The Place Beyond

by Ryan Lohner

  At least the town had a good football team, of which he was a proud member. Sure, it meant he had to hang out with jerks like Johnny, but it was the one thing he was actually thankful for about growing up here in Berkland. He’d turned into the school’s star player, renowned for both his speed and tackling power. Last season he’d been key to several victories and had been basking in the glow ever since, while flattering himself into thinking he hadn’t let it go to his head too much: that he had let the others know they were valuable members of the team, too. He just hoped that when he finally got away from here, it didn’t turn out he was just a big fish in a small pond, and his skills were nothing special in the real world. His parents had been nothing but supportive, but he’d watched enough pro games to know it was a whole other level of the sport.

  But no one was paying attention to the team now, and he didn’t blame them at all. He didn’t know the missing boy himself, besides catching brief glimpses of him a couple times. None of the other players seemed to have known him either, but Johnny had behaved really oddly when Jim had asked him about the kid. Without saying a word, he had simply looked at his shoes, pawed at the floor, got a dirty look on his face, and walked away. Jim wondered what he was missing.

  One interesting development involved Jane Watson, whom he’d never really noticed before, until she had come back for the new school year as a full-blown hottie. He’d been trying to find the right time to approach her for a couple weeks, but now she seemed to be spending all her time with that new kid. Of course, he didn’t feel threatened at all. He was confident what Jane’s choice would be if he decided to throw his hat in the ring, but it was just … odd.

  * * *

  Matt had just finished his turn with the police. Talking with Jane, he learned that they had only asked him the same rote questions as all the other students. No one wanted to say it, but he knew that meant they had zero to go on. All their searching was turning up nothing, and Matt had seen enough cop shows to know a missing person who wasn’t found after two days would probably never be found.

  He felt like screaming all the time. His whole life he’d been the odd man out, the dweeb no one wanted to be friends with. And now the boy who had given him the very thing he had craved, the friendship that made life so much better, was who knew where, suffering who knew what. Terrible visions kept flashing through his head – Dave being beaten by kidnappers, or dead in a ditch. And try as he might, he just couldn’t summon any hope that the cops would solve this any time soon.

  At least Jane had finally stopped crying. However bad he felt, it always became worse when he saw how this was affecting her. For a while, in a way Matt was quite sure wasn’t healthy, she had refused to say a word about it, pointedly changing the subject whenever he tried to bring it up. Matt knew he should have tried harder to get her to open up but the last thing he wanted now was to drive her away, leaving him completely alone again. Her red and often tearful eyes had told him that she was at least letting some of her emotions out.

  Today, a week after the disappearance had been discovered, she had finally opened up enough to him to say something.

  “I was going to ask him out, you know.” She glanced away from him “That’s why I came up to you in the first place.”

  Matt dug deep inside himself for a little chuckle. “I suppose you didn’t notice me at all?” He quickly regretted his poor attempt at humor as she silently looked down at the side-walk. He’d been hoping to make her laugh, but all he’d succeeded in doing was creating an embarrassing silence between them.

  She turned her face up to him and Matt felt himself relax a little. He had been half-expecting to see that he’d set off her tears again, but the look she gave him was calm, although still flat. “I know what you’re trying to do, Matt, and thanks.” She managed a shaky smile. “Just having someone to talk to helps.”

  “What about your brothers?” Matt asked. He’d had the idea they were all pretty close.

  This did earn him a laugh. “They’ve spent my whole life just pulling my pigtails, so to speak. They yell at me, I yell at them, it’s all pretty messy. Something like this …” Jane shook her head. “I’ve got no idea how they’d take it, and I’m not really in the best space to want to find out right now.”

  Matt nodded; he could certainly understand the feeling. “You know what I can’t stop thinking of for some reason? That stuff he said about us all checking out what’s happening in the woods. I don’t know what it is, but I swear, the whole conversation just keeps going through my head, word for word.”

  Jane frowned. “Yeah, what was that? I mean, do I really strike you as a girl who would be into that? Although, I was starting to like the idea,” she finished, blushing and turning away.

  Matt didn’t know what to say. Talking to girls required learning a new language as far as he was concerned. It was a skill which he’d never been that invested in, but the last thing he wanted now was to make her more emotional. Finally, for want of any better ideas, he said, “You want to do it anyway?”

  Jane looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. He’d said it, so he might as well just go along with it. “Just something about the way Dave said it. Just bringing it up out of nowhere. I can’t help but wonder if maybe there was more to it than just a casual mention. Maybe looking for whatever’s going on out there can help us find him.”

  He noticed Jane preparing to object and held his hand up. “I know, I know. It’s crazy. I’m grasping at straws. But … I just feel like I need to do SOMETHING. I’m going nuts just trying to live my life waiting for other people to solve this, and from where I’m standing, it doesn’t look like they’re doing that great a job. You feel some of this too, right?”

  Jane took a while to respond, and Matt saw several emotions flash across her face. He cringed, wondering if he had inadvertently said the thing that really would drive her off for good. It sounded weird to him now that it was out there. But when she spoke, she wasn’t angry or confused. Instead she said, “Say you’re right. What exactly are you expecting to find out there? Hell, what are we even going to do about it anyway?”

  Matt had no idea himself. But by now he felt committed to the idea, so he pressed on, “I guess we listen, and if one of the sounds happens, we follow it.”

  Jane laughed again. “I don’t have a lot of confidence in this plan.”

  Matt could only smile. “Well, neither do I. I’m just pulling stuff out of the top of my head here.” At least it seemed to be working on her mood. She was actually smiling now, and if it was a little tight, well, baby steps. He was a beginner at dealing with this level of emotion and felt very lucky to have even made it this far without crashing and burning.

  Jane opened her mouth to say something, then seemed to decide better and closed it again. She chewed on her lip. “I’m in.”

  Matt had to take a step back. “What – seriously?”

  “Seriously. I know my way around the woods pretty well.” She shot him an apologetic grin. “I went through kind of a tomboy phase. Although there is one other thing we have to think of.”

  The grin had gone. Now, when her green eyes met his blue ones, they were deadly serious. “What do we tell our parents?”

  Matt hadn’t thought that far ahead. He slapped his forehead. “Right. There’s already one missing student, and they’re not going to want to give whatever happened any chance to get at us.”

  Jane put her hands on her hips. “Well, this is your idea, genius. What are we going to do?”

  Matt took another couple of steps back. “I’m thinking! Just give me time!”

  Jane suddenly had a knowing look in her eyes. “Because I’m pretty sure I can sneak out of my house. How about you?”

  Suddenly Matt’s bright idea was spinning in a direction he was pretty sure he wasn’t comfortable with. “That’s … a surprise.”

  “See, for a while now, I’ve been thinking of what I might do if I wanted to go out and meet a
guy without my parents knowing. Be prepared, right?”

  “I–I … guess that makes sense,” Matt stuttered. “Still doesn’t help me, though.”

  Jane chewed at her lip again. Matt wondered if he should maybe start to worry whenever he saw her do that.

  “Well, we shouldn’t do this until the weekend, anyway. If we’re going to be out late I sure don’t want to face school the next day. So, why don’t you tell your parents you’ll be bringing a new friend over? Say you need to feel like something is normal, maybe.”

  Yeah, he definitely needed to be worried about the lip chewing thing.

  * * *

  Jim had just happened to be passing by when he overhead Jane talking to Matt. He decided to hang around a bit, figuring he might even pick up something he could use to talk to her. But after what he’d just heard, he was in quite a different mood. It seemed he’d severely underestimated the new kid, who already had the girl coming over to his house, and would soon be alone with her. The guy was an evil genius! Well, it was too late to do anything about it, but he would definitely be keeping a much closer eye on those two. He wasn’t backing out of this without a fight. Not that either of them even knew it was a fight as of yet, but it was the principle of the thing that mattered. He would win in the end. It might take a bit more effort than he’d expected, but experience told him it would happen.

  * * *

  By Friday night, everything was ready. Matt had shown Jane all over his house (getting some unnerving looks from his parents in the process – he was sure they’d got hold of the wrong idea) and she’d come up with a plan. Luckily, he had a clock in his room. At midnight on the dot, he slipped out of bed. Despite his parents being able to work from home, they kept to strict schedules and he was sure they would both be asleep by now.

  He and Jane had spent some time on the stairs, finding which ones made noises, and where. Mostly this was easy to memorize and navigate with a bit of repetition, but the real issue came about halfway down. One step had defied all their attempts to find a spot where it would stay quiet when stepped on. He had no choice but to jump over it, and he had never been very confident in his physical agility. The concept of not only landing safely on the next step, but not making enough noise to wake anyone up while doing so had almost had him backing out of the idea right there. But it seemed he’d set off some kind of spark in Jane, causing her to cash in her unused rebellion points all at once. With his parents out of the way, shopping – his father giving him a wink on the way out – she had kept him at it until he could manage the feat reasonably well.

  From there, it was just straight out the front door. Matt had a bike, but getting it outside involved either lugging it up from the basement or opening the garage door and he knew he couldn’t do either without making a ton of noise. There was nothing for it – he would have to do the deed on foot. Luckily, the place he and Jane had arranged to meet wasn’t far. Berkland wasn’t a large town, so finding a good place halfway between their houses wasn’t hard.

  Jane met him at the rendezvous spot. She looked at him, frowning, and shook her head. “What, you didn’t think you’d need a jacket?”

  Matt had indeed kicked himself a couple times on the way there for forgetting this detail. Fall was now in full force, and it seemed, despite the name, South Jersey was still far enough north for that to really mean something. “What do you want,” he blustered, “it’s my first time.”

  Jane rolled her eyes. “Mine, too, but you don’t see me unprepared. Just remember, this was your idea. If you end up getting pneumonia, it’s on you.”

  Matt chuckled. “You don’t think the Jersey Devil’s the bigger problem?”

  Jane laughed again. “There’s really only so many times you can hear that story before it loses all impact. So, are we going, or what?”

  Matt again marveled at the change he was seeing in her. “You know, I should admit, I was at least half-joking about this.”

  Jane gave him a long look. “You think I didn’t notice? But really, thank you. You had exactly the right idea. Just get out and do something, even something stupid. If you hadn’t said it, I’d still be crying myself to sleep right now.”

  The look on her face showed Matt that she was completely in earnest about this. He smiled. “Yeah, so would I.”

  He was going to ask where she wanted to start but, abruptly, the decision was made for him. A large boom, like a plane breaking the sound barrier, came from the nearby woods. For a moment they stared at each other, then, without needing to say anything, headed off in pursuit.

  Luckily, Matt hadn’t come completely unprepared and had thought to bring a flashlight, as had Jane. The forest proved hazardous: low-hanging branches snatched at their faces and tangled in their hair. Roots caught at their ankles doing their best to trip them up and mounds of pebbles that looked sturdy slid into nothing as soon as they were stepped on. Doggedly they pushed their way through, shining the lights in a wide arc before them. After a while, Matt started to wonder if they were even still going in the right direction. He had not ventured this deep before; they could have got completely turned around and he wouldn’t know it. Jane surged ahead, confidence in every line of her body. Matt kept his worries to himself, figuring she knew where she was headed.

  He knew he’d made the right call when another boom echoed around them, closer this time. Knowing they were at least on track gave Matt renewed hope; he started thinking maybe what they were doing wasn’t completely insane. As yet he had no real idea how, but he had to make himself believe there was a purpose to all this. If there wasn’t, he and Jane would be right back at square one, actually worse than that since, at least before, they’d had something to look toward. Failing to uncover anything tonight would leave the feeling of there being nothing they could do pressing down on them all the harder. Plus, risking all this trouble without achieving anything really didn’t sit well with him.

  It also occurred to him that he hadn’t stopped to think about just what they would do if they did find something out here. The closest thing to a working theory he had was that Dave would just be tied up deep in the woods with the person or people who took him. He asked himself now what the two of them could do if they came across a scene like that?

  Just then, Matt heard the sound of voices coming from up ahead. He stopped dead in his tracks and was relieved to see Jane do the same thing. The voices came from straight ahead. Searching the night, Matt could make out a small hill. The voices had to be coming from behind that. Praying it wasn’t already too late, he clicked off his flashlight, signaling Jane to do likewise. Matt had expected to be plunged into total darkness, only to find there was still a surprising amount of light around. He looked up; there was only a half-moon in the sky, which wouldn’t account for the visibility around them. Then his eyes were drawn lower: the light seemed to be coming from near ground level, just on the other side of the hill, throwing shadows up and around rather than down. He’d been so intent on the ground straight in front of him, with all its dangers, that he hadn’t noticed. Now he saw that it was coming from a ball, barely visible over the top of the hill. From the distance they were at it was hard to tell, but Matt would have guessed it was the size of a grapefruit.

  He and Jane looked at each other again, blank incomprehension written on both their faces. The voices continued, though they couldn’t make out any words; the hill acted as a barrier to any clear sound. Matt pointed toward the sounds, raising his hands he shrugged, hoping Jane would understand that he was asking if they should go closer. It was dawning on him that Jane had a good deal more idea what she was doing than he did, so he was fine with letting her take the lead.

  Jane nodded, gesturing for them to go around the right side. A quick glance, in the light spilling from that weird ball, showed clear ground with little of the kind of obstacles they’d faced getting here, so he gave her a thumbs up. They cautiously edged down the path, careful not to make any noise. The ball’s light grew brighter as the hill�
�s slope allowed more of it to meet their eyes, but this still didn’t make much difference as the fear of not knowing just what they had stumbled into kept their speed slow.

  The closer they got, the more the thought of the danger they might be walking into played on Matt’s mind. He began asking himself if he really wanted to find out what was going on, if it meant maybe risking their lives. But the thought came too late, and at long last, they came close enough to make out what was being said. Not that it was of much help. The first thing they heard was, “I’m tired of all this waiting around. I get that there’s a problem with time variations, but we’ve been sitting on this thing long enough!”

  Matt and Jane looked at each other in utter bafflement.

  “Don’t talk about it like you’ve any idea what you’re saying,” another voice said. This one was much deeper and had a clear authoritative tone. “Besides, we have our orders. If you don’t like taking them, you shouldn’t have joined up.”

  The first man barked a laugh. “So instead of working with you guys, I’d just have stayed in jail? No thanks. I’m just saying – all this waiting around wasn’t in the pitch.”

  “Oh shut up, already!” a third voice cut in irritably. “It’s not changing. It’s never going to change. Until we hear differently, our job is to watch this area. Count yourself lucky we get to switch with other teams and spend some time at home.”

  Matt glanced at Jane again, shocked to see the fear painting her face. She gestured at him frantically, telling him they should leave now – right now! Silently, hardly daring to breathe, they crept back the way they’d come. And then they kept going, neither willing to say a word until they were all the way back to town.