by J. Thorn
“Will he get his smokes in heaven?” Samuel asked.
“He will,” replied his mother.
Several other goliaths towered over Samuel as they approached the casket to pay their final respects. Two men wore dark-green uniforms slathered in medals of various sizes and shapes. They left the folded, triangular, American flag next to the casket.
“Your gramps fought like hell for his country in World War Two,” said the one man. The other simply stood with a face of stone.
Samuel’s mother patted her son on the head and bowed slightly to the uniformed man that spoke.
More adults came forward, each one speaking to Samuel’s mother through him and his limited vocabulary.
That little boy closed his eyes, and when he opened them, Major sat on the ground, wrapping his wounds and staring at the tree line where the alpha male had disappeared.
***
“Are you hurt?” Samuel asked.
Major shrugged. “They bit me.”
“I hurt the alpha male, but he ran away,” said Samuel.
“I know. It’s okay. You and him ain’t done yet. At least that’s what I’ve heard.”
“From who?”
Major just shrugged his shoulders and continued wrapping a strip of cloth around his left wrist.
“We need to get going and find the others,” said Samuel.
“I think we bought ourselves some time.”
“How much?”
“Enough.”
Samuel nodded as the last of his adrenaline subsided. He felt gnawing aches and pains coming from everywhere. His eyes felt heavy, and his legs became pillars of stone.
“We’re staying one more night,” he said.
“Seems like we both need it, for whatever goes as a night from now on,” replied Major.
Samuel opened the door and walked back into the cabin. He dropped his body to the bare board on the bunk and fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter 7
Samuel awoke to his own snores, the sound pulling him from an undisturbed rest, and he blinked and stretched his arms. Dull pains came to life as a reminder of the combat with the alpha male and his pack. He looked around the room. The chair sat empty, pushed back under the ancient desk, and the few personal items that Major had left on the floor were no longer there. Samuel stood and eased the door of the cabin open. The trees, the skyline, and the forest all sat in perfect silence. Not a single motion caught his attention. Samuel took a deep breath and could not smell the pines. He stood over the corpses of the wolves, inhaled, and again smelled nothing.
“Major!”
No reply.
He stared in the direction the alpha male had left and then opposite it, in the direction he assumed they had to travel. Again, not a single item in the locality moved. Samuel tried to remember what Major had said about a reverting or a rewinding, but he could not place it. Whatever it was had accelerated, and Samuel wondered how long it would take before everything, including himself, would be forever frozen in the solitary landscape. Before he could ponder that question, an item on the ground near the cabin caught his eye: one that had not been there the night before. He bent down and picked up a piece of paper, weathered and folded in half. Samuel glanced to the horizon and noticed a slight puff of charcoal that faded into deep obsidian. He felt the looming, endless night and shivered.
He unfolded the piece of paper to reveal a strong, but flowery, handwritten script. He recognized “Major” scribbled at the bottom, and he sat on the step of the cabin to read it aloud.
“Samuel. I am sure you find my sudden appearances and disappearances troubling. I’ll bet you’re confused about this locality, this existence, this whole damn place. The current Reversion is accelerating, much like the others I’ve experienced. I know you’ve felt that. I am probably three to four days from rejoining you at the Barren. The Barren is the remnants of a village. It could be a collection of reflections. I’m not sure. Whatever it is, there are structures there like the cabin. To get to the Barren, you’ll need to follow the path from the cabin to the summit. Looking down into the valley, you’ll see a winding pass that will take you through a wide marsh that eventually ends at the foot of another mountain. You’ll see the peak from the summit of the hill above the cabin. Stay on the path that will cut east around the base and take you to the opposite side. The Barren sits there on a high plain surrounded by unattended wheat fields. The cabins look like deer nestled in the grass from above. Wait there for me. I’ve left you a scimitar in the desk drawer. If you stay on the path, you won’t need it. Stay on the damn path. Until then, Major.”
Samuel shook his hand and reread the note.
“What about the alpha male?” he asked the dead air.
He stood and went inside the cabin. Samuel reached into the desk and retrieved the scimitar left for him by Major. The blade sparkled as if it had been sharpened, polished, and oiled. The leather binding wrapped around the handle and provided a solid grip. Samuel could not remember if he had seen Major using this knife in the fight with the wolves. He tied the sheath to his right thigh, and the top of it looped through his belt. Samuel tossed his few personal belongings into the rucksack and wished he had a flashlight.
The framed photograph hung on the wall in the same place it had for decades. The undisturbed dust covering it spread out even and smooth. Samuel stepped forward and brushed the dust from the surface as he had the first time he noticed it hanging in the cabin. This time, however, there was no picture underneath the glass. Held by the frame was nothing more than a black square. Samuel moved closer to the surface of the glass, imagining his hand might push through it and the wall, appearing on the outside of the cabin. Instead, his hand stopped. The picture was gone like Major said it would be.
The reflections aren’t as strong as the original, they don’t last long.
That’s what Samuel remembered. He frowned and stepped back, deciding he did not care much for the reflections. He cared even less for this locality.
***
He decided to keep moving. When he looked down from the summit, he could no longer locate the cabin. He struggled to find the path stretching out to the horizon and weaving inside the trees. At a certain distance, the horizon melted the sky and the earth together into a hazy cloud. The cloud was not moving as fast as a summer thunderstorm, but it was clearly coming up from behind and swallowing the land beneath it. Samuel told himself to visually mark its progress. As long as the Reversion did not leap ahead, he could manage to stay ahead of it on the way to the Barren. He laughed and shook his head, wondering if the Barren would provide a safe haven or simply be the final destination to succumb to the end of this place.
Samuel put the summit behind him. He crept down the mountainside, switching back and forth on the path in a constant descent. He lost sight of the horizon and the perspective of direction, and hoped to remain focused on reaching the Barren, and Major, and whatever stood beyond that. By the time Samuel reached the valley floor, his muscles ached. He felt the sweat clinging to his clothes and robbing his body of heat as the exertion slowed him down. He tipped his forehead underneath his left arm and sniffed. His nose could not detect the faintest scent.
Samuel had walked a few hundred yards on the path stretching into the valley floor when the landscape began to change. As he came down the mountain, the trees reappeared in greater number and proximity. The trail narrowed until it was barely wide enough for him to pass. The massive, deciduous trees gave way to low-hanging weeping willows and their long trails of thin leaves. He identified Spanish moss on the trunks of several, which confirmed that he had in fact reached the marsh that Major had mentioned. Samuel drew a deep breath and caught the slightest hint of brackish water and rotting vegetation. He drew another to confirm it was real.
The Reversion must unwind from one direction of the locality to the other, he thought.
With the hope that he was outpacing the ominous cloud approaching the summit, Samuel decided to rest. He cou
ld no longer regulate day and night, as the light source in this world had burnt out like an old incandescent bulb in a lonely room, spilling the last feeble rays into eternal darkness. He laid the rucksack at his feet and looked over a shoulder at a pile of loose branches near a rock. He gathered them up and ran a hand over the surface, detecting a hint of moisture, but not enough to keep it from burning. He was not sure if he was going to need the light or the heat, but creating a fire for his camp felt like the right thing to do. Samuel arranged the twigs in an A-frame design and removed the lighter from his pocket. He had bent down low and rocked his thumb back on the flint when a voice broke the heavy silence.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
***
Samuel spun around, expecting to see Major. He saw nothing but the faint outline of the willows standing guard over the marsh. He shook his head and pulled his thumb back again, this time sure he could ignore the phantom voice in his head.
“Don’t do that.”
Samuel turned his head toward the voice. He watched as the outline of a human appeared to rise from the marsh. Water dripped from the ends of patchy strings of hair as the form walked toward Samuel. Strips of clothing that had once covered a body with style dangled from pointed elbows and knees. It was not until the person stood before Samuel that he was able to gaze upon the face.
The man stood with the dying light reflecting off of his exposed bone. Clumps of white covered his face where skin had once stretched over his skull. He had two black holes for eyes, and his mouth was parted in a demonic grin.
“It speeds up the Reversion. I don’t know why, but it does,” said the man standing before Samuel.
“Okay,” replied Samuel.
“I’m dead,” said the man.
Samuel shifted his legs and stood to face the man. He detected a whiff of decay, which disappeared quickly. The flotsam from the marsh clung to the dead man’s frame like a cape hung from bony shoulders.
“The dead don’t speak. Or walk.”
“They do here.”
The dead man moved toward the stack of twigs. He sat on the ground with a wet plop. His hand, stripped of skin, motioned for Samuel to do the same.
“Let’s talk,” he said.
Samuel nodded and sat on the other side of the woodpile, never taking his eyes off the dead man. “What should I call you?” he asked.
“I cannot reveal my name yet,” replied the man. “You can call me whatever you want.”
Samuel nodded again, but did not christen him with an identity.
“It must have something to do with the changing form, you know. Wood, to fire, to ash. It’s like an energy tide that rolls the darkening cloud faster toward the opposite horizon.”
Samuel looked at the lighter in his hand and dropped it back into a pocket.
“Are you alone?” the man asked.
“Yes.”
Samuel sat there and decided to let the dead man have what he needed from their interaction. After a prolonged silence, the man spoke again.
“Do you know of the Jains?” he asked.
Samuel shook his head and thought about the sleep he craved. “No.”
The dead man rocked backward and placed both bony hands on his knees.
“They were the first, in your original locality, to come up with the idea of ahimsa. They called themselves ‘the defenders of all beings.’ Do you know why?”
Samuel did not reply, knowing the conversation would occur anyway.
“The Jains believed in conquering desire as a way of achieving enlightenment. Enlightenment, for them, was escaping the cycle of rebirth. Reincarnation was a curse to avoid, not some type of immortality.”
“Sounds Buddhist,” said Samuel.
“It is. Mahavira and Buddha were contemporaries. But they are not the same.” The dead man paused before continuing. “Because of their belief in the cycle of rebirth, Jains also believed that every living thing had a soul. Not just intelligent creatures, but the trees, birds, plants. Everything. So the pain man inflicts on other living creatures is really the pain he inflicts on himself. ‘Many times I have been drawn and quartered, torn apart, and skinned, helpless in snares and traps, a deer. An infinite number of times I have been felled, stripped of my bark, cut up, and sawn into planks’.”
“That’s not possible. You can’t exist without destroying something else that is living,” replied Samuel.
“You can if you are not of the living.”
Samuel raised his eyebrows.
The dead man stood. His bones cracked. He turned toward the marsh and took stilted steps to the water’s edge. When the black liquid crept up to his knees, he turned to face Samuel once more.
“Rest. Sleep. Dream. I hope you can find the peace I cannot.”
The dead man pushed forward until the water of the marsh converged over the top of his head. Samuel watched a single bubble arise and pop soundlessly in the darkness. He lay on his side and allowed the spell of sleep to arrive.
***
Samuel awoke tired and achy. He gathered his things and took one last look at the marsh before continuing on the path, heading east toward the Barren and his meeting with Major. The dark cloud pushed ever closer as it devoured the locality.
Samuel could not remember the point at which he had left the path. He recalled the coming of the snow, and the cold, and the continued silence, but he felt as though one moment he had stood on the worn ground and the next he was knee-deep in gray snow.
The cold, heavy flakes floated from the sky. They landed one on top of another and covered the ground within an hour. Samuel thought the snow could have been white, but without daylight and the reflection off the snowpack, the precipitation fell in waves of gray. Samuel could not see the dark cloud that came from the west, but he felt it. He knew it was there, above the winter storm in the place where winter did not exist.
He trudged onward, sensing east as best he could. The snow came in silent waves, covering the locality and burying the marsh, the path, and obscuring the mountain from view. Samuel realized his shirt and pants would not be enough for him to survive if this was indeed the onslaught of winter. The locality carried no warning, no shot across the bow with falling leaves of autumn.
Samuel felt the snow suffocating his breath with the cold wind on his back. The ice kept his fingers numb, the fatigue pulling his eyelids down. The snowy blanket covered his body, the frozen earth stealing what little heat remained. He raised his head and noticed conforming lines standing out against the random, spiky branches of the leafless trees. He rubbed the snow from his eyes and looked again, pushing himself up until he was on his hands and knees. He stumbled forward until the outline turned into a cabin, much like the first one he had found.
The cabin stood in the snowstorm, its chimney a defiant, obscene gesture to the raging elements. One door and one window faced Samuel, like they had at the other cabin. However, this one seemed a bit larger. He held his hands out, hoping to reach the door before the storm claimed his soul. Samuel staggered forward and fell on the step. He reached up with one hand until he felt the brass knob, and the touch jolted him like a bolt of electricity, reminding him that failure to open this door meant a cold, slow death. His right hand seized. Samuel could not make his fingers grasp the knob with enough strength to turn it. He would not even consider what would happen if the door was locked. Samuel let his right hand fall, and lunged at the knob with his left. Snow caked his head, and his feet tingled with the itchy pain of frostbite. Samuel felt his fingers claw the knob. He grasped it and turned his wrist. Without the clinking sound of the opening strike plate, Samuel assumed he was dead: that the door was locked. However, Samuel’s left arm fell at an angle as the door to the cabin swung open. He raised his head and smiled. Samuel crawled across the threshold with a final lunge and rolled onto his back. He used an elbow to slam the door shut, and it shook the cabin without a sound. Samuel looked around and closed his eyes. His breathing slowed as relief and exhaus
tion pulled him into a state of unconsciousness.
***
It was the crackling fire that woke him. Samuel heard the hiss and pop of firewood before he smelled the rustic aroma of the hearth. He smiled with his eyes closed, savoring the sound and smell, senses he sometimes neglected in life and never would again, thanks to this locality. Samuel caught whiffs of scents, but again, nothing that lingered for more than a few moments before he lost it.
He debated whether or not he had perished. Maybe it was true. Maybe there was fire. Maybe he was in Hell.
Curiosity won the mental duel, and Samuel opened his eyes in the glare of the bright yellow and orange flame. He placed a hand over his forehead to shield himself from the unexpected light, blinked, and saw chasers, like an ascetic emerging from a cave after years of meditation. The warmth relaxed his muscles. As his vision returned, he noticed a fuzzy aura at the edges of it. He pushed up onto his elbows and looked around the cabin.
The hearth sat inside a black potbelly stove. A single iron pipe ran at an angle from the top and into the brick chimney, which extended up the wall and beyond the ceiling. A saucepan sizzled, with tendrils of enticing steam spiraling away from the stovetop. He turned to see a wooden table with two chairs, one at each end. A napkin holder, candles, and steins sat on top. His rucksack sat next to the door, along with a pair of suede boots that he did not recognize. Above the boots, and suspended by a single iron hook, was a long, black, leather trench coat. Samuel smiled, thinking of the futuristic sci-fi heroes laden with enormous weapons. A single leather reading chair sat in one corner, swirled sides with brass rivets holding the soft leather tight over the cushions. Samuel thought he could become lost in that chair with the help of a good book and a glass of wine. His eyes moved through the cabin so quickly that he did not notice that a thick, plush sleeping bag held his body like a cocoon. He felt his feet. They did not tingle with the burning pain of extreme cold, but rather, his toes wiggled in warm comfort. He glanced at the window next to the door and saw nothing but a charcoal square, as if someone had painted the window to block the outside. Samuel drifted into a deep sleep while the potbelly stove kept him warm.
