11.
Bloodbath
ONE OF THE UNDERGRAD ART students was given the job of responding to all inquiries. She would message Doc with questions, and he would message her back. Another student suggested that she simply produce a FAQ, but she said she had no time for that, busy as she was responding to all the inquiries.
“No, there will not be a food truck.”
“Yes, the live music will be provided by anyone who brings their own instruments. Feel free to bring whatever you like. We know there will be banjos.”
“Yes, we request that everyone wear a rabbit costume. Pink or white is preferred, but there is some wiggle room.”
“No, there are no parking lots. These are country roads. We recommend carpooling, drop-offs, and walking in.”
“No, there is no specific address. Most of the activity is expected to occur around the railway bridge on Colchester Road.”
“Fireworks are permitted, but remember, only you can prevent wildfires.”
“No, there are no camping facilities.”
“No, we do not have a drugs and alcohol policy.”
“No, we do not have any waivers, per se. Practice responsibility in moderation.”
“No, we can’t tell you if there will be any distinguishing marks on the Bunnyman because we don’t know either.”
“No, we do not have a policy on inclement weather.”
“Yes, we are for real. Are you?”
Doc sent Veronica a message. He said there’s so much chatter that he regrets not charging a fee to cover the cost of Bunnyman.
..
Stuart picked up Veronica in Doc’s car.
There were bunnies along the road, walking on the grassy shoulders and down along the drainages. The car lights lit up their white oblong bellies and shined in their faces below hoods of floppy or sky-high ears. They both were amazed and delighted at the panoply. Uniformly costumed but faces from all tribes, nations, pockets and diasporas. All hail the bunny horde. They could be seen in the trees, hurrying in all directions, some carrying backpacks and speakers, playing death metal, black metal, rockabilly and psychobilly, alt country and provincial bluegrass, Deliverance, Zombie and Ministry. The hills of Clifton were alive not just with music, but with creeds, philosophies, aesthetics, styles and comportments of the globe. Some carried six packs, twelve packs, backpacks of skinny cans and little baggies. Bars and trail mix.
They parked the car on the side of the road, listing into a switchgrass field, and started walking south. Stuart wore his bunny suit from the waist down, bunny legs cut at the boots, with the torso, hood and ears wrapped around his waist below a black t-shirt. He wore a headlamp and had given one to Veronica, who also wore bunny legs beneath a black midriff. Doc asked her to wear a gothic black dress or virginal white one, and she laughed him off. She wore a black hairband that rallied into a spiral bun with escaping wisps, tongues and tails of fan blade hair. She wore the bracelets. Doc was back at the trunk of an art student’s car, monitoring and managing through a cartop workstation of laptops and handheld radios to pierce through the signal-less, tangled woods. His troupe of art students were to report back anything of note. Doc demanded a quick word with his assistant when they passed.
They could see flashes in the woods above the road. Photos, fireworks. Loud shells of fireworks, magnesium strikes and disappearing galaxies into pockets of black fog. Photographs in clearings. Up on the tracks two bunnies with banjos were followed by one with a washboard. Veronica said, “Look at that!”
On the opposite side of the road a short bunny with his hood off was trying to console another who was vomiting on her slippers.
Down around the bend, they saw a bunny running gleefully down a slope of thorns and thistles yelling that she’d seen Bunnyman. Her small company was busy trying to find an earring or some tiny lost thing in the leaf litter on the side of the road. One combing his hand through the debris said they’d all seen Bunnyman.
They heard three quick reports of firecrackers that sounded like bombs. Two pickups raced up the road leaving a wake of machine-gun guitar riffs, trailing off into the distance.
Stuart walked with Veronica all the way down to the town itself, over the railroad tracks and up Main. The town was empty. The ice cream shop and pizzeria were closed. A woman walking her dog retreated down a lane and onto her porch. They could see her standing in the dark, watching them, the dog barking in small, high yips. They turned north again, up Chapel towards Cold Point Road. They could hear distant pops and scatter shots, muted and lengthened by a couple of miles. There were no bunnies here. They turned left opposite the entrance of Cold Point, into the brambles, high stepping over cables of thorns that grabbed and tore the pink felt of their legs, and up the rocky incline of the railroad tracks. From here it was three hundred yards to the old caboose.
The sound of the rock pile under their boots was like the clinking of glass, and some sections slid out into little avalanches down into the woods. They stepped into the middle of the tracks and Veronica stopped. They could see a pinpoint of bobbing light behind them in the distance. “Do you think it’s following us?”
Stuart watched. “Is it moving?”
“It’s definitely moving.”
“It’s probably a drunk rabbit using the tracks to try to find his way back.”
He wished she hadn’t said anything. Now it was freaking him out. They continued walking, two little circles of light, letting the intervals of wooden ties stretch out their gait, walking as couples do down the aisle of a church.
“It’s probably just an axe murderer,” she said.
“Would you stop?”
“Maybe you should wear the bracelets.”
“I’m not the subject.”
“Tell me what you know about Bunnyman. Is Doc making it up?”
Stuart was quiet, which had become unusual for them. He was now accustomed to thinking thoughts he once had formed in the closed chamber of his imagination to thinking them aloud with her, a paradise in limbo. She stopped again and looked back. “It’s definitely moving.”
“The caboose is right in front of us,” said Stuart.
There was a skyburst of chemical light. The rails shined black in both directions to their vanishing points. The caboose was cast to the side of the tracks in a hastily built platform of beams and gravel. They were back close to ground zero of the circulating bunny horde, the concentric, interlaced framework of late night mayhem, the feature event, the bridge. Doc had asked Stuart to lead her up the tracks from the south.
They approached the defunct caboose. “It’s actually in pretty good shape.” Stuart cradled the padlock in his hand and reached in his pocket for the key. Veronica looked for movement of the pinpoint light down the tracks. “Stuart,” she said, as he unstuck the thickly painted door. Inside was a clutch of boxes and gear that only gained shape and color by their probing lights, like the piled clutter of a shipwreck discovered in a trench.
“Here’s your classic Hitchcock setup,” he said. “Trapped in a tight space.”
“And with a slowly approaching killer,” she said. Stuart.” He turned to her and his handlamp caught her in the eyes. He looked down and to the side to reduce the glare. She took off her headlamp. “You’re not going to let me come to harm, or let harm come to me, are you?”
He was looking at her bracelets.
“I’m not emotionless,” she said. “I do register fear. Maybe I don’t process it like others, I don’t know why. I don’t freak out that much. But I do know what it feels like. I don’t know how I’d be able to function without it.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” he said.
“Why?”
“I just wouldn’t.”
“Stuart, I’ve known from the beginning you were the stranger. I knew how close you stood next to me during the torture session. I could feel you leaning into me the closer Howard West came. I knew that you weren’t inside monitoring my pulse when I was out on that ledge because I knew you were on the other end of the rope, wearing that ridiculous hat. I could tell by the way you walk, and you weren’t in the room when I called for you because you didn’t stick your head out of the window. I knew it was you who released my weight belt in the river because who else would know how to do it, and you weren’t there when I came back to the boat. You’re always there. And I knew you dug me out of the grave because when I kicked open the lid I saw no one there.”
He was watching the movement of her throat in the circle of light.
“So tell me what’s happening now.”
Stuart grabbed the lens of his headlamp to cover the light with his fingers. Through the skin and capillary blood, the light gleamed in layers of red and yellow across her face. He wanted to see her without blinding her.
He took a breath and shook his head. “It’s all made up. All of it. There’s nothing to worry about. Howard West only wanted to pull his neighbor’s dress down to cover her up. Doc’s been pulling strings. He contacted Jake Hindley but he never heard back. That’s probably Doc down there with the light. He didn’t tell me much, only to bring you up from the south, put you in place and check the bracelets.”
She shot her light in his face. She covered the lens with her fingers to reduce the glare.
“Everything’s cool,” he said.
“Okay.” She bit her lip. She smiled. “This is stupid.”
He laughed. “It really is.”
“Lock me in,” she said.
“Okay.” He moved some boxes around. He found the lamp that the art students had left for him.
“I’m supposed to turn this on.” He fumbled for the switch. Found it. The caboose bathed in a yellow cartilage glow.
“That’s cozy,” she said.
“It’s to make you visible.”
“To my killer.”
“And to the art students outside so they can take pictures.”
“Oh-my-god.”
“So sit up and look pretty.”
“Sure,” she said.
“This seat is the best angle.” He dusted off a box.
“Of me?” He shared the smirk and nodded.
“I’ll be up fifty yards up the tracks.”
“I will see you soon.”
He repositioned the lamp on a higher box and turned to the door. He asked if she needed anything more and she said, “chips and salsa.” He stepped out. “A bag of popcorn.” He looked down the tracks and closed the door. He threw the padlock into the tall grass.
She took her position. “Sitting pretty,” she thought, and waited for the approach.
..
The bunnies in the woods saw blood, and upon seeing it, they could taste it like a busted nose. It was self-fulfilling, a fiction that manifested itself out of retribution for having thought about it for too long. These are the basic principles of horror, and all horror begins and ends there, for having thought about a thing too long. A bunny they called Goldilocks for the flaxen braids she wore in place of her floppy ears was spooked by a bunny who had lunged at her from behind a tree. He accidentally tripped on a rack of thorns that snapped forward and lashed her face. If she had not been thinking all day to watch for a theme-night bunnyman in the woods, she might not have recoiled and clawed his face apart. Such reports only intensified. A boy down the road flung a rock into a thicket of yard clippings and sliced open the temple of a bunny who had taken flight and hidden there. Herds of bunnies set out to find the girl in distress and they found suspect bunnymen instead. Branches became a defense and rocks from little Pope Head’s Creek were made ready. There was a hail of skipping rocks on Colchester Road and the only respite from being scalped by the ricocheting discs was to run deeper into the woods, where anything might happen and anyone might be there. The overlapping soundtrack scored by speakers in backpacks kept narrowing the cusp between speculation and neck-slicing authenticity with strumming, beating repetition. This was always the promise of the night. To be hunted in a fascination forest of their own design, bombs bursting in air.
..
Veronica would rather have sat in the dark. The lamp only cast the windows into two-way mirrors. She could hear the ruckus, pops and explosions outside, but she could only see herself in the glass. This is how the pictures will look in Doc’s book of fear, she thought, preserved in time.
She heard shouting, but like all the sounds outside it was distant and abstract, until a blast too close set her lunging for the switch of the lantern. Sitting in the dark, she could see outside.
She could hear the clinking of railroad rocks. She stood and stepped to the other side, opposite the tracks, but those windows, too, contained nothing. Just the gray trunks of trees. Someone was outside, she knew, and she smirked at the thought. Doc, or maybe it was Jake Hindley pumped up with nerves. She thought to spook whoever it was, just slip outside, tiptoe around, and scream bloody murder.
It could be Stuart, bored and mischievous, but that boy should know better. Maybe it was some big, drunken hare, also terrified by the high-strung scenario and the mystery of the box in which she was held. She stepped to the other side, looked up and down the tracks with her forehead pressed against the glass. “Have at it, man,” she thought.
She heard voices before the second shot. Low and incomprehensible, although she held her ear to the window trying to make out the words. There were two men. Three? It was low until someone shouted, “Watch it!” and she heard one clear pop. She held her breath in the silence that followed. There was another footstep, or something that dropped in the rocks. She stepped back a little and stood in the middle of the caboose. The third shot cracked like overhead lightning and she instinctively dove between the boxes. She listened to the sound wave roll over the hills. Rocks collapsed all around the caboose.
They were standing outside the windows. Large men. Mesh cap and big belly men. Sloven men. Rifles and shotguns slung over their shoulders. They discussed moving north, widening the perimeter. Another agreed, said his house was up there. Another cursed his friend for sitting down on the rails, said the night had just begun, going rabbit hunting. One asked what to do about the big black rabbit.
The door to the caboose opened. “Hey there,” she heard.
The beam of light caught the tips of her shoes. A box was shifted and she was exposed. The man stood over her and reported, “We’re securing the area.” Someone outside said, “the girl in distress,” and another exclaimed, “Ah!” The man — he was a boy. 17? He wore a stretched, pale green shirt, and had a bobbing baby chin. “I’ll leave the door open. Watch out for this one when you get out.” The lot of them trudged through the rocks and started up the tracks. They talked about sending someone back to guard the town. Someone said that there are enough men in front of the store already. Veronica pushed herself up and ran outside, around the front and onto the tracks. She ran back to the rear of the caboose and found the body.
It was a six-foot charcoal gray rabbit lying on its side, wet and spreading black across the rocks. She bent down and hooked her pinky around the edge of the saturated hood. He looked bewildered. She slid her fingers into place on Doc’s warm throat. His rabbit ears had been shorn off. There still was no signal and when she dialed 911 the phone retorted with three dull beeps.
She whirled around again and ran back up to the tracks, narrowing her eyes to see where the men had gone. Where Stuart should be hiding. She didn’t know where or when she had dropped her headlamp. She walked at a quickening pace over the ties. She could see the light of the men scanning the woods. They were in good ol’ boy formation, just walking, looking, and cracking jokes. One of them was singing out, “half-rabbit man!” and another barked in a high, cartoonish voice, “half-rabbit, half-rabbit, half-rabbit,” and the first in a movie trailer voice-over announced, “I am half-rabbit man.”
She was running now. She found him on the tracks. She knelt down next to the body, and touched his shoulder. His black shirt was soaked and heavy and his left rabbit leg clung wet around his thigh. She could just make out the features of his face. He opened his eyes.
“I’m playing dead.”
She lowered her face to him. She put her palm on his forehead. “Come here.”
He stiffened a little and tried to roll to the side. “I don’t think I can move.”
“Well, you’re going to have to, because no one’s coming, and you’ll be dead in the hour.” She stood, stepped over his head, grabbed him by the armpits, and heaved him to a slumped position. He was on his feet. He took a half step forward and found some balance.
“Yeah,” he laughed, and took a few more steps down the tracks, halted, and turned abruptly right. “This way.” She caught him.
She steered him by the waist and they stumbled through the switch grass, thorns, and ivy all the way to the road. The security light of a house on the other side snapped on reflexively. Stuart looked down at Veronica’s swinging arm, which alternately touched his stomach.
“You’re bleeding all over the place,” he said.
“Funny. Don’t talk so much.”
They cut a corner across a field and four bunnies came running. One screamed, “They’re shooting people!”
“Can I get a little help here?” Veronica asked. But they were already down the road. Ahead they saw six or seven white pickups on the side of the road. Stuart was fumbling for something in his pocket. At the first truck he stopped and dug deeper.
“Come on,” she said.
“One second.”
He held in his bloody hand two red cylinders with fuses. “Doc was giving them out.”
“Come on.”
He nodded to the open window of the first pickup. She said, “Can I see these?” grabbed the little cylinders and threw them on the road.
They hobbled past the convoy, down to the intersection and around the corner to where Doc’s sedan was parked.
“Do you have the keys?” asked Stuart.
“Oh-my-god,” she said, more perturbed than anything else.
“Doc has them.”
She slumped his body against the rear wheel and he slid off her. He looked up from his tilted head. “I’ll just wait for you here.”
“A jiffy,” she said, and stepped back onto the road as three police cruisers roared by. She raised her hand, but they did not stop. She jutted the wrath of her middle finger into the red afterglow of the lights. “I’m covered in blood!” she yelled, storming back toward the scalped costume and slain body of Doc, just through the woods and down the tracks.
Stuart dozed. He blinked in and out of sleep and consciousness. He thought if he could just squeeze in a little power nap he could tell her what he thought of patriots on the way to the hospital. He had some ideas about octopus brains from an article he’d read that morning. He watched a movie she’d recommended last week, a Scandinavian horror. He wanted to talk more about the poem she didn’t recite on stage, and a band they should see this weekend, called Headscrew. He needed to tell her a thought he’d had about the cycling of time based on a poem by William Butler Yeats.
He half slept and half woke to the reports of fireworks that sounded like absolute carnage. Diminutive rabbit men ran around the car. His own legs were magnified, stretched out into the hard grass and clear across the field. He tasted metal. He saw a boy crouched down in the grass next to him, telling him to stay awake, please stay awake, cradling a shotgun that was too big for him. He dreamt of satin pillows and coffin lids and of a fan he couldn’t get to work.
When he woke up, he thought he’d wet his pants and then he remembered. The car was whipping around curves, and he let his body slide back and forth across the back seat. He held onto the car handle.
“Play us some music.”
She had found a signal and connected her phone to the console of Doc’s car to bring up a map. She had called the hospital to tell them to get ready.
He drifted. When he woke up they were speeding down the straight line of Route 123.
“Play us some music.”
“I’m driving,” she said. She pulled off the bracelets. She fumbled for her phone. She wiped the blood off the screen with a dry patch of shirt underneath her armpit. She pressed a button.
It’s Koffin Kat!
I’ll bring you back from hell.
I’ll bring you back from hell.
Damn! Listen to that boneyard bass! His ears tingled. His whole head tingled.
He watched her eyes in the mirror. Steady as a drum. He wondered about her pulse. There was something in the lyrics that reminded him of something they should do together on Wednesday. He noticed she was wearing eyeliner. He couldn't remember. The thing was either on Tuesday or Wednesday. He was sure. He couldn't know. It may have been Tuesday.