“I don’t know…,” Bones whispered, taking in a deep breath. “I just don’t know…I mean, how am I supposed to prepare for something like this? If this is real—I mean, I know it’s real…if she’s down there…Cat….”
“You can see her again,” Christopher whispered, placing a hand on Bones’ shoulder. “You can be with her again.”
“Even if only for a moment,” James added.
“Yeah…,” Bones agreed, shaking his head once more before continuing. “I hate to be the one to say it, though. We don’t know what we’re dealing with here. It’s a great thing, obviously, but—and this is a big but—we have no idea what force is at work with this kind of thing.”
“We don’t think it’s bad,” James said. “If it wanted to hurt us, it had plenty of opportunities.”
“Yeah,” Kylie agreed. “Christopher and James both went in, and other than being shaken up quite a bit…they were fine.”
“Not that it’s not scary though,” Christopher added as he remembered all the uncomfortable things he had to go through to actually get to the picture. “But it’s worth it, it really is.”
“I know…,” Bones whispered, appearing very strained and conflicted. “It just has been so long since I’ve seen her, you know? I’ve been through the loss once, and I don’t know if I’m ready to deal with those kinds of feelings all over again.”
“You won’t remember…,” Christopher said, recalling his own experience. “When you’re with her, you won’t remember that she’s gone.”
“I didn’t remember either…,” James said. “You’ll mostly feel just as you had at the time.”
“Still…,” Bones said. “I’d remember when I got back, and I don’t know if I could deal with that. I’m not saying no, however. Just…just give me some time to think about it. I’ll decide tonight.”
“Okay,” Christopher said, speaking on everyone’s behalf.
A loud knock came from the front door, startling everyone in the room.
“That’d be your mother, Kylie,” Bones said as he painfully rose from the couch. “She said she’d be by to pick you up on her way back from the shop.”
“Crap!” Kylie exclaimed as she jumped to her feet. “Stall her and well…tell her I’m in the bathroom. If she finds out I’ve been playin‘ in the cave I’ll never hear the end of it!”
Bones slowly made his way to answer the door as Kylie ran off to the bathroom to get herself cleaned up. He paused for a moment at the door, buying her a bit of extra time before he opened the door to let Janice in.
“Evening, Janice,” Bones said, nodding his head in acknowledgement.
“Bones…,” Janice said, nodding back.
“Kylie’s in the bathroom. They did some fishin‘ earlier and she’s cleaning up,” Bones said, sounding a little fake in the process.
“No problem,” Janice said quickly, as though she had something on her mind that was more important than what Kylie had done for the day. “Can I talk to you?”
“Yeah…,” Bones said, sounding concerned. “I’ll step out.”
Bones slowly shut the door behind him, much to the disappointment of Christopher and James. Christopher wondered if something was wrong. He hoped not, yet feared for the worst. What could they be talking about out there? He really wished that he could turn himself into an insect and fly out there and hang on the wall and listen to them talk.
“What’s that all about?” James asked, folding his arms across his chest.
“Don’t know…,” Christopher said, doing the same. “Nothing bad, I hope.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.…”
“Where’s mom?” Kylie asked as she emerged from the bathroom, all cleaned up and ready to head home. “Is she here?”
Christopher let his eyes follow Kylie as she walked up to meet them. God, she looks so beautiful, he thought as he watched her. She had changed into a short shirt that clung to her body, and her face was clean and clear of the dirt from the cave.
James gave him a quick nudge to his side, noticing that he was acting a bit off.
“Can we see you tomorrow…?” Christopher asked, or rather, blurted out. “I mean…to figure out what’s going on with the cave…and well…everything.”
Kylie cracked a half-smile, as though she knew why Christopher was acting so uncomfortable when talking to her. “Sorry…Fridays I have to spend the day with Mom in the shop and help her with errands….”
“That’s okay…,” Christopher said, very disappointed.
“Next time, though,” James said, playfully pushing Christopher once more.
The front door slowly opened, and Bones stepped back into the house, looking a bit troubled. He paused for one more moment, and then forced out a feeble attempt at a smile. “Kylie, your mother’s ready.”
“Okay,” Kylie said quietly as she waved to James. “See you next time.”
“Next time,” James said, waving back.
“Christopher…” Kylie reached her arms around him, giving him a big hug.
“Oh, and Saturday…,” Bones said, holding the door open for Kylie. “We’re all going fishing up at the lake. So you all will see each other on Saturday.”
“Great!” Kylie waved to the brothers one last time. “See you then, then!”
Bones closed the door behind Kylie, waving one last time to her and Janice. Then he let out a long sigh as he painfully inched his way back to the couch, sitting down as though he was pulling the weight of the entire world behind him. He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out some sort of pill and quickly swallowed it without any water at all.
“What’s wrong?” Christopher asked, very concerned. He didn’t know if something that Janice had said was troubling him, or whether the whole entire matter of the cave was troubling him. The only thing that he was exactly sure of was that something was definitely troubling him.
“Janice has decided that her and Kylie will be moving out of Pine Hallow,” Bones said quietly, knowing it would upset Christopher.
Christopher felt as though his knees would give out, and he slowly came to sit next to Bones. It seemed as though the weight of the world was now on him instead. “Why?”
“Are they in trouble?” James asked.
“Well…,” Bones said, shaking his head as though this was just another problem weighing down about him. “Turns out Bill—you know, Jack Olen’s Bill—he was in Springfield the other day and he swears that he saw Kylie’s father hanging around there, and that he was in real bad shape.”
Christopher shook his head in disbelief. “They think he’ll come after them?”
“They’re not sure…. This is something a long time coming, though; Janice has never really felt safe here, so they’ll be leaving in a week. Moving somewhere out west…Nevada I think. Janice has some family out there and she’s going to try starting over.”
“One week…,” James quietly repeated, putting a hand on Christopher’s shoulder.
“That’s so short…,” Christopher said. “Was he sure that it was him?”
“Sure enough that he went to the police and filed a report…,” Bones replied, rubbing his painful forehead. “And from the way he spoke about him, he looked terrible; covered in dirt, unshaven…looked as though he had gone completely mad.”
“I hope they catch him…,” James said, sounding very frustrated.
“I’m sure they will,” Bones said reassuringly.
“Won’t change anything though,” Christopher said as he folded his arms across his chest, a great big frown on his face. “They’ll still leave….”
“Yeah…,” Bones said as he placed an arm around Christopher, although he looked very uncomfortable doing so. Bones seemed like the type of person who was very reserved with his feelings. “Don’t think that this isn’t hard on Janice, and don’t think that she hasn’t noticed that Kylie is fond of you. I know it’s not fair, but you’ll just have to make the best of the time that you do have.”
“I know�
��,” Christopher said quietly, nodding in agreement, although the frustration he was feeling inside did not make him feel the slightest bit fond of agreeing.
“Things that change change because we are people who have no authority to change them,” James said with a frustrated sigh.
“This wasn’t an easy choice for her to make,” Bones said. “Life is full of hard choices, and loss. There is hope, though—just look at everything you’ve accomplished, everything you’ve found in that cave of yours. If that’s not enough to give you hope and make you believe in all the good possibilities that are out there, then nothing will.”
“Nevada…,” Christopher whispered, like he was speaking of some far-off land that might as well exist on another planet. “It’s too far away.”
“And your feelings can’t reach that far?” Bones asked.
“It’s not that…,” Christopher replied, still pouting and holding his arms crossed.
“Look at me, for example. It’s been four years; do you think I love Cat any less?”
“No….”
“She’s not even on this earth anymore…at least as far as I know. But that doesn’t mean that I love her any less than I did the first day that we met. I knew from that first day that we would be together, and you know what? We were…,” Bones continued, as if he were saying such things as an attempt to convince himself just as well as Christopher. “There are a lot of tragedies in life, that’s true. There are a lot of possibilities and love in the world as well, though.”
“Like the cave…,” James whispered, as though he had figured a small part of what the cave was really about.
“Yeah…,” Bones said uncomfortably. “Like the cave.…”
That night Christopher was quiet all throughout dinner. It seemed as though there was something weighing heavily on everyone’s mind in the house that night. Christopher thought again about the distance that would soon separate him and Kylie, and it just seemed so unfair to him. How come everyone that he cared about had to eventually leave him? Why couldn’t God or whoever was in charge of this spinning blue mess just let him be happy for once? After all, that’s all he wanted was to be happy and stable with this new, albeit different, family.
Christopher would write to her though, he decided that much for sure. Every day, if she wanted that. Maybe he could even visit her sometimes in the summer or on vacation days from school. No matter how much he tried to reason with himself, though, it seemed like Pine Hallow would never be the same without her. For a brief moment, Christopher could understand exactly what Bones had meant earlier.
With dinner now over, and the view from the large picture window in the living room growing dark and darker, Christopher stood alone; James and Bones were still in the kitchen talking about unimportant things. He stared off through the window into the night. Off in the distance he could see a bright flash of lightning through the thick trees. As he stood there looking into the night, windows took on a completely new meaning to him. No longer would a window just be something that he would look through; from that day on they would be something completely different, almost magical.
“A storm is coming,” Bones said as he walked into the living room, concerned that Christopher was standing alone at the window in the dark. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Christopher said. “I was just thinking about things, too many things.”
“Yeah.…” Bones placed a hand on Christopher’s back. “A lot is going on.”
Outside the wind picked up, causing the window to shudder violently as the flashes of lightning grew closer with each passing moment. Strong winds pushed against the swaying trees so roughly that the noise could be heard from inside the house. It was a rough sound like that of the ocean breaking on rock, or the roar of a jet engine high up in the sky.
Christopher placed a hand against the window, relating it to the moment he had done so at the window in the cave. It felt cold to the touch in the same way the other window had, yet the world on the outside looked as it should. He could feel the strong vibrations of the wind against his hand and the rattling of the thunder.
“Hope the dogs are inside…,” Christopher said quietly, his eyes still fixed on the coming storm.
“I’m sure they are…,” Bones answered, sounding as though he was doing just as much thinking as Christopher. It appeared that he had quite a few things to work out himself. “They’re smart dogs, after all.”
“Hey!” James exclaimed, startling both Christopher and Bones as he burst into the room. “Radio says we’re under a tornado watch.”
“Best to get away from the window then, Christopher,” Bones said as he gently led Christopher away.
“What are you guys doing here in the dark anyway?” James asked, shaking his head and sounding more like a parent than he probably should. “You’re both going to get hit by lightning if you hang out at the window.”
It was then that the wind picked up so strongly that it sounded as if a violent train was ripping through the area. The dogs outdoors were barking loudly, and the shaking window began to creak and squeal as though it would burst at the just the slightest addition of stress. There was a noisy sound of tree branches striking the house, and hard rain angrily pummeled the rooftop.
“This doesn’t sound good!” Bones strained, trying to elevate his voice over the sound of the oncoming storm. He wrapped an arm around Christopher’s waist, pulling him as he made his way as far as possible from the window.
“Basement!” James exclaimed as he ran toward the door. He held it open for Bones, who was literally carrying Christopher with him.
The wind pummeled the house violently and the very walls themselves seemed to shake and shudder with each thunderclap and violent surge of wind. The whole house cried and creaked in agony as though the storm was trying to tear it apart around them. The three quickly ran down the stairs, fearing that there was no time to spare.
“What about the dogs?” Christopher exclaimed as he was pulled down farther into the basement.
“They’ll be fine!” Bones yelled, sustaining his grip on Christopher. “They’re smart dogs! They’ll stay hidden.”
The three of them huddled down in the cobwebs and dirt of the basement floor. Upstairs they could hear the storm rage on and on. All around them dust blew down from the ceiling, and the basement light, already dim, flickered as it rocked back and forth on its chain. Several successive crashes of thunder could be heard upstairs, followed by the distinct sound of breaking glass. It sounded as though a war was being waged up in the house.
“I hope Kylie’s all right…,” Christopher whispered, as though if he were quiet enough the storm might not notice them.
“I hope we’ll be all right,” James added, sounding deeply troubled and concerned.
Then, without any warning, the basement door flew open. Wind rushed and tore its way down the stairs, filling the entire basement with a cloud of dust and cold damp air. The sound of the wind was now deafening, and nothing else of the storm outside could even remotely be heard. Bones wrapped his arms tightly around both Christopher and James, mostly convinced that this was to be the end.
However, it wasn’t. As quick as the wind had come, it was mysteriously gone. All around them the house was silent, and the walls no longer shook. The basement light that had been rocking before was completely still, as if it had never moved in the first place.
Bones slowly released his grip around the two and cautiously rose to his feet. “What was that…? What in the hell was that all about?”
“It’s over?” Christopher said, still shaky from fear of the storm. “Just like that?”
“I wonder if everything is all right upstairs,” James said as he shakily got to his feet, standing next to Bones. “I mean, something happened right? Something bad?”
“I heard breaking glass…,” Christopher said, standing next to them. “I hope it’s not bad.”
“Follow behind me,” Bones whispered as he carefully inched his way
back up to the stairs. With each step Bones would pause and strain as though he were desperately trying to hear something, trying to gauge some idea of what had just happened.
As the three reached the top they could barely make out the sound of dogs barking.
“At least Poppy and Kate are all right,” Christopher thought to himself as he followed behind Bones, slightly troubled by their slow and arduous pace.
Bones stood at the top step, peeking rather comically around the corner and darting his head back and forth as if he expected someone or something to be there to attack him. Seemingly content that he would not be assaulted, he slowly led Christopher and James into the living room. The room was completely dark, and only a faint light could be seen, emitted from somewhere outside. The power must have gone out during the storm.
Window in the Earth Trilogy Page 13
