by Doug Backus
Deke Brolin
Rhol
Dedication
To my beautiful wife Tamara, without her help and support this novel would never have happened. A special thanks to my three children who keep my imagination alive every day.
…and a special thanks to Kim and Mary for the editing.
© Copyright Douglas BACKUS
ISBN – 13 -978-0987673206
Lbteh Publishing
PART I
RHOL
Chapter One
It was one of the clearest nights Deke Brolin could ever remember seeing. The moon illuminated the forest that surrounded him much like the low light a candle throws in a darkened room.
Most people would have felt uneasy standing in the middle of a forest at night but not him. This was his last chance to save himself from the desperate life he was leading. Ironically, the same place where he had found refuge as a boy was also the place that had caused him so much pain. A pain so great, that it had sent him spiraling down the wrong path. It was an easy path, one in which Deke never really exerted any energy nor reflected on the consequences of his actions as he travelled aimlessly from place to place.
Deke Brolin was at his wits end and could not bear to walk this path any longer. He had found his way to the crossroads of where it had all begun. He needed to find an answer, or at least some comfort in facing the place that had left him so conflicted. He had chosen to be here on this day for a reason.
An old rickety wooden bridge appeared to him in the distance and marked the half-way point of his journey. The weathered bridge had been there for years. It provided safe passage across a small pebbly creek that wound its way through a meadow in the middle of the forest.
Breathing in deeply, Deke savored the smell of the smoke that hung in the air from the long since extinguished fireplaces of the old farm houses that lay scattered around the outskirts of the woods. He loved that smell. Gazing up into the heavens, he could see millions of lights piercing the dark sky. The stars were shining so intensely, he could have stared at them all night imagining the countless worlds that might exist beyond this one.
This time of year was his favorite. There was always a light frost on the ground that made the moss crinkle under his feet. The large oak and maple trees, whose draping branches formed what looked like a long tunnel along the path he walked, seemed desperate to hold onto their leaves as if not wanting to lose their fiery red, yellow and orange colors. For the first time in three years he felt at peace again, if only for this one moment.
The bridge slightly creaked, moaning at the added weight it was now forced to endure when he sat down upon it and dangled his legs over the side. The sounds of the gurgling brook flowing beneath his feet calmed him, relaxing his aching body but before long his mind began to drift into the past, with memories he wished were long forgotten. Two of the most vivid had changed his fate forever.
Fate is a strange beast. Deke thought to himself.
You live your entire life determining where it will lead you but no matter what, it will eventually guide you to your predetermined death. It was a subject he had contemplated many times.
He had often wondered if death was the end but fate had always kept him guessing.
Do you live a good decent life and dwell on in peace after your body dies? Or do you take your chances that this is all you have and live it, not worrying about anybody but yourself, nor concerning yourself with the consequences of your actions. For the last few years he had done the latter.
Life is really about choices, he thought.
He had made many in his short life and those choices could not be changed. They had already weaved their way into his life’s path.
But a path, he pondered, that’s much different.
Someone could change their life’s path with the decisions they make in the future. The future is the key, not the past. Changing your future is as simple as redirecting the path you are currently on. That is the splendor of it all. You can take different paths, whenever you want and as many times as you need. The difficult part is being on the right one when fate steps in and death comes. It’s only then that you will learn the answer to the question that has haunted mankind for years. What comes after death? It had taken Deke a long time to come to terms with his beliefs, years of searching his soul to find the answer. In the end, he decided that life or at least life’s energy does move on after death. He had to believe that because the path he was about to take was going to answer that question, at least for him.
His life wasn’t always so troubled. Up until he was eight, his life had been good. His parents were caring people. Larry, his father was a tall husky man who wore glasses and had a special zest for life.
Deke laughed to himself thinking about how ridiculous such a large man looked when driving the family car, the red Volkswagen Bug.
His dad was a school teacher who taught history and despite his size he was a great adventurer and outdoorsman with a wonderful imagination. His father could do anything, in his eyes. He used to tell stories to Deke before bedtime, usually with his own twist. Deke would sit on his dad’s lap in the living room of their quiet bungalow while the fire roared away in the large stone fireplace. Sometimes, his Dad would find his own story so amusing that he himself would roar with laughter. His laugh was like no other and could be heard throughout the whole neighborhood. His mother Sarah would just giggle and shake her head at him.
She was a very soulful person, tall and strikingly beautiful. She chose to stay at home and take care of the family. She constantly worried about Deke because he was her only child. Deke loved to explore and the thousands of acres of forest directly behind their house, had caused her many days of anguish. He would often disappear for the entire day, floating down the nearby creek on a raft or building tree forts throughout the woods. Most days, he was allowed to stay out until the street lights came on. If he was a minute late she would be in a panic by the time he returned home. She used to stroke her long blonde hair to calm herself down and in a matter of minutes she would be hugging him. She was filled with love, not only for him and his father but for anyone that graced her path. It was remarkable how people in need instantly gravitated toward her.
What an age. Deke recalled.
He could not have been loved more. His parents had made life easy and comfortable. They were always there to teach and nurture him, right up until the time that, well...they died.
A defining moment, a choice Deke lamented.
For years he tried to block that memory out but it would never escape his mind. How could it?
He could never recall how the accident happened. Just that they were driving home from a family vacation when the car veered off the road and careened down a small embankment. Memories of his mother desperately trying to grab him as the car rolled over caused his hands to clench and his breath to quicken. He swallowed, wondering what might have happened had her loving hands reached him. But they hadn’t. A distinct feeling of weightlessness had swept him away from her forever.
Following this, he remembered pulling himself up off the ground and staring at the car, upside down and on fire. Running as fast as he could, he had reached his mother’s side first. His dad hung upside down beside her, unconscious with his legs pinned under the steering wheel.
Deke instinctively shook his head attempting to rid his mind of this all too vivid memory.
“Take care of him,” his mother had gently said looking past him.
He had no idea why, perhaps he thought his mother could move on her own and heeding her words, he ran to help his father. He pulled on his sweater and screamed for him to awaken. The flames began to lick his hands as if telling him to let go. But he wouldn’t and continued to pull with all the
strength he could muster. It would not be enough to save him.
Deke’s face fell into his hands. His stomach was twisting and turning as the horrid scene playing out in his mind.
The flames enveloped his father’s body. He felt like a weakling, a failure. Those feelings still resonated with him now.
He remembered being in a complete panic as he ran back to his mother’s aid choking from the thick black smoke that now surrounded him. She just hung there covered in blood, yet peacefully staring at him, smiling.
“Mommy, quickly the car it’s on fire!” Deke had screamed through his tears.
She had just stretched her arm through the window and touched his cheek with her hand, while ever so softly speaking.
“You must go. There is no time. Remember that your father and I love you more than life itself.”
He would not leave. He begged her to try and move but the fire converged on her too quickly.
Deke sobbed, remembering how he had pleaded for God, for anyone to help. The voice of his mother screaming for him to leave, to save himself, echoed over and over again in his head.
His recollection of what happened next was foggy, at best. He recalled his mother saying something that he didn’t understand. Minutes later, he was standing in the distance, watching while the car exploded in flames. His knees had buckled and his stomach had felt so tight it caused him to roll into a ball. That’s how the police found him. They surmised the explosion had somehow thrown him out of harm’s way, saving his life or what was left of it. His parents’ remains were never found, the fire had burned so hot they had disintegrated
In his mind, they had both died because of the choice he had made to try and save his father first. That decision had defined his life for many years. Following the accident he had been placed in a foster home as the authorities were unable to find any living relatives. There, he became a recluse, an outcast, obsessed with the events surrounding his parent’s death and what he could have done differently to save them. It caused him to dwell in the past, never looking toward the future. That was until he met Mary Toller. She would become the other defining moment in his life, one who would lead him down a bright path but then, through no fault of her own, spiral him back into darkness.
Chapter Two
Deke pulled himself up and walked away from the bridge. It was time. Before long, the trees surrounded him again. His only light came from moonbeams slicing through the tangled branches above him. Falling leaves cast against the moon’s light caused strange shadows to come to life in front of him as he meandered down the path. He could see in the distance that he was nearing his final destination. He wondered if he would find what had saved him from the anguish of his foster home so many years ago or if time had forever changed his sanctuary.
His first foster home had been in the city, a place he had been unwilling to adjust to. His foster parents eventually gave up on him after enduring an entire year of his stony silence. They tried to find psychiatric care for him but the State was unwilling to pay for the expense of it. Unable to deal with his mounting issues, they sent Deke away to another foster home in the country. They hoped that perhaps a more familiar surrounding would help.
At least in the country he was able to find some comfort in the forests and fields that surrounded the small town. Unfortunately, his new foster parents were miserable to live with. The only thing they cared about was the money they received as a supplement for him and the other foster children. Of course the children never saw a dime of it and were forced to wear the same clothes and scrounge for food wherever they could.
Despite this, Deke would eventually meet his savior here. She would become the only person he trusted with his troubled memories. She would help him cope with the feelings of guilt that overwhelmed him. She would show him how to look toward the future, not back into the past. She would become his best friend, his only friend. Without her, the memory of his parents’ death would have consumed him.
Deke would never forget the day he met her.
Fate, for once, was looking after him. He still had not spoken a word since his parents died and he had prided himself in avoiding people. But on this particular day something had made him change his regular route home. Unwittingly, he had come upon four neighborhood bullies who were surrounding a petite girl. She looked to be the same age as Deke. Tears were streaming from her eyes as the bullies hurled abusive words at her. She tried to escape their circle but they wouldn’t allow it. They kept pushing her, telling her to go back to where she came from, that they didn’t need another street urchin around here. Confused and scared, she had fallen to her knees. At that point, these animals had begun to throw crab apples at her, staining her white dress with red circles.
Deke had been stunned by their abuse, their cruelty toward this girl who had obviously just arrived at the foster home. Walking straight through them, he picked the tiny girl up from the ground and without saying a word he guided her away, pushing two of the assailants aside. He would not escape their abuse though. Before he could get a safe distance away they jumped him and began to savagely beat him. The girl was able to escape and quickly returned with help but by then much of the damage had already been done. Deke was covered in blood and unable to speak.
Deke paused remembering the touch of her hand on his cheek before he lost consciousness. How could he ever forget? It was reminiscent of his mother.
The girl’s name was Mary Toller and over the three weeks that it took him to recover, he came to learn that she had never left his side. She would remain there for the next several years.
He would come to understand that their lives were not so different. She had never known her father and her mother had died eight months earlier of a terminal illness leaving her to fend for herself. Eventually, she had been placed in the foster home. They had both hated the confines of their foster home and decided to discover their own world in the forests.
On one excursion they happened upon a cornfield on the outer edge of the forest. They soon discovered that the field contained valuable items discarded and left for lost long ago. Every year when the field was ploughed, they would collect the new treasures that had emerged on its surface. These included old coins and strange artifacts which they believed were made by ancient tribes, centuries ago. They carefully buried their cache in an old stone well hoping that one day they could use it to escape the confines of their miserable home.
The field became their refuge. Over time they built a fort from logs left strewn around the area. The fort overlooked the entire field. They built it about twenty feet from the ground, in a strategic place so that it doubled as a lookout post. Two enormous branches of a large oak tree supported the structure.
Deke affectionately remembered the times he had spent with Mary in and around that fort. Those years felt timeless but his fate was about to change again, his second defining moment.
They had just celebrated their fourteenth birthdays which fell in the same week. On this particular night Deke had snuck into the kitchen to get some food for Mary and the other children but he had been caught by his foster parents. They were incensed and locked down the entire house. Undeterred, he snuck out around the back and climbed the basswood tree up to Mary’s window. After getting her attention, Deke had told Mary to meet him at the bridge at seven the next morning so that they could go to the fort.
He spent the remaining part of the night roaming the streets. Only the growing light in the sky made him realize that he had lost track of time. When he arrived home the sun was already visible, so he ran straight to the bridge. When he got there, Mary was nowhere to be found.
He waited at the bridge for a short time and then walked to the fort to look for her. She was not there either. Becoming concerned he ran back to the house thinking she may have slept in. Mary was not at the house and Deke’s foster parents were in an uproar about her whereabouts. Hearing this had him beyond worried. He tried to tell them about the plan they had made to meet at the br
idge. He begged them to come to the woods and help search for her but his pleas fell on deaf ears. They locked him away in his room hampering any hope of him finding her.
Deke scowled at the memory of it all. He should have broken away from their grasp that day. If anyone could have found her, it would have been him he angrily thought.
About twelve hours passed before his pretend parents started worrying about their monthly checks and finally called the police. Deke was furious that they waited so long. The police spoke with all the children in the house, saving him for last. He told them everything, including the plan to meet Mary at the bridge in the forest.
After a two week search of the area, the police came up with nothing other than a shoe with blood spots on it. Her shoe with blood spots on it. They would not tell Deke where they found it and suddenly he became the prime suspect in her disappearance.
The police constantly interviewed him and everywhere he went people whispered about him being a deviant and a savage. He was angry that they wasted their time on him instead of looking for Mary. They were right though. He was responsible, not in the way they thought but because he had been late. He had let her down. She might well be here walking with him today, had he arrived at the bridge on time.
His guilt consumed him. In his mind, only he was to blame. The only friend he had in the world was gone because of him.
When they finally closed the missing persons file and presumed her dead Deke walked away from life. He lived on the street, alone and broken travelling long distances but going nowhere. He became lost in a world of self-loathing, unable to forgive himself.
He travelled from city to city always staying on the outskirts, skulking like an animal in search of food, not wanting to have contact with anyone. After three years of living in isolation, Deke could take no more. Something from deep inside of him was guiding him back to the place where it had all started. He never had the chance to say goodbye to her back then. To say farewell to a friend who once saved him, who had loved him for who he was.
