The Truth Circle

by Cameron Ayers

  * * * * * *

  Ken was well and truly lost. He stumbled through the forest, exhausted, not even sure what direction he was walking anymore.

  It had been hours since his lakeside encounter with Wade. In his mad scramble to escape, Ken had sprinted from the floodplain into the southern edge of the forest, propelled forward by fear, without a plan and little to no awareness of his surroundings. Only a singular thought — survival — echoed in his mind as he pushed his oxygen-starved lungs and cramped legs to the limit. He had collapsed in an exhausted heap at some point — Ken wasn’t certain when; time was relative in his endorphin-addled mind — and as he rested, he began to wonder where he was.

  Some good had come from his headlong flight; he hadn’t seen or heard Wade in some time. He kept staring skyward for a glimpse of the sun, hoping to orient himself by its position. Unfortunately, it had retreated behind a thick layer of low-lying clouds that darkened the sky and threatened rain.

  Ken headed in what he guessed was a northern direction, figuring that he could get his bearings if he found the floodplains again. He felt inside his pants pockets for his smokes, figuring they might take the edge off. Empty. He cursed, realizing he must have left them back at camp.

  Ken hopped over a dry creekbed and wended his way through a tightly packed birch grove before emerging into a football-field-sized dell surrounded on all sides by sturdy beech, oak and birch trees. The interior was large fields of knee-high grasses occasionally punctuated with wildflowers, all of which led to a small mound in the center marked by the largest ash tree Ken had ever seen. It was easily seven stories high, dwarfing all the surrounding trees. Ken marveled at it because it was totally bare; while all the other trees ringing the dell were just beginning to turn and discard their leaves as autumn slowly gave way to winter, the giant ash had apparently grown impatient for winter’s arrival and shed all its foliage a month early.

  As he walked toward the towering tree, Ken became acutely aware of the sound of his footfalls and the swoosh of the grasses as he passed. It wasn’t because of how much noise he was making; it was how still everything around him had become. The forest always teemed with noise: birds chirping, wind rustling, streams ambling, squirrels chattering; a symphony of wildlife. But an eerie silence enveloped the dell, as though all the animals and the very elements themselves avoided it. And each unsettling step Ken took reminded him that he was disturbing this peace.

  As he approached the tree, Ken saw it had a heavily knotted base of exposed roots that twisted into pretzel-like shapes before plunging into the ground. In the center, just in front of the trunk, was a dark hole large enough for a small child to squeeze through. It looked too small to be a wolves’ den, so Ken concluded it was probably an abandoned badger’s hole.

  He had a much harder time explaining what he found all over the mound. Spread out from the base of the tree was a charcoal-gray, powdery substance that traced thick, spiral-like patterns across the mound, like a pinwheel of granules. All of these spirals, which extended in every direction around the twenty-foot-wide mound, converged at the same point: the hole in the ground.

  Everything on the mound was dead. The grass — so tall and vibrant across the rest of the dell — was withered and brown on the mound, while the few wildflowers Ken could pinpoint in this granular maze had wilted. Even the patches of dirt that could be seen between the swirls had a sickly gray tone to them, as though the land itself was blighted.

  Ken stopped just short of the mound, looking down at his feet to be certain he didn’t step onto the powdery substance. Whatever this was, he didn’t want any of it getting on him. He knelt down for a closer look, careful not to touch anything. He’d seen diseased plant life before and it looked nothing like this. There were no obvious signs of mold or rot, no visible cankers on the tree.

  As for the powdery substance, Ken had no idea what to make of it. It was finely grained, like sand from a pristine beach, only this beach was gray and mottled. The pinwheel patterns it spread in were undisturbed; not even the wind had altered their course.

  Whatever did this wasn’t natural, Ken told himself as he stood up and backed away. He made a beeline for the shortest route out of the dell, which was which was a cluster of trees on the opposite side of the hole in the ground. As he hastily walked around the tree, something caught his eye.

  Dangling from a nail on the other side of the tree was a feathered mandala. Ken squinted his eyes as he examined the trinket. It looked just like the one overhanging the entrance to the wigwam; same crimson frame with eight petals in the center. Same eight feathers hanging down. Could there be a connection between the two? And why would that Native American phony place another one way out here?

  Ken felt his skin start to crawl. Everything about this dell seemed creepy and off. He walked faster, casting wary glances over his shoulder every so often, as if the trees would uproot themselves and charge at him.

  He started to feel better almost as soon as he exited the dell, and it was several minutes before he realized that the forest sounded alive once more, with bird calls overhead and the wind gently whistling through the trees once again, sounds that blended with the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot. Ken found it comforting after his earlier experience, and set off with an added spring in his step. He followed a grove of maple trees up a gentle slope, walking alongside them as the spaces in between the trees were lined with fallen branches that formed a patchwork blockade.

  Ken was so relieved to experience something familiar again that he scarcely noticed where he was walking as he reached the top of the rise and passed the last maple tree, nearly setting foot on the road before he even registered it was there.

  A road! Never before had a simple dirt road looked so good to Ken. It was patchy in spots, with clumps of weeds and brush encroaching on it, and was little more than six feet wide, but it was the most inviting thing Ken had seen all day. He pumped his fist in the air with excitement, forgetting not only his odd experience from five minutes ago, but his exhaustion after hours of walking.

  But which way to go? One direction led downward and disappeared behind a rock outcropping some 40 yards away, while on the opposite side it ended in a wide, rolling field some 100 yards in the distance. Ken hesitated for a moment before taking the field path, reasoning that if the road didn’t resume on the opposite end of the field, he could always backtrack.

  While the sun remained stubbornly hidden behind a thick layer of clouds, it was pleasantly warm, and a gentle breeze invigorated him as he walked. The grass on this side of the field — the upper slope — barely rose over his sneakers, suggesting that it was a popular grazing area. He noticed several honeybees foraging nearby, taking advantage of the temperature for a few precious hours before the night’s chill forced them back to the hive.

  Ken could already see the other side of the field; it was lined with trees, and between them he could see the road. Only it didn’t pick up where the other one had ended. Instead, the road ran parallel to the field; that and the fact that it was made of gravel indicated it was a completely different road. Ken noticed that the gravel path ended shortly after crossing the field, but the road continued, a dirt path that forked left and wound its way up a small hill that vanished on the other side of the hill’s crest.

  As he drew closer, Ken couldn’t shake off the oddest sense of déjà vu. There was something about this place that seemed familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. It was then that he heard the voices.

  Two people, talking. So faintly that he thought he was imagining it. But as his feet moved from grass to gravel, the voices grew clearer. They were both adult male voices. They seemed to be coming from the other side of the hill.

  Ken started charging toward the hill, his weariness after hours of walking forgotten. With each step he felt a surge of adrenaline coursing through his veins, making his limbs impossibly light as he ran across the gravel road and followed it to the dirt path uphill.

  “Hey!�
�� he shouted exuberantly. “Over here! Help!”

  The voices on the other side of the hill ceased.

  “Help me!” Ken called out again. “I’m lost out here!” he shouted, forgetting in his excitement that he wasn’t the only one abandoned.

  “Hello?” a man called out in the distance.

  Ken crested the hill and felt his heart leap into his throat when he saw two figures downhill, maybe 200 yards further down the road. They were still too far away to make out clearly. He waved wildly in the air. After an agonizing second, one of them waved back.

  Ken started laughing in excitement as he charged down the hill. A wave of relief washed over him as they drew closer and he realized this nightmare was about to end. He was saved! Saved!

  He could barely contain himself as he bounded toward his rescuers. No doubt they were hunters or intrepid backpackers that could escort him to safety. Details about either of his rescuers were hard to make out because they were standing in the shadows of a shading tree on the side of the road, and because many of the intervening trees had low-lying branches that obscured the view downhill. The taller one looked to be white, and was wearing light-colored clothing. The other one was harder to make out through the foliage, but he appeared to be dark-skinned and shorter than his traveling companion.

  As Ken drew closer, the pair left the comfort of the shading tree and stepped out into the road to greet him, giving him his first good look at them. The shorter of the two was stocky and black, while the taller one had shaggy red hair and was wearing light-colored robes.

  Fuck.

  All the enthusiasm drained out of Ken’s body, and he quickly stopped jogging downhill.

  “Fuck you two for getting my hopes up,” Ken greeted them while pausing to catch his breath.

  Lamar looked to Coop knowingly.

  “I told you it was him,” he said.

  “We thought you were gone,” Coop said. “Like, permanently.”

  “I’m not that lucky,” Ken replied, drawing close enough to the pair to speak in a normal voice. Ken noticed the two of them were walking stiffly, with a side-to-side motion, like they’d just run a marathon and could barely stand. “Why are you two walking like that?”

  “Long story,” Coop intoned. “Just don’t ask us to carry anything heavy for the next 24 hours.”

  “Or anyone heavy,” Lamar chimed in.

  Ken shook his head in confusion.

  “Whatever, we can play catch-up some other time,” he said. “What the hell are you two doing all the way out here?”

  They looked at each other, confused, and then back at Ken.

  “You do know where you are, right?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ken snapped.

  “Uhmm … you’re a quarter-mile south of camp,” Lamar said quietly.

  “Get the fuck out of here.”

  “It’s true,” Coop chimed in. “This is the same road John used when he brought us here. We only got back 30 minutes ago, ourselves. Gaby and Beverly are down there right now.”

  Ken rolled his eyes in aggravation. All this time Ken thought he was heading north, he had actually been heading east. Now at least he understood that sense of déjà vu earlier. He’d stumbled on the same spot they had visited yesterday morning, when John showed them …

  A puzzled expression crossed Ken’s face. He ran a few yards back up the hill, to the crest, and looked back the way he’d come. They weren’t there.

  “It’s not the same road,” he insisted, walking back to Lamar and Coop, who at this point were vacillating between annoyed and amused. “You two must have gotten turned around.”

  “See that ridge?” Coop asked sharply, his annoyance plain as he pointed the way they had come. “The camp’s on the other side of it.”

  “It can’t be,” Ken insisted stubbornly.

  “Why are you so certain?” Lamar asked.

  “Because,” Ken said with a dramatic pause, “there are no totem poles.”

  Ken walked the pair to the top of the hill, and they looked down at the gravel road and the open field.

  “If this was the same road, the totem poles would be there, right?” Ken said, motioning to where the poles should have stood, the ones John had shown off yesterday.

  “See, they’re not there,” Ken finished with a self-satisfied little smile.

  “What are those marks there?” Lamar asked, pointing to two deep indentations on either side of the road at the bottom of the hill, right where the totems poles would have stood. Ken hadn’t spotted them when he passed by earlier because of the difference in elevation. His grin quickly vanished.

  Several minutes later, the trio was down by the fork in the road, investigating the imprints in the ground, which were nearly two feet deep. Lamar ran his fingers lightly along the outer edges of the clay that had once contained the left pole. The edges were completely smooth to the touch. If something as heavy as one of those eight-foot poles had been extricated, there would have been cracking along the outer rim, fissure marks showing where it had been torn out at an angle. There was nothing of the sort.

  “Where are the drag marks?” Ken asked as he examined the hole on the right. “Something that heavy gets dragged away.”

  Lamar checked his side and noticed the same thing. The only tracks in the dirt around the poles were their own shoe imprints. It was like the poles had simply vanished.

  “How’d he do it?” Ken asked. “Those things must have been 400 pounds each. You’d need a backhoe to cart one of those things off solo.”

  “That’s a lot of work just to mess with us,” Lamar responded. “And there’d be tread marks all around here.”

  “Maybe they were imitation, like fiberglass,” Coop suggested. “John could lift that, right?”

  “Then they wouldn’t be able to stay upright. A light breeze could knock them over,” Lamar pointed out.

  A thought occurred to Coop.

  “Remember what he said when we were here yesterday?” Coop asked. “He said that the next time we see them, we’ll be different people.”

  Ken shrugged.

  “So?”

  “So maybe the vision quest hasn’t changed us enough,” Coop explained. “I don’t feel any different from yesterday, do you?”

  “I feel a lot more pissed off than I did yesterday,” Ken replied dryly. “And what do you mean ‘hasn’t changed us enough?’ Hasn’t changed us enough to what?”

  “To see them,” Coop replied in earnest.

  Lamar quickly turned away to mask his snickering. Ken wasn’t as polite.

  “Are you shittin’ me, Fanny Farmer?” Ken said, laughing right in his face. “Maybe we should consult a Ouija board or say ‘Bloody Mary’ into a mirror three times!”

  Coop stiffened.

  “We ruled out reasonable explanations, so …”

  “So you decided to break out the most batshit crazy one ever?” Ken interrupted with a demeaning laugh. “You keep talking like this, and I’ll put you in the loony bin with Wade.”

  Coop stormed back to camp in a huff, and an apologetic Lamar quickly followed him. Ken, on the other hand, continued to laugh long after the two were out of earshot.

  “Enjoy your ‘vision quest,’ dipshit!” he called out in a cruel imitation of Coop’s shrill voice. “The rest of us will concentrate on getting rescued!”

  * * * * * *

  Gaby helped Beverly lay back onto her sleeping blanket, holding her bad ankle stationary as the older woman slowly lowered herself. She winced as Gaby set it on her monogrammed carry-on bag.

  It was late afternoon now, and the interior of the teepee was already darkening, even with the door ajar. The odor of last night’s fire still lingered.

  “Can I get you anything, Bev?” Gaby asked, kneeling down beside her with some difficulty.

  “A stiff drink,” Beverly muttered, still annoyed by her treatment earlier.

  “All we have is water.”

  “I can’t spend the rest o
f the day in here with nothing to do,” Beverly insisted. “I’ll go out of my mind with boredom.”

  “We’re a little short on reading material here,” Gaby responded patiently. “So try to imagine all the things you’ll do when we get out of here.”

  Gaby put her hands on her knees and started to stand up. She immediately fell to one knee, her face contorted in pain as she bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  Beverly leaned forward, concerned.

  “Let me take a look at it,” she said. “It’s not getting any better.”

  Gaby held up her hand to ward Beverly away.

  “I’m fine,” she said through clenched teeth. “I just stood up too fast, that’s all.”

  “You are not fine,” Beverly said emphatically. “You can barely walk and you refuse to sit. Whatever you sat on is still in there. What happens when you have to use the outhouse? How long before it becomes infected?”

  Beverly could see Gaby starting to waver. She reached out to take her hand in a compassionate gesture. Gaby tensed up and jerked her hand away. She looked at Beverly warily, as though the older woman was going to strike her.

  An awkward silence hung in the air as the two looked at each other.

  “Sorry,” Beverly said, lowering her offered hand. “I forgot that you don’t like to be touched.”

  Gaby relaxed slightly.

  “I never thanked you for helping me today,” Beverly started. “I know I was … well, I was kind of a pill about it. But if you three hadn’t helped me, I’d still be at the bottom of that ravine. I was stubborn and behaved badly. Now it’s my turn to help,” she said, drawing closer to Gaby. “Let me help you out of your ravine.”

  Gaby mulled this over. She opened her mouth to refuse when Beverly held up her hand.

  “I know you’re hiding something,” she said quietly. “The long-sleeved shirts, refusing to wear a swimsuit during the sweat. Whatever it is, you don’t have to be afraid to show me.”

  Gaby started to protest, but Beverly cut her off again.

  “There’s nothing you could have done to yourself that I haven’t seen a hundred times before,” Beverly continued. “Self-cutting, injection marks, I’ve seen it all.”