I had the story worked out in my head. I was going to say we were playing baseball in gym and the ball bounced off my glove and hit me in the jaw.
But those aren’t the words that came out of my mouth.
“I got in a fight.”
“A fight,” he said the words incredulously.
“Yup. Some kid had been running his mouth at me for days and I’d had enough.”
“Then why are you the one with the bruise?” He didn’t ask me who or why. He didn’t ask me if I was okay. He wanted to know if I lost.
I shrugged. “I provoked him into taking the first shot. It’s the only hit he got in. Not only did he lose the fight, but he got in trouble for starting the fight. I was just defending myself.”
The lies just poured right off my tongue and my stomach heaved.
Dad grunted. “Way to take care of yourself.”
“Dinner’s on the table!” Mom called from the kitchen.
The thought of food was not appealing at all, but I washed up and took my usual spot at the table.
“I made your favorite tonight, Logan,” Mom said and sat a heaping plate of spaghetti in front of me.
Spaghetti wasn’t my favorite. It was Sam’s.
I looked up to my parents’ faces to see if there was even a flicker of the truth or recognition in their eyes. But there wasn’t. It was like they completely believed the fake world they lived in.
“I’m not feeling well,” I announced and pushed away from the table.
Mom’s face clouded over with concern. “What’s the matter?” She got up and felt my forehead.
“I think I’m just going to go lay down.”
“What can I get you? Would you like some toast? Some tea?”
“Don’t baby him, Gwen,” Dad said and I took my chance to flee the room.
In my room, I flopped down on the bed and stared at the comic book posters that covered the walls. My head was swimming and my vision was a little blurry, which made focusing on the characters hard, but I did it anyway. My skin wasn’t hot, but I felt warm, like my body was sweating on the inside. My stomach roiled and I regretted that cookie I ate earlier.
I could hear my parents’ voices out in the kitchen as they talked about their day, and Dad went on and on about his job. I never could understand why Mom let him push all of us around. Without really moving, I reached into my nightstand and pulled out my iPod and shoved the ear buds in my ears. I cranked up the music so I couldn’t hear anything else and I closed my eyes.
But the music wasn’t loud enough to block my own thoughts. Thoughts that scared me pressed in on me and left me feeling confused.
Underneath it all, one thing repeated like a mantra, eventually lulling me to sleep.
I wished my brother were here.
***
That night I dreamed of pain. Of wandering down a country back road that seemed to cut right through a wooded mountain. It was so dark that I could barely see three feet in front of me and it was eerily silent.
Then, from behind, a tree branch snapped.
I turned, looking over my shoulder, but nothing was there. I kept walking, looking for something, trying to find my way home. It was cold out and all I was wearing was a T-shirt. I tried to ignore the way my skin prickled with cold and I jammed my icy fingers into the front pockets of my jeans.
Suddenly, headlights flashed behind me, projecting a shadow of me across the ground. It was long and distorted, far wider than I could ever be. I studied it, imagining that I really did have those wide shoulders and head, that I looked that menacing and intimidating. No one would mess with me then.
I wasn’t concerned about the car closing in on me from behind, and I didn’t turn around until it stopped right behind me. The driver got out, but was no more than a dark figure, standing at the hood of the car, the headlight’s glare making the person impossible to see.
“I saw your car a few miles back. Did you run out of gas?” His voice was deep and low and it sent shivers down my spine.
I felt myself nodding.
“Nearest gas station is ten miles. Hop in and I will give you a lift.”
Suddenly, fear slammed into me. I couldn’t accept a ride from a stranger, even if it meant walking ten miles to civilization. My heart started slamming against my ribs and sweat prickled my skin.
“No, thank you,” I told the driver.
I saw him shrug and then climb back in the car. I heaved a relieved sigh and began walking again. I waited for the driver to go on by, but he didn’t. Instead, the engine revved and when I looked over my shoulder, the car was barreling toward me at an impossible speed. With a great shout, I began to run and dove off the road and into the trees.
The trees were close together here; there was no way that car could fit between. I watched in horror as the car backed up and then sped forward, slamming into one of the trees. There was a great cracking sound as the tree split and began falling toward the ground. Toward me.
I ran. I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, ignoring the pull and tugs of the branches and the burning of my lungs. Then I stumbled.
And fell.
I fell forever, it seemed. My scream echoed around me, making it sound like I had screamed a hundred times.
Suddenly, I hit the ground and I heard the crunching of my bones. Pain exploded through my limbs and I lay there, sweating and shaking. A figure floated into my vision. Once again it was so dark I couldn’t see anything but the outline of the body.
I tried to get away, to get up and run. But my broken body wouldn’t move.
The person standing over me began to laugh. A high-pitched laugh that never ended and invaded my brain until it was all I heard. Every hair on my body stood on end.
Abruptly, the laughing stopped. The silence was so complete it was almost as loud as the laughing had been. Then the figure—the person—bent closer. I flinched, waiting for them to do something vile to me and wanting it to just be over.
But he didn’t touch me.
He whispered.
Welcome to Hell.
***
My entire body ached when I woke up. I was disoriented and confused. I had fallen asleep in my clothes, which were now wrinkled and sweaty, and the iPod had gotten stuck and was skipping over and over again, a loud screeching sound that filled my ears. I ripped it away and threw it aside. It landed just feet in front of me with a soft thud. That’s when I realized I wasn’t in bed.
I was outside. In the backyard, lying in the grass.
How did I get out here? The last thing I remembered was going to bed. And the dream… I remembered the dream.
Welcome to Hell.
Forcing myself to stand up, I snuck back into the house and down the hall to the bathroom, where I stripped off my clothes and took a shower, turning the water as hot as I could stand, hoping to relieve my achy muscles. When I was done and dressed in loose basketball shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt, I flopped back onto my bed. I tried to remember going outside, how long I had been out there, but my mind was blank.
Mom came in and fussed over me, taking my temperature (normal) and bringing me a bottle of Gatorade, which I downed in one gulp. She gave me some pills that I dutifully swallowed, then she left me in peace. For all of five minutes. After half a day of her hovering, I began to pretend that I was feeling better, sitting up in bed and “reading” a comic. I asked for soup that I knew we didn’t have and some popsicles. When her car pulled out of the driveway, I let out a huge sigh of relief. Dad was here and I could hear the TV on in the family room and some game playing. He would leave me alone.
My body didn’t hurt as much as it had when I woke up, but my joints and back still ached. I felt strange… and even though I was weak from hunger and illness, somehow I still felt stronger.
The words from my dream echoed through my head, taunting me until I couldn’t take it anymore.
Welcome to Hell.
I swung my legs over my bed and quietly slipped out into the hall, pausing at a closed door. I listened to make sure Dad was still in the family room and I was startled when I seemed to pick up on the slightest shift of his body against his leather recliner. Knowing that he was occupied, I took the doorknob in my hand and turned, pushing the door open soundlessly and slipping inside.
Into Sam’s room.
What used to be Sam’s room. It had been untouched since the day he left. My parents merely closed the door and pretended this room no longer existed. Dust coated the surfaces and a few drawers were closed crookedly in his dresser. There were a couple socks lying on the floor and his hamper was overflowing with dirty jeans. Comics were stacked on the nightstand and his bed wasn’t made. The air was stale in here, but I took a deep breath and could catch just a hint of the way he used to smell.
Tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked them back. Men didn’t cry.
I went across the room and sank down on the foot of his bed. Everything changed that day. The day he shifted into a hellhound. A creature that wasn’t supposed to exist. I still remember lying in bed at night and hearing Mom cry. She hardly ever slept and she used to creep into my room at night to check on me. I eventually figured out that it was because she was afraid Sam would attack me in my sleep.
Hellhounds were dangerous, they said. Hellhounds were sins of nature, freaks. A hellhound would kill you in your sleep and then drag your soul to Hell for all eternity.
But even after Sam changed, to me, he was still only Sam. He was my brother.
I asked him once what it felt like to change, to have something bad inside his body. He said that the first time felt like he was being torn apart and he hurt for days, but after that, his body seemed to know what to do and it didn’t hurt so much. I remembered something else, too.
The first time he shifted, he went out in the yard.
My body ached. I hurt. I woke up in the yard…
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. Pushing away the terrifying thought that wouldn’t leave me alone.
But it wouldn’t go away. It sank into my aching body like the rain does the grass.
I was turning into a hellhound.
Welcome to Hell.
***
The next day, I woke up in my own bed, relieved that I had slept soundly there all night. Yet, I was exhausted, feeling as though I had barely gotten any sleep at all. But I wasn’t sick anymore and my body didn’t hurt. And I was hungry. My appetite was back full force and then some. I grabbed a hoodie, pulled it over my head and headed to the kitchen. I ate so much that Mom could hardly keep up with my growling stomach.
When I finished my countless plates of pancakes and bacon, my body felt heavy and I went into the family room to watch a little TV. Dad was out back mowing the grass, and when I looked over at his recliner, I smiled.
Then I sat down. I put up my feet and turned on the TV to channel surf.
It was a comfortable chair. But my comfort was momentarily forgotten when a news report flashed onto the television screen. The image of a dark-haired woman in a white blouse, holding a microphone and standing outside across the street from a mini mart, made my stomach do a little flip. My first reaction was to change the channel, but I couldn’t. I was somehow mesmerized and couldn’t look away.
“Sometime in the early morning hours, a series of disturbing events rocked this normally quiet Maine town when the local mini mart, seen behind me here,” she spoke and gestured behind her to the place that was surrounded by crime scene tape and broken glass, “was vandalized and robbed. The single witness, the cashier, was knocked unconscious and found in a crumpled heap in the bathroom by the police after a would-be customer called 9-1-1. The officers who arrived first at the scene told us what they found.”
I don’t know why my palms were suddenly sweaty and my heart was beating fast. This wasn’t the first time a crime was committed and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Still, I watched, swallowing past the lump in my throat, as two men wearing uniforms came onto the screen.
“As soon as we pulled into the lot we could see how badly the place was vandalized. All the large front windows were shattered, destroyed merchandise littered the parking lot as well as trash from the busted trash cans. Once we ascertained the store was empty, we went inside and noted that the entire mart had been destroyed. All the drink cases were busted and thousands of dollars in inventory was ruined. The cash register was torn from the counter and cracked in half. All the money was gone and there wasn’t anything left that was salvageable. When we searched the premises, we found the cashier unconscious in the bathroom with a large wound on the back of his head, and a set of deep scratches on his leg, and it was clear he had a dislocated shoulder and a broken arm.”
A tingling in my own arm had me looking down at a set of scratches on my forearm. I couldn’t remember where they came from. They hadn’t been there when I went to bed last night… I slid the sleeve of my hoodie down to cover the marks.
The screen flashed back to the news reporter, who was frowning as she stared into the camera. “The cashier, a Mr. Manning Rogers, was taken to the hospital where he regained consciousness long enough to tell police that he only saw one man—who he described as a huge man in a mask. The victim then slipped into a coma.” The reporter paused. “Doctors are hopeful for his recovery.”
I noticed that she didn’t say optimistic. They must not expect the guy to wake up. My stomach twisted. Who could do something like that to another person? It was sick.
“If that wasn’t enough tragedy for one evening,” the reporter continued, “there was also a fatal car crash only three miles away from the mini mart where two vehicles crashed head on and then flipped onto opposite sides of the road, where they both caught on fire and burned until the fire department arrived to put out the blazes. The occupants of both cars were pronounced dead at the scene. Names are being withheld until families are notified and the mystery around the crash can be solved.”
What was so mysterious about a car crash?
“The eye witness to the crash told channel eleven that the cars wouldn’t have crashed had there not been some sort of animal that burst from the bushes and rushed out into the center of the street, causing the northbound car to swerve, lose control and collide into the southbound car. The animal then rushed into the woods and no one has seen it since, but it was described as being”—she paused to look at a note card that was suddenly in her hands—“large, hulking and angry.”