Over the Darkened Landscape

by Derryl Murphy

  “Jesus.”

  Danny nodded. “He knew that Sandy was pregnant. Said he’d take care of that his own way. And then he warned me not to use any more of his Slow. Too expensive to waste on a kid, he said.”

  Mike nodded. “Who are the rest of the pedos? Do you have any names?”

  Danny reached into his jeans pocket and brought out a crumpled piece of paper, straightened it out as best he could and gave it to Mike. “Four that Sandy knew of. Sometimes Hayes would mention these guys. Only first names, though.” He slid out of Mike’s arm and back down to the floor, sniffling and wiping his nose with his sleeve. “Sorry.”

  Mike tried to smile. “It’s okay, Danny. We might find something in his office. Thanks for the list.”

  “So what happens now?” asked Danny, trying to brush away more tears.

  “I dunno,” shrugged Mike. “It’s not like I can bring you in or anything.” He thought for a second, then said, “I think I’ll just have to tell my captain the truth, see where it goes. It sounds like this is ugly enough they’re gonna want to keep it a little more quiet.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Danny was staring at Mike now, his eyes growing wide.

  “What?”

  “You took Slow to come across the Line, right?”

  “Yeah. Got it from Hayes’s stash. Which is gonna mean bad trouble for me when I go back across.”

  “Did you bring enough to go back across?” His voice was barely a whisper.

  Mike leaned back against the counter, fear and exhaustion both swamping him at once. “You don’t have any more?”

  Danny shook his head. “You took the last vial from Sandy’s room. All the rest I know of are on your side of the Line.”

  “Think, now.” Mike pinched the bridge of his nose and tilted his head up, eyes closed. “I am such an idiot. Simone has a cellphone, but her battery is toast. She didn’t have time to go get her charger.”

  “Did you bring a radio?”

  He patted his pockets, already knowing that he’d forgotten the thing. “Slow doesn’t exactly promote forward thinking, it appears.”

  “We have a phone back at the station. Connects us with your headquarters.”

  Mike held up a hand. “I know, I know.”

  “We can call.”

  “What, and tell them I took an illicit drug to come across the Line and decide to cover up a murder my best friend committed? I’d call if it was just me, but I can’t get my partner in trouble.”

  They were both quiet for a minute. Outside the sun was now shining, and it seemed that most of the kids had left; only a few were still standing around.

  “Did you bring your car?”

  Danny nodded.

  “Take me back.” Mike grinned, but he was feeling scared, and he knew it probably showed, no matter the front he presented. “I guess I’ll put in for early retirement. Maybe I can even qualify for full pension after only three days on the job.”

  “Mike, no.”

  “Danny, I can’t stay. I can’t.” He squeezed his friend’s shoulder. “You know it, and I know it. If I stay too long I start to age anyway. May as well be old in a place where old people are welcome.”

  A long pause. “Right, then.” Danny’s voice was catching. “Let’s go.”

  The drive back to the Line seemed too short. Neither of them talked, or even looked at each other, Danny concentrating on the drive and Mike just looking out the window at the buildings and kids as they went by.

  At the Line he climbed out, groaning even more from the pain of the ride. He went down on one knee then, and they hugged, tight, knowing this was really going to be the last time.

  He stood at the Line for a moment, looking up high into the haze, then back at Danny. “I’ll miss you.”

  “Try and enjoy your retirement.” They both tried to smile.

  Mike shrugged. “Maybe I’ll use my old age to go knock a few heads, make sure nobody’s thinking about crossing over ever again.”

  “It ain’t perfect, but this is still some pretty goofy shit,” came another voice, quiet but definitely amused.

  Mike turned back and watched as Simone staggered across the Line, carrying a syringe and the second vial of Slow, half empty. She handed them to him, turned and winked at Danny, then said, “You kiss real nice, Mike. Hurry up and take that stuff; it’s probably not enough to hold back all the years, but it’s better than nothing.” She brushed some hallucinatory thing away from the front of her face, and then sighed. “You kiss like a kid. Felt nice.”

  Mike, not sure how long her hit would last, put a hand on Danny’s shoulder and forced a grin, then loaded up the syringe, found a vein, and with only one false start stuck himself.

  Taking Simone’s hand, he left Templeton. The extra years bearing down on him were not as heavy as before, and the Slow kept some spring in his step. He closed his eyes, and tried to remember what it had meant to be a kid.

  The Day Michael

  Visited Happy Lake

  The house was quiet when Michael got there. Mom was at the hospital for a late shift tonight and wouldn’t be home until midnight, later if she picked up some overtime. And considering the money from Dad was late again this month, overtime was likely.

  He ignored the supper she’d left in the fridge, instead nuked a frozen pizza. After he was done with that and a can of Coke he watched some TV, did the little bit of homework he’d brought home, then got himself ready for bed. There was nothing else to do, no friends to see or talk to, and he liked reading in bed the best, anyway.

  He’d found some old books at a rummage sale on the way home today, and something had made him buy them. Lucky that Grandma had sent him ten bucks a couple of days ago.

  One was a tattered old sci-fi paperback, but the rest were books he remembered from when he was a kid, titles that Mom had likely tossed during one of her cleaning fits: Tales of the Green Green Woods, by Walter T. Haywood, a small hardcover, pretty beat up, and a bunch of other books by Haywood, including Culpepper Frog’s Big Day, James Jackrabbit’s Exciting Race, How Randall Grizzly Came to the Woods, and more. Just holding them had brought back warm memories, and he’d decided right then that he had to have them again.

  The novel looked interesting, but Michael decided he would check it out tomorrow. Instead, he started to flip through the Haywood books. There were fourteen in total, in varying conditions, all with illustrations on the cover and inside by someone named F.M. Davies. All of the pictures were of the creatures of the Green Green Woods, just as he remembered them. A distant memory cropped up, Michael sitting on the couch and wiggling because he had to pee so bad, until his mother in disgust had finally taken the book from his hands and sent him to the bathroom. He grinned as he remembered the look on her face.

  Doubling up his pillow, Michael read Culpepper Frog’s Big Day in less than a half hour. Yeah, it was a book for little kids, but the message about conservation was actually pretty decent; how Culpepper and the other animals kept Happy Lake from being drained would teach kids a lesson in a way adults couldn’t.

  He flipped to the front of the book, looking for information on when it had been published. On the inside of the cover he saw the words “This Book Belongs To,” and a child had scrawled his name on the line below, “Willy Thornton.” Curious, Michael picked up the other books and saw that all had once belonged to young Willy Thornton. One of them also had the date written in pencil under his name, 1938, in a more adult hand.

  Tales of the Green Green Woods was next, short stories about all of the animals in the woods, and Michael skipped back and forth, reading some stories now, saving others for later. By the time he got to the end of the last story he was starting to feel pretty fuzzy. He read the last few sentences of one story out loud to try and keep awake, half-mumbling and once had even lost his place, then closed the book and laid it on his table, then shut off the light. All in all he felt pretty satisfied, despite his day at school.

  He didn’t feel like he’d been aslee
p too long when the light came on again. Michael groaned and covered his eyes, then sat up, expecting that his mother was poking her nose in to tell him something of marginal importance. But when he managed to open his eyes to a squint he saw that the door was still closed. But he could hear something rustling around at the edge of his bed.

  Before he could react to the noise a large rabbit poked its head up down by his feet, then with a huff it hopped up onto the covers, followed by an over-sized frog. Both were wearing clothes, the rabbit in tie and tails, the frog wearing a yellow waistcoat and a bowler hat. Except for the fact that they were three-dimensional and very real-looking, they were exactly as F.M. Davies had imagined them in his illustrations for the books: James Jackrabbit and Culpepper Frog, in the flesh.

  Michael searched for but couldn’t find his voice. Culpepper Frog hopped over and sat on his pillow, then reached up and gently tapped him on the cheek. “You’re awake, kid. This ain’t a dream.” The frog’s voice was low and raspy, with something of a Chicago accent. And it smelled musty, which was a surprise; he would have expected it to have a moist odor, like a pond. Like Happy Lake, however that smelled.

  James Jackrabbit hopped over and settled in on Michael’s legs, its weight feeling very real. “What’s your name, son?” asked the rabbit. It also had an accent, from New England, Michael supposed.

  “Um, it’s Michael.” He wanted to jump out of bed and run, but with the rabbit sitting on him he was scared to move.

  The rabbit smiled at him, an eerie, unsettling sight that looked even more unnatural than the fact that it was wearing tie and tails and was proportionally not at all like a real rabbit. “Nice to meetcha, Mike.” It—he—shuffled up and sat on Michael’s stomach. “I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, but as I remember my manners, I’m James Jackrabbit, and this is my compatriot, Culpepper Frog.”

  Culpepper tipped his hat and also smiled. His teeth were flat and white, very much like a human’s.

  “I’m . . . pleased to meet both of you,” replied Michael. He closed his eyes and tried to take a deep breath, but only managed a series of slight gasps, he was shaking so hard.

  James Jackrabbit arched an eyebrow and smiled again, this time at Culpepper Frog. “He’s a polite one, ain’t he?”

  “That he is,” agreed the frog. “It’s nice to come back to a polite kid, Michael.” He stood on his hind legs and peered into Michael’s face. “But ain’t you a little bit old to be needing us?”

  Michael blinked his eyes. “Needing you? What do you mean?”

  James Jackrabbit tut-tutted. “Culpepper, he may be a little older than our last friend, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t need help.”

  “Help?” Michael was beginning to feel stupid, but before he could ask more, the door swung open and in lumbered a bear on its hind legs with a crow on its shoulder. The bear was a smallish grizzly—although it still had to duck its head and turn sideways to come through the door—and wore checkered knee-length shorts, and while the crow wore no clothes, it chewed on an unlit cigar. Randall Grizzly and Cameron Crow, joining James Jackrabbit and Culpepper Frog in Michael’s bedroom.

  “There ain’t nobody else in the house,” said the bear, his deep voice a rumble that penetrated right to Michael’s heart. “Kid’s all alone.”

  “Where’s your folks, kid?” asked the crow; he had a New York accent and while he talked held his cigar between two wing feathers that he worked like fingers.

  The frog reached over and grabbed a picture of Michael and his mother from his bookshelf and waved it at the others. “There’s no father in this photograph, fellas,” he said.

  Michael finally managed to find his voice. “My dad’s gone. We don’t hear from him too much. Mom’s at work tonight, doing overtime.” He looked to James Jackrabbit. “Listen. Can I get up and get myself a drink?”

  “Absolutely, kid,” answered the rabbit, hopping down to the floor.

  Michael got up and pulled his housecoat over his pyjamas, shuffled out to the kitchen and got a tall glass of water, added a couple of ice cubes that he chipped out of the frost-ridden freezer compartment, then went into the living room and sat down on the couch, letting the kitchen light spill in rather than reach overhead to turn on the lamp. All four animals sat on the floor in a semicircle in front of him. He took a long drink, gasped when he was done, and sat there looking at them, turning the glass in his fingers and rubbing at the condensation forming on the bottom.

  “I can see that you’ve decided we’re real,” said James Jackrabbit.

  Michael nodded.

  “It must be pretty scary having the lot of us just pop up the way we did.”

  “I would say . . .” Michael’s mouth was suddenly too parched to talk, so he took another drink. “I would say that it wouldn’t matter just how you popped up. I’d still be freaked out.”

  All of them chuckled at this. Then James hopped up onto the couch and sat beside him. “And yet we’re here.” He was smiling.

  Michael smiled back, nodded. “Yes. Yes, you are.”

  James clapped a paw on his shoulder. “So in that case, let’s settle down and figure out why you called us here.”

  Michael took another swallow of water. “But I didn’t call you here. You just showed up.”

  “Kid, we’ve been flat and dry for a long time now, and the only way for us to come back out is to be called.”

  “But I didn’t call you. I picked up some used copies of the books about you guys and read a couple before I went to sleep, is all. Just wanted to remember what it was like.”

  Culpepper hopped up and sat on the other side. “What what was like, kid?”

  Michael hung his head, feeling a little embarrassed. “Um . . . being younger, when I didn’t have any worries.”

  “Ah.” All of the animals nodded.

  “Are you saying you just got these books today?” asked Cameron Crow.

  Michael nodded. “At a rummage sale.”

  James sat up straighter. “Randall, go get the books from his room.”

  The bear ran and fetched the books, dropped them in a stack on the couch beside James. “Which one did you read last?” he asked.

  Michael pointed to Tales of the Green Green Woods. James slowly picked up the book, held it up to his face, nose quivering as he closed his eyes. “Oh my,” he finally said, voice soft and sad.

  “What?” asked Culpepper. “You know I can’t smell anything. Was he rolling the book in carrots or something?”

  James shook his head and held out the book for Randall to smell. From the bear came a growl that made the hairs on Michael’s neck stand on end.

  The rabbit then handed the book over to Michael. “We can’t read,” he said. “But we know, nonetheless. Still, I want you to read the name of the owner of this book.”

  Michael flipped it open and found the name the young hand had etched. “Willy Thornton.”

  Cameron squawked and flapped into the air, one feather coming loose and twirling to the floor. Culpepper’s croak was almost a belch, and his eyes looked ready to pop out of their sockets.

  “The young master must still be alive,” said Randall. “He’s the one who needs us.”

  The rabbit nodded. “Michael, do you have a map of your town anywhere in the house?”

  “I think so.” Michael jumped up and ran into the kitchen, opened the drawer underneath the microwave and rummaged through the papers. “Here it is,” he said, opening it as he ran back into the living room. He spread it on the floor and the animals gathered around it.

  James tapped at the map. “Blue means water, right? And green is for park or forest?”

  Michael nodded.

  “This ain’t a town, guys,” said Cameron. “It’s a pretty big city.” He sounded worried.

  James twitched his ears. “With Michael’s help, we’ll be able to do this, don’t fret.”

  “With my help?” Michael sat back on the floor. “Why do you need me?”

  “You foun
d the books for a reason, Michael,” said Culpepper. “And you know this city better than any of us.”

  He frowned. “What do I have to do?”

  James smiled and slapped him on the back. “Atta boy! Here,” he said, leaning back over the map and poking at it with his other paw. “This is the biggest lake that I can find. How far is that to walk?”

  Michael counted off the street numbers in his head; the park was clear across town. “An hour, maybe more.” He shrugged. “I’ve only ever ridden the bus or gone in the car with my mom before. Why?”

  “Because that’s Happy Lake, that’s why.”

  “No it isn’t.” Michael peered at the map. “It’s called Chester Pond.”

  James smiled, and all the other animals chuckled. “Tonight,” said the rabbit, “it’s gonna be Happy Lake.” He stood up and folded the map. “Now get yourself dressed and maybe grab a snack to bring along. We get to pay another visit to the Green Green Woods tonight.”

  “And bring along the books!” shouted Culpepper. “We’re gonna need them!”

  It was close to one in the morning when they finally stepped out into the night air. Just to be sure nobody was watching, Michael shut off the porch light and then had them all go out the back door. He stood there for a moment, surrounded by these impossible animals, and then sighed and pointed. “This way.”

  They weren’t even out of the yard when two cars drove by; all the animals froze, low to the ground, and Michael just stood there, shifting the backpack full of books and snacks, hoping they wouldn’t be spotted. They weren’t, but he started to wonder if it would be possible to even make it a block before someone called the police or the zoo or something.

  “We have to go over right away,” said James. “Michael, get Tales of the Green Green Woods and read the title and first line from page 37 out loud.”

  Michael sat on the grass and pulled the book and his flashlight from the pack, and opened to the first page. “Bonnie Raccoon’s Fishing Trip,” he said. Then, “It was a bright sunny morning when Bonnie Raccoon climbed from her comfy warm home in the side of the old oak tree.”