Four Octobers

by Hautala, Rick

  But he wasn’t there, and I knew it wasn’t just that he was sick at home for a day or two. He was gone, and I told myself that I would just have to get used to it.

  Of course, the police and plenty of the people from town spent the next several days looking for Chucky, but no one found a trace of him, and they never figured out where he had gone. Later that day, they even got some divers to go down into Nickerson’s Quarry and a few of the granite quarries where we swam in the summer, but they didn’t find him.

  Chucky’s parents went crazy with grief. His father started drinking more than he should, and his mother eventually turned into kind of a hermit. That afternoon, after school, the police talked to me and my parents. I wasn’t very much help. Chucky had never said anything to me that gave any indication he was planning on running away or anything. I knew they were thinking that Chucky may have committed suicide, but they never came right out and asked me if I thought that’s what happened.

  I insisted that I knew Chucky, and he would never do anything like that. He was my best friend, and I just couldn’t get used to the idea that he had just disappeared like that. There was talk about kidnappers and all sorts of other things, but the simple fact was, my friend was gone.

  But I did have one idea where to look, so when I got home from school and after I’d done my chores, just as the sun was setting, I went out to my grandfather’s field. The brown circle of grass was still there. If anything, it looked darker than before in the waning light. The grass was crisp and dark brown, and black on the edges in the fading, purple twilight.

  “Chucky…?” I called out softly.

  A painful tightness gripped my throat and made my voice sound higher than usual. Although the evening was cool, a sheen of sweat broke out across my forehead and ran like icy strings down the inside of my shirt.

  I realized that the wind that had been blowing gently before had stopped, and a hush in the air pressed against my face like invisible hands. This time—thank God—I didn’t feel that sudden blast of withering heat behind me or feel any kind of concussion in the air, but then I heard something that made me jump.

  “…Johnny…”

  For a split second, I thought it was my mother, calling me in for supper; but an instant later, I realized it was Chucky. His voice sounded so faint and faraway I had to strain to hear it as I leaned forward, my head as close to the circle of brown grass as I dared to get it.

  “What the heck, Chucky?” I said out loud, feeling foolish talking to someone I couldn’t even see. “Where the heck are you? What are you doing?”

  “…I’m right here. I can hear you, but I can’t see you…”

  “I can’t see you, either,” I said, swallowing so hard my throat made a loud gulping sound that hurt. I took a breath, trying to find a slight measure of courage. “Are you—”

  I was going to ask him if he was dead, but I didn’t dare to because I was pretty sure of the answer. Overhead, the October sky was streaked with narrow bands of purple and indigo clouds. A breeze suddenly rushed across the field, cold and hard. It ruffled my hair and made me shiver. I looked longingly over my shoulder at the line of trees between me and the house, and was amazed how far away safety looked.

  “So where are you? How come I can’t see you?”

  There was a long pause, and in that silence, I almost convinced myself that I was imagining all of this. But then Chucky’s voice came to me again, sounding fainter, if anything, but it was still there… and it was real.

  “…I can’t really tell. But I don’t think I…”

  His voice twisted up into a funny, fluttering sound and then faded away before he finished what he was going to say. It was lost beneath the low, rushing sound inside my head.

  I realized that I had dropped to my hands and knees in the center of the circle of dead grass. I didn’t remember consciously stepping inside the circle. What had happened to me that morning was still so fresh and clear it sent a lightning bolt of panic shooting up my spine. Uttering a low, strangled cry, I rolled to one side, tucking my chin down against my chest the way we had learned “tumbling” in gym class.

  As soon as I was outside the circle, I realized that all the other sounds around me had been muffled, like my ears were full of water, but now I could hear everything clearly. Off in the distance, my mother was calling me from the back steps. Her voice echoed from the woods behind the house.

  Licking my lips, I leaped to my feet and furiously brushed the dead grass off my pants. I couldn’t believe how drained I felt. It reminded me of last winter, when I’d had the Asian flu. All of my joints were burning, and the muscles in my arms and legs felt like they had turned into oatmeal. I tried to holler back to my mother, but no sound came out when I opened my mouth.

  “John-ny!”

  The memory of hearing Chucky call my name and talk to me made me shiver, and as I turned and ran for home and supper, I tried to convince myself that it hadn’t been Chucky I heard.

  Not really.

  It was impossible.

  I had to be imagining it. It was like I had slipped into a world like in those scary science fiction movies I had to sneak into because my parents wouldn’t give me the money to go see them.

  I knew I’d better not tell anyone what had happened—especially not my parents. They’d think I was crazy, for sure, and I might end up in the mental hospital. We’d all heard those stories about the “nut house” over in Danvers. “Coffee Hill,” we called it, because it was “chock full of nuts.”

  So I kept my mouth shut about what had happened, and after supper, I washed up and went straight upstairs to bed, earlier than usual. My parents seemed to understand that I wanted time to myself, but after I had tucked myself in, my mother came upstairs to talk to me. She told me that she understood how upset I was about what had happened to Chucky, and she reassured me that everything would be all right. He’d show up, and we’d all laugh about how concerned we’d been.

  But I knew differently.

  I knew things wouldn’t be all right ever again.

  The problem was, no one knew what had happened to my best friend. He still hadn’t shown up at his home by suppertime, and the police were still out looking for him until long after dark. The divers didn’t find him in the quarries, but that didn’t prove anything. There were hundreds of places he might be hiding, if he was hiding, or he could have run away to another town.

  I was pretty sure he was someplace else, and I knew he wasn’t coming back.

  After my mother turned out the light and I settled down in bed, I couldn’t help but listen to the wind, whistling through the crack in the window. It made the tin can telephone bang against the wall, but I was too scared to get out of bed and move it. I imagined that the sound wasn’t the wind at all. I imagined that it was Chucky, calling to me from out of the darkness. I knew he was trying to let me know that he was in some kind of trouble and that he needed my help.

  All night, I hovered somewhere between being asleep and awake, and the dreams I had and the things I imagined kept me tossing and turning until dawn.

  When the sky first started to get lighter in the east, blending from black to coal dust gray, I had come to the conclusion that I was the only one who could figure out where Chucky had gone, and I was the one who could save him.

  Or at least try.

  It wasn’t hard to convince my folks to let me stay home from school that day. When I complained that I wasn’t feeling well, my father sat on the edge of my bed, held the back of his hand against my forehead, and told my mother that I probably needed to stay home and rest.

  My mother wasn’t too keen on the idea because she had plans to go shopping and then out to lunch with her friends, Mildred Story and Vera Miller. I told her I’d be fine, that all I was going to do was stay here in bed, maybe read a few comic books, and try to sleep.

  They both believed me, so I was tingling with excitement as I listened to them getting ready to leave. My father left at the usual time fo
r his job at the town water plant. Then my sister—after complaining that it wasn’t fair that I got to stay home when I wasn’t even sick—left for school. An hour or so later, after checking in on me and reminding me for the millionth time not to answer the telephone or doorbell, my mother left when Mildred drove up into the driveway and honked her horn. The dust hadn’t even settled behind them before I was out of bed, dressed, and out the back door, running through the woods to my grandfather’s field with the shovel I’d gotten from the garage bouncing on my shoulder the way a soldier carries his rifle.

  The excitement and anticipation I’d been feeling quickly evaporated when I saw the circle of brown grass in the field.

  It was darker than ever. Some of the grass was as black and fragile as ash. I shuddered as I stared at this proof that at least part of what I thought had happened really had happened. During the night, I had tried to convince myself that it wasn’t real, that nothing had happened yesterday, and if I had gone to school this morning as usual, I’d see Chucky sitting behind me where he always sat, one row over and one seat back.

  But as I stared down at the withered grass, not daring yet to step inside the circle, my hands got slick from the grip I had on the handle of the shovel.

  I knew this really was happening, no matter how much I might think otherwise. I couldn’t stop that weird feeling that I was dreaming as I took a few steps closer to the circle of grass.

  Swallowing hard, I licked my lips.

  “Chucky?” I called out. “Are you there?”

  The day was unseasonably warm, the sun almost broiling as it beat down upon my shoulders. I don’t know how long I stood there, waiting for a reply, but the only sound I heard was the soft rustle of the wind in the grass.

  I took a deep breath and placed the tip of the shovel on the ground, resting my foot on the top of the blade and leaning the way I’d see town workers do when they were at a construction site.

  When the wind suddenly died down, that same weird, prickling sensation came over me. I could hear one or two crickets chirping in the field. Then the sound of a car coming down the road drew my attention.

  I panicked, thinking my mother might be coming back to the house because she’d forgotten something or, more likely, because she wanted to check in on me. When I saw Old Man Wayrenen’s rusted Ford pickup truck rounding the corner, heading toward town, I let my breath out and relaxed a little.

  I shook my head, suddenly realizing that I had been just standing there, staring at the circle of brown grass for so long my vision began to shimmer. I wasn’t sure if there was something wrong with my eyes, if I was crying, or if the air inside the burned circle really looked denser, but all around me the air was rippling and shimmering. It made me think of the times I’d jumped into Nickerson’s Quarry and rolled over and looked back up at the sky from underwater. The sky, even the sunlight, jiggled so much it made me feel dizzy. I fought back the fear that I was going to faint again, and this time my father wasn’t there to help me.

  “Hang on, Chucky,” I whispered under my breath as I shucked off my sweatshirt and dropped it to the ground. Gripping the shovel tightly with both hands, I held my breath and took my first step inside the circle.

  Unlike the last time, I didn’t feel anything really weird once I was standing in the circle. Maybe I was getting used to it. I did notice that my hair prickled a little, and when I looked down at the backs of my arms, the tiny hairs were standing straight up like the hair on a frightened cat. I ran my forefinger along my forearm and flattened out the hairs, but they stood back up as soon as I took my finger away.

  “Really weird,” I muttered. I couldn’t help but notice that my voice sounded so distorted I had the distinct impression someone else had spoken, not me.

  Before I started digging, I took another look around the field, surprised by how distant and dreamy everything appeared. It was like I was looking through a pane of old-fashioned glass that distorted my vision and made everything ripple whenever I moved my head. I guess I started to daydream or something because all of a sudden I started to feel really sleepy. I covered my mouth with my hand as I yawned, but I suddenly jerked wide awake when I heard a voice.

  “…Get digging…”

  I had been expecting to hear Chucky’s voice, so I was surprised to hear what sounded like a full-grown man talking to me.

  “Are you talking to me?” I asked, unable to control the tremor in my voice.

  I waited for a reply, but none came—at least none that I heard clearly—so I gritted my teeth, took hold of the shovel, and jabbed the rusted blade into the turf at my feet.

  Over the years, Chucky and I had done plenty of digging, so I had been expecting more resistance than I got. I assumed the turf would be a hard tangle of knotted grass and weed roots, but the shovel blade sank into the soil so cleanly and easily it threw me off balance. As I scrambled to keep my balance, I let go of the shovel, and the handle bounced painfully off my shoulder as I fell to the ground.

  Embarrassed that someone might have seen me, I scrambled to my feet, brushed off my pants, and then bent down to pick up the shovel. The soil, I saw, was as rich and dark as the soot of a burned out campfire. I scraped at it with the shovel and saw that it was so loose I could just as easily have scooped it away with my hands as with a shovel. As I set to work, I found myself wishing that Chucky was here to help me. I really missed my best friend.

  I lost all sense of time as I worked, but I noticed that my shadow shifted quickly across the ground, as though the sun were speeding past me. I ignored it and just kept digging, not really paying attention to whatever progress I was making. It seemed, somehow, not to matter. All that mattered was that I keep digging, throwing shovelful after shovelful of loose, black dirt over my shoulder outside of the circle.

  As I worked, I was vaguely aware that I was getting hungry and thirsty, but I had no intention of stopping to rest. I had developed a rhythm that was unlike any other time I had ever dug a hole. Even though sweat was pouring down my face and inside my T-shirt, I didn’t feel the least bit of strain in my muscles or joints. After a first little bit of breathlessness, I found that I was breathing deeply and evenly, the air pouring like water into my lungs. I imagined that, to someone watching from the field or from down on the road, I must have looked like a digging machine, spewing out fantails of rich, dark soil that arched against the sky before landing several feet outside the circle. I didn’t stop to think how peculiar it was that I hadn’t hit any rocks or anything until my shovel blade struck against something so hard it made a loud gong sound that rattled my teeth. The blade scraped against the buried object, shooting out a spray of orange sparks, and then sank into the wall of dirt.

  I stopped digging and, for the first time, realized how hard I had been working. My body was drenched with sweat, and my clothes hung heavily on me. A deep vibration thrummed inside my body, and it hurt when I took a breath, but I paid no attention to it as I dropped to my knees and plunged my fingers into the soil to see what I had hit. This was an old New England field, so I had been expecting to feel the rough surface of buried granite. I was surprised when I felt a piece of smooth, flat metal. I dug deeper with my fingers until I found the edge and tried to pry it free, but the thing wouldn’t budge.

  “What the heck?” I muttered in frustration as I sat back on my heels.

  Sweat was coursing down my forehead and into my eyes. When I wiped my face with the back of my arm, the grit scraped my skin hard enough to draw blood. I was panting heavily, and as I shifted my gaze out over the field, I realized I’d been working like a maniac. Exhaustion wrung me out, and I sure could have used a drink of water, but I didn’t want to stop.

  I couldn’t stop.

  Not yet.

  When I turned and glanced over my shoulder at the house, a whirlwind of tiny white spots corkscrewed across my vision like a swirl of fireflies that left behind trailing afterimages, glowing bright blue and violet before they faded away. A powerful wave of
dizziness swept over me again. It felt as though my head kept turning, spinning all the way around in a complete circle on my neck. The whole world went suddenly silent, and the sky and field seemed to blend into a single multicolored, out of focus smear.

  Whimpering softly, I leaned back and took a breath. To keep myself from keeling over, I braced myself with both hands on the ground, my fingers digging into the loose soil. The silence rang in my ears like metal striking metal. My biggest fear was that I was going to pass out again, and that my parents would find me out here in the field, unconscious or this time maybe dead.

  My eyes ached as I peered down into the hole I had dug. I was surprised to see how deep it was. I hadn’t been conscious of working so hard, and I had gone down maybe three or four feet in an area at least as wide as I could reach with my arms fully extended to either side. I had let go of the shovel, and as I looked at it now, I saw that the tip of the blade was resting against the metal object I had struck. Leaning closer, I studied it carefully, positive of only one thing.

  It sure as heck wasn’t any rock.

  Even from the little corner of it that I’d exposed, I could see that it was a flat piece of what had once looked like highly-polished metal. The shovel hadn’t even dented it although I’d hit it hard enough to make it ring like a bell and send sparks flying. And even after being underground for… however long, it hadn’t corroded or rusted in the least. I held my breath as I moved closer to it and, kneeling down to get as comfortable as possible, started digging carefully around the thing, trying to locate its edges.

  My hands were smeared with clots of black soil that looked almost like dried blood. The tips of my fingers were skinned and bleeding. As I worked, that weird feeling came over me again, and I felt as though I was trapped inside a large, transparent bubble. The outside world flickered and distorted, large parts of it disappearing in little swirls of darkness, like rushing storm clouds. A dense hush enfolded me, killing any other sounds. Teasing prickles of electricity ran across my skin, and a couple of times, when I touched the metal surface of the thing, I was sure I saw lacy blue sparks shoot out between it and my fingertips.