Boy in the Box

by Marc E. Fitch

  The dark trees that marked the entryway into Coombs’ Gulch bounced and shook and blurred as he stumbled and ran down the hill. Visions from the rocky shore of the lake ran through his head. He pictured the men who took Thomas Terrywile from that small path through the woods as he walked home from school. He remembered the strange, deathly smell of them as they carried the boy to that place deep in the forest. He remembered the bitter cold and loneliness of the void in which he was trapped for decades, the confusion of his random appearances in strange places, his tears and yearning as he tried to reach out to everyone, anyone to rescue him from hell; he remembered the feel of that long, clawed hand gripping the boy’s shoulder as it stood looming over him like a demonic father figure. Was that what it wanted? A child it could keep, abuse and terrify at its whim?

  It did not accept sacrifices; it accepted offerings brought to it by human puppets.

  Jonathan tried to tamp it all down, tried not to think of it, of what it meant for his only son. He focused on this one fact: Jacob was still alive. He could be found, and Jonathan was the only person who could find him, the only person with this awful knowledge.

  The meadow fell away and dropped toward the darkness of Coombs’ Gulch. The clouds darkened with the setting sun. The clouds were heavy now; the smell of snow suffused the air once again. The trees were black and appeared to shift and move with an unseen presence rippling in the shadows. Before him, the forest seemed to twist itself into a strange and horrifying grimace like a child’s Halloween mask – a ghastly pantomime of life. The mouth opened wide for him, swallowed him down into the Gulch.

  He reached the point of exhaustion. The terrain was now too steep and rocky to run, the trees and underbrush seemingly impenetrable. He slipped on roots underfoot; branches slashed his face, and rock outcroppings left ten-foot drops that could break his legs, leave him crippled and dying in the wild. He careened off a tree and slid to a stop. The forest turned like a kaleidoscope, silent and fractured into a million pieces. He felt it crawling over his body, like an army of ants roaming beneath his skin. The entire mountain pulsed with an unseen force, which was finally pulling back the veil, making itself known.

  Jonathan found his footing and began to move as quickly as he could, sliding, falling down the slopes he and the Braddick brothers had climbed just two days before. He struggled for a grip in the snow. He tried to calculate in his mind the fastest route back to the cabin. He wondered whether Daryl Teague had left Conner’s Suburban there as he promised. He feared what would happen when he called the authorities, the story he would have to tell. But most of all, he feared for his son and feared it was already too late.

  Snow began to fall, softly floating to the forest floor between the leafless crowns of trees that grabbed at the sky. He caught glimpses of the eastern ridge of mountains; they seemed to dance and sway with the pounding of his heart. He remembered what Daryl Teague told them about the Gulch: the mountains were like mirrors of themselves. People got lost, thought one direction was the other. He wondered for a moment if another man now stumbled and fell toward his doomed destiny in Coombs’ Gulch on the opposite mountain.

  The trees were a maze. The undergrowth was stripped of its leaves, its remains like fossilized bones against the snow.

  He now realized the distance he had yet to cover, and suddenly began to wonder if it was all futile, doubt reaching up and gripping his heart. He could practically kill himself trying to get back home through the Gulch, but what difference would it make at this point? He was like the buck who, startled at the piercing thundercrack of a gunshot, runs and bounds through the forest as his life pours from the hole in his side. Jonathan had so much farther to go, so little light left to find his way. He stared at the eastern mountains and tried to scream the way Mary had screamed with all that pain and loss, but his dry throat cracked and it came out as only a whisper. He had no voice now. The only thing left was a heartbeat, moving arms and legs, and a mind slowly spiraling into the abyss.

  He clasped trees to keep from falling on his downward slide. He constantly turned his head to scan the forest behind him like a paranoiac, but there was nothing. He listened to the blood pumping through his veins and secretly hoped some malady would suddenly stop his heart and give him an easy excuse to bow out forever. But it didn’t happen. He had a debt to pay and there was no escaping it.

  Time stood still. The slope was endless, plunging deeper than he could remember until the mountain peaks disappeared from view. It was like burrowing beneath the Earth’s crust. The air grew dark; walls closed in. The trees were everywhere, endless. It seemed like an illusion, but he knew if he reached his hand out, his fingers would find purchase. It was like being led through a hall of mirrors. He thought of his bachelor party night in that strip club nestled in the looming hills, when the doe-eyed girl had taken his hand and led him to the back rooms. He remembered the image of himself walking with her hand in hand to that dark place. He remembered wondering whom he was looking at – a pathetic stranger, more alone in the world for taking this stage girl as a prize. What had she whispered to him in those moments? In the dark, with the flashing lights? Had she changed forms momentarily? His animal prey, splayed open and hollow to the cold, empty world, had whispered in his ear.

  Now, in the mirror of the trees, he looked to his side and saw he was not alone. She walked with him. Every step, every movement mimicked his own. She was dressed the same as that night in the strip club – a line of cheap fabric arching over her rounded hips, which seemed to glow faintly in the dusk; her breasts were tanned and rippled slightly with each light step. Her dark hair fell like a deep stream and brushed thin shoulders. He watched her, and she watched him. He continued his downward trek into the Gulch, and she moved with him. He stopped and she stopped. He turned to face her, and they stared into each other’s eyes. She seemed so far off, yet, like a fever dream, she was close enough to touch. He could make out every detail of her. Like a mirror she moved perfectly with him; like a mirror, it was not real. There was no soul, no life.

  He looked away from her and turned to the narrow slope. Root systems gripped massive stones and held them. He turned to look at her again, but she was gone.

  Instead, he saw his wife. Mary’s thick brown hair fell heavy down her back. She was clothed, wearing the sweatpants and T-shirt combination he found so sexy on those long, lazy weekend days when they felt cut off from the rest of the world – the early days before the trappings of this life had fully formed and moved in for the kill. The days when they would lounge around and rent a movie, make love in the afternoon and talk about whatever came to mind. She had been his best friend and lover. She had been his whole world. She looked at him now through the trees of Coombs’ Gulch – a ghost, a memory, a reflection of the past. He smiled the moment he saw her, and the same smile flashed across her face, too. Everything he hid from her over the years was out here, buried in this purgatory of mountains and trees, burning through his arms and legs and lungs. But all they had been together was gone, and now there was only this ghostly image beside him. They walked together for a long time deeper into the Gulch. She stayed with him through every step. He fought back the urge to take her hand and hold it as he took her to the place he could never take her before – the place where a bullet was fired and killed everything they had not yet created. In this hidden place, with the air dark and swirling, he hoped she would say something – anything – to make it okay again. To tell him that it would be all right, that he was good and she was with him and loved him. He looked over at her with tears in his eyes, and she looked at him. He held back the urge to cry.

  Then Mary was gone, and small, innocent Thomas Terrywile stared at him from the snow. He was closer than Mary had been. He tilted his childish head as Jonathan tilted his; he reached to grip the broken limb of a black spruce as Jonathan did, and he shifted his weight to his downward foot to keep from sliding, just as Jonathan did. His eyes were big and
brown. Jonathan was not smiling, but the boy smiled wide and long.

  Jonathan continued his hike, and Thomas Terrywile hiked with him, every movement a perfect mirror except his face. Even the land itself was reflected – they touched the same trees, stumbled on the same rocks, walked the same land. The pitch leveled off, and the trek became easier. Thomas Terrywile stayed with him. Jonathan tried not to look, but he caught glimpses from the corner of his eye. He wanted to deny it, but the boy was still there, walking with him. The light was nearly gone and Thomas became harder to see. When Jonathan turned and looked, little Thomas Terrywile looked back. But from the periphery of his vision – when he could barely make out the figure beside him – the boy appeared monstrous and huge, a massive shadow filled with awful angles. And in the moments before Jonathan would turn to look upon it, he could feel its horrifying gaze, its size and presence. Then he would turn, and it would just be the image of a boy staring back at him, mimicking his movements like a boy might do with his father.

  The slope of the Gulch flattened as he reached the base of the valley. He neared the stream, the vein through the heart of it where he would turn south for the cabin. The massive thing beside him flickered in and out of existence. He turned his head quickly to face it, to see it in its full form.

  Thomas Terrywile was gone. Now there was only his son, Jacob, staring at him in the darkness of the wood. A small gasp of desperation left Jonathan’s lips. Jacob was missing from home, but now stood directly in front of him. Jonathan tried to tell himself it couldn’t be true, that it was a trick, but every ounce of his being told him to run to his son, to take him up and hold him. Jacob’s mouth mimicked his own – a silent scream. Jonathan fell to his knees. Jacob did not move but merely watched him, as if he didn’t understand his father’s pain. Jonathan held his arms open wide to embrace him, and Jacob did the same, his small arms and fragile hands stretched out. “Jacob,” he whispered, but the boy’s face broke into a wide grin; his eyes wrinkled and sunk into deep black holes. Jacob shook his head slowly back and forth, and from his mouth came a deep, cavernous voice as if from the bottom of a well.

  No.

  Jonathan scrambled to his feet, turned and ran, the image of his child running steadily beside him in a mirror of mockery. Snow began to fall again, hard and fast. Jonathan saw the stream ahead, still flowing with water not yet frozen over. He fell before it, plunged his hand into the icy water and brought it to his mouth to drink. Debris and dirt crunched in his teeth. He turned to look at Jacob, but he was gone and there was only the dark forest in the night. He looked in the other direction, and there was nothing.

  Then he felt it just behind him: something there, looming tall over his shoulder.

  There was a breath – a chuffing sound that blew up against the back of his neck. He stayed so still that he did not breathe, did not allow his chest to rise and fall. He waited there for what seemed like hours. There was only the slight trickle of the stream in the vast silence, and he waited to be killed, to be run through by some predator he couldn’t fathom. He waited for the end to what began ten years ago, all that time from then till now only a fraction of a second between the bullet leaving the gun and striking home to the heart of its target. All this time, he’d been nothing more than a dead man walking, no different from when Conner’s corpse crawled out of the lake and presented itself to the world.

  At least the revenant could scream. Jonathan could not summon the strength or courage to cry out. He would die with a whimper in this place, put to rest with only a breath of fear. He thought of Mary then. He thought of Jacob being offered up to this thing, which now stood behind him. He thought about where Jacob might be right now – that infinite, dark and cold place – and then his fear turned to anger, a welling up of animal rage from his gut that overwhelmed him, that felt as big and terrifying as the day his son was born. Life surged within him, forced its way out into the world, even in the face of death.

  He felt the metal and wood of his rifle strapped across his back.

  It chuffed another breath high above him, like some great African animal, too large to be bothered with a human. Yet it waited for him. He thought of Michael in his tree stand, letting out a birdlike whistle so a deer would lift its head and turn toward him before he punched it through the chest with a shotgun slug. Jonathan breathed in through his nose. He felt every part of his body; he felt the rifle, the way the strap slid slightly to the right so he could slip it off quickly, the way the stock touched the side of his leg. He tried to remember if there was still a round in the chamber.

  Jonathan’s movement was not as smooth as he would have liked. He turned quickly, slid the strap from his shoulder, hefted the Remington in his hand, fumbled the safety for a moment and raised the barrel to fire. He didn’t know if it could be killed, but his rage urged him on to try.

  And there, just a few feet away, he saw his own image staring back at him. He saw his own horrified face, his same camouflage coveralls, worn, wet and dirty; he saw his facial hair rubbing against the flesh of his neck, his eyes staring wide in wonder. Jonathan paused for a moment. He could not think, and his mind spun and snapped, unsure of who or what he was – whether he was the reality or the reflection, whether he was truly in control of his actions or merely the puppet for this thing, its desires and motivations. Jonathan slowly began to lower his rifle.

  But he could not let it go.

  Jonathan raised his rifle to shoot, and his mirror image, in turn, turned the barrel of its rifle upward, lodged it beneath his chin and fired.

  Jonathan watched his head erupt outward with blood and bits of gore; teeth blasted out like buckshot from the explosion of gas and fire; flesh shook and limbs quivered and Jonathan watched as his mirror image dropped to the ground and slumped forward, reddening the snow and pouring blood into the rotten soil.

  Jonathan screamed, fell to his knees and clawed at his own face.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Jonathan wandered through the forest in the dark. He could not tell if he was man or ghost. He still felt the ground underfoot, felt the frozen air chafing his cheeks, felt the fear and desire to return to his wife and find his lost boy. But something lay dead in the Gulch. He followed the stream because it was the only thing he could think to do, as if his body were on autopilot to return to the cabin, get home and face…he didn’t know what anymore. The future was nothing more than a gray fog drifting toward him. It brought nothing but more pain, yet all he could do was continue onward. He stumbled. His legs weren’t working correctly anymore, tired and dead from three days of heavy hiking through the mountainous terrain. His gait was awkward; only the last remnants of his willpower dragged his body through the trees. Anyone who saw him would think a corpse had risen from the grave and stalked through the trees. He turned to see if his body still lay dead and faceless on the ground. He could see it – a black stain in the pale snow.

  He did not know what time it was anymore. Time had lost all meaning. Time didn’t matter for Jacob – if indeed he were trapped in that terrible, lonely limbo like Thomas Terrywile – and time no longer mattered for Jonathan. He was dead. Whether it was spiritually or physically, it no longer mattered. All blended together, all was the same. The curtain had been pulled back momentarily, and he saw himself dancing on the stage, his own movements controlled by an unseen puppeteer. It was almost laughable, except he was the lone audience.

  The snow ceased momentarily and the moon shone full and bright in a break between the passing clouds. The mountain ridges glowed, each a reflection of the other. He followed the stream but couldn’t be sure he was headed in the right direction. All he could do was keep on moving – keep living, if that was what it could be called. He saw identical places a thousand times over. He saw the stars turn. He heard branches move and break in the darkness, first on one side of the stream and then the other. The sounds and movements were too quick to be just one person or animal; it had t
o be many, all of them closing in. For what, he did not know, but he moved forward anyway. From behind came the sound of heavy timber being uprooted and thrown to the ground, heavy crashing sounds of thick, splitting wood. He looked to the moon, but it was half-hidden behind the canopy of black spruce trees. There was another sound – something on the cold air that moved like ghosts through the bracken.

  He left the thick timber behind and walked among the tall grasses, the flatland that lined the stream, the place where it had all begun with that single gunshot. Everything was dead under the snow. The moonlight poured down, and everything glowed bright and ghastly and cold. He heard whispering again. It came stronger now, heavier, carried on the air; the voices became more human, but still he could not make out the words. It sounded like a small group of men talking, plotting, just out of listening range, the way voices mingled together in a crowded pool hall or downtrodden dive bar. He thought about the night at the East Side Tavern when Michael and Conner approached him with this plan. The strange bar patrons who somehow looked familiar, how they watched him even though he did not know them. It was like the entire world was in on some kind of joke and he was the mark, left to spin and cry in his ignorance.