Boy in the Box

by Marc E. Fitch

Chapter Twenty-Four

  Jonathan sat outside the tent, his eyes felt bloodshot, sinking into hollows, his skin cold and breath weak in the morning light. He still clutched his rifle and flashlight in his arms. As the air brightened and sunlight touched his eyes, he moved his arms slightly, afraid to turn his head and see the corpse of his friend dancing in the trees. The whole night he sat frozen, staring out at the lake, waiting for what came next. During that time, he thought of nothing; it seemed his mind spun, but no conscious thought stepped out from the chaos. It was just a swirling mess of visions of his family and friends, nightmares and questions, warped by the impossible things he saw and heard in the night. It taunted him.

  The morning sun lit the top of the mountain, which glowed bright and white in the fresh snow, and slowly the light began to roll down the mountainside to the shadow of the valley in which he sat waiting, watching. The sky was clear now, but the air smelled of snow and burning wood. In the west, clouds rose like floating kingdoms.

  Then, like a stone statue suddenly coming to life, he stood. A light covering of frost shook itself free from his coveralls, and he walked down to the water’s edge. He stared out across the lake to the tops of the mountains glowing in the sun, and he wondered how different the world looked from the top of the mountain or the bottom of the lake.

  Then a voice from behind him: “Whose tracks are these?”

  Jonathan turned and saw Michael standing outside the tent, looking sunken and withdrawn. His pale eyes seemed distressed, seemed to look through Jonathan to the lake where his brother had drowned.

  “Whose tracks are these?” he asked again, pointing to the footprints left behind by the revenant Jonathan had seen in the night. They trailed off into the maze of forest, longer steps than any man could take. Jonathan followed the tracks with his eyes. He should have known, and wondered to himself how he could have made such a mistake.

  “I don’t know,” Jonathan said. It was all he could think to say. A stiff wind from off the lake pushed up against his back.

  “Where did they come from?” Michael’s voice was flat and dead, as if he were only speaking and not thinking – a talking doll whose cord was pulled.

  Jonathan didn’t want to be left alone – he couldn’t be left alone. It was more than he would be able to bear. They were out of food and out of time. They needed to get back to the cabin if they were to survive and needed to somehow face the world together. “I said I don’t know. They were just here this morning. Maybe they’re mine from last night. I had to look for firewood, you know.”

  Michael stumbled down from the tent and shuffled through the ash of the fire. He stared down at the tracks and then followed them into the distance. His mind worked, picking apart the possibilities, the mechanics of it.

  “They start here,” he said, pointing at the small ledge between the shore and the forest soil. “And they head in that direction. No other footprints coming or going. They aren’t yours. They came from the shore.”

  “No, Michael. That’s not it.”

  “Do you see any other explanation? There are the tracks, the evidence right in front of you. Where did they come from?”

  “I was out looking for firewood…”

  “You looked for firewood up there,” Michael said, pointing behind the tent, “and over there. I know that because your tracks wander around and then come back to camp. Those tracks just go straight out and never come back, and it looks like they were running.”

  “Michael, we need to leave and we need to leave now. We have to get back to the cabin today or…”

  “Or what?”

  “I don’t know. We need to get back and tell somebody. Get help. I don’t know. Things aren’t right out here. You know that.”

  “I know there are human boot tracks starting here and leading out there. You have no explanation. Want to hear mine?”

  “No. No, I don’t.” Jonathan started walking back up to the tent. “What we need to do is break down this tent and leave. Now.”

  “My explanation is Conner made it to shore down that way where the lake empties into a stream and then walked up the shoreline here. He was probably freezing, disoriented and walked off into the woods in the middle of the night. He got turned around, lost in the snow.” Michael reached into the tent and pulled out his jacket and his rifle. “And now we need to go find him.”

  “We can’t!” Jonathan yelled. “We have no food. We’re miles away from anywhere, and more weather is moving in. We won’t be able to survive much longer out here!”

  “You can go for days without food.”

  “Listen to me. Even if what you said was true, he’d be frozen to death by now. He couldn’t have made it.”

  “He could make it. We have to look. We have to know we tried.”

  “He’s gone, Michael. You know that. There’s no way he could have survived the water, the cold. There’s no way he could have made it that far. He would have just come back to the tent.”

  “Maybe he did,” Michael said. “Did you see anything last night? Hear anything?”

  Jonathan pursed his lips and looked back out at the lake.

  “I thought so.”

  “We need to leave and get help. That’s the best way, even if what you say is true. We could get a search and rescue team, helicopters, anything…”

  “And what are we going to tell them we were doing up here?”

  “Hunting, fishing. The same thing everybody does up here. We’ll tell them we got lost. It doesn’t matter; we can think of something, but we need to go get help. If we leave now, we can get to the cabin in time.”

  “In time for what? If he’s dead, what would time matter?”

  Jonathan said nothing.

  “What did you see last night?”

  “I didn’t…”

  Michael turned his rifle in his hands. Its barrel swayed back and forth, lazily pointing in Jonathan’s direction. Michael gripped it tighter and the barrel pointed directly at him. “We’ve been friends for a long time,” he said. “Tell me now what you saw last night. I know you’re lying. You’re not good at it unless you have three other people doing it for you.”

  Jonathan stared at him and at the rifle. “Don’t do anything you’ll regret. You’ll have a difficult time explaining a gunshot wound to the authorities.”

  “I didn’t have to explain anything to anyone last time there was a gunshot wound up here,” Michael said. “There’s no burying this one in a box and hiding it in the ground.”

  Jonathan waited a moment. He searched for words, an explanation, but nothing came. His mind was at a loss. “I don’t know what I saw.”

  “Was it Conner?”

  “It looked like Conner, but it wasn’t him. Not like this. It wasn’t alive. It made strange sounds out of its mouth. It wasn’t Conner. It was something pretending to be Conner.”

  “Spare me your nonsense and suit up,” he said.

  “He’s dead. It came walking up out of the water. What in God’s name do you think could have survived in there for that long?”

  “What did he say?”

  Jonathan’s voice caught in his throat. The words – the sound of the words – came back to him, and he couldn’t repeat it. There was no way to tell Michael what he heard. “What did you see when we opened the box, huh? Tell me what you saw.”

  Michael was quiet for a moment. “I saw a boy being taken to a place in the woods. I saw three men doing things there. I saw that place we found in the Gulch, or something just like it. That’s what I saw.”

  “And what did that boy look like?”

  Michael looked away and back out to the lake.

  “Do you really think he just happened to be there in Coombs’ Gulch that night? That this is all just a big coincidence?”

  “I saw other things, too,” Michael said. He slowly lowered the rifle.
“I saw stars. I saw galaxies. I saw different times and different places.”

  “And did it hurt?”

  “I never felt pain like that in all my life.”

  Jonathan pointed at the tracks leading into the trees. “Out there is more pain like that. We’re being tricked. Led around like dumb, blind animals. You go out there and you’re just going to find yourself in that place again, except this time it will be permanent.”

  “What makes you the expert?”

  “Up in the field. You saw something through the scope; what was it?”

  “I couldn’t be sure…”

  “What was it?”

  “It looked like a man.”

  “What man?”

  “I can’t be sure. It was too far.”

  “Tell me. Just say it.”

  “It looked like Gene but…not him at the same time. I could only make out a couple of his features. He looked different, though. He looked like he was smiling. I thought it must be my imagination, with everything going on, and when I looked again he was gone.”

  “Did that make you think that Gene was still alive?”

  “No. Gene’s dead.”

  “And yet you saw him.”

  “This is different.”

  “No, it’s not! Something out there is playing with us. Trying to trick us into following its plan. The best thing we can do is just get back to the cabin.”

  Michael looked down and then back out at the tracks. He blinked tears out of his eyes. “I don’t know what to do without him,” he said.

  “I know. But we have to do the right thing, the logical thing. We need to get back to the cabin as quickly as possible and get help.”

  “What will I tell them? Madison? Brent and Aria?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The footprints in the snow led out into the infinite. Michael stared at them and Jonathan could see him calculating the odds, toying with the possibilities, a look of desperate longing in his eyes.

  “Fine,” he said. “We’ll go now.”

  Michael lowered his rifle and turned back toward camp.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Nothing was dry. Their clothes, the sleeping bags and tent were still damp with melted snow. The air was thick with moisture again. They broke down the tent and Jonathan strapped it to his pack. They were hungry and tired. Jonathan’s stomach felt as if it were eating itself. He searched for food but there was none. Michael stayed silent and cold as the snow. Jonathan watched him for a moment. He pictured the barrel of Michael’s rifle pointed at him. He had the terrifying and lonely sensation of realizing his life was worth far less than another’s. All the years together, growing up, he knew he was on the outside looking in on the Braddick brothers. He thought he understood it, but did not. He caught glimpses of Michael standing at the edge of the trees, staring down at the path of footprints in the snow.

  And that loneliness made him wish for home even more – for Mary and Jacob. The times throughout the brief history of their small family during which he was absent – numbed with drink or suffused with regret and rage – stung him all the more now. It made him fearful. Time was strange. It faded away but lived forever. Small and vastly important moments were lost to time and yet somehow echoed through lifetimes, like the light of a long-dead star finally reaching a child’s eye as he stares through a darkened window to the night sky. He felt it. His life, his words and actions, everything he had done lived on forever, infecting the world. He wanted to be a good man, but he feared the echoes of his past grew too loud.

  He strained for hope. He told himself he would return home and make it right. The present could be changed, the future rewritten. He tried to tell himself he was not trapped. All those years of regret and guilt and remorse were unnecessary. He told himself they had saved Thomas Terrywile from an eternity of cold, lonely pain. Through death they saved him, yet sacrificed themselves. There was no nobility in what they did, but perhaps there was forgiveness. Perhaps there was a chance at goodness. He felt he could live with it. He felt he could move on from it. He just needed to get home and hold his wife and son and tell them he truly loved them – that everything had been for them – and then it would be different. Then there would be life where there had only been the specter of death.

  This was what he told himself and he tried to believe it.

  It was just after 8:00 a.m. They could make it to the cabin by dark. They could get in the truck and go home and, in time, put it all behind them.

  He looked over at Michael as he stared into the woods. The snow would come again, and then there would be no trace of them left. The fire, the tracks, everything would vanish beneath a white blanket. Thomas Terrywile’s bones rested somewhere at the bottom of the lake.

  Jonathan checked his rifle, made sure a cartridge was in the chamber and slung the Remington over his shoulder.

  “Are you ready?” he said, but Michael said nothing back. Jonathan wondered how Michael’s life would be now, with half of himself missing, dead and wandering through the trees. “Let’s keep up a good pace. We will get back and get help.”

  “There’s no help for this,” Michael said. It didn’t matter where Michael stood, which direction he faced; his eyes looked to the trees.

  They left the lake in the woods behind and started up the mountain toward the meadow, at least one thousand vertical feet above, the conduit that would plunge them back into Coombs’ Gulch and the cabin. The ghostly gray birch trees stood silent in the pale world, their strange, peeling bark pulled away like old skin. Jonathan thought of Mary – his vision of her dancing upon that lonely stage, peeling away her own skin, crying silently to no one but herself. He thought of the dancer on the first night of his bachelor party, the way he walked hand in hand with her to that small back room, how she removed her scant clothes piece by piece and how he took so much from her that night and lost so much of himself. He thought of all the deer they had killed and flayed over the years, strung up in the air, cores opened to the world, worked over with sharp, curved knives.

  It had taken all this time, but Jonathan now knew he was the one being skinned. All the time and effort and pain was merely his skin being removed, leaving him open and exposed. There would be only truth at the end, stripped of all its garments, and the truth was not sane.

  A darkness fell over him, a feeling of dread. The things he’d seen in that ghastly vision were of past and present and future – history and prophesy. But he could change it. He knew he could.

  The blood seemed to drain from his body, his arms and legs tired and limp. Relieved of the burden of the coffin, he and Michael could make better time, but now even his backpack felt like a paralyzing weight. He breathed the heavy, cold air and it hurt his lungs. The four inches of snow made the slope perilous and slick. His boots slipped off unseen rocks and roots buried under the snow. He fell and stood up again. He pulled himself up the hill on all fours at times. The snow melted on his coveralls, and his clothes soaked through. He grasped trees to pull himself forward, slid downward, fell and pulled himself up. The muscles of his legs burned. Michael persisted forward, farther ahead now. He didn’t stop or turn back.

  The clear sky disappeared behind low cloud cover. The flat, gray light hid the contours of the slope. Jonathan could no longer discern indentations in the ground, the small bumps of rocks and roots. All he knew was that he trudged uphill, slipping, regaining, straining, wanting to call out for Michael in that gray limbo and wondering if Michael would even turn back to see him.

  Jonathan cried out and Michael finally stopped to wait. His legs ached. The peeling birches were everywhere. He leaned against a tree. His lungs hurt.

  “There’s something out there,” Michael said. His voice seemed lost in the impenetrable gray. “It’s way out there, pacing us. Hard to see. Just past where you can’t see any farther.”

  Jonathan tried
to catch his breath. He looked into the maze of ghostly birch.

  “You see it,” Michael said.

  “I don’t,” Jonathan said, barely able to talk.

  Michael stared. He seemed almost to smile. His mind worked some kind of angle, seeing something in his own way the rest of the world could not comprehend, breaking it down, piece by piece, to find what was broken. Jonathan was no longer there. It was only Michael and whatever he saw in the trees.

  “What does it look like?” Jonathan asked. His mind flashed to Conner, dead white and dripping, walking from the bottom of the lake to stare at him in the night and speak in the voice of a seven-year-old boy.

  “It doesn’t look like anything right now,” Michael said. “Maybe in a little bit it will look like something else. But it’s there, waiting for us to move. It’s like a reflection in the snow, the light hitting it a certain way, the trees bending with it.”

  Michael raised his rifle and stared through the scope. Jonathan took his Remington and did the same, but saw nothing. Perhaps what Michael saw was no different from what Jonathan experienced the night before while gathering wood – the knowledge that something was there without laying eyes on it.

  There were only hints, no real answers.

  “It’s like when you go to a kindergarten play,” Michael said. “Me and Annie went to one last year. It was Brent’s first school play. You remember the one? I think Jacob was in it, too.”

  Jonathan nodded. He remembered the play. Little kids garbling lines, trying to follow teachers’ directions from the wings while parents cooed and laughed and snapped pictures.

  “Before the play began you could see the stage curtain moving and rustling as the kids took their places. Their little hands and feet pushing against the curtain, trying to find their way out into the light where people could see them. That’s what it looks like. The curtain is moving.”

  Michael stared intently into the trees. He had not moved. His voice was flat, far away. “It’s breaking down.”

  “What’s breaking down?”

  “All of it,” Michael said. “Whatever it is we’re in. There’s a way in and out. That’s where Conner is.”