by Sarah Beard
Hannah has her cell phone out, a blank contact screen open. “Okay. What did you say your name was?”
I indulge her and give her my contact information, not only to keep up the charade, but also because maybe this can be the beginning of a friendship, a meaningful connection to the boy I’ll always love.
When she’s done entering my information, I stand to leave, but then pause. “Hannah,” I say, “can you tell me about your brother? I’d love to know something about the boy who saved my life.”
he moment I step into the Briar, I’m swallowed up in shadows. I hold up my pendant like a lantern, but even then, the light reaches only a few feet around me before being absorbed into the dark. I’m reminded of the times I played Hide and Go Scare in the woods back in Michigan with my foster siblings. I always won because, not only was I not afraid of the dark, but a kid jumping out from behind a tree was nothing compared to the real terrors I’d already experienced.
Only, this place is darker than any earthly woods, and I am scared. Scared of the unknown, of things foreign and unfamiliar. Scared that I won’t be able to find my mom, and that even if I do, I won’t be able to bring her out.
Charles didn’t say exactly where I could find her, only that I’d be able to feel where she was. So I pause and listen. Not for sound, but for direction. For the path that leads to her. I visualize her face and concentrate on my desire to find her, and after a moment, I feel a tugging in the center of my chest. Like I’m standing near a magnetic field and my ribs are made of iron. I don’t know how far away she is, but she’s somewhere off to my left. I’m tempted to quicken to her, but Charles warned me not to, saying that the thorns would slash into me, similar to how the rocks cut my feet.
So I move slowly toward her, stepping over fallen branches and around patches of twisted growth. Sometimes I have to backtrack when the vague path comes to a dead end. Every now and then, I see shadowy movements in the thicket, or ambiguous shapes slinking across my path. And sometimes through the trees, I see the glowing pendants of other guides. Eventually I cross paths with one of them, and we acknowledge each other with a nod. A man trails behind him, looking afraid and uncertain, his eyes darting about as if he’s expecting a monster to leap out of the shadows. “Keep your eyes on me,” the guide says, and the man refocuses and seems to calm a bit.
The sight gives me hope, so I forge on, constantly seeking the unseen path toward my mom. I wonder what she’ll look like when I find her. Will she be renewed and young again, the way Charles has changed? Or will she look the same as the day she died—fragile and spent, like a quivering autumn leaf barely clinging to a tree? I shut the image out and instead think of the times I saw her happy. Like when I brought home some clothes for Hannah and Jane and told my mom that the neighbors donated them. My guilt over stealing them came the next day, but I never told Mom the truth because I didn’t want to spoil her happiness.
Or like the time I was seven and came home from school with a note from the principal and a bloody lip. She sat me down in the bathroom to clean me up, and as she dabbed a moist washcloth on my lip, she asked, “You wanna tell me what this was about?” I told her the truth, how I tackled some fifth grader because he was making fun of Hannah’s hair. Mom gently laid her callused fingers on the back of my neck and gave me one of those rare smiles that reached her eyes. “That’s what I love about you most, Kai. You always look out for the people you love.”
And then there was the time she rallied enough courage to leave Dad, and she packed me and my sisters in our old Plymouth Duster and drove all the way to San Luis Obispo to live with my aunt. I still remember watching her from the backseat as we flew down the highway with all the windows rolled down. Her hair whipping in the wind, her face full of possibilities, like a prisoner set free.
It didn’t last long though. Whether it was Dad she missed or the drugs he provided, three weeks later we were back on the road, returning to Michigan.
Even then, she had trouble untangling herself from the dark.
The land has been sloping downward for what feels like weeks. Or maybe it’s been days or hours, I really don’t know. That’s the thing about forever—time is irrelevant.
The shadows have started whispering to me, not piercing my ears, but somewhere deeper and more fragile. Turn back, they say. You’ll never find her. This is where she belongs. I try to tune it out, but there’s nothing else to listen to. Take off your pendant and stay here. This is where you belong. Desperate to fill my mind with something else, I start singing quietly to myself. I sing the songs I wrote for Avery, picturing her smiling face and imagining the warmth of her hand in mine. I cling to the hope that I’ll see her again someday, and for a while the thought chases away the shadows.
Until through the bushes, I hear someone cry out in pain.
It’s a man, but the way he’s crying sounds almost childlike. Then I hear laughter and another man’s mocking voice. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I follow the voices, my interest piqued.
Whoever it is, I don’t want them to see me. So I tuck my pendant under my shirt and follow the wailing and laughing. A bit of light still seeps out, and I can see only as much as I could on a moonless night on Earth. The land continues sloping downward, and the ground begins to feel moist. My feet sink into it with each step, and the slope is so steep I have to hold onto shrubs and branches to keep myself from slipping.
Through a narrow window between the trees, I see the land dip into a swampy area. At the lowest point, there’s an enormous dead tree, its sprawling, lifeless roots attached to their reflections in the murky, dark water. I stay hidden in the trees, watching from the shadows.
A thin, gangly man kneels at the water’s edge, hunched over and moaning in agony.
The other person, a husky beast of a man with wiry hair sprouting from everywhere except his eyes and nose, stands beside him. “I told you,” he says gruffly between jeering barks of laughter. “Not everyone can handle it. But if you want to go back to Earth, it’s the only way.”
This gets my attention, and without a moment’s thought, I step out of the trees and slide down the slick hill to the level ground where they are. The man’s laughter halts. He falls back a step, startled, like I’m a cop crashing his kegger. I step to the edge of the murky water, a few feet from the two men.
“Is this a portal to Earth?” I ask, my mind suddenly spinning with possibilities.
The big man regards me a moment, looks me up and down like he’s sizing me up. His lips twist into a smile. “Sure is.” He tips his bushy head toward the water. “Why don’t you try it out?”
I’m not sure I believe him. I pull out my pendant so I can see the water better. Both men grimace and cover their eyes with their soiled hands.
“Put that thing away!” the big man shouts, spitting in disgust.
But I don’t put it away. I hold it over the water. Beneath the glassy surface, the water swirls and writhes like smoke.
The man must see my wariness because he says, “What? You don’t trust me?”
I look at him. “No. I don’t.”
“Here—I’ll show you.” Without hesitation, he steps to the water’s edge and jumps in, vanishing beneath the surface. There’s no splash, only a few small ripples circling his point of entry.
The other man, who is still on his knees, stares at the water fearfully as though it might reach up and grab him.
“Is it really a portal to Earth?” I ask, sensing that I can trust this man more than the other.
“It’s not worth it.” He drops his head and rubs his eyes with the heel of his hands, then cries, “I can’t get the images out of my head.”
“What images?”
The man doesn’t answer, just rises and shambles away, scrubbing his eyes with his fists as he vanishes into the shadows.
The water ripples again, and the big man emerges and steps back onto the bank. His clothes are dry, and he dusts off his shoulders before looking at me. “See? Perfectly
safe.”
My curiosity winning over, I drop to my knees. The ground is spongy, and my knees sink in. I hold the pendant over the murky water again and watch the swirls of black weave into one another, snaking around and around. Fascination overrules my wariness, and I reach out a finger, hesitantly dipping it in the water.
Immediately, I’m jolted to a time and place entirely different, but nauseatingly familiar. I’m hiding under a sheet in a dark room. The smell of cigarette smoke burns the back of my throat. Dad’s footsteps thunder across the room, and he growls my name before clamping his hand on my arm.
I jerk away from the swamp and stumble backward on my elbows as though I’m still in that room, ten years ago.
As though amused by my terror, the man bursts into laughter. It echoes off the trees, the sky, the hollowness of my insides.
I don’t understand what just happened, and I look to him for an answer as though he might actually give me a straight one. But he just keeps laughing, so I stand up and step over to him. My pendant lights up his face like a flashlight under his chin.
Maybe something about me scares him, because his face clears and he stops laughing.
“What is this place?” I ask through clenched teeth.
He rubs his overgrown beard between his hands like it’s a stick and he’s trying to start a fire. “They say it’s like a cesspool, where the worst memories drain to.”
I give him a dubious look. “And it’s connected to Earth?”
He laughs again, loud and raucous and sneering, like he thinks I’m the biggest idiot that ever existed. “Where do you think the worst memories come from?” He slugs me in the shoulder, and I fall back a step. “Not everyone can handle it,” he says again. “But for most of us here, it’s the only way back to Earth.”
My thoughts go to Avery, to how it would be to see her again, even if she couldn’t see me. Would being near her again be worth reliving the anguish of my childhood?
“Go on,” the man says. “There’s someone you want to see, isn’t there? A girl, I bet, from the ache in your eyes. I bet she’s pretty. Don’t you want to see her again?”
I kneel at the water’s edge again, gazing into the water. “How long does it take? To go through?”
“Seconds. Technically.” He makes a raspy and gruff coughing sound, then points to his head. “But the perception of time is all in here. Depends on your memories.”
How many memories would I have to relive to get to Avery? A handful? A dozen? All of them? However many, it would be worth it just to see her once more. I stretch out my hand again and lean forward, on the verge of diving in.
But something stops me. The same thing that kept me from stepping into the Briar before I had the pendant.
Experience. Discernment between darkness and light. And as I see my glowing pendant reflected in the black water, I remember why I came into the Briar to begin with.
I rise to my feet and leave the swamp behind, the man’s laughter fading as I move farther away.
As I refocus my effort to find my mom, I feel a pull stronger than ever. Holding up my pendant, I move through a grove of enormous dead trees, their barren branches twisting into one another as if trying to tear the other down. A dark mist blankets the ground, swirling at my feet with each step.
She’s close. I feel her presence like heat from a fire. I follow the warmth, peering into the dark spaces between the trees for a sign of her. “Mom,” I mouth silently, so anxious to find her that I’m practically tripping over my feet.
From the corner of my eye, I see a streak of color. Pastel blue. But when I turn, it’s gone. I stand still, watching the trees, waiting to see it again. And then I do, moving from behind one tree to another. It flows and ripples as it moves, like thin fabric. It beckons to me, the little bit of color in all this gray. And then it disappears behind a tree again. I move toward it, and when I see it again, I realize what it is. A woman’s dress. She’s striding through the grove.
Even without seeing her face, I know who she is.
“Mom,” I whisper. I step toward her, and a twig snaps under my foot. She whips around, and I glimpse her face. Her eyes are full of fear, just like the last time I saw her alive. And then she turns and runs away.
“Wait!” I call out, rushing after.
She loses me easily, and I find myself deep in the grove, turning in a circle. I pause to feel for her, and then follow the pull to an enormous trunk. There’s a jagged opening on one side, and when I lean down to peer inside I see the hem of her blue dress.
“Go away!” she cries, her voice shaking with terror.
I don’t want to scare her, but there’s no way I’m leaving now. I drop to my knees, the pendant’s light pouring into the hollow. It’s about as big as a two-man dome tent, and she’s sitting in a nook, knees pulled up, head buried in her arms. Her dark hair spills over her arm like a waterfall.
It’s been nine years since I’ve seen her, since I’ve felt her arms around me, since I’ve heard her soothing voice. The sight of her now, afraid and alone in the dark, shatters me. If I’d known, I would have come sooner. It occurs to me that maybe that’s the reason they didn’t tell me before where she was. Charles said I wasn’t strong enough until now. Maybe he was right. If I’d come into the Briar to find my mom when I first died, I would have never found my way out.
“Don’t be afraid.” As I say the words, my mind is flooded with all the times I’ve heard others say those words in vain to her.
Don’t be afraid to leave your husband.
Don’t be afraid to go to school and make a better life for yourself and your kids.
Don’t be afraid to battle your addictions, to find better ways of coping with your pain.
It was fear of pain that ultimately killed her. The need to numb it by any means. “I won’t hurt you. I only want to talk. Will you come out?”
She doesn’t budge, just stays huddled in her nook. “Leave me alone,” she says, her voice muffled under her arms. “You’re wasting your time.”
Cautiously, I crawl inside and pause a couple feet from her. Rocking back on my knees, I say softly, “Mom.”
Her head snaps up, and her eyes slowly widen as they travel over my face. She makes a sound of disbelief, and her fingers come to her lips. “Kai?” she whispers beneath her fingers. Then she reaches out to touch my face. Her fingers are cold on my cheek. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m here for you.” I reach out, but she recoils as though my hand is a python.
For a long moment, she stares at me as though trying to decide how she feels about me being here. “You shouldn’t be here,” she finally says. “You don’t deserve it.”
“Neither do you. I came to take you out of here.”
She shakes her head, then sinks farther into the shadows and goes back to hiding her face.
This isn’t going to be as easy as I imagined. I slump back against the inside of the hollow, sitting on black dirt and wood shavings. My mom is so close I could reach out and take her hand, but for some reason she doesn’t seem to want that. So I clasp my hands together and try to ignore the ache in my chest that’s growing more intense by the second. “Mom,” I say quietly, my voice pained, “don’t you want to leave this place?”
In her hand, she clutches the fabric of her skirt and kneads it between her fingers as though it sooths her. “It’s not that simple. If all it took to get out of here was desire, there would be no one in the Briar.” Her hand goes still. “Though, for a long time after I came here, I didn’t want to leave.” She slowly lifts her head, but doesn’t meet my eyes. “I was so … sad. I didn’t want to face anyone. Especially you and your sisters, because of the pain I knew I caused you. But being here—there’s nothing to do. Nothing to take my mind off things.” Her eyes rise to a spot in the hollow, and I follow her gaze. Where the wood is smooth, faint images have been carved. I squint and lean closer, trying to see what they are. Faces. Round and childlike. Two girls and one boy.
I know why she’s asking. She wants to know how old I was when I died. “It doesn’t matter,” I say, not wanting to dampen her spirits even more with the details of my death. “All that matters is that I’m here.” I grasp my pendant. “I can help you out of here.”
She shuts her eyes and grimaces, then shakes her head. “It’s not that easy. There have been others like you who’ve tried to help me out. But … even with the light …” Fear seeps into her eyes. “You don’t understand.” She lowers her gaze, suddenly looking detached. “You should go,” she says without looking at me. “Get out while you still can.”
“I’m not leaving without you.”
As she meets my eyes again, her expression turns pleading. “Don’t ask me to go. You don’t know how much it hurts when I try to leave. I’m not strong enough. I’ve never been strong, even when I was alive. If I had been, I would’ve made different choices. I would have made a better life for you. I wouldn’t have died and left you alone with your dad.”
I reach for her hand, and this time she doesn’t pull back. She lets my fingers wrap around hers. “You were always stronger than you gave yourself credit for. I know you did the best you could. But all of that is in the past. What matters is now. This isn’t the end. Your life isn’t over. You have another chance here, to make a better life for yourself.” I tug her gently toward me. “Come with me. I’ll lead you out of here, to somewhere light and warm. You’ll be given something to do. Something that will make you happy. You’ll be able to help other people.”