by Susan Lowry
“I mean, do you feel like they would make a good, realistic couple, from what you’ve seen of them?”
He shrugged. “Don’t see why not.”
Lucy threw her head down on her knees. “Sarah is so – not like him. I wonder what kind of child they’d produce.”
“Well, why would you be worried about that?” Of course the answer had been obvious to him for a while now. But he didn’t want to let on.
“Oh, never mind darling. Somehow I’ve gotten off track… that’s not what I was going to tell you anyway.”
“What were you trying to tell me then?”
“No. It was just that… when Christopher and I were travelling, after a few months, he made quite a few promises to me, you know?” Kevin had never seen her look quite so sad.
“Like what?”
“Yeah… like, he said we were going to be just like a married couple. He really wanted us to have children back then.” Her eyes were filled with pain though she was making a valiant attempt at concealing it.
He was almost certain she was being honest and suddenly, she seemed too innocent. She was far younger than he’d originally believed, having only just turned sixteen. Twenty had seemed more like it the day she had first eaten lunch with him at his cabin, and he had been fooled about it for a while. Now he wondered if Chris had taken advantage of her back then.
Lucy’s head remained resting on her knees and she mumbled into them, almost inaudibly, “Sarah got between us. Oh, I know she’s beautiful and all… not like me, but it isn’t fair —”
“That’s not true,” Kevin blurted.
“Yeah, it is.” Not moving from her position he stared at her long hair draped across her knees. He didn’t reply.
She glanced up at him then with a timid smile. “You’re just saying that.”
“No! I’m not.” He really wanted her to believe him. She was stunning, and she should know it.
Lucy finally sat up. She slid over the few inches between them and for a second, rested her head on his arm and then she suddenly leaned away from him.
Her story really was tragic. He put his arm around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry Lucy.”
She blew air from her lips and a wisp of blonde hair lifted from her perspiring forehead. She seemed exhausted. “Kevin, were you ever planning to have kids?” Her voice sounded like she was singing to Kevin, it was so smooth and high.
He smiled and made a deep huff. “Nah… Not really… I was too into my career.”
“Did you have a girlfriend?”
“Yeah… but she was a long-distance one, with my education and all.”
“Did you make it back to check on her?”
“Yup. I surely did.”
***
With the sharp edge of a rock, Travis was slashing the weeds that ensnared the gate and pulling at the roots, to separate them from the metal. He’d first attempted climbing over top but the thick branches had grown low and too close and the leaves were so dense. He pulled and finally, with his heart hammering, he was able to make a narrow opening and slip through.
***
Was she flirting? Chris and Jack had an eye on him. They’d made it quite clear they thought she was too young. But she obviously needed to feel close to him. The smell of her hair and damp skin pressed against him was awakening memories that had been shut down, in a death-like coma.
Concerned only with survival, he and Hannah had never even thought of intimacy in that way. Now he wondered how it had been possible they’d not desired each other. They must have been in such a dark place his mind had shut the memory of what he had been feeling out. It made him shiver to think of her now – she was truly gone.
“Let’s go inside out of the sun Kevin,” Lucy whispered.
***
In the bright field Travis could think clearly again. The treeline off in the distance to the west stretched miles past the lake and beyond it there was a valley. He knew about it from the map he’d been studying and he’d seen it from the highway, when he, Jack and Kate had driven a long distance from Moonstone.
He lay in the tall grass where he would be hidden from anyone if they passed; the sun beamed down on him and the crickets chirped loudly as he plucked a nearby dandelion and held the stem between his fingers twirling the pedals around. Then he put the end of it in his mouth, regarding the not quite overgrown footpath that led across the field to the forest.
His strategy was taking shape but he wasn’t quite ready yet. Soon though, very soon, he was thinking when a he swore he heard the voice if his father whispering in his head, “Failing to plan is planning to fail son.”
Chapter Sixteen
Making Plans
(October 15th, Year Two, PA)
Travis could see Rose all the way from Sarah’s dock through the trees and he knew that he was in trouble. Her eyes flashed at him angrily as he approached and her earrings rattled as she flipped her chin and demanded, “Just what have you been up to Travis?”
He hung his head and shoved the dirt around with his shoe. She wasn’t that strict. She had even allowed him a lot of leeway and privileges – maybe more that his real mom and dad had done. This time he had finally pushed her too far. He hated to upset her but unfortunately there wasn’t another way.
Rose’s busy schedule had given made it fairly easy to sneak away lately, but when Lucy came over that one day last week, she had passed the recreation center, and not seen him there, where he was supposedly doing his lessons by the swing. He could not reply to their frantic pings either, not without them clueing in to how far he had gone.
At first he’d tried to ignore them but they both sent out such anguished appeals for his whereabouts that Travis began to run back to the road. When he arrived home, the two of them were looking quite scary.
“I just went for a walk,” he’d explained.
“Why didn’t you ping us back, Travis?” Lucy had demanded that first time.
“I couldn’t! I’m not getting into any trouble, so don’t worry about me, okay?”
“You mustn’t do things without us knowing what you’re up to dear. Do you understand?” Rose had been rather reasonable about it several times last week.
Unfortunately they’d caught on despite his efforts to leave when they were all very busy. He needed a better explanation.
“This is becoming unacceptable Travis. Unless you have a very good explanation for what you’ve been up to, you are going to be grounded until I can trust you again,” Rose snapped, with a fury in her eyes he’d never seen before.
“I – I… I’m just looking for stuff to draw,” he said. “Do you have anything better than construction paper?”
“Would that have been so difficult share?” Rose said suspiciously.
“But you never let me go anywhere on my own. I wanted to look for birds and sketch them – like the ones I did of Snowy. By myself.”
“You are well aware of how it worries us when you don’t answer our pings!”
“I’m sorry, but… I wasn’t supposed to go that far, and –”
“You are right about that! Where are your drawings then?”
“I didn’t have anything to draw on. And besides – the birds keep flying away.”
Rose did not soften her tone when she said, “You’ve deceived me too many times now. Last week and then again today. Go to your room and think about what you have done, and when you’re ready to give me a better explanation, then we will talk. Go!”
He stayed in his room contemplating for a long while. There had to be a solution. It didn’t seem long before the sky was splattered with stars and he was starving. Pacing back and forth he happened to catch the astronaut sauntering by with his flashlight, headed toward Lucy’s place.
***
“It’s me,” Chris announced, knocking.
He saw Lucy peek over the back of her couch, the room glowing from an oil lamp on the side table. She stood up and paused before coming to the door, opening it just a crack and
peering out at him.
“It’s late,” she mumbled.
“Sorry, do you mind if I —”
Lucy let the door swing open and with an abrupt turn lumbered back to the sofa.
“You’re wasting your energy with all this pent-up anger,” he said, shutting the door and following her into the room. Picking up a pile of books from a chair across from Lucy — who was horizontal on the couch again — he sat down, and nudged a bowl of popcorn back to safety from the edge of the table.
“It’s gone on far too long. We’ve barely talked,” he attempted in his gentlest voice.
Lucy crossed her arms and grunted.
“I didn’t entirely have my head together back then you know Lucy. I know you think I’m infallible. But the plague was hard for me too.”
She remained unresponsive so he went on.
“You didn’t let on that there were other survivors, now did you? If you remember, you kept Travis a secret for a very long while. I didn’t know he’d led me to you. As far as I understood, we were alone Lucy, when I told you those things.”
Lucy stretched her arm out to retrieve the bowl of popcorn. She balanced it on her stomach, grabbed a handful and offered it to him.
“Thank you,” he said, taking a small handful. He got out of his chair and began to pace while he spoke. “If all goes well, the electricity should be working tomorrow.”
“That’s a relief,” she pouted.
It was difficult to see her still hurting, she was so very young, and he couldn’t deny that to some extent he’d been the source of her pain.
“Lucy,” he began, shaking his head in frustration, “the day I found you, you were in such a horrible state. I truly doubted you were going to make it. All I had cared about from the moment I’d landed the shuttle was finding survivors and it was almost too late when I finally got there. You were barely hanging on, so far-gone in fact, that for the first time since… well, I don’t know – I… I wept like a baby Lucy.”
He stood at the window watching the painful memories of their past flash through his mind, and he was struggling to explain them, even to himself.
“But, when you were a little better, you confided in me, didn’t you? I thought it was so unfair that you had been through all that, only to give up hope – you had been such a fighter up until then. I didn’t feel confident you were going to make it… doubt you remember much of the details.”
Chris turned to look at her, discouraged by her silence. How could he get through? He walked over to the couch.
“I’m sorry that you felt so betrayed Lucy. Guess I seemed heroic to you, eh, taking over when you’d given up, nursing you back to life and everything; Christopher, the great and powerful astronaut to the rescue.”
He perched on the edge of the coffee table inches away from her. “But I wasn’t a hero, pumpkin. I needed you to survive – for me!”
Lucy’s chin remained pressed against her chest but she peered up at him in a way that made her eyes enormously round, and in that dim light, they were an amazing, indigo-blue. At least she was listening.
“I meant all those things I said to you Lucy; all those promises. It gave us hope, don’t you see? Thought we’d be alone – forever possibly. It just seemed like the right thing to do, to keep us going. But things have changed so much since then, you must have gradually figured it out like I did, that it no longer made sense.”
“Please stop going on about it,” Lucy finally protested, looking down at her hands, with her brows wrinkled together. “I get it. I’m fine with it now, okay?”
Her voice was like the song of a melancholy bird, her features soft and paled by the oil lamp, so young – in spite of everything.
“Sarah’s more suitable, I suppose,” she continued. “It wouldn’t have worked out in the long-run; we would have ended up hating each other.”
“That’s entirely possible,” he mumbled.
“So what did you really come here for?”
He gazed across the room and then back at her. “Well, to see if you’re okay, for one.”
She was staring at him steadily.
He sighed, “I would like to father your child one day Lucy. But not until you are ready. And, I know that isn’t now; not for a very long while.”
Lucy blinked at him.
“You will make a good mother. One day.”
“What about Sarah? What does she think about that?”
“Well…”
He got up, walked to the hearth and picked up a photo of Lucy with her biological parents. It was such a shame they hadn’t gotten to know her. “That’s the other thing I came to tell you honey. Sarah’s pregnant.”
Lucy sat up.
“There’s no doubt about it,” he assured her.
Her lips were beginning to quiver. “I’m really happy about that,” she peeped, burying her face in her hands, falling back into the cushions and starting to sob.
“Lucy,” he soothed, taking her in his arms, wanting to protect this amazing but fragile being.
“I’m sorry Christopher… I just—”
“Shhh, there is nothing for you to be sorry for,” he comforted, letting her weep into his shirt. He finally peeled her away and held her so she could see his face. “Can I trust you to be careful with Kevin? We barely know him and there may be reasons he should not be having a child just yet, right?”
Lucy flared her nostrils and slowly nodded.
Chapter Seventeen
The Journey
(October 27th, Year Two, PA, Morning)
Travis was going to be nine in just a few days on Halloween. He gazed at the pumpkin across the table from him that he’d carved last night, feeling eager for the party Rose had promised. She didn’t know there would be more to celebrate than just his birthday and Halloween. That had to be kept a secret for now.
He sprinkled an extra spoonful of sugar onto to his oatmeal, while listening to Rose and Kate giggling in the kitchen. He could see them from where he was sitting.
“Are you still having those strange dreams?” Rose said, sawing through a loaf of bread.
Kate sighed and nodded. “Always at this eerie kind of estate – it’s a nursery, I guess. I can’t explain it, but it’s creepy every time. Ugh!”
Rose laughed. “That’s pretty obvious to me. I have to admit, planning all these babies makes me anxious too.”
“But, I don’t think I’m worried about that Rose. Ben is the best thing that’s ever happened to me – and I can’t wait for Sarah’s baby. I’ll be an aunt! Can’t wait for yours either, when it happens,” Kate added.
Kate glanced over at him and then walked over to the table. “What about you sweetie, are you glad we’re having more babies?” She smiled and gently ruffled his hair. “You love playing with Ben, don’t you?”
Rose plunked the sandwich and muffin she had wrapped up for his lunch on the table in front of him. “Of course he does. He tells me all the time how much he cares for Ben.”
Kate took a seat across from him and rested her chin in her hands. “I’m glad you’re learning to draw. We can’t forget to enjoy these types of things: music, painting, theatre, dancing – all the arts are important, aren’t they?”
She sighed, and looked at him seriously, “I think I’m going to get my paints out really soon.” Then she began to study his sketches that he’d left in front of him.
“This one of your hand is realistic! We should pin these up in the rec centre Rose.”
Travis took his bowl to the sink, rinsed it, and put it away. He returned to the dining table, and began to pack up the sketch pad, pencils, and charcoal Kate had brought over for him, placing them carefully in his backpack while she watched. He put his lunch in last.
“As for the little critters that keep running or flying away from you hon, you have to be still until they learn to trust you. Why don’t you take your camera along, it’s got an excellent telephoto lens?”
“Good idea,” Travis agreed. Photos would
definitely help soften the blow before they decided on a punishment. He ran to his bedroom to get it, returned, and zipped it into one of the pockets of his backpack.
Rose and Kate seemed rather pleased with him. Over the last few weeks he’d been patiently compliant, following every rule and building up their trust. He didn’t even need to ping as often to keep Rose satisfied. Everything was paying off.
Fortunately her schedule was completely filled that day; they all had some major tasks in fact, and with two meetings planned – one in the morning and one in the afternoon – it was the perfect time to make his move. If he was lucky his absence might not be missed at all.
It was a good idea to contact Rose much earlier than usual, he’d thought, and timely that he’d managed his first shot of a chipmunk on his way up the road – his subsequent ping had left Rose especially pleased. She wouldn’t think of him again for a while he suspected as he continued north. Bypassing the rock on which he would usually sit while drawing he went without hesitation up the road and stepped into the tunnel of shadows.
Squeezing through the open gate was quick and left no time for the spiteful demon to materialize in the darker places. Once out in the field he raced through the tall grass towards the woods following the overgrown footpath. Just as he’d suspected it led him directly to a hiker’s trail; recreation for visitors of the resort, he realized.
Having hiked several times with his family, Travis understood the red marking on a tree near the beginning of the path and felt confident it would be easy to find his way home. The problem was the shadows saturating the path.
As far as he knew the people had all perished back at Moonstone – that’s where they’d found all the bodies. Still, there was a possibility some of them had been struck down during a hike – the plague had worked that fast.
Travis had been grateful that Sarah and Kate had discreetly removed the corpses from Moonstone which had given him a little bit of peace of mind for a while. Lucy’s arrival would have bolstered his confidence even further had it not been for the horror he’d witnessed the very night she’d moved in with Sarah. Somehow this further trauma had given the demon life.