by Dan Pearce
“Yep,” he said again. “We won’t know unless we get there.”
“Shit,” I said, as I hurried my pace to catch up to him.
The Shadow Marks weren’t in Chapuin. Tashibag wasn’t there either. When the trail opened-up and the trees widened to welcome us to the end of our journey, we found only the burned remains of an old village. What once were twelve different wooden huts, now only endured as piles of charred rubble. Dozens of small saplings had sprouted, and young vegetation now covered the ground which once had been cleared. Every indication was that nobody had been to this place in quite some time.
The burnt huts circled a wide clearing. Two enormously tall fruit trees, the likes of which I had never seen, grew in the center. A few weathered pieces of fruit still hung from the highest branches, but most of it had already fallen and become mashed rotting goo upon the ground.
I sighed as I stepped into the open. “Well, shit. That’s that. I guess I better get back to Samantha,” I said feeling the awful beginning stings of defeat.
Dishon ignored me and began walking the circle of huts, studying each of them, trying to make sense of something I thought was cut and dry. We thought Tashibag would be here. She wasn’t. Of course, she wasn’t. Why would she be? Our same story that had repeated itself so many times was simply repeating itself again. It was that simple. I was going to lose Samantha, and there was nothing more I could do about it. Time was up.
“She is here,” Dishon suddenly called, as he stood studying the floor of a hut on the opposite side of the field from where I stood.
Just as he announced it, a hot snort of air blew into the back of my hair. I spun around and found myself staring into the eyes of a big ass alpaca, its face inches away. It snorted another hot breath of air against my face, and another alpaca’s head appeared above it, curious at what the first was doing. “Umm… Dishon?” I called as I slowly backed away, looking around for the witch whom I knew must surely be there as well. I saw no sign of her.
The animal soon lost interest and began lazily feeding on the fallen rotten fruit. Dishon joined me at my side and smiled at the two-headed creature. “There you are,” he said. “Now where the hell is Tashibag?”
“She has to be here, right?” I said to Dishon, who had just grabbed me by the elbow and was pulling me to the burnt hut he had been studying.
“Oh, she’s here, Cain. Look at this,” he said as he pointed at the floor within.
I stepped-in closer for a better look. A thick layer of powdery gray dust blanketed the ground. The same mark we each carried on our chests had been perfectly carved into it. I turned toward the alpaca, again expecting to see Tashibag. She was not there. “What the hell are we supposed to make of this?” I asked Dishon who stood next to me pondering the same.
A strong breeze, whose source seemed to gust from somewhere within the collapsed walls of the hut, began violently circling above the dust floor until the mark was gone and the floor had been smoothed over. I looked up at Dishon who was already intently looking at me, and we both looked back at the floor in terrified wonder as an invisible force began carving something new into the floor.
The etching began slowly forming sporadic letters, which appeared to be forming sporadic words. Again, I looked all around us and as far into the trees as I could see. Surely the witch was there somewhere.
Before the message could be made out, something about it all just pissed me off completely, and I became irate. “Show yourself, Tashibag,” I yelled in the original tongue we spoke to one another when we first met. “Enough of your tricks, let us see your face. Have we not paid the price for our depravities? Have we not been good men? Must we wait another twelve thousand years to earn our redemption?”
There was no response except from both heads of the alpaca, which lifted in unison to watch me while I yelled.
“Cain,” Dishon said, bringing my attention back to the long inscription that had just finished forming.
Your goodness cannot be denied
In both your hearts, love doth thrive
But I cannot yet gift you reprieve
A war it comes, for which I grieve
A darkened force right now does grow
Which desires to control our souls
Cain must leave the girl behind,
And Dishon’s love, shall remain blind
The time soon comes when we shall meet
And only then will you finally see
You are where you are, which is where you must be
And you’ve been prepared to fight next to me.
But first remember these five words
Ibus Supassi Asorszho Su Shurdz
Speak them the day you know that you must
Join with me and give me your trust
Your curses are still your burdens to carry,
Leave this place. Do not stay. Do not tarry.
I read through Tashibag’s rhyming inscription completely, and then read through it again. Dishon slumped to the floor and said nothing. “Let’s get a picture of this bullshit,” I said, pulling my smart phone from my front pocket. Dishon just shook his head with glazed-over eyes, while I saved a picture to my nearly dead device.
I jammed it back into my pocket, stepped away from the hut, and lost it emotionally. “Fuck you, Tashibag! Fuck you!” I yelled. “I know you are here. Show yourself, coward. I demand that you show yourself,” I said as my voice trailed away, and unwanted tears began to surface. I dropped to my knees and began to whisper my petition now. “Please show yourself. Please.”
I pled with her in whispers a little while longer and knelt in defeated silence for some time before I realized the alpaca was no longer there. The mountains had become louder at some point, filled with the more usual ratio of calls from small animals and the rustling breeze through the branches of its trees.
I turned my attention to the still quiet Dishon behind me. “She’s gone,” I said, my voice cracking.
“I know.”
“She’s gone. And I’m going to lose my Sam.”
“I know, Cain,” he said again, his voice weighed heavily with the dejection of it all. “And I’m sorry.”
CHAPTER 28
I have never fully understood the phenomenon, but it has been true often enough for me that I’ve never been a critic of Murphy’s famous law. There is no doubt that during life’s most crucial moments, when it is so important for everything to go right, very little ever does. The saying is that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. So it was with my efforts to get back to Samantha.
If I had to guess, Murphy’s Law is just the manifested result of what happens when we create those tiny yet powerful chain reactions which disrupt the natural flow and energy of the world around us in our attempts to manipulate our situations to be exactly as we think they should be. We feel we need one specific outcome, and we need it by one specific deadline. When the events leading to our deadline don’t line up for it all to happen, it feels like the universe has it out for us and wants anything but the same thing we want.
I know the universe didn’t have it out for me after Dishon and I left that burnt village, but it certainly seemed that way.
I was already so tired and exhausted when we started the seventeen-mile trek back to Ocongote. Being sleep deprived as we hiked and climbed those miles to get there left us far too depleted of the proper energy needed for the trip back, and so our pace was far slower than I would have liked. We had burned through the last of our snacks while we tried to keep warm the night before, and so our bodies screamed to us to provide more energy to them. Dishon, in his skin-and-bones state, eventually slowed to an extremely frustrating pace, and I found it increasingly more difficult to be patient about it. We only covered about half the distance back before Dishon had to begin walking with one arm around my neck for support. A mile later we were forced to stop as Dishon could take himself no further. He told me to leave him, insisting he would be okay, but I knew it was something I could not do.
We lost the remainder of that day while I struggled to rig a fish trap and catch enough food to sustain us on our remaining hike to Ocongote. We lost that entire night, unable to take the risk of the Shadow Marks finding us again. I was certain that if I lost consciousness, I would be displaced and my last chance to see Samantha one last time would be taken from me. It took double the dose of caffeine pills at double the recommended frequency to keep myself awake until dawn.
It was mid-afternoon the next day when we reached the end of the road through Ausangat. Expecting a smoother sail once we reached Ocongote, I became even more frustrated that there were no taxis or rickshaws nearby. We hobbled two more miles into the city together before we found transportation, and only then was it that we realized the wad of money I had kept wrapped in my extra pair of underwear was missing. This meant extra negotiations with the rickshaw driver with promises of a bigger than necessary payment once we reached the motel. Each extra or lengthened moment to get back frustrated me further as I knew very well the last flight that I could catch from Lima was scheduled to leave at 9:13 PM.
When we returned to the motel, it was locked-up with a note that promised to return within thirty minutes. It took 29 frustrating minutes for the old woman who was watching my bags to return. While the rickshaw driver waited there for what I then had to promise would be an even bigger payment, he also informed me that the only bus to Lima had departed two hours earlier. It was then that I gave up the hope of catching a flight before morning. The thought of another sleepless night before I could see Samantha pushed me into a deepened state of panicked fury. The old woman finally returned, and I angrily demanded my bag. While she went to retrieve it, Dishon instructed me to leave him there, and to worry over him no further. “Meet me on Facebook,” he said and tried to hug me goodbye. In my flustered state, I only half-hugged the man who had always been my truest friend, and quickly turned my attention back to my problems. Dishon looked at me in disbelief, then left me there as he hobbled out the door and disappeared into the streets of Ocongote.
The old woman finally returned, and she did so dragging a suitcase belonging to some other guest. I became livid and sent her away to rectify her mistake. That took a few more minutes, which felt like thirty, and was enough time to finally internalize the rejected look I had seen on my friend’s face after I barely afforded him a terrible goodbye. Now worried about just what a jerk I had been to the man who had gone to hell for me in the preceding days, I stepped outside and became even more distraught that he already had made his way into a side street, and I had no way of knowing which way he even went. The woman returned with my bag and took far too long collecting the final sols I had promised her.
I stuffed several bills into the hands of the rickshaw driver to pay what I owed and what he would charge me to carry me to a taxi stand. He took far too long strapping my suitcase to his luggage rack. The ride to the nearest taxi stop took way too long. Loading my suitcase into the back of the taxi took way too long. The drive back to Lima took an eternity too long, and I spent most of it demanding that my driver hurry it up.
I knew I wouldn’t make it to the airport in time. I knew before the old woman went for my suitcase. I knew before I didn’t give a proper goodbye or even a hint of a thank you to Dishon. I knew before I put pressure on the rickshaw driver or yelled at the man in the taxi. I wasn’t going to make it. Yet, I still felt like I could in some way force a different reality into a very specific tiny box and somehow get the outcome I felt that I deserved after everything I had been through.
I let that need for things to finally go right tap into the more plaguing parts of my personality, and not only was I a jerk to everyone in the process… I caused more problems to exist than there ever would have been had I just chilled the fuck out and taken things in stride. It took a while, but I eventually realized this.
Finally letting go of the thought that I must get to the airport as soon as possible, I apologized to my driver and asked him to pull the taxi over at a fueling station after I looked down at myself and realized just what a terrifying mess I was. I was still wearing the clothes I was wearing when the Shadow Marks shot me with their arrows. Large holes where the projectiles hit me had only gotten bigger, and the cloth surrounding each hole was saturated and stained with copious amounts of dried blood. The parts of my clothes that weren’t bloody were roughed up and filthy. I wondered how it was that nobody had inquired about my well-being upon seeing me, but also realized that I had acted far too crazy to give them the chance.
After I changed into fresh clothes, and after all else was said and done, I missed the final boarding on the final flight home by more than three hours. I had seven excruciating hours to kill before the early morning flight, and each of those long hours became another chronic and pesky reminder that I was controlling my own negative outcome far more than I cared to admit.
I hated thinking that had I just stayed and given my friend a proper goodbye, he would be in a better situation at least for that night, and I would not have our shitty goodbye weighing on my conscience. I knew that had I been kind and more patient with the old woman, she probably would have gotten things right the first time. I knew that had I not spent three minutes at the end of the road out of Ausangat, bitching about there being no transportation, I might have made it to the motel before the woman left for her thirty-minute break. I knew that if the anxiousness to get going on our witch hunt hadn’t rushed my efforts as I originally filled our pack with supplies, we may have been able to sustain enough energy to get back in time to catch an earlier flight.
Those hours in the airport were long, and empty, and boring, and were everything I needed to realize that I only had myself to blame for the small chain reactions I set off in my attempt to manipulate and control my own situation.
There was also the fact that I was so deprived of sleep and so thoroughly exhausted. I afforded myself a sliver of forgiveness for that and raided every caffeine pill and energy shot they had from three different airport convenience stands. I wasn’t going to disappear without seeing Samantha one last time. I also obviously preferred leaving her behind on my own accord, as being displaced would come with a set of challenges I’d rather not worry about just then.
I thought about calling or messaging my Sam from Lima but decided against it. There was nothing I could say right then that wouldn’t leave her confused or worried, and I liked the thought of her being delightfully surprised when I walked back in the door unexpectedly. I just needed to get home, do something incredible for her, and hold her for as long as I possibly could before I left her heart-broken and without any answers as to why I disappeared.
I did get on Facebook just long enough to hurry and paste a letter of sincere apology that I had written to Dishon and logged-off again before Samantha could get on and see that my account was active.
When I finally boarded the plane, my mind felt fully minced. I was running purely on synthetic alertness, and my heart was starting to thump at a strange and unequal rhythm as the caffeine surged in and out of its valves. I felt an awful queasiness, which spread far beyond my stomach and made me feel as if I might vomit
I hated to do it, but with visibly trembling hands, I tipped back another energy shot after taking my seat. I knew the risks of sitting too long at that point. I laughed to myself as I pictured what would transpire on the plane if I were to disappear from my seat mid-flight, leaving the clothes I had been wearing strapped there with no logical explanation of what had just happened. I had never seen what displacement looked like when it happened. I didn’t know if I evaporated into a puff of vapor, or if I slowly and electronically faded to nothing as if I was being beamed-up to the Enterprise, or if I just vanished. It would be quite a scene, I mused, as I thought of the flight attendants scurrying, and my rowmates panicking, and pilots calling it in as they…
Shit. I sat up straight and grabbed hold of the handle on the seat in front of mine, forcing my eyes open. My mind had drifted, and my little
daydream had almost turned itself into an actual dream. Any time now, I thought as I waited for the latest burst of caffeine to wake me up more fully. I downed three more energy shots to stay awake during the six-hour flight home.
The plane landed, and the aisles flooded with people. Deep breath. Almost home. I reminded myself that I couldn’t control how quickly the packed aisled in front of me deplaned. I finally was able to exit and then had to wait for my luggage. Deep breath. Almost home. My suitcase finally slid onto the luggage carousel, and I made my way through the long empty airport hallways until I reached customs. The lines were long. Deep breath. Almost home. The woman behind the glass stamped my passport. I drank another energy shot as I stood in line for a taxi. Deep breath. Almost home. Traffic on the interstate. Deep breath. Almost home. The car stopped so many times when what seemed to be the lights at every intersection flashed red. Deep breath. Almost home. Finally, the taxi pulled-up in front of our apartment high-rise and I paid the driver. Oh my God. I’m home.
I didn’t know what to expect when I walked through the door. My phone had died at the airport in Lima, and so I hadn’t had a chance to check it once I got service in the states. At some point I had lost my watch and was only just noticing that. What day was it? Thursday? Friday? It had to be Thursday. No, it was Friday. I didn’t know. What time was it? Would Samantha even be home? I think I remembered seeing on the blinking taxi clock that it was some time just after four. She might be home.