Hapi by Cari Waites
Jayden didn’t knowhow long he worked before he finally managed to peel the tin wall back. His fingers were swollen and clumsy, and he’d lost the feeling in them. The tin cut across the fleshy part of his palm as he pulled it back, and he left a bloody, smeared handprint on the dirty concrete floor as he crawled through the gap he’d made. The sharp edge of the tin scraped down his back, snagging on his T-shirt and bringing him out in goose bumps, but he eased through carefully and didn’t cut himself a second time.
And then he was outside in the night with the rain on his face.
A line of trees loomed up close to the back of the shed, darker than the cloud-filled sky above them, and Jayden hurried toward them, clutching his water bottle in his bloody hand. His bare feet slipped in the mud, and the sudden shock of being free made him shaky and uncertain. He pushed forward into the trees, trying not to think of snakes or crocs or a million things he could trip over and snap an ankle. He had to keep moving as quickly as he could.
His feet slipped on wet leaves, and he shot out a hand to stop himself from stumbling. He caught a branch and wavered with it for a moment until he regained his balance.
He stopped and looked back at the shed. It was a black shape in the darkness. Jayden couldn’t see any lights at all, so the shed must have been blocking the view of the house. Hopefully it would block his escape as well.
The bush was dark; an inkier blackness than Jayden had been used to even in the shed. Shapes loomed up out of nothing and already within striking distance before Jayden had even seen them. He sucked in short, shallow breaths as he moved and thought of the shifting dark patterns he saw in his vision, endless and receding into themselves, when Hapi choked him.
He kept moving, expecting something sharp to pierce his foot with every step, and hoped like hell he was heading away from the river. He didn’t want to give any crocodiles nesting on the bank an easy meal.
The ground inclined upward and Jayden followed it, roots dragging at his feet and mud sucking. He pushed a stringy branch out of his way and it whipped back and caught him in the face, as sharp and shocking as a slap. He stumbled back, losing his footing and landing heavily on his arse. He sat there for a moment, breathing heavily, before clambering to his feet again and moving.
He was sweating despite the rain. Salt stung his eyes and he wiped it away with his wet shirt. He was sweaty, wet, and covered in mud. He slapped at his arm as something stung him. It was too dark to tell what had gotten him, but the spot itched like a sandfly bite. Great, that was all he needed. At the same time, though, if sandflies were the worst he had to face tonight, he’d consider himself lucky.
Jayden didn’t know how many hours it was until daylight, but he needed to put some distance between himself and the shed before then. He hoped he wasn’t heading straight for the river, and he hoped he wasn’t going in circles, either. He’d read something about that once, or seen it on some TV show, about how lost people wandered in circles even when they were certain they were going in a straight line. He had no idea if the opposite held true, if people who thought they were going in circles were actually moving in straight lines instead, but probably not.
He tried not to think of the brothers as he ran, but it was impossible because the idea of what they’d do to him if they caught him was terrifying. Hapi might have said he’d make sure his judgement wouldn’t hurt if Jayden gave his breath to him, but Jayden knew that wouldn’t hold now. Hapi’s wrath, he was sure, would be just as brutal as his brothers’.
He reached a wall of trees that grew thickly twisted together. Fig trees, maybe, with tendrils that reached down into the mud and took root there. Jayden pushed through the first few of them, wincing as something slithered down his back, but soon reached a place where the dangling roots of the trees were too solid to push aside. He stood there for a moment, catching his breath. He pulled his water bottle out of the waistband of his boardshorts and took a sip of water. He wondered if he should stay here, just until dawn brought enough light to see, but what if he wasn’t far away from the shed at all? He had no idea how long he’d been running and no idea how far he’d gotten.
A rustle in the underbrush somewhere close by decided him. He hurried away from the noise and then backtracked for a few minutes before trying another path. This time when the trees closed in, he found a way to slip between them.
He rested for a moment. His lungs ached as he pulled breath into them. His throat made a clicking sound when he breathed, and he wondered if he had Hapi to thank for that. He wondered if Hapi had caused permanent damage to his throat. What about to his brain? Wasn’t there a risk of damage to the brain if oxygen was cut off?
Jayden rubbed his uninjured palm against the rough, wet bark of a tree and forced himself to count his breaths and slow his panicked heartbeat. Those were future worries and now, more than ever, Jayden had to live in the moment. He had to survive the night before he started worrying about shit like permanent damage.
And then, just when he’d pushed his panic down, he heard it in the distance: the high-pitched howl of a dog.
Jayden ran.
Branches slapped him, stinging, blinding, but Jayden kept moving. He stumbled more than he ran, every step in the darkness a potential misstep, but he was still moving. He heard the dog’s howl again, from somewhere behind him, and then, to his horror, an answering bark from a different direction.
Jayden had never been so terrified, not with Hapi, and not even with Duamutef. Without his sight, without being able to anticipate which direction an attack might come from, Jayden’s imagination filled in the blanks.
You’re already dead, his frantic panic screamed at him. You’re already dead and this is hell.
He tripped, stumbled, and landed on his hands and knees in the mud. Gravel dug into his palms and he crawled forward. Suddenly the gravel gave way to something smoother and Jayden let out a sob. Bitumen. He’d found a road.
His momentary relief flooded away, replaced by panic when he heard a howl echoing from somewhere in the darkness behind him.
The dogs.
Jayden scrambled to his feet, his body aching and hands stinging. There was no time to feel relieved, not when the dogs were hunting him. Maybe the rain made it harder for them to track him, and maybe now that he wasn’t crashing loudly through the bush they wouldn’t be able to follow him as easily, but he didn’t know. His whole life had spiralled into an entire dark world of not knowing.
A little over a week ago—he thought it was a little over a week, but he couldn’t be sure how long he’d been in that shed—Jayden had been driving his shitheap of a car north on the Bruce Highway, sitting on small-drawn hopes and the promise, even if those hopes didn’t pan out, of new horizons. And now he was trapped in a nightmare, with dogs snapping at his heels and the spectre of Egyptian gods hanging over him.
There was a sun god, wasn’t there, with a big blazing eye that watched over everything; although, maybe Jayden was conflating that with some other myth he’d heard once. Maybe the sun god was as awful as the rest of them or maybe he was the good one. It didn’t matter, since Jayden couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the sun.
The rain beat a steady tattoo against the bitumen. Jayden looked left along the road and then right. The rain reduced his field of vision to what felt like nothing more than a few metres in each direction. He couldn’t see any signs.
He picked a direction—right—and kept running.
The bitumen was hard going on his feet after the mud, but at least he wasn’t scared of tripping. He lifted his face to the clouds as he moved, opening his mouth to catch the rain. He heard a dog barking again, still in the distance, and couldn’t tell if it was closer than before. A part of him was afraid it was the dog that wasn’t barking that would be the one that caught him, and he wouldn’t even know it was close until it was already on him.
And then he saw a flash of light through the rain up ahead, there and gone so quickly that he thought he’d imagined it.
And then he saw it again, except it wasn’t a flash this time, but a steady light—headlights. The car must have gone down a dip in the road or something that it had vanished for a moment, but those were headlights and they were coming closer.
Jayden froze for a moment in indecision, and then he heard another howl behind him, closer this time.
He ran forward, feet slapping on the wet bitumen, and waved his arms wildly. The car’s headlights were on high beam, and the light caught him as he stumbled along the edge of the road. For a horrible moment Jayden thought the car would just keep going—Who would stop for some crazy guy at the side of the highway?—but the car braked and pulled up a short distance after passing him.
It was a new white sedan.
Jayden hurried toward it, and the passenger’s side window lowered as he approached.
He looked like a mess. He was west and muddy, and his hand was bleeding again.
“Help me,” he said, curling his fingers around the top of the window. “Please, can you help me?”
The man was middle-aged and grey-haired. “Shit,” he said, his brow creasing. “Have you had an accident?”
The car doors unlocked with a click as the man pressed a button, and Jayden wrenched the door open and clambered into the car. “I need to call the police,” he said.
“You look like hell,” the man said. “Do you need the hospital?”
Jayden couldn’t stop his hands from shaking. “Maybe, I don’t know. But I need the police, too.”
“Okay,” the man said, eyeing him warily like he was some sort of cornered feral animal. “Put your seat belt on.”
Jayden reached for the belt and drew it across his body with difficulty, his jerky movements causing it to lock more than once. He finally clicked the buckle into place, sliding his hand up under it to adjust it and stop it from touching his bruised throat.
The guy threw him a sidelong look and put the car into Drive. He pulled away from the side of the highway.
Jayden looked at the phone resting in the centre console. It was plugged in and the screen on the dashboard showed the driver’s playlist. Jayden saw the icon for the phone’s call functions.
“Can… can you call the police?” he asked. He felt as though he was unravelling rapidly now that he was sitting in this man’s nice car, making the seat muddy and wet while he shivered in the air conditioning. He squeezed his hand convulsively, expecting to feel his water bottle crack, but he didn’t have it with him anymore. He must have dropped it at some point. “Please.”
“Yeah,” said the guy and reached out toward the touchscreen. A gold ring glinted on his hand. “Do you want me to—Jesus!” He slammed on the brakes just as the shape loomed out of the darkness in front of them. “What is that?”
It was one of the dogs. It stood there, huge and black, staring them down in the headlights. The rain made its coat gleam like a pool of ink. Its hackles were raised, its head was lowered, and its lips were pulled back in a growl that bared its fangs. Jayden couldn’t hear the growl from inside the car over the sound of the driver’s soft jazz playlist, but he could feel it. The fear reverberated in his bones.
“Holy shit,” the driver said. “That’s a big dog.”
The light from the touchscreen caught on his gold ring, and Jayden saw a pattern engraved in the metal. A hieroglyph.
His heart stuttered, static panic blasted inside his skull, and he fumbled for the release button of his seat belt.
“He’s looking for you, is he?” the man asked, his mouth curling into a smile. “Of course he is.” He laughed as Jayden tugged uselessly at the belt. “Come on, you’re not stupid enough to step outside and let the dog get you, are you, my little wandering soul?”
Jayden used the force of his fear to propel him—he reached out and tried to grab the man’s phone. The man backhanded him, and Jayden’s head bounced against the headrest of the car seat.
“Who are you?” Jayden rasped, although he already knew the answer.
“I’m Horus,” the man said, his gaze falling approvingly on the bruises around Jayden’s throat. “I see you’ve already met my sons.”