Splattered

Prologue: Highway Girl

We are born and we die.

That’s really all there is. It’s all we get from what author Raymond F. Jones once called this island Earth. From the most insignificant insect burrowing beneath the wood of a fallen tree in remotest Alaska, to the president of the United States in Washington, D.C.; from the tiniest of krill in the north Atlantic to the mightiest of Blue whales upon whose palates they are consumed; from the puny, round stones beneath our feet to the great, jagged rocks of the Himalayas; there is always that one commonality, that one thread, that one inexorable road to which everything must adhere.

There is room for more, of course. Much more. The time in between each event is rife with possibilities, but for neatness’ sake, we may add only two: We are born, we grow up, we get old, and we die. Which of the four is the most difficult to carry off? Statistics for such a query have perhaps never been pursued. Is it birth, with its pain and blood and tears? Is it growth, with its numerous mistakes and bitter compensations? With age comes frailty, sickness, and for many, the fear of the shadow of death. It’s hard to determine the worst of the lot.

Keltie Burke has already been born. She is, at the beginning of this story, ten years old, attending fifth grade at Pleasant Street School in the small town of Norwalk, Ohio. And since she can remember nothing about the day she arrived in this world, it would be well nigh impossible to catalogue (without consulting the mother, who drinks and cannot be trusted to recall events beyond a day old) exactly how much pain and blood and tears were involved. Thus, we shall focus for now on the second stage of her life’s journey. A young girl sits in a classroom, waiting for the end of day bell to ring. The collar of her pink shirt is frayed; her jeans are wrinkled. Her eyes, blue, squint at the blackboard, not due to any myopic condition, but in disbelief for the silliness of the words written there. She runs a hand through her short, black hair and releases an audible sigh. The teacher hears. Her cold eyes blink. And from here, on a very bitter wind indeed, the growing up of Keltie Burke takes wing.

***

Miss Wheeler’s eyes blinked once, twice, three times. She was sending a warning. Or perhaps, young Keltie thought as she found an adverb on her quiz paper and circled it, a challenge. Would you like to share with the class what that little sigh was supposed to mean, Miss Burke? A challenge, yes. It made much more sense to think of it that way. Whenever one of Miss Wheeler’s kids coughed too loudly at a report card, or closed a book with too hard a snap after seeing that day’s homework written on the blackboard…or sighed just a tiny bit too deeply during a quiz, the eyes came up. And blinked. And blinked.

The girl ran quickly down the street.

With a suppressed snort, Keltie circled another adverb. How the hell else was a girl supposed to run? Slowly?

Now she could almost feel Miss Wheeler’s eyes, blinking away like a couple of camera shutters. Blinking…and daring her to look up.

Keltie looked up. “Can I help you?” she asked the square, stony face hovering three rows in front of her. “Oh, I’m sorry. May I help you?”

All movement in the classroom—including that of Miss Wheeler’s eyes—stopped. A gust of autumn wind found the window, peeked in, and was gone. Miss Wheeler stared at Keltie; Keltie stared back. It was barely over a month into the school year and already she had been made sick by this woman’s ridiculous antics. The proper use of can and may. The don’t even think about getting a drink rule when leaving with the restroom key. And how she had treated Alyssa McGroom yesterday—how she had spent five minutes embarrassing her in front of the whole class. Enough was enough.

“Perhaps it is you,” Miss Wheeler said,” who needs the help.”

“Not at all,” Keltie told her, “unless you count the assignment written on the board. Memorize The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes. I’ve already read the poem and I didn’t like it. I don’t want to memorize it.”

“What didn’t you like about the poem, Keltie?”

“It’s too long.”

“Is that all?”

“No.”

Miss Wheeler’s eyes had begun to blink again. A sudden urge to leap from her seat and blacken both of them took hold of Keltie. It really was irritating as f**k to watch her do that. Blink, blink, blink, you will speak to me until I say it’s okay to stop speaking. Blink, blink, blink, explain yourself, young lady.

“I can’t imagine being stupid enough,” Keltie went on, “to blow myself away to save the life of a thief who likes my hair.”

Some of the other kids laughed. One of them was Alyssa. Another one, God love her, was Penelope Sitko, who’d been friends with Keltie since the first grade and probably hadn’t even read Noyes’ poem yet.

“Quiet!” Miss Wheeler snapped, rising from her desk. She was only in her late twenties but already her butt was starting to get big. It was because of this, Keltie thought, that she never wore a skirt to school. Pantsuits only, if you please. Oh and vote for Hillary in 2008. “Miss Burke, the word stupid is a crude, offensive colloquialism, and I do not permit its usage in my classroom. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl. Now approach the front of the class. You will explain to everyone why you did not care for The Highwayman. You will be literate. You will be insightful. You will use complete sentences. You will not use idioms like blow myself away. You will not sneer. You will not give disgusted little sighs.”

Keltie rose from her seat as soon as the silly woman stopped to take a breath. Though she was only ten years old, talking in front of groups did not make her nervous. Quite the reverse. She liked the kind of attention that put her in charge. It was such a glorious departure from the more brutal variety she received at home.

“The Highwayman, by Alfred Noyes,” she began, placing her hands on her hips, “is a tedious piece of work with some clever rhyming, but not so clever characterization. Why would this landlord’s daughter wait for her lover at the inn? Why wouldn’t she go out riding with him instead? I would.”

More titters from the class. Some of the boys wore lopsided grins. But a hiss from the teacher shut everyone right back up.

“The thief promises to bring the girl gold, and then rides off to steal it. But why tell her that? Why not surprise her with the gold instead?”

“The theme of the poem,” Miss Wheeler cut in, “has nothing to do with surprising your Valentine with a gift.”

“But it would have been safer for them both had the guy kept his mouth shut, right?” Keltie asked the class, without looking at the woman behind her.

“Keltie, don’t ignore me!”

“And let me repeat myself for those of you in the back who may not have heard: There’s no way in hell I kill myself for somebody else. No way in hell.”

“Keltie…Louisa…Burke!” Miss Wheeler thundered.

Twenty-five pairs of eyes goggled from a gallery of gaping mouths. Even Penelope, who understood Keltie better than anyone (including her own parents), looked ready to sign whatever papers were necessary to have her friend committed on the spot.

“Sorry,” she said, blinking sheepishly, more like Hugh Grant than Elizabeth Wheeler. “But that bothered me. A lot. So I guess maybe it is a good poem after all.”

“Go to the office, Keltie.”

At last, Keltie turned around to look at her teacher. The woman’s pantsuit looked severe enough to capsize a military cease-fire. What did her boyfriend think of those things? Did she even have a boyfriend? She did, Keltie remembered. At the beginning of the school year she had talked about him a little. She had also invited anyone in the class to come to her house for dinner, on any night they wished. “Just knock on my door,” she had said, smiling, “it’s perfectly all right. I love all my students.” Not long after that, they’d found out that Alyssa McGroom had taken her up on the offer. It turned out Miss Wheeler was not only a liar, but a total b***h as well.

“Maybe I’ll use my hatred for the poem to memorize it,” Keltie told her presently.

“Maybe you won’t need to memorize it, young lady. Unless it’s for next year, when I have you back in this class to repeat the fifth grade.”

“Oh that sounds like fun.”

“Get out! Now!”

Keltie walked back to her desk. Her chin was up, her gait spirited. She thought she had done pretty well for herself, all things considered. She had spoken her mind without getting frightened. And by the look of the class—awe-struck, admiring—her message had been received.

“Leave your books,” Miss Wheeler said as her hand touched a copy of Epiphanies in English. “You can pick them up at the end of the day. And keep your eyes off the ceiling. You have nothing to be proud of.”

Keltie gave Miss Wheeler a sneer, and then looked up at the ceiling with her arms held wide.

“Stop that!”

“See how easy this is, Alyssa?” Keltie called out, holding her pose. “Don’t let her make you feel bad. She isn’t a monster who’s going to drink your blood.”

Keeping her head up, Keltie made her way to the back of the classroom. The fluorescent lights were clean and white. Not a single dead bug hung from the silver fixtures. It was hard not to be impressed by that. But then, this wing of the school was still fairly new. Detroit had once looked pretty, too. With time everything—and everybody—got old and disgusting.

“What on earth are you talking about?” Miss Wheeler demanded to know.

“I’m talking about how you laid into Alyssa for coming over to your house for dinner, after you invited her to do it.”

“What happened when Miss McGroom came to my house is none of your business, dear.”

“Then maybe,” Keltie told her, letting the words ooze coldly from her throat, “you shouldn’t have shared the experience with the entire class. Dear.”

Miss Wheeler stared across the room at Keltie for a long time. Her eyes blinked once, twice, three more times. As before, Keltie faced them down without a struggle.

“You think you’re a pretty smart little girl, don’t you?” the teacher asked when it became apparent the blinks were not working.

“I’m not bad,” Keltie replied.

“You’re awesome,” someone—it sounded like a boy—said.

Miss Wheeler’s head jerked. “Who was that? Tell me! NOW!”

By this time Keltie had reached the door. She grabbed the handle, pulled it. Its well-greased stainless steel latch clicked. Beyond was a marble floor with red carpeting. Masonry walls painted white, like a prison’s. And of course, more fluorescent lighting. Everything looked so clean and new. So ordered. From down the hall she could hear Mr. Rhenborg talking about integers; from somewhere else came the sound of a flushing toilet.

“Get back here!” Miss Wheeler snapped. She had come out from behind her desk and was moving towards Keltie. It was now or never. Stay or run.

Smiling, Keltie raised her middle finger. “This is for can I,” she said, “and this”—her other middle finger stabbed the air—“is for may I! f**k off!”

There came a screech from Miss Wheeler as Keltie turned and ran. Catch me if you can, b***h, she thought. She was pretty sure Miss Wheeler, with her flabby arms and her dumpy butt, would be able to do no such thing. Keltie’s legs were a blur. She raced past the drinking fountain (don’t even think about getting a drink!) to a wall of windows with steel frames painted brown. Beneath these windows were two doors that let on the outside world. Small lungs gasping for air, Keltie yanked one of the doors open—

And was grabbed on the shoulder by Miss Wheeler!

Screaming, Keltie tried to jerk away. Five long, red nails clawed into her blouse. With her other hand, Miss Wheeler snatched a thicket of Keltie’s hair and pulled. The entire hallway swung backwards as Keltie felt her neck being stretched to its absolute limit. Above her, a pair of eyes blazed with an insane fury almost too bright to look at. Two perfect rows of white teeth gnashed and snarled. Sharp tufts of brown hair seemed to hiss at the walls like snakes.

Keltie twisted her body to the right, to the left. No good. With her boots barely touching the floor she couldn’t get leverage. Miss Wheeler gave her another cruel, brutal pull. A scream, this time of pain, pealed from her lips.

“You,” Miss Wheeler said, and her voice was like dark, cold night, lurking in the boughs of a forbidden forest. “You, you, you, you.”

All Keltie could do by way of reply was sob. “Please,” she begged. “Please, I’m sorry.”

Another yank on the hair. Keltie hissed. Her feet drummed on the marble floor.

“I’m gonna drink your blood,” Miss Wheeler’s looming, lunatic face growled.

Keltie’s feet stopped. “What?”

“You heard me. You blink and your name is mud. We’re going to the principal’s office. Together. And you’re going to repeat to him everything you said to me five minutes ago. Understand?”

“I’m sorry!”

“Yes, you are. But let’s find out how much.”

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

“Shut up!”

Keltie raised one boot off the floor. “I am so…fucking…SORRY!” And hard as she could, she stamped the toe of Miss Wheeler’s dress shoe. It was a different pair of lips that let out a scream this time. Elizabeth Wheeler staggered backward and fell butt first into a janitor’s mop bucket. Soap bubbles splattered the wall.

It was time to go now—oh boy, was it ever. Two other teachers—one of them David Rhenborg—had left their classes to investigate the din. Before long it would be the entire school.

Keltie’s shoulder hit the door, letting in a gust of crisp October air. The wind fled in; she fled out. Here a decision presented itself. On her right was a large, open lawn that led to Pleasant Street. That was no good. Mr. Rhenborg was tall and strong. No way in hell could she hope to beat him in a sprint. Down the left was the gymnasium. Piney hedges lined its brick wall. Good cover. Keltie ducked behind them and made her way to the corner, turned left again and crept past the kitchen windows (Taco Tuesday everybody! Smell those hot tortillas!) to the playground. There was more open space here but she thought she’d be all right if she stuck close to the building.

Keeping her butt below the windows, she slipped past the monkey bars, the swing sets. The school grounds fell away to a wooded area that wrapped Pleasant Street, shielding the south end of town from the north. They were dark on this day, and the trees were in motion beneath turbulent skies, but still Keltie wasted no time plunging their depths. She crossed the football field with leaves chasing her feet, and in seconds found a path leading into the wood.

Once behind about a dozen trees she stopped to get her breath. Her eyes scanned the path. Had anyone come in pursuit? It didn’t seem so. The playground looked deserted, a temporary hostage of the cold and gray. All the same, she knew it would be lunacy to break cover while the hunt was still hot. She needed a place to lie low and think about what to do next.

Going forward, the path traced a slope that rustled with dead leaves. The woods grew darker as she walked. Colder. Creepier. Thorns clawed her arms. Twigs snapped under her boots. With a backward glance she saw that the opening to the playground had disappeared; she was at the bottom of the slope, utterly obscured.

So be it. Keltie walked on. Though she’d never been down this path, the territory it crossed was far from unfamiliar. You didn’t grow up near Pleasant Street park without getting to know its boundaries. For instance, the park itself was only about a hundred yards off to the left. A much farther walk to the right (west) would eventually dump her onto the county fairgrounds. And straight ahead was a creek which used a culvert beneath Pleasant Street.

She could already hear the water, rushing through a gap in the piebald terrain. Nearby stood an ancient, moss-covered bridge made of stone. Seeing it made Keltie blink. It looked very out of place way back here in the trees. Who but a girl on the run from authority could possibly have use for such a thing?

Keltie approached the bank. The water was still high from a rainstorm the week before. High, fast, and deep. Its silver surface looked cold enough to freeze bone. Morbidly, she began to wonder what it would be like to fall in. Her foot would doubtless get stuck in the muddy bottom, forcing her to hold her breath. She had no idea how long she could do that, but it wasn’t forever.

A noise from under the bridge made her jump.

Her eyes searched the buttress. The shadows were too dark to see through, however, the green moss too thick. No bother. After all, there were plenty of catfish in this creek. One of them had jumped.

But it didn’t sound like a splash, girl, it sounded like a stick breaking.

A raccoon, then. Rabbit, squirrel, whatever.

Keltie walked to the bridge. The day wasn’t getting any warmer, and she’d left her coat—and her lunch bag, and all of her money—in her locker. She needed a plan—one that didn’t involve going home to explain things, at least not yet. Mom might not care, but Daddy might put her in the hospital.

“Do you always think bad thoughts?” a quiet voice suddenly asked.

And Keltie’s boot, still an inch from the bridge, froze. She spun around with frantic eyes, expecting whoever had spoken the question to be standing right on the bank. No one was. The water rushed on, all innocent on this chilly autumn day. The leaves continued to fall.

“Who’s there?” Keltie called out.

To her complete surprise, the voice answered. “You really shouldn’t,” it said. “It’s bad for the blood.”

The speaker was female, her tone pretty, almost musical. Yet where this should have provided at least some comfort, Keltie could only feel dread. Spine tingling, she looked from one tree to the next, trying to locate some clue—a lock of hair, the hem of a skirt—to her companion’s whereabouts.

“Where are you?” she asked, giving up the search after a few fruitless seconds.

“Under the bridge. I’m waiting to pick up my brother. He’s in your class, right?”

“Under the bridge?” Keltie looked down at the high water. “How? There’s no room to stand.”

“I’m not standing. My brother is Martin Calinga. Do you know him?”

She thought for a moment. Martin Calinga. Yes, the name did ring a bell.

“Well?” the girl under the bridge asked again, with what sounded like mock impatience.

“I think so,” Keltie said. “Marty, right? Do his friends call him Marty?”

“He doesn’t have any friends. Just me.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have any friends either, Keltie, and that’s a shame. You’re a good girl.”

Keltie stepped out to the middle of the bridge. Her eyes were on the stone, the concrete, whatever it was. She wanted to put a bit more distance between herself and this other girl—this other girl who liked to hang out under muddy bridges, and who somehow knew her name.

“I have one,” Keltie said, for want of anything better.

A giggle came from the wet moss. “Oh yes, the vivacious Penelope Sitko.”

Oh wow, Keltie thought, we are getting weirder by the minute. Her boots shuffled another step across the bridge. “How do you know these things about me?” she asked.

“Your thoughts are easy to read,” the other girl replied. “Not simple, mind you, just easy. That happens with the angry ones.”

“I’m not angry.”

“Now that’s a lie. Hey,” the voice suddenly chirruped, “do you like turtles?”

Keltie had been about to say goodbye to Marty’s sister and leave. Now she hesitated. “I’ve never seen a turtle,” she said. “Is there one down there?”

“Indeed there is,” came the pretty voice’s reply, “a great, big box turtle. Biggest shell I’ve ever seen. Come down and have a look.”

“Really?” Keltie took a step back towards the rail. It was made of iron, and very rusty. A kid could duck under it with ease. Maybe even slip and fall into the creek.

“I’ll catch it for you, Keltie. Then you can take it home for a pet. How does that sound?”

“Cool! Do you know what they eat?”

Another giggle from the shadows. “Oh…we can talk about food. In a few minutes. But come quickly before the turtle swims away.”

Keltie had forgotten all about her unease with this odd stranger. A box turtle! She’d always assumed that a few of them lived along the creek, but had never seen one outside of books. The idea of owning one as a pet…yeah, that was cool, all right. Better than cool. She could show it to Penelope, post pictures of it online. And feed it, of course.

Careful not to lose her balance, she knelt down under the rail. How would she carry the turtle home? How would she get it inside without Daddy seeing? Her mind began to flip through possible solutions.

“That’s it,” the voice coaxed, “jump down. Don’t mind the water.”

Keltie made a face. What she’d just heard verged on the ridiculous. To not mind the water would basically mean drowning. The current rushed a mere four feet from where she was crouching. If she jumped she’d be gone. Swept under, swept away.

“Where are you standing?” Keltie asked for the second time.

“I’m not standing,” the voice repeated.

Keltie opened her mouth to reply—to tell the girl that to jump down was impossible, that all she could see was water. Then Marty Calinga’s sister appeared. Her pale face slid out from under the stone, all aglow in a fan of black hair that danced in the dead leaves. Then came her shoulders, boney, like the gnarled boughs overhead.

“Why would I need to stand?” the face hissed.

Two gray, splotched arms—corpse’s arms—snatched for Keltie’s legs. Their length seemed out of all proportion with the creature’s body, but a vertical piece of the iron railing blocked one. Flakes of rust spattered Keltie’s cheeks. Screaming, she leaped back. The other arm groped and snatched at nothing for a moment, then disappeared under the bridge as if sucked down a vacuum chute.

Keltie scrambled to the opposite rail. Her back found one of the beams. She leaned against it, catching her breath, waiting for strength enough to stand and run away. It was a long time coming. Her heart raced; her knees shook. The girl had been lying prone under the bridge, face up. Lying, or perhaps clinging to the bottom like a spider.

“No way,” Keltie breathed to herself. “No way, girl, come on, get a grip.”

Her eyes remained locked on the place where it had all happened. The railing. The cracked, jagged concrete. Both had gone quiet. From below, water rushed on. Keltie closed her eyes. There was nothing there. Nothing had happened. It had all been a dream.

The gray arms lunged up from behind, locking around her chest before she could so much as open her mouth to scream. “Gotcha!” the voice moaned in her ear. “Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha!”

Keltie squirmed and kicked. It did no good. The arms gave a long, hard squeeze. Air plumed from Keltie’s lips—HAAAUUUUHH!—and when she tried to breathe in again, the arms just squeezed harder.

“Shhh,” she heard the other voice whisper. “It’s time to talk about food now. I promised you that, didn’t I? Because you’re such a good girl.”

The vice around Keltie’s ribs gave a third, excruciating squeeze. One more like that would break her bones. Not that it mattered. She was blacking out, slipping away. Her lungs were locked, unable to draw breath. She was going to die. Croak. Cross over. Kick the bucket. Goodbye, world, the monster under the bridge got me. Thanks so much for warning me they were real. Heaven forbid I could have been prepared.

The fact that her mind, in extremis, had strayed to thoughts of the divine kingdom is perhaps what triggered the miracle that happened next.

“Vera!” someone called. “Vera, no! NO!”

The arms let go. A slow, painful breath—just enough to keep her awake—filled Keltie’s chest. Slumped against the rail, she heaved in one gasp after the next, until the color returned to her cheeks. It took time, but it happened. Darkness retreated. The world—bare branches, brown leaves—came back into focus.

Still bleary, Keltie looked up. A dark-skinned boy with black hair stood on the bridge. His face was one she knew, and one she had heard mentioned today already, at this very place.

“Marty?” she croaked.

“Run,” he told her. “Get up and run.”

“Can’t. Not yet. How’s Miss Wheeler?” She grinned as she said this last, in spite of all to the contrary.

“Still a b***h,” Marty affirmed. “Now get out of here.”

“Okay. I’ll try.”

He helped her to her feet, then to the end of the bridge. That was all the further his hospitality stretched. Still feeling like she’d been swallowed up by a dream, Keltie staggered off. She glanced back only once, to see Marty still on the bridge, all alone, his gaze in the water. She also saw that his lips were moving. He was talking to someone—someone who no doubt held the opinion that Keltie was a very good girl. A very good girl indeed.