Acorns

Kate Spencer felt odd behind the steering wheel of a stranger’s car. With everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, this was the culmination of her transformation––she was now as much a stranger to herself as she was to this car.

The feeling lasted for only a moment as the tsunami of her real troubles rose back up to their towering heights, before crashing down and obliterating her capacity to hold any other thought. The black Acura TL wasn’t stolen; but if she were to get pulled over and the cop did even a little digging, grand theft auto would seem like a slap on the wrist.

It was a quarter past two in the morning. There hadn’t been any sign of life in either lane of the freeway for miles, and Conway Twitty murmured from the radio. The cruise control was set to a couple miles per hour over the limit to avoid the suspicion of following the letter of the law. The car had a built-in navigation system but the dashboard screen showed only the time; instead, there was a paper map riding shotgun, and a six-inch winding red line jumped off the page like the drawing of a treasure map. It even had an X to mark the spot.

“Eleven-million dollars,” Kate whispered. She had recited this mantra, per her stepbrother Lane’s suggestion, whenever guilt began to nibble at her mind over the last few months. But now that the deed was actually done and she was knee deep in the shit, the words were just gibberish. The only thing that would ease her mind was finishing this.

The freeway was carved through a thick forest. The trees crowded the road, flaunting their seasonal bruising of rusty-golds and copper-rubies. Up ahead, Kate saw thin fog lingering in the darkness. When she passed through the misty wall, the eerie beauty on the other side distracted her from reality. It was like driving through a dream.

The murky air had turned the headlights vague, and Kate was forced to lower her speed. She figured this was a good time for another smoke. Her Newports were always within arms reach and she fished a fresh one from the pack. She lit it and took a hearty first drag. Heaven. She cracked the window and the cool and drizzly October night poured in.

Kate felt a little guilty about chain-smoking in someone else’s car, but the cigarettes were the only thing keeping her sane. Besides, Lane’s friend was going to be paid handsomely for supplying them with the car. Whoever he was. 

She took one final puff and then dropped the butt into a Coke can in the cup holder. 

Just then, a hint of something tingled her nostrils. It was flirty at first, but quickly turned harsh. It grew stronger by the second and soon her eyes started to water from the sweet-burning stench. Then she recognized it. 

Whiskey––Kevin’s drink.

Kate’s father had been a whiskey man, too, and she could never stomach the stuff. She gagged from the smell. She aired out the windows but it did nothing and she soon began to feel a stirring in her guts. She assumed there was an open bottle or something else she had overlooked when cleaning out the backseat. But before she could check, breath hit the back of her neck. 

She locked up. Eyes wide. 

The breath was soaked in whiskey and labored by clenched teeth. It warmed her neck in steady intervals. Kate’s eyes darted up towards the rear-view mirror.

A man was behind her. He wore a white t-shirt. The hair was tousled and black as the night. The eyelids were torn away and acorns filled their eyeless sockets. Kate watched the motionless man in the reflection for a second that lasted a horrifying eternity. Then, the jaw and mouth slowly unhinged to an inhuman size, and he projectile vomited hundreds of acorns from the gaping hole.

Kate screamed and flung herself forward––bumping the steering wheel and momentarily swerving the car. Her pulse was in an all-out sprint. With the car under control Kate fired a look behind her.

The backseat was empty.

She reached and felt around in the space behind her seat to be sure, but there was no one. The smell of whiskey had disappeared, too. 

After her nerves eased, Kate was aware of a new (and unrelated to whiskey) turning in her guts. That man in the mirror––there was something about his face, it was . . . familiar. Then it hit her, sending her stomach into free fall: the man had looked like Kevin.

Thirty minutes later and the fog was now a somber pest. The Coke can had a few more ashy butts in it (most of which were smoked while she reasoned away the hallucination in the backseat to her recent lack of sleep and eventually ditched the incident on the side of the freeway miles back), and she grew antsy. 

Kate glanced at the gas gauge. The thin arrow was getting a little too chummy with the E line. She had known beforehand that this trip would require a fill up, but that did little in easing her anxious mind, now. When she saw the sign for a gas station that was less than two miles away, Kate didn’t notice the whining steering wheel under her wrenching grip. 

The gas station had no customers. The three covered gas pumps were overseen by a brick convenience store close by, and the fog gave every light a misty-shower effect. If there was anything beyond the darkness closing in on the gas station, the human eye couldn’t currently detect it. The whole place looked as if it sat at the bottom of the deepest ocean.

Kate pulled into the parking lot and panicked––the convenience store looked closed. But stopping alongside pump #1, she saw through the window that someone was mopping and the neon light by the front door said it was open. Sure, she had a credit card to pay at the pump, but she would pay in cash. It had to be done in cash.

The transaction went smoothly. The old man was surprisingly pleasant when considering the time, and the store's persistent assaulting of one’s nose by way of burnt coffee and hours’ old hot dog water. Kate had spotted the surveillance camera right away and made sure the crown of her cap was the star of her visit. 

On the way back to the car she felt watched. There was absolute nothingness past the pumps and anything could be out there, in any direction. 

She filled up the tank quickly, eager to get back on the road and far away from this gas station stuck in the abyss. But halfway into the car, she spotted a phone booth on the side of the convenience store. She paused. I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to check in.  

Kate balanced the payphone receiver on her shoulder and began to pound in the numbers she knew by heart. With her fingertip on the last digit, she caught the horrible mistake and promptly slammed the phone back on the hookswitch. Her breath was trembling as she exhaled relief. She had almost called his home phone––that would’ve been incredibly stupid.

She reached in her purse, dug out her wallet, and pinched a little piece of scrap paper out from behind her library card. With her attention down at her hands, she only caught a glimpse of the figure running at her in the top of her vision. A white t-shirt is all she saw. The sealed booth had muted the pounding footsteps until they were right outside. Without slowing, the figure in the white t-shirt threw an exploding fist through the glass door. She screamed and flinched but couldn’t fully protect herself from the blast. Only the debris that fired back into the booth––striking her face and neck––weren’t shards of glass. 

They were acorns. Brown and ripe acorns.

The fist that had shot through the glass was now a convulsing outstretched hand the size of a baseball glove. It stabbed and grabbed, hunting for any part of her to latch onto. She fought off the violent probing, willing herself with rapid-fire screaming. But the rattling acorns were ankle deep, and she lost her footing. The back of her head walloped against the glass behind her and she collapsed amongst the clattering on the floor.

The bill of her cap had fallen with her and was now blocking her sight. She panicked, flipping her hat off and bolting upright. The acorns had disappeared and she sat on the empty phone booth floor. She looked up towards the door, fully expecting to see the massive hole from the fist or the white-shirted figure that it belonged to. But the door was closed and as solid as a picture window. Kate climbed to her feet. She scanned the gloominess beyond the booth. 

Other than a whimpering light above pump 3 that begged to be switched out, the gas station was dead. Gentle streams escaped her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

She was sobbing as she scooped up the scattered items of her purse, including the scrap paper.

“Pull it together, Kate,” she whispered through her cries. And after a few deep breaths, she again pulled the receiver off the hook.

Her fingers were twitchy and mischievous as she dialed the paper’s numbers, but eventually she plugged them all in. After four excruciating rings, a man’s voice answered the prepaid mobile phone on the other end.

“Hello?”

Kate felt a monsoon swelling behind her eyes. She hid it as best she could, but her voice betrayed her. “It’s me,” she said. Trembling.

“Kate!?” The man said. “Jesus, is everything all right?”

“Yeah,” she sniffled. “I just stopped for gas.”

“Fuck, Kate. Don’t scare me like that. I thought you got . . . I thought the worst.”

“I’m sorry, babe. I didn’t mean to scare you––I just . . .”

There was a long pause.

“What’s wrong?” He said it with sincere curiosity. With everything at stake, he was still genuinely concerned with her emotional state. He was the love of her life. She’d known it since she was fourteen.

“Lane,” she said. “I keep seeing him.”

“What––who?”

“Him.” She peeked outside the booth again, making sure she was still alone. Then, she added in a whisper, “I keep seeing Kevin.”

Lane paused before saying, “He’s dead, Kate.”

“I know––I just . . . It’s like his presence. I feel it. Like he’s watching me. And I’m, seeing . . . other things.”

“What things?”

His question put her in a trance. The images of the backseat and phone booth incidents tormented her mind like a horrifying slideshow. She answered toneless, and staring at no spot in particular on the brick wall next to the booth. “Acorns,” she said.

“Acorns?––Wha . . . did you say, acorns?”

“Yeah. I keep seeing them, Lane. They’re––”

“Baby, listen to me, okay? You gotta stay strong. I know this has been brutal on you but it’s almost over. We’re so close, baby. Just a little further and it’s done. This time next year we’ll all be on a beach. You, me, and Tommie.”

Just hearing her son’s name was enough to click the lights on in the dark cellar of her mind. She was all smiles when she asked: “How’s my little guy doing?”

“He’s good. Fast asleep, now. Had to give him a bottle about an hour––”

“Did you warm it first?”

“Yes, Kate. I know how to take care of my son.”

“I know––I’m sorry. I’m just . . . scared.”

“Everything is going to be okay. Finish line, baby. What, two hours left?”

Kate looked behind her at the car, towards the passenger seat where the map was sitting. “A little less.”

“We’ll be waiting for you, gorgeous.”

“I love you, Lane.”

“Love you, baby.”

Kate knew this was her part. The wavy red line on the map had brought her all the way here, and now it was her turn to finish it. She stood by the Acura’s trunk. Staring at it. She held the key fob, rubbing her thumb over the button that would open it. 

The forest was overgrown down here. Lane had scouted this spot months ago and he was right––it was perfect. Kate had been able to back the car up a good twenty feet without disturbing too much greenery. And even if by some tragedy the cops had narrowed their search here; with the plethora of unoccupied land in the area, it would be like looking for a polar bear in a snowstorm.

A branch snapped in the distance. Kate broke her fascination with the trunk and looked in the direction of the noise. It was wasted energy. The moon was feeble, and what little light tried to pass through the treetops was grated by their jagged limbs and died before it could reach the forest floor. Kate could barely see five feet in front of her.

Suddenly, the feeling of being watched became suffocating. Kate became motivated. She turned back to the trunk and punched the button. 

It popped open. And a soft white bulb lit up its cargo. 

Her husband’s corpse was double wrapped in the thickest painter’s plastic money could buy. Kevin’s facial features were dulled behind the multiple layers, but his opened mouth was suction-cupped to the sheeting. Above the collar of his white t-shirt, the skin was darkened with bruising that wrapped around his entire neck. Exactly where Lane had used a vacuum cord to strangle him while he watched the evening news.

She started working Kevin’s body out of the trunk one end at a time. The light from the trunk and her mini flashlight would have to suffice. Besides, the hole Lane had dug last week was only a few feet away. 

She really wished Lane were here for this part, but understood that their story depended on him being home. Kevin Spencer’s wife visiting her stepbrother for the weekend was a sturdy alibi that her neighbors would vouch for. ‘And now, blessed with a newborn,’ Kate imagined them telling detectives as she tossed Kevin’s limp legs out of the trunk. ‘Visiting family was even more important to her.’  

Kevin’s body dropped nicely into the deep hole. Kate went back to the trunk for Kevin’s bon voyage gift––his suitcase bursting at the seams with everything an abandoning father would pack. She flung the luggage on top of the body and it made a skin crawling thud. Kate felt a sliver of remorse for being so callous, but she had no time to respect the dead. This was the most vulnerable part of the whole plan and her adrenaline was at a peak she had never felt before.  

She snatched the last item from the trunk, a shovel, and went to work on the dirt pile by the hole. Her armpits soaked gradually as she filled a nice solid layer over the body. She paused, wiping her brow and fetching the folded map from her back pocket, and the lighter from her front. Kate lit a corner and watched the map burn until there was only a half left. She tossed the remaining half in the hole where it slowly disappeared to ash. Then, she went back to filling.

It was done. 

The cool air pouring in from the car windows was rejuvenating on her damp face and neck.

“Eleven million dollars––ha!” Kate said. A smile had been stuck on her face for the last five miles.

She pulled out a victory cigarette and lit it under the dome of her off hand, using her knee to hold the car steady. 

A minute later and she was turning back onto the freeway, leaving gravel roads behind her. It was smooth sailing from here on out.

Kate reached to ash her cigarette but on the second finger tap, she dropped it. 

“Shit!––shit!––shit!”

She frantically glanced back and forth between the road and the car’s center console. Nothing.

Then, a fiery dot burned at the corner of her vision. The cigarette was on the passenger side floor. She reached for it but the seatbelt would only give so much. So she unbuckled it, and took her attention off the road––for only a second––as she leaned over and retrieved her smoke.

“Gotcha,” she said, sitting back up and returning her eyes to the freeway.

The man with acorn eyes was ten feet away, standing in the middle of the road. 

Instincts took over and Kate yanked the steering to the right, trying not to him. The tires screamed on the pavement until she lost control of the car in the dirt just off of the shoulder. She watched in dreamy terror as the car glided along the grass, headed directly for a massive oak tree. The nose of the car crashed into the tree––she blacked out almost instantly. 

Kate came to, surrounded by shattered glass. Half of her body had bursted through the windshield, and now her helpless torso laid flat on the hood of the car. 

She felt a metallic bang just above her head. And then another. And another. 

Her brain was sparking and firing, trying to locate the source of the agony that was present throughout her entire body. Her blood was everywhere and it pooled in her mouth. Then reality hit and the pain in her heart dwarfed all of her other injuries: She was going to die. And Tommie would grow up without a mother. 

She blubbered, and coughed up an alarming amount of blood. Her left cheek collapsed onto the cold metal. Defeated. Through her tears she saw what had been banging around her. 

The hood was littered with acorns. And just then, another one fell from the tree and struck the car.