smack face-first into a tree. I fall on my butt and taste blood. Behind me the serial killers, or whoever they are (Gilroy?), are getting closer, so I scramble up, put out my arms, and run like the devil. I hit a tree with my shoulder, jam my fingers on another, and smash my knee into a third, but I don’t stop. Tiny branches whip my face, but I don’t care.
I stop crashing through the brush and crouch down to listen. I can’t hear anything except the screaming cicadas and my blood pounding in my ears. I can’t tell what direction I came from. I can’t breathe normally. Heat lightning flickers gently in the sky. I stand up and start to walk.
Every branch I step on causes me to cringe. Something is in the woods with me, and whatever it is can hear me and see me blundering in the dark. At any minute, I’ll see the shape of a man step out from behind a tree, and it will all be over.
Suddenly, a shape looms before me. I let out a noise and fall backward. It’s massive, with its arms outstretched to grab me. I scrabble backward in the dry leaves and realize that the figure isn’t moving. I freeze.
Wait, it’s a… statue?
Fifteen feet tall, the sculpture is rough and primitive. When I finally get up the nerve to touch it, I discover it’s made of concrete. Its arms are stretched out as if the statue is going to hug me—twenty-five feet from fingertip to fingertip. I can feel it watching me, and while in the daytime I would laugh at myself for being so stupid, at night, alone in the woods, I only want to get away. I know it’s just a statue and that it’s not really alive… but what if I’m wrong?
I creep past it and keep moving, feeling as though I’m being watched. I keep waiting to hear the statue lift itself out of the ground and shamble after me. And then I trip over the TV. I’ve tripped over a TV before (don’t ask), and there’s no mistaking the noise it makes or where it clips me in the shins. My hands hit the dirt, knocking over a broken plastic pitcher, and all around me on the ground I see light-colored shapes scattered everywhere: broken plates, toaster ovens, microwaves—it’s a graveyard for smashed junk.
Then I notice the headstones and realize it’s an actual graveyard. The stones are worn and old, leaning to the side, split in half, sinking into the mulch. I think about the dead bodies directly beneath me: how their coffins have probably rotted away, and the dirt has subsided, and their hands are just inches away from breaking through the mulch and twining around my fingers. I’m up and running again.
I pass a tree with white ribbons hanging from its branches, then another tree, this one with nothing but hubcaps dangling from chains. I swear I see white candles burning, far away, but when I turn toward them, they flicker and go out. Two massive rocks have been chopped and shaped until they look like the heads of African kings. I run between them. The trees are getting thicker. The woods are getting darker…. I’m lost.
Wait—I smell salt water and the sweet smell of thyme. Then the scent of cloves, cinnamon, and lemongrass. I hear the tinkling of a wind chime up ahead, and I burst into a clearing. Then I recognize it… Buzzard’s Roost.
All the lights are out except at the Buzzard Social Club, where it’s bright and loud. Music is playing. People are probably watching something on the stupid satellite dish. Suddenly, something as mundane as television seems tremendously comforting to me.
The music gets louder, and it sounds alive. Maybe they’re having a party? Just being around people right now, having a beer or even a Coke, something processed and artificial that was made in a factory and sold in a supermarket—even that sounds reassuringly normal to me now. I burst into the social club.
“Hey, guys!” I shout. “Remember—” And then I stop cold.
The room is packed with people, and they’re all staring at me. Three drummers with their hands frozen over their drums. Dozens of black people I’ve never seen before. Old white ladies. My grandmother. Josie. And right across from me, those two backstabbers, Hayes and Madison.
Doc Buzzard, the man I saw in the garden shed, steps out of the crowd. He’s dressed in white.
“Hello, Alex,” he