Page 86 of Mazywood

Johnny reached for the note. Sharise’s handwriting was more jittery than usual, but it bloomed into perfect focus. We’re following the trail to find Mom. Get help!!!

Nine words. For a long moment, all he saw was one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine words. He recounted once more, just to be sure. His lips were shaking too hard to count aloud, so he counted in his head. He couldn’t make sense of the words. Why was Tasha on a hiking trail without her jacket?

“Sharise!” he called out so she could explain her note better.

The empty house sat silent.

Johnny was sure that if he hadn’t wrapped his head so tightly, his brain might have melted by now from this aching. The ache of knowing. The ache of not knowing.

Something made Johnny look up. A presence.

Uncle Ricky was leaning against the hallway wall between the living room and kitchen with one boot propped against the cedar planks in a way he never would have dared in his mother’s sight. He still wore his cowboy hat, standing directly across from Mazelle’s framed movie poster from Lazy Mazy Goes to New York. Uncle Ricky took a long hit on his fat joint.

Johnny decided he would accept guidance from the living or the dead.

“This note doesn’t make any sense, Uncle Ricky,” Johnny said like a whiny child. “She says they’re ‘following the trail.’ What trail?” His heart pulsed in his throat with chopping beats.

Outside. The road. (You always knew it was about the road.)

“Why don’t you go outside and find out?” Uncle Ricky said.

Outside was no better than inside, memory-wise.

The driveway was empty. No minivan, no RAV. Johnny guessed it was about eight in the morning, judging from the gray sky, but it was hard to place the sun because of thick, rippled clouds. Snow clouds, Uncle Ricky had called them long ago. But it wasn’t snowing now.

The cold slapped Johnny with alertness. He didn’t turn around to see if Uncle Ricky had followed him outside, since alertness made him certain Uncle Ricky had never been there. The cold helped stave off his dizziness so he could walk down the porch steps without falling.

“Tasha!” he called. “Sharise! Imani!”

Was utter silence natural in the woods? The deep quiet felt ominous. No signs of life. The only thing he knew for certain was that he wasn’t supposed to be alone.

“What the fuck?” Johnny whispered.

Johnny’s earlier tears were turning to ice, tugging at his eyelids. Everything went blurry when his left eye sealed shut, and he quickly wiped the frost away, but gently, so he wouldn’t lose that contact too. Johnny could barely see the E on an eye chart without his contacts, so he would be useless without it. Johnny always slept with at least one contact in to avoid immersive blindness from the moment he first woke up. He hated that lost feeling.

Like this. Like he was lost now.

Johnny wanted to believe that Tasha and the girls had taken the RAV while he was sleeping—(“Sleeping”? That what you’re still calling it?)—but the note had mentioned a trail. The ski trail? Johnny was tempted to veer toward the rear of the house to survey the trail, but the open gate at the end of the driveway captured his attention instead—and the white Jeep half-hidden by trees outside of his fence.

Something about that Jeep made Johnny’s veins wither.

His legs carried him on their own, his sore leg propelling him like he was being pulled on a leash as he ran toward the road. (You had your gun before, remember? And you had it for a reason.) As he loped closer to the Jeep, a sound he did not recognize burbled in his chest.

The RAV’s front tires dipped sharply into the embankment farther down the road. He’d had an accident! But where was his family? For five steps, six steps, Johnny did not let himself know. He called out, expecting to find his family injured.

But the RAV was empty. The passenger door stood wide-open, jammed into the embankment’s snowy brush. The door yawning open tore a hole in Johnny’s blizzard of not knowing, and he reeled from an assault of images.

This door flinging open—snow flying into the car—no, not snow, a living beast with monstrous teeth and bat-like flaps—Tasha swallowed inside the veiny white flaps—Tasha’s legs kicking—Tasha screaming—Tasha dragged down the road so fast—too fast.

Tasha. Gone.

The weight of remembering toppled him from his feet and snuffed out his breath. Johnny’s knees roiled with new pain as he collapsed down to the snow, hard. He had no oxygen to fuel the shriek trying to claw from his throat, but he heaved with his effort. He needed to expel the anguish or be devoured. Finally, Johnny’s howl rose to the treetops, wild. An hour might have passed. Or five minutes. Johnny sobbed and shrieked.

The dizziness returned because he was on the verge of hyperventilating, and he would gladly have succumbed to fainting, or dying, but remembering the nine words made him fight for his breath. We’re following the trail to find Mom. Get help!!!

Tasha was gone, but his children needed him to fight off his shock.

“What trail?” Johnny whispered from the tatters of his throat. No imaginary voice or hallucination appeared to help him understand this time, the cost of alertness.