Boy in the Box

by Marc E. Fitch

  “Conner is dead.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe that’s what we’re supposed to believe, but you saw him back there on the beach.”

  Jonathan stood up straight now and stared at Michael. “We need to keep moving. We can’t be stuck here. Michael? Do you hear me? We can’t stay here. We have to get back to the cabin. I have to get home. I have to.”

  “We’re behind the curtain as well…”

  Jonathan grabbed Michael by the shoulders. He was a larger man, but Jonathan turned him like a top. “How many more miles to the cabin?”

  Michael stared in silence for a moment, and Jonathan quizzed him again. “Do the numbers in your head. How many more miles to the cabin?”

  He blinked and paused for a moment, looking as if he was trying to reach into his memory, retrace the outline on the map. “Six, I think.”

  “How long will it take us to make that trip? C’mon. Do the goddamn math in your head.”

  “This terrain? Seven hours probably.”

  “That would put us at the cabin by five,” Jonathan said. “It’ll be nearly dark by then. We need to get back before it’s dark, before it starts to snow again. We need to get there so we can get help, okay?”

  Michael’s eyes lost the shine in them and suddenly seemed more familiar, as if he were coming out of a drunken haze, sobering up and recognizing the world around him.

  “Just look straight ahead,” Jonathan said. “Let’s get to the field. There’s cell service there, and it will be mostly downhill once we get over the ridgeline.”

  From the corner of his eye, at the farthest reaches of the trees, a lone branch bounced back and forth as if it had just caught on a piece of clothing, pulled, and let go.

  They climbed again. Jonathan led Michael up the mountain. The steep incline leveled off as they approached the meadow. He could see it through breaks in the trees – a seemingly endless expanse of white with brittle and frozen brown straws reaching through the snow, bending in the open wind. The dense trees faded away, the land flattened. Jonathan pushed through the last hundred yards until he stood at the edge of the field and stared up to the top where the snow-covered meadow touched the gray sky, the way an ocean touches the horizon. For a moment he was disheartened. It looked so much farther than he remembered. He fought the urge to just lie down in the snow and let the cold overtake him quietly, silently. The field was an endless expanse of nothingness. Jonathan walked farther into the field until he was completely clear of the trees and stood for a time, listening to Michael’s footsteps behind him. The wind fell from the tops of the mountains, pushed cold against his face. The tip of his nose felt numb. The cold set deep into his bones.

  He turned to look back. Michael stood among the trees staring at him, his rifle once again leveled at Jonathan’s heart.

  Michael’s voice sounded dead and desperate. “You go on,” he said. “Don’t follow me.”

  “No,” Jonathan said.

  “I see him out there.”

  Jonathan started to speak. A crack, a sudden explosion, filled the air and rung his ears. Dirt and snow jumped into the air beside Jonathan’s feet and smoke rose from the tip of Michael’s rifle. Jonathan didn’t move. “You go on,” Michael said. “You get help. Don’t follow me. He’s out there and I have to go find him. I don’t have a choice. I have to. You don’t understand.”

  “I do,” Jonathan said. “But please don’t.”

  “He needs me,” Michael said. Then he turned and ran back into the trees, and Jonathan was completely alone in the snow-gray field. The wind came down from the mountain again, and the stalks of straw bowed their heads.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Michael felt he had finally returned to his right mind. Conner was out there. He knew this because he saw him. They had looked at each other across a distance of trees and snow. Jonathan was the one who had lost it. He had always been the weakest among them, with a strange mind easily given over to fantasy. This was quite simple, really. Conner had fallen in the water, come ashore but was confused and lost due to nearly drowning. There was clearly something wrong. Michael had seen Conner – glimpses of him, really – as he and Jonathan hiked the mountain toward the pass. At first Michael couldn’t be sure if his eyes were playing tricks on him, but then, just as they reached the clearing of the meadow, Michael looked and saw his brother clear as day. He stood somewhat crooked, as if bones were broken, among the trees at the farthest range of vision. Conner stood there staring at him, mouth open like he was trying to say something, but couldn’t get the words to rise up.

  Jonathan was already hiking into that desolate field, trudging his way toward the cabin, trying to ignore the truth so he could continue hiding behind lies and fantasy. Jonathan was spinning out of control – his crazed ideas about the boy they had buried, about Coombs’ Gulch and something stalking them in the forest. Things had been tragic and strange, but there was no reason to assign it some kind of supernatural quality. Michael had seen someone who looked like Gene through his scope yesterday, but that was all it was. Someone – probably another hunter – who happened to look like Gene. Gene was dead and gone. Conner was not. Conner was up and walking around, hurt and confused, and Michael had to find him.

  Jonathan had grown more paranoid and insane, so the easiest thing to do was force him away, fire a shot so he knew Michael was serious, and let him go. Best case scenario: he makes it to the cabin and gets help. Worst case: he slips further into his own delusional fantasy and ends up lost or dead. Jonathan had been a friend, but Conner was Michael’s brother, and there was no real choice in the matter. Blood is thicker.

  Michael looked out into the trees. Conner had been there a second ago. He was sure Conner was saying something to him, but he couldn’t make it out. A creeping sensation rolled up his spine, as if his body was revolted by this place. But it did not matter. What mattered was moving as quickly as possible, finding Conner’s tracks through the snow and getting his brother back.

  Michael couldn’t help but flash back to the moment he saw Conner fall into the water and sink. At that moment it seemed everything inside him suddenly vacated his body; he was suddenly hollow and numb. That terrifying time Michael spent under the water, in the black, unsure if he would drown in the paralyzing cold, haunted him. He had reached his hand down into the deep – his lungs screaming, his eardrums about to burst – and felt Conner’s hand there for a moment. Michael seized on to it, but Conner’s fingers slid away like loose strands of seaweed.

  It was that moment that drove him now, more than the dead boy, more than all this bullshit about something stalking them. It was the moment when he chose to save himself over his brother. He had been out of air, and his body began to panic, the cold draining the life from him. Michael felt himself slipping. During drowning, the body involuntarily forces you to inhale, and Michael felt his mouth opening, the black water slipping in. It would be only a matter of seconds. Rather than plunging down farther, he kicked to the surface and Conner was gone.

  But now Michael had seen him. Now he knew Conner was not gone. He was out there. He was up and moving, and that meant he was alive. Jonathan was full of shit. How can you deny something when you’ve seen it with your own eyes? He had seen his brother staring at him across that expanse of trees. Now was the time to strike out and make that final plunge.

  Michael was as hungry and tired as he had ever been. It was cold, and the clouds rolling over the mountains meant more snow. If the snow came hard, it could cover Conner’s tracks, so he had to move fast to get to him and bring him back to the cabin. With any luck, Jonathan would have reached it by then and have gotten help. It was all a simple matter of risk and reward. He risked much tracking his brother through the forest now; he risked much trusting in Jonathan to reach the cabin and find help, but the reward was too great to ignore. It was a calculated risk – statistically, this was the only acceptable course of act
ion.

  Michael left Jonathan standing in the endless field, which disappeared into the sky. He turned to his right and began to move quickly, pounding through the snow, keeping his footing as best he could. Through a break in the trees, Michael took one last look over his shoulder and saw Jonathan watching him like a scarecrow in the maize. It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered but getting Conner.

  Michael reached the spot where he saw his brother staring at him like a ghost. He could see the tracks. Solid proof. Incontrovertible evidence. The tracks led up from the lake. Conner had followed parallel to them the whole hike up the hill toward the meadow. Now his tracks led south, toward the adjacent mountain, which bordered the pass. The tracks disappeared into the trees. Michael called for Conner as loudly as he could, waited, and then called again. There was no answer, only silence. Looking into the staggered trees rising from the snow, he thought he detected movement, something just behind them, just out of sight. He couldn’t see anything definite, as if his eyes saw something whose form his brain could not distinguish. He thought of a child playing hide-and-seek, trying to hide behind a tree not thick enough to completely shield him from view. There was something, but he could not make it out. Michael looked down at the tracks and followed.

  He moved quickly at first, trying to run through the snow. His daily regimen of jogging several miles around the block, followed by a workout with free weights in his garage, kept him moving. But the extra gear – the heavy backpack, the rifle, the hunting suit – slowed him down. The previous long days of hiking meant his legs were already sore and burning; the lack of food made him weak, and the thin, cold air hurt his lungs. But he kept his bouncing pace, slipping occasionally on the slope covered with the wet snow.

  The tracks continued past the edge of the meadow and then turned and began to climb up the slope of the southern mountain. Fuck. How had Conner gone this far so quickly? Michael stopped, breathing heavily. The tracks seemed to trail on forever and again turned sharply up the mountain, moving straight up the incline. But they were there, and they were real; there was no doubt. Michael caught his breath for a moment. He called for Conner again but there was no answer.

  He made a decision then, another calculated risk: drop the backpack here so he could move faster and better navigate the steep mountain. He could make better time, catch up with Conner and then follow his own tracks back to his gear. He kept the rifle, just in case of bear, or to signal rescuers by firing shots in the air. Michael unloaded the backpack and found a strong limb jutting out from a thick yellow birch. He hung the pack and strapped the rifle tight across his back so it wouldn’t bounce on his shoulders as he hiked. It seemed a momentous decision, but at times like these certain gambles had to be made. Besides, there wasn’t much in the pack that would help anyway. Jonathan had the tent. The food was gone. All he had was a sleeping bag and some tools. He should have reached Conner by now. Michael’s pace should have overtaken a weak, confused and injured man. He figured it would not be much longer. Conner would just be a little farther, beyond the trees. He had to push himself a little harder, move a little faster. Conner would be slowed down on the climb. Michael could catch up, get his brother and head for the cabin. They wouldn’t be able to make it by nightfall – especially if Conner were injured or in shock – but if they kept moving they wouldn’t freeze.

  It was Michael’s only chance to bring his brother back from the dark depths; to bring him back from the dead was worth anything, even if it meant his own life.

  Michael followed his Conner’s tracks and wondered for a moment if he had been following his brother’s footsteps his whole life. Despite being the younger brother, Conner had always been the one who seemed to lead, to take control of the situation. He had a gift for making people like him, for making conversation when few others could find something worth talking about. Michael, on the other hand, could never be bothered. He had always been confused as to why people insisted on so much pointless talk. Why not just stay silent? Michael remembered a famous quote about that: “Better to say nothing and let the world think you’re a fool than to open your mouth and prove them right.” Michael was no fool; he just didn’t see the point in a lot of conversation. The weather? Could anything be more boring? Take a look outside and recognize there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Sports? Who could keep up with it all and why bother? He almost pitied those who spent their lives watching ESPN on endless repeat and memorizing stats that would never, ever, at any point in their lives make a single ounce of difference. It was like a homoerotic obsession. Michael appreciated a good football game as much as the next guy, but the men who stood around talking sports stats at parties would probably sneak into Tom Brady’s bed given the chance. Just shut up and drink your beer.

  Michael had no use for useless things, and so many people seemed obsessed with useless things. Michael liked things that worked. He liked making things work. He liked finding and eliminating the errors that stopped things from working. In that way, he had little use for ninety-nine percent of people who more or less threw a wrench in the gears of functioning society – those who did dumb things to make life worse all around, obsessed over inanities or were useless as babies when they reached a challenge. It was one of the reasons he liked hunting and had taken to it so quickly. It was one of the reasons he kept hunting even after the accident ten years ago. Hunting gave him two things: solitude and utility. In the early-morning hours, he was alone with the world. Cold, sitting in a tree stand, watching life unfold all around him as the sun rose and the forest grew progressively lighter. Watching, waiting, listening to the sounds creeping up in the morning light, spotting a buck or doe – perfectly created for dashing among the trees, wandering in from the abyss of night into his vision. On those cold mornings it was just him and his prey, hunter and hunted. It was the true nature of life.

  Then, when he took a deer and gutted it there in the middle of a forest, he could see the truth of life. Ancient civilizations sacrificed animals to communicate with the gods. Michael wasn’t religious, but, to him, this seemed by far a more effective form of prayer than anything taught in churches with high altars and stained-glass windows. In the blood and guts and organs was the truth of life. And if you’re seeking revelation, staring at the stark, cold, animal reality of life was a good place to start. Mammals were all largely the same – same organs, same functions. In one end, out the other, and everything in between is there to absorb and use energy. When you looked at the inside of a newly gutted deer, you essentially saw the same functions inside yourself. This was what people were. This was what everything was. And then you drag the weight of that realization back to your home. You skin it. You age it. You cut it up and you eat it. That was true utility. Supply yourself with the base truth.

  Conner had been one of those few people who did not fuck things up or make life more complicated. Conner greased the wheels. He was not much different from Michael. Whereas Michael liked to discover what made things work and rid them of errors, Conner essentially put those functioning things together to form a grander whole. That was why he’d been so good in business – taking a bunch of moving parts and putting them together to make money. Eliminate waste, fire the useless and capitalize on strengths while taking advantage of others’ weaknesses. If Michael was the engineer who designed the machine, Conner was the guy who created a pipeline to move that machine into the hands of well-paying customers. They were in vastly different businesses, but their minds were symbiotic. Losing Conner would be losing the only person with whom he felt that kind of connection.

  Powering through the snow, legs burning from the strain of pushing uphill, Michael almost felt guilty about his sudden frank realization; Conner meant more to him than anyone else – even his own wife. As he struggled through the snowy terrain, he thought about Annie and the one thing that didn’t make sense, the one thing for which he could not envision a fix.

  For years they had tried for a ba
by. Annie wanted a family. Michael was indifferent, really, but he wanted her to be happy – an easy fix for his home life because, as time wore on, Annie became more and more despondent. A child would fix that, would bring her joy and relief and restore his house to something more comfortable. Comfort was one of the drivers of society. It was why there were engineers like him – to ensure maximum effectiveness, ease of use, comfort. Michael worked on helicopters, made them function successfully to keep the discomfort of crashing or even the fear of crashing from encroaching upon passengers. Utility was the ultimate comforter – the maximum benefit with the least expenditure of energy.

  But Annie’s despondency at their inability to conceive challenged Michael’s equation for life. They expended massive amounts of time, money and energy trying to create a life. They saw doctors and ran tests. She took hormone treatments and drugs, and he humiliated himself jerking off into a cup. They talked about it; she cried over it, and he drank over it. All so that this future baby would give Annie some comfort. But then, babies were also difficult, expensive, lifetime commitments. In essence, he was putting in all this energy to create something that would ultimately sap more energy and make his life more difficult instead of more comfortable. True, it would make Annie happy, and a happy home is an easier, more comfortable home, but, he figured, people can get used to anything. Even if there was never a child, eventually her sadness would wane and they would fall back into the same routine and find a form of comfort and contentment.

  But still, throughout the past four years, his utilitarian theory of life was upended, and he wasn’t sure why. It was a lot of effort in order to expend more effort. He loved Annie, but he could not love a child that was not yet conceived. Annie was different. She loved something that did not yet exist. He couldn’t understand it.