Kaleb Nation: Harken

The trees got thicker, and the numbers on the dash clock continued to roll higher. I wondered if we would even make it to this secret rendezvous point before he’d have to start paying for overtime. I really just wanted to get this one done. I could get home and rest before school, and use the cash to pick up the camera lens I’d been eyeing for weeks at the photography shop.

“How old are you again?” he asked. Even though they always wondered, it wasn’t the usual type of question from clients—an unwritten rule that the less we knew about each other, the less trouble we be in if we were caught.

“Five days until I turn seventeen,” I said. “I accept tips for my birthday.”

He gave a low and yet not amused laugh, and I gave up trying to make him lighten up.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “The lights.”

I slowed down and switched the beams off. Darkness enveloped us once again, this time unbroken by anything besides the moonlight. At first it appeared that we had stopped in the middle of a long stretch of road winding up the canyon, but when I followed Mr. Sharpe’s gaze, I saw that there was a thin dirt path leading into the trees to our right.

He nodded toward it.

“They’re down there?” I said.

“No,” he replied. “But we’ll be able to see them. There’s a clear view of the cabin.”

I sighed and considered my car’s underbelly, but in the end began to leave the road. I’d done bizarre things for clients so many times before that this wasn’t strange. I’d once had a teenage girl as a client who was convinced her father wasn’t really biologically related to her, even thinking he’d kidnapped her at birth. She’d led me all the way out of town to grab my photograph of him when she confronted him at his office, only to find out that yes, he was her father, and no, he was not at all amused by her bizarre accusations.

There was a bump as my tires left the pavement and sank into the loose dirt. The woods glowed with a dim haze. Finally, when the road had disappeared entirely from my rear-view mirror, he held a hand up.

“Here,” he whispered. I put the car in park, turned off the engine, and bathed in silence.

We sat still for a minute, just listening for anyone who might have discovered our presence. My eyes scanned the forest. I couldn’t detect any motion or life between the leaves and branches and gnarly trunks. It was a place even deader than the road I’d been on before, and would have been frightening if I hadn’t developed an immense disregard for fear by then.

I grabbed my binoculars and camera from the back seat as Mr. Sharpe pointed out my window. I switched on the night vision so that I could scan the trees in its exposing green hue. A cabin , I reminded myself. That should be easy to find out here.

But even as I scanned the area, I couldn’t see any building breaking the endless tangle of trees. I pressed the binoculars harder against my eyes, trying to spot anything unnatural at all, to no avail. All I saw was more brush, tangled even thicker off the path.

“You’re sure it’s this side?” I asked, looking at Mr. Sharpe. He nodded so I tried again. Still nothing. I breathed out with irritation. There wasn’t a building anywhere in those woods, and if there was, the cabin was far too invisible for me to spot anyone’s eyes. All I needed was one photo.

“Why don’t you look?” I proposed, turning to toss the binoculars to Mr. Sharpe. He hadn’t been ready to catch it and the binoculars dropped heavily into his lap.

I opened my mouth to apologize but stopped in that same split second. The moment the falling binoculars surprised Mr. Sharpe, the camouflage that he had so masterfully held over his gaze vanished, and I saw the Glimpse .

It was gone a half-second later. But that was all I ever needed.

I felt so stupid for not seeing it before.

I’d studied killers, mostly from afar through history textbooks and documentaries. Usually they were nervous, balancing their barely-restrained aggression against the aching of their almost-stifled conscience. But sociopaths had no conscience. There was no fear in this man’s eyes for what he was about to do because life simply meant less to him than a blade of grass.

He unbuckled his seat belt and leaned forward, pretending to study the empty woods—as he’d been doing the entire time. All of it had been an act. There were no lovers in the woods, there was no cabin, and there was no reason for this man to have brought me this far into the middle of nowhere, except for one. I tightened my hands into fists, hoping that this one time, I had read someone wrong.

Unfortunately, I was never wrong.

“I was sure they’d be here,” he said with false lament. “It’s a pity I brought you all the way out.”

Then, with a swift and practiced motion devoid of feeling, Mr. Sharpe jerked his hand from the inside of his jacket, tearing a hidden seam as the handle and blade of a long and thick knife broke free. The knife swung at my shoulder and would have pinned my corpse to my own seat if I hadn’t been ready, sliding down in one swift motion with my head under the steering wheel, my foot flying up and slamming hard into the man’s unsuspecting chest.

Breath exploded from his lungs but I wasn’t finished, catching the handle of his door next so that it flew open. He shouted at me, teeth ground together in rage, ripping his blade from the seat and tearing the cushion and material out in the process. His voice came as a maniacal shriek, striking within inches of my heart, scraping the skin on my arm as I dodged the knife.

I shouted though I knew that no one would hear it, the man turning into a beast of thrashing and striking and stabbing.

“Curse you!” he yelled. He swung the knife but in his momentum, I kicked him again and he tumbled backward, half inside my car and half on the dirt, his knife still splattered with red from my wound.

In a flash of motion, I turned the keys in the ignition and threw all my weight onto the gas pedal, heart racing as the car flew into reverse. I missed him only by the inches he dove out of the way. With the passenger door still flapping against brush and grass, I rocketed backwards, the murderous gaze of the madman still chasing me through the woods.

My arm stung like a thousand teeth had bitten it. Blood ran over the gray material of my seat, its split-open insides an image of what my chest would have been if I’d acted a second later. But still, the man continued to chase me, shouting, clinging the torn bits of his clothes as he ran, diving to reach the passenger door.

I pressed the pedal harder, shaking as I flew back onto the main road again, brakes screeching as the car whirled around and my headlights grazed the trees in all directions. The momentum threw my door to slam shut. I hit the locks as the man burst out of the woods a few steps behind. I scrambled to switch the gears just as he hit the opposite window, pounding the glass with his sweaty face behind it, his hands grabbing for the handle. I shot off, throwing him from his feet again.

Always, always check for weapons, you idiot! I mentally yelled at myself, breathing so fast that I was dizzy, my heart racing and every inch of me trembling with a foreign feeling of terror. I’d had crazy ones before, but nothing like this maniac. I shouted just because it boiled up inside me, trying to hold my arm against my shirt so the blood wouldn’t run everywhere.

Mr. Sharpe refused to give up even as I pushed my car to its limits. He’d appear in the mirror then fall back into the trees, only to dive back out closer to me again. I cursed at him, sweaty hands slipping on the steering wheel. As I glanced at the speedometer, I saw something else horrifying.