Superman's Cape

by Brian Spangler

  “Oh, Shit!” he exhaled and felt his other leg begin to sink against the soft Earth. Panic was stinging his eyes as he crunched his face and looked around to find something to grab on to. Kyle reached out and around and gripped at only air as he sank further.

  “This isn’t quicksand!” Kyle yelled half-jokingly to the trees. But it also wasn’t the field of grass he thought it was. He was already cold, and his legs were aching in the wet as mud trapped him from the knees to his feet. Chills grew as the mud mouths drank the warmth from him. They sucked on his legs like straws and he could feel his teeth begin to dance in a chatter. He pulled his arms around his body in a vain attempt to warm himself.

  Kyle slowed his struggles. Quicksand or not, he knew that moving too fast would only encourage the bog-mud mouths to hold onto him longer. They’d be fast to eat up more of him if he let them. He put his hands down and tried to push up. He pushed, thinking he could brace an area and then lift his feet. New bog mouths opened up beneath his hands. The cold wet ran between his fingers and stole them from his sight. The salt air pinched his nose as the young mouths threatened to take all of his hands. Panicked sweat ran into his eyes. It stung and distracted him while fear mounted and erased all the ideas of hunger that waited in his belly.

  Before he realized what was happening, Kyle lost his balance and fell flat on his belly. He closed his eyes. He waited for another bog mouth to open up and swallow him whole. He could visualize the monster of all bog mouths swimming up through the loose mud from thirty feet below. He tried not to cry as he imagined the mega-bog mouth’s long tail whipping back and forth, propelling it up to attack him as he lay like some kind of prey squirming on the surface. Kyle opened his eyes when nothing happened. No mega-bog mouth swam up to attack him. He found nothing but more mud and water to paint his body.

  “I’ll swim out of here,” he told the trees, sounding relieved. Kyle inched forward like a worm. After a few feet, he pulled up half a leg. His panic was easing while the slow steady rhythm of pump and grind became his normal. He touched solid ground. It helped him move forward. His front slid across the top of the mud and eventually his leg was up and behind him.

  Cold sweat dripped from his hair and needled his eyes. His heart was thumping hard. He felt hot and cold. He felt sweaty while his teeth continued chattering. Kyle raced against the tides that wanted to pull him in. When his muscles cramped, the strength of his momentum faded. He needed to rest. He needed to breathe. He had started to cry, but couldn’t remember when. Exhaustion was setting and his sobbing slowed. Salt air felt congested and thick in his lungs when he tried to cough.

  He pitched his eyes up and saw the sky growing dark. A deep line of clouds broke in what was a mix of daylight and an early showing of stars. He stopped again and took another breath. The smell of falling rain stirred into the sea air and a breeze ran over his wet face.

  “Gotta keep moving,” he mumbled. Grabbing at straws of grass in front of him, Kyle’s hand fell on something hard. It wasn’t rock hard or even ground hard. Instead it was something that felt like a handle. Momentum stirred anew and he ate it up. He swung his other hand around from behind him and took hold. With both hands he pulled until he saw stars in his eyes. Salt air congestion squeezed his lungs as he coughed out another breath.

  The mystery handle didn’t move, it held solid. It was rooted to whatever was on the other side and gave Kyle the leverage he needed. He pulled again, and this time his body closed in on the Pines and solid ground. He pulled again, and the handle burped a mud bubble and started to let go. Kyle pulled even harder. He wanted to squeeze every inch he could from the handle for as long as it would let him.

  Just as Kyle’s chin reached the handle, it rolled towards his face. A long breath of suction released air and gasses and mud. A stench, unlike any he’d known, swallowed his breath. He gasped. The smell of rot turned his stomach and caused him to retch. A frenzy of flies took off all around his head. Some hit his face, and one landed in his eye. His stomach turned again as his eye bled tears in a battle with the fly. In the dusky light, he could see what finally gave way. He could see and smell and even taste what rolled. It was the remains of a half-buried animal. Maybe a small deer or large dog. He could make out what he thought was an eye. A dead eye. It stared back at him as though offended by the disruption. Whatever it was, it got stuck in the same bog mud and couldn’t get out. It died there.

  Kyle held onto the bones of the animal and pulled harder. He pulled until he was face to face with the rotting meat that was its insides. He pulled so that he was lying on the dead animal. Kyle squirmed on whatever gave him the traction he needed to bring his knees up and crawl. He retched some more. The flies and white pustule worms he uncovered clung to his shirt and skin like passengers. They crawled over his arms, leaving their maggot trails as they inched along. Fresh vomit filled his nose and mouth. He blew the vomit out and sucked in more of the air filled with decay and rot. He squirmed until he crawled. He quickened the crawl and began to clear the carcass using the bones for his footing. His ears filled with an odd crunching in reply to his feet. He crawled some more until he walked, and then he walked until he ran. And when he was back to the pines, he collapsed onto his back and spat more vomit before catching his breath.

  14

  When Sara saw the blue and red lights flashing through the trailer windows, she was reminded of the day a police car pulled up to their old house. They were there to bring home Jonnie and Kyle. They were there to bring home news she didn’t want to hear. She heard their words. She heard every sound. She could still see images of Jonnie and Kyle getting out of the patrol car. A young officer, a woman in her early twenties, approached the foothold of their door. Sara felt confused by the look in her boy’s faces and the shallow reach of the officer’s eyes. She remembered denying what the young woman was trying to tell her. The officer looked uncomfortable in her uniform as she held back her own tears. It’s just so sad, Sara remembered the officer mouthing in a whisper as she struggled with the words. But she did manage to tell Sara what happened. She struggled more when she told Sara that Chris was dead. Sara remembered all of it.

  This evening’s squad cars threw the same blue and red lights, but they didn’t have Kyle in their front seat. This evening she needed them to help find her son. To bring him home. Angst was what Sara felt when thinking of Kyle out there alone in the dark. She hurt thinking of him as lost and cold and hungry.

  A mother is there to protect. A mother is supposed to guard. She was his mother, and when he was hurting most, she just let him go. But she was hurting, too. And maybe a part of her, a small part of her, the part that was dodging guilt, didn’t want to run after him. She didn’t want to hold him after he broke the picture frame. After he stomped his foot on the photo of her and Chris and Kyle and even Jonnie (to those that knew).

  “Ma’am, I’m Captain Saunders, and this is Officer Richards,” the Captain offered from the landing of the trailer with a small nod of his head.

  With the heel of her hand, Sara wiped a tear from the corner of her eye.

  “Please come in,” Sara consented, opening the screen door.

  As the officers entered, Sara realized just how small the trailer was. For her and the boys, the size seemed to be reasonable. It wasn’t the Ritz or a Palace of any kind, but for the three of them to eat, bathe and sleep, it satisfied. Captain Saunders wasn’t a small man. Well over six feet, and although in his late forties and graying, he was fit. He stood young. His chest was out in front more than growing in the middle. And while Captain Saunders was a large man, Officer Richards was even bigger.

  “Ma’am, first, let me say how sorry we are for your loss,” Captain Saunders’ voice echoed with sincerity from the inside of the trailer. Taking his hat off and holding it in front of him he continued, “We’re a few hours from where you lived before, but we all followed the story of your husband and think the world of him for standing up the way he did.” Sara watched as rain water rushed
from the brim of the Captain’s hat. Large drops spilled to the floor where the men stood. Sara paused for a moment, uncertain whether her voice would stay strong if she tried to speak. When the moment passed, she turned her eyes away from the water on the floor and back to the Officers, “please call me Sara – and thank you,” she answered with appreciation.

  The men nodded then loosened their jackets. Sara noticed the rugged gear on the officers. They were dressed in hunting or army fatigues that carried elements of a police uniform. The fatigues bore a camouflage that Sara thought matched the colors of the afternoon trees. The only constant in terms of color that stood out to her was the gun and their badges.

  “So I understand your boy, Kyle, may have hiked into the woods behind your house?” Officer Richards asked, having pulled a small tablet and pencil from a shirt pocket. He flipped a few pages using his thumb. He then licked the tip of his pencil, and started writing down the events as Sara recited them. He wrote about the ride back from the doctor’s office in Beasty. He wrote about the words spilled along with the broken picture frame. He wrote about Kyle walking out of the trailer, and he even wrote about Sara closing her eyes and falling asleep. Sara wondered if she should have left that last part out.

  Sara couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable with some of the questions. At times the trailer fell silent with only the sound of moving leather from their uniforms and the odd sounds of scratching from Officer Richard’s pencil. As Sara watched the pencil move across the tablet, a feeling of urgency bloomed. She wanted the questions over. She wanted the men to leave and start looking for Kyle.

  “Did he have a cell phone, or could he have walked the road and maybe called someone?” the Officer continued in his questions.

  Sara considered this for a moment then shrugged and answered, “No phone. But I suppose he could’ve walked …” she started, “… but after I realized he was missing I called home to all of our friends and family.” Sara gestured another no and continued, “Nobody talked to him or heard from him.”

  “Well we’re trying to rule out all possibility of him being in the woods,” the Captain interjected.

  Captain Saunders glanced at Officer Richards then back at Sara. Captain Saunders gave Sara an inquiring look and then said, “We took the liberty of stopping off at your neighbors and asked if anyone saw or heard something. To be frank, none of your neighbors even knew who you were, or that you were living here,” he continued. Sara picked up a sound of reservation in his voice. She regretted not making an effort to introduce themselves to the folks sharing their street. It wasn’t a case of being snooty or snobbish or even because she was so busy. No, in her mind it was the idea that staying any length of time was too strange, too foreign. She told herself the trailer was just a temporary setback. She told herself this every day when she left the dreams behind on her sheets and pillow. All this is temporary, once the finances are settled, we can get some of our old life back, she thought, and then brought her hands together and rolled her wedding band between her fingers.

  The Captain chewed on his upper lip as though trying to take back any accusatory tone that might have crept into his words, and then said, “I don’t mean to scare you ma’am, but you should know what we’re up against if your son did in fact enter those woods,” he finished.

  “What Captain Saunders is trying to say is …” Officer Richards started then looked at his partner and back to Sara, “… what you have behind your home isn’t a small stream with trees that housing developers just carved into. The woods are a part of the Croatan National Forest. If your son went into those woods without an understanding of where he was, then it could take some time to find him,” the Officer finished.

  “How long?” was all Sara could think to ask. She pushed back the pressure in her head – it told her she was going to break down in front of the two strangers. And she didn’t want to do that.

  Captain Saunders raised his voice with optimism. “Ma’am, we’re calling in all the folks around here who know these woods. We’re also calling in the Forest Service, and we’ve already put a call into the State police who can coordinate a broader search outside the perimeter if needed. I know that doesn’t answer your question, but the truth is it could be minutes, hours or maybe days,” he answered and paused to try and offer an assuring smile. “I can tell you that we know what to look for, and we will do everything we can.” When he finished, he shuffled his feet after looking down to the floor and seeing the puddle they created. Embarrassed, he looked up and offered apologies for the mess.

  “We’ll be setting up shop off to the side of your home facing the yard. We want to put up a sort of command and control center where we can coordinate across the various agencies and perform our search effort from,” he explained before extending a hand to take Sara’s.

  “Certainly … yes, anything. Just please help me get my son home,” she pleaded, and by now was begging in her mind that they leave. Needing for them to be out of her home. She was sure to fall and collapse to the wet floor in front of them and cry, and she didn’t want any more police seeing that.

  “We have a half dozen officers and volunteers at the face of the woods with flashlights and radios, but with these rains becoming heavy I expect we will have a long night before we can really get in there and find your boy,” Captain Saunders said turning toward the door.

  “I’ll put on some coffee,” Sara offered, holding her hands in a tight ball. She held her fingers close in attempt to relax the shaking.

  As the Officers turned, Sara eased the trailer door closed behind them. With a small lift, she adjusted the handle to kick it past the sticking frame. When she heard the door’s latch collapse and settle, Sara turned around, leaned her back against the door, and sat down with her knees up to her chin and her face in her hands. Quiet tears followed her hands and then down her arms. Then came the racking sobs as her mind flashed more images of Kyle in the woods -- wet, hungry, alone and scared.

  15

  It was all a dream, just a dream. A bad one. A nightmare, in fact. The kind you wake from and let sit in front of your eyes. After a moment or two, you might try to shake the remains out of your head. If you’re lucky, the nightmare will leave. Sometimes luck is just a fable and the nightmare is your reality – and the nightmare is the start and the end of your day.

  Kyle lay in his old bed. He was home in the house his little brother was born into. The familiar smell of his sheets and pillow came with each breath. He stirred a sleepy smile to the sounds of the squirrels and the songbirds outside his window. He heard their busy preparations for another game of capture the flag around the backyard feeders.

  He dreamed of his dad and the burn hole that began to bleed. He dreamed of Jonnie’s blue blanket, Superman’s Cape, and how it faded to red and then to gray and then to black before falling to the ground in a pile of bones and ash. Kyle’s smile thinned as his lips pressed to a narrow line. A dream. All of it. Even the trailer’s stack of moving boxes and Beasty who moved the boxes. All of it, just a dream. A bad dream.

  The nightmare was his being lost. Lost in woods he did not recognize. Lost in woods that hid the sun during the day, and turned winter cold at night. The nightmare was his legs being eaten by muddy brackish waters. A bog mud that devoured little boys in a swamp where animals with rotting flesh could choose to save your life or let you join them in a tidal eternity.

  Kyle refused the urge to open his eyes. He wasn’t ready to leave the dream where he was home in his old bed. Home, under sheets and a blanket that were his accomplices in stealing just five more minutes before starting the day. Large drops of rain teased his eyes. At first they fell at random, their bodies hitting the pine needle floor around him and seeming to join the tail end of his dreams. The rain grew to become a steady pace. One after the other. Each making fun of him until he was left with no other choice but to wake up.

  Kyle opened his eyes. And when he could see nothing, when the world around remained black, he tried rubbin
g the sleep out of them. Mud on his hands and arms yanked his mind from his sleep and his dreams. The roughness of the ground upon which he sat and the cold that swept over his skin jerked him awake faster.

  Sleepy images came into focus as the rain drops fell a little harder. Squinting, he could see trees and ground and the clearing that almost took his life. “None of it was a dream,” he muttered and closed his hands around the pine needles on the ground.

  Kyle was waking up. He opened his eyes wider to take in as much of the available light he could. He listened to what was around him. He took in the air and searched past the faint smell of sea salt. He looked at everything and for anything that might help him.

  The sounds were almost distracting. The chatter among the trees and the swamp were louder than he expected. Above him, he heard wings flapping. The tangled sounds of tree leaves and pine needles stirred from the ground. He thought maybe it was a field mouse or a stray cat who knew the woods better than he did.

  A ‘queenk, queenk, queenk’ came from the trees and from the muddy bog area where he envisioned the fallen chess pieces moving in approach to the solid grounds. Fleetingly, he wondered if the chess pieces would ever escape. But then forgot about them when he recognized what the ‘queenk, queenk, queenk’ sounds were. “Tree Frogs,” he mumbled. He knew the chirps to be Tree frogs. He remembered hearing them during a late afternoon fishing trip. They call out when it gets dark or after it rains, his father told him. Get a lot of them together and the chorus can be deafening. These tree frogs were loud. The ‘queenk, queenk, queenk’ was all around him. It needled his ears. The sound was getting into his head, and while he’d only been awake a few minutes, he thought the sounds might make him scream.

  The rain was coming down harder. He glimpsed a streak of blue-white racing over the tree tops. A moment later, a shallow roll of thunder interrupted the tree frogs. Heavy drops showered him of the bog mud. It was on his arms and legs and covered most of his pants and shirt. He was caked in the mud. It made his skin feel tight and he found himself wishing he had buckets of rain water to wash it off.