By
The highway stretched out like a dark ribbon, putting necessary miles between us and the cabin, but the distance did nothing to quiet the screaming in my head. The silence in the car wasn’t peaceful; it was the heavy, pressurized quiet of a submarine too deep underwater.
I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles turned white. I wanted to reach across the console, to bridge the gap and hold Ruth’s hand, but I felt contaminated. We had survived, but the world had shifted on its axis. The physics of our lives—mortgage payments, grocery runs, daycare pickups—now felt like a thin veneer over a rotting reality.
“I didn’t want to believe it was real,” I whispered. My voice sounded like gravel, unused for hours.
Ruth didn’t look at me. She stared through the windshield at the hypnotic rhythm of the passing lane markers. “Me either.”
“What now?”
“I don’t know.”
She rubbed her forearm, a repetitive, anxious motion. In the dim glow of the dashboard lights, I saw the markings. To my eyes, they were intricate, shifting patterns of ink—dark, organic lines that seemed to pulse with a faint, internal rhythm.
“Are these…” I trailed off, glancing at my own arms. The same ink spiraled there. “What are these?”
Ruth finally turned. Her eyes were swollen, the whites mapped with red veins. She traced the new mark on her skin. “I just got my daddy’s liferoot. I didn’t even know I had it inside me.” She looked at me, her expression hollow. “I guess you got your daddy’s, too.”
Liferoot. The word dredged up a fragment of memory I had suppressed for twenty years. I knew the word, but only as an abstract concept—the fuel my father burned to stand against things that shouldn’t exist. I had never seen one. My father had been a man of button-down shirts and Sunday best; he never had a tattoo in his life. Yet, my mother had sworn his cane belonged to him, though he’d never walked with a limp. He had left the cane behind. He hadn’t left this.
“I never knew what one looked like,” Ruth said.
“Me either.”
“They should only be visible to other Grafts,” she murmured, yanking her sleeve down to her wrist.
Graft. That was the other word. The label my father wore like a secret rank.
I reached out then, unable to stand the isolation anymore. I covered her hand with mine. She didn’t pull away, but her hand was cold. I squeezed, trying to transmit some semblance of safety I didn’t actually feel.
“MOMMY! DADDY! I’m hungry!”
The shriek from the back seat shattered the tension like glass. I jerked the wheel slightly; Ruth gasped. Then, the corners of her mouth twitched. It wasn’t a smile, not really, but it was a crack in the mask of horror.
“How do chicken nuggets sound, buddy?” I called back, my voice cracking.
“Great!” Calvin chirped, oblivious to the blood and ash that stained our memories of the last six hours.
I took the next exit, seeking the neon sanctuary of a drive-thru. The routine felt alien. I ordered into the speaker, the mundanity of choosing dipping sauces feeling absurdly high-stakes.
At the payment window, I handed my credit card to the teenager manning the register. He took it without looking up, popping gum. When he handed it back, his eyes dropped to my arm resting on the sill.
He froze. The gum stopped snapping.
I looked down. To me, the ink was a swirling testament to heritage. But I saw the reflection in his eyes—shock, then revulsion. To him, I didn’t look tattooed. I looked like I had taken a spool of barbed wire and scrubbed the flesh off my forearms. The raw, jagged mess of a madman.
“Have a day,” he muttered, dropping the positive adjective as he pulled his hand back sharply, afraid of infection.
The mood shifted instantly. At the pickup window, the woman practically threw the paper bag into the car, her face twisted in a grimace. She slammed the sliding glass shut before I could even check the order.
We ate in the moving car. The silence returned, heavier than before, punctuated only by the happy crinkle of wrappers from the back seat.
The apartment complex in Edgerton was a collection of beige stucco and asphalt, but tonight it looked like a fortress. We pulled in just as the sun finished bleeding out over the horizon.
Getting upstairs was a tactical operation. Ruth carried Calvin, who had crashed hard after the sugar rush, his head lolling on her shoulder. I carried the single duffel bag we had managed to pack. Being surrounded by strangers—neighbors walking dogs, the muffled sound of televisions through thin walls—felt paradoxically safer than the isolation of the woods.
We had an unspoken agreement: survival first, processing second. We moved through the bedtime routine with robotic precision. Pajamas. Teeth. Water.
After I tucked Calvin in, I sat on the edge of his bed, intending to tell him a story, but my mind was a blank slate. I had no stories left. Ruth appeared in the doorway, looking like a ghost in sweatpants. She stepped in, brushed my shoulder, and took over. She sang to him—soft, wavering lullabies that held a steel core of resolve.
I retreated to the living room. I needed answers.
I knelt by our bed and shoved aside shoeboxes and winter coats until my fingers brushed against smooth wood. I pulled out the box. It was a simple thing, perfectly square, crafted from dark walnut with no hinges. I held the lid and gave it a gentle shimmy until the vacuum seal broke and the bottom slid into my lap.
Inside lay the artifacts of a life I had tried to forget. At the bottom rested a journal, its leather cover cracked and wrinkled like an old man’s skin.
I opened it. The first few pages were filled with the looping, unsteady cursive of a ten-year-old boy. It wasn’t a diary; it was a catechism.
“What is the purpose of the Grafts?”
The memory washed over me, vivid and smelling of my father’s pipe tobacco. He had sat across from me, his face stern but his eyes crinkling with patience.
“To protect—”
“Write it down,” he had said.
I traced the faded ink on the page. The Grafts exist to protect humankind first, and supernaturals second, from their preternatural predators.
I turned the page.
“And what gifts were given to the Grafts to this end?”
I could hear my own young voice reciting the answer, a monotone drone of memorization.
Three gifts were given unto the Grafts. First was Photomancy, that we might defeat supernatural predators with the strength of the least. Second was a Helper of a unique sort. And the third was lost to the Grafts millennia ago, along with the dragons.
“Excellent,” my father had said. “How does one become a Graft?”
He or she must bond a liferoot in a circumstance of selfless need to protect.
I stared at the last line. Selfless need to protect. I looked at my arms, at the swirling ink that marked me. I had been terrified, yes. But in that cabin, I would have died to keep Ruth and Calvin safe. That was the key. That was the catalyst.
“How much do you remember?”
Ruth’s voice made me jump. She stood over me, her arms crossed tight against her chest. She sat down next to me on the sofa, her thigh pressing against mine.
“More than I thought,” I said, closing the book. “More than I want to.”
“What are we going to do?” Her voice was small, trembling.
I put my arm around her, pulling her into my side. She felt fragile, like she might shatter if I squeezed too hard. “Are we supposed to do anything? Maybe we just… try to live. Get counseling for PTSD.”
“No,” she whispered, burying her face in my neck. “I’m scared, Blaise. I’m scared it’s going to happen again. The thought of leaving the apartment terrifies me. How do we know we’re even safe here? What if they follow us?”
I didn’t have an answer. I was just as clueless, just as terrified.
“Maybe we should reach out,” I said, grasping at straws.
“To who?”
“I don’t know. Someone who knows.”
“Marty,” she said instantly.
I frowned. “Marty? Your dad’s friend? I can’t put my finger on why, but he always creeped me out when I was a kid. He looked at us like we were… specimens.”
“Who else did our parents trust?” she countered. “Your mom doesn’t know the truth. Neither does mine. Marty was the only one around when the ‘work’ talk happened.”
“How do we even get a hold of him? He’s been off the grid for years.”
Ruth reached into her pocket and pulled out a stiff piece of cardstock. It was a Christmas card, the edges worn soft.
“Where did you get that?”
“It was in the glove box. It came the first Christmas after we got married. I kept it because… I don’t know. It felt important.”
She handed it to me. The front was a generic snowy landscape. Inside, the handwriting was sharp and angular. It was signed simply, “M.” But as I looked closer, I saw the flourish of the signature wasn’t just ink—it was a sequence. The tail of the ‘M’ looped into numbers, disguised as calligraphy.
“Call him,” Ruth said, her eyes hard. “I need to know what’s going on.”
I took a breath, pulled out my cell phone, and punched in the hidden numbers. I hit the speakerphone button and set it on the coffee table between us.
It rang once.
“Hello, my sweet Blaise and Ruth,” a voice purred from the speaker. It was a smooth, yuppie English accent, dripping with amused condescension. “Why, what took you so long? Let me guess. Your daddies’ world finally caught up to you?”
A pause, and then a darker tone.
“Tell me everything.”