As a result, Christopher grew more and more nervous with each descending step. He wondered if they would be going downward forever and what would be at the end—if they ever arrived. There were so many thoughts going through his head, so many ideas. He felt as though he would never be out of there. The only comforting thing was the cool wind that occasionally blew around him, tossing his hair about and refreshing his lungs and skin. In a strange way, it felt as though the wind was attempting to comfort him.
“Finally,” James whispered as the tunnel came suddenly ended, opening up into a large chamber where the sound of constantly crashing, echoing water filled the air. “This room here is huge.”
Christopher carefully followed James into the large chamber, wildly swinging his flashlight beam about in an attempt to uncover everything there was to see as quickly as possible. Water rushed down into an out-of-the-way corner of the large chamber, collecting in a pool comparable in size to the one at the entrance. There was yet another stream that flowed from this pool, this time disappearing into a nearby wall of rock. Christopher was floored with the beauty of this place, as all around him the walls seemed to shimmer and dance from the beam of both he and his brother’s flashlights. Every surface scintillated in beautiful, unusual ways. It didn’t appear that the cave went on any farther, though, but for that Christopher was rather thankful that it seemed to be impossible to go any further deeper inside.
“That’s up where we were earlier,” James said with a sense of accomplishment. He pointed the beam of his light up to the cave’s high ceiling, but could only see the mouth of the drop-off, and even then it was only visible when he shined his light on the water pouring out of it. “The tunnel we were at just winded around all the way down here. It’s amazing.”
Christopher searched around the area, amazed at every sight his light happened upon. Something he found on the cave floor made him stop completely in his tracks.
“This…,” Christopher whispered, “…this is what we were looking for.”
“What is it?” James asked, walking toward Christopher.
Both beams affixed upon the floor in the center of the cave, where a large white cross was painted on the ground. There were no signs of shoes or a necklace being left behind. Yet this didn’t stop the feeling of sadness, eerie strangeness that suddenly washed over both Christopher and James.
“This is it,” James whispered, his voice noticeably trembling. “This is where they found her stuff.”
“I wonder who painted this cross….” Christopher traced his hand over the paint. “Maybe the parents.”
“Probably…,” James answered. “It’s sad.”
“Yeah…,” Christopher whispered.
For some time the brothers continued to search the area, to see if they could find anything more. Once they were content that there wasn’t another passageway out, or anything else of superstitious interest or unnatural nature, the two sat down against the cold cave floor with Poppy beside them.
Christopher rummaged through his sack and pulled out the remnants of his sandwich, and after sniffing it gingerly, took a healthy bite out of it. “It’s not bad.”
“Of course it’s not!” James retorted. “Bones didn’t make it.”
Christopher burst out laughing, almost choking on the sandwich. “His cooking…wow, it’s really crappy. I mean, I’m happy he tries.”
“My stomach is never happy that he tries,” James said, laughing as he pretended to throw up, complete with accompanying guttural noises.
“It’s not that bad.”
“Oh, it is.”
Christopher pulled the canteen out of the pack, taking a long drink of water. He tugged on Poppy’s leash, bringing her closer to him. Having Poppy near made him feel so much more comfortable about hanging out at the bottom of the cave’s falls. Christopher placed his arm around Poppy’s shoulders and stretched out his feet alongside her. “So…did you find what you wanted to find…down here?”
“I don’t think so,” James said, the humor that he had now gone. “Then again, I don’t know what I was expecting.”
“Do you at least feel better, I mean…about things?” Christopher asked, although really he didn’t even know if he himself felt better.
“I don’t think so…,” James said, hanging his head in his hands. “I don’t know exactly what I expected to find down here. Maybe I just wanted to believe in something that wasn’t normal, something that wasn’t normal everyday reality. It’s just seems like every day is full of sad events, and that the world is full of people who have lost people and many other things.”
“I know what you mean,” Christopher whispered. To have to think about things like this just made him feel sadder, yet it was a truth that he knew. “Even the people we’ve met here. I mean, look at Bones, he lost Grandma…and Kylie’s family, her father’s gone…Alena, well, she disappeared from here…then there’s us….”
“Then there’s us…,” James repeated. “I think I just wanted to have something to show me that there was still magic left in the world. That if there were spirits here or that something strange had happened here…then maybe, just maybe, there was something else to this world than just sadness and losing people you care about.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t find it here,” Christopher whispered. “What you were looking for.”
James lifted his head from his hands and shook his head roughly, as though he was trying to shake away all of his unhappy feelings. “You remember what dad use to say whenever unfair things would happen?”
“Yeah…,” Christopher said, sorting through his thoughts for a moment. Sometimes it was hard to remember things about his father, and it was especially hard to remember much of anything right then, as deep in the cave as he currently was. “That stuff changes, basically because we’re not meant to be in control, or something.”
“That things change, because we as people don’t have the authority to change them,” James added. “I don’t think I’ve ever understood that until now…I think it’s about feeling helpless.
“I feel helpless a lot,” Christopher said, gently rubbing the back of Poppy’s ears. “I’ve felt helpless every day since they’ve left.”
“Yeah….” James rummaged around in his backpack, pulling out his sandwich. He slowly unwrapped the plastic, and when he was finished he tore off half of the sandwich, throwing it to Poppy. “Here you go, Kate,” he said, petting the old red dog.
Christopher chuckled a little. “You’re going to give her a complex.”
James shook his head and cracked a little smile. After taking a bite of the sandwich he looked at it, a bit disappointed. “What do you miss most…about home?”
“Hmm…” Christopher thought for a moment. “Videogames.”
“Bones has a TV. This isn’t the Stone Age here…you know?” James pulled his canteen from the bag.
“It’s black and white. Plus, I don’t even think I can hook up the Nintendo to it,” Christopher said.
James laughed. “Maybe it is the Stone Age here, then.”
“What do you miss most?” Christopher asked.
James glanced at his sandwich once more. “Taco Bell….”
Poppy let out a low whine, followed by a genuine crying noise.
“I think she’s got to pee,” Christopher whispered, looking over toward James.
“Let her go in the corner, it’s no problem,” James said as he packed his lunch items into his backpack and then rose to his feet.
“No way!” Christopher exclaimed. “This is a holy place; if I let her pee in here who knows what bad things will happen to me. I’ll get cursed and I’ll never be able to pee again, and then I’ll explode.”
“That, or maybe Pennywise the clown will come and get you,” James added, laughing at the thought.
“That’s really not funny here!” Christopher protested. “That book gave me nightmares!”
“Let’s get out of here then,” James said as he turned back towar
d the tunnel they had previously followed.
The brothers made their way back through the winding passageway, and neither really had anything much to say as they continued the journey. Occasionally Poppy would whine, letting the two know that they should pick up the pace a bit, lest they go ahead and test that theory about bad things happening if she marked a bit of the territory as her own. Yet, for obviously being a dog that was not very well trained, she showed an awfully large amount of restraint.
It took Christopher’s eyes a great while to adjust to daylight once again when he finally exited the cave. It was a painful process just trying to keep his eyes open enough so that he wouldn’t trip over anything or fall into the creek. Once Poppy answered her call of nature, they all walked back home, and on the way Christopher went over every little detail of the adventure he and his brother had had in the cave just moments before. After all, that’s what it was to him—an adventure. Like something out of a videogame. Of course, there was no battle against an almighty evil that was to be fought at the end of the “level.”
That night, after exchanging stories with Bones about all that they had accomplished that day, they readied themselves for bed. For once in a long time, Christopher actually felt like sleeping. He dragged himself up the stairs to his bedroom with the heavy feeling that often comes after going through an exciting day, and having seen something that not everyone in the world had seen. Maybe he had even gained a better understanding about the feelings that he and James were both apparently going through. It was an amazing feeling, especially since this was only the third day that they were here. It really was starting to feel like a home. Everything really and sincerely was starting to feel good again. Just the thought of it, to Christopher, was simply amazing.
Exhausted, Christopher climbed into bed, Fred the stuffed dog in hand. James wouldn’t be sleeping beside him this evening, yet he was all right with that. He was content to be alone, and he felt great. Outside the crickets sang, and this time it seemed as though they had brought a few tree frogs along with them for their performance. It was so easy to let the sleep in that night, almost too easy.
Some time passed as he slept, and Christopher was unaware of exactly how much time had gone by. He felt strange once again, although this time there was no fear. Like his first night here, he was awake without any good reason or cause to be.
“Am I even awake?” He could feel his lips move as he spoke. Perhaps, he thought, this must be a dream. A dream would make sense at the moment, yet he felt awake. Perhaps he was having a dream about feeling awake?
“That doesn’t make much sense.” He could feel vibrations in his head as mumbled in the darkness. “If I’m awake, I can open my eyes.” He grasped for control over his body. He tried to open his eyelids, paused, and attempted it once more. Slowly the room filled into view, and it was only a touch brighter than the darkness that existed when his eyes were closed.
“This doesn’t make much sense.” He could hear himself talking now. Christopher was startled when he realized he could see himself speaking, too, and he watched as those exact five words puffed out of his mouth—in English—as tiny billowing white puffs that danced and flowed until they disappeared into the ceiling, dispersing like smoke.
“What is this?” Christopher asked in a panic, and then the question—What is this?—seeped out between his lips. Christopher stayed panicked. His breath felt hot and short. He struggled to lift his arms, finding he could not move them; he struggled with his legs, and found they were equally paralyzed. If he was dreaming he desperately wanted it to end; if he was awake he sincerely wanted to be sleeping. “Help me…,” he pleaded.
Help me—the words danced off of his lips and into the air, this time twirling around and around as though a wind had caught a hold of them.
Wind, Christopher thought to himself. There was a wind in here. Not just any wind either; this was a familiar wind. It filled his lungs and cooled his throat, which surprisingly no longer burned or felt constrained. The feelings also drifted away, and Christopher was now sure that this was not, after all, a dream. “Not a dream.…”
Not a dream…. The words drifted from his mouth and danced across the room, twirling about in the wind before disappearing into the far wall.
Christopher found it very strange that he should feel so relaxed, especially with everything that was going on. As far as he remembered (his mind was rather cloudy, after all) words just don’t go around visibly materializing and blowing around like that. The more that he thought about it, the more amused he became.
“Weeeeeeeee!” Christopher said, and smiled as he watched it—Weeeeeeeee!—billow out of his lips, catching the wind in the room and tumbling end over end into the wall. “I shouldn’t be okay with this,” Christopher thought to himself, growing more and more aware of how weird the situation was. “I really shouldn’t be okay with this.”
“Four score and seven years ago…the forefathers of this great nation ate some eggs and bacon.” Christopher declared, and then, to his great amusement, watched as the long train of smoky white words emanated from his mouth. Just as before, once the long sentence caught in the familiar wind—the wind of the cave—the words went tumbling around like fallen leaves in autumn. I’ve lost it, Christopher thought. It’s not James who went crazy…it’s me.
Strange, though, that he should feel so content. “I shouldn’t feel happy about this.”
Just when things couldn’t possibly get much stranger, Christopher could feel something soft squirming about underneath his left arm. “Fred?” Christopher said, and the words came out and danced about the room. That’s Fred again, Christopher thought.
Fred the white stuffed dog, a little worse for wear from the tear of time and attention, climbed up to his feet and made his way up to Christopher’s face. He plopped down lightly on his neck, since he was full of fluff, and embraced the side of Christopher’s face, giving him a great big (or as big as he could manage) hug.
“Thanks, Fred,” Christopher said, and again he produced smoky, magical words from his mouth. “I’ve really lost it.”
“You should be sleeping, Christopher,” Fred whispered. His voice was kind and gentle; the voice that Christopher had always thought Fred should sound like, if he had had the ability to talk. “The wind is here now,” the stuffed dog finished.
“The wind is here now…,” Christopher said, the words visibly eking out of his mouth one final time as his eyes suddenly grew heavy. Before he could think or attempt to move, he was asleep.
Perhaps he and James had really brought something back with them after all.
Chapter 5: First, Two, and then Three
A spoonful of magic is worth more than an ocean of gold.
Christopher’s eyes slowly adjusted to the morning light, noticing they seemed a bit more unwilling to cooperate than usual. He rubbed his eyes violently, hoping that it might possibly speed along the process of restoring his vision. Painfully, he sat up—this was, strangely, also a more difficult feat than usual. He thought long and hard. There had to be some reason that he felt so strange this morning, hadn’t there? It pained his mind to think so hard about something that he couldn’t quite grasp, and only made him feel that much worse.
The more and more he struggled to think clearly, the more and more he thought about the night before. There had to be something…there was definitely something to remember. A memory, maybe even a dream. Lost, like some elusive butterfly that was so small that even the most tightly-woven net could not catch it. It felt important to remember, anyway. Maybe just the fact that there was something to tell was important enough, something that might just help James.
Once he could see properly, Christopher scanned his current surroundings, finding things not to be quite right at all. Instead of being in his upstairs bedroom where he should have been, he was sleeping on the downstairs couch in the main room of the house. Covering him in lieu of a nice warm blanket or sheet was a pile of old newspapers and a couple of
hunting magazines that Bones kept around on the coffee table. Christopher felt a flood of emotions—of confusion and slight embarrassment. He thought back, and knew it had not been but two years ago when he had done a bit of sleepwalking. He didn’t remember the exact incident himself, but his parents had told him that on a vacation he had tried to just get up and walk right out of the hotel room. When they asked him where he was headed, he would not reply. He would just keep walking, causing his parents to eventually have to restrain him in the bed for a short time.
Christopher pushed off the surrogate blanket, attempting to refold the newspapers and restack some magazines, so that no one would wake up and see what he had done. As long as no one had already seen him, that is. When Christopher lived in Bloomington, he had a friend whose cat was such a heavy sleeper his friend used to move the cat to other places of the house without it waking up. Christopher realized now how the cat must have felt.
Before Christopher could finish tidying up, somewhere in the room a telephone started to ring, or rather, blare, sounding mostly muffled and clueing Christopher in that it was definitely not somewhere in plain sight.
Window in the Earth Trilogy Page 6
