Lolo Omo

“Looks closed,” she remarked, nodding at the dilapidated structure.

“Bullshit, there’s somebody in the garden.” I pointed to the silhouette flitting between the sunflowers next to the ‘main building’.

I exited the car and approached the gloomy multi-function store. My girlfriend brushed a brown curl out of her face and followed. A little bell announced our entrance. Even I could feel Vick’s goosebumps. A place like that, in the middle of nowhere, made her imagination run wild. Not much light illuminated the sparsely stock shelves. Dust hung in the stale air and tickled my nose. The sneeze that thundered out of me startled Vick, and she squealed.

“Bless yous!” chirped a voice from the twilight behind the cash register. The gaunt man with the strange accent shuffled barefoot around the counter. He adjusted his dirty glasses and looked down at me.

“What can I do yous for?”

“Do you have tick repellent?” I asked, unimpressed.

“What’s tick repellent?”

“Uh… repellent… for ticks.”

“What for? Yous ‘fraid o’ ticks?”

I stared at him.

“Our ticks harmless. Don’t be ‘fraid o’ ’em… Not o’ ’em ticks.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, honey, let’s go.” Vick took my arm and dragged me outside. One last time I looked at the building. Was that a silhouette behind the window? Were those eyeglasses reflecting the sunlight?

I let my gaze wander over Vick’s slim, toned body. As she caught me, she smiled at me with brown eyes. After a few minutes, we turned off the county road. The narrow feeder wound its way close to the cliff through the dark greenery. As we reached the entrance sign to Twin Peaks, the pale sun disappeared behind the mountains, casting their oppressive shadows over the village.

Vick’s sister Isabel lived in the last house. Beyond her place was nothing but deep, dark forest in which the road shrunk first to a path and later to a trail.

After a long welcome and a short night, we hiked along this trail. Soon it disappeared, and the vegetation swallowed us. The pounding of our feet on the damp forest floor was the only sound out here. Isabel’s ominous “Be careful” still lingering in the back of my brain. I shrugged it off, trying to argue my arrogance to her knowledge of these woods away.

We slowly made our way uphill. In the evening we reached the foot of the southern slope. The geocache, we set out for, was called “Cerebrum Hirudo”. It was hidden halfway up, and we planned to be there the next day at lunchtime. We set up camp in a clearing.

“Help me put this log closer to the fire. So, we don’t have to sit in the dirt,” Vick ordered.

We lifted the dead wood. When Vick screams, she screams for her life. It was a screech, loud and high enough to chill your bones. It echoed off the mountains and my heart skipped a beat. I almost dropped my end of the log. Instead, Vick threw hers away and did her this-is-icky-dance. The log slipped from my fingers and fell. Not to the ground, but onto my foot. Pain spread and I lost my balance.

“Oh shit! Sorry, sorry!” Vick dropped to her knees next to me and kissed me. “Sorry monkey, are you okay?”

“I’m alright.” I got up and ignored the throbbing in my foot. “What happened?”

Vick pointed in disgust at the gray heap that had been rotting under the log. I couldn’t make out the shape at first, but as I leaned in, the blob’s features became more defined. I recognized it by the fangs. The once big mountain lion had shrunk by two-thirds. Its fur had fallen out and its mummified skin stretched over its empty frame. The body was intact except for the fist-sized hole in the neck. From that oversized black hickey crawled the stuff of nightmares. Cockroaches, maggots, beetles, sought their way in and out, making the former predator’s skin tremble.

“Lolo Omo,” Vick whispered.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just something my sister told me.”

“Have you been telling each other ghost stories again?”

“Hey!” She punched me in the chest. “Ghosts are real.”

I took her in my arms and kissed her forehead. “I know, sweetie.” I tried to cover up my ironic undertone. “What’s scarier is that we’re in cougar territory.”

We pulled the log closer to the fire, huddled together and checked ourselves for ticks. The warmth from the crackling flames flickered across our faces, casting dancing shadows in the fading daylight.

Around midnight, a loud slurping sound woke me. At least that’s what I thought, but when I opened my eyes, the night was silent. Obliging my bladder, I crawled out of the tent into the cold darkness. I wasn’t picky when choosing a tree. The forest was quiet, except for a rustle in the bushes beside me. I paused and listened into the shadows. The bush twitched. Anticipation crawled up my legs, through the spine into my brain, raising every little hair along the way. A head-sized ball galloped past me. A silver dash disappearing into the undergrowth. When my breathing calmed down, I returned to the tent.

The next morning was damp and covered with dew and fog. Vick had rekindled the fire.

“You’re the best,” I thanked her for the coffee she handed me.

“Did you sleep well?” She leaned her head on my shoulder, sleepily nibbling on a piece of bread.

I nodded and stared into the fire.

“There’s another sucked-out animal back there.” She pointed in the direction of my tree.

“They surely haven’t been sucked dry.”

“It looks like that.” Her voice was thick.

“What is it?”

“A fawn, I think.”

I sipped the coffee.

“It still has fur,” Vick continued.

“Probably hasn’t been there that long.”

“It has a hole in its neck like the cougar. Still bleeding a little.”

After breakfast, we set out to recover the cache. We took the bare essentials with us because we would spend the night here again on the way back. Despite the increasingly thick fog, we made good progress and the GPS beeped promptly at 12 p.m. The cache was quickly found, and we made ourselves comfortable under a nearby tree. “Why is it called a cerebrum something again?” Vick asked as she entered us into the logbook.

“I don’t know, I didn’t read the description.”

“Isn’t a cerebrum in the brain?” She put the book back in the cache.

“I think so.” I handed her an apple.

We ate in silence in the deafening calm of the forest. Then we hiked back. At camp, we checked ourselves for ticks and enjoyed our last evening in the wilderness.

That slurping again. This time I was sure of its existence. I opened my eyes. Slurp. It was already light, and I heard Vick rummaging outside. Slurp. I dug myself out of the sleeping-bag and stepped into the cool, damp morning air. Slurp. Pain shook my skull. Slurp. I staggered toward the fire. Slurp. My eyes tried their best. Slurp. But they didn’t focus. Slurp.

Vick turned to me. Her scream cut through the air. I wanted to ask her what was wrong, but my face was numb. Vick’s was grimaced in horror. My knees weakened. I had to sit down. Vick had her phone out. With shaky fingers, she took a video and showed it to me. I felt the color drain from my face. A shimmering gray ball hung from my neck, pulsating. What looked like an engorged tick was the size of an orange. “Pull it out!” I yelled.

Vick ripped the beast from my neck. Blood spewed hot and sticky from the wound. I fell into the dirt. Vick had dropped the creature. It lay on its back and wriggled with its eight legs. Its scissor-like jaws opened and closed menacingly, and its long trunk curled in and out. It exploded under Vick’s foot in a red cloud which settled on the forest floor like a fungus’ spores, leaving only hairy legs.

The gaping hole in my neck burned like a wildfire. Vick jumped into the tent and returned with a T-shirt. “Hold that on there!” She pressed it on the wound and grabbed my arm.

I kept losing consciousness, as she dragged me down the mountain, picking me up every time I fell. It felt like an eternity before Isabel’s house flashed through the trees, a beacon of hope.

“Lolo Omo,” she whispered as she treated me under Vick’s concerned gaze. “Lolo Omo!”

The next day, dark circles under my eyes adorned my face and I felt hungover. Vick parked the Jeep at the gas pump.

“So? Did ’em ticks done bite yous?”