The Revenant Road

THE

REVENANT

ROAD

By Michael Boatman

1

Open Season

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one.”

On May 16
^th
, just after
midnight
, Jeannie Chan-Montgomery was attacked and murdered on the
Cascade
Mountain
National Park
camping grounds, two hours north of
Seattle
.

On May 15
^th
at
11:39 PM
, Ralph Montgomery, Jeannie’s burden of thirteen years, stood up and started telling “The Joke.” Jeannie hated “The Joke” almost as much as she hated Ralph.

“Blind Guy goes into a bar carrying a huge battle-axe and riding a talking donkey,” Ralph said to the small gathering of friends huddled around a dwindling campfire, wrapped in warm blankets.

Sixteen minutes away from her own butchering, Jeannie jabbed at the orange/red embers of Garret’s fire with a sharp stick, trying to rouse some heat from its depths. Lately, she’d marched through her life beneath the cover of a dark cloud of rage, spinning in orbit about a black sun that burned but shed no warmth.  She wished, for the hundredth time that week, that she had something heavy to smash Ralph’s skull with: In Jeannie’s most fevered imaginings, Ralph was the poster boy for Death by blunt-force trauma.

The Montgomerys and three other couples had driven up from northern
California
the previous Friday night to celebrate Garret and Bonnie Longridge’s twelfth wedding anniversary. The four couples considered themselves close friends; a unit bound by ties that had been formed in college and graduate school. Over the years they’d made it a point to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays together.

Jeannie had hoped to conceive a child the following spring, as she couldn’t quite fathom spending the rest of her life alone with Ralph. The concept of divorcing him, while attractive, made her deeply uneasy. Her mother had raised her with the belief that little Chinese girls who abandoned their husbands were women of low character, a humiliation to their families, and whores.

Half-Chinese,
Jeannie thought bitterly.
Thanks, mom. 

She thrust the stick deeper into the flames.   

The three other couples shifted uncomfortably in their blankets while Ralph talked. Jeannie rolled her eyes and gritted her teeth. When he was sober, Ralph was the most boring motherfucker in
San Francisco
. Get more than two Heinekens inside him, however, and he suddenly became Lenny-fucking-Bruce.

Asshole
, Jeannie thought.

She tossed another log onto the fire. Ralph never noticed how obnoxious he got when he was drunk. He never noticed a lot of things, especially where Jeannie was concerned. If he did, he might have noticed the way Garret Longridge studied Jeannie’s every move. He might have noticed the three times Jeannie and Garret had slipped off into the woods together that day, or the high color fading to a rosy glow in her cheeks when they’d returned.

“Bartender goes: ‘Hey, man, you can’t bring that donkey in here!’” Ralph said. “Blind Guy goes: ‘But I’m allergic to dogs, so they gave me this specially-trained seeing-eye donkey—’”

Jeannie’s focus drifted across the campfire to where Garret and Bonnie sat snuggled together in their thick blanket. As Jeannie watched, the very blonde, very W.A.S.P.y Bonnie craned her head back and kissed her husband on the cheek. Garret smiled and kissed her back.

The Happy Fucking Couple,
Jeannie thought.

“Bartender goes: ‘Okay, I guess. But the battle-axe has got to go.’ At which point the
donkey
says...”

Jeannie threw the stick into the fire, stood up and stalked out of the circle of light.

“Honeeeyy,” Ralph moaned in the tone she hated. “You’re killing the joke.”

“You okay, Jeannie?” Bonnie said.

Jeannie stopped, turned back.

“No,” she said. “I’m nauseous and I’m fucking your husband, you stupid bitch.”

A savage pleasure lit Jeannie up from the inside at the sight of their stunned expressions. Her eyes shining, Jeannie spun on her heel and stomped into the woods. She was barely ten yards away from the clearing before she started running.

God, that felt good,
she thought.
The looks on their faces!

Jeannie ran, loving the wind as it cooled the sweat on her throat, and the rising beat of her heart. She stripped off her sweatshirt and bra, flung them away and ran on, fully aware that she was running away from everything and everyone she’d ever really known.

“Good,” she breathed, and began to sprint.

Someone grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around. It was Garret.

“Jeannie?” Garret said. “What the Hell—”

Jeannie grabbed him, stifled his outrage with a kiss.   

Garret pushed her away. “Stop,” he hissed. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

“I told the truth,” she snapped. “Remember that?”

Garret opened his mouth to answer, but a moment later, something wet splattered Jeannie’s face. She yelped, half-blinded by the sudden warmth that stung her eyes, and realized there was blood in her mouth.

Jeannie opened her eyes.

Something was standing in front of her, something huge.

At first Jeannie thought it was a grizzly bear. There’d been sightings in the park earlier that month. But the thing that gripped the headless body of her lover in one massive fist was too large to be a grizzly bear. With the other hand it lifted Garret’s severed head and swallowed it whole.

Jeannie turned and ran.

Whatever the Not-grizzly was, Jeannie knew, on some instinctual level, that it had come for her. Even now she was too angry to go down without a fight.  

Behind her, the Not-grizzly dropped Garret’s corpse and shrieked. Jeannie sensed the creature leap after her, screaming as it closed the distance, and put on a burst of speed. A shadow passed over her head and dropped to the ground in front of her with its arms spread like dark wings.  

Jeannie slammed into the thing’s chest and felt her nose break. She rebounded and spun to the ground.

The thing leered down at her, blocking the light from the full moon: Teeth that would have looked more at home in a shark’s maw erupted from its jaws and splattered Jeannie’s face with drool. She screamed. Then the thing sank its claws into the meat of her face and dragged her into the forest.

Jeannie Chan-Montgomery’s shrieks echoed over the forest while her husband and friends searched for her. 

Her killer screamed while it fed.         

I know these things because Jeannie Chan-Montgomery walked through my bathroom wall an hour ago. I was sitting there, finishing the
Times
crossword puzzle, when she appeared and called me a “selfish prick.” She’s been dead for nearly six months but that doesn’t matter. She’s glaring at me as I write these words.

“You’re responsible now,” she hisses. And she’s right. In a very real way, I
am
responsible for Jeannie’s death and the deaths of so many others. They come to me, my Dead, to whisper their stories. I write them down: Like the Dead, I also walk the
Revenant Road
, and I’m responsible.

I’m responsible.                            

My name is Obadiah Grudge.

This is a true story.