Excavation

Chapter 25

The static seemed to float out of the telephone receiver, fluid, suffocating. Reed could barely hear the faint rings beneath it. Then the rings stopped. “Hello?”

“Carol.”

“Reed! How are you? Did you find out what you need? Are you coming home?” She said it rapidly, all the words pushed together.

“I’m not sure, Carol. I’m not… well. Something seems to be happening to me here I don’t understand.” He coughed then, and was amazed himself how bad he sounded.

“Reed, your cold… have you been to see a doctor?”

He paused. He shouldn’t have called her; what could she do to help him anyway? He just needed to hear her voice, tell her, even obliquely, what was bothering him. There was normalcy at home—he could hear it in every word she spoke. The difference between here, the Creeks, and home. He yearned for it. “Yes… I’m fine. He says I’m fine.”

“Well, you don’t sound fine. Reed, I want you home. I want to take care of you. We need you home.”

“I…” He stared at the receiver. His hands were sweating so much the phone was wet. Her voice sounded garbled, as if she were drowning. He stared as one, then two, drops of moisture fell to the floor by his feet. “I want to come home, Carol. But I can’t just yet. I’m finding… things.”

“You need to get out of there, Reed. You sound awful!”

“I know, love. I know.”

Static filled her voice for the rest of the conversation. He had no idea what she was saying, but it comforted him to know her presence was on the other end of this line. The static became worse and worse, until finally she broke the connection. Reed hung on to the phone, listening to the dial tone, for several minutes longer.

The bear ripped through the underbrush and caught the small deer on the run. He crushed its life quickly, not out of mercy but out of eagerness. He still burned, but the burning was steadier now, easier to live with because there weren’t all those peaks and valleys. It just burned and burned, ridding him temporarily of the inside thoughts that had irritated him so, letting him think of basic things. Hunger and food. Thirst. Rage.

He sank his muzzle into the steaming carcass and bit into the flesh. Warm blood flooded his throat. He groaned with satisfaction, drinking in the salt taste.

But then the harsh thoughts were back, the thing inside him, crowding his head and making him roar in pain and anger. He wanted to be biting into something else. Ripping it apart. Something human.

He staggered away from the carcass as if drunk, and charged into the growing darkness.