PREVIOUS CHAPTER
Two years later, Zip and I drove down to Portland to meet Li’s family. We took Zip’s pride and joy, a decades-old, beat-up red Corvette. The roof was cracked, so it leaked when it rained, which in Seattle was a fairly significant issue, and the seat belts didn’t work — they just hung across your chest like lasagna noodles — but Zip’s love for the car was boundless and all-forgiving.
“I don’t understand your refusal to buy a new car,” I said, gripping the edge of my seat as the scarlet death trap rattled over a pothole. “What else are you doing with those paychecks?”
“I’m saving,” said Zip. “Never been much of a spender.”
“Still, you gotta live a little.”
I fingered the Rolex on my wrist. His frugality made me uncomfortable. In my first two years as a ranger I’d acquired a spacious apartment and a new BMW, taken trips to Europe and Asia, and outfitted myself with a wardrobe that was, if not fashionable, then at least expensive.
My savings account was a great deal emptier than I would have preferred, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from spending.
Zip patted the dashboard affectionately.
“This car is my baby,” he said. “I’m gonna drive it until the wheels fall off, and then I’m gonna buy new wheels and drive it some more.”
The Li family lived in an imposing brick mansion up on a hill. When we rang the doorbell I felt a sudden spike of fear. I had no idea how to act in front of a rich, well-mannered family. What if they laid out a whole bunch of little forks and spoons at dinner, and I didn’t know which to use for what?
Zip seemed as calm as always, although his right hand curled and uncurled, squeezing an imaginary tennis ball. His family, I knew, had been just as dysfunctional as mine. Neither of us would ever have invited our friends over for dinner.
The door opened.
“So,” said Mr. Li, later, beaming at his daughter over the dinner table. “You've been on how many expeditions together now, the three of you? Nine?”
“Thought it was ten,” said Zip.
I lifted a pile of mashed potatoes into my mouth. Noticing Mr. Li looking my way, I nodded, hastening to swallow.
“We’re shooting for the record,” I said, covering my mouth with a hand in case I had something stuck in my teeth.
“Which one?”
Li put her knife down. “Most expeditions by the same trio,” she said. “Record is twenty-six.”
“Sixteen more expeditions?” exclaimed Mrs. Li, horrified.
Li grinned.
“Jeez, Mom, try to have a little faith in me.”
Mrs. Li pursed her lips and sawed on her steak. Mr. Li scratched his nose, hiding a smile. I gathered that there was a bit of an ideological divide in the Li household when it came to Li’s career choice.
“You’re my baby girl,” said Mrs. Li.
“You don’t have to worry, Mrs. Li,” said Zip, puffing his chest out. “We’re looking after her.”
“Ha!” barked Li.
“What about your parents? Don’t they worry?” asked Mrs. Li.
The last time I’d heard from my dad was the day I left home. As I lugged my duffel bag out the door, he’d unleashed one last eyeball-bulging rant about my stupidity and selfishness.
Did that count as worrying?
Well, it was better than my mom, who’d never tried to contact me in the eighteen years since she left.
I turned to Zip.
“My parents are too busy working to worry,” he said.
Mrs. Li visibly narrowed her eyes, and Zip looked sheepish for perhaps the first time ever, but then Mr. Li broke out laughing.
“Understandable,” he said, putting a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Lucy’s a neurosurgeon, so she’s hard at work all week as well. Me, on the other hand… God knows I don’t do anything with my life.”
“That’s not true,” said Mrs. Li. “You have your gardening.”
Now Mr. Li joined Zip in looking sheepish.
“Well,” he said, “have to keep busy somehow.”
This was a man who had battled deadly forest monsters for nearly a decade. Thirty years older than Zip or me, he maintained enough muscle mass to give either of us a run for our money in a fistfight. It was simply impossible to imagine his hands cupping a plant bulb or trimming a rose bush.
Tearing weeds out of the ground, though: that I could imagine him doing. Mercilessly.
“The previous record-holders,” said Mrs. Li, “who were they?”
“Roy LaMonte and the Briggs brothers,” said Li.
“I knew Roy,” said Mr. Li. “Good man. Fantastic poker player. Shame the way things turned out.”
“Still better than what happened to the Briggs brothers,” said Li. She stabbed with relish at the pile of roasted Brussels sprouts on her plate. “Mom, how come you never made these when I was growing up?”
“Oh, your father does all the cooking these days, dear,” said Mrs. Li. “Do you mind me asking what happened to the Briggs brothers?”
Mr. Li sighed. “Not appropriate conversation to have over dinner, I’m afraid. Suffice it to say that the forest got them.”
“Could you pass the salt?” asked Li.
“The steak’s more than salty enough as it is,” said Mrs. Li. “You’ll give yourself a heart attack.”
Li grinned, her incisors gleaming. “Least of my worries, Ma.”
Mrs. Li’s tight-pressed lips twitched in an approximation of a smile. She passed the salt.
“Poor Roy,” mused Mr. Li. “After that trip — amazing that he made it out, by the way — he was raving mad. Wouldn’t stop talking about the things he’d supposedly seen. Hallucinations.”
“What’d he think he saw?” I asked.
“Fantasies. Structures. Towers, pyramids, you get the idea. People, too.”
My fork, laden with another mound of potatoes, froze just short of my mouth.
“What?”
Everyone stopped eating to stare at me.
“Is something wrong?” asked Mrs. Li.
I made eye contact with Li. The look she gave me said --Later. Tell me.
“No,” I said, and cleared my throat. “No, nothing’s wrong. I was just surprised, that’s all.”
“I see,” said Mr. Li.
That night, Zip and I flipped a coin to see who got to sleep on the guest bed. I lost and headed to the spacious living room to set up on the couch.
I was digging for my toothbrush when Li came down the stairs in her pajamas. She looked amazing. I couldn’t quite figure out why — the pajamas weren’t revealing or form-fitting, so maybe it was the shapelessness itself that made it hot, somehow — but for a couple moments I forgot not only what she’d come down to talk about, but also the English language and my own name besides.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Uhm?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
I gave up on the toothbrush and sat back on the couch.
“It’s probably nothing.”
Li perched, cross-legged, on an armchair across from me.
“Tell me, Tetris.”
I took off my Rolex and stared at its smooth steel face.
“In the forest, before Junior died, I thought I saw something. Something like what your dad described, across the chasm.”
Li didn't say a word. Her eyes were sharp as a hawk’s, her eyebrows furrowed.
“An obelisk,” I said. “Some kind of script all over it. Junior saw it too. That’s why he left us behind.”
“And you thought Roy LaMonte—”
“Junior said he saw a person.”
“A person? Like, a human person?”
“I don’t know, just ‘a person.’ That’s all he said. I didn't see anything. Well, I saw something, a movement, but I couldn’t tell what it was.”
I closed my eyes and strained to picture the scene, the shape vanishing into the forest. Had it been my imagination?
Li stared out the window, lost in thought. I looked too. There was nothing to see. As I stared into the darkness, I imagined Junior stepping into view, pressing his face against the glass.
In my imagination, his eyes were shiny and black, even the parts that should have been white. When he opened his mouth, blood dribbled over his parched bottom lip.
My eyes watered. I tore my gaze away from the window.
“Funny,” said Li. “You sure you saw something man-made? Wasn't just a rock?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, it's interesting, anyway,” said Li, unfolding her legs. “I wonder..."
"What?"
"Nothing.”
She stood and stretched, hands linked above her head. At the apex of the stretch, her shirt lifted up just far enough to reveal a tantalizing section of midriff. I tried not to gawk.
“Good night, Tetris. Enjoy the couch."
"Beats a tree branch," I said.
I watched her climb the stairs.
When she was gone, I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. Then I returned to the living room and turned off the lights. The whole time, I studiously avoided glancing out any of the windows I passed. For some reason, I couldn't shake the feeling that, if I looked, I’d see the vision of Junior again.
Immediately after falling asleep, I began to dream. I stood alone by the chasm in the forest where Junior had died. No matter how I stared into the murky darkness on the other side, I couldn't make out the obelisk.
The chasm seemed much deeper and darker than before, but I couldn't pull myself away. I knew that if I stood beside the abyss too much longer, it would drag me in, but my bare feet stayed rooted to the ground.
At first, the forest was silent, but after a while I began to hear a rustling.
When I turned around, Junior was there, held aloft by the scorpion that had killed him. The stinger poked out through his chest, but his legs were calm and still, not kicking the way I remembered.
The scorpion blinked its many eyes at me, and I got the feeling it wanted to say something, if only its mouthparts were capable of articulating more than a sharp hiss.
Junior, on the other hand, proved very capable of speaking.
“Tetris,” he said in a voice far too deep, as blood dribbled down his chin.
Reluctantly, I brought my gaze up to his face, and saw with queasy horror that his eyes were as black and shiny as the scorpion’s.
“I’m sorry, Junior,” I said.
“Under your skin,” said Junior in that awful, grating voice. “Your skin, Tetris. You have to know—”
I jolted awake before I could hear any more. A sheen of sweat slicked my body from neck to ankles, and my heart thumped violently against my ribs.
NEXT CHAPTER
Two years later, Zip and I drove down to Portland to meet Li’s family. We took Zip’s pride and joy, a decades-old, beat-up red Corvette. The roof was cracked, so it leaked when it rained, which in Seattle was a fairly significant issue, and the seat belts didn’t work — they just hung across your chest like lasagna noodles — but Zip’s love for the car was boundless and all-forgiving.
“I don’t understand your refusal to buy a new car,” I said, gripping the edge of my seat as the scarlet death trap rattled over a pothole. “What else are you doing with those paychecks?”
“I’m saving,” said Zip. “Never been much of a spender.”
“Still, you gotta live a little.”
I fingered the Rolex on my wrist. His frugality made me uncomfortable. In my first two years as a ranger I’d acquired a spacious apartment and a new BMW, taken trips to Europe and Asia, and outfitted myself with a wardrobe that was, if not fashionable, then at least expensive.
My savings account was a great deal emptier than I would have preferred, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from spending.
Zip patted the dashboard affectionately.
“This car is my baby,” he said. “I’m gonna drive it until the wheels fall off, and then I’m gonna buy new wheels and drive it some more.”
The Li family lived in an imposing brick mansion up on a hill. When we rang the doorbell I felt a sudden spike of fear. I had no idea how to act in front of a rich, well-mannered family. What if they laid out a whole bunch of little forks and spoons at dinner, and I didn’t know which to use for what?
Zip seemed as calm as always, although his right hand curled and uncurled, squeezing an imaginary tennis ball. His family, I knew, had been just as dysfunctional as mine. Neither of us would ever have invited our friends over for dinner.
The door opened.
“So,” said Mr. Li, later, beaming at his daughter over the dinner table. “You've been on how many expeditions together now, the three of you? Nine?”
“Thought it was ten,” said Zip.
I lifted a pile of mashed potatoes into my mouth. Noticing Mr. Li looking my way, I nodded, hastening to swallow.
“We’re shooting for the record,” I said, covering my mouth with a hand in case I had something stuck in my teeth.
“Which one?”
Li put her knife down. “Most expeditions by the same trio,” she said. “Record is twenty-six.”
“Sixteen more expeditions?” exclaimed Mrs. Li, horrified.
Li grinned.
“Jeez, Mom, try to have a little faith in me.”
Mrs. Li pursed her lips and sawed on her steak. Mr. Li scratched his nose, hiding a smile. I gathered that there was a bit of an ideological divide in the Li household when it came to Li’s career choice.
“You’re my baby girl,” said Mrs. Li.
“You don’t have to worry, Mrs. Li,” said Zip, puffing his chest out. “We’re looking after her.”
“Ha!” barked Li.
“What about your parents? Don’t they worry?” asked Mrs. Li.
The last time I’d heard from my dad was the day I left home. As I lugged my duffel bag out the door, he’d unleashed one last eyeball-bulging rant about my stupidity and selfishness.
Did that count as worrying?
Well, it was better than my mom, who’d never tried to contact me in the eighteen years since she left.
I turned to Zip.
“My parents are too busy working to worry,” he said.
Mrs. Li visibly narrowed her eyes, and Zip looked sheepish for perhaps the first time ever, but then Mr. Li broke out laughing.
“Understandable,” he said, putting a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Lucy’s a neurosurgeon, so she’s hard at work all week as well. Me, on the other hand… God knows I don’t do anything with my life.”
“That’s not true,” said Mrs. Li. “You have your gardening.”
Now Mr. Li joined Zip in looking sheepish.
“Well,” he said, “have to keep busy somehow.”
This was a man who had battled deadly forest monsters for nearly a decade. Thirty years older than Zip or me, he maintained enough muscle mass to give either of us a run for our money in a fistfight. It was simply impossible to imagine his hands cupping a plant bulb or trimming a rose bush.
Tearing weeds out of the ground, though: that I could imagine him doing. Mercilessly.
“The previous record-holders,” said Mrs. Li, “who were they?”
“Roy LaMonte and the Briggs brothers,” said Li.
“I knew Roy,” said Mr. Li. “Good man. Fantastic poker player. Shame the way things turned out.”
“Still better than what happened to the Briggs brothers,” said Li. She stabbed with relish at the pile of roasted Brussels sprouts on her plate. “Mom, how come you never made these when I was growing up?”
“Oh, your father does all the cooking these days, dear,” said Mrs. Li. “Do you mind me asking what happened to the Briggs brothers?”
Mr. Li sighed. “Not appropriate conversation to have over dinner, I’m afraid. Suffice it to say that the forest got them.”
“Could you pass the salt?” asked Li.
“The steak’s more than salty enough as it is,” said Mrs. Li. “You’ll give yourself a heart attack.”
Li grinned, her incisors gleaming. “Least of my worries, Ma.”
Mrs. Li’s tight-pressed lips twitched in an approximation of a smile. She passed the salt.
“Poor Roy,” mused Mr. Li. “After that trip — amazing that he made it out, by the way — he was raving mad. Wouldn’t stop talking about the things he’d supposedly seen. Hallucinations.”
“What’d he think he saw?” I asked.
“Fantasies. Structures. Towers, pyramids, you get the idea. People, too.”
My fork, laden with another mound of potatoes, froze just short of my mouth.
“What?”
Everyone stopped eating to stare at me.
“Is something wrong?” asked Mrs. Li.
I made eye contact with Li. The look she gave me said --Later. Tell me.
“No,” I said, and cleared my throat. “No, nothing’s wrong. I was just surprised, that’s all.”
“I see,” said Mr. Li.
That night, Zip and I flipped a coin to see who got to sleep on the guest bed. I lost and headed to the spacious living room to set up on the couch.
I was digging for my toothbrush when Li came down the stairs in her pajamas. She looked amazing. I couldn’t quite figure out why — the pajamas weren’t revealing or form-fitting, so maybe it was the shapelessness itself that made it hot, somehow — but for a couple moments I forgot not only what she’d come down to talk about, but also the English language and my own name besides.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Uhm?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
I gave up on the toothbrush and sat back on the couch.
“It’s probably nothing.”
Li perched, cross-legged, on an armchair across from me.
“Tell me, Tetris.”
I took off my Rolex and stared at its smooth steel face.
“In the forest, before Junior died, I thought I saw something. Something like what your dad described, across the chasm.”
Li didn't say a word. Her eyes were sharp as a hawk’s, her eyebrows furrowed.
“An obelisk,” I said. “Some kind of script all over it. Junior saw it too. That’s why he left us behind.”
“And you thought Roy LaMonte—”
“Junior said he saw a person.”
“A person? Like, a human person?”
“I don’t know, just ‘a person.’ That’s all he said. I didn't see anything. Well, I saw something, a movement, but I couldn’t tell what it was.”
I closed my eyes and strained to picture the scene, the shape vanishing into the forest. Had it been my imagination?
Li stared out the window, lost in thought. I looked too. There was nothing to see. As I stared into the darkness, I imagined Junior stepping into view, pressing his face against the glass.
In my imagination, his eyes were shiny and black, even the parts that should have been white. When he opened his mouth, blood dribbled over his parched bottom lip.
My eyes watered. I tore my gaze away from the window.
“Funny,” said Li. “You sure you saw something man-made? Wasn't just a rock?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Well, it's interesting, anyway,” said Li, unfolding her legs. “I wonder..."
"What?"
"Nothing.”
She stood and stretched, hands linked above her head. At the apex of the stretch, her shirt lifted up just far enough to reveal a tantalizing section of midriff. I tried not to gawk.
“Good night, Tetris. Enjoy the couch."
"Beats a tree branch," I said.
I watched her climb the stairs.
When she was gone, I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth. Then I returned to the living room and turned off the lights. The whole time, I studiously avoided glancing out any of the windows I passed. For some reason, I couldn't shake the feeling that, if I looked, I’d see the vision of Junior again.
Immediately after falling asleep, I began to dream. I stood alone by the chasm in the forest where Junior had died. No matter how I stared into the murky darkness on the other side, I couldn't make out the obelisk.
The chasm seemed much deeper and darker than before, but I couldn't pull myself away. I knew that if I stood beside the abyss too much longer, it would drag me in, but my bare feet stayed rooted to the ground.
At first, the forest was silent, but after a while I began to hear a rustling.
When I turned around, Junior was there, held aloft by the scorpion that had killed him. The stinger poked out through his chest, but his legs were calm and still, not kicking the way I remembered.
The scorpion blinked its many eyes at me, and I got the feeling it wanted to say something, if only its mouthparts were capable of articulating more than a sharp hiss.
Junior, on the other hand, proved very capable of speaking.
“Tetris,” he said in a voice far too deep, as blood dribbled down his chin.
Reluctantly, I brought my gaze up to his face, and saw with queasy horror that his eyes were as black and shiny as the scorpion’s.
“I’m sorry, Junior,” I said.
“Under your skin,” said Junior in that awful, grating voice. “Your skin, Tetris. You have to know—”
I jolted awake before I could hear any more. A sheen of sweat slicked my body from neck to ankles, and my heart thumped violently against my ribs.
NEXT CHAPTER