Without My Spoon-Conkling

Without My Spoon

L.M. Conkling

There are children singing in the forest.

Jerry’s eyes pop open, his heart thudding so hard his chest shakes with each beat. Through the thin fabric of his tent he can hear their voices, high and bright, wafting on the cold air.

Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts
Paralyzed monkey meat
Dirty little birdie feet

He draws a deep breath. Oh. It must be the girl scout troop he passed earlier. They had stopped to eat an early lunch, the girls chattering like magpies between bites of ham salad sandwiches and swigs of grape soda. Their troop leaders, a pair of women who looked like they’d rather be anywhere than in the forest with a gaggle of preteen girls, had glared with suspicious eyes when he’d given a friendly wave. He couldn’t blame them. A solitary man in the woods, a group of young girls. If he were a different type, it could be the start of a horrible story.

But all he had wanted was to be gone from the house he’d shared with Janice.

He had hiked out farther than he’d ever been before, found a nice flat spot to pitch his tent and built a little fire. Dug a few shallow holes with the trowel he’d brought along. Drank a cup of tea heavily laced with bourbon. Packed his food in a parcel and hung it from a tree so as not to tempt bears, then turned in with hope of a bit of rest.

He always sleeps better in the woods. When he was younger he’d sleep out in the open, no tent, no bed roll. Just a sleeping bag and his eyes searching the blackness of space. Sometimes his buddies would come, and they would smoke the horrible seeds and stems that certain college boys always had, discussing things that seemed so deep at the time but which he could no longer remember.

Nowadays he has a tent, a lightweight foam pad and plenty of ibuprofen. He’d stopped smoking weed years ago because it made him paranoid. But even without being high he doesn’t like to look at the sky at night anymore. Where he used to feel awe at the vastness of space, now it spikes fear in him. It’s too big, too unknown. Who knows what is lurking in the darkness?

Jerry reaches out, touches the slick nylon of the tent wall. Janice had refused to camp at all until he’d bought one, convinced that she’d be sprayed by a skunk or shredded by a bear while she was sleeping. Nothing Jerry said could convince her that if a bear really wanted to get to her, it wasn’t going to be stopped by the thin walls of the tent.

“It’s uncivilized,” Janice had said, tossing her curls over one shoulder. “It’s bad enough you’re asking me to go a few days without a proper shower, and to shit in the damn underbrush like an animal. The least we could do is have a tent.”

He’d compromised and bought a tent.

In the time they’d been together after that, he refused to tell her how much he loved that tent.

The girls are still singing out in the forest.

Add a can of all-purpose porpoise pus
And me without my spoon

Jerry wrinkles his nose when the girls collapse into giggles, their high voices reverberating through the woods. Children are disgusting.

He hears one of them cough, then retch. Someone must’ve inhaled a bug.

And how close are they, anyway? He’d passed them hours ago. Have they trailed behind him on purpose? He had kept an eye on his map and marked each turn he’d taken on the trail so he could easily find his way back, but he is much further out in the woods than anyone should be taking kids. What are those chaperones thinking?

In the morning, he retrieves his food bundle from the tree, makes sure the fire is completely out and packs everything into his backpack. He munches a dry protein bar while he sets out again, each turn carefully noted on his map.

It’s a solid eight hours of hiking, and by the time Jerry finds a new place to set up camp he’s exhausted. The weather has been gorgeous, and although he’s been under the canopy of trees for most of the day he still is sunburned. The skin on his face is grimy and tight, an ill-fitting mask. The tent goes up easily. He swipes a baby wipe across his cheeks to remove some of the caked sweat and dirt, then finds the miniature tube of aloe gel in his tiny first-aid kit and applies it liberally. Not up to making a fire, he eats cold canned beans and swigs the last of his tea and bourbon, relieved to think of the weight they’ll take from his pack the next day.

In the forest around him the nocturnal animals have woken up and are speaking to each other. The cry of a hoot owl on his left is answered immediately by another from his right. Jerry smiles, peace settling in his bones. The frogs are also out, though he doesn’t remember passing any pond or damp area. Perhaps deeper in the woods? They burble their comforting croaks, layering over each other, calling their cheerful conversations. He hears the distant yipping of coyotes. It is a personal symphony, just for him.

Jerry closes his eyes and listens, and for a quick moment he feels the awe he’d felt in his early twenties when weed hazed his mind. His anxiety tumbles away like sand under a wave. He is exactly where he needs to be.

His body leans sideways and Jerry jerks awake, realizing how close he came to tipping over into the dirt. Time to get some sleep. After digging a few small holes around the site then shoveling over his deposits, he collapses onto his bedroll, pulling his sleeping bag over him. He’s too tired to wriggle inside it.

Paralyzed monkey meat
Dirty little birdie feet

Jerry’s eyes pop open. You’ve got to be kidding, he thinks. Did they follow me?

The hike today had been grueling. He hadn’t stopped to eat or rest. Eight hours of non-stop moving. There was no way a group of kids could keep up, even if they tried. But the singing sounds close, like it had the night before.

Add a can of all-purpose porpoise pus
And me without my spoon

Then that horrible, high-pitched giggling. And another cough and retch.

That’s odd. Is it normal for kids to always sound like they’re hurling?

Jerry shakes off the thought. He’s never been around kids so has no idea what is normal. Do they spit up a lot?

The noises seem so close – it has to be the way the mountains are formed, something to do with sound waves bouncing. That makes sense.

Jerry rolls over, listens to the echoes of the giggles and coughing, waits for silence to descend like a heavy blanket. When the forest is quiet again, he sleeps.

The next day begins much like the last. Retrieve the food bundle. Load up the pack. Eat a protein bar from his dwindling supply.

He hadn’t planned on being out too long, but something inside keeps telling him he needs to go a little bit further. It’s like something is calling him. Jerry still has enough food to last him at least a few more days, if he keeps his meals small and eats only twice a day. Which is fine with him; it is easier to hike when you eat light. He’ll make good time.

Jerry chooses an erratic path. He slept terribly despite his exhaustion; his ears ringing with the memory of that horrible song, those high-pitched voices. He wants to leave them behind. He marks each turn he takes on the map, noting carefully when he cuts away from the trail, loops back, and creates shortcuts, always consulting the tiny compass Janice had given him, which hangs off his belt.

“If you have to go out into the wild, be safe, I guess.” Janice hadn’t liked to look too concerned, but Jerry knew what she meant. She cared. She hoped he’d make it back safely.

Her hair had tumbled like a waterfall over her shoulders that morning, still tangled from the heavy sleep of Christmas Eve. He’d brushed it back from her face, ignoring the deep shadows under her eyes, her chapped lips, the sour waft of coffee on her breath. She had cared for him, and that was all that had mattered.

The compass reminds him that had all been true, once.

When Jerry finds a small clearing, large enough for only his tent, he glows with satisfaction. He is finally truly alone. He hasn’t seen a soul since he’d passed the girls two days before, and he knows they couldn’t have followed him out this far. This is the realm of experienced hikers only. Not some group of pre-pubescent girls and their soft, out-of-shape chaperones. Jerry is sure that they’ve turned back by now; a two-day camping trip was probably all they were planning anyway.

He thought the tent would have enough room, but the trees on either side constrict it, crowding the sides. Jerry doesn’t mind. He can still fit in it to sleep.

The sunburn on his face is itching, and he hisses in pain when he scratches absently. Flakes of skin peel off, stuck to the dirt encrusted under his fingernails. That was fast. Usually it takes a few days for sunburn to peel.

And he can’t find the aloe.

The baby wipes sting his face but take away some of the crusted grime. He knows he is starting to stink, but he’ll take care of that when he gets home.

He eats another protein bar and digs a few small holes. Jackknifes his body into the tent, then curls up on the mat, pulling the sleeping bag over his exhausted body. Tomorrow he’ll have to find some water; he’s gone through his supply except for one tiny bottle. But he has his purifier straw and several empty bottles to fill when he does find water, so he’ll be fine. And he may start back tomorrow, anyway.

The tent is cozy as a nest and Jerry’s eyes flutter down, exhaustion catching up with him. The soft sounds of the forest crowd around him again, but the familiar cadence makes his eyes snap open, staring into the darkness between him and the slick nylon of his tent.

The hooting of owls.

The croaking of complacent frogs.

The high yips of coyotes.

Jerry bites his lip and reminds himself of his own exhaustion. Of course he’s hearing the same animals. He’s in the same forest, isn’t he? And he can’t be sure that he is hearing them in exactly the same order. At least he’s not hearing the girls—

Dirty little birdie feet

“Oh, for fucks’ sake!” His own voice is too loud in the tent and Jerry winces.

They can’t have caught up with him. Is someone messing with him? Has some nutjob been tracking him, playing a recording from the darkness? Why would anyone mimic those sounds anyway? But a weirdo with a recording makes more sense than a troop of girls this far into the wilderness. Unless they are some elite group of hikers. They hadn’t looked like it, though.

Add a can of all-purpose porpoise pus
And me without my spoon

Those lines seem louder. They ring in Jerry’s head, his eyes watering with the noise and the first real spike of fear he’s ever felt while camping.

“Children are terrifying,” Janice had said, swiping red polish over her nails. “Pregnancy is terrifying. Giving birth is terrifying. I want none of that in my life.”

Though girlish voices in the dark weren’t the kind of terrifying Janice had meant, Jerry had agreed with her then. Even scheduled a vasectomy so she knew he was serious.

He agrees with her even more now. Children are terrifying.

Even more so when he hears familiar giggling. After a beat, the cough and retch.

There are really only two options: either the kids are somehow on the same trail as he is and know he’s here, making the same horrible noises every night to scare him. Or an adult is out there, doing the same thing to mess with him. Although he hasn’t heard anything about this particular area, there are always stories about wild men in the woods. People who don’t like you coming onto what they consider their territory. But usually they just attack, or try to scare off interlopers. Maybe acting the mimic, playing those sounds on a loop each night, is their way of scaring him away? Jerry doesn’t want to think about the kind of crazy that would come up with that. It seems too complicated.

Silence again falls in the woods. Just like the previous two nights, the voices stop after one refrain, one brief period of giggling, the sound of a cough and someone about to vomit.

It takes Jerry a long time to fall asleep. The fear is still vibrating behind his ribcage, a wild animal awakened.

Jerry folds the tent, tightly rolls up his foam pad. Ignores the whiffs of stench he catches when he moves. Decides to save his protein bar until the hunger is unbearable.

He figures it’s best to start back. According to his map, there is a small waterfall only a few miles away; he can stop there and refill his empty bottles, then drink from them with his filtration straw. That’ll still be safe. And it is enough to get him back home.

The trail he chooses is overgrown, obviously unused. He is surprised it is even on the map. It snakes through the forest, a barely-there indentation crowded with ferns that bat at his bare calves with each carefully placed step. The woods feel abandoned in their silence. No birds, no shuffling of small animals in the underbrush. The canopy is dense, lower than it has been during most of his hike. Jerry notes these differences and keeps moving. It’s eerie, sure. He vaguely remembers old warnings to be careful when things get too quiet in the woods, how silence means something predatory or unnatural is around, but he brushes the memory off as something he read once in a story. At least the trees block the sun so completely that he doesn’t have to worry about his sunburn getting worse.

Jerry scratches his cheek and flinches. This time he’s drawn blood. That’s not good. Maybe he’s been scratching in his sleep for the skin to already be so thin? The sun had really done a number on him and burned him worse than he thought.

He wipes his bloody nails on his filthy shorts and sighs. He is burning this entire set of clothes when he gets home, anyway. No need to worry about a few tiny bloodstains.

The sound of tumbling water starts low, a murmur that Jerry follows gratefully. He’ll take a break, fill his empties, maybe even scrub up a little. Just enough so that he doesn’t feel nauseous at his own stink. And maybe eat one of his last protein bars. He really has to make sure he gets back to civilization tomorrow. Otherwise he may start chewing on bark and roots.

The map might have indicated it was a small waterfall, but it looks plenty big to Jerry. It tumbles over rocks and crevices, landing in a large pool before overflowing into a wide creek. Up close the sound is much louder, a balm to Jerry’s ears. They’d begun to ache and ring with the silence of the forest.

As much as he enjoys the outdoors, he is a town man. He likes the chatter of people on the street, the occasional middle-of-the-night siren. Laughter and arguments and car engines. Enough competing noises that one more gets covered up. Like with Janice. No one noticed the yells or the thumps; they probably assumed a TV was on too loud somewhere. If it had gone on too long they might’ve called around to their neighbors, but it had been quick.

Jerry strips down to bare skin, leaving his dirty clothes on an outcropping of rock. He shudders at the thought of putting them back on his clean(er) body, but it will be better than not rinsing off at all.

The water is icy, bracing, and Jerry gives up on slowly creeping in, choosing instead to launch himself into the cold pool. His heart leaps and stutters in protest, but Jerry laughs underwater. It feels good to let the dirty, hot breath out of his lungs before he pops up, water streaming from his head.

Using just his hands, he scrubs at what he thinks are probably the smelliest bits of his body (anywhere there is a crevice) and hefts himself onto a rock before the cold embeds itself too deep in his bones.

When he is dry enough, he tugs his clothes back over clammy skin, feeling dirty again instantly. Oh well. Tomorrow he’ll burn these, get dressed in the clean, soft shorts and t-shirt he’s left in the trunk of his car. Never come back here again.

Two plastic resealable bags are at the very bottom of his backpack, where a person would really have to dig for them. Jerry thinks here, at the waterfall, will be a great place to dig a hole, make a deposit. He curses when he finds one of the bags ripped, empty.

Great. Now Janice’s teeth are going to be all over the bottom of his backpack.

He’d buried all but two of her fingertips the day before, leaving a few at his campsite and several along the way. He’d done the same with most of her teeth, but he still has at least three or four rattling around.

Jerry doesn’t know if one tooth alone could identify her, or if it is the bite pattern that is important. Whatever it is, he doesn’t want to make it easy. He probably could’ve crushed them to powder with a hammer, but he likes the idea of planting them out here in the forest. Where they might sprout into something better.

Janice, with her positive pregnancy test. Seven months after he’d had his vasectomy, and her belly still flat as a pancake. What had she expected him to do?

Jerry sets the ripped bag aside. He’ll worry about digging out the extra teeth and fingertips when he makes camp for the night. For now, his focus is on the other bag.

The contents are not as beautiful as they had been, but anyone who knew Janice would recognize her hair. Naturally curly and shiny, it is still beautiful. Even hanging limply from the flap of skin that had been her scalp.

And since her hair has always reminded him of a waterfall, Jerry finds it fitting to bury it beside an actual waterfall. There is something poetic about that, isn’t there? Not that Janice would agree. She’d never seen the beauty in nature.

After he completes his task, patting the damp dirt on top of the curls and flattening them forever, Jerry washes his hands, cupping water and splashing his face. Digging, even a small hole, always makes him sweat. It is the bending down. At his age, that hurts. It hurts a lot. His back is screaming and Jerry considers jumping back into the water, letting that iciness infiltrate his spine.

But he needs to keep moving. He draws up another few handfuls of water, pours it over his head, lets it run through his hair and down into his face and ears.

Add a can of all-purpose porpoise pus

Jerry stills. Shakes his head, allows the water to trickle out of his ears. You’ve got to be kidding, he thinks. I imagined that.

The last thing he is going to do is yell out “Is anyone there?” like a moron in a horror movie. If someone is following him, best to ignore them. They haven’t done anything except make noise, anyway. If they were going to hurt him, they would’ve already done it.

Jerry tightens the laces on his hiking boots, hefts his pack on his back and heads out along his intended trail. A few more hours today, and about six tomorrow, then he’ll be back. There will be plenty of time to get rid of the last few bits of Janice on his way. The rest of her – mutilated and battered – is inside an old couch in a landfill, where it is unlikely to be found.

After an hour of walking, Jerry finds himself in the clearing where he’d slept the night before. According to his map he can cast off from this spot, taking a more direct route back to his car which waits with the soft promise of clean clothes and fast food less than forty minutes away. Hooking his thumbs in the straps of his backpack, Jerry surveys his previous campsite. The disturbance between the two trees where he’d forced his tent is so minimal that most people wouldn’t guess anyone had been there recently. Jerry is proud of himself, having left so little trace of his occupation.

When he turns to leave, his heart drops.

All the tiny holes he’d dug, the places where he’d left pieces of Janice, have been unearthed.

Small mounds of dirt, with claw marks delineated clearly in the soil, show that an animal has been at his deposits. Jerry frowns. He hadn’t thought of this. But why would a creature dig up Janice unless it planned to eat what it found? There is no real harm done, not in any way that could lead back to him. But anger crests through Jerry’s chest while he uses one booted foot to pat down the loose dirt. It was just like Janice to ruin this last bit of time they had together.

Jerry hurries from the clearing quickly, hoping to leave his anger behind. He imagines it like steam wafting off him, dissipating into the treetops. After another mile, he is smiling, taking in the beauty of the forest, the clean air. Things that are behind him can stay behind him. No need to dwell. Those pieces of Janice are being digested somewhere right now, with no ties back to him. Even though it isn’t how he’d intended things to go, it is still all going to work out just fine.

He makes good time and is happy when he finds a lovely little spot within a ring of towering trees. In celebration he builds a fire, sets some of his waterfall water to heat and prepares the only MRE he’s brought with him: chili and macaroni, his favorite. After this, he will only have protein bars, but he can survive on those till he gets back tomorrow.

His belly full for the first time in a few days, fatigue creeps through Jerry’s limbs. Instead of retiring to his tempting tent, he dumps out his backpack, locating Janice’s last three teeth and two fingertips, which are starting to have an unpleasant smell. He knew he should’ve put them in some type of solution. Oh well. It’s too late now. He’s planning on burning this backpack as well, so no real harm done. The tent, sleeping bag and bedroll should be ok. They’ve been attached to the outside of the pack, not the inside. And if for some reason they were tested, it’s reasonable to have traces of Janice’s DNA on them. From the one time she’d gone camping with him.

Even though she knew he loved it she only did it once. And complained the whole time.

Jerry cracks his neck, rolls his shoulders. That’s the past. His next girlfriend – well, he won’t even start dating another woman unless he knows she likes to camp. Best to make sure they are compatible right away. Good thing vasectomies are reversible, just in case.

Knowing it’s his last night in the woods, Jerry stays sitting by the fire, staring into the flames, feeling the heat on his face and the chill on his back. He is planning to come back out in a few weeks – not here, a different place – so that it’s not a one-time suspicious trip right around the time Janice disappeared.

Jerry snaps his fingers. He needs to report her missing. Maybe call her friends and mom first, tell them when he got home from camping, she was gone. And sound like he’s worried she left him while he was away. Then report her missing. Maybe wait a little longer before the next trip. That would look weird, right? To take a camping trip a few weeks after Janice goes missing? Yeah, best to wait.

Jerry douses the fire, yawns. There’s no food to put up in a tree; he doesn’t think bears are going to want his protein bars. Digs one hole, deposits a stinky fingertip. He’ll do the rest on the trail tomorrow.

The night is getting chilly and Jerry wriggles down into his sleeping bag, rubbing his aching, dirty feet together.

Worry trickles through his mind. The weird sounds – what if he hears them again? And what if the animal that dug up Janice has developed a taste for human flesh? Would it come for him?

Jerry takes a deep breath, shakes his head, smiles to himself. The sounds are creepy, but nothing bad has happened. And the creature that dug up his offerings is obviously some kind of carrion-eater, so it wouldn’t be interested in a living man. He is causing himself worry for no reason, and he tells himself sternly to knock it off.

Outside, the sound of humming insects and the whistle of a soft wind lull him, easing his mind toward sleep. It is a perfect night; the full moon above the forest casting a gentle light, the air clean and crisp.

A pair of owls begin to call to each other, overlapping the drone of insects. Jerry sits up in his tent, the nylon fabric rasping with his movements. There – the frogs. He holds his breath, waiting.

Coyotes yip in the distance.

Jerry’s ears pound with his echoing heartbeat. He cocks his head, listening. The singing should begin next, but instead he hears a slight rustle from outside his tent. A scratching. Something is clawing at the dirt.

Where he’d buried Janice’s fingertip.

Jerry eases open the zipper on the tent flap, silently pulling it free one notch at a time. He wants to see what kind of animal has been following him, digging up what he wants to stay hidden.

There is enough light to see the outline of something hunched over in the darkness, movements furtive while it scratches at the ground. The moonlight picks out its fur, wavy and dull, swinging around its head like a mane.

Not a mane. Not wavy.

Curled and tumbling.

Janice’s hair.

The creature stills at Jerry’s sudden gasp. It cocks its head toward him, the red gleam of its eyes flashing in the semi-darkness. It rises to its feet.

The figure is monstrous, hulking. At least 6 ft tall, standing on two feet like a man. Wearing Janice’s filthy scalp and mud-crusted hair. When it turns, Jerry sees that most of its fingers are strangely elongated, tipped in white and red. All except for two, which are shorter and end in long talons.

Jerry watches as it spears the fingertip it has just unearthed onto one of the naked talons, almost completing the matching set. Janice’s favorite nail polish shines, chipped and red, a macabre decoration at the end of the creature’s dark flesh.

When its mouth opens, blackness yawns. Except for Janice’s dirty teeth jammed along its gumline, glinting with bloody saliva. It holds its lips apart as though held in a stationary scream but instead the voices of children spill out.

And me without my spoon

Jerry’s scream cuts off when the thing pulls him from the tent, scratching at him with Janice’s nails, biting him with her teeth. The one naked talon it has left slices his abdomen and his greasy guts spill onto the forest floor. Janice’s muddy hair follows him as he falls, sweeping over his eyes to blind him as the creature lowers its head to eat.

“What a goddamn mess.” Kyle scrunches up his face, kicking dirt over another pile of vomit. “What did you say happened here?”

“Troop leaders say all the girls got sick at once. All started spewing, apparently right in the middle of some singalong. Probably food poisoning. No matter how often you tell people not to pack sandwiches with mayo while camping, they still do it.” Anderson leans on his shovel, pushes back his hat. The pale green of his park ranger uniform is already splattered with mud. “Hey Kyle, don’t just put dirt on that. Dig a hole. You know animals will be attracted otherwise.”

“Ugh, so gross.” Kyle picks up his shovel from where he leaned it on a tree. “Kids are so gross.”

Anderson holds up one finger and Kyle stills. “Do you hear that?”

From the depth of the forest, the sound of a man’s scream abruptly cuts off. A moment later, it repeats. Then again and again in rapid succession.

“Yeah, I hear it. What is that? Some kind of bird?”

Shrugging, Anderson hefts his shovel. “Repeating like that? Most likely. Birds aren’t my thing, you’ll have to ask Cynthia when she comes in. Anyway,” – he pushes the blade of his tool into the earth, – “consider yourself lucky that vomit is all you’ve seen so far. We get a lot worse. Wait till the first time you find a body.”

L.M. Conkling is an author of speculative, corporate and supernatural horror. In her free time, she enjoys exploring haunted locations and new restaurants, challenging herself with difficult recipes that last several pages, reading, and creating artistic quilts that cause viewers to stare for much too long. She resides near the coastal forests of Northern California with her husband, Will, and their black hellhound, Val. She received her Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Cal Poly Humboldt.

Without in any way limiting the authors’ and publisher’s exclusive rights, any unauthorised use of any part of this story to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited.

This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, events, locations or general circumstances is entirely coincidental and/or used in a fictitious manner.