Jimmy Stone's Ghost Town

by Scott Neumyer

  * * * * *

  Trex barked loudly as he crouched down low and stuck nearly his entire snout into some type of hole next to a fallen tree stump. I pointed my flashlight in his direction and tried to see just what had gotten him so excited.

  "What is it, Trex?" I asked. "Did you find something, boy?"

  I heard the rustle of leaves and dirt as David walked by me and slightly ahead of us. The moonlight in front of him cast his shadow right over us and I could feel the cover of black over me and Trex.

  I knew we were deep now - deeper than I'd certainly ever been in these woods - and a bout of the sweats set in as I realized that the only thing I could see behind us were walls and walls of darkened tree limbs and a barely-worn dusty trail.

  We'd been walking through the woods, and following Trex, for probably about thirty minutes now but there'd been nowhere to stop. There was no opening, no clearing, for us to find any chance to rest, chat, and practice some of the techniques that David had laid out. The only thing we'd seen were dark batches of trees, surrounded by dark batches of who-the-hell-knows-what. All we had were our flashlights and Trex's nose - which was now buried deep in some animal's hole.

  I lost sight of David and his flashlight while trying to see what Trex had gotten himself into and trying to figure out how I could coax him out of it.

  "Jimmy!" I heard while on my hands and knees next to Trex. "Jimmy, come here!"

  It was David - I mean, who else would it be all the way out here - and he sounded rushed. Scared maybe? No, not David.

  "Jimmy!"

  "I'm coming," I shouted back and yanked on Trex's leash. He gave a quick yelp and shot up to his feet, pulling his dirt-covered nose out of the hole. "We're on our way!"

  I turned my flashlight back toward the small path between the trees and Trex pulled ahead of me, leading the way through the darkness toward David.

  "You've got to see this," I heard him say as we rounded the corner behind a thick pine. "It's--"

  "--Amazing," I said, finishing his sentence as Trex and I stopped right next to David. And amazing is exactly what it was.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The three of us stood, slack-jawed, and staring straight ahead at what had to be one of the most surprising and beautiful things we'd ever seen in our lives.

  David on the right. Trex in the middle, resting back on his haunches. And me on the left. It looked like something you'd see in a movie, right at the moment of clarity when the main characters come together and see what they'd been missing the entire time. This was one of those times when everything moved a little bit slower and the John Williams score started to crescendo up to a roar.

  Our flashlights were still on, but our arms hung limply at our sides, the flashlights creating tiny circles of light on the forest floor by our feet.

  Trex tried to let out a furious bark but all we heard rumble from his snout was the tiniest yelp. He was clearly just as stunned as we were.

  "What do you think--"

  "--shh," David said quietly, but just loud enough to keep me from asking a question that neither of us would be able to answer. "Doesn't matter."

  In front of us. I mean, directly in front of us was a bright circle of trees. There had to be at least twenty of them in the circle and it was huge. If it had snowed, and it was cold enough, you could have stuck an ice-skating rink in the middle of the circle.

  But what was even stranger was that each tree seemed to be exactly the same distance from each other, and they were glowing. It was as if they formed a fence around the huge open circle. Like someone had placed each one there to protect this incredible open space.

  The moon was shining but the glow on these trees wasn't moonlight, and they sure as hell didn't each have their own lights attached to them, but they were still glowing, I tell you. Glowing!

  The ones directly in front of us, maybe three of them, were silhouetted against the blackness of the rest of the forest.

  "Should we?" I asked and nodded my head toward the circle of trees. David hadn't turned his head to see me nod, but I was sure he knew what I was asking.

  "Uh huh," he said, almost dumbfounded, and without even taking his eyes off the glow in front of us.

  "C'mon, Trex," I said and took one small step toward the circle.

  Trex and David took one small step to line up with me and then we moved slowly in unison toward the glow.

  We took maybe four more steps until we were able to see around the three large trees that were right in our way.

  It was then that we both gasped when we saw just how not completely empty the circle actually was and just where all these trees were getting their glow from.

  There, dead center in the middle of the vast circle of trees, stood one pristine tree, not too thick around, but enormously tall. It looked like it stretched all the way to the moon - maybe even piercing it - like Jack's beanstalk.

  For the first fifteen feet up the tree, at least, it was just tree. Just bark and stump, no leaves, no branches, no nothing. It was beautiful, and clear, and looked - at least to the three of us standing just outside the circle - like the most perfect tree you've ever seen in your life. It looked like God Himself had taken His hand and plopped this perfect tree down right in the middle of the forest. Right in the middle of this circle.

  But not even the absolute perfectness of this tree was what made David, Trex, and me all gasp like we'd seen a ghost (or ten).

  It was that the entire, perfect, sky-high tree was surrounded by a shining light. It was as if a huge tube of light was dropped around the tree itself. It was shining and bright from top to bottom and strong enough to create that gorgeous glow bouncing off every single tree in the circle.

  If heaven were a tree, I'd swear we had died.

  I tried to speak, but nothing came out the first time that I moved my lips. I shook my head, to clear the cobwebs, and tried again.

  "I've got to see it up close."

  "Me too," said David as Trex barked loudly, the sound echoing through the entire forest. "We have to."

  So I grabbed Trex's leash, flicked off my flashlight and took five more steps. With David right behind me, I crossed through two of the trees in front of us, broke the circle of light, and stepped inside.

  The light was all around us now, and it was as bright as it had been outside that morning.

  I turned to David and he turned back to me and smiled. I dropped Trex's leash and he sat obediently by our side.

  I laughed (probably the nerves and excitement) and then David laughed and Trex barked.

  "Now this is what we came out here for," I said as we walked slowly toward Heaven, or God, or just a plain old tree with her damn shiny glow. Whatever it was, we were walking straight toward it, and we were going to find out.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Sometimes, when I had too much time to sit in my room alone and think, I'd wonder what it would have been like to have my almost-sister around instead of Trex. I mean, I figure that Mom and Dad wouldn't have bothered to bring a puppy home for me if Charlotte had come home with them instead. I didn't know it at the time, but now I'm smart enough to realize that Trex was a gift to keep me from asking too many questions, getting too upset, or wondering why I suddenly wasn't going to have a sister.

  Would life have been different? Would Mom have stuck around? Would Dad be like the Dad I used to remember from when I was small?

  I'd lay on my bed in my room, listening to the drone of Dad's TV from the living room, and think about how things might have changed and if things would be better.

  But every single time I'd get just a little too upset – every single time a few tears started to well up in my eyes and trickle down my cheeks – I'd hear a quick bark and feel Trex jump on the bed, nuzzle up next to me, and whap me slightly with his tail. That was enough to remind me that things were going to be just fine. Enough to show me that I have everything I need. And enough to make me forget - just for a few moments - that I almost had a sister named Ch
arlotte and that Mom wasn't coming back.

  I always had Trex. No matter what else happened, who else came into our lives, and what Dad did to himself or to me, I always had Trex. Always.

  And it was no different now with David and I staring up at the shiniest glowing tree you've ever seen in your entire life (possibly the only glowing tree you've ever seen in your entire life), I had nothing to fear - Trex was right there by our side.

  We had no idea just what to expect as we approached the massive glowing tree, but we knew (for some strange reason, we really just knew) that we'd be okay.

  The glow wasn't an ominous glow, and it wasn't something that you'd think could swoop you up, suck you into some strange time warp where you'd never see or hear any of your friends and family again. No. It was more of a warm, glowing cocoon of light. It was inviting and beautiful. It was, perhaps, the most beautiful thing either of us had ever seen.

  Trex whimpered slightly as we stepped closer and closer to the glowing ring of light surrounding the tree, but he never pulled back. He never stopped moving toward the tree and neither did we.

  "Are you sure?" I asked David just before we reached the point of no return - the last step or two before we'd be bathed in that glowing light.

  "We'll be fine," he said and shook his head up and down as if to reassure himself of the very same thing. "It's just light, right?"

  "Right," I said and took another step closer. "Just light."

  It was in that very last step - one little push of the feet and we'd be there - that everything around us seemed to slow down and come to life all at once. We could hear the slightest rustle of leaves as the wind blew through the trees around us. The smell of pine was strong in our noses and everywhere we turned we could see the most gorgeous glow in the history of light. The forest was alive.

  The very last step, although not really frightening, certainly felt like a leap of faith. We had no idea what to expect once we stepped inside the glowing ring of light. We wholeheartedly felt like we'd be totally fine, but there was still that one last hint of apprehension as our legs moved and our feet broke the plane of the light and stepped inside. It was the only thing left to do - just go right ahead and step inside.

  David, Trex, and I each took that last step, and we took it with a conviction that you might not have expected. We stepped in strong and proud and full of hearts that could go any which way. They could break or fill to their absolute brims.

  And when we finally found ourselves standing inside that glorious glowing ring of light and saw the monstrous tree in front of us, there was nothing to fear. We were full and happy and knew that everything was good.

  The strange thing, though, was that once we were inside that ring of light, everything else seemed to filter away. We couldn't hear the rustle of the leaves anymore, or the wind whip through the trees, and the smell of pine had completely left our noses. It was as if we were enclosed inside a vacuum. The tree had its own ecosystem and its very own environment, which we now stood in – stock still and staring straight ahead at the largest tree trunk we'd ever seen in our lives.

  "Is this--"

  "--Yes," David said, cutting me off. "It's everything and anything you could possibly even say. There's nothing you could ask me that it isn't."

  As crazy as David's response might have sounded, I completely understood exactly what he said. The tree, and its insanely awesome ring of glowing light, was everything and nothing. It was whatever we wanted it to be.

  "I can't believe how quiet it is in here," said David, looking around him in every direction. "It's like the entire world just disappeared."

  Trex looked up at David and let out a quick bark, jumping just slightly to show his excitement.

  "It's beautiful and amazing and the most surprising thing I think I've ever seen," I replied.

  I took the cue from David and allowed myself to look all around me. I thought, for a moment, that I might need to pinch myself to actually come back down to earth. It was as if I was floating in this weird abyss and I could fly anywhere and do just about anything. The world around me no longer existed in this moment. There were no more Coogan Boys. My dad wasn't a hapless drunk. My almost-sister actually came home. And my mom was still here and hugging me hard every single day.

  That wasn't, unfortunately, how anything really was now. But it sure as heck felt nice to think that maybe - just for a moment - that's how everything turned out.

  When I came back down to earth and shook the dreams from my head, I saw David inching closer and closer to the tree, Trex just followed close to David's heels and inched along toward the tree as well.

  "Look!" he said, pointing toward the middle of the trunk. "Do you see this, Jimmy?!"

  I took two quick steps toward David, Trex, and the massive trunk and set my gaze on where David's finger was pointing.

  "I... I think I see..."

  "This," he said, pointing even closer to the tree's bark without actually touching any part of it. "Right here."

  I leaned in closed to the tree and looked right down David's arm, his hand, his fingers, and his outstretched pointer until I saw exactly where he was pointing.

  "What the--"

  "I know," David said. "I know."

  At the very end of David's bony little pointer finger was a bluish glow shining straight out of the tree's dark, brown bark. The rest of the trunk was your normal, everyday brown rippled bark, but that shining bluish glow was staring us right in the face now.

  I stepped closer to the tree and looked right into the glowing light.

  "It's--"

  "Wait," said David, leaning back a few inches and craning his neck in a strange way. "Take one step back and look again."

  I stepped back from the tree and craned my neck as well. It was then that I finally saw what had probably been there all along since we stepped inside the enormous tree's glowing ring of light.

  Right there, in front of our faces, it looked like someone (or something) had carved letters into the trunk of the tree (to be more accurate, it looked like it was etched with some sort of laser beam). It was these letters that created the gorgeous blue glow coming from the trunk of the tree.

  I looked over at David and Trex and saw their faces tinted blue as well as the glowing light shone on them.

  "What do you think it means?" I asked David.

  "I have absolutely no idea."

  I stepped back in close to the tree and stretched out my hand toward the trunk.

  "You're not going to--"

  "Yeah," I said turning my head toward David to gauge his reaction. "I was going to."

  "Are you sure that's a smart thing to do?"

  "What could it hurt?" I said. "They're just letters."

  I watched David shrug his shoulder and Trex tilt his head to the side as I turned back toward the tree and placed my finger at the very top of the first letter. My finger grabbed the glow from the letter and turned bright blue in the pulsating light.

  I had no idea how these letters got into the tree, but I couldn't help but be drawn to them. I had to touch them.

  I had no idea, however, just what would happen when I began tracing the glowing blue "GT" with my finger, but by the time I'd reached the very bottom end of that "T," I realized we were in for something we'd never expected.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The more time I spent with David, the more I began to realize just how good he'd become at fitting in at school.

  He was that one kid in the back of the class that no one ever heard. He never made a peep, never answered a question, never got in trouble, and just never attracted any kind of attention.

  Maybe that's why we hit it off and got along so well. I mean, other than the fact that he basically found me in the bathroom and saved my life. He was never noticed, and I was always trying my damndest not to be noticed.

  He'd become my friend. He tried to teach me all he knew about escaping the Coogan Boys and years of embarrassment. And he'd seen the worst of what my f
amily had to offer (namely, my dad).

  And now we stood on the precipice of something completely foreign. We stood in the middle of a glowing ring of trees that had probably never been seen before and we stared down two little mysterious letters. They could mean anything. They surely meant nothing to us. But it was the three of us - David, Trex, and I - standing there, experiencing this, and seeing just what we were made of.

  It had to be dark by now and the way back home, through the woods, would be nearly impossible to find. We were here, we were staying, and we had no intention of leaving any time soon.

  And so it was, those two mysterious letters - "GT" - carved deeply and precisely into the massive tree's trunk. They pulled me in like a rubber band and I couldn't help but touch them.

  David and Trex stared straight at the end of my outstretched hand as my fingers began to trace the glowing blue letters.

  My blue finger followed every curve, swooping up, down, left, and right as it made its way around the "G," picked itself up, moved over to cross the very top of the "T," and slowly made its way down the length of that very same letter.

  But something happened as I neared the bottom of that final letter. That bright blue glow seemed to grow even stronger and brighter as I reached the very end. The "G" itself began to mush, swirl, and squish its way into a tight circle, finally encroaching into its neighbor's space, and eventually smushing right into the "T."

  I reached the end of the "T," removed my finger, and stepped back next to David and Trex.

  We stood, slack-jawed, and watched as the "G" and "T" merged into a swirling circle of blue light.

  The glow continued to grow brighter and the circle grew larger and larger until we saw before us a swirling ring of light, inside the tree's trunk, big enough for us to step right through!

  It swirled and glowed, whirred and pulsated, and we couldn't believe what we saw, much less actually take our eyes off it.

  Trex barked loudly and looked up at the both of us. I turned and looked directly at David. He stared right back into my eyes.