Nick Cutter - The Troop

I loved Sherwood. We hardly got to see each other—we don’t have a lot of money (I don’t even know how Mom affords you) and Sherwood’s parents are farmers. But every summer they came for a visit. I’d take Sher to the ocean. No ocean in Manitoba, right? We got along great. When I told him a little nugget of info, Sher was genuinely interested.

We stuck to the out-of-the-way places, the ones only I knew. I didn’t want to run across any kids from school—they’d call me lardbucket or tub-a-guts. I was scared that if Sher saw that he wouldn’t like me anymore. Which wasn’t really fair to him. Sher would’ve helped me, because blood is thicker than water, right?

Sher was tall with wide shoulders and lots of muscle—farmboy muscles, he called them, laughing and telling me everyone had them back home, he wasn’t so special. But Sher WAS special. Handsome (I can say that about another boy, it’s not weird) and people just… they gravitated to him, is I think the word. Like a magnet drawing iron filings. Everyone wanted to be around Sher.

Then he died, a stupid unlucky accident, and everyone was so sad. The world had lost a great light—everyone said so. I wondered what they’d have said if it was me who died? I didn’t really want to guess.

After the funeral I dug out my box of photos. My mom bought me a Polaroid for my birthday and it got a lot of use. Mainly they were of Sher—I was the one snapping the photos, plus I don’t like how I look on camera.

I was going to put up a memorial wall. On Facebook, right? Something to remember Sher by. My idea, sincerely. But somewhere along the line it changed.

I scanned the photos, put them in a file on my computer. But instead of a memorial wall I… well, I created a person. I guess that’s what I did, yeah.

Alex Markson. The boy’s name. I don’t know where I got it from, but it seemed a strong name—it fit well with the photos. Alex Markson had Sherwood’s face and body. Alex Markson had my words, my interests. Alex was me and Sherwood, combined.

I put up the profile. I knew it was wrong. My heart hammered like a drum when Sher’s face went POP! up on the screen. It was… sacrilegious? I almost deleted it. Almost.

I started posting stuff. Nothing much at first. Just things that interested me—the stuff kids around here pick on me for. My words pasted to Sher’s body.

The super-weird thing is… Alex started to get friend requests. I mean, a LOT. People neither of us had met. Not weirdos either. Normal, cool people. Boys (and girls!) my age.

At first I was scared to accept them—I saw Sher up in Heaven, shaking his head—but after a while I did. People posted on my wall and I’d post on theirs, as Alex. Sher’s face bloomed like a flower on strangers’ Facebook pages.

But the thing is, Alex’s interests were mine. And people thought he was smart and funny and, well, COOL. Isn’t that weird? When I say those exact same things it’s nerdy, because people think I’m a nerd. Like, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So then—and this is really embarrassing—I sent some requests. To Max Kirkwood and Ephraim Elliot and Kent Jenks. I even sent one to Trudy Dennison, who sits in front of me in homeroom and is the most beautiful, funniest, and just all-around best girl in the whole entire world. Not that I’ve ever really talked to her, except for that time she borrowed a pencil in social studies… which she never gave back, come to think of it. Maybe she thinks “borrow” means “keep,” same as Kent does… probably she just forgot.

Anyway, guess what? They accepted, even though they never met Alex. How could they, right? They just thought he was handsome, and loose, and cool.

I thought: This is how it COULD be. If I wasn’t ME. If I existed in a different body, an acceptable body, a body everyone loved. If I didn’t live in North Point, where I’m like this train on rails: I know where I’m going, hate it, but can’t change course. This was who I could’ve been if the ball had bounced just a bit differently, you know?

My own Facebook page has ten friends. My mom, a few uncles and aunts, my grandmother—“I bought you a new pair of jeans from the Husky department at Simpson’s Sears in Charlottetown, Newtie!”—and a few pen pals… my pal from Dubuque de-friended me.

Now here’s the big confession, Dr. Harley, the solid gold bonanza, the secret that says just about everything, I guess:

Alex Markson isn’t friends with Newton Thornton. Not on Facebook. Not anywhere on earth or in this life.

IT WASdark by the time they returned to the cabin. A fire flickered in a ring of rocks. Scoutmaster Tim was sitting on the far side. The tendons on his neck stood out in sharp relief: they looked like tiny trees all tenting inward.

“Don’t go inside,” he told them.

“My warm coat’s in there,” Kent said.

“The fire’s warm. You’ll be fine.”

“I’d rather have my coat.”

“I don’t care what you’d rather have,” Tim said in a dead voice. “The man inside is sick. Sick in a way I’ve never seen before, at least not that I can diagnose here.”

The boys settled themselves around the fire. Newton said, “Sick how?”

“At first, I thought cancer. As a doctor, that’s always the first thought. But cancer is almost always typified by loss of appetite and…”

Tim saw no good reason to tell the boys that the man had stirred that afternoon—lunged upward like a heart-staked vampire from its coffin. His eyes crawling with burst vessels… his tongue a knot of sinew as if something had sucked the saliva out of it…

The man had sunk his teeth into the chesterfield and torn at the fabric with savage bites.

The mindlessness of it had horrified Tim.

Tim managed to sedate him before he swallowed too much. There was a good chance he’d choke to death on the chesterfield’s musty old foam. He’d cradled the man’s neck as he laid him down. The man’s head tilted back and his jaw hung open…

Tim had seen something. If anything, it resembled a white knuckle of bone—the bone of a greenstick fracture except curved and gleaming. Visible only for a harried instant. Lodged in his throat below the epiglottal bulb. Gently ribbed and somehow gill-like…

Next the man’s rib cage bulged in a bone-splintering flex as something settled.

“…and this man is very hungry,” Tim finished.

“So what are you going to do about it?” said Kent.

Tim ignored the boy’s cheeky defiance. “He may have some kind of internal sickness. By the time the boat picks us up, I believe he’ll be dead.”

Newton said: “Can you operate on him?”

Shelley said: “Cut him open?”

Tim said: “I haven’t done a lot of surgery, but I know the basics. Max, has your dad ever had you help him out on the job?”

Max’s father was the county coroner. Also its taxidermist: if anyone wanted his trophy bluefin mounted on a burled-oak backing, he was the one to call. An insistent voice in Tim’s head told him not to involve the boys—keep them clear of this. But a new voice, a silky whisper, told him no worries—it’d be just fine.

You’ve got it all under control, Tim…

He didn’t, though—he’d become hyperaware of this fact. This night would determine whether the man lived or died… maybe only a few hours of the night. This was why he would’ve bombed as a surgeon: Tim lacked the quick-cut instincts, that private triage room in his head. He was a thinker—an over thinker. Overthinking matters was just a harmless quirk in a GP but now, when swift action was needed, he could feel himself coming apart.