The Land of Make Believe

by Michael Arnold

  Then if they don’t look like white sheet with the eyes peeking through the holes, Dad, then what are the ghosts that you are talking about, Olen remembered asking eight years ago.

  “Close your eyes, squeeze them tight, then open them, what you will see will all be an image of your imagination, what you see there is nothing like this in real time, Olen!”

  “What’s real time?” Olen asked, the voice in his head queried. “Real time means right now, silly. It’s reality. it’s what is happening right this second!”

  Another of his dad’s thought screamed out to him. Ghost may or may not look like me and you, son, but there is something that may be different about them internally. Try their voices. If it isn’t in their voices, it’s in their abilities. They have special abilities beyond this world and when you see these types of ghosts, son, you better run because they will say, boo!

  As if those thoughts of his father were real, as if he was hearing them for the first time, Olen jumped, tripped over his own big feet and tumbled to the ground.

  When he regained some of his senses, he retrieved the stick and focused on the trap that looked like a huge mouth with alligator teeth that penetrated deep into Whisk-pey’s leg.

  “This is absolutely amazing!” Olen said aloud but to himself. “She looks like a young girl and she also looks like a dog. She is the most beautiful person I ever seen in my life!”

  “If you looked at her closely you could see she isn’t a person,” Olen’s voice told him. “It is a weird-looking creature. I think it would be best to step away and run. Get back on your bike and get out of here while we still can. That’s the best thing to do!”

  “No, I’m not running, nor am I going anywhere, this…, this…, this…”

  “It’s a creature of your imagination, Olen? We are in real time here. Come on, snap out of it. Call it what it is, and stop being such a nice guy. It’s a “creature” and that is what you should call it!”

  Olen frowned, a mean upturned glare shone out of his eyes as if the person he was talking to was actually a real person. “I’m not calling her a “creature”. I will call her a “she” before I call her a “creature”. There you have it, now go away. And I don’t mean later, I mean now!” Olen said.

  The voice vanished.

  “I have to get you out of here!” Olen said to himself. As if he was a doctor or perhaps a nurse he remembered watching on some TV shows. He placed his cold hand on Whisk-pey’s hairy neck to check for a pulse.

  She was out. How long, it was uncertain, but the moment she felt the coldness of Olen’s hands, she jerked up, but was soon brought back into submission when she felt the jaws closing on her leg again. She hollered in excruciating pain, while Olen yelled because of Whisk-pey’s sudden jerk and shout of pain.

  “Oh my God, she talks!” Olen whispered.

  “What did you think I was supposed to do? I am a…” Her sentence stopped when she accidentally moved the trap, increasing the level of pain. “Oh my leg, my leg hurts. Ento, Ento!” she yelled.

  Olen wondered who or what Ento was but because it wasn’t at all important to him, he didn’t question this other presence. Instead, he said, “I’m going to get you out of this trap. Just hold your horses!”

  “Horses?” Whisk-pey questioned. “Horses, I have heard of them but I don’t have any to hold!”

  Olen didn’t know what to make of Whisk-pey’s response. But one thing that he didn’t want to do was to make matters worse than they already were. “Never mind, hold still, try not to move. I don’t want to hurt you more than you are already.” Olen bent down on both knees. He had no idea how he was going to help Whisk-pey out of the trap. Why do I get myself into stuff like this? I see no way of getting her out of this bear trap. If it wasn’t for some black bear running loose then it wouldn’t be any traps, then there wouldn’t be this…

  Go ahead and say it; you know you want to. And it is perfectly alright! He heard the mocking voice of his double resounding loudly in his head, so much so that he jumped a little. Ignoring his double actually worked. He didn’t say anything else but then there was another voice, a voice that was an entity in itself. He heard the voice of Charles Henry speak out loud in his mind. Look at him. Microscope boy is so dumb he doesn’t even know how to pull a wedge out of his butt, you have to be the dumbest high schooler in the whole entire world. Go kick rocks, Stephens, and while you’re at it jump off the bridge. I promise no one will miss you, not even your parents.

  That was hard to digest when Charles Henry spoke those words several months ago in the school’s front entrance after he had given Olen a wedge and a slap on the back of the head because he didn’t have all of the ten dollars that he demanded of Olen at the end of the week.

  “I can do this. I just have to figure out how to get it off, that’s all!” Olen said in a voice lower than a whisper and unheard by Whisk-pey. He tried opening the mouth of the trap with his hands but it was like trying to pry a lion’s mouth open. That shouldn’t have been an option or a thought, but since he had to try every idea to get Whisk-pey out of the trap, he needed all the help he could get.

  Feeling badly, and beyond the decision to do so, Olen wanted to say as loud as possible what Mrs. Platters, his art teacher, had told him. This world is only made of genuine things, Olen. While your drawing here really denote of your ability to create, your creation needs to be from a world of reality, young man, not from a place that doesn’t exist. Reserve your talent for something real, Olen, not something like this.

  “I should have never left my home. If I would have never left home then I would never have gotten stuck here in this stupid thing,” Whisk-pey said, now her eyes wide, shining with a tear that rolled out and sunk into her shaggy face.

  Olen reached out and grabbed her hand as he watched another tear, then another, and another fall from Whisk-pey’s eyes. If things couldn’t get any worse, blood started to show on the trap and on the ground. Whisk-pey’s hand was now sweating and gripping tighter. She looked away and closed her eyes.

  “Honestly, you’re not going to be able to get me out of this, are you?” Whisk-pey asked.

  Olen wanted to turn his face, hide, and most of all answer Whisk-pey’s question truthfully. He turned to her and stood up. The words “No, I’m not going to be able to get you out,” only came into his mind but what came out of his mouth was something different. “Yes, yes, I will be able to get you out of the trap,” he yelled.

  His eyes were latched on the springs which held the mouth-like trap closed. He noticed that when Whisk-pey tried to pull her leg out, the clamp tighten the grip on her leg.

  Quickly, Olen went to the other side of the trap. “Okay…, ummm, what’s your name again?” Olen asked.

  “My name is Whisk-pey.” Her voice was sinking and her strength was leaving her eyes.

  “Okay, cool name. I like it. Okay, Whisk-pey, what I want you to do is when I push on the back of the trap I want you to try and take your leg out of it if you can. You think you can do that?”

  “I think so, I will try anyway,” Whisk-pey replied.

  “And, by the way, my name is Olen Stephen. My family calls me Olen though, so I guess you can too.”

  Whisk-pey was in fact badly hurt but she found the courage to utter, “Just please hurry up and get my leg out of this trap!”

  First, Olen tried to depress the jaws with his hands, when that didn’t work he stood on the end of each side of the trap hoping that his weight would do the trick. Come on and open. I know you can do it, bear trap. Open your mean, mean mouth, trap, Olen thought.

  Whisk-pey couldn’t or wouldn’t watch. She covered her face and placed it in the ground.

  “I know you told me to go away, but I have a suggestion. You want to hear it?” Olen bit down on his lip but didn’t answer.

  “I take that as a yes then, Olen! Shift your weight to the back of the spring handle since you are so light, all of your weight will be on the back of the spring handle and it shou
ld release the trap jaws.” Still without a response to his double’s suggestions, Olen thought it wasn’t a bad suggestion and it could work. He tried it and the trap jaws released immediately.

  Surprised and happy, Olen was going to step off the spring handle before Whisk-pey would ever have a chance to get her now badly damaged leg out from between the jaws of the trap. “Hey, it worked, it worked! I got it open. Now you can take your leg out of the trap!” he yelled.

  Whisk-pey slowly took her head off the ground. She didn’t bother wiping away the dirt that adorned her little nose and looked up at Olen in disbelief.

  “All you have to do is move your leg out and you are free,” Olen said.

  Her face showed amazement while her eyes were almost closed.

  He did all he could do to keep his balance without falling backwards. If he didn’t, in an instant, the jaws of the trap would slam back onto Whisk-pey’s leg.

  Not only was the leg void of feeling and bloody, but from the way it looked, Olen was sure it was broken – if not broken, seriously damaged. Shocked, Whisk-pey kept both hands on her leg. “I want to find the person who set this thing!” Whisk-pey mumbled while she picked her leg up out of the trap and put it down onto the ground. She screamed out in renewed pain when her leg slipped out of the grip of her hands and hit the ground a little hard. Olen literally jumped off the springs handles and hurried to Whisk-pey’s aid.

  Olen had saved Whisk-pey from the bear trap but there was more; there was her leg, her badly injured leg. Her leg looked like that it would collapse at any moment before Whisk-pey would ever be able to stand up.

  Whisk-pey pointed to the house. “I was in that place before I came out here. I have to get my friend out. He is in there and I need to find a healing well. Do you know where the healing well is here?” Whisk-pey’s breath was fading fast.

  “Healing Well, I don’t know what that is. Do you mean like a doctor or something?” Olen questioned dumbly.

  Her vision slowly diluting and her eyes barely able to stay open, she found enough strength to focus on the curious face looking at her. To Whisk-pey he was a deceiving, lying, cunning person that only freed her to perform a different harm onto her.

  Before Olen realized what was going on Whisk-pey had drawn her sling-shot and a single black rock out of her satchel. “You take me to the Healing Well, or else I will…” Her words trailed off. She gave in to the situation knowing that it was a damning and disgraceful reality. Nevertheless, she fired the rock before the damning and disgraceful reality of her situation would have her.

  Olen screamed out jumping out of the way to land with his butt in the dirt. Whisk-pey’s release had very little power and so the black rock, that was so potent in the Land of Make Belief, was worthless and ineffective when it landed in the ground on Earth.

  She was trying to hurt me with that rock or whatever it is, Olen thought. “That’s why the best and the smart thing would be for us to get out of here, bad leg or not when she wakes up she is going to be not just mad but fiery mad.” Olen’s double said aloud. “She did say something about someone name Ento. I should at least let him know what’s going out with his friend out here,” Olen replied. “Okay, Olen, you are the boss but at least when this all goes wrong, you can’t say I didn’t warn you!” This time Olen ignored his double’s voice and went inside of the house, hoping to find this person named Ento.

  From when he first walked in, Olen found it evident that someone had moved and had taken whatever was easy to carry and left the other things behind or they were coming back for the rest of their junk. Nevertheless, Olen wasn’t in the house to find what he would like to steal what was left, he was there to find Whisk-pey’s friend Ento.

  “Ento, Ento, are you here?” Olen said, roaming through the front part of the house then the strong unbearable smell reached his nostrils,

  Olen knew that smell well from the salad that his mom made every so often for their next door neighbor - sardine salad. “Oh crap, I know that smell, sardines, is my mom here or something?” Olen said to himself.

  In the kitchen it looked as if it had been ransacked by thieves or little children looking for snacks that their parents told them they couldn’t have.

  “Ento, if you are here show your face. Your friend Whisk-pey is outside hurt. She got caught in one of our bear traps. I don’t know how serious it is, but it looks pretty bad. I may be able to help her but I would have to get her back to my house.”

  Olen didn’t know if he was looking for a person like Whisk-pey or a person like himself – a human being, but he definitely wasn’t expecting a purple like frog with a ridged back and bulging green eyes that leaped out of the broken pieces of cabinet and onto Olen’s chest. Stunned and surprised to see a creature like Ento, he swatted at him but stumbled backward falling into the pile of discarded junk.

  “I am tired and up to my neck with all the trouble that I, myself, have to endure because of others,” Ento yelled, “and I am going to make sure that for once in my life I can have some peace and quiet. Today I am going to stand up to the trouble that has awakened me from sleep!” Then he slapped Olen not once but twice across his narrow cheeks.

  Nervousness suddenly turned into serenity when Olen saw that Ento was less harmless than a bird’s feathers and a little surpised that he encountered a talking frog. “Would you stop it? Did you hear anything that I just said?” Olen asked as he got to his feet, pulling Ento off his chest by his ridged and jagged skin. He held him out in front of him. Ento made a face, a face that was contorted in fear. “I…, I.., I didn’t mean to jump on you like that. Whatever creature you call yourself, I just want some peace and quiet for once in my life,” Ento stuttered. For a moment, a short moment, sympathy came upon Olen but it quickly dissipated.

  “You can have your peace but you have a friend outside who’s hurt. Her name is Whisk-pey, you know her?”

  “Well, I’ll be tree bark! Why didn’t you say so! Let’s see what the problem is.”

  When Ento and Olen got outside, it looked as if Whisk-pey was dead, as if she hadn’t moved in days.

  “Oh no! What have you done to my friend?” Ento yelled, jumping off Olen’s shoulder and onto the dirt ground in which Whisk-pey lay.

  “I didn’t do anything to her and if you are not careful then what happen to her will happen to you. So, if I were you I would move away from her. She will have to go inside if we are going to get her some help,” Olen said.

  He wasn’t sure if Whisk-pey was dead or alive but one thing was for sure, Olen had developed a kind of confidence after he had freed Whisk-pey from the trap. All will be well. She will be okay. I have to figure out how to get her some help, Olen thought then reached out to grab up Whisk-pey.

  “You will not touch her!” Ento yelled. “Don’t you think you have done enough already, whatever creature you are?” Ento planted himself on Whisk-pey’s chest. Olen saw her chest going up and down rhythmically and smiled. She wasn’t dead. “I haven’t done anything, I can at least wrap her leg, it may be some medicine in that house that she can take and she will be better.”

  “She doesn’t need medicine she needs the Healing Well!”

  Healing Well? That is the same thing Whisk-pey said. What do they mean Healing Well? Olen wondered. “I don’t know exactly where you came from and you can tell me when we get her inside but we don’t have a Healing Well here. I don’t know what that is!”

  “Why you scrawny little whatever you are, I am not going to let you anywhere near Whisk-pey. If you want her, then you are going to have to go through me!”

  “Well, since you leave me without a choice I am going to have to do what I have to do,” Olen retorted. His voice deepened.

  Ento hunkered down, wanting to hide under Whisk-pey’s shirt.

  Olen was fed up with Ento’s immature antics. As Olen stretched his long arms out to pick Whisk-pey off the ground with or without Ento guarding her, there was a sudden and distinct fluttering sound enveloping them. The sound
was so pointing and direct; it caused both Olen and Ento to stop. The noise came from behind Olen and directly in front of Ento.

  “Butterflies, I haven’t seen butterflies in a real long time,” Olen blurted in total surprise. They were coming in from the illuminating light from the seam in the sky directly by the sun. Neither Olen nor Ento questioned what they saw at first. In wondering admiration they watched as the pink winged butterflies with the yellow outer trimming fluttered their wings with ease and dove, giving off a rainbow of light which engulfed Whisk-pey’s injured leg.

  “I think I seen them before, they are from the fairies,” Ento shouted. Then, from where he was standing, he leaped on to Olen’s shoulder.

  “Fairies?” Olen questioned. “That name sounds familiar, like I have seen them before, I mean not on television, but as if I seen them somewhere else!”

  “Television? What is that?” Ento asked.

  “Never mind,” Olen replied.

  “Look, the blood is all going away. The butterflies from the fairies are healing her,” Ento said, pointing at Whisk-pey’s leg.

  Olen watched closely as the butterflies’ interwoven motion gave off the light that was healing Whisk-pey. Olen looked on silently. Somehow he knew he had seen these before. He had seen these butterflies, the fluttering, the rainbow and the healing, and that unblemished face which poked through the crack of the sky with those wide-set, slanted eyes.

  Olen could have passed out when he met those light brown colored eyes with his own gazing stare. I know you, I’ve seen you before. What sounded like a yell were nothing more than Olen’s thoughts. Those words were like a rehearsed song in his head. For a moment he held his lips closed then cracked a wide smile of recognition.

  Chapter 11

  “What you are witnessing today, my wonderful and magnificent people of Dark Forest, is the dethroning of a weak and pathetic king, known as Bodolf, who desire only to keep his people in poverty, need and obscurity. But on this very day when the sun is at its highest and the sky Gods have so graciously given us their pure air to breathe, our new king demonstrates his kindness to us. Today I give you the new and wise king of Dark Forest, Fenris!”