“He takes good care of you,” he murmured in approval. He held my face in his hands and kissed me. A moment later Mothman was helping me get dressed and then we were all on the bed again, them on either side of me. They both played with my hair and ran their claws and talons over my skin lazily, satisfied.
“Do you think he’s okay?” I finally asked. Caspian didn’t miss a beat, knowing who I meant.
“Brandon’s a brawler,” Caspian said.
“You aren’t worried about him? It’s not just the cult, it's what they’ve done to him.”
“I know. I’m… worried too,” Caspian admitted again with some reluctance. Pollux made a show of acting shocked, sitting up with a gasp, his hand flying to his chest.
“Oh shut up,” Caspian snapped in agitation.
“You’re really worried?” I asked. This was a big deal. I’d come to realize Caspian wasn’t attached to much else other than me. That he didn’t really have friendships, struggled to be himself, and battled with his instincts to be a possessive, violent beast. Caspian looked at me in bed and shifted back to look like a man, his pointy parts and back fin gone so he could lay with us easier.
“What can I say? The fucker has grown on me. It would be a shame to lose my punching bag,” he joked, trying to lighten the situation and his discomfort with it. I smiled and held his face in my hands.
Pollux wrapped his arms around me, squeezing me tightly to his chest. His soft fur had me sagging against his chest in comfort. Caspian clutched me too, burying his face in my hair and inhaling me as the past few days caught up and we all fell fast asleep.
4
As soon as I crashed into the treeline, I knew I had to make a detour back to camp. Freaking out didn’t make me a complete idiot. My mental crisis could wait until after I got help.
As I pushed through bushes the leaves curled, browning on impact before flinging themselves from their twigs to die on the ground. I crushed them beneath my boots as I walked. A sleepy owl blinked down at me from a tree limb a moment before spreading its wings and taking off in a panic, its taupe wings flapping as frantically as they could.
Uhh. I shook my head and repeated to myself that the mental crisis could wait. Ignore the dying plants and terrified animals. Stick to the task at hand.
I slid around the edges of the camp, watching as it was thrown into chaos. They were all running towards the cabin I’d just loudly escaped from. While they did that, I slipped between two small cabins. One of my antlers scratched at the wood siding, I jerked back in surprise from the noise and ended up making my right antler knock on the other cabin’s siding.
“Shit,” I hissed, my heart beating fast as I stood there waiting to see if I alerted anyone of the antlered maniac running loose. Nothing happened so I pressed forward, staying aware of my antlers and giving the walls a wide berth. As I made it towards the front of the cabin, someone darted by, running to join up with the rest. I halted and held my breath but they kept going and didn’t turn around.
Finally, I moved out in the open. I eyed the clearing that the cabins all faced before slipping onto the porch and quickly darting inside. I swept my gaze around the living room. The dated brown velvet couch had a black stain in the shape of someone’s ass. The wallpaper showed fish leaping from the water next to illustrations of fishing poles.
The lights were on in the living room, brass table-top monstrosities with the yellowest bulbs I’d ever seen. The tv was on, talking about our missing rock band last seen in West Virginia. I stalled, wanting to watch the news about us but on the coffee table in front of the tv was a cell phone, the screen still unlocked.
My skull head darted side to side as my breath echoed loudly inside the mask. I couldn’t hear or see anyone so I didn’t waste any time. I quickly snatched up the phone before the screen locked. With that, I got out of there as fast as I could, scrambling back out the door and taking off into the woods, the phone clutched in my fingers as I ran.
Animals crashed away from me in panic. I could hear them scrambling through bushes in mad dashes. Birds lifting from trees in one great big cloud of wings and screeches. Leaves began raining down, dried, dead husks as they floated under my feet to be crushed.
I had to gain distance. I lifted my head and looked at the erected poles with cameras flashing little red dots of light. I didn’t know how far the cameras went into the woods but I needed to find a spot where they wouldn’t see me. Hopefully, it wasn’t so far away there wouldn’t be service. I looked down at the phone, fiddling periodically with the screen so it stayed open while monitoring the bars of service. It was low and spotty.
“Fuck,” I huffed. Running deeper into the woods was a chance I had to take. Better out of sight without service than wasting my one chance of escape making a ten-second phone call that may or may not help us. Worst case scenario, if I couldn’t reach anyone on the phone, I’d find the main highway and…
Fuck, I couldn’t hitchhike like this. No one would stop for a fucking skull-faced... I pushed off that thought with a growl. It threatened to bring on that mental crisis I was currently holding at bay by sheer force of will.
I felt strong as I ran. My legs pumped powerfully. It was the best I’d felt since before the caves. After days of feeling on the verge of starvation, weakness etched into every bone, I relished this newfound potency. I gulped big lungfuls of fresh air and ran harder. I moved fast for a while but soon I started to falter, energy leaking out of me like a sandbag with a hole. Whatever short burst of strength I’d been given was suddenly giving way to exhaustion.
Luckily, I was now well out of range of the poles with watching cameras blinking down at me. I stumbled against a tree, panting as I sat down. I looked down at my forearm as I made a tight fist. I was already thinning out again. The tattoos there looked like shrinky dinks, shrinking in size as my body thinned. I slid down the tree as I caught my breath, my muscles screaming with exertion.
Hunger was bleeding back into my gut. It was relentless. How was I supposed to live with a gnawing hunger as my constant companion?
I blew out a breath and dialed 911.
“What’s your emergency?'' The voice came through a bit garbled but clear enough. I began spewing about being trapped by a cult in the mountains and the calm voice on the other side of the line irritated me. They shouldn’t be calm, no one should be calm.
“What is your location?”
“I don’t know,” I ground out, brushing dead leaves from my jeans. I looked up to see them continuing to rain down from the tree.
“We’ll use your phone to pinpoint the closest tower. Stay on the line.” They tried to ask me more questions but I didn’t have much more to say than I already had.
