by Billy Wells
From time to time, Claude would see Cory's name in the Washington Post. Sometimes he saw his picture in a magazine with an article about an impressive building he had designed. But during all the years that followed, neither ever tried to get together for a reunion with their families.
* * *
Then one day, years later, Claude received an invitation for a twenty-fifth college reunion. He’d chosen not to attend any of the previous reunions, but this time, he thought it would be fun to see his old friends from UVA. The affair was to be held at a restaurant near the campus. By this time, Claude had completely lost track of Cory’s career and hadn’t seen anything written about him for over five years.
On the night of the event, Lydia, accompanied him to the reunion. During the festivities, Claude enjoyed rekindling old times with his classmates from the graduating class of 1988. Some, who had been fat, were now thin; others, who were thin, were fat. Some were bald, and some had gray or snow-white hair. Some wore expensive clothes; others dressed as if the time had not been as kind with their lives.
Claude was disappointed Cory had not chosen to attend the reunion. At least, he had assumed that until Horace Lindsey circulated a two-page handout of pictures of classmates, who had passed away since graduation.
When he saw Cory's picture on the first page, it saddened him to think they had never spoken after the horrific incident with the grizzly.
When Claude saw the date, 1988, under Cory's graduation picture, he assumed the person who had created the brochure had inadvertently typed the wrong year of his death. He turned to Horace Lindsey, who had lived in the room next to them in the dorm, and casually mentioned the oversight. Horace smiled cordially and replied, “No, Claude, I don't think this is wrong. Cory was killed by a grizzly that escaped when the truck transporting it to the Atlanta zoo overturned. Don’t you remember, he was on a camping trip in West Virginia with his roommate, Cl....”
Horace hesitated, when he suddenly realized Claude was Cory's roommate, and he was with him the day he died. He looked at him oddly and said, “I don't understand, Claude. Certainly you know better than anyone what happened to Cory that terrible day.”
“Horace. I don't know what you mean. A bear chased Cory and me and had us pinned in a hole for over eight hours. But luckily, it finally gave up on us and left. It was certainly a close call, but we came home unscathed. Cory became a famous architect. He designed several landmark buildings in Manhattan and Chicago with his prestigious firm.”
Horace was confused and turned to another classmate, Murphy Schwartz, “Hey, Murph, do you remember Cory Phelps, who was in our class?”
“Sure. I remember Corey. He was on the track team with me. Too bad about the way he had to go, having a runaway grizzly attack him a few months after we graduated.”
Murphy looked up, and when he saw Claude standing with his mouth agape, he realized immediately he had been with Cory when he died. He began to stammer an apology when Claude cut him off.
“Look, fellas.” Claude explained. “I don't know why you think Cory died the day we were attacked by the bear, but I assure you, he was alive no more than five years ago and became a famous architect.”
“The two of them looked at Claude suspiciously. Horace inched forward in an attempt to smell Claude’s breath and finally said, “I don't want to upset you, but I believe Margie has a news clipping of the obits of the members of our class who passed away. You might want to look at that. Maybe, it will clarify the date for you.”
Claude saw Margie seated at a table across the room. As he approached, he saw a three-ring binder in front of her. For some reason he had an eerie feeling when he said, “Margie, I understand you have the obits of the classmates who passed away so far.”
“Yes, I do. I have all of them in this binder.”
“Could I see it?”
“Surely.” She handed it to him.
Claude opened the binder and stared at a picture of his friend and roommate, Cory Phelps, and his obituary clipped from the original Charlottesville Dailey Progress on November 15, 1988. The obits were in chronological order, and Cory was the first person in the class who had died after graduation. Reading from the top, the article indicated a grizzly bear, that had escaped from an overturned transport truck near Seneca Rocks, WV in the Appalachian Mountains, had killed his friend during a camping trip.
Claude’s head started to spin, and he quickly took a nearby seat and pretended to read from the notebook.
After pulling himself together, he threaded his way back to his table, where his wife was conversing with the former president of his class, Harriet Long. Afterward Claude sat in a daze and tried to make sense of his confusion about what happened on that fateful day in 1988. He made small talk with some of his classmates until he and Lydia left the party at ten o’clock.
It wasn’t long before Lydia sensed something was wrong as they headed toward home in Fairfax, Va., which was three hours from Charlottesville.
“What's wrong, Darling? Did something upset you about the reunion?”
Without hesitation, he blurted, “I’m totally confused about what happened when Cory, my roommate at college, and I were trapped in a hole with a twelve hundred pound grizzly breathing down our necks.”
“What do you mean, Darling? Did you blackout or something?”
“No. I remember it like it happened yesterday. You don’t forget something like that. We were trapped in a hole for a long time, but the bear finally wandered off, and we lived to tell about it. Cory, who was my best friend ever since the fifth grade, became a world-renowned architect who designed some of the tallest buildings in the world. I have a clipping I saved from Time magazine at home in my file cabinet.”
The words excited him as soon as they rolled off his tongue. When he arrived home, he would find the clipping to prove to himself he was not insane. Certainly, he didn’t dream Cory had a life.
“So what did the other classmates say about your roommate?” Lydia asked innocently.
“Two classmates said he was killed by the bear that day and never lived to have the life I remember. Another classmate showed me the obituary from the local newspaper from 1988, which also gives the bear attack as the cause of death.”
“Wow. That is strange.” Lydia said, and thinking back, she looked at Claude quizzically for some time and continued, “You say your best friend’s name was Cory, and he was your roommate in college?”
“That’s right. Cory Phelps. We met in the fifth grade, and he was my roommate all four years at UVA.”
“I'm surprised. I don’t remember you ever mentioning him before. He wasn’t invited to our wedding. Do you have a picture of him?”
“Of course. We went everywhere together for years,” Claude answered defensively. Then, shaking his head in bewilderment about the absence of a wedding invitation, he couldn't remember a single picture he had of Cory.
This realization was mindboggling to him. “I'm sorry, Lydia, I have a migraine. My head is about to explode. This thing about the year Cory died has really creeped me out.”
“Do you want me to drive?”
“Maybe you'd better.”
Claude pulled to the shoulder of the road and traded seats with Lydia. She drove as he sat wrestling with the cloudy memories of the past.
Finally, they arrived at their two-story colonial. As soon as Claude entered the house, he headed to the den and opened the file cabinet next to his desk. He saw the tab marked “fourth tallest building in the world,” removed it, and opened the folder.
He couldn't believe his eyes when he saw the picture of a blonde and short stranger who looked nothing like his friend standing in front of the skyscraper. The caption read Cary Barnes, not Cory Phelps.
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, he remembered the creepy voice in his head that he had not thought of since that day in 1988. Horrific images flashed in his memory from the dark past. He saw Cory smiling, and he heard his voice, “Don't worry, Big Man. We’ll mak
e it home, I promise.”
Then, somewhere behind his eyes, he saw Cory on the ground just outside the hole in the rock face. He had a big bump on his head, and he was holding his right knee and glaring at him in disbelief. In his mind’s eye, Claude saw the bear bounding into the hole as he scurried away as fast as he could. He heard Cory’s gut wrenching scream and the sound of the grizzly ripping his friend apart. Sadly, he remembered never looking back.
Is this what really happened? Had he sacrificed Cory for his own life and concocted some kind of fantasy about what happened that day?
Lydia stood with her mouth agape, staring at the wild look on Claude’s face as his lip began to shudder uncontrollably. Spittle ran down his chin as he tore at his hair and beat his fist on the desktop.
“What's wrong, Darling. Settle down. You look like you're having some kind of breakdown.”
Claude threw the picture of the architect and the skyscraper on the desktop and stood up. He disappeared into the bedroom and when he returned, he looked at Lydia like someone he vaguely recognized but didn’t really know. He muttered, “I need air and time to think.”
“Please, Darling. Don't leave. Stay here with me. I'm afraid you might hurt yourself or someone else in the state you’re in.”
“I'm okay. I need some time alone. I'll be back soon.”
She tried to hold him, but he pushed her away and fled out the front door with something tucked inside his coat.
Claude returned to his Lexus and sped away into the black night. He kept driving and driving, watching the blur of the double solid lines passing relentlessly for miles and miles.
* * *
Three hours later, he saw the Appalachian Mountain range in the distance, a silhouette in the night sky, as he ascended the highway up a winding road of hairpin turns.
When he pulled into the parking lot, an eerie feeling of déjà vu sent shivers up his spine. He got out of the car and started up the path like it was yesterday towards the stand of boulders at the foot of the mountain where the bear had attacked them.
It was a tedious climb, particularly, with his street shoes, and he scraped his arms and legs several times on the jagged rocks. He cursed when he slipped and tore a big hole in the knee of the suit he’d worn to the reunion. But did it really matter? He probably wouldn’t be coming back down if Satan were waiting for him in the rocks.
As he approached the fateful spot where the bear had trapped them in the crevice, he felt an eerie wind whisper on the shorthairs of the back of his neck. It sounded like a thousand souls crying in the night. Standing atop one of the boulders, he saw the silhouette of the devil against the night sky. In the light of a full moon that hung among a blanket of stars, he saw a face with no features except for his piercing red eyes that glowed like slits of fire.
“What are you doing here, Claude?” Satan asked grimly.
Claude recognized the voice immediately, “My memory has always been crystal clear about what happened here twenty-five years ago. The bear trapped us in the hole, but finally gave up on us, and we returned home safely. The next day, Cory and I went our separate ways to start new jobs. We had successful careers, got married, raised a family, and lived happily ever after. The strange part is all my classmates say Cory died here twenty-five years ago and never had the life I thought he had.”
“Cory didn't want to make a deal like you did. I offered him the same chance I offered you. He was a fool and suffered the consequences. He wouldn't sacrifice you to the bear. It's a dog eat dog world, Claude. He was a loser and paid the ultimate price.”
“Are you saying he wouldn’t sacrifice me to the bear, but I sacrificed him?”
“I never said that. Why sweat the small stuff, Claude. You went on and had a wonderful life with a woman you loved and who loved you. She gave you beautiful children, who gave you grandchildren you love dearly. Am I right or am I right? Fuck, Cory. He’s not even a pile of bones now.”
“You miserable…fiend.”
“Claude. I have many names, but fiend is not one of them,” Satan said curtly.”
“You made me kill my best friend to save my own skin.”
“I never said that. Why punish yourself, Claude? You don’t know what part you played that day. You only know Cory was killed by the bear and didn’t become an architect like you thought. There’s no reason to feel guilty, he would have died anyway whether you sold your…I mean made the deal with me or not.”
Claude stood in the darkness with tears streaming down his face.
He looked up at Satan’s red glowing eyes and said, “Somehow I fell into your trap and let you deceive me about the deal I made with you. Somehow, you erased the guilt of my actions from my mind all my life. But several hours ago, I saw visions of what really happened that day.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that. I never thought you would. I must be slipping after thousands of years.”
“And somewhere down the road there’ll come a day of reckoning when you will ask me to do some diabolical act for you. Am I right or am I right?”
“Exactly,” Satan said with a chuckle. “And the day is finally imminent after all these years. In fact, I have a job for you next Tuesday.”
Claude thought for a moment and replied, “Next Tuesday, I'm scheduled to take photographs of President Obama and his cabinet for an article to appear in Newsweek the following month.”
“Correct, Claude! Your time of greatness is only three days away. You will be more famous than John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and all the other great assassins of all time. When you take the picture on Tuesday, the camera will explode and exterminate the entire US cabinet and send the United States government into complete chaos.”
“You must be crazy if you think I’d kill the President.”
“You must do my bidding, or else,” Satan shrieked.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You won’t believe what would have happened to your lovely wife if you had not married her.”
“You fiend.”
“Stop calling me that. Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Mammon, or The Prince of Darkness will do for right now, but not fiend. Anyhoo, Lydia didn't fare well with the ax murderer who swept her off her feet and then chopped them off. The end was quite grisly and excruciatingly painful.”
“Fiend.”
“Claude. You’re testing my patience. Where was I? Oh, yes. If you don't follow through, your children and your grandchildren were never born. Think of all the joy and happiness that will be swept away in the blink of an eye. Every good thing you ever did since 1988 will not happen, and many people will suffer and die needlessly. Who gives a flying fuck if a group of ass kissing politicians is blown to smithereens? Just like the lawyers at the bottom of the ocean with five hundred pounds of chains wrapped around their feet. It’s a good start. Would you rather see those imbeciles live or your own precious family? You had a wonderful life, Claude. Are you going to throw it all away?”
Claude pulled out the 38 special concealed in his coat pocket and fired five quick shots at the demon with red eyes. Satan stood with his mouthful of fangs agape as the bullets ricocheted off the rocks behind him. Claude put the gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger. He heard a click and the devil said, “Now Claude, it's not going to be that easy to welsh on our deal.”
Suddenly Claude and Cory were back in the hole with their backs to the wall, cringing in fear. The ten-foot monster swiped the air in front of their faces with its enormous claws.
Then the boulder that kept the beast from reaching Claude and Cory disappeared in a puff of smoke. The last thing they heard was a gale of raucous laughter filling their ears as the grizzly pounced on them with all its fury and began to maul, slash, and tear them to ribbons with toothy delight.
* * *
Twenty-five years later at the 50th reunion of the class of ‘88, only half of those who attended the 25th year reunion returned.
About halfway through the evening, the master
of ceremonies played a disc on a large screen monitor of the class members who had passed away since graduation.
The first picture that appeared on the screen was of Cory Phelps. The caption underneath read November 15, 1988. Unlike before, the second picture was of Claude Jarvis. He had the same caption underneath his yearbook picture, November 15, 1988.
Horace Lindsey said to Murph Schwartz, “I remember those guys like it was yesterday. They loved life and their futures were bright. They had everything going for them. They could've written their own ticket and gone as far as they could dream. Can you believe the bad luck? It’s mind boggling to think a grizzly that was transported over fifteen hundred miles from its habitat snuffed out their lives only a few months after they graduated.”
“Horace, when you’re right, you’re right.”
ABSOLUTELY NO FISHING
As Henry and Dave approached the impressive community with fifteen mansions bordering an expansive lake, Henry’s face darkened when he saw the huge sign on the entry gate that read: PRIVATE PROPERTY- NO TRESPASSING- ABSOLUTELY NO FISHING WITHOUT SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES.
He looked at his long time buddy with the big tattoos on both biceps and the nose ring and said “Hey, man. We can't fish here. This is private property. These rich dudes have their own private docks, and they don’t want poor people like us smelling up the place.”
Dave scoffed and snapped a reply, "It's the off-season, Bro. Do you see anyone around? It's as cold as a witch’s tit this time of year. These are summer homes of the rich and famous.”
Henry peered into the distance in wonder at the monstrous structures, each over 10,000 square feet, some with four car garages. Shaking his head in disbelief, he said, if these are summer homes, what the fuck do their main homes look like?”
