by DW Gillespie
When he was gone, I sprinted to the front window and peered through the blinds as the truck pulled out. I figured he would circle the neighborhood a few times before heading deeper into town, widening his search. Regardless of where he went, I knew he wouldn’t find anything.
I went back into my room and flopped onto the bed, staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out just what my next move should be. I had no idea where Andy had been taken, but I knew who took him. There was only one clue out of all this, only one thing that led anywhere: my path from the bus stop into the Trails and finally home the day before the Thief appeared. I had no doubt whatsoever that I had drawn the thing in, or my bear had. I thought of Barnett, of the strange, still-hazy scene, and the idea of going in there alone was enough to make me shiver. But then I thought of Andy, all by himself.
He was tougher than me by a mile, but he had been right. Neither of us knew what we were up against. If, by some chance, I could actually find him, I knew the odds of me getting him home were slim. I knew all of these things, but that didn’t matter now. He was out there, and I would find him if I could, even if it meant the end of both of us.
I threw whatever I could find into my backpack. A flashlight. A bottle of water. A lighter. A handful of roman candles. I slung the bag over my shoulder and slipped the knife into the pocket of my jeans. I took one last look around the house, a curiously quiet place without Dad and Andy there. Had Mom stood here once, hands on her belly, a young, whiny Andy at her heels, and my father, nervous and jittery, asking if it was finally time? I wondered if she had taken one last, longing look at her home before she went to the hospital. Three left that day, and as far as anyone knew, four would return. The house must have been quiet then too.
Memphis prowled in and startled me back to the present, curling around my leg. He always seemed to show up, whether he was or wasn’t needed.
“I’ll be back,” I told him, kneeling down. I scratched his head and rubbed the tears from my eye. “And I’m bringing Andy back with me. You hear me?”
He looked at me with his sharp, lazy eyes, and I ventured out into the day, alone. It wasn’t three o’clock yet, but the woods between the neighborhood and the field were as dark as nightfall. The storm from the day before had broken, but the sky was still dark, still gloomy, and I knew it could rain at any moment. Every breeze through the grass, every crack and pop of branches, made me glance over my shoulder in fear. Monsters, both human and otherwise, seemed to lurk in every shadow, behind every scrubby wall of brush. More than once, when the wind picked up, I froze, the terror boiling up in my throat like bile, and I nearly turned and fled in the opposite direction. Each time, I would close my eyes, think of Andy, think of whatever darkness he was in, and the moment would pass, ruffling through my hair like the wind. So I pushed on toward the Trails, which stood like a monolith of dark green, and I shuddered as soon as I set my eyes on them.
I won’t go in there. You can’t make me go in there. Nothing can make me go in there.
One breath, then two. A step, small and pitiful, but enough to carry me forward an inch. The breeze was at my back now, urging me forward, inviting me in.
I opened my eyes, and there I stood, at the edge of the Trails. Without further hesitation, I stepped in. Had that place ever been so utterly devoid of light? Had the trees and branches and creepers pressed so far off the path the day before? It didn’t seem possible, but once I laid my eyes on the first jelly bean, I felt my heart lift a bit. It was part of Andy, part of his own silly plan that made me almost giggle even as tears clouded my eyes. Deeper into the tangle I went, leaving the light farther behind with nothing to guide me but fluorescent bits of sugar. On and on I went, passing every turn, every corner, ignoring the parts I knew, leaving the relatively known for the vast expanse of unknown beyond it.
I hit the fork in the path where we had frozen the day before, and once again, I paused. I could still see it, the patch of grass where Andy had stood – spying on something he was never supposed to see. I knew that Barnett was gone. My brain told me he had to be, but it still took heaven and hell to get my feet moving once again. With a shiver, I reached into my pocket and drew out the knife, which I promptly flipped open. I edged close to the clear patch and peeked in, finding nothing but an empty patch of green. Then I took a few rubbery paces back to the trail, and I hesitated once again, this time not with fear but with confusion. I retraced my steps, back to where I had stood the day before.
I had been here.
Andy had been there.
Then we were running.
That was all. No time to mark a path. No time to bend down and drop a yellow or orange or pink jelly bean. And yet, there it was. Green. Shining like a neon emerald some ten feet to the left of where Andy had been standing the day before.
Nothing, I thought. A bird moved it. Maybe a squirrel, or my imagination, or nothing at all.
I thought of the downpour we had run through, how it must have cut lines in the slick dirt of the trails, little temporary rivers that would easily carry a jelly bean.
Yes, I thought. Rain.
I stepped over, my heart sinking a bit, and I reached down for it, and when I did, I noticed the next one a dozen steps down the path.
Calm down, I thought as I stared at it, listening to my heart pound. It was the rain. Just rain.
This one was yellow, and when I stepped over to it, I didn’t have to pause for more than a second before I saw the orange one just a few short yards away.
I walked over and straddled the orange bean, staring at it like a bomb disposal specialist might study an unmarked box on a street corner. I stood in that spot, the little sliver of neon orange between my feet, and I began to slowly spin in a circle, looking for the next jelly bean, if indeed there was a next one. I was as methodical as I could be in my excitement, tilting my head from foot to sky with each half step, desperately striving to cover every speck of land, to find the next bread crumb that might reunite Hansel and Gretel. There were four different paths carved in the ancient earth, and they branched out in different directions like the points on a compass. None of them was well defined, and the longer I stood, the more certain I became that this was all just wishful thinking. I stepped away from the orange beacon and began to make small, concentric circles, radiating out from the center.
I kept my eyes down, focusing on the small patch of dirt or grass or leaves just between my feet, but after five minutes, I felt like a fool. There was nothing here, no perfect path, no ‘aha’ moment. Just rain picking up old, uneaten jelly beans. I was just beginning to lose hope when a red speck shined in the light just out of the line of trees. It was probably thirty feet or so away from the orange bean, and as I quietly waded through the grass, I was convinced it wasn’t a jelly bean at all. Maybe a bottle cap or a candy wrapper, but certainly not a jelly bean.
Then I was on top of it, and my face beamed as the path forward became clear. There was a thin line in the tall grass of the field, just wide enough for people or deer to walk single file. On I went, one step at a time, and when I found yet another bean, all doubt was gone. I had no clue what had happened to Andy, whether he was hurt or tied up or even half dead, but I knew he was alive. This was, without any question in my mind, his path, the path that he knew I could find. One jelly bean at a time, I followed him like a bloodhound deeper into the suburban wild.
The field ended in another row of trees and a barbed-wire fence that hung limply in place inches above the ground. I climbed over it, following the sparse neon path, and a thought occurred to me. Based on everything I knew, the Toy Thief was nocturnal, even to the point of hating light. His entire existence seemed to depend on darkness, depend on never being found. I had no clue what would happen to Andy, what was happening to Andy, but I felt certain that the night would bring another trip into the Trails, back the exact way it had come. I was just guessing of course, but the odds seemed to be
in my favor. The implications of this were clear. If the Thief found the trail of jelly beans, it would, without question, remove them. Then any hope of finding my brother would be gone for good. Even worse, he might choose to punish Andy for what he’d done.
I was stuck between two competing forces. My heart told me to run, to catch up as quickly as I could, but my brain said that every step was a risk, every movement a potential deadfall. I thought of my own pitiful traps the week before, and I didn’t doubt for a second that the Toy Thief would be infinitely more devious and clever.
“Just imagination,” I told myself. “Don’t let it stop you from what you know you have to do.”
Past the fence was a new wild I’d never even known existed so close to our home. I could still see the houses peeking over treetops in the distance, but I was far enough away that no one would ever hear me scream. The path was vague as I went, and I noticed smaller trails that shot off like rabbits in different directions, toward different neighborhoods and homes. I felt certain that any of these would lead me straight into someone else’s backyard, and if I pried open the first window I found, I’d see someone else’s bedroom lined with toys ripe for the picking.
I came into a tiny clearing and realized that these side paths were all issuing out from a central hub, extending like tributaries from a single river. I stood in the center, searching for the next colored checkpoint, and I found it. This particular path through the tall grass was more worn down than the others, a highway for the deer, the coyotes, and of course the monsters. Deeper and deeper I ventured, the day waning overhead, the distance between me and my house, my sanctuary, growing wider as the distance to Andy narrowed. Once, the trail moved close enough past the backyard of one of the homes that a dog stirred and began barking at me as I passed. But then the rows of homes ended, and I left the neighborhoods behind for good.
Beyond the cover of the woods, I found a small, ancient-looking road. I stumbled over the wheel ruts that led toward a low fence marked by a rusted chain that dangled across the weedy path. A yellow and brown Caution sign stared at me, mostly illegible through all the rust. I was at the old quarry, the place mentioned in whispers among the kids on the street, a place only the bravest actually laid eyes on.
Go back. Do it now while you still can.
For the first time since I had set out, I realized that the warning from within myself wasn’t really me. It had a sharper, darker undertone that I couldn’t quite place. Then it hit me: the dream from a few nights before. The dark, soupy blackness that formed itself into a man. The hollow warning it spoke to me before opening its bloodred eyes. What had it said?
No death for your brother…
Why did I have to remember that here of all places, now of all times? My mind, despite all the insanity of the past week, had made a special note of that dream, had locked it carefully away behind a rickety door that could be opened at a moment’s notice. That dark tone wasn’t quite like a man’s voice, but something that might have once dreamed it was a man. I was trying to talk myself out of doing what I knew I had to do, but my mind had added this awful darkness to further dissuade me. It made sense, in a twisted way. After all, dreams come from within, and every grim moment, every curdled image is provided by our own subconscious. I didn’t know any of this, not as a kid, but I did believe that somehow, my mind was using my fear against me, doubling, tripling my terror.
No.
Yes, of course it was just a dream.
No, it wasn’t.
My voice now, all me, clear and vivid.
There was more to that dream, and you know it. No dream in your entire life ever felt like that one. And for good reason.
No. There was no good reason. Dreams were dreams.
Precisely. And that was no dream.
I clapped my hands to the sides of my head and went down on one knee. Maybe there was something there, some shred of truth about what I was telling myself, but it didn’t matter – not now anyway. Later there would be time: time to sort all this out, time to make sense of the circus behind my eyes. But not now. Now only one thing mattered, and that was Andy.
“So stop,” I said aloud, certain that every voice in my head could hear me. “And keep walking.”
And I did. In an unbroken march, stepping over the low hanging fence, I went past the quarter mile of tall grass, past the jagged remnants of rock, the uncut pillars that seemed to rise from hell itself. On and on, until the ground began to slope downward, and I caught sight of it: the sheer face of gray granite, a hundred feet at least, ending in a bottomless well of dark water. I stepped to the edge, peered over, felt the world tilt underfoot. The path ended here, ended in a drop to almost certain death. I checked left and right, retracing my steps to the last marker I could find, but the trail had gone cold. For one desperate moment, I considered the possibility that the awful monster really didn’t have any sort of lofty ambitions for Andy. It wasn’t a kidnapping. It was merely a murder. I pictured it tossing him over the edge, maybe with a rock tied around his neck for good measure, his last pleas for mercy heard by nothing more than the passing crows.
“Andy.”
I whispered his name, and the sound of my own voice made me want to scream. Down both sides of the canyon, the sheer cliffs were impossible for me to climb, and as far down as I could see, there was nothing but flat gray rock. Somewhere in that moment of final desperation, I realized there were tears streaming down my face. The dark clouds rolled overhead, but I was too tired to care, and I flopped onto the bare dirt and began to sob. I couldn’t go back. There was nothing to go back to. But to stay here was to admit to myself that there was no hope.
Once I had just about cried myself out, I sat up and stared down at the black water. I hated the sight of it, so dark and full of secrets, and in weak, helpless defiance, I kicked a rock off the edge and waited. But instead of a splash, I heard the unmistakable crack of rock on rock. Once more, I peered over the edge, leaning as far forward as I dared to. There wasn’t much to see, only the bulging wall stretching out before me. I had assumed, wrongly perhaps, that the rock wall was sheer, just like every other part of the quarry. Again, I found a small rock, reached out, and let it drop. It left my field of vision, and I expected to hear it splash down, but once more it cracked, stone upon stone.
Somewhere down there, just out of my field of view, was an outcropping. I scrambled to my feet and began pacing the edge of the cliff. I couldn’t see much of anything until I had walked about a hundred yards to one side. The quarry wasn’t exactly straight, and with the narrow, grading curve, I could just make it out: a flat platform of rock, maybe thirty feet wide, was hidden under the bulge of the wall. Even more incredibly, behind it was a hollow.
A cave.
I could even make out the remains of an old path to the bottom of the quarry farther down the right-hand side – a rutted trail just big enough for a single vehicle to drive down. In a sprint, I made my way to the narrow road, which hugged the side of the quarry and toward the rocky platform I had seen. I kept one hand on the wall as I stepped carefully down, unsure of how deep the water at the bottom was. It was a slow, awkward walk, but I made it without any issues, at least until I hit the bottom. At one point, vehicles could have easily been driven down here before the workers gave up on it. Now, with the floodwaters low, I could see the bands on the walls where the water level had gone up and down throughout the year. It was somewhere in the middle now, the washout from the day before bringing everything up a bit, but it had been as much as ten feet higher in the past.
The narrow road fed right down into the murky water, and I put a tentative foot in. There was no drop-off, just the continuous, gentle slope leading ever downward into the still, dark water. The road ended some fifty feet away from the entrance to the cave, and I began to shuffle in place like I was about to piss my pants. There was something about that water, so still and tepid, as warm as a
bathtub. It felt dirty somehow, like wading through sewage. There was no way around it though, so I bit my lip and stepped in, clinging to the wall as I passed deeper into the murk. Past my ankles. Above my calves. My knees. The middle of my thigh. When the water passed my belly button, I stopped to reassess and sighed when I realized I was still thirty feet away.
But I was closer to the cliff wall now, and I could see it for the first time. It wasn’t just some divot as I’d feared it might be. It was an opening, a gaping mouth that had once been cut into the earth, in search of granite or marble, before this place was given back to nature. I could see the opening big enough to drive a truck through, but the line of the water was just below the lip of the cave. And it was a cave. Man might have made it some long, forgotten years past, but this was no longer a place that men knew. I felt exposed and helpless splashing through that dark water, but I couldn’t go back. This was it. It had to be, and so I hitched my backpack off and held it over my head, walking forward on my tiptoes until the water was up to my chin.
I wasn’t the strongest swimmer in the world, but I was comfortable enough in water to press off the bottom and tread over the last few feet. I caught the edge with my left hand just as my face went under, and I sucked in a mouthful of that sour, tepid water as my feet found the sloping bottom once more. With a coughing spasm, I tossed up the backpack and scrambled up the slope, dropping like a rock once I was on the dry land of the cave entrance. With a glance up, I peered into darkness, wondering just what I might find when the light of the summer day died away.
Chapter Nine
I haven’t been completely honest. I think you’ve probably picked up on that. You might not think there’s a good reason to lie to you, but lying’s all I know. Think back to that awful blind date with the chubby guy. No one bothered to tell me what he looked like, just like no one bothered to tell him the same about me. I have no idea what it’s like to be him, but for me, the truth about who I am…well, it’s the kind of thing I have to work up to.