by Jerome Sitko
He sits in one of the two chairs and starts stripping the rubber band off the newspaper. It’s a local paper: the Idaho Statesman. Occasionally they deliver free papers to entice new subscribers. Lance knows his mom will never spend money for a newspaper unless it’s close to Christmas and then she gets it for the coupons and sales ads. He flips through it searching for the comic strips. His favorite is Beetle Bailey. He stops mid-turn when his eye catches a headline:
BOISE BOY STILL MISSING
BOISE - Earlier this week, local authorities reported finding the remains of missing Boise, Idaho teenager Ryan Collins, in a shallow grave in the Oregon high desert approximately 50 miles from the Oregon-Idaho border. It was reported that the teenager had been abducted in Boise, possibly by an unknown number of adults traveling through the area in a 1970s blue-and-white Volkswagen minibus.
The police reported that the group might be part of a band of vagrants with devil-worshipping ties to a church in Southern California.
At the time of the discovery, police reported with “high certainty” that the mutilated remains were indeed the missing seventh-grader from Hillside Junior High School.
Today, authorities are backtracking on their previous claim after a dental exam of the deceased failed to match Collins’s dental records. The body has not been identified at this time, and authorities are actively investigating.
Authorities are convinced Collins is still missing, and his case will be reclassified from a homicide to a missing person.
A request to interview Collins’ family has been denied at this time.
Lance stops reading. Actually, he stops the moment after he sees Ryan’s name in print. He knows this means Ryan can still be alive.
I’m right!
Now he needs to try and figure out how to prove it and then find him. He grabs Bear and gives his furry friend a big hug. Bear’s tongue immediately goes into overdrive, licking Lance’s face and ears.
“Okay boy, I know. I know we’re both happy, but how are we going to find Ryan?” With both hands cradling Bear’s head, the dog’s tongue was lapping at air trying to coat Lance’s face with slobber, but Lance stays just out of reach. Lance stands and begins pacing between the kitchen and the living room, deep in thought, and talking to Bear out loud.
“How can we prove he’s still alive? How do we find him?” He pauses. “Who is going to help us, Bear?” Still feverishly pacing, his mind churns overtime. “I need to settle down. I need to sit.” He flops on the couch and Bear leaps up into his lap. “I can call Jeremy. But he’ll think I’m crazy.”
There’s a knock on Lance’s door.
S
Emma has been watching Lance since his return from Sheol, remaining just out of reach of his consciousness. She’s been worried about his physical and mental state since the journey to Sheol. The horror Lance and his friends endured would place most sane men in an asylum. She’s allowed him time to rest and regain his energy, but now she knows she must reveal herself and explain why Lance keeps having his nagging dreams about Ryan. And, she knows that Charlie is now actively searching for the boys. He was not destroyed like the kids believed when they left Sheol.
Lance leaps to the door and wildly pulls it open, expecting to see Jeremy on the other side. Instead, he sees a beautiful barefoot goddess of a woman, wearing a white lace dress. She has long, braided black hair, a 1960s or 1970s throwback flower-girl look.
“Emma!?” he says, perplexed that he knows her name. He instinctively blocks the door with his foot to keep Bear from running out, but Bear is obediently sitting on the couch, quietly staring at them both.
“Do you remember me?” she asks, waiting to be invited inside.
“I don’t know, but your name is Emma, right?” He opens the door wider so she can step in. He motions for her to sit on the beat-up brown couch, half expecting her to decline so she doesn’t get her dress dirty. Emma sits and Bear crawls over to her and lies against her right thigh. She strokes Bear’s head and asks him to give her some privacy. Bear stretches and hops down off the couch and walks back toward Lance’s room.
“I’m right, right? Your name is Emma?” Lance asks as he sits on the opposite end of the couch.
“Yes, Lance you’re right. Do you know why I’m here?” She straightens her dress briefly breaking eye contact with him. “Do you remember anything about us?”
“Wait!” Lance jumps up and runs to his room sliding on the carpet. He returns a few seconds later holding his tattered notebook. His finger pointing to her name. This time he sits closer to Emma so she can see the notebook. “I wrote your name down from my dreams. I’ve dreamed about you, right?”
“Lance, you and I have been more than a dream. We’ve been on a heck of a journey in Sheol. I didn’t know how much you would remember. It appears not much.” Emma shifts and crosses her legs at the ankles. “Do you remember when we first met? You were about nine years old. We did what’s called ‘glimpsing.’ We take you from your conscious state in Adamah and your mind travels to Sheol. People usually don’t remember the experience or they believe it was a dream. It’s different than physically entering into Sheol through what you call a threshold or a portal.”
“No, it doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Do you know why you keep dreaming about Ryan?” she asks, mapping Lance’s face looking for emotion, for a flicker or some signal that he comprehends. Instead, she sees sadness. His emotions for Ryan are strong and Emma knows she will need to be delicate, but they are running out of time. Emma reaches up and removes a silver chain necklace from around her neck. She holds it in her hand and displays it like a saleswoman at a fine jewelry store. “Do you remember this rock?”
She is again peering into his brown eyes. Clasped to the chain necklace is a silver dollar-sized flat rock, a talisman. The edges are rounded and there is a noticeable groove through the center. The rock is gray, but it looks like it was pulled out of a campfire with noticeable black striations. Lance shakes his head to indicate he does not know what it is or what it means. Emma leans into Lance, adjusting herself on the couch and places the necklace over his head. Like jolts of lightning, images and emotions flood Lance’s mind. So much, so fast, he thinks he’s going to get sick and pass out. The visions cause Lance to have a cataplectic attack and he collapses back into the couch.
The talisman is the same one that Lance carried on his previous journey into Sheol and the same one that saved humanity from Charlie’s plan to merge the two worlds, which would have assured Erebus’s rule. Emma is taking Lance glimpsing, but this time Lance is having an out-of-body experience, soaring high above each phase that happened during his previous trip. He’s watching a cognitive replay of what happened to him and his friends the last time Charlie captured them.
Phase one: Lance, Jeremy, Joey, and Ryan are standing outside of the Thriftway Building Center after running out of the building trying to escape the big cowboy coming after them for throwing a rock through his windshield. Instead of the cowboy in their world, they meet the oddly dressed man in Sheol; they would later call him Charlie. They didn’t know it then, but Charlie opened a portal at the back door of the Thriftway connecting Adamah and Sheol. Watching a replay of Joey murdering Ryan for the second time does nothing to blunt the emotion and fear Lance felt then and feels now. Lance knows it was Charlie controlling Joey, pulling Joey’s strings like a puppet master. The large black vultures, Charlie calls highwaymen, carry Ryan’s body off high above the clouds. They fly so close to Lance that he instinctively tries to move out of the way.
Phase two: They are driving through Sheol’s barren red landscape in a beat-up Camaro without Ryan. They stop at a rundown gas station/diner and Lance is watching himself and his buddies making out with three very pretty girls inside the diner. Charlie is sitting on a stool observing them like a pervert at a peep show. Charlie becomes restless and the whole place breaks into pandemoniu
m. The girls mutate into grouplings and Lance watches with newfound horror as they begin rotting. All three boys, Lance, Jeremy, and Joey, try to escape, but the doors are locked. Lance hands Jeremy the stone (the one around his neck now) and they both begin to calm down. They leave the diner and are back on the road, and the red Camaro is the only object moving in the unambiguous landscape. Lance is now viewing the back seat and watches as he hands Jeremy the talisman to try and settle him down after their horrific experience with the girls. Jeremy is not mentally strong enough or feels so hopeless that he believes his only option to free himself from this nightmare is to commit suicide. The Camaro is moving at more than one hundred miles an hour and Jeremy shoves Joey’s driver seat forward and leaps out of the car head first. Lance is hovering high above the ground as he watches all of them run toward Jeremy’s body in the street, and again the highwaymen swoop in to take the body into the orange sky to later deliver a groupling.
Phase three: The car finally rolls to a stop outside of the abandoned factory in the red dirt next to a dilapidated retaining wall. The ground is lurching and kicking like a violent roller coaster ride. Enormous chunks of the earth are swallowed away leaving black holes scattered across the landscape. Thousands of people from all directions are walking across the barren landscape toward the factory. Lance can see they are Charlie’s grouplings. The sky is filled with highwaymen and Lance is swerving through the air to keep from colliding into them. He doesn’t have to he’s glimpsing; they pass through him like he’s a ghost. They are inside the dark, smelly factory now, in a room made of gray brick and stone. Lance has been here before and remembers it’s where he first met Emma when he was nine years old and she took him glimpsing. It’s the first time Emma made herself known to Lance. He’s hovering next to what once was Charlie’s body, but is now an evil contorted mass spinning above the room.
Emma wants to emphasize what happens next so she slows the replay, Lance needs to understand that it was his bravery and courage that saved everyone.
Lance thrusts the talisman toward the portal forming in the center of the room. Demons are soaring out of the abyss at breakneck speed, their demonic screams add to the chaos already in the room. The talisman lands short and Lance lunges at the same time as Charlie descends from the endless ceiling. Charlie crashes into Lance with his gnarly, mangled talons digging deep into Lance’s back. He’s trying to get a good bite so he can lift Lance away. The phoenixes are circling and one of them dive bombs and crashes into Charlie exploding on impact.
Lance watches his former self, frozen in the prone position, his hand inches from the rock. He tries to project his movements to himself and force the Lance on the ground to push the rock forward; of course, he can’t. And then it happens: Lance musters the strength and courage to overcome his fears, but before he can close the portal Charlie, wounded but not destroyed, re-emerges from the ceiling and knowing he has no more time, Lance forces the talisman into the portal closing it forever. Or so he thought.
Lance is jolted back to reality and finds himself lying on the floor in his trailer. Emma kneels beside him, rubbing his arm, soothing him. Bear is standing above his head, tail wagging nervously, letting out concerned little yips. At first, Lance can’t move or maybe doesn’t want to move. He’s disoriented and the rush of horrible memories flood his brain causing a temporary short circuit of his senses. He eventually sits up and rests his back against the couch. Bear hops up and begins licking his ear.
“Knock it off, boy. I’m okay,” he says, rubbing his eyes. His muscles feel like fragile rubber bands that could snap at any time. He tries to stand, but Emma gently pushes him back down. She sits next to him on the floor and wraps her arm around his shoulder and hugs him.
“Don’t move, Lance. You’ve just had quite an experience. You need to gain your strength,” she’s still rubbing his shoulder.
Lance begins to collect himself and his muscles start to relax. Holding the talisman up in his hand he says, “Is this the rock, Emma? The one that I carried during my journey that sealed the portal?”
“Yes, it is.”
“How am I remembering all of this now? I’m so confused.”
“Lance, there’s something we need to—”
“Wait! Wait! If Ryan was taken by the highwaymen the same way Jeremy was, that means he can still be alive, right!? That’s why I’ve been dreaming about him. The dreams,” he gives himself a mental high-five, feeling vindicated.
“Those feelings are actually visions of Ryan when he crosses a threshold between Adamah and Sheol. This world and the other.”
“So, if Ryan is in our world right now, Adamah, why hasn’t he come home?”
“He can’t, Lance. Charlie’s hold on his mind is too strong. He only allows Ryan to cross over because he knows you can see him. He wants to bait you back to Sheol to finish the job he started and you ended. The talisman did not destroy the portal that can merge the two worlds. Somehow it’s open again.”
“Then what can we do?” he asks in a small voice with no conviction. A forceful feeling of despair floods his mind causing his hands to shake uncontrollably. He wrings them together in a futile attempt to steady them.
“You’re not going to like what I have to say. You need to go back to Sheol to save him,” Emma says with a heavy heart.
“You’re coming with me, right? I’ll go. I want to go. I want Ryan back. But you’ll come with me, won’t you Emma?” The thought crosses Lance’s mind that Emma may choose not to go or may not be able to go even if she wants. He snatches that bad thought and crumples it up like a piece of paper and mentally throws it out of his mind. She has to go; he won’t give her a choice. If the portal is opened and Charlie is back, he needs her.
“Like before, Lance. I will always be with you. I’ve never left you. Of course, I will go.”
Relieved, he says, “Will it be like this? Like a real person?” He’s now holding her hand.
“No, not like this. Like before. I will be with you when you need me. I will help guide you. Your powers are growing stronger and that’s the only reason I can appear before you like I am doing now. You’ll be fine. I have to go, Lance, but remember we’re always together.” Emma begins to fade and slowly dissolves into the air like a spritzer of mist, and then she’s just gone.
Lance feels lonely and more confused than ever now.
What power? I don’t feel any power. How do I get back to Sheol? I don’t even know where to start. It’s not fair she left me, he thinks. Wait, I’ll get Jeremy and maybe Joey.
He stands up on shaky legs and walks into the kitchen and reaches for the yellow phone on the wall and pushes the numbers to dial Jeremy.
“Hello, Jacobson residence,” Jeremy’s older brother answers.
“Hi, Brian. Is Jeremy home?” Lance asks while mentally cursing and flipping the phone off in his head.
“Who’s this?” Brian asks, but obviously knows it’s Lance’s voice on the other end.
“Lance. Is Jeremy there?” Lance asks, aggravated.
“Bitch, even if he was, I wouldn’t let him talk to you, fag.”
“Please, Brian, it’s important.”
“Bullshit. Nothing you’ve got to say can be important.”
Lance can hear Jeremy in the background asking who’s on the phone right before he hears the click. Brian hangs up. Lance sets the handset back on the receiver and picks it back up waiting for the dial tone. He dials again.
“Hello?” Jeremy says.
“Whew, Jeremy. It’s Lance. Thank God your brother didn’t answer again.”
“What do you want?”
“I have some news to tell you about Ryan. I know he’s alive and I have proof.” Lance waits for Jeremy to process the information and after a few seconds decides he’s not going to answer him back. “Well, did you hear what I just said?”
Still nothing from the other end o
f the line. Finally, Jeremy says, “Fuck dude. Yeah, I heard you. What do you want me to do about it?”
Lance kind of expected that response and was ready.
“Meet me at the cabana; that’s all you have to do. I’ll show you why I believe he’s alive and then you can make a decision.” He waits again, listening to the slight hum of the connection. “Fuck dude. Come on. Will you meet me?”
Jeremy wants nothing more than to crawl back into his bed and go back to sleep, but he knows from Lance’s tone that he’s serious and probably won’t leave him alone until he agrees to meet.
“Okay, I’ll be there in an hour or so, I haven’t showered in days and I stink.”
“Sweet, see you then. Oh, I’m calling Joey to meet us too. It’s important that all of us be there.”
Lance waits for a response that he knows won’t come. “Okay, bye, see you in an hour,” he says as he hangs up the receiver, relieved that he was able to make this happen.
Before he called, he gave himself a 50/50 chance and that was only because they are such good friends and Jeremy, like Lance, has had time to rest and reflect.
He calls Joey next and knows the conversation will be much different if Joey is even home to answer. Joey answers on the first ring. Lance can visualize Joey lying on his bed with his Walkman next to him, his shoes still on, and Joey staring up at the poster taped above his bed of Lita Ford in black leather with her butt cheeks showing, holding a red guitar. The conversation is short and Joey agrees to meet them at the cabana in an hour. Lance flops onto the couch exhausted and rests.
S
Bear runs ahead of Lance and into Diana’s yard. Diana is Lance’s neighbor and he has had a crush on her from the first time they met. He remembers her lying in a lawn chair in her white two-piece bikini. One of her speakers propped up outside her window playing KISS’s, “Calling Dr. Love.”
Today, she’s sitting on the steps leading to her front door. Her blonde hair is draped over her face. Her arms are hugging her legs. When Bear reaches her, she grabs him and cradles him for support. She’s clearly distraught and Lance can hear the hurt and anger in her voice.
