Wanderers Read online

  Instead she ran up along the driveway, the red gravel crunching underneath her sneaks. The Holsteins on the left bleated and mooed. A young calf—she thought it was Moo Radley—stood there on knock-knees watching her hurry to catch up to her tweedledum sister. “Nessie,” she hissed. “Nessie, hey!”

  But Nessie didn’t turn around. She just kept on walking.

  What a little asshole.

  Shana jogged up ahead of her and planted her feet like roots.

  “God, Nessie, what the hell are you—”

  It was then she saw the girl’s eyes. They were open. Her sister’s gaze stood fixed at nothing, like she was looking through Shana or staring around her.

  Dead eyes, dead like the flat tops of fat nails. Gone was the luster of wonder, that spark.

  Barefoot, Nessie continued on. Shana didn’t know what to do—move out of her way? Stand planted like a telephone pole? Her indecision forced her to do a little of both—she shifted left just a little, but still in her sister’s inevitable path.

  The girl’s shoulder clipped her hard. Shana staggered left, taking the hit. The laugh that came up out of her was one of surprise. It was a pissed-off laugh, a bark of incredulity.

  “That hurt, dummy,” she said, and then grabbed for the girl’s shoulder and shook her.

  Nothing. Nessie just pulled away and kept going.

  “Nessie. Nessie.”

  Shana waved her hand in front of Nessie’s eyes. Wave, wave, wave. She had the thought then, a stray thought she pretended could be true even though she knew deep down it couldn’t be, She’s just playing a joke on me. Even though Shana was the prankster and Nessie’s only real joke was a cabinet of knock-knock jokes so bad it made their bad-joke-loving father wince. Still, just in case, she took her finger and poked Nessie’s nose as if it were a button.

  “Boop,” she said. “Power down, little robot.”

  Nessie registered nothing. Didn’t even blink.

  Had she blinked the whole time? Shana didn’t think so.

  Then she saw, ahead, a big rain puddle. She warned her sister: “Nessie, watch out, there’s a—”

  Too late. Nessie plodded right through it. Splish. Splash. Feet in the water almost up to the ankles. Still going and going. Like a windup toy set to beeline in one direction.

  Still staring ahead.

  Still moving forward.

  Arms stiff by her sides. Her gait sure and steady.

  Something’s wrong.

  The thought hit Shana in the heart like a fist. Her guts went cold, her blood to slush. She couldn’t hold back the chills. But she tried anyway and said to herself, Maybe she’s just sleepwalking. That’s probably what this is. Okay, no, Nessie had never done that before, but maybe this was how her brain chose to handle those hormones running through her like a pack of racehorses right now.

  The question was: Go get Dad?

  Ahead, the end of their driveway stretched out. There, the cheese and dairy shop made to look like a little red barn. There, the mailbox made to also look like a little barn, this one blue (and with a cow silhouette cut out of tin and stuck on top). And there, too, the road.

  The road.

  God, if Nessie walked to the road and a car came by…

  She yelled for her dad. Screamed for him. “Dad! Dad!” But nothing. No response. He might’ve been out in the pasture or in the barn. Going to get him meant leaving Nessie alone…

  In her head she could hear the make-believe sound of a truck grille hitting her sister, knocking her forward. The crunch of bones under tires. The thought made her queasy.

  I can’t get Dad. I’ll stay with her.

  This can’t go on for long.

  Sleepwalkers eventually wake up.

  Don’t they?

  * * *

  —

  TEN MINUTES. TEN minutes had gone by. Nessie reached the top of the driveway and pivoted as if on an invisible track and then—

  Kept walking. Like, no big deal.

  Down Cassel, down Orchard, toward Herkimer Covered Bridge—the old one over the Scheiner’s Crick, the one with the Amish hex on it. Nessie kept trucking. Mouth open just a little as if in small awe of something only she could see.

  All the while, Shana talked. Faster and faster, like a jabbering idiot. “Nessie, you’re freaking me the fuck out. Quit it, please quit it. Are you having some kind of breakdown? Are you having a stroke?” Their grandmother Mom-Mom had had one stroke, then a bunch more, and it turned her weird. She lay in the bed talking sometimes in English, sometimes in Lithuanian, but most of the time in gibberish. Sometimes she spoke to them, sometimes to people who weren’t there. It left Shana with the understanding that a stroke broke your head like a stepped-on cookie. “Please stop walking. I’m going to have to go get Dad soon. He’s probably already wondering where we are, Jesus. He’s gonna kick our asses. Probably my ass because you’re his favorite, you know. Oh, don’t pretend like you didn’t know that. You look like Mom. I look like—well, him.” And nobody really likes themselves, she thought. “Just quit this shit now. Now. Now?”

  Ahead, the bridge loomed.

  Probably shouldn’t walk on that thing barefoot. She’ll get a splinter. And then she might get an infection and now they said antibiotics didn’t really work like they were supposed to anymore and Mister Schultz the bio-sci teacher at school said, “We’re entering the post-antibiotic age.”

  That decided it.

  Shana jogged ahead of Nessie and turned toward her, walking backward so that she faced her sister, holding up her hand and gesturing like it was a game-show prize. “Nessie, listen up, dummy. If you don’t quit this right now, I’m going to haul back and smack the crap out of you. Okay? I’m just gonna—boom, whale on you. Last chance.”

  Her threat failed to land. Nessie did not register it at all.

  Shana blinked back tears. Don’t show her you’re crying. A stupid thought but still, she was the big sister, and Nessie shouldn’t see that.

  I don’t want to hit my baby sister.

  I mean, she did want to hit her, kinda. But in a fantasy way. In the theater of her mind it sounded good, but now, for real? It scared the shit out of her. “I’m gonna do it,” she warned.

  Nessie did not care. She did not hear. She did not see.

  Shana lifted her arm. Palm ready to smack.

  She winced. She gritted her teeth. She swung her hand.

  And then, she pulled the slap at the last second, crying out in frustration. “Goddamnit, Nessie!”

  A shadow fell over them. Shana turned suddenly as the blacktop of Orchard Road gave way to the creaking boards of Herkimer Covered Bridge. Above, the beams hung like bones. Grass and sticks dangled—nests of birds whose babies had gone. Everything else was the kingdom of the spiders—webs draped between webs, flies mummified.

  Spears of light poked through holes in the wood. And ahead, Shana spied a new danger in that light: the glittering glass of a broken bottle. Kids came here to drink sometimes. Shana came here to drink sometimes. Quick, Shana hurried ahead, tried to kick away some of the glass. But there was just too much of it, and Nessie walked ineluctably forward…

  Okay, new plan.

  Kill her with kindness.

  Not literally, of course. But instead of smacking the taste out of her mouth, Shana decided to hug her. Grab her. Stop her.

  Easy enough. Nessie was a little slip of a thing, but Shana was bigger, broader, more the tomboy. (Though that was an image she’d been trying to shake now for the better part of a year. It wasn’t because she wanted to get a boy or anything but okay whatever, it’s exactly because she wanted to get a boy. Cal Polette, as a matter of fact. Cal, who liked photography, too, whose dad owned a bank, who had a very lickable jawline. Cal who thought her name was Shawna.)

  Shana said, “All right, little di
ngleberry. I’m coming in.”

  A stray thought landed in her head like a rock through a window: When was the last time we hugged each other?

  She opened her arms and grabbed her sister.

  The girl had surprising strength. She kept going, pushing Shana back—hard enough, in fact, that Shana’s sneakers slid on the wood. Not willing to be denied so easily, Shana planted her feet hard—

  And with that, Nessie stopped. She didn’t stop struggling, though: She kept on wriggling like a mouse in a snake’s crushing coils.

  She began thrashing and Shana’s mind went to that memory: the girl fighting their father in that old bus stop shelter.

  A sound rose up out of her. A low whine, an animal sound. A new fear buried itself under Shana’s skin like a burrowing tick. It was the sound of something in pain, alarmed, even full of rage.

  “Nessie, settle down, it’s okay,” she whispered to her. Louder she said it so that she could be heard: “It’s okay, I said.”

  The girl started to feel hot. Like a fever starting up. Shana kept her grip but pulled away just enough to look at her sister’s face: Nessie’s cheeks had grown flushed, and angry red streaks stretched across her forehead. The whites of her eyes suddenly erupted red, like grapes crushed. “Nessie, stop, please stop, please, oh shit, stop—”

  Nessie’s teeth chattered. Blood trickled from her nose as her body began to spasm and rise in temperature—it was hot, too hot, and Nessie’s skin felt like the hood of a black car that had been sitting too long in the summer sun, and Shana thought to double down, to hold on tighter, bucking-bronco-style, but a panicked certainty screamed through her mind:

  Let her go, let her go now.

  Shana let go, backpedaling suddenly.

  Nessie blinked for the first time this morning. Relief flooded through Shana. I did it. She’s okay.

  But then the girl’s eyes clouded over once more. Her eyeballs rotated in her head like lottery balls and then pinned her gaze again on the horizon. Nessie walked forward anew, the shakes gone, her nose and upper lip still bloody.

  Shana collapsed and wept as her sister kept on walking. Right across the broken glass, seeming not to feel it.

  I know I know I know I’m only a teenager, Dad reminds me like, every day, and my sister reminds me that I’m still young, and I don’t care. I have so many things I want to do, so many boys to kiss and so many places to go and so many ways to change the world, I’m ready to get started. Because everything and everyone has to start somewhere, right? I’m starting now. Mom, if you’re out there, and if you ever read this, I’m sorry you won’t get to see what I do. Maybe you’ll come back to us again. Maybe I’ll find you, who knows? Maybe that’s what this is all about. Me finding you.

  —from the journal of Nessie Stewart, age 15

  JUNE 3

  Maker’s Bell, Pennsylvania

  SHANA’S LEGS PUMPED SO HARD, her muscles and tendons felt like guitar strings strung too tight, ready to snap. In gym class she always hated running the mile, often making an excuse to the teacher (“Sorry, Mister Orbach, it’s my moon times, if you know what I mean”). But now running had to be her thing—she didn’t want to leave Nessie alone out there for long, but she needed her father.

  As she reached the bottom of their long driveway, a stitch hit her side like a steak knife stuck between her ribs, sawing back and forth. Her foot skidded on loose scree and she went down hard, twisting her body, her elbow driving into the ground. But she didn’t stay down. She clambered to stand, launching herself down the driveway, gasping for air as she did.

  One small blessing: Her father stood halfway down the driveway, looking around—probably for her and for Nessie—and when he saw her, he waved and ran to meet her.

  Breathless, she cried out for him. Two minutes later, they were in his rat-trap pickup—an old Chevy Silverado fringed with rust—and barreling down Orchard Road, juddering over the groaning boards of the covered bridge.

  Along the way, she tried, stammering, to tell her father what had happened. But Dad, he was only half listening. His eyes scanned the road ahead, the way an owl might look for fledglings that had prematurely fled the nest. He interrupted Shana—

  “I don’t see her. I don’t see her!”

  “She has to be out here.” Tears pushed at the inside of her eyes, and she had to blink them away.

  “You’re sure she went this way?”

  “Yes, Dad, I’m sure.”

  “Think, damnit. Because if you’re wrong—”

  “I’m sure, I’m sure,” she said, but suddenly she wasn’t sure. They did come this way? Right? It was all a blur. Shana felt crazy. Maybe Nessie was back at the house somewhere. Maybe Shana was dreaming.

  Or worse, what if Nessie did come this way, but then she changed direction? What if she walked down to the stream? Could she have slipped and fallen in? Could she have drowned? Or what if she wandered into the woods, or what if someone came by and picked her up and put her in a van and drove far away—they always warned about that kind of thing in school. Shana always figured it was mostly just parents trying to control their kids more, trying to spook them into keeping close, but what if it was true? Nessie wouldn’t have the presence of mind not to get taken away. They might hurt her. Touch her. Kill her.

  Didn’t they say that if you didn’t find a missing person in the first forty-eight hours, you’d never find them? This was the first hour, and Shana had already lost her little sister. If only I wouldn’t have left her. I could’ve stayed with her. Shit, I’m so sorry…

  Dad pumped the brakes and Shana lurched forward. Orchard Road ended here at the intersection of Mine Hill Road. It went east and it went west. Dead ahead lurked tall oaks and maples giving shelter to darkness and the deep damp. “There!” her father called out. He pointed past Shana. She turned her head to look but by the time she did, Dad was already pounding the accelerator and cutting the wheel—stones screamed under the assault of spinning tires. And now, now Shana saw Nessie.

  The girl walked ahead, up toward the bend that hooked around the old Pemberton farm, the one that had gone to hell since the barn fire a few years back. Dad raced up alongside her, pulling ahead and cutting the engine.

  They both flew out of the car and raced up to her. Shana hoped to see that her sister had regained some glimmer of who she was…

  But it was not to be. Her eyes stared forward, watching nothing. They had cleared a little, going from full-blooded, ripe red fruits to merely bloodshot.

  And still, Nessie kept walking.

  Dad tried. He waved his hands in front of her.

  He whistled. Clapped his hands. Snapped his fingers. Worry tightened his cheeks, dented his brow. No—not worry. Something else, something bigger. Fear. That’s what Shana saw there—bold, bald-faced fear. Seeing her father scared only made her more scared.

  Dad stepped aside. Nessie walked ahead.

  Their eyes met. “Shana, I’m going to try to restrain her.”

  “You can’t. Don’t. It hurts her—”

  “It’s the only way. Okay? I’ll be gentle.”

  It’s not about being gentle, Shana thought. This was something else. This wasn’t sleepwalking. This wasn’t anything anyone understood, not yet, maybe not ever. Even now she turned her eyes to her little sister’s feet—were her feet cut up? Injured in any way? Not that Shana could see. That wasn’t right, either. This feels like some kind of nightmare.

  “Dad, be careful—”

  “I’ll be careful,” he hissed back at her. Usually, he was calm as a bowl of cookies, but now she saw his hand shaking and sweat beaded on his brow even though it was an unusually cool morning for early June.

  He again stepped in front of Nessie.

  He opened his arms wide, as if to hug her.

  She stepped into his embrace hard, almost knocking him d
own—but he rooted himself low and wrapped his arms around her tight.

  For a moment, Shana thought, It’s okay, it’ll be okay.

  Then Nessie started to shake again. The shaking turned to thrashing. Dad held fast even as she started keening and wailing, the sound rising out of her like the bleat of a truck-struck deer broken on the road—Dad yelled over, “Shana, you come hold her, too.” But Shana wouldn’t. Can’t.

  “Dad, let her go, please—”

  He picked her up, then, grunting as he stood. Nessie’s legs kicked out. Her skin flushed. As the girl’s head rotated wildly on her shoulders, Shana once more saw her eyes go all the way red—they started to bulge like corks straining at the top of a Champagne bottle, ready to pop—

  “Dad!” Shana cried, hurrying over to her father, grabbing him, struggling with him. He fought back even as the sound coming out of Nessie became something otherworldly: a whooping, screaming alarm, inhuman in its volume and composition—it grew from that to something animalistic, then the shriek of a wild, vengeful banshee.

  Shana slugged her father in the ribs, and again under his arm, in the armpit. He yelped, and his arms opened—

  Nessie dropped to the ground in a crouch.

  And then, once more, she stood, shook it off, and kept walking.

  “I’m…sorry,” Shana said to her father, gently touching his arm.

  It was like he didn’t hear her. Or like he didn’t even realize that she’d hit him in the first place. His mouth formed her sister’s name, but only when he said it a second time did he make any sound: “Nessie.” A small utterance, like a plea or a prayer. His own eyes cleared anew as he looked to Shana. “I don’t know what’s happening. The way she was shaking…she got hot, so hot, like she was about to burn up in my hands.”

  “I know. I know. I told you. We need help.”

  “Help. Right.” He blinked back tears. “I’m gonna go get help.” A small thought hit her: I shouldn’t be the one telling him what to do. Dads are supposed to know what to do to fix every problem, make it all okay again.