As I said, there wasn’t any official path—just random openings and short patches of smoothed ground. It was hard to decide which way to run, and hard to see once I’d left the well-lit parking lot behind.
A half-moon gave some slight illumination where the overhanging trees allowed its glow to penetrate. The area to my right opened into a nice, even slope, a few jutting rocks acting as natural steps. I could move down that slope quickly, but wasn’t sure it was the right direction.
The alternative was a steep drop to the left, and parts of that route looked like a tough squeeze. The guy from the window booth wouldn’t have fit through the tight sections. I decided to take the easier slope.
As if in protest, anguished faces peered at me from a nearby clump of trees on the rejected path. The faces pressed out from the trunks, mouths open in dark rotted circles, skin wrinkled in deep grains of flaked bark, cheek bones deformed by knotted burls.
I took that shadowed path, feeling a trunk the way a blind man reads a stranger’s face, finding the grain of the bark and random knotty bumps, but nothing like the brow and nose and open mouth from Jack’s projected image.
(You’re right, Celia, it’s like Hansel and Gretel and their trail of breadcrumbs. But Jack’s breadcrumbs always made the world worse. It was like I walked into hell to follow him.
I’ll give you a good sample of the other images Jack planted, haunting the woods to help me find him.)
I saw a nest of snakes, rattle tails vibrating soundlessly behind them. I didn’t have nerve to stick my hand among those coiled shapes, but I picked up a stick, which poked unaffected through the false image.
A bear trap indicated the entrance to another small clearing. Metal teeth closed around a thick hairy foot, blood and snapped bone above the ankle where it was chewed off. I kicked at the trap. In that dark shade, my foot seemed to enter the illusion: metal teeth clamped around my ankle instead of the bear’s.
At the other side of the rough circular clearing, I found an animal corpse to mark the way ahead. The squirrel’s head was missing, its stomach gutted open. The fur was stiff. Maggots crawled over its gashed, gnawed body.
I touched it to confirm the illusion. The fur felt like the bristles of a hairbrush. Maggots tickled my palm, wriggled between my fingers. The stench of rot wafted from the disturbed corpse. I jumped back, startled, shaking the gore off my hand.
(Yeah, the dead squirrel was real. Nature throws disgusting stuff at you, once in a while.)
I found Jack’s breadcrumb a few feet away: a tall anthill with mouse-size ants crawling over it. When they looked at me, the ants had human faces.
Not real, I told myself, and ran through the anthill without bothering to test the image. I knew I was getting close to Jack.
Then I found him. He dangled from a high tree limb, a noose around his neck. A burlap sack covered his head, but even in moonlit shadow I recognized Jack’s clothes, the shape of his body.
I could tell the body was lifeless.
Oh no, no, no. It was impossible. A few insensitive comments in a restaurant, and the trail leads here? We’d been too friendly to each other, telegraphed that we were a gay couple, and those strangers—who didn’t know us, didn’t realize how close we’d gotten at college, our lives spread in front of us as a Great Journey, our relationship based on love, like anyone’s, and love isn’t something you question, isn’t something you fit into society’s rules, isn’t something you should have to hide from a world that might want to bash you with a fist or a baseball bat, or hang you from a tree because you’re different.
Jack’s shadowed form swung back and forth from the end of the rope. His arm extended on one side. From his gloved hand, the forefinger and thumb shaped into a mock pistol.
Pointing at a break between two trees.
It was another of Jack’s tricks. A hanging scarecrow, with button eyes on the burlap face, a crooked mouth painted on with tar. Tufts of straw sprouted from the collar, from the shirt and pant cuffs.
Thank God, although I was a little agitated, too. I’d never considered scarecrows that frightening—but this one really got to me.
I went to where the gloved hand pointed. A scooped opening appeared in the dirt and tree roots, and the trunks fused ahead, making it like a slanted tunnel. I never would have noticed it by myself. I’d have to crawl through it.
I crawled blind, scraping forward along my stomach, elbows out and legs bent to scoot me forward. I had expected the roof of the tunnel to open up once I’d crawled and slid forward a few feet. The ground opened up instead.
I felt the drop-off with my hands, the slide of the tunnel breaking away along a rough ledge. I dug behind with my toes to keep from sliding further, then paused for my eyes to adjust to the limited light.
The ledge formed the lip of a small pit. The distance wasn’t too far—about ten feet or so, and if I twisted my body as I emerged from the tunnel, I could probably land without hurting myself.
Only one problem. From the floor of the pit, blood gleamed from the sharp tips of two dozen wooden spears. The carcass of a possum was skewered on one post, through the bottom of its neck and out the eye socket. The body had slid partway down the spear, but the eye jelly remained on the tip.
It was impossible, like so many other things Jack had shown me in this haunted forest. But I thought about those strangers who abducted Jack. They beat him and dragged him from a parking lot and into the woods. Wouldn’t that be the same kind of people who’d set an awful trap, pretending to catch animals but hoping for human prey?
“It’s too real, Jack. I can’t follow you. I can’t . . . ”
I let myself fall.
#
(Let’s try an experiment, Celia. Pretend my finger is a sharp wooden spike. Now, you know it’s not, so there’s nothing to be afraid of.
Right?
Now, I’m going to bring it close to your face. Sit still. Try not to blink. I’m bringing this pointed spike right to your nose. There.
Did you feel it? I didn’t touch you at all. But you felt it, didn’t you? And not on your nose. In your eyes.
That’s what I felt as I dropped, head down, into that pit. Spikes coming toward me, aimed at my eyes, poking each of them, tearing through them, through my brain and out the back of my head.
A horrible sensation. Because your eyes always wince, don’t they?
Even at something false.)
#
I brushed against the slope as I fell, which cushioned me so I slid and rolled the last few feet instead of hitting the ground full force.
I landed on my back, half expecting to see the bloody tips of wooden spears extended through my chest. My shoulder hurt, and I’d twisted an ankle, but other than that I was fine.
The illusion of the spiked pit had disappeared. A few feet away, Jack huddled against an indent in the wall of the pit.
He looked terrible. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and he was so weak he could barely open the other one. A cut on the side of his head had clotted shut, but not before bleeding down his face and soaking the front of his shirt.
Still, after everything I’d seen, including his scarecrow effigy hanging lifeless from a tree . . . well, Jack didn’t look so bad, after all.
We didn’t say much. I held him, careful not to press too hard against his side, and Jack knew how grateful I was to find him.
(That was always true. I was glad to find him in college. I was grateful for all the time I spent with him. Even if, sometimes, I had to travel through hell to get there.
Those forest visions he sent weren’t pretty, but they led me to him. That’s what was important. I wasn’t going to scold him for scaring me, was I? Not when I might never have found him otherwise.
He was still testing his gift, as he explained later. Seemed like it worked better when the images were more intense, more disturbing. Besides, that scarecrow was supposed to be obvious—I should have seen the straw first, the button eyes and painted mouth.)
We spent al
most the whole night in that pit. Jack wouldn’t let me leave his side—and I didn’t want to.
“It’s like camping under the stars,” he said about an hour before sunrise, and from his sarcasm, I knew he was ready to try to stand.
We leaned on each other. With no haunted signposts to guide us, we found our way out of the woods.
#
“And that was the first real adventure I had with your other father. It had a happy ending, though Jack was still beat up a bit, and our car, too.
“No hospital for Jack. It was mostly a head wound, and when you’re young, you heal fast. Jack recuperated in a motel room while I took the car to a local repair shop. ‘Just get it drivable,’ Jack said, though he wasn’t too happy with a front hood sealed shut with a bent coat hanger, and a powder blue door replacing the dented one on his side.
“What can I say? The mechanic gave me a good deal, and the mismatched door had a window already in place.
“I bet you’re wondering about the guys who abducted Jack. Well, we didn’t report the crime to the police. The guys snuck up behind him in the parking lot; we hadn’t seen all their faces in the diner. And Jack was anxious to continue our cross-country journey.
“Like I said, it was our first adventure. We moved on, not confident enough to tie up every loose end.
“Don’t look so disappointed, Celia. Okay, you know what? We’d heard one of the hidden friends refer to that guy as Biggs—surely an ironic nickname, which just as easily could have been Slim or Tiny. But how many Biggs could there be who visited that diner? He sure made himself at home there in that window booth, all those plates spread out like a personal buffet. If we went back there sometime later, that guy might not be too hard to track down—and you can bet he’d lead us to his friends, as well.
“But I’ll save that story until you’re a bit older.”
Chapter II
What are your parents like?
Celia never quite knew how to answer that question. She likened it to the time she asked her friend Nora if it was difficult using a wheelchair every day. Nora responded: “Sometimes. Walking might be tough, too. I’m not able to walk, so I wouldn’t know.” Celia never asked her again.
The answer made sense. You take what life gives you. Comparisons are never quite as simple as they seem.
Megan, another classmate, once said, “My parents will throw a fit if they learn I got a C+ on my history test. I’ll get grounded for a week. Are your parents that strict?”
Hard to say, because Celia always did well in her classes, especially history and English. And what would it mean for her to be grounded, anyway? She didn’t care for the usual withheld privileges: extra cell phone or Internet usage; late-evening visits or sleepovers with friends; weekend trips to the mall. If she ever did anything to make Dad Shawn upset, he’d have a hard time coming up with some way to punish her.
She imagined him wagging his finger and speaking in a stern voice: “No more study time for you, Celia. I’m suspending your library card. And no carrot sticks in your lunch this week, either.” Ridiculous.
She’d always been self-motivated. She followed rules, asked what was safe and healthy and behaved accordingly. Some people, well, they might have different ideas. And that’s why a girl like Megan probably needed strict parents, to push her to try harder. Her next test, Megan would get a better score.
The comparisons were understandable, though. Celia sometimes caught herself being jealous of Megan, whose mother had such an exotic fashion sense and always helped to dress Megan in fun, colorful outfits. Or James, who had the latest games and gadgets because his father gave such extravagant gifts, birthday or not. Other peoples’ parents always seem so attractive in small doses—when they’re on their best behavior, of course, all quirky and funny and even hip, in their own way.
Live with them every day and it’d have to be a different story. These hip moms and dads, same as any parents, would nag kids to clean their rooms, empty the trash or the dishwasher, walk the dog or scoop after the cat. They’d inevitably slip into the tired phrases parents have always used: Don’t ask why, just do it or, In my day, children were more respectful of adults or, Wait until you have kids of your own.
No point being jealous of other families. She had a good home. It was hers. She didn’t want to trade it for anything else.
Still, the worst jealousy would sometimes arise. The kind Celia felt most ashamed about when it hit her, an occasional wish for . . . she wouldn’t use the word normal, but instead settled on regular, or usual, or traditional. A mom and a dad who got married in their twenties, had kids one right after the other, bing, bing, bing, and settled down into nine-to-five jobs, a suburban split-level home and a big Range Rover in the driveway for sports practice or weekend getaways.
Then she’d be able to answer: You want to know what they’re like? Oh, like anybody else’s parents, really.
Not . . . odd.
That’d be the best word to describe Dad Shawn, but at the same time it might provoke a kind of sympathy, and pleas for more information.
They’d understand it if they met him, of course: her dad was five to ten years older than her friends’ parents, and he had a quiet manner and nervous smile, like he wanted to end any conversation before it even started. Some people thought he acted superior, like he didn’t care about other people’s interests—in sports, say, or popular music or movies. Her friends mostly decided Dad Shawn didn’t know how to speak to kids: he seemed like a teacher to them or, worse, a principal or police officer.
As Nora once said: “Your father seems kind of suspicious. A lot of people are awkward because of my wheelchair, but they get used to it eventually. Your dad, he watches, and I almost think he’s expecting I’m just going to get up and walk.”
Celia kind of laughed that one off, and explained it with reference to her dad’s job in the Special Collections department at the Hopkins library. “He’s around all these ancient, moldy books. Some of them, they’re so rare and valuable, and the pages would crumble if you touched them the wrong way. You’d destroy something that could never be replaced. Visitors have to wear special gloves, so the oil on their fingertips doesn’t damage the page. A few of the books, they’re kept in air-sealed glass cases, and my dad has to turn the pages with these rubber-tipped sticks. It’s tricky, like that carnival game with the metal claw where you’re trying to win a stuffed animal.”
As usual, Nora let her go on awhile, then prompted her back on track. “You’re telling me I’m a moldy book?”
Celia laughed. “Sorry, no. Think about how Ms. Rowan has to shush us all the time at school. Her books, at least, aren’t that valuable—it’s not like we’re going to ruin them or steal them. My dad’s like her, but more—does that make sense? In his library, he’s got to watch everybody carefully. And he’s kind of like that with people, too. He’s watching to make sure we’re properly cautious. Following the correct procedures.”
“So he thinks I’m going to break something?” Nora leaned to one side in her chair, then twisted the wheel in perilous balance. She made a crazed face, giving Celia the comical image of an out-of-control wheelchair banging against a table and sending a glass lamp crashing to the tile, or careening into the side of an entertainment cabinet, television flipping to the ground and CD cases spilling from their alphabetized compartments.
“Not exactly.” Celia loved how Nora could crack jokes, never afraid to include her disability as part of the humor. Some people, when they first met Nora, might try not to mention the chair: the subject made them uncomfortable, and they assumed Nora was uncomfortable with it, as well. Her friend would always make a quick joke, to ease the tension. The first day of ninth grade, Mr. Chen told all the students to “Have a seat,” and then he looked at Nora and gasped, liked he’d said the most offensive thing in the world. Nora saw his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide with shame and mental gears turning as if he was figuring how to word his apology—and Nora just smirked and shru
gged and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll park here in the handicap space.” Everyone laughed, and the teacher knew she was letting him off the hook.
“I think I get it,” she said, returning to Celia’s analogy about her father. “Your dad’s protecting priceless books at work—so he’s kind of suspicious all the time. Gee, that must get tiresome.”
“Oh, he’s not that way with me,” Celia said. “We have a lot of fun. He jokes around a lot. But he’s not usually that way with others.”
“Yeah. I guess it helps that you’re kind of a goody-two-shoes.”
“Sure,” she said, glad the idea had mostly gotten through. Someday, she hoped, Dad Shawn would be more comfortable around Nora, maybe let his guard down a bit more. She didn’t like to make excuses for people, especially family members. “He’s not usually like that” only works a few times until people realize, “Well, every time we see him he’s like that.”
There were other factors that might have offered better explanation for her father’s demeanor. Yes, Dad Shawn sometimes appeared cold or distant, but maybe that’s because his life partner had suffered a lengthy, painful illness—an experience that would make anyone cautious about forming close bonds with new people.
Just as significant were the experiences he’d had during that long road trip with Dad Jack, when they were young. In all the stories, the two of them uncovered disturbing secrets beneath a veneer of normalcy: prejudice, evil, selfishness, even perversion. People sometimes wore a false smile. They tried to harm you, or to make you unhappy with yourself.
Her father had seen too much of that, maybe. His experiences taught him not to trust others.
Or even to trust his senses. In his years with Dad Jack, seeing wasn’t necessarily believing.
Well, Celia definitely couldn’t risk bringing in that particular explanation. Yeah, my father’s partner was able to distort reality, to project images as if the world were some kind of movie screen. A horror movie screen, to be exact.
And their adventures? Yes, they found supernatural stuff like vampires and zombies and ghosts. No, I don’t have any real proof, but my dad told me and that’s enough for me. I believe him.
Odd Adventures with your Other Father Page 3