OCTOBER 26, 2017 // 11
T
hey were tourists.
That’s what he told the kids
as they whipped through the
dusk out of Portland into the foothills,
the A.M. radio still dry-heaving the lat-
est on Watergate and Vietnam through
larger and larger chunks of static. He
just needed a few days to figure out his
next move — their next move — and
what better place was there to think
than the beach?
“Don’t we have school tomorrow?”
Audrey asked from the backseat in the
kind of incredulous tone only natural to
a 16-year-old girl.
Well, Bonneville Dam it. He would
have to call their schools in the morn-
ing. Did the cabin even have a phone?
He really hadn’t thought this out. Ben
Driscoll cinched a brand-new Parlia-
ment between his lips then punched the
dash lighter a little too hard as he tried
to smile into the rearview.
Audrey caught him in the mirror,
one brow raised and waiting. She had
inherited her mother’s stink-eye; a
practical heirloom from his deceased
wife.
Sam didn’t even look up from the
book in his lap. With a flashlight cra-
dled in his neck to illuminate the pages,
Ben’s 12-year-old son looked older
than his station. Bearded with shadow,
the light playing off the wire-rimmed
glasses that sat atop the eye-patch over
his right eye, he looked like some kind
of intellectual dwarf pirate minus the
hat. Ben wondered, with his son’s sorry
lot of late, if Sam raised his head for
much of anything anymore.
“What’s the matter, Odd?” Ben said
to his daughter. “Don’t like it when
your father goes groovy? Makes an
impromptu plan?”
“Ew,” his daughter said, visibly
shuddering even in the dark of the
station wagon. “You are so far from
groovy you don’t even know how to
use that word. Nobody goes groovy.
Groovy is just … groovy.”
Ben sighed and checked the gas
gauge. The needle was still hovering
around half a tank, thank God. With
the gas stations in Portland recently
shuttered behind their OUT OF GAS signs
thanks to OPEC, he had had to abridge
his getaway plan. His buddy Rex had
rented a little place outside of Cannon
Beach over the last summer and had
passed along the info. After laying low
for a few days, they would be reborn.
Now he just had to figure out how to
tell the kids their old lives were dead.
As they passed the summit, it began
to rain in sheets. Ben had the sensation
that they were driving underwater.
Next time you commit grand larceny,
genius, Ben said to himself, maybe
don’t do it in October?
Approaching U.S. 101, somehow
the rain intensified. Ben could barely
make out Sultan, their terrier mutt,
whimpering in the rear of the vehicle,
but Audrey was on it, turning around to
comfort the dog.
“Did you know that there’s sup-
posed to be treasure buried on Neah-
kahnie Mountain?” Sam said. “It’s sup-
posed to be haunted. Cursed. People
who go looking don’t come back. Can
we go?”
“Yawn,” Audrey said.
Ben thought about his own ill-be-
gotten treasure. He had stuffed $15,000
into the spare-tire well of their Plym-
outh Satellite. Buried beneath suit-
cases, picture frames, bikes, and one
muddy terrier lay their future, but oh
how cursed did it already feel.
Cancer doesn’t just dig one grave. It
has enough gravity to sink whole clans.
He had lost their house just to pay for
losing his wife. Stuck in a two-bed-
room with two kids, and then every
morning on site there’s awful Marilyn
Horn with her checkbook, erecting her
family’s dream house one signature at
a time.
It takes quite a while to drive from
North Portland to the West Hills. Less-
er men get to thinking.
By Monday Marilyn Horn would
start asking about her lumber and she
would find her foreman gone.
“Let’s see what the weather has in
store, buddy,” Ben said, “but a hike
sounds like fun. This week is all about
fun. In fact, I say we play a game.
Have you guys ever wanted to be
someone else?”
“Only like every day of my life,”
Audrey deadpanned.
The rain went full riot, and for a
moment there was no way to distin-
guish elk from tree, and Ben just had to
swallow faith that 101 was still heading
south in front of them. The full moon
was no help.
“Let’s pretend to be a different
family,” he said.
Sam turned off his flashlight and
Ben tried to blink away every psyche-
delic color that throbbed at his periph-
eral. The station wagon’s roof kept
getting pummeled, and the emptiness
of the passenger seat next to him had
never felt so vast.
“But I like being Sam Driscoll,”
Sam said.
“You sure about that, buddy?” Ben
asked.
An orange light flashed above the
car, revealing the dark, flailing arms
of the trees at the side of the road, but
Ben could not tell what direction the
light had come from as the rain and sky
had bled into a single thing. Seemed
too low to be a plane but Ben couldn’t
be sure, and they hadn’t passed another
car for miles, meaning they were the
only ones stupid enough to be out here.
Audrey was the first to see the
stranger standing on the shoulder of the
road.
“Bad night to be hitchhiking,” Ben
said matter-of-factly.
“Aren’t you going to stop?” Audrey
asked. “It’s pouring.”
“We’re only going a few more
miles,” Ben said. “Wouldn’t do them a
lot of good.”
“But I thought you were going
groovy, Dad. Joining the revolution?”
“Oh, for crissakes,” Ben muttered as
he pumped the breaks and guided the
Satellite toward the shoulder.
“Dad,” Sam said.
“What’s that smell?” Audrey asked.
“Is there a beached whale around here?
I think I’m going to barf.”
Sultan began to growl.
As Ben focused, he noticed that the
figure in the rain hadn’t made a move
toward the car. He wasn’t even looking
in their direction but at the tree line
instead.
Sultan barked.
“Dad,” Sam said.
His arms were at his side. Had he
even stuck his thumb out?
“Dad!” Sam said more emphatically.
He had no bag. No jacket. Just a
soaked Pendleton plaid buttoned to his
Adam’s apple, and something else . . .
draping off his arms. Ben immediately
thought of limp tentacles, as if this
stranger were wearing a dead octopus
like a shawl. He had no face. Was he
wearing a mask? Ben thought he could
see wet tufts of dark hair, an earlobe
peeking through the covering. No, not
a mask, but a wrapping, heavy with
rain and soil and eclipsing his entire
head. He was just eyes and a mouth
embraced by gauze.
“Dad!” Sam said. “Is that a mum-
my!?”
Then, quick as a jolt of lightning,
this thing was at the front passenger
door, smacking the window and shiv-
ering the handle as it moaned in some
sort of guttural cow dialect. Audrey
screamed and Sultan barked incessant-
ly. Had Ben remembered to lock the
door? As perverse silver linings go, he
realized that he had stopped unlocking
that door after Jessica died. Ben peeled
out onto the highway, but the thing
persisted, running the length of the
station wagon, and smearing the rear
passenger-door window with a viscous
liquid emitted from its bandaged palm
that resembled chocolate pudding.
It would be another two miles be-
fore Audrey stopped screaming, Sultan
stopped barking, and Sam would un-
fold himself from the fetal position to
watch the rain wash the smear of goo
off his window.
Ben welcomed back the persistent
sound of the rain on the roof. On the
radio, Nixon still refused to hand over
his Oval Office tapes to Archibald Cox.
“Dad?” Sam asked. Ben looked at
his son in the mirror. He had taken off
his glasses, but his right eye remained
behind the patch. “Was that a mon-
ster?” he asked.
Ben couldn’t say. He didn’t know
exactly what a monster looked like.
• • •
Rex had said the Surf’s End House
was cozy, which, in real estate, means
small. This place wasn’t cozy, it was
rustic, which, in real estate, means
dilapidated. Located at the dead end of
a short access road, Ben had noticed
only one other property on the street as
they drove up.
Rain had been punching this place
into the sand for years. Buckling
slightly through the middle, wild
vegetation bookended either side with
what appeared to be the pressure of a
vice. The worn, cracked shingles of
the siding dripped with black lichen,
as if the house had been crying though
mascara. The station wagon’s head-
lights exposed a patchwork of fuzzy
green moss up on the roof. Ben could
see a single fern growing up there too
next to the chimney. Besides the fern,
the house also came with a stone-faced
old man sitting on the covered porch, a
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