[2014] Wildwood Shadows

by Scott McElhaney

  “I’m not happy one bit about the fact that you’re standing here before me, Charlie. I’d much prefer you to be safe and sound with your mother. And your mother… I don’t want to know. She’s beautiful and has a heart of gold, so no, I don’t want to know how she’s doing for fear of hurting myself even more than I already have,” he said, breathing out a long and weary sigh, “And I’d apologize for my disappearance if I’d done it intentionally. Much like you, I was there and then I was gone. I had thought I located my father and I hit the switch that I believed would have retrieved him. It didn’t quite turn out as I’d planned.”

  I looked at him, wishing for a moment that I could feel sorry for him. I don’t know why, but I still remained so angry inside.

  “But did you worry about us?” I asked, “Did you even miss the ones you’d left behind?”

  “Terribly so, Charlie,” he replied, making no move to bridge the distance between us, “So much that I tried to completely forget about the two of you. I’m ashamed to admit that after about a full year in this world, I had done just that. My survival instinct… my emotional survival instinct had taken over and helped me to find a way to go on. I forgot the two of you just so I could survive in my new life. There was no hope of me ever returning home, so I had to move on. It’s a horrible thing for me to even say aloud and I despise these words even as I speak them.”

  “What about now? According to your plans, there’s actually a glimmer of hope now,” I said.

  He merely shook his head. He pursed his lip and shook his head.

  “Let’s go inside and check out the equipment before we start taking any of my plans too seriously,” he replied, putting an arm around me and leading me out of the garage.

  Poosiitha

  I lit a few candles in the radio room even though it was still midday. The surrounding trees didn’t allow very much light through the downstairs windows no matter how clear the skies were overhead. Once I lit the candles, he asked me to grab a couple screwdrivers from the kitchen. Instead, I offered him my multi-tool.

  He grinned when I handed it to him, “I see you’ve taken to preparing yourself for anything. Did you get a chance to fire my Glock yet?”

  My hand subconsciously went to the gun at my waist. He didn’t appear to be teasing me for walking around like a cowboy as I initially suspected. He truly wanted to know if I’d tried it out yet.

  “No,” I replied, “I’ve been carrying your shotgun around too. Never thought the day would come when I’d be strutting around like Rambo.”

  “Good, I’m glad to hear it. If the bears don’t get you, the wolves will. They hunt in packs around here, so don’t show them any mercy,” he said, unscrewing the bottom of the Ham radio, “Shoot to kill and keep shooting if any animal threatens you, kid.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was just trying to scare me into hiding or warning me to keep alert. He finally pried the bottom loose and lifted the whole top of the unit off. He reached over to the candle and slid the jar closer.

  “Darn Apple Blossom Rosemary Cinnamon Pecan Banana Freakin’ Lilac scented candles. That’s one thing I never missed from our world,” he chuckled, waving his hand across his face, “Don’t have much choice anymore now, do we?”

  He peered into the radio, poking it with the knife portion of the tool. He muttered several curses as he examined the radio. Finally, he ducked beneath the table and pulled out the plug. He held it up and showed it to me. The plastic portion of the gray plug was black in some areas and partially melted.

  “What the heck happened here?” he asked.

  He took the candle down to the outlet itself and we both saw it at the same time. Both of the plug sockets were burned, leaving a black scorch mark on the wall nearby.

  “You weren’t down here when you disappeared?” he asked.

  “No, I was upstairs on the floor in the living room,” I said.

  “Did the lights flicker or anything?” he asked.

  “No, I would have noticed because we were having quite the thunderstorm. It was only around seven in the evening and yet it was pitch dark outside,” I replied.

  “A thunderstorm?” he repeated, looking up at the ceiling, “Exactly! That would explain the whole house disappearing.”

  “How does that explain it?” I asked.

  He glanced over at the laptop on the other desk. His eyes scanned the room quickly, then returned to the open radio in front of him.

  “Did your mom leave this equipment on all the time?” he asked.

  “Yeah, just in case you needed it running in order to return I guess,” I replied.

  “So this had been a dormant bomb just waiting to go off all this time. If either of you had the presence of mind to flip the A-switch down and then back up again, you’d have found yourself here with nothing but the clothes on your backs… same as I did.”

  “What are you saying? Do you know how I got here then?” I asked.

  He motioned me to the back of the radio and showed me a little melted portion of what I guessed would be considered a circuit board in old radios. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen inside a computer or a TV before. This had little glass tubes and some plastic cylindrical things that resembled miniature batteries throughout. There were some circular rubber tabs that popped up throughout this circuit board as well. I could only imagine that this was what the insides of all old radios looked like. I found it hard to believe that this wasn’t just an ordinary Ham radio.

  “Look at the fusion back here,” he said, pointing to the melted portion with the blade of the utility tool, “The lightning must have hit the house, accomplishing two things at the same time – or almost the same time. It ionized the entire house itself as the electricity coursed through the piping and the wiring while at the same time frying this radio, but not before it created this little connection right here in the circuit board.”

  I could now see what he was talking about. The metal pathways were usually perfectly drawn in ways where they never touched each other, but where the board had been melted, it caused two of the parallel “roads” to touch. I nodded, letting him know I saw what he was had discovered.

  “That connection was the same link made by flipping the switch – the same switch I had flipped the day I disappeared. Only instead of sending the one with his finger on the switch into the past, it sent the whole house into the past,” he said, “Except the destination was a little off, so I’m going to have to assume that you or your mother had turned the dial a bit.”

  “I didn’t touch it,” I replied defensively.

  “Oh, I have no right to complain about you touching my stuff, son. I’m just curious that it sent us both to very similar locations in the past,” he replied, still examining the inside of the radio, “You say it’s been two years, but from my point of view… well, I think I can count nine winters since I last saw your world.”

  “Nine years?” I blurted.

  “So, maybe you can see why I’ve moved on. I’m not the same person you remember,” he said.

  “But…but Dad, that might not be a bad thing. You were never home. And even if you were, you were down here looking for Grandpa,” I replied, “You and I were never close, but that wasn’t my choice.”

  He turned and looked at me as though seeing me for the first time. I took a step back, worried that I might have said too much.

  “I’m sorry, son. I don’t have any excuse,” he said, “I guess I always felt you were too young even when you weren’t. I could have taken you fishing and probably even hunting. I could have even let you in on this. I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s all in the past and it’s no big deal,” I replied, “I’m just saying that you moving on and not being the same man I remember isn’t something you should be worried about.”

  “It’s a bit more than that,” he said, reaching up and rubbing his forehead, “I’ve got a new family and a whole new life here.”

  I felt all the air suddenly leave me as th
ough I were a balloon that had just deflated. He removed his hand from his head and looked up at me. When our eyes met, I caught the unspoken words he transmitted to me. They simply said “We’ll get you home, but I’m not going with you.”

  M’seewe

  “Are we leaving the equipment here?” I asked.

  He shut the door after we finished examining the state of his radios. He handed me the multi-tool which I tucked away in my pocket again.

  “Yeah, we won’t need that until we get some electricity going. We’re going to build two generators. The first will be a smaller version of the second, generating just enough to work a single power tool. Once we have drills and saws again, we can get a lot accomplished at a quicker pace,” he said, “So building the real generator will be a lot easier.”

  We started up the stairs where two Indians were working to get the dining room table out the front door. They shimmied it through and then proceeded toward the woods. I wanted to argue yet again against the raiding and destruction of this house, but ultimately he was the one who owned the place.

  “Will the Indians be willing to help in this endeavor? This sounds like such a big undertaking.”

  “I gave them some promises of modern technology – not the least of which would be the use of power tools. We’ll be the only village with a microwave oven and the electricity it takes to run it,” he chuckled, “Besides, I’ve got a lot of medical files and data stored on my laptop. I could use that information when trying to treat their ailments.”

  “Such as smallpox,” I said, following him into the kitchen, “When the time comes.”

  “Yes, although I’ve already introduced them to penicillin, aspirin, and a couple other easy-to-manufacture medications, there are still a lot of other remedies that I wish I remembered how to make,” he said, “Penicillin has been abundantly helpful in some of the illnesses I’ve treated, but it will serve no purpose with a viral thing such as smallpox. I’ve got some plans in place though and we’ll overcome.”

  He opened the junk drawer and immediately located two screwdrivers, a retractable razor, and a wire cutter and then tucked these away in his pocket. He then led the way to my bedroom and immediately removed one of my large speakers from the wall. He handed it to me and then went to retrieve the other. He then motioned for me to lead the way out of the room.

  Once we were in the hallway again near the railing above the stairs, he flung the speaker hard against the stairs below. Since the speaker casing was mostly made of cheap fiberboard, it shattered quite easily.

  “Your turn,” he chuckled, turning to me.

  I think he expected me to throw a fit, but I remembered that we were cannibalizing everything and this meant my stuff too. I threw mine even harder, getting a nice cracking sound as it exploded onto the stairs.

  “Nice,” he laughed, rushing down the stairs to examine our mess.

  He located the internal speakers themselves and pried off the circular hunk of metal at the back of each of them. He then took one of the metal circles, each of these about four or five inches in diameter, and passed the screwdriver over it. The screwdriver was drawn to it instantly.

  “We’ve got two magnets, so that’s a start. Now, let’s go get us some copper wire,” he said.

  Ka’kile

  Over the course of what felt like two or three hours, Dad, me, and an Indian named Corn Stalk took to the walls with a crow bar, a sledge hammer, and an axe. If either of us were electricians, we could have probably removed the wiring with less damage to the structure, but alas, we had no experience in this matter.

  By the time we were finished, the three of us were headed to the woods with several coils of wire, two fans, and the speaker magnets. Dad also had grabbed the hunting rifle and a box of ammunition. I still carried the Glock and the chrome shotgun except now the shotgun was equipped with a makeshift sling so I could have a free hand to carry the cables.

  “Where will I be staying while I am there in the village, Dad?” I asked as we navigated through the woods, “And are you sure they will accept me?”

  “I am highly regarded among these people, Charlie,” he said, “I had once helped the warchief’s wife through a bad case of dysentery which he had believed to be something from which she would not recover. You will stay with me in the longhouse that I share with the warchief and his family.”

  “Is the one who gave me this vest the warchief?” I asked, “I had assumed he was the chief because everyone listened to him.”

  “No, Grey Wolf is a highly respected man though. He is what we would call a holy man. But don’t get the wrong idea by the word ‘holy’ and assume he is some sort of priest. He would be like something of a historian who makes sure no one forgets what the Shawnee ancestors wished for their people,” he said, “The fact that you are wearing his vest will speak a lot to the people in the village. It will say that not only are you willing to trade with these people, but that the holy man of the tribe found something of yours that he wished to trade for.”

  “Not to mention the fact that it’s a pretty cool jacket,” I added, tugging gently at a strip of beaded leather.

  My father chuckled, climbing over the massive remains of a fallen spruce. I followed him over as did Corn Stalk.

  “Do these people know where you’re from?” I asked, “And what their future holds?”

  “No,” he replied, leading the way around a swampy patch of the forest, “I tried to explain, but there was no way to really get them to understand the concept of time travel. I kept being compared to the spirit gods and I didn’t want that kind of responsibility. Ultimately, I settled for being a medicine man and a prophet. And as a prophet, I warned them about the Spanish, smallpox, horses, and ultimately the colonists who would lay claim to all their land.”

  “How’d they react to that?” I asked.

  “Well, keep in mind that they’ve never seen any of these things before, so the promise of horses meant nothing really. The threat of smallpox was just another sickness or disease to them. And they have no idea that the colonists were you and me – the white man. I think it best to keep it that way,” he said, “To be honest, I really don’t recall if the Spanish ever came to Ohio when they started up the coast in the fourteen and fifteen-hundreds, but I do know their horses and their smallpox did.”

  Suddenly Corn Stalk shouted something that sounded urgent. We turned to him simultaneously to discover that a black bear was bounding toward him on all fours. Dad dropped the box fan and his coil of wire a short second before he cocked his rifle and raised it. Corn Stalk didn’t waste any time putting a wide tree trunk between him and the bear.

  A shot rang out much too close to my ear, causing all of the wildlife in the forest to give pause. The bear reared up and turned to us, roaring in pain or anger. I dropped my coils of wire and fired the shotgun in the general direction of the bear. I was startled all of a sudden by the powerful recoil. The bear started bounding in our direction, ignoring Corn Stalk for the time being. Dad fired two more rounds in quick succession. The bear stopped suddenly as though stunned momentarily by the pain.

  Contemplating the pain didn’t take him long. A second later, it was roaring louder and headed straight at us. My dad was firing again while I cocked the shotgun and shot him again and again. The bear crumbled to the ground about two feet in front of us. I held the shotgun on him even though I saw no further movement.

  The Indian called something to us to which my father replied with words I didn’t understand. He placed a hand on my shoulder, nudging the bear with the tip of his moccasin.

  “He’s thoroughly dead, kid,” he said, reassuringly, “We’ll send someone back for it later.”

  “Why?” I asked, dropping the weapon to my side as I returned to my coils of wire.

  “You’re in a different world now, Charlie,” he replied, “There’s your Wal Mart lying right there in front of you. That’s dinner, clothing, blankets, and maybe even jewelry.”

  According to my
original plans, Wal Mart was still in my pantry and I was going to survive on that for as long as I could. Dad never so much as checked to see how much food we still had remaining in the house. I should have reminded him while we were still at home so I could have chicken noodle soup while the others ate bear liver.

  Corn Stalk talked to my dad for a moment before we continued onward. Dad spoke rapidly to him with just as much enthusiasm behind his words as that of the Indian.

  “He is now frightened by our abilities to ‘wield lightning and thunder’,” he explained to me as we started onward toward the river.

  “Did you explain what these weapons were?” I asked.

  “As best as I could, but there’s really no frame of reference I can use to make it any less miraculous,” he replied.

  “It’s going to be even funnier when he sees your ability to create ‘lightning’ with copper and magnets,” I said.

  “Good point,” he said.

  It wasn’t much longer before we exited the forest at the edge of the Cuyahoga. We met up with two Indians there who appeared to be waiting for us. Dad talked to them, all the while gesturing toward the woods as he spoke. I didn’t ask what he was talking about since little seemed to have to do with me personally. I just assumed he was telling them about the bear anyway, though I couldn’t imagine how two Indians would be strong enough to lug the body of the beast all the way back here.

  Once the two Indians left us for the woods, Dad led us to a part of the river that didn’t exceed about a foot deep and was fairly easy to cross. I didn’t even draw my jeans up to keep them dry at this point. From here on, I was just going to go with the flow and hope that my future would one day include a McDonalds or a Taco Bell once again. That was my goal from this day forward – wet pants or not.

  Once on the other side of the river, Dad led us upstream about fifty meters before turning to a well-worn path that led into the woods. Unlike the woods we just came from, this one had a nice dirt path carved into the forest floor. No weeds, briars, logs, or swamps impeded our journey through the woods. It might has well have been a metro park path from my own world.