Suddenly the crickets stopped.
The boy glanced around. It wasn’t unusual for crickets to stop when people were near them, but this was different. Usually crickets in a certain area would stop and those farther away would not. Right now, he couldn’t hear anything but his own breath.
A cold chill ran down his back as he stepped away from the side of the road. He could hear the breeze rustling through the grass, but there was something else as well. A muffled crunching of vegetation. The sound was soft, but it was loud enough for him to hear. He looked down the road and saw the outline of the first hut of his village.
He began walking quickly, telling himself it was only the sounds of the earth. He’d walked this same route hundreds of times and nothing had happened. The larger predators liked to stay away from people and farther into the plains. He had nothing to be afraid of. His father had walked this route and his father before him. This was their road.
There was another sound behind him. The boy couldn’t tell where it came from. It seemed to come from the wind and swirl around in the grass before going to the sky. His heart was beating faster now. He looked once toward his village and then behind him. Making his decision, he sprinted for his hut.
There was a ruckus behind him, grass and weeds being torn from their roots as something crashed through the brush in pursuit.
He was now dashing with all his might, his legs burning and his breath hot like the air around him. The sounds had grown louder, it was right behind him.
The boy was close now to the first hut. It was two stories and made of wood and straw. He burst through the wooden door and saw a man and woman sitting by a small fire. He’d seen them before, they were friends of his mother.
Before he could say anything, a roar rattled the hut. Shaking the beams and causing bits of dirt and dust to fly off the roof. The boy looked to the man whose eyes were wide. He grabbed his wife and took the boy’s arm and ran to the back of the hut where a small ladder led to the second floor. He took his wife by the hips and helped her up as she climbed and disappeared into the darkness. The man then helped the boy up. The wife held him in her arms as the man yelled not to come down.
There was another growl, then dirt being kicked up near the walls. Heavy breathing circled the hut and was followed by clawing against the wood. Whatever was outside was looking for a way in.
More dirt and more digging and then the boy heard the man gasp. There was the deafening splinter of wood and laughter as the man stood frozen.
He jumped for the ladder and started to climb. The boy could see his head poke through the second floor opening before there was laughter again and the man screamed. The wife took hold of the man but he was ripped away from her and pulled down to the first floor.
The screams and crunching of bones made the boy start to cry. Then, the noise stopped. The wife had stopped screaming and sat in shock, trembling. She let go of the boy and kicked the ladder down before scooting to a wall away from the opening. The boy began to go over to her, and froze when he looked down through the opening.
The dark black of blood stained the ground and the walls. The man’s body was not there, but bits of flesh mixed with the dirt and appeared like large insects on the dry earth. There was a growl and the boy jumped backward. As he sat in the woman’s arms, they began to scream for help, pounding against the walls, tears running down their cheeks.
The wood began to creak. Both of them listened breathlessly. The hut shook again and bent, the woman screaming as she realized the hut was collapsing. It shook only a few more seconds before a thundering sound filled the boy’s ears and he fell with the collapsing building and crashed into the ground.
The woman’s screams stopped and the boy couldn’t see what was happening with blood dripping into his eyes. His head was cut and he felt the sharp pressure of a break in his leg. Then he felt something hot against the skin on his arms; it was breath.
CHAPTER
25
The next day Eric woke up late in the afternoon. He’d scored some mediocre drugs; a few dime bags of H and an eighth pound of weed. He’d stayed up late in the morning smoking, watching the city lights from the balcony and the slow rise of the sun over distant hills.
By the time he showered and smoked a joint, it was already nightfall. The moon was half-covered with dark clouds and hovered in the sky like a glowing orb of pale light.
He left the hotel with a stack of money, his drug-hunger satiated for the moment but already tingling his belly for the next wave of warmth and comfort.
The business district was closing up and Eric walked through a few back alleys into the nearest red-light district, though they weren’t given a name here. They were just a few square blocks of bars and strip clubs and cheap hotels. Wind chimes were sounding from a nearby house as he walked down the sidewalk, running into more and more single men. This was like a playground for them, but much more sinister. Because the usual pleasure for single men was sex, and sex was always mingled with power, most of the girls in this district had plenty of mended bones and fresh bruises. Usually it would cost the tourist only a few extra American dollars to impose whatever fantasy he wanted on the girl. Their pimps-which were the owners of the bars or hotels the girls worked out of-knew they could find another girl to replace her for next to nothing.
Eric walked past a bar that stood the girls outside on the sidewalk in their underwear, if they were lucky a silk or polyester robe to cover them. Men would walk by and choose a girl, taking them to a nearby hotel that was owned by her pimps or just the back of a dark alley if the owners didn’t have a place.
He walked into a bar he hadn’t been to before, a small brick building with a neon sign in front. It was just one large room and the bar was against the wall, wooden stools set up in front of it. In the center of the large space was a circular stage with two girls dancing nude. There weren’t that many people inside, mostly laborers having a few drinks before going home or the odd businessman looking for sex. Eric sat at the bar and ordered a shot of Jagermeister, downing it quickly and ordering another. The music was some loud reggae song and it annoyed him as much as the red lighting and copious mirrors.
“You American?” a heavily accented male voice said.
Eric looked to see a small balding Thai sit next to him. He had his jacket half-way open and rings on every finger. “No,” Eric said. The man laughed. “Yeah, you American. You shy. You no shy, I have good yum yum for you. Five dollar.” “I don’t want any yum yum.” “This good yum yum; five dollar.” The man grabbed Eric’s hand. “You come back, I show you.”
Eric finished another shot and stood. He wasn’t horny, but he didn’t really care where he was and it might as well be a backroom filled with women. The man walked him past the stage, Eric glancing up at the girls, their faces empty and sullen. The man opened a door and led him through it, waiting for him to walk in and then shutting it. There were couches on one side of the room next to another door, a small table in between them. The other side of the room sloped down into a pit filled with water about two feet deep. At first Eric thought the pit was filled with mud, but as he looked more closely he could make out the thin tails and rough skin of small crocodiles. They lay motionless in the water, one on top the other in the small space. The water was filthy and stunk of excrement.
The man yelled something toward the other door and it opened. A young girl stepped out with a baby in her arms. It was crying and naked and the girl brought it over to the man.
“Five dollars,” he said, pointing to the pit. “Five dollars and you watch.”
Eric could feel the acidity of vomit rise in his throat and his stomach felt like it was filled with lead. He looked at the young girl and saw bruises on her neck and her bare legs. Though young, she already had a look in her eyes that he’d seen in the older women. A look of hopelessness, and acceptance of the hopelessness. For a reason he couldn’t put into words, it was the scariest thing he’d ever seen.