see its eye, wouldn't know its face were it not for curled lips, the black rotting gums and mismatching teeth, like books on a shelf too wide. It reminds me more of a greyhound—granted, one that got loose and ate enough royal deer to grow as big as cattle. The wind blows, and a leaf gets stuck in the wound, the stem snagged in blood that's still fresh and flowing. I look at that leaf for a very long time.

A slow itching comes from behind my eye like the feel of a widening lens. I should look up, I think, in case something's there, my head pulling like a puppet's string. I squint to see in the dark brown fog, silent if not for the whistling wind.

"When you stare at me like that your eyes could stir dried cement." That's what he'd said, in the kitchen, before painting, the old lamp still hanging by a string from the ceiling. A bit like those streetlights, some ways off now, not standing but floating profane in the dark. I had not realized, but I'd turned to look. Gaining strength, I glance back to the woods.

Fireflies. I didn't know they stayed out in the cold. They are beautiful, shining steady just behind the tree line. Their lights barely blink—maybe the chill makes them lazy. "I feel that," I mutter, my thin voice shocking me. I look at one long enough to swear it'd shine forever, then just as I switch focus to a neighbor, it stops. I want to take a picture, reaching down before I realize my phone isn't there. I turn to the truck, wheels cocked at odd angles. There's no way I'm driving my baby back.

I search the black seats and damp floor mats until I'm certain my phone won't be found tonight. I remember the steeple. How far back was that? Couldn't have been more than half a song, no worse than four miles. I can run that in less than an hour. I grab the keys and kiss my Ranger goodbye. "This will only take a bit," my words timed with the wind.

Walking down the dark road, I feel a bit baffled, soon quelled by relief that I'm still feeling fine. Good, I keep thinking, let's have an adventure. What hurry do I have to go any place, anyway? Oh, how my new loves will gasp when they hear this; I picture the coastline curves of their collarbones. Delivered from hell by the breath of the forest. I smile again at my fortune. The wind feels like the old brush of fingers on my back, like embracing whenever he returned from the cold. It whistles an aria beneath the eggshell moon.

Here we go, I think, now we're getting somewhere. This is what living looks like. The fireflies cluster and begin to bounce, following through the woods just over my left shoulder. It's gorgeous, but somehow I can't stand to look.