Undraland Read online

Two.

  Stranger Things

  Working as a cashier in a small town is a lost art. You have to look interested in your job while being totally bored out of your skull. Luckily my boss wasn’t under the impression that I needed to act like my life’s ambition was bagging and checking, so he let me do my homework when the store hit its inevitable lulls.

  I’d been so nervous for college, thinking it would be infinitely harder than high school. But as most things in life, the buildup was bigger than the thing itself. Bio was boring after looking at the syllabus, so I spent the first two weeks doing all the homework sections in the book just to be done with the busy work. This was the way of most of my classes, with the exception of English Lit. There was little structure to the way Professor Branson did things, so homework in her class was anybody’s guess. This is how I got stuck reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame like a pretentious poser at the end of my shift. I talked to Tonya about it on my cell during my lunch break. “I honestly don’t understand classic literature like this. I mean, this would never get published today. A billion pages on the architecture of the city? Boring!”

  “You want me to rent the Disney version?” Tonya suggested.

  She’s a sweetie. “Something tells me it won’t be as close to the original as Branson wants it. You know what’s next on the chopping block? A Tale of Two Cities. And after that I get treated to the heartwarming tale of Love in the Time of Cholera. I swear, the woman’s a masochist.”

  I heard a telltale clatter of pots that told me Tonya was trying to cook again. It was a thing of mercy I wasn’t home for it. She burns everything and makes a huge mess doing it. Then she grins with this expectant cutie face when she serves you the slop. I have to be all cheery and eat the gruel with gratitude, using my best acting skills. I just don’t have that in me today. Stupid Danny eating all the cheese. “Hey, T, are you cooking something?”

  “Yep! Just finished making us a hot dog casserole, Little L.” Oh, the pride in her tone. I never had the heart to blanch to her face, so over the phone worked just fine. “It’s in the fridge, so just heat it up when you get home. I’ve gotta leave for work.”

  “I’ll bet you a dollar Danny eats it all by morning,” I groused. My phone chirped to let me know my battery was a piece of crap, and was currently crapping out on me. Like a big giant piece of crappety crap. I hate my phone. I hurried to end the call. “Sounds awesome. Have a good night at work. Wait those tables like a wildebeest.”

  “That’s the plan. Waitress extraordinaire.”

  “See you soon,” I said.

  On my walk home after work, my stomach rumbled and churned at the same time. The creepy feeling that someone was watching me always amplified at night. Out in the open. By myself. I looked over my shoulder, but again saw nothing.

  Stupid overactive imagination. I’ll never let Danny talk me into an all-night marathon of the Evil Dead movies ever again.

  I picked up my pace, knowing that if Linus was watching, he’d be laughing. I wished he were still here. Nothing was all that scary when he was around. That’s before the chemo wiped out his high school jock build. Linus got the height and the outgoing personality. I got the figure no one looked at and the ability to make two whole friends since moving to the area. I shouldn’t even count Danny, since I got him by default. He comes with Tonya, who never seemed bothered by my melancholy moments or my disinterest in sneaking into the club Danny valeted at. She’s a treasure, hot dog casserole and all.

  A rustle in the distance made my heart jump. I scolded myself immediately. Of course there’s movement in the woods. Probably a raccoon. I squinted at the thick wall of trees, but saw nothing to explain the tightening knot in my gut. Well-lit street to the right, dark bands of trees on the left. I’d take the noises of busy city life any day over the quiet of nature, luring you into a false sense of security.

  The movement became more patterned, and I could tell the raccoon or person or zombie or whatever was ambling with more purpose toward me.

  Okay, seriously. Too much rustling to be the wind. Not caring that my messenger bag was banging my thigh, I picked up my pace to a jog, my heart rate increasing when I heard the movement in the woods following me. The hairs on my arms stood on end, and not to be superstitious, but my arm hair is never wrong.

  Dread jolted my heart when I heard uneven running coming toward me from the trees. I broke out into a full on run, trusting my Chucks to make up for my natural lack of sprinting skills. I’m pretty sure there was something in the commercials about that. Nature whipped by me, and though I still saw nothing, I heard it charging at full force, crashing through bramble and crushing stray branches underfoot. I ran with all my might, turning my head to the side at the sound emerging from the woods to find… a bear?

  I swear, I was so shocked, I nearly stopped running to gawk at the beast barreling toward me from my left. It was such an odd sight. A giant brown bear. In Ohio. On the sidewalk.

  Chasing me.

  I screamed like the girl I am, alerting no one. I stumbled once as I turned from the beast and pumped my legs for all they were worth in the direction of home.

  Then the chase stopped, quick as it came. The pounding steps ceased, and were replaced by animal howls and roars, reaching their crescendo when a horrific ripping sound cracked through the night. I slowed my flight and turned to see the largest bear that ever was. He was easily over ten feet tall, hulking in musculature, with massive paws and rabid foam clinging to its fangs. The bear was wrestling an olive-skinned man…and losing.

  I still don’t understand it, but somehow the tall and muscular Atlas of a man, crazy enough to wrestle a bear, bested the beast. He knocked the furry mass onto its back and put the bear in a chokehold like a professional wrestler in a Lycra onesie. Only this guy wore jeans and a black t-shirt, which really, professional wrestlers should’ve adopted a long time ago.

  “Run, Lucy! Go home!” the man shouted in a deep timbre.

  “What?” I said stupidly. Shock is the only way I can think of to explain why I needed to be told to get the smack out of Dodge.

  “Run!” he repeated, his expression wild as he wrestled the bear, who was putting up quite the fight. The bear clawed at his face, leaving a gouge I screamed at the sight of.

  I wanted to help. I mean, who was I that this Good Samaritan should die because of me? With one more command from his angry mouth, I obeyed. I think we both understood how little help I could actually be to him in this scenario. I mean, seriously. It’s a bear. Some kind of a rabid giant brown bear who was gunning for Kincaid girl ribs and barbecue sauce for dinner. I ran away from the two, fishing through my bag for my phone and cursing loudly when the battery failed me. This was my punishment for texting Tonya while on the job.

  Half a mile left, and the stitch in my side was begging me to join track next semester to replace weightlifting. Seriously. What a useless skill. What was I thinking? I ignored the discomfort and bolted to the apartment in record time, not stopping until I was safely tucked away inside. One bedroom, one bath, no dishwasher, three locks. Good enough. I bolted all three, then pushed a chair in front of the door for good measure.

  Tonya was waitressing, and Danny was at work driving Cadillacs in the parking structure, so there was no one to freak out to. I let out one tearless sob to the empty apartment. I plugged in my phone and left Tonya a breathless message to watch out for bears on her drive home. I worried she would think I was joking. Visions of Tonya getting mauled by the beast plagued me until a fist slammed on the front door not five minutes later.

  Bears don’t knock, but neither does someone with a key. I moved the chair and peered through the peephole, gasping at the grisly sight that greeted me.

  It was him. Six and a half foot tall Samaritan Sam with a large cut bleeding through the arm of his grimy black t-shirt. My stranger danger alert went up, but knowing his injuries were my fault moved my fingers to open the door. “Come in. Oh! Your shoulder! Oo! The bear got yo
ur face!” The blood was far thicker up close than through the comfort of the peephole, seeping down from his high cheekbones and painting red streaks into his five o’clock shadow.

  He didn’t need introductions, but barreled through to the bathroom without a word. Like he knew where it was. Like he’d been here before.

  I knocked on the door lightly. “Are you okay? Do you need anything, guy-I-don’t-know?”

  “I got it,” he answered gruffly. “Where’d Danny put the antiseptic?”

  Danny recently sustained a life-threatening injury of scraping his elbow in a game of touch football. Two days, and we were still hearing about his heroic moves. “It’s probably out here. Hold on.” Danny was always leaving things in unexpected places. I once found the jar of peanut butter on top of the rickety bookshelf and the jelly under the duct tape-patched futon next to the remote. He’s lovely to live with.

  I scanned the living room, fished under the futon, rifled through the pantry and finally found the antiseptic in the laundry basket. “I got it!” I called through the apartment. I was gripping the handle before it dawned on me I should probably never barge in on a man in the bathroom. “Can I come in?”

  “It’s your place.”

  With that warm welcome, I let myself into the narrow space. It was small with one person using the facilities; introducing a huge-chested hulking guy into the bathroom made the walls feel even closer together. “Here, let’s wash that and see what the damage is.” I put on my best professional voice, hoping it fooled him. If I really wanted to be a doctor, flinching at a gushing flesh wound was not an option. “You can borrow one of Danny’s shirts. Yours needs a washing.” Or a trash can. It was torn in three places and drenched in what I hoped was mostly the bear’s blood.

  He nodded and pulled his shirt over his head. I tried not to look at his perfectly cut abs or his entire torso that looked straight off the covers of Tonya’s skeezy meet/cute-flowers-dinner-handcuffs romance novels. He had a rope around his neck with a pouch on the end, resting against his bare chest. Blood streaked the counter and pooled on the floor. One of his hands was shaking as he washed off his broad shoulder and too-large bicep in the sink, bending at odd angles to get under the wimpy flow. The two biggest culprits for his pain were the gash on his shoulder and the one on his cheekbone.

  “I got it,” I offered, pulling a rag from under the sink and wetting it. I gently dabbed at his skin, aware of our close proximity and the discomfort that came with it. Aside from the assumption that he was Danny’s football buddy, I really knew nothing else about the guy. He made no effort to break the building tension, so I kept quiet, praying the wounds would not be super deep. I pressed the rag to the seeping gash on his shoulder, noting that he did not make his soreness known.

  “You…there was a bear. He was chasing me, and you stopped him.” He said nothing to this, which for some reason made me feel relieved that at least I had not lost my mind and imagined the whole thing. “Thanks for that.”

  His green eyes landed on mine, a million questions flickering between us. He swallowed. “Yup.” He reached for the antiseptic and removed the cap with his teeth, looking savage. Like, you know, a man who wrestles with bears. His thick black hair was messy and matted with blood that dripped down his forehead and touched the ornate diamond-shaped gold tattoo under his cheekbone. I’d never seen a metallic tattoo before, and didn’t even know that kind of ink existed. It blended into his olive skin, and I only noticed it when I was uncomfortably close to the stranger. I fought with the urge to touch it, feeling foolish as I moved my gaze to his very naked shoulder.

  Occasionally Danny would walk around without his shirt on. With his pooched belly hanging over his boxers, it was hard to tell if he was trying to impress Tonya or if he’d given up on showing off for women altogether.

  This was not the same. The guy looked like, well, a man who wrestles bears. He even had scarred-over violent slashes across his chest and one that wrapped in a downward swirl across his abdomen.

  Why did we get an apartment with such a tiny bathroom?

  I examined the fresh cuts on his face and his shoulder with a frown. “Why was there a bear?” And then the questions started tumbling out of me. “How did you survive a fight with a bear? How did I get away? Where were you going this time of night?” Then the most obvious question of all came to me, and I was chagrinned how turned around I’d gotten that I hadn’t asked it before opening the door in the first place. “Who are you?”

  “You shouldn’t let strangers into the house.” His eyes hardened at my accusatory tone. “And I’m the guy who kept the Were from eating you.”

  “The what?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Did you hear you?” I left the rag on his shoulder for him to put pressure on if he wished. “Who are you?”

  “Jens.” He glanced toward the door. “And we should get out of here. Pack a bag.”

  “Huh?” I shook my head, as if that might make sense of the night’s events. “We? Look, I appreciate you fending off the bear. Really, I do. That was some legit Ultimate Fighting Champion stuff, for sure. But I’m not going anywhere. I don’t know you.”

  He leaned toward the door. His neck muscles were tensed, and he seemed to be listening for danger. It was then I realized his Spidey sense was tingling, and he had not let down his guard even in the solid bear-proof apartment structure. He spoke in a low whisper, grabbing my arm in a firm manner I did not appreciate. It didn’t hurt, but the I’m-bigger-than-you implication was clear. “Look, I don’t have time to explain the way of the world to you. We have to get out of here. If one Were found you, more are coming. I can handle one, sure, but a whole pack? You’ll have to trust me on this.”

  “You?” My voice was shrill. “Who are you? Trust you? That may work in the movies, but I don’t trust on a dime. You can patch yourself up.” I pointed to the door. “Get out.”

  Instead of arguing, he said the one thing that stopped my brain. He looked at me to make sure I heard him and said, “Salmon Seesaw.”