by Brian Hodge
He drew a deep breath in through his nostrils, letting his chest expand until it strained the straps of his backpack.
Why not give it a shot?
After all, running away from home was supposed to be an adventure. Maybe he was playing it too safe by staying so close to home.
"If it's worth doing," he muttered to himself, "it's worth doing right."
But as he strode through the woods, his step suddenly faltered. The reality of what he was doing—what he already had done—hit him much deeper than he thought it would. Forget about Marty, who would probably celebrate when he found out he was gone; his father was going to freak out royally.
Maybe it wasn't fair to take off like this.
Maybe he was being selfish, leaving without a word.
And maybe it would be better to stick a little closer to home for a day or two just to see how it felt.
Kip stopped short in his tracks and looked longingly back over his shoulder at the way he had come. It wasn't very far to the caves. Less than two miles from his house. But the woods suddenly seemed to telescope in and out, swelling and shifting so much he could barely recognize where he was. He'd walked this path and played out here—how many times? Hundreds. Thousands. But now he suddenly felt as though he had been teleported to some wild, uninhabited planet. With a heavy sigh, he straightened his shoulders to brace himself and started walking again, but now he moved a bit slower.
"No," he said, kicking the toe of his sneaker at the mat of rotting leaves on the forest floor. He'd stick with his first plan and spend a few nights near the caves. It's not admitting defeat or saying I'm scared of being alone in the woods, he told himself. He was just trying running away from home on for size to see how it felt before he committed himself to it. After all, he had all summer to decide.
2
By the time Bill wandered into the kitchen, Marty was seated at the kitchen table. He cradled his head in his hands as he stared through half-closed eyes at his glass of orange juice. His father had grounded him the night before because of the whole mess about summer school, so he had stayed up late, playing video games in his room and listening to music on his headphones. Now he was paying for it.
"How'd you sleep?" his father asked as he opened the coffee can and started filling the basket of the coffee maker. His movements were slow, and even though he'd slept later than he wanted to, he took the time to inhale the coffee aroma before filling the carafe with water.
Marty shifted his head to the side, not wanting his father to see his eyes. If they looked as bad as they felt, he was surprised they weren't running down his cheeks like watery eggs.
"All right, I guess," Marty said. His throat felt like it was lined with gravel, so he took a sip of juice and licked his lips.
Once the carafe was filled, Bill slid the coffee basket into the machine, dumped the water in, and flipped the switch. A gurgling hiss, which had always reminded Bill of an asthmatic's lungs, filled the kitchen. Turning around, he leaned against the counter and regarded his son.
"Did you think any more about what we talked about last night?"
Marty looked at him but quickly lowered his eyes. "You mean about summer school... or Kip?"
Bill shrugged, "Both," he said as he got his coffee cup out of the dish drainer. It had been a birthday present from Kip several years ago—back when Lori was still alive—and showed a sleepy-eyed person, sprawled over a paper-cluttered desk. "I don't do Mondays," read the caption.
Marty's head bobbed up and down several times, but Bill wasn't sure if he was agreeing with him or just on the edge of falling back asleep.
"Well...?" Bill said.
"Yeah, yeah," Marty said impatiently. "I'll go to freakin' summer school." Again he flickered a glance at his father. "I won't like it, but I'll go."
Bill nodded reassuringly. "I think that's the right decision," he said simply. "It'd be a drag not to graduate with your class."
Marty wanted to say, screw graduating with his class, but he kept his mouth shut and lowered his eyes. He could just about give a shit about his class. He had decided to go to summer school only because it meant he would graduate on time and be done with school forever by this time next year.
Bill went to the refrigerator and got a carton of milk and the second half of a grapefruit he had started the day before. The coffee was still dripping through the coffee maker, but after a glance at his watch, he took the half-filled pot and quickly filled his cup. He tossed half a spoonful of sugar into the cup, and then added a generous amount of milk.
With his cup in one hand and the grapefruit in the other, he sat down at the table across from Marty. He was trying to lose the little bicycle tire of flab around his beltline, so he scrupulously avoided putting sugar on his fruit. He scooped out a section and couldn't help but wince as he bit into it.
"Speaking of Kip..." He glanced at the doorway leading into the living room. "Have you seen him this morning?"
Marty shook his head and mumbled something that approximated, no.
Bill took another bite of grapefruit, chewed, and swallowed before pushing the chair back and standing up. "Hey, Kip!" he shouted, cupping his hands to his mouth. "Come on! Time to get up!"
The house was silent as Bill waited for a response, and when none came, he took a sip of coffee and started for upstairs. "He said he was going to do Mrs. Robinson's lawn today," he said over his shoulder to Marty by way of explanation before walking through the living room and up the stairs.
Pausing outside Kip's door, he leaned forward, listening for signs of activity in the bedroom. Now that Kip was almost a teenager, the family had established certain ground rules about bursting into someone's bedroom unannounced.
"Hey," Bill called out, giving the door a light rap with his knuckles. The door wasn't shut tightly, and it swung slowly open.
"Kip?" Bill leaned into the room but still didn't enter. The bed had obviously been slept in, but he was pretty sure there wasn't a body underneath the jumble of sheets and blankets. Yesterday's dirty clothes lay in a tangled heap on the floor at the foot of the bed.
"You here?" Bill said, taking a few steps into the room and listening intently, but he already knew Kip wasn't there. He scanned the room, a puzzled expression on his face. He hadn't heard Kip get up early, and now that he thought about it, there hadn't been any dirty breakfast dishes in the sink.
Bill bent down and picked up the dirty laundry, then went quickly downstairs. He dropped the load into the laundry basket and sat back down at the kitchen table. By now his coffee had cooled, so he took a huge swallow followed by another bite of grapefruit before speaking.
"Kip didn't say anything to you about going somewhere today, did he?"
Marty still hadn't moved from his chair, and without looking up, he shook his head. "Uh-uh."
"Kip wasn't in his room." Bill glanced at his wrist-watch and grimaced. "Damn, I can't be late for that meeting with Perkins."
Marty's face brightened as he looked at his father.
"He's probably off somewhere with his dip-shit—with his friends."
Bill stood up as he finished his coffee, then took one last bite of grapefruit before stuffing the rind down into the garbage disposal. He rinsed out his cup and placed it on the sideboard. He picked up his briefcase by the door and slung his sports coat over his arm.
"I'll be in the office all day. No. I'll be in court this afternoon. Give me a call if you haven't heard from your brother by noontime, 'kay?"
Marty's upper lip twisted into a sneer. "Do I have to?" he asked, his voice a mocking whine. "Maybe we got lucky, and he ran away."
"Not funny," Bill said, but Marty was thinking if he had his way, he'd be nowhere near the house, near Kip, or near a phone until late this afternoon. He wanted to head back out to the Indian Caves with Cassie. If Al and Jenny wanted to come along, fine, but he intended to party down today, especially if he had to start summer school next week.
"I'm just a little concerned," he said
with an edge of irritation in his voice. "It isn't like Kip to just skip out like that, so when you see him, give me a buzz and let me know, got it?"
"Yeah. Sure. Don't worry," Marty was giving his father less than half of his attention because, now that he was waking up, all he could think about was getting out to the caves.
His father left, closing the door hard enough behind him to rattle the glass in the window. Marty sat poised in his chair, listening to his father's receding footsteps. The car door opened and slammed shut; then the engine started up. Marty finished his glass of juice, even though it was now a little too warm. Leaning forward, he watched out the window as his father backed the car around and then took off, leaving behind a thin haze of exhaust.
"Aw-right," he whispered as he put down his empty juice glass and stood up. He grabbed the phone and dialed Al's number but wasn't surprised when he didn't get an answer: Al's mother and father both worked at the Sappi Paper Mill in Westbrook, and Suzie worked at Unum in South Portland. Al was probably so sacked out he didn't even hear the phone ringing, so after five or six rings, Marty didn't leave a message before hanging up. It would be just as easy to walk over to Al's. They could call the girls from Al's house and make plans for the afternoon.
No hurry... no worry, Marty thought. No matter how it went, it was going to be a fine day even if he said to hell with the agreement he and Al had and ended up going out to the caves alone.
3
Clearing a space big enough to set up his tent was more work than Kip had expected, and—again—he was glad he had chosen not to strike out right away for the White Mountains. As he slashed away at the brush, swinging the broad blade of his brother's hunting knife like a machete, sweat carved thin lines through the dust and dirt on his arms and face. His green T-shirt had dark circles of sweat under the arms, and it clung to his back as if he had worn it swimming.
It was still a little too early in the season for mosquitoes, but—worse—a cloud of black flies swirled like a vibrating halo around his head. As he swatted viciously at them with his free hand, Kip thought, in honor of the occasion, he should have worn his T-shirt with a picture of a black fly and the logo: "Black flies don't just bite. They suck."
He had already worked nearly three hours, and his campsite wasn't even half ready. With sweat stinging his eyes and the back of his neck ridged with black fly bites, he was beginning to think that just maybe he had made a mistake. Certainly, he was stupid not to have thought to bring insect repellent, and he thought that maybe, before he'd been missing for too long, he should sneak back to town and buy some. Then again, he'd be all right once he got the tent set up. He could sit inside with the flap zipped shut and read all afternoon, black flies be damned.
His campsite was close to the Indian Caves but hidden from it. The entrance to the caves was on one side of a sloping rise, known as Eagle Hill. If you followed any of the several trails to the top of Eagle Hill, to the west you could look down onto a good sized portion of Thornton. Beyond that, a latticework of farms, towns, and trees swept toward the New Hampshire border and to the purple-hazed ridges of the White Mountains beyond. Even in June, sometimes you could see the gleam of snow like icing on the top of Mount Washington.
About a hundred feet to the right of the cave entrance, a fast flowing stream ran, sparkling over a slick, boulder-lined bed. It eventually emptied into the Saco River and from there flowed to the sea. The water was pure, drinkable without purifying, so Kip wanted to be near that. No sense lugging water. One of the more pleasant thoughts he had was being able to fall asleep listening to the bubbling chatter of the stream.
When he reached the stream this morning and crossed it, he recalled reading in history class about Caesar crossing the Rubicon. That made him laugh out loud, and the sound bounced back to him, echoing above the burbling sound of the water. It was with great relief that he had slung the backpack off his aching shoulders and, after quickly surveying the area, set to work.
That had been three hours ago, and in that time, much of Kip's enthusiasm had wilted with the increasing heat of the day. His stomach grumbled with hunger the whole time he worked, but he vowed to himself that he wouldn't stop to eat until his campsite was ready. Sips from the cold stream had hit his stomach like ice and only made his hunger worse.
First, he had cleared the ground for the tent. This entailed hacking down brush, pulling up as many of the small stumps and roots as he could, and then leveling the ground as best as he could. The forest floor was spongy with the mulch of rotten leaves and although it took effort, when he was done, he'd have a place to sleep almost as comfortable as his mattress back at home.
Thinking of home made him wonder again if he had been missed yet. He had decided not to leave a "goodbye—I'm leaving" note because he wanted as much of a head start as he could get. No sense announcing that he was splitting. If he did that, he might as well leave a trail of breadcrumbs for someone to follow.
No, this way was best. Just disappear like morning dew. He chuckled when he noticed the cuffs of his pants were still damp from this morning's trek across the field. Dirt clung to the damp cloth, making wide, brown collars at his ankles. He figured he'd wash his clothes in the stream once the tent was up and he had eaten lunch.
At last, when he had cleared an area large enough for the tent, Kip hauled the nylon shell and aluminum poles from his backpack. First he laid down the plastic ground cloth to help keep out ground moisture. Then, after assembling the poles, he spread the tent on the ground and shook the stakes out of their nylon carrying bag. Only then did he discover his second mistake. He didn't have anything to drive the stakes into the ground. This was quickly remedied by a trip to the stream, where he picked up a bell-shaped stone he could use as a hammer.
The sound he made as he pounded the tent stakes into the ground filled the woods like rifle shots. The work went slowly because he constantly kept looking around, scanning the area and wondering if anyone could hear the noise he was making. He was concerned that the rushing sound of the stream would mask the sound of anyone approaching his campsite until it was too late, so he hurriedly drove the rest of the stakes into the ground just to be done.
Next, he took the assembled poles and, climbing inside the collapsed tent, put up the back pole first and then the front pole. Once erected, the tent walls were still a bit floppy, but that was an easy matter of pulling out and staking down the guy ropes. When the job was finished, he got his sleeping bag from the backpack and, fluffing it to get the down unpacked, rolled it out onto the tent floor. By this time he was dripping with sweat, but he dropped onto the sleeping bag, clasped his hands behind his head, and watched contentedly as the shadows of leaves danced across the tent walls. He couldn't repress the thrill that raced through him when he realized that this was it.
He was ready.
But as he lay there, Kip saw a shadow move across the tent wall that made him jerk up. Among the dancing shadows of leaves and branches, he saw something else shift silently by—something that didn't look like leaves. He sat up, frozen in place and poised for danger. Sweat ran down his face and stung his eyes, and he held his breath so long it began to hurt.
He had no idea what it was. The shape had been distorted by the angle of the tent wall, but it might have been a dog or maybe a raccoon. But unless they were rabid, raccoons usually didn't come out in the daytime. Whatever this was, it appeared to be small and slouch-shouldered. It moved silently, looking almost like a person, crawling slowly on all fours from the front of the tent to the back.
There was no way Kip could tell what it was by the shadow it cast on the tent wall. He wasn't even sure how close the thing was. Its shadow twisted and blended with the shadows of the trees, distorted and magnified. Once it was at the back of the tent, Kip sat there, unmoving and imagining the worst. He hardly dared turn his head to watch it.
He cursed himself for not bringing his backpack into the tent with him. Foolishly, he had left Marty's hunting knife with it, so if
whatever that was out there, if it decided to attack him, he was defenseless.
His pulse was thudding in his ears as he listened for any sound other than the gentle hissing of the wind in the leaves. He imagined the Nazgul, the "dark riders" from Lord of the Rings as they tracked the hobbits across Middle Earth, swinging from their dark steeds, their black cloaks sweeping the ground as they crawled about, sniffing the ground for any trace of their quarry.
Is that it? he wondered. Am I being stalked by something?
Or—as Marty no doubt would say—was he just being a wimp and letting his imagination get carried away?
It could have been just the shadows of the trees.
Couldn't it?
His eyes were opened so wide they began to hurt as he scanned back and forth across the tent wall, wishing his vision could cut like a lance through the thin nylon and see what was out there. Suddenly, it seemed as if all of the shadows cast on the tent wall were moving, and they didn't move like branches and leaves being tossed about by an errant breeze. Clumps of fluttering beech tree leaves coalesced into odd-shaped heads and bodies. Branches suddenly looked like gnarled, twisted arms with long, bony fingers that reached out for him...grasping...clawing.
His ribs felt compressed by some huge, invisible grip. His shoulders began to tremble from the strain. Any moment now, he expected yellowed, hooked claws to slash through the nylon tent and tear it and him apart with hissing, ripping sounds. And then...then they would grab him, and do to him—
—what they did to Mom!
His mind shouted, and the word "Mom" echoed.
"No!" he yelled, suddenly lurching forward. A corner of his mind was surprised that he managed to get enough air to whimper, much less scream.
His arms flailing, he unzipped the tent screen and dove out onto the ground. His hands and feet kicked up divots in forest floor as he scrambled on all fours over to the backpack. He was frantic and looking all around as his fingers, as if with a mind of their own, opened the backpack and fumbled for the knife. Once it was free of its scabbard, he withdrew the six-inch blade and held it up so it glinted in the sun as he shifted into a defensive crouch.
