The Hike (7 page)

“Oh,
that's
what that was,” Crab said.

B
en's hand was still bleeding from the fight with the cricket. He was all out of cheesecloth, so he wandered down to the beach—staying within the path—and washed his sliced palm in the surf. It wasn't an easy task; the incoming waves kept kicking up loose sand that spilled into the cut. He found himself having to endlessly rinse everything off. Crab waited ten feet behind him.

The hovercraft was enormous, a mansion on the sea. Ben had never ridden in one before. Given recent events, he didn't expect anyone to be inside the thing.

“Are you coming with me?” he asked Crab.

“That boat looks fancy as hell. I'd get on that.”

“Okay.”

“I need water and food, though. If you don't feed me, I'll just pitch over the side and you can go eat shit.”

“I'm sure we can figure out something. Do you know who's doing this?”

“Doing what?”

Ben gestured all around. “This. Is this God?”

“Who's God?” Crab asked.

“Are
you
God?”

“You call me God, I call you Shithead. Same deal as calling me Frank.”

Ben searched for the beginning of a proper explanation. “Do you know what humans are?”

“Yes. I'm looking at one right now. Not a very impressive one.”

“Okay, well, humans have families. Male humans and female humans get together and have human babies and all that.”

“Sounds like a riot.”

“I'm trying to make this as clear as I can. I'm not trying to wow you.”

“Go on.”

“I have a family. We live in a place called Maryland.”

“I know Maryland. I got family there.”

“Great. Yesterday I took a trip, away from Maryland, and I got lost. You with me so far?”

“Yeah.”

“And then I ended up here, and I don't know where I am. I don't know which way Maryland is. I don't know what town this is. I don't know what ocean that is out there. I don't even know if I'm still on Earth, or if I ate some kind of bad mushroom or something. I don't know anything. But this path opened up and anytime I leave it, something tries to kill me. And so here I am. I have to have keep following this path. I have to
hope
that it will guide me back home somehow, when it's this same path that keeps leading me farther and farther away from it. And I don't know who's doing this to me. So I'm very frightened, Crab. I feel like my family has died, or maybe
I
died. I didn't even get to say good-bye to them. It just hurts. Does that make sense to you?”

Crab waited a moment to answer.

“I thought you said you were gonna get me food.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Who is that?”

“Just get on the boat.”

Crab skipped lightly over the gaps in the dock as Ben slipped his dirty brown socks and rotting shoes back on and slung the backpack over his shoulder. Approaching from the slip, he could see the deck of the craft come into view. It was a glorious vehicle, outfitted like a luxury yacht. There was a leather banquette that wrapped around the main deck, all trimmed in curved, lacquered walnut. There was a separate tanning deck toward the bow, with sturdy lounges and block stools. In the center of the deck, there was a set of white sliding doors with tinted windows, beckoning passengers into the craft's interior. Ben stepped aboard, unlatched some of the storage compartments under the banquettes, and found all the necessary maritime safety equipment: life jackets, flare guns, fire extinguishers, deep-sea fishing rods, and more.

He walked through the sliding doors and was greeted by a main interior that was larger than his home. It was like an indoor peninsula, with a panoramic view of the sea that stretched around from port to starboard. There was a full galley kitchen and two dining tables and, dead in the center of the room, a fully stocked surf-and-turf buffet. The food all looked freshly prepared, as if an entire staff of servants had put it out and then disappeared the moment Ben stepped aboard: mountains of peeled shrimp, freshly shucked oysters and clams, lobsters perched atop silver tubs of crushed ice. A bottle of Dom Perignon sat in a chilled bucket, legs of cool condensation running down the side . . . beckoning him to come and drink. Ben walked up to the raw bar and took a whiff.

“How can this food all be fresh?” he asked Crab.

“I dunno.”

Ben then wandered over to a big bowl of cracked crab legs. Stone crab. Ben had heard about stone crab, but had never tasted it. He looked at Crab for approval.

“Don't even think about it.”

“All right, all right,” Ben said. “Someone had to have put this food here. Someone must be on board.”

He was paranoid now, feeling eyes around him. He imagined some race of creatures with X-ray vision staring up at him through the floorboards.

“Come with me,” he said to Crab, and Crab scurried behind as Ben went below deck to the staterooms and opened every closet and turned down every top sheet. He checked every last cupboard and latrine, but there was no sign that any other living being was gracing them with his presence. This stuff was all just here somehow. Conjured.

He went back up to the buffet.

“Are you hungry?” he asked Crab.

Crab bobbed up and down.

“Then let's eat.”

Ben grabbed a plate (it was warm) from a side stack and loaded up on everything: giant dollops of caviar and whole lobster tails and warm slices of flank steak from a hotel pan and oyster after oyster after oyster. Then he popped the champagne and started drinking it right from the bottle.

“Damn,” said Crab. “You like to party.”

“Someone may aff well enjoy thisth stuff,” Ben said, his mouth full of beef. And then, just past Crab, he saw an outlet with a thin white wire running out from it. It was a charger. For his phone.

I can charge my phone.

He took the phone out of his shorts pocket and plugged it into the jack. The outlet was dead.

“I have to turn on this boat,” he said to Crab.

“How?”

There was a spiral staircase in the center of the main cabin. Ben grabbed the charger and bounded up the staircase with the excitement of a child running around the inside of a 747. At the top of the staircase he entered the bridge. There was a full 360-degree view of the surrounding sea and coastline, a sonar monitor, a console with hundreds of little buttons and knobs, a main throttle, and a ship's steering wheel. It was a regular steering wheel, not the wooden one you spin around on a pirate ship. Ben was hoping for the wooden wheel.

The ignition still had the key in it. He grabbed it and turned hard enough to break it off.

The craft's engine sputtered to life behind him and then began to roar. Little rectangular lights bleeped and blooped all over the console. The craft rose up in the air and blew a wake in every direction, creating a hydraulic force field around itself. The sun was setting now. And quickly. As the darkness set in, Ben saw two parallel lines of phosphorescent algae begin to glow and stretch out into the water. The path wanted him to go straight out into the ocean.

There was an AC outlet resting flat on the front of the console and Ben plugged the charger in with his phone attached. The phone booted back up, but with no logo. No spinning wheel. No white screen. Instead, Ben saw an old woman spring up on the screen. She was sitting in a white room in a plush chair. She was wearing a white frock and a bright red overcoat. Ben remembered her right away.

“Mrs. Blackwell?”

“Find the Producer,” she told him.

“Who is the Producer?”

“Stay on the path, and find the Producer.”

“
Where
do I find this Producer?”

“At the end of the path, of course.”

“Is my family alive?”

“The Producer will answer all of your questions. Go now. The beach will sink into the ocean in two minutes, and it will take you with it if you do not leave immediately.”

The phone flicked off. Ben pushed the power button again, but there was nothing.
Find the Producer
. He threw the phone across the bridge and kicked the console.

“Uhhh, Ben?” said Crab. “You're wasting time.”

Ben turned and saw the water beginning to envelop Courtshire. It crept up the sands and was rising to meet the wooden dock slip. They had to leave. Ben grabbed the throttle.

“Wait!” Crab yelled, “You forgot to . . .”

Ben rammed the throttle forward, paying no heed to Crab. The twin propellers started to hum, and then shriek. But the craft wouldn't move. The water continued rising. Ben realized his mistake immediately.

“The craft is still moored!”

He ran back down the staircase, Crab skittering behind, and flew out the sleek double doors of the main cabin. The roar of the propellers was drowning out everything as he grabbed the rope stretching out from the cleat anchored to the frame of the dock. It was pulled firm and taut, the full force of the propellers bearing down on it. Ben tried to reach down and slip the rope off the cleat, but immediately realized his folly in leaving the throttle on. The loop wouldn't budge and he could see the sandbar sinking down into the ocean, ready to take the craft with it. It weighed down on the rope and now the craft was tilting upward, like a plane ready for takeoff. In a few moments, it would flip entirely, capsize, and be pinned against the ocean floor.

“We have to cut the engine,” Ben said. He went back into the cabin as Crab started to pinch the rope. He wasn't the biggest crab, but
his pincers could do some damage when the situation called for it. The rope began to fray, strand by strand.

Ben ran up the staircase as the hovercraft tilted farther upward, the spiral staircase leaning and flattening to horizontal. Once Ben reached the top, the pull of gravity was so strong that he found himself pressed against the back window of the bridge, the controls virtually impossible to reach. He threw himself to the floor and began scaling it like a wall as the craft went up and up and up. He wasn't going to make it. Whoever this Producer was, he would never see his face. He would never see Teresa or the kids again. All those days and years with them, and he just needed one more
second.
Not even a second. Just a frame. A twenty-fourth of a second. A final snapshot of everything he loved, before the sea claimed him. He reached for the throttle one more time but it was no use.

And then, without warning, the ship broke free and soared up in the air. Ben flew back against the hard glass and felt it shatter from the force of impact. Now he was falling out of the bridge tower, the broken glass shredding his skin, and he slammed hard against the fiberglass shell covering the twin propellers as they blew the hovercraft up and way.

Now came the
really
mean part, because gravity was asserting itself once more, and the craft started to flatten back out. And in 3, 2, 1 . . . BOOM. It splashed back down in the ocean like a humpback whale, displacing thousands of gallons of seawater and throwing Ben to the deck. Before he could recover, the acceleration kicked in and he was thrown back and to the side and then, finally, overboard.

Ah, but the rope. There was a frayed end of rope hanging off to the side, cut loose from the dock thanks to Crab's diligent work. Somehow, Ben found the rope in the dark. He clung to it as the hovercraft
picked up speed and jetted out into the great wide blue. It was at cruising speed now, and Ben felt his feet dragging along the surface of the ocean, the water pounding away at him as he biffed and bashed into the rubber skirt of the craft. He wasn't going to be able to hold on much longer. He called out for Crab, not knowing where he was, or if he was even still aboard.

“CRAB!”

Crab peeked over the edge of the main deck. “What?”

“Cut the engine!”

“Why?”

“Just cut the engine!”

Crab scurried back to the cockpit, but he was too small to push down the throttle or turn the key. Under the console was a series of connecting wires, so he found a wire under the ignition and gave it a good, hard pinch.

The mighty roar of the propellers and the engine died down, and the rope finally slackened in Ben's raw hands. His feet were dipping into the calm waters now as he swung forward and found himself dangling straight down the side of the craft. He began to scale the rope, drawing from a reserve of energy he never knew he had until this moment. It would cost him his last ounce of strength. Cost him everything, really. Dying here would have been just as fine as dying later on, but still he pushed on, pulling himself upward and feeling the sting of the wet and salty rope as it dug deeper into his wounded hand. This would be the last time he'd be able to use his hands for a while.

He pulled himself back on board and flopped across the deck like a reeled-in marlin. Nothing but furious breathing for a good long time. After a while, he felt a tickling on his belly. In the moonlight, he could see the outline of Crab.

“Thank you,” he said to Crab.

“I think I broke the boat.”

When Crab moved out of the way, Ben noticed the moon. Well, one of them at least. There were two of them in the sky now.

Two moons.

“Y
ou need to get up,” said Crab.

“I can't,” Ben said. He was all wet and bloody. Breathing was the only thing that didn't hurt right now. “I can't move.”

“Get your ass up. We're drifting off the path.”

That got Ben back on his feet in a hurry. Sure enough, he could see the hovercraft was floating off course, with one of the lines of glowing algae running straight underneath the ship and at an odd angle. If they drifted completely out of bounds, a sperm whale was probably going to come and swallow them whole. He raced back up to the cockpit and turned the key. Nothing.

“It won't turn on.”

“I told you,” Crab said. “I broke the damn thing. I clipped the wire.”

“Which one?”

“I don't know. The right one.”

Ben looked underneath the console and found a frayed end. He frantically searched for a matching wire as the craft drifted farther to the . . . Christ, what direction was it?

Finally, he lucked out and found the match. He sparked the two
wires together and the resulting shock offered his hands one final, painful insult. But it worked. The engine kicked up, and Ben moved the throttle forward ever so slightly to get the craft back on course. Within a few moments, she was comfortably within the boundaries of the path, cruising forward into the twin moonlight. The lights in the bridge cockpit were illuminated once more and now he could see Crab sitting up on the dash and the worthless phone deposited over in the corner of the room. He picked the phone back up and tried the power button again, but there was nothing, not even after he plugged it back into the working socket. He looked up to the heavens.

“I don't know if I'm talking to God, or to this Producer I'm supposed to find, but I need a favor,” he pleaded. “I need my family. Let me at least see their faces. If you have an ounce of compassion . . .”

The phone flickered to life. It gave him one picture. Just one. It was the five of them at a Chuck E. Cheese's for Rudy's sixth birthday party. Ben was in the center of the frame, one arm wrapped around an indifferent Peter, the other arm clutching the birthday boy tightly as he tried to wriggle away and go back to eating his chocolate cake. Flora was peeking out behind them. She was making a face, because a nine-year-old never smiles for a camera with sincerity. And then there was Teresa on the right. As always, she was beaming and trying to wrap her arms around the familial mass to hold them together. She was rubbing her gold wedding band with her thumb, an old nervous tic of hers.

Then the screen went back to black. Ben looked up again, tears down his face.

“Thank you.”

“What do we do now?” Crab asked.

Ben knew the answer right away. “I need a shower. You stay here and make sure we don't veer off course.”

“What if we do?”

“Come tell me.”

“Why do I have to sit here and do the patrol duty?”

“Would you prefer to shower first?”

“No. I guess not.”

“I'll bring you something. What do you want?”

“I could use some barnacles and fish parts.”

“Parts?”

“Yeah. Not the whole fish, man. Just some parts. Sharks get the fish first, usually.”

“Oh.”

“And worms.”

“I don't know if the buffet had worms or fish parts.”

“Well, then, whoever made that buffet is a dick. You go shower, and when you get back, I'm gonna hop in the water and find some dinner. On my own. Fat lotta good you humans are.”

Ben went back down to the staterooms below deck. They were fully furnished, with crisply made beds and a vase of flowers on every nightstand. Each stateroom had a private bathroom stocked with fresh towels and washcloths and bathrobes. He tore off his wet shorts and tattered shirt and hopped in one of the showers. The second the fresh warm water hit him, he wanted to melt into the tiles. He shut his eyes tight and let the showerhead blast his face, then he opened up his slashed hand and watched the blood drain out of it. There were superficial cuts and scrapes all over the rest of his body from his little window plunge, but nothing that would require him to stitch himself up or cauterize a wound with a flaming arrow.

He stepped back out of the shower and put on one of the fluffy white robes, the soft terry cloth tickling his skin. He was remembering, albeit slowly, what it was like to feel
good
again. It was still possible.

There was a first aid kit under the sink, with a bottle of hydrogen
peroxide and some gauze and medical tape and ibuprofen. He doused his hand in the peroxide and watched it bubble. He kind of liked the sting. Then he wrapped it all up, swallowed three of the pills (he prided himself on being able to swallow pills without the aid of water), walked upstairs, grabbed himself a lobster tail at the buffet, and chewed on it like a corn dog on his way back up to the cockpit. He found a roll of electrical tape under the console and used it to patch the ignition wire back together.

“You look refreshed,” said Crab.

“I have to sleep.”

“What about my food, asshole?”

Ben cut the engine. The craft slowed and began to drift. “Go now.”

Crab hurried down and splashed into the water. Seconds later, he was back.

“That's it?” Ben asked. “Already?”

“Look at me, man,” said Crab. “Do I look like I need two pounds of food to go on?”

“Right.”

He sparked the engine back up and looked out at the glowing algae as they converged at the vanishing point.

“I have to sleep, Crab. But we need to stay on course.”

“We'll take turns, then. I'll watch. You rest. If I need you to steer, I'll pinch you on the ass to wake you up.”

“Okay.”

He went back down to a stateroom and tried sleeping on the bed but it was no use. His brain refused to shut down. He was aching to sleep. Just a few hours away from this was all he wanted.
Sleep. Stop thinking. Just fucking sleep.

And yet, his eyes remained open. He pulled the comforter off the bed, grabbed one of the pillows, and trudged back up to the bridge.
Then he swept away the last bits of broken glass from the back window and laid down on the floor. The air was warmer out here by the ocean. Wherever he was, it was no longer November.

“Why are there two moons up there?” he asked Crab.

“I don't know.”

“Am I dreaming?”

“No.”

“Do you know this Producer that the lady was talking about?”

“No. How'd you get that scar?”

“What?”

“That big scar on your face. Where'd that come from?”

Ben was annoyed by the question. “I was in a fight,” he replied. “
With a shark.
”

“Bullshit.”

“You're right. That is complete bullshit. A dog did it.”

“What kind of dog?”

“A Rottweiler.”

“Ah shit, I'm sorry.”

“Don't do that. Don't say you're sorry. People always say they're sorry when I tell them. It does nothing for me.”

“All right, then. Screw that dog. Is that a better way to react?”

Ben laughed. “Yeah, that's closer.”

“You like dogs?”

“Not really.”

“You own a dog?”

“Hell, no.”

“Why'd you come back up here instead of staying in one of those fancy bedrooms?”

“I couldn't sleep,” Ben answered.

“Why not?”

“It was a long day. Making friends with a talking crab was somehow the least weird thing about it. I have a lot to process.”

“Where are we going?”

“I have no idea. My fucking hand kills.”

“Think about your family, then.”

“What about them?”

“Nothing. I just figured thinking about them would take the sting away.”

“Yeah, well thinking about them hurts, too.”

“Maybe that's a better kind of pain.”

“Maybe.”

And so he thought about the picture that flashed on his phone for just a moment. He could close his eyes and trace his wife and kids on the back of his eyelids. He could make a photo negative of them in his mind. The pizza parlor. The cheap red tablecloth. Teresa awkwardly rubbing her ring. He was coloring the image in when he finally drifted off.

 • • • 

When he woke up, he was in a bed.
His
bed. The queen bed upstairs in his house, white nightstands flanking either side. He looked over at the clock. 5
A.M.
Weren't you on that boat just now? Boat, what boat? There's no boat. You're home. Home just as you are every day . . .

He was alone in bed. No Teresa. She was still working the night shift at Shady Grove Hospital. He got up to piss and looked out the bathroom window at the moon. One moon only. He heard the front door downstairs open. So he walked out into the upstairs hall, clad only in his boxers. The other bedroom doors were closed, the kids fast asleep.

He could hear crying coming from the living room now. He
tiptoed downstairs and saw Teresa slumped on the couch, still in her nurse scrubs and black clogs. She wasn't moving.

“Teresa?”

She let out a deep moan. He sat down next to her and put his arm around her, running his fingers through her hair.

“Are you okay?”

“I can't talk about it,” she said.

He patted her leg gently, doing his best to walk the fine line between compassion and smothering.

“It's okay,” he told her. “You don't have to say anything.”

She had a rule about never bringing work home with her. It was a deal they had made long ago—to keep work at work and not burden each other with those miseries. She lost patients regularly, but never told him about it. And her policy worked. She was so smart to implement it. They were comfortable in silence together. It was the nicest part of their day sometimes, given how goddamn loud the kids were. They were good at silence.

But she looked different this morning. Devastated. He took her hand and kissed her cheek and she curled into him, still not saying a word. They sat for an hour before she finally spoke.

“Oh, Ben . . .”

“Just this once, you can tell me.”

“I can't,” she whispered. “I can't tell you or it'll kill me.”

“You saw someone die.”

She said nothing.

“More than one?”

A slight nod.

“I'm so sorry, T.”

She kept her eyes shut tight.

“It's not your fault,” Ben said.

“It was my fault,” she said. “I killed them.”

“No, no, you didn't kill anyone.”

She started to cry. “I can't talk about it.”

Wait a second, you remember this night, don't you? She canceled a few shifts after that, remember? And then she stayed stone silent for a couple of days afterward: barely saying a word, only getting out of bed to go paint in the basement. Took her a week to become herself again. Worst night she ever had on the job. Don't you remember that?

 • • • 

When Ben woke up, the hovercraft had hit an iceberg.