by Alexie Aaron
Green orbs glowed in front of her the size of basketballs. A lid lowered and Mia realized who was sharing her piece of hell. “Oh great, a roomie,” she said. The thorns closed over Mia, and she felt movement.
Murphy hovered over the space where Mia had entered the now stable sinkhole. The storm had moved off. The stars overhead cast an eerie light around him. He heard a sound above and watched as Ted dropped down off the ledge and slid down towards him. He had in his hand the last energon cube. He activated it silently and set it on the ground.
Murphy connected with the cube and drew all of the energy. Together they started digging for Mia’s remains.
Ted felt a rumble beneath them. He retreated up the steep incline, watching as sand and mud bubbled out of the center of the hole. In the middle of it a large piece of wood moved upward. It was sectioned in five thorn-topped pieces. As it cleared the hole, the segments opened like wooden fingers. Sitting in the middle of the wooden hand was Mia, who was very much alive.
“Excuse me, this is my floor,” she said, patting a finger as she climbed out of the hand. She ran over to Ted, embracing him.
“Don’t you ever…”
“Fall into a sinkhole in autumn?” she filled in, accepting the kisses he pressed to her muddy face.
CRACK!
Mia turned around to see Murphy standing there. “I thought I was in hell. And then I realized when I didn’t see your old carcass hanging around, I wasn’t dead,” she said. She looked beyond him and pointed.
Murphy turned around and saw the owner of Mia’s exit conveyance standing twenty or so feet tall. “I think the lady ate your energon cube. Now, don’t you two fight. Much to my surprise, she decided to save my ass instead of eating me.”
The creature looked down at the couple and swatted away the French trappers who flew around her like moths attracted to the energy she was emitting. She turned around and walked off into the darkness.
“Are you alright down there?” Ryan’s voice called.
A beam of light blinded Mia and Ted. “We’re alive, but have no clue for how long. Did you find Blair up there?” Ted asked.
“No. But he’ll turn up. Hang on, we’re tying a rope off. Chambers, that is the shoddiest knot work I’ve ever seen. Here give me that…”
Mia looked up at Ted and growled, “That ungrateful son of a bitch didn’t even wait around for the ending. He’s like those guys who leave the game early when their team is behind. You never know what’s going to happen in the last minutes,” Mia pointed out.
Chapter Thirty-two
The big viewing screen in the PEEPs command vehicle came to life when Ted and Mia came within the ear com’s radius. Mia’s GPS/heart monitor icon popped open. It displayed that Mia was experiencing a regular heartbeat, and location-wise, she would soon be out of the woods.
“Cid calling out to Ted or Mia, come in please.”
“Ted speaking. It’s great to hear your voice, Superman. Has a Blair Summerfield come out of the forest yet?”
“Negative. The only activity we’ve had was Tom. The Monroes brought him in a half hour ago along with Ethan Aldridge. They’re on the way to see old Doc Walters. Oh, according to the state police, Vince and Sean Smithe were picked up trying to hitch a ride into Big Bear Lake. They are also headed to the hospital. Both boys are suffering major contusions. In addition,Vince has taser burns, and his brother refuses to leave his side. They aren’t singing songs in praise of their wooded adventure. The Smithes wisely asked for their lawyer.”
“We’ve had a bit of fun out in mother nature, a bit too much to talk about on this thing. We’ll see you soon, Ted out.”
Cid heard a noise behind him. Rory who had previously lain down on Mia’s lounge chair and passed out was waking up. “What time is it?” he asked.
“Eight-thirty. You’ve been sleeping for about an hour.”
“What did I miss?”
Cid brought him up to date.
“You know, all this is my fault.”
“I beg to differ,” Cid argued.
“Hear me out. If I wasn’t so jealous of my friends who were still on the football team, I wouldn’t have looked for other guys to hang out with. Football season wraps in a month. I wasn’t abandoned. They didn’t ditch me, I ditched them,” he realized as he was talking. “There I was feeling all sorry for myself. I made myself a victim, and Blair came in and took advantage of me.”
“From what I hear, Blair’s a monster. Ethan Aldridge is ruing the moment he stepped in and saved his butt.”
“He didn’t seem too pleased last time I saw him. Ethan’s an ass too. Crazy em effer.”
“A crazy em effer that saved a deputy’s life,” Cid reminded him. “When we are tested that way, our true qualities rise to the surface.”
Rory disagreed, “Shit floats.”
Cid started laughing. “I see you’re not so easily swayed. Give it time. Learn the whole story if you can. Pity those that didn’t have parents who cared. Or those that fell under the spell of the Summerfields,” he advised the youth.
“So what’s your story, Cid. How come you’re so wise?” Rory said, pulling up a chair next to him.
Cid offered the boy a Dr. Pepper and pushed the Red Vine canister in his direction. “I didn’t exactly have an easy time making friends…”
“Bull shit, handsome guys have no trouble.”
“Hold on,” he instructed. He pulled out his wallet and pulled out a picture. Before he showed it to Rory he explained, “I didn’t always look like I do now. This is how I spent my teen years.” Cid put the picture in front of Rory.
Rory looked at the skinny guy wearing the thick lensed glasses.
“Before that I was fat, about two-hundred and fifteen pounds, and I was only four feet eleven at the time. I made my first friend, Ted –the guy you met in the woods - when we bumped into each other in school. We’ve been friends ever since.”
“Why do you still carry that picture?”
“To remind me who I really am. Clark Kent.”
Rory smiled. “Well, Clark, I’m going to see if I can convince the sheriff to let me go home. I don’t need to go to the hospital. I’m feeling just fine…”
“Let me be the judge of that,” a gruff voice declared from the entrance to the trailer. They turned to see a very muddy and tired John Ryan glaring at them. “I’ve called your mother. She’s on the way. I want to see you in the station tomorrow at ten sharp.”
“I’ve got school,” Rory protested.
“Miss it,” Ryan said, turned heel and walked off.
“My advice to you, Rory, if you want to come out of this mess in one piece, you’ll be there at ten to ten,” Cid advised.
Rory blew out the air he had been holding. “I think I’ll take your advice. My mother is going to kill me. I used up my savings on that fucking marker.”
“I hear from Mia, you’re pretty good with colors. If you manage to stay out of jail,” he prefaced, “I have a painting project in the burbs next weekend. I could use another set of hands.”
“I’d like that,” Rory said, walked over to the edge of the vehicle trailer and sat down.
Cid watched him looking down the road figuring out what to say to the woman he worried all night.
Mia kicked at the stones on the verge of the road. Ted was insisting on her going to the hospital. Aside from a few nasty bruises and an arm that hung funny - and was most likely dislocated - she felt fine. “Walters is going to start off by saying… ‘Mia Mia Mia, you really should take my advice and hang out with a better quality of people.’ I’m just not in the mood for another lecture.”
Ted looked at her. “First of all, you didn’t sound like the doctor, you sounded like Igor. Bad impressions are the first sign of illness. Ralph is going to eat our livers for breakfast if you get sick before the wedding. You’re going to the hospital,” he insisted.
Mia reluctantly nodded.
“Murphy floated over and took off his hat. He waited until
he had Ted’s attention, shook his head in disgust and said, “Frogs.”
“Oh lord. Murphy, you can’t call them that. They are French men,” he instructed.
“On the third day of October my true love gave to me,” Mia sang, “Three French men, two muddy cops and a ghost named Stephen Murphy.” She snorted as she laughed at her own joke.
Murphy angled his head, brought his finger up to the side of it and made swirling motions.
Ted laughed. “She’s not crazy, just a bit tired.”
“Thanks for defending me, Teddy Bear,” Mia said, making a face at Murphy.
“Anytime dear,” Ted said, putting a protective arm around her, noting that she winced when he touched her right shoulder. “He has a point though. What are we going to do about the ghosts in there?”
“It’s not just Larry, Moe and Curly,” Mia confided. “The place is like opening day for the Cubs, with all the men hanging around.”
Murphy nodded. “Frenchies, Limey Bastids, Injuns, and hunters.”
Mia was stunned. “That’s it, no more cable television for you!”
“Don’t be hasty. If you call attention to the bad language, the tot will use it all the time according to the child-rearing manuals.”
“Murphy’s not a… Well… How long do we have to ignore him?” Mia asked, watching Murphy balancing his axe hilt on his nose, walking in circles, waiting for her lecture to finish.
“Getting back to the ghosts…” Ted prodded.
“Ma Nature’s going to probably tap the three trappers before long, and they will be harmless again. I’ll consult with Father Santos and get his recommendation about the whole situation. I suppose if she leaves the woods, then Angelo will have to be called in. But I don’t think she will. I think she’s happy as long as the woods are left alone. I don’t see anyone wanting to venture in there again in the near future. The south sinkhole has taken half the road, and I doubt the county has the funds to fix it. If we’re lucky, they’ll post danger signs, fence off the area, and Sentinel Woods will once again be forgotten.”
“What about Blair?” Ted asked.
“Gee, you had to fuck up my brilliant summation, didn’t you?” Mia growled. “Blair is evil; there is no doubt about it. I would hope that the justice system would find an appropriate way to punish the monster, but realistically we know that isn’t going to happen. I’ll recommend to Father Santos that someone may want to follow his progress and step in when the man becomes actively dangerous again.”
“To think, we risked our lives saving him,” Ted said in disgust. “We should have let the creature have him.”
“We didn’t know that he was evil. I felt evil around him, but I didn’t really know. And besides, that’s not for us to decide. We are just mere instruments of fate after all.”
~
Blair stumbled out of the woods bone-tired. He stood for a moment looking up at the western sky, taking in the universe, and smiled, taking for granted that the stars were placed there just for his pleasure and that the storm, which had left the ground muddy but the air fresh, came at the right time to liberate him from the creature in the woods. He breathed in the crisp cold air and sighed. This feeling of entitlement was bred into him, and he relished the role of the privileged child of a billionaire and his charitable wife. Although, her love and charity only went as far as parties and galas; she didn’t share normally, especially with her children.
“Dear Mother, what crimes you’re responsible for. You have a son lying in the morgue ready to be served up in pieces by the coroner. Sweet Keith, put there by a monster that was defending a child he was bullying. Now you only have me. Am I running home to your arms? No, I’m here standing in a field pondering what went wrong, blaming others for my miscalculations.” Blair stepped over a rotted fence post and continued across the soybean stripped-field.
“Let us not forget dear Papa, the absent patriarch of the family. More concerned for his next launch than whether or not his progeny made it home last night. Our veiled cries for help – all the antics the family lawyers sorted out - met not with concern and discipline but with costly automobiles and vacations that you didn’t bother to attend.”
Blair laughed at the sound of his own voice echoing through the night. He heard the whistle of a freight train in the distance making its way towards Chicago. He thought about joining the ragtag group who had spent so much time saving him and his fellows from their own folly. Questions would need to be answered. Jason’s family would have to be appeased somehow. What words could he share with people who nurtured that crowing clown? He dismissed the idea. Better to go home, contact the firm of Get-me-out-of-trouble-I-have-money and Brewster, and have them sort it out.
He pulled out his phone and saw to his delight that it still worked. He had two bars, even in this wilderness. He flipped through his contacts and selected a number.
“Candace. Blair Summerfield. I’m in the need of comfort and a ride,” he said, giving her the directions. She started talking, and he hung up. “Oops, I’m out of bars,” he snickered and made his way to the road to wait for her.
She stood at the tree line watching the man-child walk across the field. She pondered going after him and making him pay for the ruination and hurt he was responsible for. But he was in man’s territory now. He was their problem. If he ever returned to her woods, she would kill him and feed her mushrooms with his rotting corpse. She realized now that displaying the other two boys didn’t have its desired effect. She wanted to scare mankind away as she had done so successfully in the past, but mankind had developed rules and laws that protected the good and the evil ones. As she watched the boy standing and waiting at the edge of the road, she realized that he and she had something in common. They both were born without hearts.
She waited until the smart vehicle pulled up and he got in, before turning and walking back into her forest.
Chapter Thirty-three
Tom woke up sore and groggy. His dreams were filled with strange images, things he hadn’t thought about since childhood. He saw his mother sitting over in the corner of the room with some knitting in her lap. “Mom,” he said through parched lips.
Susan Braverman’s face lit up. She set her knitting down and rushed over to the bed. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” she said, very aware that Tom had died out there in the woods.
“Someone’s got to occupy that future craft room of yours,” he said, referencing their standing battle of him still living at home.
“You can stay for a bit longer, but I’ve got plans for that room,” she teased, putting her hand to his forehead. “You feel a bit warm. I’m going to call…”
“No need for that,” Margaret Mary said walking in. “I’m here to check the hero’s vitals.”
“Wha…” was all Tom got out as a thermometer was stuck in his mouth.
The nurse clipped a pulse oximeter to his finger before she wrapped the cuff around his other arm and took his blood pressure. She removed the thermometer and listened to Tom’s chest. Moving the stethoscope to his back, she asked him to breathe in and out. “Sounds good, a little raspy, but air is getting in.”
Tom started coughing. Margaret waited for him to stop before explaining, “You breathed in some grit when you were fighting for air. It’s your body working it out. We have to monitor you to make sure nothing organic is setting up shop in your lungs.”
“Ethan, how is he?” Tom asked.
“The kid is spinning some tales about what happened to you guys out there. We think he was suffering from air loss to the brain. He did, however, have presence of mind to dig the sand out of your mouth and start CPR, I’ll give him that.”
Tom’s memory was fuzzy. He remembered seeing who he assumed was Stephen Murphy kneeling over him, pulling him back from a warm sunny place into the cold woods.
“What made you think you could jump in quicksand and come out of it alive?” his mother asked him.
“Too many Tarzan movies,” Mia Coop
er said from the doorway. She stood there smiling, explaining, “I’m just a geek bearing gifts and advice for the young hero. May I enter your domain, M&Ms?”
“I’m not sure I should be letting riffraff in, but since I’m in a friendly mood, you may enter, Ms. Cooper,” Margaret said. “Just no tiring the patient,” she warned as she collected her equipment and left the room.
Mia handed Susan a gift bag. “That’s for later. Right now, I’d like to explain some odd things your son may be experiencing,” she said, walking over to the door and shutting it. She walked over to the side of the bed and gazed a moment at Tom. She’d forgotten how young he was. Mia regretted that the sparkle of wonderment he should have still in his eyes had already been dulled, a casualty of his job as a law enforcement professional. She took a deep breath and started, “It wasn’t CPR that brought you back, Tom. You were brought back to life the same way I survived my fall into the well down in Lund. Stephen Murphy reached into your chest and squeezed your heart until it started to work on its own.”
Susan, well aware of the oddities that surrounded Mia Cooper, wasn’t sure she believed that a ghost started Tom’s heart. But she never knew Mia to tell a lie, so she sat back and listened.
“Because of this, you may see or hear things that others don’t. This may pass or it may stay with you.”
“You’re saying I died.”
“Murph says by the time he got to you, you had no pulse, weren’t breathing, and your heart had stopped beating. The process of dying and being brought back can bring on night visions, nightmares, good dreams and daytime hallucinations,” she listed. “It’s how your soul is adjusting to being pulled back through the ether,” Mia explained. She took his hand tenderly in hers. “You have been given a second chance at life.”
Susan watched her son’s face and relaxed as he seemed to accept what Mia was saying.
