“Is this normal?” Emma asks meekly.
Jack ascends to the first step, cautiously. “I’ve not been away that long.”
“How long?” Emma asks.
The place looks as though no one has occupied it in years. Jack tries to peer into the window but is prohibited to do so by browned newspapers taped against cracked glass. “Less than a year,” he finally replies. “They would not have let this happen.”
“Something is wrong?” she asks, tightening her grip upon Jack’s hand.
“Something is wrong.” He nods.
Despite the apprehension in of every fiber of his being, he places a hand to the doorknob. Sure that the door will be locked, he turns it. The knob groans and jiggles as though it has not been used in some time. The door creaks inward, and a small gust of cold air escapes from the house, bringing with it a familiar smell, reminding him of campfires as a kid.
“What is that smell?” Emma asks, sounding more curious than offended by the odor. “It smells like… burnt wood and old flowers.”
“I have no idea,” Jack replies as he nervously eyes the open door and the darkness past it. The small area illuminated in the muted light beneath the door—a tiled-floor kitchen—is stained dark black. The idea that this is old, dried blood instantly pops into Jack’s mind. “I don’t know what to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to go in,” he says as he backs away from the door, carefully descending the steps. Once he had seen the state of the house, he knew that something was not quite right. His parents would never let the house get into this state unless they were sick, dead, or even worse, murdered. His mind flashes images of his mother, her body decaying as she lies in a bed stained black from her rotting corpse, her face eyeless and her mouth hanging open in an eternally horrified expression.
“Call out to them,” Emma whispers, placing a hand to Jack’s back.
Jack shakes his head, placing his hands to his face in an almost childlike manner. His imagination is playing tricks on him, showing him things that might be in the house—a killer, dressed in brown, blood-stained overalls; a hunting rifle over his shoulder; a smirk on his gritty, bearded face that smells of chewing tobacco. The man sits in a rocking chair, rocking back in forth in a rhythmic motion. Two shells, dispensed from the rifle, lie upon the floor.
“I can’t go in there,” he says. “I have to get out of here.”
He stumbles as he tries to walk away from the house, nearly falling to the ground. Emma attempts to help him but he pushes her away. He makes it a few more steps before he expels all the contents of his breakfast upon the ground. He runs for the car, throwing the door open and collapsing into the driver’s seat.
Emma follows, calmly. She keeps her eyes fixed on him as she opens the passenger side door and sits beside him. She tries to think of something to say, some way to help. Nervously, she chews on the inside of her bottom lip—Jack looks as though he is moments away from having a complete breakdown. “Jack…,” she whispers. “We don’t know anything yet.”
He shakes his head again, and then rests his forehead against the steering wheel, letting out a heavy sigh and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand repeatedly. Jack apologizes, “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t go in there. I don’t want you to see me like this, like a wreck. I’m so embarrassed. I just couldn’t do it. I’m so fucking worthless.”
“Jack,” Emma repeats, placing a hand gently to Jack’s face. “Look at me.”
Jack eyes meet Emma’s. The blue of her eyes calm him in small regards. However, even her face cannot calm the thumping that fills his chest, his heart reminding him of a scared rabbit. He looks back to the house, and then back to her.
She reaches for his hand once more, squeezing it reassuringly. “Don’t worry about the house right now. You have nothing to be sorry for. I won’t make you go in there. I know that things don’t seem right, but, like I said, we don’t know anything yet.”
“This has never happened to me before,” Jack shakily replies. “I’ve never been this afraid, without a reason. I’m so fucking terrified of the house right now, and what is in there, and I don’t know why.”
“It’s okay, really.” Emma nods. “I felt it, too.”
“You did?” Jack asks.
“Yeah,” Emma continues, “I’ve felt like this before though.”
“‘Like this’…,” Jack repeats robotically. He is amazed by how calm Emma remains. It makes him feel all the more ashamed that he let himself be so weak.
“Like you are stepping onto somewhere you should not be. The feeling you get when you take a few steps towards a building, and part of you already knows that something is off. Not just off, but part of you is screaming to not go any further. The way that the world darkens in response, steals the sun away and leaves behind only cold and empty fear,” Emma speaks, almost as though reciting a speech that she had inducted to memory long ago. “My father did not leave us in any conventional way. I’m the one that found him.”
“Suicide,” Jack whispers, nodding nervously.
Emma knows that this information will not be of any value to Jack, yet cannot help it. Her meager courage has been earned in the loss of innocence. “He was in his shed. I used to play there a lot as a child. It was like a fort, I’d bring my toys in and kind of set up for the day. It never felt off, until that day. It was like the shed knew. I found him that day, though. He took a shotgun to his own head. There was nothing in there that I discovered that day that I could recognize as my father. It turned him from someone I loved, a familiar face, to some kind of mess of blood and parts, a monster that haunted my nightmares for years.”
Tears begin to stream down from Emma’s eyes as she uses the sleeve of her white shirt to wipe them away. “I’m so sorry,” she manages through heavy breaths.
“Please,” Jack speaks as he wipes away a tear with his hand. “Please don’t cry.”
“I’m the one that is supposed to be comforting you,” Emma adds, shaking her head. “It just reminds me so much and I’m so sorry for that.”
Jack looks to the house, his home. In its state it is not even recognizable as the place that exists in his memories. He looks to Emma, her eyes glossy from tears, cheeks red and black from smeared eyeliner. Even in this state, she is beautiful. Jack finds his courage, in small amounts. He reaches out and pulls Emma in, embracing her tightly. “Thank you,” he whispers in her ear, and then kisses her on the cheek, which tastes salty.
“For what?” she asks, and attempts a weak smile.
“For coming with me,” he quietly replies, and then opens the door and steps out. “I’ll be right back, all right?”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I’ll just step in,” he answers confidently. “Just open up the door and see.”
Emma nods wordlessly, and then looks away to the rainclouds in the distance.
A light rain begins to fall as Jack closes the short distance between the car and the house. The old metal windmill begins to creak as the wind picks up. He walks up the stone steps, placing a hand upon the rough, cracked surface of the door. The door creaks noisily upon its hinges as he forces it open, illuminating the white-and-black-tiled kitchen floor. Tiny specks of dust dance about in the light. A short distance away, the form of Jack’s mother is slumped against the cabinets. Her body is thin and decayed. Her blood covers the floor in a black ink. Her dress is tattered, and her vacant head looks up toward the ceiling fan, which is covered in large round black spots. There is nothing there that resembles Jack’s mother. Not her face, nor hands. All that remains is a tangle of human form, old and twisted, tormented like the exposed roots of a tree. Covered in familiar clothing, adorned with swirls of brown familiar hair, not a mother—no kind or harsh words could escape her lips—yet something else, like a thing that has stolen parts of his mother, yet could not retain any sense of what it truly meant to be her. Scrawled along the wall behind her, in blood, is the singl
e sentence: The wolf’s cry is not sad, it is proud. Hanging above the odd writing, a mangled red fox dangles from the ceiling tied by its tail with a length of cord. The fox’s eyes are missing and its black tongue hangs eschewed from its strangely grinning mouth.
Jack turns and walks out the door, closing it firmly behind him. The rain begins to fall even harder. A short burst of thunder echoes through the valley. He takes each step down from the door cautiously, for he feels that at any moment his balance may give way. His mind is full of mental photographs of things that he has just seen; his mother, the bloody message, and the decaying fox. All these things, these impossibilities, seem too unreasonable to believe. At the final step he slips and finds himself upon the ground, his hands against the mud and the rain hard against his back. He begins to cry. He has not done so since he was a child, and cannot even remember the reason.
He looks ahead, attempting to make out the form of his car in the heavy rain. The deluge of water from above is so dense that he cannot. “Emma!” he cries out, although his voice is muffled by the sound of falling rain, now as loud as a waterfall, and carries no further than his own ears. He pushes himself up against the cold wet ground to his feet once more. He begins to sprint, the best he can, towards the direction of the car.
As he arrives, he finds the passenger door ajar. Emma is nowhere to be seen.
“Emma!” Jack screams out as loudly as he possibly can, bringing both hands to his mouth.
“Emma!”
A flash of lightning hits the roof of the car, scattering sparks of brilliant pink. The car horn sounds, and the smell of smoke and burnt fabric fills the air. Jack is thrown back down to the cold, wet mud once more. He is winded—unharmed, yet startled. He begins to cough; water is trying to desperately drown him the same way it would a chicken that foolishly chooses to look up during a rainstorm. He clumsily makes his way into the passenger seat by crawling upon the ground like a toddler. Shutting the door as quickly as he can, he peels off his jacket. He is soaked and trembling from both fear and the cold. His pants are caked in mud and the driver’s side seat is giving off smoke. Jack jumps in shock once more as a boom of thunder vibrates the car around him. He feels sick, in shock, and, worst of all, alone. He checks the back seat—besides Emma’s backpack and a half-empty water bottle, it is empty. His mind races with a million thoughts: Where could Emma have gone? What reason would she have to leave the car? He cannot make sense of anything that is happening. He feels as though he is on the edge of madness, a mere step away on wet ground from falling into complete despair. His mother is dead, for certain, and his father, too most likely—Emma, his new light in his life, is missing. The rain is coming down so hard that it almost drums out all of his thoughts, a steady unrelenting tapping like a hundred fingertips against the metal roof of his car.
Finally coming to a moment of brief clarity, Jack reaches into his pocket and retrieves his cell phone. He dries the wet screen against the fabric of the driver’s side car seat. He releases the phone’s lock by pressing a button on the side and the screen lights up in response. He fumbles with the numbers on the touch screen, dialing 8112 first, and then 911.
After a short ring, a female voice answers, “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
Jack cannot find the words. His mind cannot form them, nor his lips. He makes a short grunting noise, almost a cross between a sigh and a wet cough.
“What is your emergency?” the woman asks again.
“Rural Route 117, Pine Hallow, Missouri,” Jack finally blurts, his voice strained and sick. “My mother has been… she… she is dead, I can’t explain anything.”
“All right, sir, remain calm…,” the woman begins.
Jack hangs up the phone.
Another loud crash of thunder echoes through the air. This time Jack is not startled. He feels numb. He cannot control his mind, nor make sense of the random thoughts that are running wildly through it. He spends a few moments thinking about rubber bicycle tires, hundreds of them, turned sideways and spinning on spikes of metal. He imagines rust eating away at the Eiffel Tower and then eating away at his own feet. His mind dreams of being a stick, caught against a rock in a stream, struggling to be free but dreading the moment that it might happen. He shivers and feels torn like a flag caught in a hurricane. He curls himself up into a ball, the same way a child would, and sleeps. Not a normal sleep—more of a state that which he is forced into, one of which he would expect to wake up from and find some semblance of normalcy. Instead he wakes up to a looping thought of his body as a pile of leaves, being blown away against a stone walkway and then into the air—and back into sleep.
Act II
The Wolves
Emma Awakens
“Emma?”
A voice asks.
“Emma?”
“Yeah?” Emma exhaustedly replies as she shifts her body in the bed toward the voice, her throat sore and dry. For a moment all she can recall is her own name; however, even the sound of it seems somehow alien to her. The same way that if you repeat your own name enough times it no longer sounds quite right.
“You awake now?”
“Water,” Emma manages, as she opens her eyes.
Her surroundings are unfamiliar, dark, and pungent with a chemical smell—the scent of cleaner, mixed in with that of an old building. The smell alone gives her the impression that she is in hospital, and, as her eyes slowly adjust to the darkness, her assumptions are confirmed. She finds herself lying in bed, wearing an old dingy-looking hospital gown and a thin white blanket. At the edge of her bed she can make out the image of a tall man—he has short cut salt-and-pepper-colored hair and a rough, but kind face. He is wearing a long brown trench coat. Beneath the coat Emma can make out a white-collared shirt, no tie, and a pair of ironed suit-style pants, also brown in color.
“Of course,” the man says as he reaches for the paper cup already at the tableside cart. His hand pauses for a moment at the prescription bottle next to the cup. “This, too?”
Emma bites her lip, and then nods.
“It’s how I knew your name—I saw the label,” the man says as he hands the bottle and cup to Emma.
She pushes back against the bed to raise herself slightly higher.
“Don’t mean to pry,” he continues, “but I want to know how you knew my name.”
“I… I am sorry,” Emma says quietly as she fumbles for a moment with her prescription. She searches for the small nub on the cap, her hands too sore to get the bottle open.
“Need a hand with that?” he asks, and, without waiting, he reaches over and twists open the child-proof lid in one smooth motion.
“Thanks.”
“Clonazepam, one milligram, three times daily,” the man says as he sits at the foot of the bed. He brings a shoed foot up to his knee and rests his hands against it. “It’s for anxiety, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Emma answers shortly. She eyes the man nervously, and then turns her attention to her pills, retrieving one with her shaking hands; she downs it along with a full cup of water. She turns her attention to the man at the foot of her bed once more, trying in the dim light to make out some form of recognizable feature. “I don’t know who you are—I’m sorry, should I?”
“Oh,” the man replies, sounding somewhat shocked. “You called out my name a few times while you were out. I thought maybe there was a reason.”
“I did?” she asks, confused. “What is your name?”
“Jack,” the man answers. “Jack Olen.”
The mention of the name “Jack” sends her mind reeling. She suddenly remembers short bursts and clips of what had happened. Something about Jack’s parents, something else about the house being wrong, and then the thunderstorm. Emma begins to worry, for she cannot remember why nor how she has arrived at this hospital. Nor can her mind comprehend why it is so dark and quiet, save for the sound of rain tapping against the nearby window.
“Is he here?” she asks, trying to get herself up from the
hospital bed. “Jack….”
“Not me, then,” Jack Olen replies as he rubs his forehead with his hand, his eyes are red from either stress or lack of sleep. “I was hoping it would add some sense to this. And he is not here, whoever this other Jack is. Wherever here is.”
“Jack Wolfe,” she quickly adds.
“Jack Wolfe…,” Jack Olen repeats, “…son of Landon Wolfe, in Pine Hallow?”
“Yes,” she says as she scans the area, feeling more uncomfortable now because her clothing is nowhere in sight. “Well, I mean, I didn’t know his father’s name. We were travelling down from school; his brother had called him and said that he hadn’t been able to get in contact with their parents. We made it there but I don’t remember much after that, I… I don’t remember what happened to Jack after that. I mean I have this image in my head of him walking in and then it started…”
“Started to storm?” he interrupts. “I do know the father—quite well actually. Mostly it is because Pine Hallow is a very small community. I suppose Landon Wolfe is its celebrity. Not his birth name by the way, Landon Wolfe—he had it changed. Used to be William Rien, but as I remember him explain he chose Landon because of its similarity to London, Jack London, an author he aspired to be. I suppose he named his son Jack for similar reasons. Then again, I am rambling on a bit, aren’t I? After all, you must be just as confused as I was about two hours ago.”
“What happened two hours ago?” Emma asks. She peeks out to the hallway that she can barely make out from her vantage point on the bed—the hall is as dim as the room and completely void of any activity.
“I was on my way to visit Mr. Landon. I’m actually retired, a retired detective here in Springfield.”
“So we’re in Springfield now?”
“Well, as best as I can guess, I recognize this hospital. I’ve been here before. However, it’s not right in any sense at all. See, I had been asked to look into this case that happened back a few weeks ago: this new couple moved into the area, had a child probably about two years or so old, not very old at all. Well, the kid figured his way out of the house and wandered out into the night. Real bad move; he ended up dead. Now, the boys from Springfield reported it as an animal attack—wolves. However, my partner, Bill, ran into Landon early this morning while hunting and said he was acting strange, just appeared very unkempt and intoxicated out in the timber. He also became very confrontational when Bill asked if there was something wrong. So Bill asked me to go and have a talk with Landon. He had some strange feeling that Landon was somehow connected to the child’s death a few weeks earlier, but couldn’t really explain why, said I’d have to see Landon myself to understand. Wouldn’t surprise me, though, if he did—after all, Pine Hallow has quite a past: missing teens, unexplained deaths, murdered children—I’ve come to expect worse these days, in retirement, than my most unusual cases In Springfield from when I was active.”
Window in the Earth Trilogy Page 30
