“To help us connect you, please select from the following menu items,” the voice chirps. “If this is an emergency, please hang up and call 911.”
It’s not that kind of emergency. Can I delude myself into believing it’s not an emergency at all? By the time I’ve tried, and failed, and tried and failed again, the menu has looped back to the beginning.
“To schedule an appointment, please press 1” finally gives way to “For all other questions, please press 0.” I punch my thumb down on the 0 on my phone screen.
A second of silence. Then, “Hi, you’ve reached the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Wellness Center. Please leave a message, and we will return your call as soon as we can.”
I open my mouth to leave a message, then hang up instead. What if I’m overreacting? I can’t fuck up Uncle Bill’s job. He needs it.Weneed it. The wind draws whispering fingers over my window, and, suddenly, I want to cry.
Uncle Bill’s an asshole, always has been, unreliable and sullen and quick with passive aggression disguised as straight talk. But with my mom’s memory fraying, he’s also the person who remembers me best in the world. And I’d rather worry about him than the empty freezer, or my weird visions, or my mom’s fantasies of the flayed man.
“Families like ours used to live where the earth was hungriest” was how my mom began the story of the flayed man, or at least, the version I remember best. She told it often enough when I was four and five, syringe in my hand, painfully trial-and-erroring my way into my own veins, but she wasn’t always consistent in her retellings. “Marshes, swamps, border places where solid ground stops being so solid anymore. He was a priest, or our version of one. He found the children lost in the bogs, the trapped ones, the drowned ones, and brought them back to feed his family.”
This was a noble act, her voice said. He was a good man, once. But it only takes one mistake to doom you forever.
“Eventually, people stopped venturing into the swamp. And his family began to starve. Until one day, he came upon a woman trapped in quicksand. Blinded by hunger, he didn’t hesitate. He devoured her. And then, only when he had licked his jaws clean of the last drop of her blood, did he realize: it was his own daughter.”
She said it with a smile. It’s so easy for the universe to turn on us.
“For what he’d done, the flayed god cursed him to wander the swamps forever, unable to return to his human form. Killing and killing, eating and eating, and still he’s always starving. He can hear your innermost thoughts, and if you’re naughty, if you’re ungrateful, he’ll be drawn to you. No matter how fast you run, he’ll find you. And then, well. He likes the taste of hearts best.”
An ancient priest shrouded in layers of torn flesh, rib cage cracked apart, joints ground down and bent back, every nerve exposed and screaming to feed. That’s what we’d become too, without blood to keep us under control. That’s why it’s up to me to do whatever it takes to make sure my mom’s hunger is taken care of, and her with it.
But not yet. Not yet.
I barely realize what I’m doing until the Nokia is in my hand. The T9 keypad makes typing slow and frustrating.
Did uncle Bill ever tell you about this urban legend called the flayed man?
Painstakingly, I add more.
idk if you have it here, it might be a local thing where my grandma is from. I found an email he started about it and thought he might have been writing to you. Btw I’ll drive up tomorrow.
As soon as the phone chimes to indicate the text is sent, I want to take it back. It’s a weird question, and Brian was barely friendly on the phone. What if this is all it takes to change his mind about helping us?
I can’t bring myself to let the Nokia out of my sight as I microwave a dinner of frozen rice and vegetables. The tiny screen stays dark. I wash my face and brush my teeth, and when I’m done, I’m tempted to start all over again. Scrub my skin clearer, my teeth shinier. I pick at an imaginary blemish near my eyebrow.
When your body heals the way ours do, it’s easy to use it to punish yourself. I used to be worse: picking at my skin, chewing away hangnails. Digging the opaque ridge of my thumbnail into my forearm, where I could see veins drawing their blue tracks. I wanted to tear my flesh away until I could pull my arteries free of their predestined routes, until I could snap them between my molars. Then I’d really have something to be afraid of.
A sensation like a sharp pinch, and I look up to see that I’ve scraped the top layer of skin off where I was poking at the non-blemish. It’s red and raw now, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I wash my face again. No flecks of pink on the white towel. It’s already healed. The Nokia remains blank faced on the counter.
I need to take my mind off waiting for Brian to reply.
I stretch my thoughts back to Uncle Bill’s email draft. The initials and dates are probably a dead end with no context, but the bit about disappearances might lead somewhere.
I typeMt Charleston disappearances (unconfirmed), just how Uncle Bill wrote it, into Google and hold my breath.
A few local news articles pop up, along with a website detailing cold cases and anUnsolved MysteriesReddit post. Avalanche a few years ago, missing family on a camping trip, mystery car abandoned near a trailhead. Nothing specific enough to let me be sure of what I’m looking for.
I scroll until my back starts to ache. Then I have another idea. I dig through my work bag until I find the papers I pulled from Uncle Bill’s safe.
A newspaper cutting, the one about the woman who died in a hiking accident, surfaces with a rustle of old paper and the smell of burnt coffee. There’s a faint brownish ring in the upper corner, where Uncle Bill must have set his coffee mug.
A little over a year ago, Martina Revelle, forty-six, went out for the day and never came back. Her neighbor saw her drive off, said she had no idea where Martina was going but that she often went on long solo hikes. The first day she didn’t come back, the neighbor figured she was camping. She called the cops on the second day. There are no friends quoted, and no family, but that could mean anything. Maybe Martina Revelle was just a normal person who no one liked.
Except Uncle Bill cut out an article about her disappearance and locked it in his safe. That’s not normal.
