by Milo Abrams
Nolan took the "scenic" route back home, even though every route in the country was scenic as far as James was concerned. The road curved and then straightened out, cutting right through a green ocean of corn stalks that stretched as far as the eye could see, even with binoculars, on both sides. His father was no farmer, but James hadn't seen anything growing behind his dad's house.
"How come there's no corn or anything behind the house?" James asked.
"What do you mean?" Nolan said, fiddling with the radio for a station.
"Well, all these other houses seem to be actual farms and there's nothing but grass at ours." James felt weird calling his dad’s house his own.
Nolan thought for a moment then his face lit up, "Oh! That's because of the fire."
"Fire?"
"Yes, the house that was on that property burned down, and thanks to the extremely dry summer, the cornfield was so dried out it went up, too. The barn barely made it out, if you look at it you can still see burn marks from the flames." Nolan beamed, "It's one of the reasons I got such a good deal on the property. The guy said some chemical accelerants that got caught up in the fire ruined the field and it would have to be dug pretty deep and re-fertilized. You know how it is, the more work something needs, the cheaper it is. I saved so much money on the property it was actually cheaper to buy the land and build a new house than to buy one."
"Wow," James said, "why didn't you just rebuild the barn then, too?"
"I thought it added character. A little charm from its old life. Works out double for me because I don't have to tend to the field since it takes up most the backyard. I love the country but I don't want to be a farmer. Funny how things seem to always work out.”
All talking stopped as they turned back onto Nolan's dirt road and proceeded with the simulation of re-entering Earth's atmosphere. He eventually slowed down and turned into the driveway.
"Why did you build such a big house then?" James asked as he stuffed the rest of his ice cream cone in his mouth.
"The apartment was way too small, and besides, I don't plan on living alone forever," Nolan said, winking at him.
That made the rest of James's ice cream taste sour. He had been seeing hints for a while that his dad was moving on but he didn't want to believe it. His dad made his way into the house, happy as always and James lagged behind. He kicked the large gravel in the driveway and moped to the steps. It wasn't until he was in the kitchen, washing away the sticky remnants of his sloppy ice cream eating that he happened to glance out the window. At the back of the yard staring back at him was the gray figure crouching in the same spot it had before. James looked around frantically for the binoculars.
"Oh no, where did I put them?" he said panicking. He frantically searched the table and counters, periodically peeking out the window to make sure the creature was still there. It just sat there, still as the deer feeder in the middle of the field in front of it. "Wait," he stopped, "the truck!" James sprinted across the kitchen and burst through the heavy front door, jumping clear off the porch, skipping every step and ran to the truck. Still sitting on the seat were the binoculars. He grabbed them and put them to his eyes but all he saw was the house. “Argh, damn house,” he grunted as he made his way toward the back. Clearing the distance between the truck and the front of the barn in seconds, he inhaled deeply, trying to catch his breath while he scanned the backyard through the binoculars. It was gone.
"Damn.”
He spent the rest of the day wondering about what he had seen. Losing his interest to help his dad work on the car, he spent the afternoon sporadically checking the kitchen window and lying around. At one point, his dad came back inside pouring with sweat and grease. “I filled your deer feeder with the feed. I saw you forgot to do that.”
“Oh,” James replied, “thanks. I guess I just forgot.”
“It's okay,” he said wiping grease from his hands on a rag. “Oh, and I also noticed last night that you discovered my laptop. You're not in trouble and I'm sure this must be quite an adjustment for you. Just don't delete anything," Nolan said as he walked to the table then brought the computer back with him and set it down in front of James. "Please don't spend all your time on here. I wasn't going to tell you I had internet access, you know, to help you really have an authentic country experience."
"Don't worry, Dad, I know how to handle a computer. And I promise I won't. I’m just going to look for ways to improve the deer feeder." This made his father smile. He tried to affectionately mess up James’s hair but James ducked out of the way of his grease-blackened hand laughing.
James didn't want to upset his father. He knew that he could blow his chance of being able to use the computer again for the rest of the summer. After looking at pictures of deer feeders he concluded that the idea was pretty simple and anything more elaborate would require more money and he wasn't about to ask his dad. He already couldn't muster the courage to tell him he thought there was a strange animal in the backyard. The idea of a wolf had already unscientifically been disproven, so he searched for animals that might resemble what he had been seeing, but nothing fit. Even looking at pictures of coyotes and wolves didn't seem right. The shape of the body and how it stood up and walked back into the woods wasn't the same. He needed more evidence. He needed to see the creature in the woods again because now all his daydreams of deer and wolves abandoned him. There was something in the woods behind his father's house and it was watching him.
Even that night James’s mind wouldn't let go of the woods and its secret. The darkness of his room was replaced by the low light conditions of the woods as he slipped from the waking world to a place where he would be thrown face to face with the gritty truth of his fears through his dreams.
James sat in the dirt, with trees twisted around him like a prison. The sound of shuffling leaves startled him and before he could form a conscious thought he was flying through the trees, his feet pounding the ground with the beat of his heart. Ahead of him, a huge boulder worn with deep grooves and pockets where water had eroded its surface sat firmly planted in the ground completely out of place in the dark green of the trees. He ran up to the rock, placed his hands on its slippery surface and instinctively tried to climb up it, but it was too tall and too smooth. Behind him the trees whispered and shuddered with the vibrations of something moving deep within them. James scampered around to the other side, pressing his back up against its solid and reassuring presence.
“Help!” he called out in vain.
Suddenly the large stone against his back shivered. He turned and backed away from it, watching as its round and stable shape began to melt and become fluid. He watched in horror as the bulbous boulder became thin and distorted as it rearranged to take on a new shape. Four long slender legs began to appear, gripping the ground with pointed claws. The backside stretched and twisted into a tail, and the top arched down toward a growing head that grew several rows of protruding teeth. James backed up, tripping over a root, then scrambled backwards as he watched the boulder transform into a wolf.
“No!” he screamed, picking himself up to run.
The trees whipped his body as he ran and he could hear the crunching and crashing of the wolf behind him. He finally came to an opening in the trees that led him to the edge of a cliff. The wind blew hard, making him shiver. Below him was a river and behind him growls rumbled through the trees. As soon as he heard a tree behind him snap from the wolf’s weight, he jumped.
Day Three
7
Dreams are complicated things. Some people remember dreams they had the night before every morning, while others may only remember two over the course of an entire month. But everyone dreams and everyone has nightmares. James was one those people who hardly remembered his dreams. His nights were usually blank blinks of being like going through a wormhole from one day to the next. It took a lot for James to remember a dream.
He woke up in the morning of the third day covered in sweat and shivering. The box fan in the
corner continued to hum along but it wasn't blowing on him, he had it on just for noise. James still found it hard to completely adjust to sleeping in the silence without the noise of the city, so his dad gave him an old box fan he kept in the barn to use at night. It was dirty and covered with splotches of paint, but it did the trick. James wiped the sweat from his forehead and stepped out of bed like he had landmines attached to his feet. His dad's new house had central air, a luxury he never knew back in the city.
Stepping out from the hallway, he expected to see his dad in the kitchen making breakfast. He was torn between wanting to tell his dad all about the dream he had and wanting to forget about it completely. To his surprise, his dad was nowhere to be found in the house. No sizzling skillet, no bubbling coffee pot, and no breakfast. He grabbed a colorful afghan draped over the back of the couch and wrapped it around himself. The hardwood floors felt like an ice rink to his naked feet as he walked to the kitchen window and looked out to the field anxiously. Outside, the dead grass stretched under the morning sun, begging for rain, all the way to the dark wall of trees at the back of the property. He scanned the tree line for his creature but the only thing he saw was the deer feeder.
Nolan opened the door, drenched in sweat and covered in grease and grime. He pulled a red rag from the back pocket of his jeans and wiped his face, took one look at James wrapped in the afghan and hunched over like a wet puppy in a snow storm then burst into laughter.
"What's so funny?" James asked scowling.
"Look at you," Nolan said heading for the sink to wash his hands, "you look pathetic. Poor kid, was the air too low for you?"
James tried to act tough but he was too cold. He hadn't just woken up with sweaty hair, his shirt and pants also felt wet. For a minute he thought he might have pissed himself but thankfully his full bladder led him to believe otherwise. Instead, he was drenched in an anxious, fearful, nervous sweat. There was something in the woods behind the house and he was the only one seeing it. Not only that, but it was now in his dreams, too. "No, it was good. I think I just woke up hot and sweaty is all."
"You eat yet?" Nolan asked.
"No."
"Well, let's get some breakfast in you, then you could help me work on the car." Nolan smiled as he began heating a skillet. He pulled a box of pancake mix from the cupboard and poured it into a mixing bowl.
James emptied his aching bladder then changed out of his pajamas and into something dry. He wondered if telling his dad about his dream and the creature in the woods was a good idea. He wasn't even sure his dad would believe him. Nolan was a man of medicine and science and his logical approach to the world had slipped into the inner workings of James's brain without him realizing it. As strange as everything had been over the last couple days, James still had a hard time believing that there was a creature in the woods behind his dad's house.
He reappeared into the kitchen and was greeted with a mountain of pancakes. "Wow, Dad, these look great!"
Nolan laughed, the creases of his aging cheeks gently lifting a smudge of grease below his eye similar to a football player. "It's instant!"
They sat quietly at the table and James watched as his dad ate, unaware of everything that was going through his mind. He couldn't tell his dad that he had a bad dream and woke up scared. His dad saw him as a growing man now, at least that's what he had told him. Although his internal struggle drifted from side to side like a ship on stormy seas, he ultimately couldn't find the courage to tell his dad about his dream.
"Not bad," Nolan said, burping loudly. "So, you want to help with the car? You left me hanging out there yesterday."
"Sure," James said. "I'll be out in a minute."
Since James never remembered dreaming, it felt like a historic time for him, and he decided to grab some paper and jot it down. He remembered something his history teacher once told him. He said, "The reason we write things down is not so we don't forget them, but so we remember how important they really were." To James it sounded kind of sappy but he was impressionable to those sorts of things. As the minutes passed, the strength of his nightmare weakened. It seemed the more he tried to recall every detail, the more it seemed to slip through his fingers like grains of sand. He spoke what he wrote, thinking it may help it stick with him better.
"Okay, what happened? I was in the woods behind the house. It was dark and deep and I felt like I was lost. I ran in different directions but the woods just kept going, and every way I ran there were giant boulders that turned into creepy wolves with long arms like people and they chased me." He looked down at what he wrote and doubted it for a moment. “That's what happened, right?” He shrugged and left it. It wasn't poetry, but it was good enough. He took the piece of paper and shoved it beneath his underwear and socks in his top dresser drawer then ran outside to the barn.
Somehow, writing down his nightmare made him feel better. By writing down what scared him, he distanced himself from it and it no longer felt like it was something that was happening to him. The brain can deal with a memory of trauma much easier than it can an actual trauma, and the nightmare's effect on James faded. He forgot about seeing a strange creature at the edge of the woods, about the deer feeder, and the idea of luring in deer to see wolves. In his newly found peacefulness, he left his worries behind temporarily and bounced into the barn to help his dad work on his car.
His dad was halfway underneath the car with just his legs sticking out completely covered in dirt and dust when he arrived. James hadn't paid much attention to the car the last time he was in the barn, mostly because it was covered in a heavy brown tarp, but now it wasn't and it was impossible to miss. It was old but extremely shiny and bright red. If the barn had eyes and could see the color on the car inside it, it would've surely been jealous. With the car safely sitting on rusted yellow ramps, James knelt down by his father. "Nice looking car."
Nolan's voice rolled out from under the car even though he stayed under. "Thanks, it has its problems though, 'cause it's getting old. Hoping to get it up and going."
James sat down by his dad's legs. "So, what's wrong with it?" he asked.
"The body and engine are perfect, but it had a bunch of wheel problems, you know like wheel bearings, breaks, bad tires…not to mention all the lines underneath were rusted and gone." James then heard metal hitting metal and his dad yell as the oil pan came off and dumped oil all over him. He slid out from under the car, his face covered in a slimy brownish-black goop and began laughing. He wiped his face. "I got it all pretty much done besides that damn oil pan."
James moved and sat on a chair at the bench along the wall of the barn. "You've been working on it a while?"
Nolan continued cleaning himself up then picked up the oil pan and threw it into the corner. "Yeah, put quite a bit of money into this sucker, too."
"Why not just buy a new car or pay someone else to fix it? I mean look at your truck, Dad, it's a piece of shit." James quickly covered his mouth as soon as he realized what he said. He had never cursed in front of his dad exclusively before, and any time his mother heard him back home, he was instantly grounded. In his family, his dad had always been the disciplinarian. His mother ruled the roost but his dad was her right-hand man. Any justice or punishment that needed dishing out always waited until he was home from work. James winced and waited for the verbal beating he was sure was coming, but it never did. Instead, his dad just started laughing.
"Yes, but that piece of shit," he said pointing toward the driveway with his thumb like a hitchhiker, "is my little red rocket. I'll ride that sucker 'til she dies."
James was confused and relieved that his dad had taken his little slip-up so lightly. "You laugh a lot more now, I noticed," James mentioned.
Nolan opened a box which contained a new oil pan and sat back down to slide under the car. "Life's too short not to laugh more. I always took everything so serious. Speaking of short, I have to get this car running."
"Why, you got a date or something?" James joked.
"Actually," Nolan said between ratchet sounds, "I do."
They said nothing more about it. James finally had the confirmation he was looking for that his dad had moved on. It also explained his new change in attitude and why he had been so happy. For a while, James sat next to his dad while he grunted and swore between deep inhales under the car, but there was nothing really for him to do. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't help fix his dad's car. Eventually, James wandered away from the car, too bored and hot to sit around and do nothing, and explored the barn some more. What intrigued him most was the ladder that led to the hayloft.
He stood there staring at it for a few minutes, noticing that it looked old and weathered just like the barn itself. Hoping it was strong enough to hold him, he went over the pros and cons in his head and struggled with his desire to climb up and explore. There was a hollow feeling in his gut that told him not to but in the moment, he didn't care that a fall from such a height could kill him if he landed the wrong way. He grabbed the ladder and placed his foot nervously on the first rung. Just as he put pressure down to lift his other foot off the ground, it snapped and his foot smacked the floor of the barn with a hard thud making his heart thud similarly in the process.
"What was that?" Nolan called out from underneath the car. "James, you all right?"
Wide-eyed and panicked for a second, James replied, "Yes, the ladder broke."
"Ladder?" Nolan emerged from beneath the car, "Jesus Christ, James, don't climb on that damn thing. It's probably as old as the Civil War."
James looked at his feet, "I just wanted to see what was up there."
Nolan looked up at the hayloft without saying anything.
"What's up there?" James asked.
"Honestly, I'm not sure." He walked to the other side of the barn and grabbed a tall aluminum ladder then set it up next to the broken wooden one. James stepped over to climb it but Nolan stopped him. "Hang on there, buddy," he said, "let me make sure it's safe first." Nolan gracefully lifted all two-hundred and thirty pounds of his body weight up to the top and stepped into the hayloft, disappearing where James couldn't see him.