The Troop

by Nick Cutter

him—I’m

Thbese dashes are kinf of distracting

Would they come for him? He figured so. He was their failure—a human blooper reel—but also the keeper of their secret. And he was so, so toxic. At least, that’s what he overheard them say. He didn’t wish to hurt anyone. The possibility that he may already have done so left him heartsick. What was it that Edgerton had said? If this gets out, it’ll make Typhoid Mary look like Mary Poppins

For two days, he and the boys would be alone. One cabin, a few trails. A boat dropped them off with their supplies earlier this evening; it would return on Sunday morning.

The weekend forecast was calling for a storm; weather reports had it rolling in off the northern sea, one of those thunderhead-studded monsters that infrequently swept across the island province—half storm, half tornado, they’d tear shingles off houses and snap saplings at the dirt line.

No, poor Newt was simply born a nerd, as certain unfortunates are. Had Tim been in the delivery room, he’d’ve sensed it: an ungrippable essence, unseen but deeply felt, dumping out of the babe’s body like a pheromone.

Congratulations, Ms. Thornton, he’s a healthy baby nerd. He’s bound to be a wonderful man, but for the conceivable future he’ll be a first-rank dweeb—a dyed-in-the-wool Poindexter

Shelley . . . Tim considered between sips of scotch and realized the boy gave off no smell at all—if anything the vaporous, untraceable scent of a sterilized room in a house long vacant of human life.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

He pinched it between his fingers before it could get away and ate it up. Very nice, very nice. Succulent.

I'm picturing him as Gollum now

even the name had a pushy, aggressive quality. An alpha-male moniker, of a piece with Tanner and Chet and Brodie, names parents bestow upon a boy they’ve prefigured as a defense attorney or a lacrosse coach. No parent harboring the hope for a sensitive, artistic child names that child Kent.

In such ways are friendships built. In tiny moments, in secrets shared.

I thought: This is how it COULD be. If I wasn’t ME. If I existed in a different body, an acceptable body, a body everyone loved. If I didn’t live in North Point, where I’m like this train on rails: I know where I’m going, hate it, but can’t change course. This was who I could’ve been if the ball had bounced just a bit differently, you know?

There is an emotion that operates on a register above sheer terror. It lives on a mindless dog-whistle frequency. Its existence is in itself a horrifying discovery: like scanning a shortwave radio in the dead of night and tuning in to an alien wavelength—a heavy whisper barely climbing above the static, voices muttering in a brutal language that human tongues could never speak.

This sickness cared nothing for Kent—for the man he could’ve become, for the bright future that seemed so assured. It was coring him out, ruining him in unfixable ways.

The dividing line between genius and insanity is very thin and quite permeable—which is why so many geniuses descend into madness.”

“Do you want to know the best, most effective transmitter of contagion known to man?” Edgerton asks me this with a pinprick of mad light dancing in each iris. “It’s love. Love is the absolute killer. Care. The milk of human kindness. People try so hard to save the people they love that they end up catching the contagion themselves. They give comfort, deliver aid, and in doing so they acquire the infection. Then those people are cared for by others and they get infected. On and on it goes.” He shrugs. “But that’s people. People care too much. They love at all costs. And so they pay the ultimate price.”

It came down to that flexibility of a person’s mind. An ability to withstand horrors and snap back, like a fresh elastic band. A flinty mind shattered. In this way, he was glad not to be an adult. A grown-up’s mind—even one belonging to a decent man like Scoutmaster Tim—lacked that elasticity.

That’s what’s different about kids: they believe everything can happen, and fully expect it to.

But for now he still believed enough, and maybe that had kept him sane.

“I’m just saying that sometimes the more you care for something, the more damage you do. Not on purpose, right? You end up hurting the things you love just because you’re trying so hard.