Ashes of Foreverland

by Bertauski, Tony

  “No, no, no...” She fumbled with the handle.

  “Cyn.”

  “Don’t touch me!”

  “Let me—”

  The door popped open. She tumbled from the SUV and slammed into the ground. A thousand memories rose to the surface.

  There was snow here.

  I was buried in the snow. The boy, Sid, on my chest, his hands around my throat.

  The driver’s door slammed. Cyn scrambled on all fours and stumbled through the thicket, away from the hill. Around the back of the SUV, she ran in the opposite direction. Away.

  Away, away, away...

  Run, Barb’s voice whispered. Run, run away.

  Cyn’s throat hurt, her chest burned. She missed steps, fell and got back up, racing down the long slope, sprinting for the trees at the bottom.

  She fell one last time, her palms scuffing through long grassy reeds, raking the rocky ground. She crashed hard, losing all her breath, rolling over with pain deep in her stomach.

  She was here once before. She was here again.

  In the wilderness.

  Give me the body.

  Cyn closed her eyes and wished it would all go away, that this was all over. She couldn’t do this again, couldn’t face the wilderness.

  “Not again,” she muttered. “Not again.”

  Barb’s presence began to fade.

  It receded into the background, far below the surface of her awareness, deep into her subconscious where Cyn no longer felt her, no longer heard her.

  A shadow fell.

  Danny reached out. She considered it. He brought her out here, took her to the last place on earth she ever wanted to see again, and now he wanted to help her stand. If he thought she would enjoy this, that she would follow him back to the SUV so they could tour the countryside and reminisce about the old women in their brick house, about their shaved heads and the cots and the needles in their heads, about waking up in an endless Foreverland loop without memories...

  She raised a limp hand and let it fall into his hand.

  He latched on and tugged. When her dead weight didn’t budge, he relaxed.

  And she pulled.

  Danny’s weight yanked forward, the toe of his boot catching her ribs as he tried to stop. She snatched his coat and pulled him over her as she turned, bringing his weight crashing down.

  She hooked her leg around his waist to mount him, but the slope carried his momentum away from her. He was on his hands and knees. Too lanky and strong to take down, she threw herself onto his back and wrapped her arm around his neck. With the inside of her elbow over his windpipe, she secured the choke hold with her other arm and rolled.

  All his weight fell on her.

  He flailed like a flipped turtle, grinding jagged stones into her shoulders. She ducked her head, hooked her legs over the top of his and applied more pressure. Wildly, he tapped her arm. A few more seconds and the restriction on the carotid artery would black him out. She kept her head down.

  His arms thrashed through the tall grass.

  Paper began to rustle. He stopped prying at her arm and waved a piece of paper. She couldn’t read it, but she saw the lettering.

  Her hold relaxed.

  He dropped the note and gasped for air. Cyn bucked him down the hill and spun in the opposite direction, sweeping the paper up as she jumped to her feet. Danny stayed on his hands and knees, choking a string of drool to the ground.

  Green ink.

  That was the color of the letters on the envelopes she never opened. The envelopes she stacked in a wicker basket, envelopes she threw in the garage.

  “What is this?”

  He put his hands on his hips, still on his knees. His cheeks were red; a scuff on his chin was finely lined with blood.

  “Did you write this?” She shook it in his face. “Are you the asshole sending me letters?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then who?”

  “A friend.”

  “Is this a joke? You were in on this sick joke the whole time?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “What...what does this even mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you...” She balled up the note and fired it into his face.

  She regretted letting go of the choke hold and stormed up the hill, her thighs burning as she climbed. Not even halfway to the top where the dead tree waited, she stopped.

  Pressure was building. No, not pressure. Presence.

  Barb was rising from her subconscious like something lurking beneath the water. She ignored it, pumping her arms until she was halfway—

  Give me the body.

  Cyn turned around. Danny was on his feet, opening the wadded note, smoothing it against his thigh. Barb whispered in the dark.

  She took a step back down the hill. Her head swirled with panic as Barb tried to find a handhold. With each step toward Danny, she faded away, disappearing like an apparition.

  Danny was catching his breath. Blood was smeared across his chin and the back of his hand.

  “Why do I feel...different around you?” She wouldn’t talk about Barb, would never admit to it.

  “We survived Foreverland.”

  He feels it. Does he have someone inside of him, too? “Why’d you bring me out here?”

  He held up the wrinkled paper. When she narrowed her eyes, when the thought of ripping that page into little pieces crossed her mind, he began to read.

  “Where once there was light on a dusted rim, when day followed day, now a night-filled sin.” He emphasized the last word and paused.

  Sin is the homonym of Cyn. But sin could mean Barb: the demon in my head.

  “Turn back your sight to where your steps begin,” he continued, “and return to the root and fall again.”

  He dropped his hand and, once again, paused. “This is about you,” he said, “going back to where Foreverland started.”

  He nodded up the hill, at the dead tree.

  “Where you fell,” he said.

  “You kidnapped me, dragged me out to hell because of a poem? A goddamn poem?” She grabbed two fistfuls of his coat and swung him around. “We’re going back to the truck; we’re getting the hell out of here.”

  “You feel different. You said so.”

  “I don’t want to be here.”

  “Reed is how I found you. He sent me. I don’t know why, I just know that something feels different when I’m with you. And he’s telling us to be out here.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “He told you to bring me back to my nightmare, to hell on earth? Are you out of your mind? How would you like to go back to the island?”

  “I do.” He turned his head and swallowed. “Every night. Except when I’m with you.”

  The pain was in his eyes. Are we all doomed to relive the nightmare?

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “What’s that matter?”

  “You don’t belong out here.”

  “But you do?”

  “I didn’t say that. Neither of us should be in the wilderness.”

  “You think we’re too young for this? You think that’s how it works?” He chuckled. “Age is relative. There’s a time dilation between Foreverland and physical reality; they’re not synced up. Time goes much faster in Foreverland.”

  “I know.”

  “Think about how long we were in Foreverland.” He spit blood and thumped his head. “I look young, but that’s an illusion.”

  “I’m just saying we’re over our head out here. You don’t know anything about surviving in the wilderness and neither do I.”

  “We don’t have a choice.”

  “I didn’t choose this life.”

  “None of us did.” He rattled the letter. “Something’s happening, and this is all I got.”

  A chill wind streamed down the hill. Cyn wrapped her arms around herself. Her fingers were nearly numb, her nose leaking.

  �
��So what then?” she asked. “What now?”

  “There are supplies in the truck. We set up camp.”

  “And what? Search for another note?”

  “We wait. Something will come up.” He sounded too confident.

  “You know how cold it gets out here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you want to camp?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “There are cabins.” She pointed at the hilltop. “Over there.”

  He looked around, nodding. There was something else on his mind. She knew what it was. It was the same thought lurking in her mind, one she wanted to ignore before the vertigo of reality confusion dropped her stomach.

  She followed him up the hill, past the dead tree, staying close enough to him that Barb didn’t surface. By the time they reached the SUV, her legs were numb.

  How do I know this isn’t Foreverland?

  ——————————————

  They stopped in an open field.

  The headlights grazed dying wildflowers. Beyond, in twilight’s gray shade, scrubby trees and thick undergrowth were swallowing the remnants of three buildings: two log cabins on the left, a brick house on the right.

  Somewhere between them was a lump of earth where Jen was buried. No, that was in Foreverland. Jen died in Foreverland, not in real life. We all died in Foreverland.

  They all woke up in their bodies, but the memories of those deaths remained. Somewhere in the ethers of the universe, imagined or not, it happened.

  “I can’t go,” she muttered.

  If they were going to stay out there, the house would be more suitable than a tent. But there were memories in there. Memories, she feared, that were worse than the cold.

  Danny turned around.

  When night had fully arrived, he had set up two tents and stacked wood. He’d stopped for supplies somewhere between Minnesota and Wyoming, and stocked the back of the SUV while Cyn slept in the front seat. There was enough for months. She shivered at the thought of staying that long.

  He heated tea and something to eat. They sat in silence and listened to wolves howl in the distance. A quarter moon hung over the mountains. Exhausted, she climbed into her tent.

  She didn’t stay long.

  Afraid that Barb would return, she went to the only place she knew would keep the old woman quiet. Danny looked up from his sleeping bag when she unzipped the flap and crawled in. He watched her shove her sleeping bag inside. She could feel his arm between the layers of fabric.

  “This doesn’t mean anything,” she whispered.

  Barb didn’t visit her dreams that night.

  ——————————————

  Cyn opened her eyes to the smell of smoke.

  It was well past sunrise. Danny sat on a fabric chair with a stack of broken limbs beside him. A cup of coffee waited on an empty chair.

  They drank in silence.

  She felt foolish for crawling into his tent and couldn’t look him in the eye. He was younger than her. Maybe sixteen? Cyn was eighteen, or nineteen. She wondered about the accuracy of her memories, and that included her birthday, a day she hadn’t celebrated, ever.

  But he was right: age didn’t matter.

  “How long are we staying?”

  “I don’t know.” He kept busy breaking wood.

  Cyn cleaned the plates in a bucket of ice-cold water.

  “Can I show you something?” he asked.

  “Depends.”

  “It’s just something someone taught me. It helped me through, you know, the worst of it.”

  He didn’t need to elaborate. The days that followed Foreverland were it.

  “When I couldn’t take it anymore, someone taught me that pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional.”

  “Cute.”

  “What he meant was the thoughts, how I identified with them, believed them, let them spin stories in my head, take me out of the present moment where I didn’t want to be. The present moment is all that exists.”

  He crossed his legs and closed his eyes. He didn’t call it meditation. “Be here,” he said. “Let the thoughts rise, let the thoughts go, and count your breaths without prejudice.”

  He didn’t know her thoughts.

  As long as he was near her, her thoughts were ordinary thoughts. But when he went to fetch wood or get water from a nearby stream, other thoughts surfaced.

  Was there a method to meditate with another person living inside your head, someone that could pour a bottle of pills down your throat?

  ——————————————

  In just over a week, the nights were too cold to crawl out to pee. They slept together, always in their own sleeping bags. Sometimes she woke in the night to find they were holding hands. It was always his arm that hung out from the sleeping bag, as if he’d reached out.

  She tried going back to the cabins, but the sight of the brick house racked her fear. Danny never pushed, giving her space.

  Occasionally, they’d see something move in the trees. Just over the ridge, one morning, they saw the wolves that kept them awake at night. Five of them stared across the field before trotting into the forest.

  “We need to be careful,” Danny said.

  There were nights she swore she could hear them walking around the tents.

  It was mid-afternoon when he left with a towel over his shoulder. Tired of clinging by his side, she decided to stay at the camp. Ten minutes later, Barb began to whisper. The old woman’s voice was weak and scratchy, almost exhausted.

  Cyn didn’t wait for her to reach the light.

  She followed a path into the trees and up to a ridge. She saw a cliff ahead and hid in the trees. Down several granite shelves was a shallow stream. Danny was in the middle of it, his underwear clinging to his skin.

  The water had to be just above freezing. His ribs jutted from his sides. He wasn’t shivering, yet. His skin was fair, his shoulders freckled. He scrubbed his head with shampoo and rinsed it in the slow current.

  “I know you’re there,” he said.

  She ducked behind a tree.

  “You should come in, rinse off,” he said. “You won’t regret it.”

  It had been weeks since she bathed—her clothes would testify—but she was already shivering, a cold that reached her bones, one that started on the inside, ignited by fear.

  She didn’t join him. But she didn’t go back to the camp. She huddled against the tree, arms crossed, sitting on a bed of moss.

  Barb was quiet.

  Danny climbed the granite shelves and squatted next to her, fully dressed with the towel around his shoulders. Steam was rising from his head. She noticed the scar, the tiny starfish in the middle of his forehead.

  Branded by Foreverland.

  “How’d you do that?” Danny ran his finger over the raised scar on the back of her hand.

  She jerked it away. “It wasn’t suicide.”

  “I didn’t think that.”

  He took her hand, his fingers icy cold, and tenderly traced the white line that went from her knuckle to the knob of her wrist. His touch tingled up her arm, embraced her heart, almost brought her to tears.

  “Did it happen out here?”

  She closed her eyes, remembering the big city, the tall buildings. She arrived at the airport alone, feeling so small and insignificant. Before she arrived at the Institute, she got so high that the sidewalk rocked like the deck of a ship and almost threw her into traffic when she fell off the curb.

  Those days felt so distant and foggy. Almost like they weren’t real.

  “It was the last day I used. I was so messed up.” She chuckled and shook her head. “Unlike now, right?”

  “So what made you stop using?”

  “This new recovery program paid for by the Foreverland fund. Hurray,” she said flatly. “I didn’t plan on cleaning up, really. It was a free trip to the city, and I wasn’t doing anything, so...”

  “What city?”r />
  “New York.”

  He stiffened. “The Institute?”

  “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  “When?”

  “Like, last spring.”

  He looked away, calculating; his lips moved slightly until he shook his head. “I was there, too, about the same time. I received an invitation from the director.”

  “Mr. Deer?”

  He nodded slowly. Thoughts churning.

  “What’s that mean?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.”

  He didn’t sound like he believed that. Nothing, so far, had been a coincidence.

  Danny pulled a stocking cap over his damp hair and gloves over her hands. “We should get back to the fire.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because it’s cold.”

  “No. I mean, how do you know this is real?”

  His smile faded, but didn’t disappear.

  “I mean,” she added, “how do you know this isn’t still...you know...”

  Cyn’s Foreverland looked exactly like the wilderness. There was no difference. That tree on top of the hill, the one they saw when she woke in the SUV, was in Foreverland, too.

  The scar on their foreheads would always be there to remind them, but the real scar was the question they asked themselves every day for the rest of their lives.

  How do you know this isn’t a dream?

  “I don’t.”

  “What if we’re dreaming again?” she muttered.

  “I don’t know how that would be possible.”

  “Of course it’s possible.” She woke up every day in that Foreverland cabin. Only when she woke up did she know it was the dream.

  He fell against the tree, their shoulders touching. “Does it matter? Wherever this is, we can only be here. It’s all we can do.”

  Her chin quivered. She clenched down, hated showing emotion, hated her weakness. It was something she couldn’t control, couldn’t throw on the ground and choke. She felt his hand reach for her, felt his fingers lace between hers.

  “This is real,” he said.

  They held hands that way, listening to the stream until the cold chased them back to camp. They sat by the fire, warming their hands without letting go. Their clothes were saturated with smoke. Perhaps it was the wood they were using, but there was an odd hint of something fragrant. It wasn’t cedar.