Perri O'Shaughnessy - Sinister Shorts

Charisse didn't answer. She was watching a tarantula skitter across the path, hairy legs moving much faster than they should. She pointed, excited, her hand with the long nails and sparkling rings incongruous in the dirt and heat and stillness. Fleck kicked dirt after the spider. “This is what I think,” he went on, repressing the moan the pain in his stomach had started. “Julie Mattei hiked up into someone's hate zone. If she hadn't shown up, the next walker would have been killed. Simple as that.”

“I don't believe it,” Charisse said. “They have their reasons.” She left it at that.

Another rest. The pain had settled in his gut, cramping him, making him stop and bend over now and then till the worst of it passed. Charisse was tired, too; she had slowed down and she walked with a slight limp. No one had passed them for some time. He was burning with thirst.

This walk was acting on him, replacing the forgetting with awful, fresh memory. Why had he returned?

“John, did your work make you start to think that life is senseless, too? Random and meaningless like you keep talking about?” She went on without waiting for an answer. “Because if it is, then you could do anything to another human being. I mean, what kind of morality would be left?”

“There you go,” he said quietly, so quietly she didn't even hear him.

“Just think of her up here, on an overcast day. A spring day, everything blooming… she was thinking about making love the night before, maybe. Or about chicken tarragon for dinner. Then, like this”-she snapped her fingers-“she's gone.”

He had stopped to catch his breath and wipe the sweat off his face. Gnats floated around their heads. “If they get too bad, walk with your hands raised above your head for a while,” he said. “They circle the highest point.”

“Did you ever meet her?” When he didn't answer, she wiped her forehead and repeated the question.

“We went out a few times,” Fleck said. The trail had narrowed between two boulders. They were hidden there. You could bury something here easily, he thought. An earthquake right now would bury them together.

If his words had surprised her, she didn't show it. “When did you move to Atlanta?”

Fleck ignored the question. “Doesn't this place scare you, Charisse? A woman died here and all.”

Now it was her turn to remain silent.

“I wish you hadn't come today,” he said. She stepped back, her spine pressing against the rock.

“You moved to Atlanta at the end of March. Right after Julie Mattei was killed,” she said, her voice low.

“That's right. And you've only known me for two weeks, that's right, too.” His head swam; he licked his dry lips. The camera case banging against his chest had been beating him up rhythmically with each step. “You look a little like Julie,” he said to her. “She was a glamorpuss like you.”

He was leaning over her, both hands against the rock above her head. Charisse said levelly, “You're trying to scare me. Why?”

Some tension in him went back into hiding at her words. He moved back from her and said, “You're too trusting.”

“Don't play games like that, John. I'm not like you. I'm not afraid of the world like you.”

“You should be,” he said. They went on, back into another patch of blinding sun.

“We're almost there,” he said. “Up another quarter mile, past that stand of pine.”

Charisse had stopped again. “What?” he said, then remembered he'd told her that morning he'd never been on The Long Walk. “I forgot,” he said. “That's all. I did hike this trail once, a long time ago. Come on, Charisse, don't look at me like that.”

“I'm going-back down the trail.”

“No,” Fleck said. “It's dangerous.” He grabbed her arm, as much to support himself as to restrain her. They stood there on the dusty path in the hard sun. “C'mon. We'll get some water, then we'll go straight down.”

She tried to shake him off. He held on.

“Let go of me, John.”

She started back down the trail. He took her arm again and turned her around. “No, I'm not letting you go,” he said. “We're going to get some water, then we can go back. I'm sorry if I scared you,” he was saying to her as he half-pushed her ahead of him up the trail. Silent, tearful, and exhausted, Charisse went along, which was fortunate since the immense pain that had lodged in his gut had fragmented and he could barely control his legs. Into a buzzing black shade they climbed, unable to see ahead through the psychedelic play of light and shadows beneath the canopy of leaves.

One more steep incline. The hillside turned rocky. Off to the right, beyond the scarred hillsides, he could now see the whole bay, a vast glittering silver lagoon dotted with boats, ringed by sunlit cities, the four great bridges connecting the peninsula and the headlands of Marin and the East Bay, San Francisco on the horizon partially veiled in its mountain range of white fog, the city of Oakland spread along the water, just below their feet. It all looked so pretty from far away.

One more thick stand of eucalyptus, and the trail abruptly delivered them out onto a flat sweep of granite. On the other side, about a hundred yards ahead, Fleck made out a rock wall, what looked like a depression. The Cave. Where the spring would be, inside and out of sight. On the right, another cliff fell away into miles of air.

“That's it,” he said, pointing. “Water.” Just saying the word made him feel better. He must have heatstroke, plus whatever else was gnawing away inside him.

Ducking down to enter, he nudged Charisse ahead. The dark blinded him; the coolness immediately started him shaking.

The Cave was a small rock room, lit only by the blazing open arch where they had entered. As his eyes adjusted, he saw Charisse in the corner, her whole head under the spring, her hands splashing up clear water, drinking greedily while it flowed over her head and neck.

Another shadow in the dark, an older man, drank water out of a tin cup, watching Charisse. Fleck put his hand against the wall and blinked several times. Some of the faintness went away. The man was a white biker type, tall and brawny, with a heavy gnarled walking stick. He stepped aside into indistinct shadows when he saw Fleck. Charisse came up for air, saw Fleck, and moved back.

Heedless, Fleck dove for the spring.

Freezing! It hurt, burning his head. His neck muscles spasmed. Red waves crashed inside his eyelids-

He slid down on the hard cold floor, his back propped against the wall, choking and sputtering. “Charisse,” he gasped as soon as he could speak. “Wait a minute. I'm sick.”

Charisse didn't answer. With a sound like a sob she turned and, lowering her head at the arch, ran outside. Fleck was gripped by sick dread. He scrabbled to get up, but he fell into a cramp.

He had to be with her. He got to his knees, shaking his head like a bull, droplets flying off his hair. Suddenly he felt the man behind him, wrapping long arms around his chest, pinning his arms.

His dread degenerated into physical panic and he struggled. So it was this stranger, the one he had forgotten to watch. A snap of the fingers-

Fleck was hauled to his feet. The man stepped back, saying, “You okay, buddy?” Fleck pushed him off, walking unsteadily to the mouth of The Cave.

His hand shading his forehead, he saw Charisse out in the glare, crossing the flat, looking so small. The sight of him made her rush off the main path, off to a narrow shaded walkway fringed by exotic red plumes of bottlebrush…

She ran up the path where Julie died.

Blind again, each breath a scorching effort, Fleck loped out of The Cave after her, hunched over, but she ran hard until she disappeared. It wasn't until he reached the far end of the flat and made his way to the brush that he saw the sister, the black girl who had waved at them earlier, way up the path beyond him, rising out of the eucalyptus forest behind Charisse. She had to be almost six feet tall, her hair in a natural like pictures he'd seen of Angela Davis in the sixties.