Robin woke from another nightmare of trees and flame and gulped a deep breath as if she’d surfaced from the ocean. She lay staring at the carpeted ceiling, breathing hard and fast, trembling, trying to mentally scrub off the feeling of being a kid again, the smell of cut grass, the sensation of clutching that wooden hand again—
Condensation dribbled down the curve of the van’s rear windows, refracting stony gray light. Her cell phone told her it was a few minutes after ten the morning of October 23. She sat up and lifted a camcorder from its customary place in a tub lined with soft black foam, then wriggled out of her sleeping bag and dug through a tub full of rolled clothes.
The smell of burning bark still floated among the dust, as if the smoke had permeated her skin and hair. She wore nothing but a pair of gray panties and even inside the van, warmed by her farts and body heat all night, the air was graveyard-clammy, so she knew the late autumn morning outside would require something a little more substantial than usual.
Damn Georgia humidity, she thought, pulling on a pair of jeans and a light jacket over a band T-shirt. Makes the summers hotter and the winters colder.
The entire back half of the van was lined with rails, shelves, and wire frames in which nested dozens of small plastic bins containing all manner of things:
One tub held baby-food jars emptied of their contents and refilled with alcohol. Another tub contained handfuls of stacked twigs, another was full of something that might have been ginger root, or perhaps bits of wild mushroom.
A large pegboard occupied one half of a wall directly behind the driver’s seat. Several edged weapons had been mounted on pegs and held in place with little clips—a broadsword, a short-sword, a kuhkri knife like a boomerang with a handle, a wicked black tomahawk, a Cold Steel katana painted matte black, the gilded silver dagger from the video.
A fifteen-year-old stuffed animal, a fuzzy blue mosquito peeked over the edge of a tub, his own personal plastic sarcophagus.
Mr. Nosy’s proboscis was a lot more limp these days—both of his glassy wings and four of his six legs had been stitched back on at some point—but he was still whole and had both of his big white Muppet eyes. Robin leaned over and gave her oldest friend a kiss on the nose.
Once she was dressed, she put the camera on a screw-mount in the corner, facing her. There were several mounts around the van, including two on the dash and two clamped to the wing mirrors.
Tucked into the pocket of yesterday’s jeans was an orange prescription bottle. She transferred it to today’s jeans. Taking a moment to screw the heels of her hands into her eyes again to grind away any remaining sleep, she slapped a bongo beat on her cheeks to redden them, then turned the camera on and started recording.
“Good morning, Internet-Land,” she said, her whiskey-and-cigarettes rasp exploding like a hand-grenade in the silence.
She put on her socks and boots as she talked, long green army socks and a pair of comfortable combat boots. “Malus here. You might be able to hear I’ve got a bit of a sinus thing right now. And I think I might be getting a sore throat. Guess that’s what I get for not eating enough oranges?”
She paused, glanced down at the van floor as if to gather her thoughts, then went back to cramming her feet in her boots.
They were like big sneakers, with a padded ankle, an Air Jordan profile, and soles like tractor tires. She’d bought them at a PX in Kentucky earlier that year for almost two hundred dollars, and they had earned the nickname “shit-kickers” before she’d even paid for them. Postmodern punk-rock couture. Her jeans were snug enough the boots fit over them.
“If you’ve been watching my channel, then you’ll know what I’ve been through. Who I am. My purpose. Well, I’m here. Back where this shit all started.” She tied the laces into a big floppy knot, then looked directly into the camera. “Home,” she said, as if the word were a hex. “Blackfield.” She tucked the laces into her boots and turned the camera to point through the rear window.
Moisture on the windows made a swimmy, crystalline netherworld of the overcast day outside. Crows razzed at each other outside the van, chittering and muttering dark gossip.
She swiveled the camera back around, filling the tiny viewfinder screen with her pale face and the dark circles around her eyes.
Instead of giving her the tough rock-chick look she’d been going for, her wavy Mohawk and shaved scalp made her seem otherworldly and delicate, fuzzy with a week and a half of chestnut stubble.
“This girl is going to go find a cup of coffee. Y’all ready for some BREAKFAST FOOTAGE?”
Big black crows took flight in every direction when she opened the back door, complaining in their harsh voices. She stepped down out of the van and unscrewed the camera, then grabbed the vinyl messenger bag. As the doors met in the middle with a slam, a blue-and-red logo reconstituted itself: CONLIN PLUMBING.
“I know you ain’t here for the food, this isn’t a cuisine travelogue channel. But I’m starving.” She took some B-roll footage of the area. The van was parked at the edge of a large graveled clearing, and mild white-gold sunlight tried to break through into the day. Several tents had been erected in the grass some thirty yards away, and beyond them was a utilitarian two-story cinderblock building, with doors labeled MEN and WOMEN. From inside came the white-noise rush of hot showers running, and steam poured from PVC pipes jutting out of the roof. Simple graffiti was spray-painted on the walls: BITE MY SHINY LIBERAL ASS. ST. VINCENT. YEE-THO-RAH. Doodles of a monkey taking a shit and a robot on a motorcycle.
To her right, a sprawling split-level cabin lurked in the shadows of the woodline, pumping out the constant smell of cooking food. The back of the restaurant opened up in a large hangar-like seating area with five trestle tables. She scanned the shadows in the back, peering cautiously, looking for a familiar silhouette and staring green eyes.
“The Red Lord will find you,” the man had said.
Last time she’d seen what he called the Red Lord was three weeks ago, a jagged figure standing in the tree line on a back road out of Seattle just after dark. Time before that had been two months earlier, a dark shape looming in the corner of her motel room at four in the morning, watching her sleep with luminous eyes.
She sighed with relief.
“Malus inbound. Prepare for impact.”
Climbing a hill, she clomped across the front porch, where a smiling gray fireplug of a dog was leashed to the banister.
“Hello there, Mad Max,” she said, pointing the camera at him. “How are you today?”
The Australian cattle dog licked his chops and whined.
Miguel’s Pizzeria was dimly lit and claustrophobic, with clumps of ropes and climbing gear hanging from the ceiling, and stacks of shoeboxes by the door. A half-dozen booths filled the room, all of them empty.
Robin went to the counter, a glass case containing mementos and historical knickknacks, but nobody was there. A tip jar and a charity jar stood by the register (take a penny, leave a penny), and A4-printed photographs postered the wall behind the counter (take a picture, leave a picture).
The photos were of semi-famous people posing in their climbing accoutrement with the owners of the restaurant, and panoramic shots of the mountains around the valley. She thought she recognized Les Stroud of the TV show Survivorman in one picture, and maybe Aron Ralston of 127 Hours fame in another, his prosthetic arm around Miguel’s shoulder.
A Black man came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a bar towel. Wearing eye shadow, a silk do-rag covered in purple paisley, and under his apron was an eggplant halter top embroidered with curlicues that looked more suited to a Japanese tea house than a backwoods pizzeria.
Eyeing the camera in her hand, he tucked the towel into his back pocket and leaned invitingly on the counter. “You a bit early for lunch.” The nametag on his apron said JOEL.
“That’s okay,” Robin told him. A glass-fronted mini-cooler stood on a counter behind Joel. She pointed at cans of Monster coffee inside. “I’ll have one of those, stick around and wait for lunch time. Cool with you?”
Joel regarded her with a tilted head, rolling a toothpick around and around his mouth. “You look super-familiar. Where do I know you from?” His weary tone and his delicate mannerisms were somehow masculine, yet … at the same time stunningly effeminate. He smelled like citrus and coconuts, strong enough to even overpower the burnt-bread smell of pizza crust coming out of the kitchen.
“I have a YouTube channel.” She indicated the camera as he took a coffee out of the cooler and put it on the counter. “Called ‘MalusDomestica.’ Maybe you’ve seen it?”
Joel rang up the coffee and gave her the total. “No, no, I think … I think I mighta went to school with you. Where did you go to school at? You go to high school in Blackfield?”
“Yes, I did.” She swiped her debit card and put in her PIN. “Do you have Wi-Fi here?”
“We sure do.” Joel printed out her receipt, operating the register in a bored, almost automatic way, not even looking at his hand as he tugged an ink pen out of his apron pocket, clicked the end, and gave it to her. “Password’s on the receipt.”
“Thanks.”
Sliding into a booth, Robin took a Macbook out of her messenger bag and turned it on. She hooked up to the Wi-Fi with the password on the receipt (pineapplepluspizza) and went to YouTube, where she signed in and started uploading the week’s latest video to the MalusDomestica channel. While it processed, she perused the thumbnails of the videos already posted. Almost three hundred vlogs, most of them no more than twenty minutes long, a few stretching into a half-hour. Her face peeked out from many of them, as if the webpage were a prison for memories, for tiny past versions of herself, as if she continuously shed prior selves and kept them around as trophies. A packrat cicada, dragging around a suitcase full of old skins. She enjoyed browsing through the grid of tiny pictures, each one representing a day, a week, a month of her life—seeing all those chunks of time, those pieces of creative effort, fulfilled her, made her feel accomplished.
Millions of subscribers, millions of viewers’ worth of video-monetization ad revenue and MalusDomestica T-shirt sales. Their patronage was what funded her travels, what put food in her mouth, clothes on her back, and gasoline in her Conlin Plumbing van.
She clicked one of the thumbnails, opening a video from a year and a half ago. Past-Robin’s hair was dyed pink and she was slightly heavier, pearish, a spattering of blemishes on her cheeks and forehead. Now-Robin clicked to the middle of the video.
A pumpkin sat on a picnic table in a quiet park somewhere. The day was overcast and wind coughed harsh and hollow against the camera’s microphone. Past-Robin turned and flung a hatchet with one smooth lunging movement.
The weapon somersaulted thirty feet and planted itself neatly into the rind of the pumpkin with a morbid splutch.
“Good one,” said Heinrich’s velvet voice from off-camera.
Joel slid into the seat on the other side of the table, startling her. His tropical aura of perfume swept in behind him, pouring into the booth.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello, Joel.”
“Looked like you could use some company. And by the by, it’s not Johl, it’s … Joe-elle,” he said, poetically pinching the syllable at the end with an A-OK gesture. “You know, like noel? Or motel? Or go to hell?”
She smiled tightly. “Nice to meet you, Joe-elle.”
“Likewise.”
“Do you always make yourself this comfortable with strangers?”
“Nah, nah—we ain’t strangers, hon.” Joel turned in his seat, throwing a leg over one knee and his elbow over the back of the bench. “I think I know you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“You think ain’t nobody gonna recognize you with that Mohawk, that rock-chick look, that extra muscle mass,” said Joel, flourishing fingers at her. His fingernails were polished, glittering in the fluorescents. “Which looks really good on you. Very Amazonian. Very punk. I likes. And you got the cheekbones for it.” He leaned in close, talking over the Macbook’s lid. “Your name is Robin Martine, ain’t it?”
She took him in with tightened eyes now, assessing him fully.
“Your mama used to babysit for my mama when we was little kids.” He sat back again, smiling like a satisfied house cat. “You and me, we used to play together. I know you, yeah, I do. We didn’t really ever talk much once we started getting into middle school—”
“My father wasn’t too keen on having other kids in the house in addition to—”
“No, honey, he didn’t like Black kids in the house.”
A blush warmed her face, tinged with the heat of anger at the memory of her father. “Well, he’s dead now, or so I’ve heard. So…”
“Oh, yeah. I know. Lot of tall tales around this town concerning you and your mama. Some of ’em are even true.” Joel took out a pack of cigarettes and packed them against his palm. Some brand she didn’t recognize, with a logo in flowery cursive she couldn’t read. “You mind if I…?”
She didn’t mind. He took one out, but paused, waggling the pack offeringly.
“No.” She waved him off. “Tryin’ to quit.”
Joel cupped the cigarette in one hand with a lighter, lit it and drew on it, then dragged an ashtray over and blew a stream of menthol smoke into the air. “Break a leg,” he mused, tapping ashes. “I’ve quit many a time. Not as easy as it looks.”
As slow as the Internet was, it would be useless while the video was uploading. Robin studied her keyboard and decided to pay more attention to Joel than the computer.
“So,” he said, kicking a toe to an unheard beat, “what does ‘Malice Domestic’ mean?” He smiled evilly and feigned a shiver. “It sounds so sinister.” He shivered again.
“Malus domestica. Latin scientific name of the common apple tree.”
“Apple tree?”
Robin gave a half-wince, half-shrug. “Makes sense if you’ve watched the videos.”
Joel stuck out his bottom lip and nodded as if to say fair enough.
She opened the can of coffee with a discreet snick! and dug the orange pill bottle out of her pocket, tipping one of the tablets out. Cupping the tablet with her tongue, she swallowed it with a swig of Monster, to be assimilated into the constant swamp-light still humming in the marrow of her bones from yesterday’s dose.
Joel took another draw and French-inhaled the smoke up his nose, then blew it back out. “What’s it about?” he asked, studying the cherry at the end of the cigarette. “Your YouTube channel.”
“It’s sort of like … a travel journal, I guess.”
“Whatcha traveling around doing?”
“Just, ah … trying to appreciate America.” Robin fumbled for the words. “Roadside attractions, restaurants, that kind of thing.”
“Kind of like a homeless Guy Fieri.”
Robin chuckled. “Well, I live in my van—but, heh. Yeah, I guess you could say that.”
“You are so full of shit.” He shook his head, the do-rag’s ties rustling behind his head like a ponytail. “Look at this thrift-store Lisbeth Salander over here, talking about highways-and-byways. You ain’t Jack Kerouac.” He leaned in conspiratorially again. “What you really up to?”
Robin hesitated, glancing down at the camera. It was still rolling. “Well … I hunt witches.”
“Really.” Joel ashed his cigarette. “Fascinating.” He reached over and turned off the camera, surprising her.
“Hey!”
“You need to stop playin’. I assume huntin’ witches means killin’ witches, and there ain’t no way you’re videotapin’ that shit, cause me and you, we know the truth, but them out there, John Q. Asshole, they don’t know shit. They see a video of you shanking somebody, they gonna be all over you. Now, I want to talk to you without this camera here. Backstage, so to speak. Off the record. Cause I can tell you just putting on a show for the people at home. But I want real talk.” He smiled tightly. “I know what you doing. You looking for them, ain’t you?”
Her breathing had become labored without her realizing it. She felt cornered. “Them who?”
“The ones killed your mama.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“When it happened, my mama lost her shit.” Joel squinted in the murk of smoke hovering over the table. “I remember this vividly—because she scared the hell outta me. This was about … sophomore year? Junior year, of high school? She was out of her mind freaked out about it. Shaking, wide-eyed, locking-all-the-windows freaked. Like she thought the sky was falling, like she was afraid the Devil himself was gonna get in the house.
“Asked me all kinds of weird-ass questions about this and that—wanted to know what kind of person Annie was, what kinds of things she did. Why she had a speech impediment, why her tongue was like that. Did she hurt animals, did she do anything to me when me and Fish was little…”
“She never would have.” Robin stiffened. “Mom wasn’t like that—”
“Oh, I know.” Joel traced imaginary hearts on the table with a fingertip. “Annie was a good woman. A good-hearted woman. Weird, maybe, but good. I told my mama that. I still remember the way she cooked her bacon when me and Fish came over in the mornings. I cook mine the same way.” He illuminated each point with his hands, forming invisible shapes in the air, snapping and wagging invisible bacon. “Crispy, but still floppy. Fatty but not gristly.”
Trying to visualize this, eating bacon for breakfast with her mother in their little kitchen, Robin saw two other little faces sitting at the table. Two quiet children, wide-eyed
(my name is fisher and his name is johl but mama calls him jo-elle)
and spooked like baby owls. The knot inside her loosened, and her jaw tipped open in surprise. “I do remember you.”
“Oh yeah?”
“It was the bacon that made me remember.”
Joel smiled and made a Hallelujah! raise-the-roof motion with his hands. “Ain’t nothing in this world good bacon can’t make better.”
“They made me forget a lot. The shrinks the state made me talk to. They made—or maybe let—me think I was crazy, and they brainwashed all the witch stuff out of me. Or tried to, anyway.”
Joel glanced toward the kitchen—or perhaps it was the clock—and back at her, giving the scruff-headed woman-in-black an assessing look. Finally, he said in a tentative way, “There was a rumor going around you said witches had something to do with it. I believed it then, and I believe it now.”
“Yeah. I told people. But they didn’t believe me. That’s why I had to talk to the shrinks. They thought I had PTSD or something. Thought losing my mother drove me crazy.”
“You ain’t found ’em, have you? That’s what you been doing ever since the shrinks let you out. You been looking for them witch bitches.”
She squinted out the window at the noonday sun.
Joel put both feet flat on the floor and stubbed out his cigarette, leaning on his elbows. He clasped his hands together and spoke around them. “So you for real, then. You doing this shit for real. How do you make YouTube videos about this shit? Ain’t this incriminating evidence?”
Robin’s fingernails dug into her palms. “You ever heard of Slender-Man? Skinny dude with no face, wears a black suit and a red tie, got long arms, creeps people out?”
“Can’t say I have.”
She did a search on YouTube for “Slender-Man” and turned the Macbook around so Joel could see it. “Half a dozen YouTube channels devoted to this paranormal being Slender-Man. Each one chronicles a different group of people trying to figure out the mystery surrounding him … they’re all set up as if the events happening in the videos are real. But, of course, everybody knows they aren’t—wink-wink. They’re each a scripted and acted horror series made to look real. Like, you remember The Blair Witch Project? How it was designed and shot to look like somebody found it on a camera in the woods, basically started the found-footage genre?”
Joel nodded. “Yeah. And you doing something like that, but theirs is fake and yours is actually real? But you make it look like it’s as fake as theirs. Ah ha-ha. Reverse reverse psychology.”
“Yes.”
Another man came out of the kitchen. His hair was going gray and his drawn face was a hash of wrinkles, but Robin recognized Miguel from the photograph behind the register. “Hey,” he called. “We got to get ready for lunch.”
“Untwist them panties, hero,” said Joel, grabbing at the air in a zip-it motion. “I’m just doing some catching up.”
“Who’s your friend?” asked Miguel.
“Her mama used to babysit me and Fish when we was kids.” Joel coughed into his fist and took a bottle of hand sanitizer out of his apron pocket, squirting it into his palms and wringing his hands. “Robin Martine.”
Miguel’s brain seemed to lag like a busy computer program and then he subtly crumpled. “Oh.” An awkward silence lingered between them, and then one corner of his bushy mustache ticked up in a wistful half-smile. “I remember hearing about, uhh…” His belly bobbed with one hesitant breath. “I’m sorry about your mother.”
Robin tried her best to be gracious, but didn’t know what to say, so she echoed his expression and dipped her head appreciatively.
“Real big shame, kid. I didn’t really know her,” he added, “but I heard she was a good person.”
“She was.” Robin’s hand found its way around the can of coffee, and she drummed soft fingers against the aluminum. The two men watched her with expectant eyes, the quiet pause only scored by the sound of furious washing and banging in the kitchen.
Robin looked down at the Monster can. “Five years ago. Decided this year I would come back to town and visit her. This year I’ve decided I feel like I can finally … finally push through the dark and say the things I need to say to her. I guess.”
“Well,” said Miguel. “Welcome back, Kotter. Mi casa es su casa.”
Joel followed him back into the kitchen. “What he said.”