FROSTBURG, MARYLAND
Tawnya Johnson checked the Budweiser clock on the wall of the Stop & Shop convenience store. It read 3:05 A.M. God, she hated this time of night—the midpoint of the graveyard shift. The dead hour. No one to talk to. Nothing to do but stare out the window at the traffic whizzing by on Highway 68. Where are all these people going, anyway? she wondered.
Most nights, the Stop & Shop stayed reasonably busy until about 1:30 A.M., when the last of the long-haul truckers and traveling salesmen bedded down for the night at the Huntsman Motel next door. For the next hour after that, a few stragglers still came in for cigarettes, snacks, and beer. But then the “dead hour” began, which lasted until the early birds started showing up around 4:30 A.M. for their morning coffee. It was the solitude of this two-hour stretch that Tawnya truly hated.
A pair of bright headlights suddenly flashed through the store window, and Tawnya watched with curiosity as a dark blue Chevy Impala pulled slowly into the parking lot. A few seconds later, a long-haired man in a black leather coat got out and made his way to the front door of the store. He seemed tentative, glancing behind him several times before entering the store. Shit, Tawnya thought when she finally got a good look at him. She’d seen all types in this store, but this guy was something else. If not for his late-model car, she would have guessed he was homeless.
“How ya doin’,” she called out as he entered.
The man mumbled something unintelligible and headed back into the aisles. Tawnya watched him carefully in the convex security mirror in the far corner of the store as he moved slowly from aisle to aisle, picking up various items and cradling them in one arm. He spent nearly five minutes at the magazine rack in the back, where he seemed mesmerized by the magazine covers and newspapers. Finally, he brought his armful of items to the counter and dropped them in front of Tawnya.
Tawnya tried not to look at the man’s face at all. She was used to dealing with toothless locals, stoned kids, grizzled truckers, and even actual homeless people, but this guy was different. His face and hands were . . . filthy. His long gray hair and beard were unruly and clumped together with mud in places. And those nails . . . my God. As quickly as she could, Tawnya rang up his purchases: fingernail clippers; scissors; shaving cream; disposable razors; a toothbrush; toothpaste; two ham-and-cheese sandwiches; a bottle of water; Time, U.S. News & World Report, and USA Today. “Is that all?” she asked.
“Do you have cigarettes?” asked the man in an educated Northeastern accent.
Tawnya was taken aback by his spoken words, which did not match his appearance at all. He sounded . . . smart. Which would explain all the newsmagazines, she figured. “Yeah, they’re back here. What kind you want?”
“Chesterfields.”
“Chesterfields?” Tawnya searched in vain for a few seconds. “Uh, we ain’t got those.”
“Camels, then,” said the man.
Tawnya rang up the cigarettes and reported the total: “Fifty-eight thirty-five.”
“Excuse me?”
“Fifty-eight dollars and thirty-five cents,” Tawnya repeated slowly.
The man seemed confused by that total but quickly retrieved two fifty-dollar bills from his pocket and handed them to her. Tawnya decided to skip the step of holding them up to the light, as all Stop & Shop employees were trained to do for bills over ten dollars. She wanted this guy gone and didn’t care if she had to take a couple of bogus bills to do it. She quickly made change and placed it on the counter in front of the man, opting not to put it in his hand as she would normally do. I ain’t touching those fingernails, she thought.
The man scooped up the change and grabbed the two plastic shopping bags that Tawnya had filled with his purchases. “Thanks,” he said.
Tawnya watched as the man exited the store and got back into his blue sedan. He sat there for several minutes in the bright light of the storefront, flipping through the newsmagazines with tremendous interest. Strange old guy, Tawnya thought, desperately wishing he would leave. Finally, to her great relief, the blue sedan pulled slowly out of the parking lot and turned left onto the access road leading to the highway. Tawnya noticed that the driver’s-side window was broken, although she didn’t think much of it. She saw all sorts of beat-up cars around here, and a broken window wasn’t necessarily out of the ordinary. Besides, she was just glad the guy was gone. A quiet night in the store didn’t seem so bad after all, she decided.
What Tawnya did not notice was that the man had merely pulled into the motel parking lot next door.
Malachi closed and locked the door to room 132 of the Huntsman Motel and headed straight to the bathroom. He flipped on the light and gazed in amazement at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He shook his head slowly in disbelief as he touched his gray hair and beard and gently traced the fine wrinkles around his eyes. Although he could see his reflection clearly, he simply could not fathom that the man staring back at him . . . was him.
Fingernails first, he decided. He glanced down and noticed that they’d finally stopped growing at their previously inexplicable rate. Whatever process had been taking place in his body for the past twenty-four hours seemed to be finally coming to an end. He unwrapped the clippers he’d bought and quickly went about grooming his fingernails and toenails to a respectable length. Then, unwrapping the scissors he’d purchased, he went to work on his hair. First, he clipped his beard and mustache short and shaved the remaining whiskers with a disposable razor. Then he did the best he could with his wild mane of gray hair, cutting it close to the scalp until it passably resembled a buzz cut. This process took the better part of an hour.
Finally, with the grooming process complete, he washed his face and hands thoroughly with soap and water and dried off with a clean towel. With his face now clean shaven and his hair reasonably groomed, he gazed once more upon his reflection in the mirror. He certainly looked different. His skin was pallid and wrinkled, his cheeks sunken, his eyes dull and tired. Yet, with his facial hair gone and his hair cropped short, he could finally see himself in the middle-aged face staring back at him. Same eyes. Same nose. Same mouth. But so many wrinkles . . .
Malachi removed his shirt and flexed his muscles in the mirror. The skin on his chest and arms was a bit baggy, but his muscle tone underneath was essentially the same as he remembered. And this was the strangest thing of all—he didn’t feel like he looked. The man in the mirror looked old and weathered, but, inside, Malachi felt strong and energized. He moved his body all around the bathroom, watching his reflection in the mirror to prove this to himself. He marched in place for several seconds, lifting each knee high above his waist. Then he twisted his torso all around with his hands on his hips. Finally, he did twenty jumping jacks in rapid succession. His movements during all of these exercises were confident and strong, which was precisely how he felt.
All of this was beyond Malachi’s comprehension. Indeed, there were so many things he did not understand about his situation that he’d already begun flirting with a terrifying self-diagnosis: schizophrenia.
All the while, new memories continued trickling into his mind, arriving in sporadic bursts with no logical connection or context. Often, these memories consisted of just a single word or phrase, or a brief recollection of some isolated event. At the moment, he was recalling a beautiful woman with black hair and a long white dress. Then the memory vanished, replaced with a darker memory of some undefined fear . . . and betrayal. He seized upon that last thought—trying once again to conjure up the memory of the gunshots. But, as before, his memory of that event consisted of only disconnected impressions. Surprise. Anger. Blood. And his escape into the darkness.
An idea suddenly popped into his mind. Scanning the motel room, he quickly spotted a pen and a small pad of paper near the phone on the nightstand. He needed to start writing these things down. Logic would eventually help him piece it all together.
He began by jotting down the single word that had just flashed into his mind at that very moment: “Jasher.”