Carver Pike - Scalp

The skittering sound grew louder and angrier. A black cloud burst forth from the animal’s fur and shot toward Carl.

Carl screamed, dropped his rifle to the ground, and spun in circles.

“Get it off me!” Carl yelled.

Andre rushed to his cousin’s side, but he didn’t get any closer when he saw the cloud dissipate. It sank right into Carl’s head. The man stopped spinning and stared back at Andre with a look of confusion. His brow furrowed. His mouth twisted and his eyes blinked rapidly.

Carl breathed deeply.

Sighed.

Groaned.

His eyes rolled back, and his hands shot to his head where he clawed at his hair.

He groaned again, but he didn’t scream. His fingernails dug into his scalp and thin trails of blood ran down his forehead and from the sides of his head over his ears. His face was a scarlet chandelier.

Andre moved around his cousin and saw blood trickle down the collar of his shirt. It was like an invisible crown of thorns had been slammed onto his head so hard it planted itself there and sent a crimson cascade flowing down.

The man’s mouth opened so wide it seemed his lips might stretch over his nose and chin. He wanted to cry out, but all that came was a guttural sound like someone had pressed against his stomach and let loose an agonizing gasp.

“Carl,” Andre said. It was all he could think to say. He couldn’t ask if the man was all right because he clearly wasn’t all right.

His hands remained at his head and his fingers dug through his hair so hard and so fast it seemed the flesh beneath it was starting to tear away. He scraped at his scalp with the frantic intensity of a dog digging up a bone. Finally, his gasp transformed into a scream. His shriek was so loud it would have driven away any living creature in the forest if they hadn’t already fled the scene.

Andre stepped back and stumbled over a tree branch lying across the forest floor. Even as he tripped and struggled to regain his balance, his eyes never left his cousin. Blood rained down from Carl and Andre knew if he hadn’t already, his fingernails would soon reach his skull.

Carl dropped to his knees, looked up to the sky, and kept clawing at his head. Andre winced from the man’s screams and for a second, he considered putting a bullet into him to ease his pain. It was only a fleeting thought, as he could never shoot his kin, but the agony his cousin was in was undeniable.

Then, as sudden as it had come on, it seemed as if the pain had been plucked away.

Carl’s arms went slack, falling to his sides like two dropped bags of groceries. His mouth remained open for a moment before he clamped his jaws shut. His eyes were watery, and his face seemed frozen in a post-stroke grimace. Drool slipped from his lips and Andre thought he looked like a patient in an insane asylum who’d been given a lobotomy.

When Andre backed up a few steps, Carl shimmied forward on his knees, creeping closer.

“Carl stop,” Andre said as he took a few more steps back.

His cousin obeyed, then reached up to scratch his head again.

“You ain’t right, cousin,” Andre said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but we need to get you some help. And you gotta quit scratchin’ your head like that. You’re gonna hurt yourself really bad.”

Carl moved closer on his knees a couple of steps.

“Hey now! I said stop!”

Carl didn’t listen. He lifted his right knee and set it down in the mud a few inches further.

“Carl!” Andre yelled, now lifting his gun in his cousin’s direction. “Please.”

Carl stopped.

“I don’t know what’s happened to you, man, but this ain’t right. You do what I say, and I won’t shoot you, but if you come any closer, you’re gonna force me to put a bullet in you. A bullet I can’t take back. So, please, cuz, do what I tell ya. Walk toward the truck.”

Carl nodded. Then he slowly lifted one leg and put his foot down on the ground. He did the same with the other. He rose sluggishly and smiled. Andre had known his cousin all his life, and he’d never seen a grin like this one.

“Go on,” Andre said, eyeballing the rifle Carl dropped when the black cloud descended on him. He wasn’t sure if he should pick it up. He didn’t want to touch anything that had come in contact with the man.

It was that fucking deer. Why did he have to touch that fucking deer?

“Carl, walk to the truck.”

Carl hadn’t said a word since he’d touched the deer with that stick. He was either in a serious stupor, the way he was whenever he got involved with the other meth heads in town, or he’d screamed so loud he’d damaged his vocal cords and couldn’t speak. Andre could see that being the case. He’d never heard a scream like that before.

From behind, Andre marched his cousin out of the woods. He was acutely aware, once again, of the silence, and he wondered if everything else in this forest was as afraid as he was right now. Were the birds hiding out in the tree limbs? Were the frogs burrowing into the mud? Were the bears taking their cubs far away from this place? That deer should have followed them.

Carl stepped carefully ahead of him, like a drunk man trying to fake his way through a field sobriety test. If Andre were a cop, he’d definitely haul his drunk ass in. It was his erratic behavior. The way his fingers opened and closed, and his head shook back and forth like he was vehemently disagreeing with someone unseen. He kept scratching his head, and his skin seemed to have a slight sheen to it like he was sweating even though they hadn’t done any uphill hiking or anything else strenuous.

At this point, Andre wasn’t thinking of it as his cousin anymore.

It was a thing .

Something he might hunt given the opportunity.

You ain’t never hunted anything like this before.

“Keep going,” Andre said, only because he felt the need to break the silence.

That awful quiet.

Some folks prayed for an end to the noise, for a chance to experience a total hush, but not Andre. He hated it. Ever since he was pushed into a swimming pool as a kid and suffered the complete and utter quiet of being underwater and realizing he should have learned to swim the previous summer. A bigger boy saved his life. Come to think of it, that boy was Carl. This sudden realization brought with it a surge of hope. He wasn’t going to call an ambulance once they reached the road and better phone reception. He was going to drive his cousin to the hospital himself.

Perhaps he’d been concentrating too hard on the past because Andre didn’t even realize Carl had turned around and was staring at him. The sun was a dull pastel orange at this point. The tree branches up and behind Carl were black at this angle. They were charcoal limbs of skeletal beasts ready to pounce on him. Carl was their leader, and he grinned back at Andre with the excitement of a madman.

“Turn around!” Andre ordered.

Carl laughed.

“I’m warning you, cousin. Turn around, or I’ll be forced to—”

Carl leaped at him, and Andre reacted as quickly as his injured leg would allow. He limped backward, raised his rifle, and shot his cousin in his right thigh. As the man pitched forward, Andre saw something small and black fall from the top of his head, like dark dandruff. It hit the ground, and Andre imagined it crawling toward him, whatever it was. It had to be a part of that black cloud he’d seen earlier.

“Stay back!” Andre yelled.

Carl groaned, but he didn’t cry out the way any other man would when taking a bullet to the leg.

“I fuckin’ told you to turn around, Carl. Why’d you do that, dammit?”

Carl rose to his hands and knees. On all fours, he glanced up at Andre with saliva dripping from his lips. His eyes were bloodshot red. He had to be in pain, yet his face didn’t register it.