Out There: A Rural Horror Story

by Cademon Bishop

  Michael felt as though he was being swayed on a ship—a very small ship. Water wisped on both, running in repeated churning sways. He felt wood below him and opened his eyes. At first, he noticed it was night, then a pale blue light lit the person in front of him. A man in a black and gray vest and a purple button-up shirt pulled the oars of a rowboat. Michael shot up and smacked his back on the front of the vessel. The waters lit a dim blue as the oars splashed.

  “Well, look who’s awake! Ya have a nice trip?” The man spoke in a British accent. Michael squinted at him in disbelief. The man had no face, only a screen of TV static where features should have been. The water glowed pale blue on the underside of his chin. “You are Christian, right?”

  “Yeah,” Michael rubbed the back of his head. He stared at the man’s face, trying to make out any sign of a nose, mouth, or eyes in the white noise of skin. Everything but his face was a pastel purple. “What is this?”

  “Welcome to hell man! At least, that’s what you’d like to call it, others call it-”

  “Wait, what!” Michael stood up; the sway of the boat sent ripples of illumination across the pitch black sea. It was almost as if the ship floated in a midnight sky. There were no stars to dance around your journey, only pure darkness.

  “Hey, hey, man, you are not in trouble… Hopefully. You’re still alive, right?” the man stopped rowing for a second. Michael pressed two fingers on his neck. Clear as day, he felt the comforting thump, thump… thump, a drum of life buried within him.

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “See, good.” The man continued to row. “Usually, it’s impossible to turn up here alive; when people do, they are usually a being destined to take some random throne. Whenever dead spirits float down here, we’ll sort em out then toss them off to their places… We had a guy come down here for three days and was a total party-pooper. Christ, I can never remember his name.” The man chuckled. “Anyways, we are just going to check you out to make sure you’re not some odd new prophecy and see if we can get you back up. You feeling okay?”

  Michael sat down. “Yeah, I’m, I’m alright… I just,” What if they're all dead? He thought. And I’m just stuck here… I could be stuck here forever. Th0is is Hell, Michael. HELL! Don’t you realize that?

  He felt that burning need to cry at the back of his throat and let it out. It came out as laughter. The painful laughter made him want to cry even more. His mind told him to go into a full-on sob, but his body just made him laugh even harder. He was in hysteria. “Why can’t it stop?” His miserable tone juxtaposed his laughter.

  “Hey, man, just take it easy.” The faceless man was about to touch Michael’s shoulder but pulled back as if Michael were contagious. “Breathe or somethin’.”

  Michael inhaled, his exhale came out in a slight chortle. “What was that?”

  “You are in the river. Things can’t grow around here, and that applies to people. Tears can be the spark to the flames of growth; you can’t fully laugh things off till you feel. Of course, there is such a thing as a bad cry. Those are the addictive ones.” The man slipped a smooth stone out of his breast pocket and repositioned the boat according to a yellow light on the stone. “Say, um, what denomination are ya?”

  “Baptist…”

  The man slipped a book from an inner pocket, “Baptist… B, B, B… AH-HA!” The man tapped a slender purple finger on the book. “Baptist… ah shite, well I don’t have a name. I guess you can call me Jude. I like that one.”

  Michael watched the ripples from Jude’s rows expand into neon blue rings of light, then diminish as he lifts the oars from the sea. “Wher’es the fire… I was always told there would be fire.”

  “Nope.” Jude laughed. “If you want there to be some, I’ll light a whole campfire for ya.” An awkward silence followed as Jude dipped the oars back in the water.

  “Is Christianity wrong?” Michael asked.

  “Noah, religions aren’t wrong. There was a good twenty-five in the past millennium that were utter Shite… Michael, why do you believe?”

  “I… well, I grew up on it.”

  “Not why you’re stuck; why do you continue to be stuck?”

  “I…” Michael rubbed his stone-smooth cheeks with two hands. “It feels good, I feel at peace… uh, it speaks to me, it’s a good community… I learn more about life…”

  “You consider that magical?”

  “I never thought of it that way. It feels like the most down to earth thing.”

  “That’s the ticket!” Jude said as he gave the oars an over-enthusiastic slap into the water. “The beings of the world are quite simple; it doesn’t take an entire book to figure out. Only a sentence… and of course, that sentence can have millions of translations. Now, this is going to be a hard thing to grasp. So, the beginning of the world, how do you imagine it?”

  “And God says let-”

  “Now some say otherwise, and that’s fine; their claim has the same value… now, let me let you in on a little secret while you take this scenic route. The universe and all things just were. They were formed, and that’s it. There was no immaculate hurrah, no god to suddenly sneeze out a planet, and no ‘here let me explode for a second.’ You’ll probably never grasp it’s being because you put far too many human concepts to it.

  “Alright, now the second secret. An energy courses through the blood of all beings. It’s the reason why the outdoors can be so peaceful. It’s the reason love exists, and it’s the reason religions form.” Michael’s mouth gaped slightly as he tried to grasp of all this. “God doesn’t create you, you create God… It’s that collective energy, that most down to earth thing, which forms spirits. Allah, Zeus, Yahweh, Buddha, Vishnu, they are all real in the same sense that you are real, because you molded them.” Jude saw the confusion in Michael’s eyes. “Would you like to know why there’s a heaven and a hell if everything is just formed?”

  Michael spun his hand in a go on gesture.

  “I’ll only ask you one question do you see yourself as an animal?”

  “No?” Michael said.

  “There! That’s why there is a Heaven and a Hell. People don’t have to believe in a religion, but there’s a constant want to stay away from the animals, and the opposite end of that spectrum is to be closer to a form of a god. That’s the only difference between heaven and hell. Heaven is a little nook that you humans have carved. And hell? Well, hell is where the spirits of animals roam free. Watch this.” Jude shot the oar down the water and let it float back up. The paddle awoke a bubbling beam of light. For the faint few seconds, they could see the shimmering spine of a fish swimming deep into the water’s depth.

  “Are those real fish?” Michael asked as he cupped a glowing puddle of water in his hands.

  “No, they’re energy and what they perceived of their bodies lives on and flows into other things. Their physical body melts back into the earth. Few animals go to a form of heaven. They don’t want it, and they are fine just roaming wherever they want. Hell ain’t torture unless you want it to be. Those who want hell to be torture, brimstone, and fire will get it. Most live here and are fine.” Jude’s snapped his wondering gaze behind Michael. “We’re coming close!” They saw a massive wall of trees lit by the water’s dim light. The forest stretched as far as they could see.

  “If things are so magical, why couldn’t you just vanish me away in a snap?”

  “You’re a physical being, with a different vibration and composition. I can’t whisk you away. Do you know how much of a rarity it is to be down here? We need to check you out to make sure you’re okay before maybe sending you back up to where you’re from.”

  Michael laughed at this. Maybe sending you back up. He laughed even harder. He was in a full-blown cackle as the infinite line of trees swooned around them.

  “Oi man, you might want to take it easy. As soon as we reach the shore, we’ll be on the mainland. The waterworks will start pourin’.” Michael tried to contain himself. He rolled on th
e bed of the boat, inhaling gulps of air, trying to contain himself. A switch flicked as the boat tapped the stout sandy shore.

  Michael cried.

  Sand peppered his hair as he fumbled off of the ship and onto the shoreline. The shore was only five feet from the woods. The still waters behind them were an infinite plane of glass. The light from the water faded. Everything was dark except for Jude. Somehow his skin lit a dim purple.

  Jude stepped out into the woods, meshes of vines ignited into neon green under his feet. “It’s just a hop and a skip through the forest.” Michael picked himself up. As he stood, he noticed that the pain in his joints was vanishing. His body felt the most refreshed it had ever felt in the past fifteen years. He felt as though he were a kid—as though he could run again.

  Tangles of ivy lit under Michael’s feet. The mushrooms that cupped the bark of the trees glowed dark green as they passed. There were no hills, no clearings, no rocks, just flat land, and trees upon trees stretching out into infinity. Each step stirred green light, then tapered away as they raised his foot.

  Michael listened to what a hell forest would sound like. There was no wind quivering the branches, only an orchestra of animals hidden within the dark. A herd of four-legged animals parted from their path. Michael only saw their darting eyes in the dark. The chants of crickets, cicadas, frogs, and birds bounced around the forest. At first, it was just the occasional hiss, croak, and chirp, but as the long walk passed, the sounds grew, becoming a soothing symphony.

  Michael knew the walk was long but couldn’t measure how long. He could have agreed with it being an hour, or even a day. “Hey Jude, what’s with time?” Michael’s question cracked the hour to day-long silence.

  Jude groaned, “I’m just a spirit. time is a gigantic void that just shouldn’t need explaining. You’re simply here. Does that fill up your brain’s fantastical appetite for the day?”

  Michael weaved between the trees as he trailed Jude, “You got something against time?”

  “Look, I don’t hate it. I just think it’s stupid to mull over it. It’s such a human thing too. How long things will be before you die, as if you need to fill every damn minute and pack every bag before you go. Accept death and live on. That clock on your wrist could spin on without you. There are seconds that you will never witness that thing turn. Appreciate the ability to live in your flash of time.” Jude slowed down his pace. “You afraid of dying?”

  “I… yeah, I guess. This has kinda lessened the blow though. At least I know there’s somethin’ out there, ya know… Dying itself is still pretty frightenin’…” Michael pondered on that for a moment. Bird calls swarmed around them. A few flew off their branches, sending a rippling glow across the treetops.

  “Death’s a beautiful thing. It makes people cry, rejoice, learn, live… If you want to learn anything on ya little vacation down here, let it be that death can be damn beautiful.” They walked for another day, maybe a week for all Michael knew. Each step slipped out of his mind. He thought his legs would tire and break at this rate, but he kept on walking. The glow of the forest never ceased being beautiful.

  A new instrument played within the concert of nature, the conversing of people. It was as if a strip of New York echoed in the distance. Faint orange lights flickered into view. More lights glinted up into the sky and hid between the tree leaves. As he drew closer, he spotted out a road, an amber streetlamp, a couple neon red signs, a “no parking” sign, and a lively lot of people. As the streets stretched into the distance, they bent and tangled upwards. Streets and buildings bundled as far as the eye could see—an urban end of the world. It was a tidal wave of a city. Michael squinted at the layers of roads and structures, trying to figure out where it stopped.

  There was no end.

  All sorts of humans and other beings sprawled through the streets. To Michael, it looked like a herd of ants climbing up a rock wall. Michael eyes trailed up one road and became lost as a street dipped behind buildings and over another avenue, then rose above a building.

  “Jeez, how do ya find ya way around here?” Michael’s mouth remained perched open.

  “It’s uh, best you don’t think about it. The map’s right here,” Jude tapped his forehead. “People mold this place. It’s a collective consciousness in landform. It would be about a ten-year walk for you to each the more obscure edges of the place, places where sociopaths survive in small cottages. This is the nonbeliever’s Hell. It’s honesty a weird mixture of beliefs that’s best not to dissect. If you’re looking for more written-out hells, you must go off on your own.”

  Michael’s gaze was fixed to a man in a suit with the head of a raven. The man tapped his beak rhythmically as he turned a corner. The hazelnut suitcase rocked in his feathered hands. “Soooo…” The raven slid past them. “Are you saying I could just swim to Hell, um, the Christian hell if I wanted to?”

  “Not really. I don’t know where it is, we just teleport there. It could be somewhere out in the woods, or even an entirely separate environment.”

  On the walk towards the building, Michael thought over the idea of hell. It isn’t such an awful place, my bones don’t hurt, and that’s all I really wanted from heaven, right? Just some place where I don’t have to worry about hurting my knee every time I sneeze. The people even seem nice.

  An oat tan dog with a red bandanna nodded to Jude and talked alongside him as they strode towards wherever Jude led.

  The dog scampered off with a courteous bow. Jude walked with his hands in his pockets. The wall of trees on his left looked like miniatures compared to the horizon of buildings on their right. Jude slipped a map from his Brest pocket.

  “Hey Michael-”

  Michael didn’t respond.

  “Do you see that square of darkness?”

  Still no response.

  “Michael you-” Michael wasn’t there. “Michael!” Jude bolted back. Teleporting across every block like the blip on a heart monitor. People stopped and turned. “Michael!?”

  Chapter 10

  Side A Track 10

  Forecast

  After the makeshift funeral, Lara drove to Butch’s house. Lara stopped the truck and sat in silence, letting the gust of wind that swam around her car direct her thoughts. She thought of the quiet, good food, quitting work, Denver, Denver, how she needed to get out of the car, Michael, and Johnathan.

  The thought of Johnathan always felt like the echoes from a gunshot, always fearful of the next eruption. Her Chevy creaked as she pulled the door handle. She knocked on the front door, no response. She knocked again. Butch’s lemon-yellow Ford Pinto rested next to her truck. He couldn’t have gone too far. Lara stepped back as she heard heavy, stumbling footfalls.

  Butch opened the door. “Well, Lara!” He said, out of breath. “Here come on in, I was dozing off in my chair. Got some tea if you want any.”

  “Sorry to wake you up. I won’t be long, I just wanted to talk for a bit.”

  “Oh, no, no, no. It’s bad for my back to be hunched over in chairs like that. Here, get on up, and we can talk on the front porch again.”

  This was the first time Lara had been inside Butch’s house. Wooden framed photographs lined the cream-colored hall between his room and the bathroom. Lara felt like something was missing from each one. Then she remembered his wife. It was as if a hole was cut out where she should have been.

  A wall split the living room and kitchen. Lara noticed a familiar wooden box on top of the fridge. It looked exactly like the one Michael brought when they met up at the church.

  “Sweet place you got,” Lara said. She tried to ignore the half-empty bourbon bottle that sulked next to a photo album in the living room. A couple of photos scattered like chip crumbs on the hardwood floor near the living room couch.

  “Thanks!” He took a swig of his beer then clinked it on the polished wooded dining room table. “Me and the missus built it ourselves in… 1943.” Butch looked away, “1943?” He whispered as if confirming it to someone n
ext to him. “The whole thing... we planned on having a kid or two…” Butch sipped. “We put all the luck from our entire lives into buildin’ this house.” He looked at her and painted on a smile. “Anythin’ going on with you right now?”

  Lara glanced out the bay window that overlooked the back of Elk Horn Woods. “Two friends of mine passed away this week… knew one for 12 years.”

  “Jesus, Lara…” Butch looked down at his bottle, then spun it a little.

  “It’s so sudden, you know?”

  Butch nodded, “I know…”

  Lara shakes her head and looks at him, “I got a new man I’ve been seein’ as well, names Denver.”

  “I think you’re a strong girl, stickin’ through all that. Why don’t you bring Denver in one day so I can meet em, see if he’s good and such?”

  “I’d love that.”

  The two moved out to the porch, then sat in silence for a minute. It wasn’t an awkward, unwanted silence, but rather a respectful calm. They watched the trees ripple in flag wave flutters. The setting sun bit at Lara’s legs as it shone onto the porch. An eggshell white truck whizzed across the road in front of the house. Lara saw a lilac butterfly masquerade around the ballroom of grass.

  “Do you mind if I ask ya something personal?” Lara asked.

  “Yeah, go on, fire away… ask me anythin’, I ain’t got much worth tellin’, and I’m runnin’ out of time to make any new tales.”

  Lara sipped some tea. “How do ya get over someone?”

  “Well, I-” he wiped his hands on his overalls. “I don’t think ya ever get over someone—at least for me. It takes time to heal that wound… at first it hurts, but it all takes time. I’m not one to talk about hurt. In my life, I don’t think I ever did done learn a thing about how to feel.”

  “I still can’t find myself gettin’ over Johnathan. He’s stuck in my head no matter how hard I try to replace his memory.”

  “Lara ain’t no other man gonna fit whatever that Johnathan kid gave ya,” Butch said; Lara nodded.