Ghost Hand (12 page)

“No, I haven’t. You also said your friend escaped.”

“So you think
you
can?” he asked, laughing in disbelief.

“Why not? I got away from them at the cemetery
and
when they tried to burn my house down.”

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” he said. “These guys are insane. There’s no way I’m going to let you do this.”

“And how do you plan to stop me? Pull my arm off?” I yelled in his face.

Down below light flared, and we both turned toward the hospital to see security flood-lamps flashing on all over the grounds.

“Shit,” we said in unison. We were standing right out in the open.

“Run for the trees!” I said, yanking my arm from his hand and tearing up the hill. I could hear him, first behind me, then we were running side by side, the damn bag of clothes bumping between us. My lungs were on fire. My legs were going wobbly. Marcus was paces ahead of me. He turned and waited, holding out his hand. I stumbled into him, and he grabbed me, pulling us both into the shadows.

We collapsed at the foot of a gnarly tree, panting and trying to catch our breaths, but I couldn’t find mine. I could hear myself gasping. I gulped at the air, but it didn’t do any good. The shadows around me were getting darker, like an encroaching tunnel at the edge of my vision.

“Hey,” Marcus said, leaning over me. “Take a deep breath.”

I can’t. I can’t
. That’s what I tried to say, but it just came out as more gasping.

“Seriously, take it easy.”

I tried, but the more I tried the more I felt my throat closing up. I flailed in panic, banging the back of my head against the tree. I didn’t know if my eyes were closed or open.

“Olivia!” someone barked, sounding just like my father when he was afraid for me. He grabbed me, wrapping me in his arms and pulling me into his chest. “Breathe,” he commanded. “Just like this. Breathe with me.”

I fought to catch my breath, to remember the unconscious pattern it had always been, but the air shuddered in, choking me.

He took my ghost hand and slipped it inside his jacket, splaying my fingers against his shirt, against the warm rise and fall of his chest. “Like this. Feel this. Breathe with me,” he ordered, placing his hand over mine.

Don’t do that. My hand is dangerous. It will hurt you.
That’s what I thought, but it wasn’t what I felt. I felt his chest expand under my hand. I felt my body relax into the warmth of him. Inhale. Then exhale. Then inhale again. The dark tunnel was receding. My throat opened and oxygen, like cool water, seeped into my lungs. I took one long wonderful breath, then another.

Twenty, maybe thirty breaths later, I slowly became aware of more than the need for oxygen. I became aware that I was curled in Marcus’s lap, his arms firmly around me, his long legs stretched out under me. My head did tuck under his neck perfectly, just as I’d imagined, and his chin was resting on my head. Both my hands were buried inside his jacket, and yes, I could feel the rise and fall of his chest and under it the loud hammer of his heart. Thu-bump. Thu-bump. Thu-bump. It was so loud, as if there was nothing between it and me.

“Your heart is so loud,” I whispered, between one Thu-bump and the next.

His arms tensed, pushing me gently but firmly off his lap onto the grass. “You had me really scared there for a minute,” he said, brushing something off his pant leg. “You were hyperventilating pretty badly.”

“Sorry,” I said. I could barely see his face in the shadows under the trees. Hopefully that meant he hadn’t seen the look on mine when he’d dumped me out of his lap. At least he hadn’t scooted away from me. Our shoulders were still touching.

“No problem,” he said. “Catch your breath. I think we have a little time.”

I followed his glance down to the hospital below. It was pretty lit up and I could see several security guards shining their flashlights behind bushes in the courtyard. But Marcus was right. It would probably be a while before they expanded the search to the hills and woods beyond.

“I’m ready,” I said, “If we stick to the trees, they shouldn’t see us.”

“I know you don’t want to hear this,” he said earnestly, “but I have a place we can go. A safe place.”

“No,” I said. “I have to get my pack.”

“Yes, you do,” he said, surprising me with his agreement. “But do you really think you’re in any condition to do that tonight?”

We both knew I’d just proven I wasn’t.

“You have to give yourself some time to recover,” he continued. “And you can’t just barge in there. We have to have a plan.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. I know the CAMFers. And you know the town.”

He had a point. Several actually. And then there was the tiny fact that he knew how to snap my hand back to normal, and I wanted him to teach me how to do it. And he was willing to help me get the blades back. Besides, he’d just helped keep me breathing. It was pretty obvious he didn’t pose any kind of threat to me.

“So where’s this safe place?” I asked, looking at him.

“It’s a bit of a walk,” he said, his teeth flashing a white grin in the dark. “You up to it?”

“I think so.”

He stood and reached down to help me up. The bag of clothes was under the tree, a few items strewn about. He quickly stuffed them back in and hefted it over his shoulder. This time, he gently took my arm and guided me over a rocky outcrop. Finally, we entered the woods, leaving the glow of the UMH behind us.

SOMEPLACE SAFE

We were on Old Delarente Road, a dirt track about two miles south of town that ended at an ancient, abandoned lumber camp deep in the woods. I had been there before, once on a hike with my dad when he’d still been healthy, a second time to take photos when I’d done a sophomore social studies project on Greenfield history.

I shambled along behind Marcus like a pet zombie, a mindless creature no longer connected to my body. I was exhausted, but I didn’t have the energy to admit it. I was just thinking about letting my knees bend, about how nice it would feel to curl into a ball in a pile of leaves and sleep, when an awful smell hit my nostrils, black and bitter and cloying. Marcus stopped in front of me, and I stopped too, just barely keeping myself from running into his back.

To our right, next to the road, two round, silver towers rose into the air, a pond of thick, putrid blackness pooling at their base. Under the moonlight, it was like something out of a dark fairy tale. In the light of day, I knew it was just two leaky oil tanks from the lumbering days, long forgotten. I’d written about them in my history paper. I’d even written a letter to the editor of the Greenfield Advocate, the town newspaper, demanding to know who was responsible for the land, and thus the clean-up of the spill. But they hadn’t even printed my letter, which probably meant whoever owned the land also sponsored the newspaper. If this was Marcus’s safe place, I wasn’t impressed.

“This isn’t it,” he said, “but let’s rest.”

I limped to the base of an old tree, upwind from the oil pools, and sat in a pile of leaves just like I’d imagined. After removing several acorns from beneath my butt, I was actually comfortable, though painfully thirsty.

There was an old tin shed just off the road and Marcus walked over to it. I knew it was locked. And rusted shut. But I didn’t want to waste my breath telling him.

Marcus reached out, pulled the door open, and disappeared into its little box of darkness. Before I could even grunt my surprise, he was back out, still carrying my bag of clothes with something else in his other hand. When he got closer, I could see it was one of those hydration packs. He must have broken into the shed earlier and stashed it there.

“Here, have a drink,” he said, handing me the pack and sitting down next to me. As I sipped luke-warm water from the plastic mouth piece, he removed several acorns of his own from under his backside and pitched them in the road.

“Leave some for me,” he said, taking the tube. He didn’t even wipe it off before sticking it in his mouth. He had nice teeth. Nice lips.

He gave me another turn to drink, and there was something intimate about it, me watching him sip, him watching me. He was staring at my lips now, his eyes dark and serious. I handed him the tube, but he didn’t reach out to take it. He just kept staring at me, and I wanted him to slide his hand to the back of my neck, and pull me to him. I wanted his breath in my mouth. I wanted him to kiss me. And I was terrified he’d kiss me.

But then my stomach growled, and we both laughed, and the moment was gone.

He took the tube and clipped it onto the backpack.

“Got any food in there?” I asked, eyeing a zipper on the outside of the pack. My head was starting to buzz from hunger.

Marcus unzipped the pouch of the backpack, reached in, and handed me a handful of almonds.

My hunger trumped my sore throat, so I popped one in my mouth.

The buzzing was getting louder. Not my head then. Probably the blades.

The blades.

Which meant CAMFers.

Except I didn’t have the blades anymore.

I jumped up, finally recognizing the growing sound for what it was. Lights barreled down the road toward us, engines revved, male voices shouted. The CAMFers had found us.

I spun, trying to figure out which way to run.

Marcus stood up and said something, but the noise of the engines drowned him out.

The CAMFers converged on us, three of them, all riding ATVs, all in a dark hodgepodge of leather and motorcycle gear, like hoodlum farmers. They circled up around us, trying to block off our escape. The only way left to run was toward the oil tanks and their pool of poison.

One of the ATVs pulled up, only a few feet from where we stood.

The man seated on it wore a full-face helmet. As he turned off his machine, all the other drivers followed suit, until the forest was silent again, except for the sound of three hot engines ticking in the darkness. The lead driver reached for his visor.

I didn’t wait to see what he looked like. I hurled my handful of almonds right into his face, aiming for his eyes, and leapt at the ATV. My right foot hit the back wheel-well just behind the seat, and I pushed off, intending to jump over the ATV and beyond it. With their engines off, I’d have been able to make it into the thick trees before they could start them up again. And it would have worked too. If my foot hadn’t slipped. If my right knee hadn’t come crashing down on the metal back panel of the ATV with a crescendo of pain. If I hadn’t taken a tumble right over it and done a header in the dirt on the other side.

I crumpled into a fetal position, cradling my throbbing head in my arms. Through a fog of pain I could hear the CAMFer swearing at me from up on the ATV.

“Olivia, are you okay?” Marcus asked, kneeling next to me, putting his hand gently on my back.

“What the hell was that about?” yelled the guy on the ATV. “She pepper-sprayed me. My eyes are burning.”

“Shut up, you pussy!” Marcus yelled back. “She threw almonds at you. You’ve got salt in your eyes. I think you’ll live.”

Marcus was yelling at the CAMFers. He’d just called one of them a pussy. Like he knew them.

“Well, what’d she do that for?” the CAMFer asked.

Marcus just ignored that question. “Olivia?” he said again, tugging at my arms which I was using to shield my broken head. “Can you hear me?”

“Head—hurts—bad,” I managed to say between skull-piercing stabs of pain.

I felt Marcus move away. He demanded that the CAMFers produce a first aid kit, which they promptly did. He came back, knelt next to me, and slipped one of his hands between my arms. “Take this,” he said, his fingers playing against my lips and shoving a couple pills between them, followed immediately by the hydration tube. I took it between my teeth and sucked, which caused an explosion of pain and stars inside my head. I must have gasped or sucked in a breath, because suddenly water was pouring into my lungs and I was choking, coughing, hacking. For a moment things went black and I didn’t even know if I had swallowed the pills or not.

Marcus moved away again, and I wanted him back. Someone threw a blanket over me and slowly peeled my arms away from my head. They flashed a light in my eyes and it hurt, and I turned my head to the side and threw up. There were voices. Marcus talking to the CAMFers. Them answering back. I knew they were talking about me, but the words held no meaning beyond the shape of the pain they made in my head.

“Hey, stay awake.” Marcus was back, lifting me in his arms. “You have a concussion, and we still need to get you to that safe place I was telling you about.”

“It hurts,” I protested, wishing he would just put me down.

“I know. Just a little further. Don’t sleep.”

Something hard was under us, his arms still around me. I pressed my throbbing head into his chest. Somehow, the Thu-bump of his heart was soothing, throbbing in sync with my pulsing temples. I felt his arm and chest muscles tighten.

A sound like a roar rumbled under me, around me, through me, filling my head with excruciating pain, rattling my teeth and making my eyes water. Another roar joined it, and another, grinding my thoughts into oblivion. I wrapped my arms around the only solid thing left and tried to bury myself against Marcus to escape.

The world jumped backward, and we jumped forward, as the ATV sped through the dark woods toward someplace safe.

* * *

I drifted, slipping between dreams and moments of consciousness the way wind slips through the seams of a tent and out again.

The whisper of rippling canvas.

The gentle creak of tent poles.

The tick and hiss of a camp stove.

I was dreaming of camping with my dad at Bluefly Lake when I was seven. But in the dream I wasn’t seven. I was older, and I was holed up in our tent with the window flaps and screens and doors all zipped up tight because the lake had turned to PSS. I was afraid (no, terrified) to go outside because the lake was calling to my hand, and I knew, if I went out there, my hand and the lake would become one. And I would become nothing.

But my dad was out there too. I couldn’t see him or hear him, but I knew he was standing just outside the tent. I could sense his artistic soul swelling and marveling over the beautiful, swirling, glowing lake, and I knew he wanted me to come out there with him, even though he wasn’t saying it. He wanted me to come out there and let my hand join with the lake. He wanted to see it, and paint it, even if it meant his daughter would become nothing, because what was life without risk and art and beauty?
Which was easy for him to say because he was dead
. And I felt angry about that, because I wanted to be safe. But what I wanted more than anything was to have my dad back in the tent with me.