I force myself to take steps in the opposite direction of the victim, on a trajectory that will take me deeper into the woods. I’ve mapped the area. I know the best places to go where no one is likely to hear me.
I stagger through the trees, holding each trunk briefly for support, weeping as I go. Time blurs and so do my surroundings as visions of Mr. O’Brien’s life fill my head. He killed a man once—a scuffle behind a bar. No one ever knew. He hit his wife one time in anger. She stayed, and he never did it again. His six kids adore him. The second daughter is pregnant—his last thought during the heart attack was that he wouldn’t get to see the baby. He won’t get to be a grandpa. He and his wife will never take the cruise they were always talking about.
I walk, and I weep, and I watch the memories drifting through my mind like clouds of inky smoke.
Bark under my palms, thorns scratching my legs. I stumble, and my ankle twists. I fumble with my sandals, trying to remove them, and somehow they come off by themselves. Or maybe a rough, warm hand helps with the buckles.
Onward I limp, over crackling brown leaves and mossy stones. Then there’s damp earth, mud. Water rippling around my ankles. My injured foot hurts and I waver, but I’m held upright until I’ve crossed the stream.
I can’t see anymore. That happens sometimes—my eyes go white, irises a milky swirl, veiled by visions. I must turn away from the pull—always turn away. Don’t go to the dead man, don’t go tothe family. Veer in a new direction each time you start to yield. Take the path of greatest pain.
***
My lips are cracked. They hurt when I scream. Everything hurts—my ravaged throat, my aching lungs, my bare feet, my ankle, my fingernails.
It’s been hours, I think. I can’t be sure. Night insects chirp around me, backup singers to my soliloquy of moans and quiet sobs. Cold cracks along my limbs and stabs my fingers to the bone. My body is wrung out—no more moisture for tears.
And still I walk, wheezing the grief of the O’Brien house, bemoaning the theft of possibility and hope. The sudden end of a man so fallible and yet so well loved. He was a jolly man, a big presence, and he leaves behind a hollow no one will ever fill.
I cry for the ones he abandoned, and I cry forhim, for the soul lingering, unsatisfied, unwilling to accept its fate. He’ll let go eventually—they all do—and drift into some afterlife. I don’t know where they go. It’s my job to stare death in the face, not look beyond it.
“Dead, dead, dead,” I whisper. “Dead eyes, dead hands, shrunken lungs. But it’s the mouths that are the worst. No more kissing, talking, chewing, breathing, smiling. No more screams. The silence is so big, it’s enormous—it swells until that’s all there is: Silence. So much silence. Living things are never really quiet. Bellies burbling, guts churning, blood pumping, hearts thumping, lungs inflating, breath hissing. Death is silence. I fill the silence. I challenge it. But in the end, it always wins. Always.”
“You’re talking. That must mean you’re coming out of it.” A low, cautious voice at my side.
I startle and blink. A white, rectangular glow explodes into mysight, and I cringe, hissing, “No, no, no!”
“Sorry.” The light angles away from me. “I’m worried you’ll cut your feet to pieces. I would have stopped you from walking, but I thought it might make things worse. Can I… Are we done wandering around?”
I know that voice from somewhere, but my brain is still full of murmurs and memories. I can’t find the thread that connects the voice to a name. “You shouldn’t be here. No one ever walks with me when I mourn.”
“This has happened before? Fuck. And your family doesn’t follow you to keep you safe?”
“They don’t care.” I’m still walking but slower now. I blink again, staring at the swath of ground illuminated by the bluish-white light. My sight is back, so I can see the grass and the dead leaves in stark relief, each outlined by a crisp, black shadow. “They wish I would die.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t. Do you do this often?”
“Yes.” Why am I answering this person’s questions? Why do I feel as though this gruff voice belongs to someone I can trust?
“You get cut up like this every time?” he asks.
“I heal quicker than most people. No scars.” Not visible ones, anyway.
The nauseating urgency in my gut is fading, draining away, leaving me cold and ravaged. Salty blood seams the cracks in my parched lips. I try licking them, but my tongue is thick and dry. “Do you have any water?”
“Shit…no.”
“It’s fine. I’ll just go home.”
“In the dark? In this condition? Do you even know where you are?”
“I can sense my home,” I say faintly. “I know where to go.”
As I turn and take a step, pain spears my ankle. I cry out, grabbing the nearest tree.
“No way am I letting you hobble home on that ankle. I can’t believe you walked on it this far.”
“Grief suppresses physical pain,” I croak, taking another step. My fingers ache with cold. October in South Carolina boasts thirty- or forty-degree temperature differences—eighties by midafternoon, fifties or lower after sundown.
