There she is.
I know it’s her, even though she’s a good hundred yards ahead, even though I can’t see her face. I know her from the cadence of her stride, the swing of her ponytail, the angle of her elbows as she slowly increases her lead. Eventually the fog swallows her completely, and she’s gone.
Not gone as in “left me in the dust.”
Gone as in “disappeared.”
I’ve seen it all play out even on the clearest of mornings when there’s no fog. She doesn’t dart onto the trail from the edge, or from a side-trail, or anything like that. No, she just appears, right in the middle of the trail, always in exactly the same spot. But her appearance is somehow relative to my speed: The faster my pace, the closer I am when she appears. She’s like an avatar showing me where I ought to be if I were in better shape. I used to be in much better shape, if my family and friends are to be believed. A hell of a runner, they say.
I wouldn’t know. I can’t remember.
Retrograde amnesia, they call it. There are holes in my memory, large holes from the time before the accident. On the bright side, my memory since the accident is sharp as a tack. Lots of bright and cheery memories of the pain of rehab and of learning all the things I didn’t know I’d forgotten.
Anyway, that was then. Now I only run because my doctor threatened to put me on insulin. At least I have a mystery to distract me from the monotony. I suppose I should be frightened of her, but I’m not. Mostly I’m just curious.
Who–or what–is she?
#
It’s weird to think that I enjoyed running once. Sure, I like how I feel afterwards, and the sense of accomplishment, and the improvement in my health. But nowadays I find the process tedious at best, excruciating at worst.
I have newspaper clippings, photographs, old journals, running logs, and assorted race paraphernalia from my forgotten days. I even have a trophy room where I keep it all together with a modest collection of trophies, ribbons, and trinkets. The evidence overwhelmingly corroborates my family’s assertions.
I’ve spent a lot of time in that room lately, poring through all of it. I have the thought that perhaps the disappearing/reappearing girl from the trail is connected somehow to my former life as a runner. I see her only while running, right? It’s just a theory, but it feels right.
I flip absently through a box of bibs, runner IDs from road races I can’t remember. My wife tells me I saved every single one I ever wore. Number one hundred seventeen, number thirty-four. Eighty-seven, this one signed by several names I don’t recognize. Three hundred sixty-three, crumpled up into a ball. Meaningless numbers, all of them. You’d think I’d have written something on them for posterity, something to remind me of their significance. Finishing times or anecdotes or something. Guess I never thought to plan for getting hit by a truck.
I wander out of the trophy room and down to the bathroom. I pull the scale out from under the sink and step onto it. One sixty-nine, down another eight pounds. My wife says I’m almost at my competition weight. I’ll take her word for it.
I return the scale to its hiding place. Despite my lack of enthusiasm for running I’m making great progress, and it’s all because of her. I want to catch her. Yesterday, I think I got within ten yards of her. I could make out the Nike swoosh on her wind pants, even the frizzy strands of hair escaping from her ponytail. So close! A few weeks ago it seemed impossible, but my confidence has grown by leaps and bounds. I can do this. I’m going to catch her soon.
It’s only a matter of time.
#
Today’s the day.
A few days ago I pulled within an arm’s length. I could have lunged for her, probably reached her, but there were too many other runners on the trail and it would have been awkward.
I pace myself well this morning, making sure I have plenty of gas left in the tank as I approach her materialization point just past mile marker three. She appears about five yards in front of me, immediately moving at a pace more or less identical to my own. The visibility is great; there are no runners in sight down the long straightaway ahead. I glance back over my shoulder and find the trail empty in that direction as well.
We’re alone.
I kick easily into a higher gear and close the gap. It’s amazing how real she looks. I hesitate, momentarily wondering if perhaps I have it wrong, that perhaps she’s real after all.
Only one way to find out.
I reach out and poke my finger through her shoulder.
She turns her head, and her eyes go wide. I assume mine do to, because I recognize her face from my newspaper clippings. I don’t recall her name, but I know I’ve seen her.
She looks away, regains her focus. Accelerates.
Disappears.
I don’t stop, even though my entire right arm has turned cold, as if I’ve submerged it in ice water for several minutes. It’s uncomfortable, but I savor the feeling as it slowly dissipates. It is the feeling of progress, evidence that she’s not a hallucination.
#
Patty Manafort.
I find her almost immediately among my clippings. She was pretty good, usually top ten in the local 5K and 10K races. I’m not certain that I knew her–none of the pictures or clippings shows us together in the same frame. But it seems likely.
There’s more.
Now that I have a name to work with, I punch it into Google. I find her story within seconds. Turns out she retired from the running game around the same time I did. Like me, I doubt it was entirely by choice.
She’s missing.
Went out running one morning, never came home.
The craziest part though?
She went missing just a few days before my accident.
Strange coincidence.
#
I can beat her now without trying. I’m so fast that she materializes behind me if I don’t properly pace myself.
I thought that perhaps something would change once I reached this milestone, but no grand secrets have been revealed. She still doesn’t communicate with me beyond a brief acknowledgment of my presence, and I’m not even certain of that part anymore. She’ll turn her head, and I’ll see that look of surprise, that momentary glimmer of recognition. But I’m not sure she actually sees me. It’s more like she’s looking through me, or at someone else peering from just over my shoulder.
The trail has dissipated, gone cold, both puns intended. I’m tiring of this game. I’ve tried everything I can think of.
What does she want from me?
#
It’s now mid-October, great running weather, cool and crisp. The leaves are falling, not heavy enough to cover the trail but enough to make me watch my step as I approach Patty’s stretch of trail for the umpteenth time.
By now I’m very consistent with my run times. She appears five yards in front of me, right on cue. I don’t have any new tricks to try today, so I just match her pace and follow. She does her usual thing, stays visible for the better part of a minute, then slowly disappears. Clockwork.
Except this time I notice something new.
A little vortex of wind, low to the ground, just enough to disturb the leaves on the trail. It whirls forward for another twenty yards or so, then veers off sharply to the right. I sprint to catch up.
There’s a bench here. That’s probably why I never noticed it. But now that I study it, really study it, I can see it. Behind the bench, there are patterns to the undergrowth, lines a little too straight to be natural. Hints of old tire ruts. There used to be a trail here. Some little access road, perhaps, or an old logging road.
Is this where she goes after she disappears?
I walk behind the bench and venture a short distance down the trail. It’s overgrown, and the going is slow. I pick my way through briars and blackberry bushes. Eventually the trail ends at a secluded little pond. The water is stagnant, its surface partially obscured by leaves from the surrounding trees. I find an uncovered patch and peer down into the water. It’s deeper than I would have expected. Eight, maybe ten feet.
I glance around but see no further sign of her.
I sit down on a large rock near the shore and shake my head. Maybe that little breeze on the trail was a coincidence. I feel no closer to the truth than when I first saw her months ago. I wonder, not for the first time, if I should just give up the chase, maybe pick a different trail to run. Why am I so obsessed with her, anyway?
That one’s easy.
It’s not about her. Never has been, really.
It’s about me.
It’s stupid, but deep down I’m hoping that she’ll spark something in this broken brain of mine. Help me fill in some of those godforsaken gaps in my memory, remember who I used to be. Something’s there, tickling my subconscious, just out of reach. Every time I see her, it bubbles a little closer to the surface.
But the surface is like a thick sheet of ice.
#
I’ve plateaued. Perhaps even regressed a little bit, if I’m completely honest. Damn Halloween candy. And Thanksgiving tomorrow? I’ll be lucky if I can waddle the five miles by Christmas. It’s been almost a month since I last beat my personal best. I haven’t regressed so badly that I can’t keep up with Patty, but I don’t try to catch her anymore. She does her thing, and I do mine.
Our connection remains a mystery.
It’s a cold morning. I’m out earlier than usual to beat the snow. Flurries in the air, maybe some real accumulation later. My lungs feel uncharacteristically raw from the crisp air, but I power through as I always do. Still, I’m a few seconds off pace as I approach her materialization point.
There she is.
She flickers on a little further ahead than usual due to my delayed arrival. Eleven, maybe twelve yards. I maintain my pace while she slowly increases her lead, then wait for her to disappear.
Except today she doesn’t.
I’m not entirely certain until I see her veer off the trail at the bench, onto that old trail. I scream at my sluggish legs to wake up and close the gap before I lose her. This is my chance. Who knows if I’ll get another one?
I reach the bench, hurdle it without breaking stride, and crash off into the underbrush at breakneck speed. I can see her up ahead, only five or six yards now. She glances over her shoulder, and this time I see something new on her face.
Fear.
“I won’t hurt you!” I shout, but it doesn’t help. She turns on the afterburners and slides effortlessly through the briars. It isn’t quite so easy for me; the thorns rip into my pants, slowing me down. A few bite deep enough to reach the flesh of my legs. The exposed skin of my forearms feels like it’s been shredded to ribbons. But she doesn’t stop, so neither can I.
We reach the pond. She runs toward the shore, weaving between rocks and tree roots. She’s losing me, and I’m starting to feel a cramp. I can’t keep up. I’m not fast enough.
She stumbles.
There’s nothing there where she fell, nothing that should have tripped her up. Whatever. At least the chase is over. She doesn’t try to get up. She flips onto her back, turns to face me, scuttles backwards a few more feet. I stop and stand over her, hands on my knees, breathing heavily.
She starts crying. I raise my hands and try to calm her.
“No, please don’t! I just want to talk!”
Her eyes fill with fear. Maybe ten seconds later, she nods and climbs unsteadily to her feet. I frown. There’s a strange disconnect here, some sort of delay or distortion in the communication.
“Wave if you understand me,” I say.
Another short delay, then she screams at me defiantly. I can’t hear it but I can see the spittle flying from her lips.
Yep. Definitely not on the same wavelength here.
Her mouth is moving. I’m terrible at reading lips, but this is easy. “Please,” she’s mouthing. Over and over again. I raise my hands and back away, but the show continues.
Suddenly I get it.
I’m seeing what happened to her. When she went missing.
Perhaps we were more than just casual acquaintances. Maybe we were friends. Why else would she show me this? I suddenly feel the weight of responsibility on my shoulders. I may learn something here, some information that should be relayed to the authorities. I stop trying to communicate with her and focus my attention on the bizarre one-woman performance playing out before my eyes.
I watch as tears stream down her face. Suddenly she cringes, then she wipes her eyes. She takes a step or two backwards, then nods and reaches a trembling hand under her jacket. She pulls out a runner’s bib, which she crumbles and throws toward the ground. It disappears the second it leaves her hand. But I manage to read the bib’s tag number before she crumbles it.
Three hundred sixty-three.
I know that bib.
I’ve seen it, in that box in my trophy room.
My trophy room.
“Oh God…”
Something slashes her jacket. She staggers backwards.
More holes appear, rapidly, one after another, turning her clothes into Swiss cheese. Something rips into her abdomen, her chest, her shoulder, her upper thigh. Her neck.
Her face.
Blood pours from wounds, bloody froth from her mouth, quickly saturating her clothes. She collapses forward onto her face.
I watch in horror as her body begins to slide, upside down and backwards, along the ground toward a massive tree on the edge of the lake, almost as if someone is dragging her by the feet. The tree has an extensive spider web of roots extending down into the water; I watch her body twist and contort between and around those massive roots, down into the water.
“No, no, no…”
I’m aware that I’m moaning audibly but I can’t stop. I follow the trail of blood toward the tree. The water has receded a little since October. Without stopping to think, I crouch down and crawl beneath the roots, into the freezing water. There are more roots beneath me, roots everywhere. My knees slip and I panic, but my feet settle on a root several feet down, leaving me chest-deep in the frigid water.
It is dark under here, but I can see a little. I can see some garbage: a McDonald’s cup, a broken beer bottle. I can see patches of moss coating the bottoms of the roots that aren’t fully submerged.
I can see the tip of a sneaker protruding from the water.
It isn’t white and shiny and new, like the sneakers Patty wears when I see her on the trail. This sneaker is old, moldy, gray with water and time.
A wave of nausea hits me, but nothing comes up; my insides are too numb for that.
I’ve found her.
And I’ve found me.
Patty’s right here, right in front of me, just below the surface.
I’m the one who put her there.
I remember now.
I wish I didn’t.
Today is the anniversary. Five years exactly. I suppose that’s why she waited until today to unlock these memories.
Yes, I was a runner before the accident.
But I was also a killer.
There’s movement in the water, a wisp of blond hair dancing weightlessly in the murk. The sneaker plops gently back into the water. I can feel vibrations through my feet, movement amongst the roots. My weight on the root system has dislodged the body, caused it to settle a little deeper into the murk. That has to be what’s happening.
Unless she’s doing it. Freeing herself, disengaging her mutilated body from the tangle of roots…
I scream and turn to run but I’m chest-deep in water and the root I’m standing on cracks as I try to use it for leverage. I drop a few feet deeper into the water. Now I’m barely able to keep my face above the surface if I tilt my head back. I can’t control my panic. I flail for all I’m worth, try desperately to climb out. But I can’t, because now I’m stuck.
My foot is caught in a deeper tangle of roots.
Except it doesn’t feel like roots.
It feels more like the grip of a skeletal set of fingers.
I try to convince myself that they are only roots, even as they tighten their grip and pull me slowly into the murk.
—
Ronald Schulte is an avid reader and writer of speculative fiction. His work has previously appeared in several online and print publications including Theme of Absence, The Literary Hatchet, Dark Fire Fiction, Bewildering Stories, and Fiction on the Web. He lives in upstate New York with his wife, son, and twin daughters. Follow Ronald on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ronaldschulteauthor/.
Great read Ron, really enjoyed it!
On to the rest.
Keep up the good work.