“That wasn’t –”
This time it was Alex who cut Trish off. “Okay,” he said, ignoring the angry glance Trish sent his way. It cost him to do that; felt like two years of his life fell away from him. But he soldiered on with, “We’ll maybe write him a letter or something. Could you tell us if there’s a forwarding address?”
Mrs. Berkowitz nodded. “None on file, but we usually get one when the new school asks for the records. If they do, I’ll tuck your letter in with anything we send them.”
“Thanks.”
Alex pulled Trish outside. “What were you doing in there?” she demanded. “He wasn’t scared of leaving us, he was scared of his mother.” She softened. “What if he was right? What if she’s truly crazy, and is going to hurt him? The way she looked…” Her voice slipped to silence, and then she frowned and Alex knew what she would say next – because he was feeling it himself. “What if she’s going to kill him?”
“I think that’s exactly what’s going to happen,” said Alex. He saw dismay in Trish’s eyes. Partly for the threat to Sam, he knew, but he suspected that she had hoped he would disagree, would talk sense into her.
He couldn’t. He believed in his gut, brain to balls, that Sam was in mortal danger.
“Then why aren’t we making Mrs. Berkowitz call the police? Or doing it ourselves?”
Alex shook his head “What would happen then? Our one police officer – if he shows up, which isn’t always a given – ambles over here, listens to us, then pats us on the head and that’s that? Or even if he does go to the cabin, then what? He’s met by a mother who’s packing, and whose boy is away doing errands, or chores – or more likely, they’re probably already gone to this ‘new job.’ He tips his cap and then corrals us and lectures us and our parents about false alarms and overreactions. And where does that get us? Stuck in our houses? Maybe grounded – and for sure wasting hours dealing with all that? How does that help Sam?”
“So what do we do?” said Trish.
Alex could tell she knew already. But he said it just the same, because some things had to be said. Some plans could be spoken only inside your own mind. But sometimes you had to say the words aloud, or they didn’t count. So he said, “We have to follow him,” and Trish nodded and said, “Into the forest,” and he nodded, and repeated the words: “Into the forest.”
The words had been said. There was no turning back.
“How?” she asked. “Our parents won’t help, because that…”
“… would mean helping us do something together. And they can’t have that, can they?” Alex finished.
“Why?” she asked. It wasn’t a question meant for an answer, which was good since he had no idea. Never had, and he suspected he never would.
Trish started walking. “Let’s go,” she said.
Alex followed her. It had been easy for Sam’s mom to walk onto school property – the gate to the school was always open, small town hospitality and all that. That meant it was equally easy for them to walk off school property.
The school was at the west end of town. The forest was about four miles away, and the cabin maybe a mile farther, and half a mile in. Alex knew about it, the same as every kid and adult in town did. It was haunted, they said. Even some of the grown-ups said it, though most of them laughed… but he had noticed through the years that even those who laughed hardest tended to change the subject as fast as they could.
“We should stop by Merle’s on the way out,” said Alex as they began to walk.
Trish nodded. Merle’s was a small gas station a mile down the road. Alex had no idea how the place stayed open; he couldn’t imagine there was much call for gas on the small road that joined the equally small towns of Sunrise and Sundown. But open it stayed, and there was a small convenience shack attached to it where they could buy some food and water. The weather wasn’t hot – it was fall, and the days had not yet morphed from “pleasantly cool” to “oh dear Lord why can’t it snow and warm things up a little?” – but Alex knew they would need water and some energy. Maybe a lot of energy, depending on what they found at the cabin.
And what do we think we’ll find?
In this situation, “best case,” meaning they were right to go because Sam really was in danger, would mean a very bad case indeed. If his mom was nuts, wouldn’t that mean they had to deal with her to save their friend?
Academic. They were going, and that was that.
Alex felt as though he was being pulled. He felt like Sunrise, the town he’d known his whole life, was really a small planet on the event horizon of a black hole. Not the forest, exactly, but something inside the forest. There was something dark there, and frightening, and yet it was also something he had to go and see.
They stopped at Merle’s. Between him and Trish, they had six dollars and change, which was enough for a few bottled waters and some granola bars. They chucked them in their packs, and kept walking.
It was past noon when they got to the forest. The way seemed to stretch out in front of them, their destination growing farther away with every step they took. And with every step they took, Alex knew two things more certainly:
He wanted – needed – to do this.
And he was very afraid.
18
(When Alex Had Grown)
Alex didn’t mind Trish driving. Some men did, he knew, but he was just as happy when she drove as when he did the driving himself. They usually decided who was driving by an uncomplicated formula: who has the keys ÷ who is closest to the driver’s side.
It had always worked out fine, even after the accident that twisted their lives into a knot.
Tonight, though, he regretted not getting the driver’s spot. He was freaked out by what had happened in Sundown – who wouldn’t be? – and had thrown himself into the car without even thinking of whether letting the recently-concussed person drive was a good idea. Now, sitting in the car, with Sundown safely in the rearview mirror, he was noticing more and more how Trish was jittering so hard the car kept swerving. Maybe it was the concussion, maybe just adrenaline. Either way, the exaggerated motion of her hands communicated itself to the car. She hadn’t spun off the road yet, but she kept getting closer and closer to that point.
Alex split his time between watching her and watching the road. He didn’t say anything, just watched helplessly as she veered toward the yellow line on one side, corrected, then slid toward the white line that delineated the soft shoulder on his side.
And beyond his side… trees.
Not many. Not yet. This wasn’t the true forest, just outlying trees. Scouts, ranging ahead of the dark army that waited just down the road.
Trish swerved. Corrected.
“You okay?” he said.
The set of her jaw was answer enough, even if she hadn’t already been driving like someone who started the party a bit early.
Alex looked out his window. He didn’t know if looking at her would disquiet or further distract her, but it wasn’t helping him any.
Not that looking out the window was much better.
Tree…
Tree…
Tree…
The first ones he and Trish passed by were fairly small. Many were partially denuded, thrusting bony fingers upward, like the skeletal hands of giants buried in shallow graves. But they had awoken, found themselves hungry, and now rose to consume what they could.
Alex shivered. But he said nothing, and did not look away.
Tree…
Tree…
Tree…
It was terrifying. It was also hypnotic. A thin mist began to seep around the edges of some of the trees, shrouding their trunks in silvery light that refracted the car’s headlights even at a distance. It created a fae world, a place where make-believe was real – and where people could find that make-believe was a very different place than they imagined as children.
All children, except one, grow up.
J.M. Barrie said that in his masterwork Peter Pan. B
ut Alex didn’t think the author could have known how true those words would be for some people, some parents.
Tree…
Tree…
Tree…
Red.
Alex jerked upright. He had almost been dozing, lulled into waking sleep by the metronomic passing of the reaching trees. Now he sat up, and peered behind him. “What the hell?” he shouted, his voice far too loud in the confines of the car.
Trish almost did veer off the road this time. The tires squealed, and she twisted the wheel hard, righting the car an instant before it surely would have spun out of control.
“What is it?” she shouted.
For a moment Alex couldn’t speak. He pressed his face hard against the windshield, even though he knew that he wouldn’t be able to see anything at this angle. It was a childish response, like craning his neck whenever Pac-Man traveled to the far side of the television in a video game, trying to see to the back of something that existed only in two dimensions.
But he couldn’t help it. He was suddenly a child in make-believe, in Neverland, and the monsters became more real with every foot they traveled and every second that passed.
And at that, Alex realized the trees were no longer solitary things. Not scouts or isolated soldiers. He and Trish had passed beyond enemy lines.
This was the forest.
“What did you see?” Trish demanded again, her voice quavering as much as her hands.
Alex looked at her, but couldn’t answer. His mouth opened and closed, but nothing came. Finally, Trish broke the silence, though not in any way he could have expected. She slowed the car and drew purposefully to the side of the road.
“Did you see it?” she asked. “I thought it was just me, but… Alex, did you see it?”
“I…” Grit packed his mouth. He swallowed with agonizing slowness, everything terror-parched and painful. “I don’t know what I saw.”
“But you saw something. What? What was it? What did you see?”
She was shouting at him. Her voice ricocheted off the windows of the car like gunshots in a holding cell, and Alex had the sudden impulse to fling open the door and run screaming from this place.
And in there? Into the forest?
(Yes. Yes, oh please, yes.)
“What did you see?” He asked the question quietly, and it was enough to coax his voice – his thoughts – to working again: “I saw something…”
“… red?”
She had completed his sentence, had completed his thought. But there was no comfort in that, no closeness as there had been. They weren’t necessarily in sync, just trapped in the same nightmare.
He nodded. “I thought I saw, hanging in the trees –”
“His toy? Sammy’s unicorn?”
Alex frowned. “No. Maybe.” He pursed his lips, then decided, “No. I thought it was Sam’s backpack.”
They fell silent. The mist edged closer. It seemed to pool, like blood trickling from the trees of the forest.
The car coughed, and the electronics on the dash flickered. The clock display shifted in unsequenced bursts, and the radio turned on in a sudden shriek of static. Then the car hitched and everything returned to normal. The clock snapped back to normal. The dash lights brightened.
Trish looked at the dashboard.
She put the car in drive.
She pulled away from the shoulder, but didn’t drive forward far before turning the car around. The road was technically a state highway, but still small enough that it took a three-point turn, then they went back the way they came.
Tree…
Tree…
Tree…
Trish pulled over again, the tires crunching over rock, loose gravel, and sun-dried insects as the car settled on the side of the road.
“Is this where you saw it?”
Alex didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He realized suddenly that one of the reasons he had always gravitated to math and science in his schooling and later his work was because they absolutely had to make sense. As soon as something didn’t, you just scrapped it and worked out an alternate path that would. That was one of the defining qualities of true sciences and maths: the discovery of truth. Theories existed, sure, but only as possible pathways to that truth; as soon as they proved to be dead ends they were discarded.
There was no room for make-believe in math and science. Not when it got to the end of the road. And he found that he did not want to do something that would jeopardize that fundamental reality. He read of Neverlands and Wonderlands; of Dune and Omne, Commities and Corporations, framlings and Fix-Its. He existed in those places at times, and they had become part of his mental DNA. He would have passed these works and worlds to Sammy, and hoped to make him a child of his mind as well as his body.
But here, in the world where his body dwelt, he did not wish for Neverland or Wonderland. Both, at their core, were nightmares. He did not want the fantastic, and did not want to see such things peeking around the frayed edges of reality.
He did not want to go into make-believe…
.. into the darkness and the whisperers, the man in the tree and the ghosts.
Trish apparently understood that he wasn’t going to answer her last question: Is this where you saw it? she had said, and Alex feared that answering would pull at that frayed edge, and reveal that reality wasn’t a world, it was just a thin blanket over something dark and born of madness.
Trish switched topics. “What’s in your hand?” she asked.
He looked down, realizing that he had been holding it since he got in the car. Realizing that he had seen it and snatched it off the ground before throwing himself in the car and getting out of Sundown.
“I don’t know, really,” he said. “I think it came from the –
(The dead guy the one who has his head splashed all over the wall in a town Pop. 1985 but is really a ghost town where nobody really lives at all.)
– guy who came at you.”
“There was something on his pocket,” she said. “It must have fallen off him, maybe when the sheriff tazed him.”
“Probably.”
“It’s evidence then,” Trish said.
Alex knew she was asking if they should take it back. But he suspected that going back would return them to a darkened, empty, dead place. So he didn’t offer to return. He looked at what he held. The mist outside still reflected the splash of the car’s headlights, and that illumination reached into the car. He turned on the dome light just the same: partly to better see what he held, partly because it transformed the car’s windows from transparent glass into smoky mirrors. He sat in this car, and he also sat in the car within the glass. He could see himself in there, and it was comforting to think of his doppelganger rather than the forest.
The trees.
The red.
He turned the object over in his hand. It was a flat card, about the same size and shape as a credit card. It was cold, and heavier than he expected, and when he tapped it against the gold band of his wedding ring he heard the high tink of metal on metal.
One end of it had a small hole punched, and a metal clip was attached there. It looked like the kind of thing a government worker would wear; maybe an employee of some tech company. Only there was no company name, no employee photo or other writing. Just a simple design that he seemed to remember seeing before, though he couldn’t be sure where.
But he remembered everything. So if he had seen this before, it could only be in one place, on one day.
He pushed away that thought by trying to analyze the card. It was real, it was something he could understand.
The card itself was a solid black, but the design on its front – a series of circles that wove into each other – was a stark white that made his eyes want to cross. They seemed elegant, deceptively simple the way some fractal designs seemed simple. It was only when you looked closer that you saw the eternal elegance built into them. Only where such constructs had always brought him a thrill of pleasure and a sense of di
scovery as he looked closer and closer –
(peering around the edges of the TV to whatever lay behind the game)
– this design made his heart sputter, forced sweat to burst from his skin. It seemed more arcane than anything. A portal to enter the dark mirror of reality. A place where the card was white, with black circles. Where up was down and down was up and we’re all mad here.
He was suddenly not at all happy to sit beside his mirrored doppelganger.
Trish was craning to look at the card, and he suspected that she was using it the same way he was: as an avoidance of what they had seen. Because, like him, she was not a creature of make-believe.
Trish held out her hand and he passed the card to her. Their fingers touched, and hers were as cold as the metal card.
We should leave. This is a dumb time to look at the card. We should get out, and get away.
But they wouldn’t. They were looking at the card, but he knew they would have to look out the window sooner or later. They would have to shut off all the lights and peer through the darkled glass.
What if he had seen Sam’s backpack? What if she had seen Sammy’s unicorn?
What if we hear the whispers? What if the whisperers come, and become.
(“They’re coming. They’re becoming.”)
He didn’t know where those thoughts came from. Another fragment of the lost day.
Trish turned the card over and over in her hand. “What’s this design?” she asked, in a tone that indicated she didn’t expect him to know the answer. “I feel like I’ve seen it before.”
“Me, too,” he said.
“Where did you see it?” Trish said.
“I don’t remember.”
She was silent a long time. “Do you remember other things? Like… the whispers?”
“Just tiny pieces. Dreams. Dreams of dreams.”
“The whisperers. The man in the tree,” she murmured. She looked from the card to him. “Did you believe it? Do you believe it? I hear whispers, and I dream bits and pieces, but I don’t know. Was it make-believe, or real?”
His mouth dropped open a bit as she said the very words he himself had been pondering: make-believe or real? Forget to be or not to be… “make-believe or real” was really the question.
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