Take my Life

The night the meteor fell, Andy was watching a storm. He always watched storms, partly for safety. He kept a close eye on any lightning strikes on the mountain, in case they resulted in forest fires. If there was a fire, he needed to know immediately in case he needed to warn his friend Cade, who lived up the mountain. He would bring Cade down to his place in case they needed to evacuate by road. There were no roads up where Cade lived; only a trail, which they traveled by dirt bike.

Andy also watched storms for the sheer enjoyment of it. He didn’t own a television, and a light show courtesy of Mother Nature was the closest thing to watching a movie. Judging by the black clouds rolling over the mountaintop, it was going to be a gooder. Andy settled into his favorite chair on the porch, bottle of whiskey in hand. The wind picked up and light rain rattled on the tin roof overhead. It was starting.

Dusk was falling when the first crack of thunder sounded and electric flashes lit up the sky.

Andy smiled and raised the bottle to his lips. He paused mid-sip.

“What the fuck is that?” he said aloud, standing to get a better look.

A fiery orb hovered in the sky for a few seconds, before streaking downward and disappearing into the trees. It was no shooting star; it was much larger and moved more slowly. He pinpointed the location where he last saw it. He made a plan to search for it after the storm. Andy was an amateur prospector, and always on the lookout for interesting new minerals, valuable or not.

It rained heavily the next day, and flash floods rushed down the mountainside. Andy postponed his search until the weather cleared the following day. He hoped the floods hadn’t erased all traces of the meteorite. A space rock would make an excellent addition to his collection.

He found nothing the first day, or the next in the area where he thought the meteorite had landed. He expanded his search. After nearly a week of searching, he was ready to give up. He had wandered further into the woods than he’d planned and it was getting dark. In the forest, darkness fell long before sunset. He checked his compass and headed back in the direction of where he’d left his motorcycle.

He stopped. Something had caught his eye. A diagonal slash in the bark of a big fir tree. It was fresh. Maybe damage from the storm, but… he looked upward, following the direction of the slash. There, in a neighboring tree, he saw a broken branch. His eyes followed the trajectory down to the ground, and… there. Something glittered in the underbrush.

* * *

It wasn’t gold.

He sat at his kitchen table, staring at his newest acquisition.

The rock sat in the middle of the table, glittering in the filtered sunlight from the window. It was about the size of a football, and unlike anything he had ever seen. It looked like crystals embedded in metallic rock. When he looked at it from different directions, the colors changed, from gold to purple to green, to every color imaginable.

Andy didn’t know if the rock was worth anything, but it was by far his best find ever. He couldn’t wait to show it to his friend Cade.

* * *

“Isn’t that what they call ‘Fool’s gold’?”

Andy had hauled the big rock with him the next time he visited Cade. His friend lived in the wilderness for reasons known only to the two of them and Andy was his only contact with the outside world. Cade had provided Andy with plenty of cash for supplies, but Andy would have done it for nothing. He liked the companionship and looked forward to his monthly visits.

“You mean Pyrite? No, it’s definitely not Pyrite. I knew you’d say that, though. Here. This is Pyrite. Compare it.” Andy pulled a small stone from his pocket and handed it to Cade.

Cade held the shiny gold stone up to the light and then examined the larger one again.

“You’re right. This is definitely not the same thing. You figure this is a meteorite?”

“Yeah, I think so. I went looking for it in the area where it went down. There were marks on the trees like something had fallen from the sky. I’m positive it’s the same rock.”

“It’s probably a combination of stuff. But you should take it in somewhere and get it analyzed. Maybe you have something valuable here.”

“And then what? Trade it for money? I already have everything I need. I’d have a bunch of money I’d never use and I wouldn’t have my pretty space rock. Naw, I’m keeping the rock. One day when I’m dead and gone, this here rock is gonna be my headstone.”

Cade raised the bottle. “That’s not going to be for a long time, my friend. Here’s to you and your pretty space rock.”

“Gimme that.” Andy grabbed the bottle and took a big swallow. The whiskey wasn’t going down well that day, but he’d had a persistent headache and needed a painkiller.

That was the last time Andy ever saw Cade.

* * *

By the time Andy got home, the headache had turned to chills. He took some Tylenol and went to bed. A good night’s sleep would fix him up.

The next day he felt worse. His brow burned with fever and his joints ached.

The fever broke the third day, but he’d used all of his Tylenol. He also came to the realization that his medicine cabinet was sorely lacking in cold and flu remedies. He felt well enough to make a trip to town; in fact, he was feeling almost good as new. Plus, Cade had gotten him thinking; maybe the rock was something special. He wanted to stop in at the library and check out some books on minerals, and maybe use the Internet for a bit of research.

* * *

Andy drove his pickup to town with the shiny rock on the seat beside him. He went to the pharmacy and restocked his Tylenol, plus bought enough cold and flu remedies to tackle any bug that came his way. He’d add some to Cade’s next supply run as well. He stopped for lunch at the cafe, proudly displaying his prize on the table. The waitress commented on the pretty rock as she moved it aside to make room for his plate. A big RV with New York plates pulled in beside his truck, carrying a family of tourists who sat in the booth next to Andy. They struck up a conversation.

Andy asked how they were enjoying Canada so far.

They told him they had crossed the border into Quebec and driven across Canada. They were planning to visit family in Vancouver before crossing back into the U.S. and making their way to Disneyland via Las Vegas. They also commented on the shiny rock and one of the children asked if she could touch it.

After the restaurant, Andy stopped in at the bank, the hardware store and the grocery store before going to the library, where he lingered for an hour or so, browsing the bookshelves and using the Internet.

He drove home at sunset, proud that he had accomplished much of his supply run early. Maybe he would drop in on Cade sooner than expected and surprise him.

* * *

The next day, the fever returned, accompanied by a cough. Andy took some vitamins and washed them down with whiskey. He’d be fine, now that he had plenty of flu medication.

With each day that passed, the cough worsened in spite of all his efforts. He even tried drinking water or orange juice instead of whiskey. Nothing seemed to help.

By the second week, Andy grew concerned. The cough persisted, now accompanied by a pain in his back and a crackling noise every time he took a breath, and breathing was difficult at times. He concluded that he might need some medical help. He would head to the hospital in the morning if he didn’t get any better. Just in case, he wrote a note to Cade and placed it under the mattress of his bed with all of his important documents. He also left his wallet there. He wouldn’t need the wallet for a trip to the ER. All he needed was his health insurance number and enough cash for a prescription. If things went south, Cade would need the rest.

* * *

THREE MONTHS LATER

The lone hiker plodded along the winding trail. The large pack on his back was light; nearly empty except for a canteen of water and a bit of jerky; the last of his food. He hoped the pack would be full for the return trip.

“I outta cuss him out, that’s what,” he said. He often spoke aloud. Out in the wilderness there was nobody to call him crazy, and it alerted wildlife of his presence.

“The sonofabitch comes to visit, doesn’t even stay to fish, and then gives me the flu, to top it all off. And then he doesn’t come back for three damn months. Deserves a slap upside the head.”

Cade wasn’t angry with Andy; he was more worried than anything else. It wasn’t like him to stay away for so long. For the past eight years, Andy had visited every month without fail. He’d replenish Cade’s supplies, spend a couple of days drinking and fishing, and update him on news from the outside world. News usually consisted of a stack of old newspapers, collected from Andy’s post office box.

On his last visit, Andy hadn’t been his usual boisterous self. He’d barely touched the whiskey bottle they’d passed back and forth at the campfire. He must have been coming down with something, because sure as shit, Cade fell sick a few days later. It wasn’t a big deal; wasn’t like he had a job to go to. He took it easy for about a week and then he felt right as rain.

Andy’s long absence worried Cade, enough that he felt compelled to make the long hike to his friend’s cabin to check on him. Cade glimpsed the bright green of Andy’s Kawasaki dirt bike as the cabin came into view. The bike was Andy’s favorite mode of transportation. He only used the truck to travel into town for supplies. Cade also had a motorcycle, but he’d shredded one of the tires on some sharp shale and he’d been waiting for Andy to come so he could ask him to pick him up a new one.

Cade reached the front door of the cabin and knocked. All was silent.

“Andy? You here?

The door was unlocked. Andy never locked his doors. Cade entered the cabin. Dust motes danced in the late afternoon light, and a thin film had settled on the table where Andy ate his meals. Telltale gray-green mold covered the dirty dishes in the sink. Nobody had been there for some time.

Andy didn’t stay in town for long; usually he went there and back in a day, with an occasional overnight trip. What if something had happened to him in town, or on the drive there? An accident? Or maybe he got into trouble and was arrested?

Cade left the cabin and walked toward the garage where Andy kept his truck. He expected the truck to be gone, but he had to check.

One of the large double doors was slightly ajar.

As Cade pulled the door open, he heard the buzzing of flies, and then the smell hit him.

Andy lay on the ground beside the truck, keys in hand. It looked like he died where he had fallen. From the look of him, he had been there for a while.

* * *

Cade shoveled the last bit of dirt onto the mound and then placed the shiny stone at Andy’s head, as his friend had wanted. The grave bore no inscription. No crosses or any of that bullshit; it wasn’t Andy’s thing. He pulled a bottle of whiskey from his pocket and poured some on the grave, then took a sip himself.

“Rest in peace, old buddy.”

Cade wandered back to the house and eased into Andy’s favorite chair on the porch with the bottle cradled in his lap. As the slow burn of the whiskey warmed his insides, his mind drifted back in time.

* * *

Cade would likely have died out in the wilderness, if not for Andy. He didn’t know the first thing about survival. He might have given up, marched back to civilization (assuming he made it that far) and turned himself in to serve a life sentence for a murder he didn’t commit. Giving up would have meant Lance won. Lance was the slimy bastard who had been sleeping with his wife. Lisa may have cheated, but she didn’t deserve to die. They’d worked things out and she was going to tell Lance it was over.

Cade should have known something was wrong when he came home to find a revolver on the floor just inside the front door. He recognized the gun as his and picked it up. It wasn’t until he held it in his hands that he felt the stickiness of blood on the weapon. He ran through the house, calling for Lisa. He found her in the bedroom with a bullet hole in her head. She had been violently beaten.

It wasn’t difficult to piece together what happened. Lance hadn’t taken the breakup well. He had come to the house to “talk” to her but it had escalated into violence. She had run to the bedroom to get Cade’s gun. Signs of a struggle indicated that Lance had wrestled the gun from her before she could use it and then beaten her with it before shooting her.

Cade panicked and ran. He wasn’t going to take his chances with the courts. It looked like an open and shut case of domestic violence. The scene played out in his mind as he cleaned out the safe in his bedroom closet. Police would find him standing over his wife’s corpse holding the murder weapon. Nobody would believe he was innocent, and he would spend the rest of his life in jail for a murder he didn’t commit.

He fled with fifty thousand dollars in cash, a passport he couldn’t use and no plan. Eventually he found himself lost and out of gas, on a remote mountain road. He hadn’t thought to bring food and water; he’d just started driving. He’d been sleeping in his car for days. Now he was hungry and dehydrated, and beginning to realize the gravity of his situation. He heard the crackle of a dirt bike engine and a bright green motorcycle skidded to a stop in front of his car. The rider was about ten years older than Cade, with a long gray beard and stringy hair.

Andy’s cabin wasn’t far from where Cade had broken down. Andy put some gas in his car, fed him, offered him a couch to sleep on and listened to his story over a bottle of whiskey. Cade figured he was done for; Andy would call the police and he would have to take what was coming.

But to his surprise, Andy had a different perspective.

“First thing in the morning, we need to get rid of your car.”

Cade followed Andy’s bike out of the wilderness, past a few towns, and then they traveled many miles down a winding road alongside a canyon. The fuel gauge of Cade’s BMW was nearing empty when Andy finally stopped.

“This should do it. Aim ‘er over there.” He pointed at the edge of the cliff.

Following Andy’s instructions, Cade put the car in gear and rammed the accelerator with a long stick. The car lurched forward and plunged into the river below.

“Now, with any luck they’ll find that and think you’re dead.”

Andy took him to the shack in the wilderness, taught him to survive, and brought him supplies every month.

* * *

“Promise me,” Andy said.

“What’re ya even… no, I’m, that’s not gonna happen. You shaddup.” Cade slurred.

It was late, they’d been fishing all day, and the whiskey flowed freely.

“Lissen! I’m telling you something important!” Andy leaned over to grab another log for the campfire and nearly lost his balance.

“You’re talkin’ crazy. Nothing’s gonna happen to you, ok?”

“But it might. Anything could happen to anyone, anytime.” Andy said. “Listen to me. I’m not a young man. My heart isn’t in great shape. Supposed to take pills and go to doctor ‘pointments, but I’m not gonna do that. Shit happens. If I die out here, it’s ok. I’m where I want to be. All I’m saying is, if something did happen to me, you could take it all. Take my wallet. The picture on my driver’s license looks just like you, now that you got the hair and the beard. You could be me. You wouldn’t have to hide out here anymore.”

“I can’t go back to my old life.”

“You wouldn’t have to. Take my life. Live in my cabin. Nobody is looking for you anymore. They found your car years ago. They think you’re dead. I got no family, no friends except for you. Nobody would even notice the difference. I would go to my grave happy, knowing I could give you one last gift.”

“I’ll probably kick off before you. You’re too damn stubborn to die,” Cade said.

“All you need to know is where to look. I keep everything under my mattress. It’s all there, everything you need. My pension is deposited every month and you can withdraw it at the gas station without even setting foot in a bank. My signature is easy, just a scrawl if you ever need to use it.”

That was three years ago. No mention was made of the conversation the next day, or ever again. Cade assumed Andy was just talking drunk.

* * *

Cade removed the folded piece of paper from his pocket and read the letter again. He’d found it when he went to Andy’s bedroom closet to get a bottle of whiskey for the burial. On a whim, he’d checked under the mattress and there it was, as promised: Andy’s wallet and all of his personal documents. Banking, pension, account numbers and passwords. There was also an envelope with a single letter printed on the front: C.

Inside was stack of cash and a letter:

I know you don’t think I remember that conversation from a few years back, but I meant every word of it.

When I got back from our last visit, I got real sick. Hope I didn’t give it to you. It’s gotten worse. I’m trying to hang on, but I think I might need to make a run to the hospital, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.

Hopefully it will all work out and I’ll see you soon, but just in case I don’t make it back, you know what to do.

Do it. Let me live on.

Stick my shiny rock somewhere nice and have a drink on me.

Andy

* * *

THREE MONTHS LATER

Cade avoided town as long as possible, but Andy’s supplies eventually ran out. As he drove the truck down the windy gravel road, his apprehension mounted. He realized how many years had passed since he had seen civilization, or any person besides Andy. He hoped Andy was right, that nobody would notice him. He would keep as low a profile as possible. Withdraw money from the ATM, get gas, groceries, and then get the hell out of there before anyone noticed him. That was the plan.

The small town came into sight. It was quieter than he expected. No traffic; not even a little bit. Everything was closed.

Where was everyone?

He spied a 7-11 store. Finally! Something that would be open! He pulled in beside a gas pump and went into the store to pay. The door was locked. The windows were smashed and the inside of the store was a shambles. Shelves knocked over, bare of goods.

What the hell happened here?

A newspaper fluttered at his feet. He picked it up. It was dated a month earlier.

The word PANDEMIC! screamed at him from the headline. He scanned the article quickly.

A deadly virus was sweeping the world. Global state of emergency. Millions dead, no cure. The virus was unlike anything ever seen before, with only a ten percent survival rate. They had traced the pathogen to an early outbreak in a small mountain town, but no “patient zero” had been located.

Published in DysFictional 4

The Ghost Dogs of Paradise Bay

“I think there’s something wrong with me. I keep telling people I have three dogs, not two. You must think I’m crazy.”

We were sitting in my back yard, watching the summer sun set over a few cold beers. Dogs lay on the grass at our feet; Sissy and Lara by her chair and Sam and Roscoe by mine. Absent was Rhea’s third dog, Loki, son of old Lara and brother of my chocolate Lab, Sam.

I knew my friend wasn’t crazy. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” I told her, “You do have three dogs, and you always will.”

The loss of Loki was still raw. Her beautiful black Labrador, her baby, taken by cancer at only six years of age. It had happened so quickly. He went from an energetic, healthy dog to a mere husk of himself in a matter of weeks. In the time it took for the vets to diagnose what was killing him, we already knew he was lost. We laid him to rest in the forest, in a green, mossy place not far from where I had buried my old dog Cyrus many years before. Cyrus and Loki would have liked each other. It comforted Rhea to think that the two of them might be roaming the forest in spirit, together for eternity.

My dog Benny had followed Cyrus to the spot in the woods two years later. I knew I wasn’t the only one. A few of my neighbors who had also taken their pets to those woods. Not everyone had space in their yard for pet graves, and the forest was a fitting site; serene, almost sacred, located on park land that would never be developed, so we knew they would never be disturbed. I’d always meant to plant a Dogwood tree out there, in memory of Benny and Cyrus and all of the others. All except for Loki lived long lives and expired of old age. I liked to think he was in good company, surrounded by the spirits of his elders. A slim comfort in the face of such a devastating loss as his was.

Rhea told me she felt like Loki was still there with her. And maybe she was right. Sometimes at night, when she was in bed, she said, she heard the toenail-clicking sound of a dog walking down the hallway to the bedroom. Both dogs were already accounted for; Sissy curled up beside her on the bed and Lara on her blanket on the floor. She heard the thump-thump of Lara’s tail on the floor, as if greeting someone familiar. As she stroked Sissy’s fur, she felt the bed move, and then mattress sink as something settled in on the corner opposite Sissy. The spot where Loki had always slept.

* * *

The area had a long history of strange happenings. There was that little girl who disappeared back in the forties, only to be found weeks later locked in an abandoned school building. She was starved and insane from the ordeal, her fingers bloody stubs from clawing at the doors. It seemed she and her brother had been chased by a cougar and she had climbed a tree and entered the building through a high window and become trapped. Over the years, a number of people claimed to have seen her at night, running for her life from the cougar.

People went missing with alarming regularity. Usually they were hikers from out of town who weren’t familiar with the area, but locals disappeared from time to time as well. Some blamed weird magnetics due to minerals in the mountains for causing disorientation and disrupting compasses. New Age types claimed there were energy vortices or portals to other dimensions.

Folk tales passed down through the years told of mysterious creatures in the lake and the surrounding woods. The Stin-Qua, which was probably just a giant sturgeon. The Mesachie Man, which may have been an escaped gorilla that somehow inexplicably appeared time and again over the course of fifty-odd years, or was maybe just a series of bear sightings. Stories were a good source of entertainment, but most legends had a logical explanation. Others, well, they were just stories.

Like the missing hikers. Search and Rescue helicopters were a common sight in the skies over our tiny village. Sometimes bodies were recovered, and sometimes people vanished without a trace. But not all of the lost hikers vanished. Some of them found their way back, with incredible stories of their ordeals in the woods. All of the stories had one thing in common: dogs. The breed of dog wasn’t the same in every story, but the rest of the details bore an uncanny similarity.

While lost in the woods, they said, a dog appeared and led them to water, kept them company at night, and chased away predators. The dog led them back to the road and then vanished into the forest. Animal rescue groups launched a number of searches for these supposed strays, but none were ever found.

There was a good reason why the dogs weren’t found. They weren’t strays. They weren’t starved, nor were they lost or abandoned. I knew for certain whose dogs they were when I heard the descriptions.

Reports of a long-haired German Shepherd could be none other than my Cyrus, buried fifteen years ago. The Beagle was Rascal, my father-in-law’s dog. There was Benny, my golden Shepherd-Husky mix. The little Jack Russel was my neighbor’s dog Spike, and recently, there were reports of a black Labrador who could be none other than sweet Loki.

* * *

It didn’t take long for the reports to start coming in: A swimmer had been knocked under the water by waves was rescued by dog, which appeared out of nowhere and pulled him to safety, then dove underwater and vanished. A child who had fallen into deep water was rescued in likewise fashion. The description of the dog was the same in every case: A beautiful yellow Labrador that dove like a porpoise, appeared from under the water and disappeared back into the lake after the rescue was complete. I knew the dog’s name. It was Lara, who had passed quietly in her sleep at age 17, a week before the first reported rescue. We buried her in the woods alongside her son. The old girl hadn’t wasted any time bless her soul. From that day forward, swimmers would have a guardian in the lake, just as hikers in the woods did.

I looked down at my feet, where old Roscoe slept, his joints stiff and muzzle white with age. He was still spry at sixteen, but I knew that one day, he, too, would join the pack in the forest.

Take my Life

Dusk was falling when the first crack of thunder sounded and electric flashes lit up the sky.

Andy smiled and raised the bottle to his lips. He paused mid-sip.

“What the fuck is that?” he said aloud, standing to get a better look.

* * *

It wasn’t gold.

He sat at his kitchen table, staring at his newest acquisition.

Andy didn’t know if the rock was worth anything, but it was by far his best find ever. He couldn’t wait to show it to his friend Cade.

* * *

“Isn’t that what they call ‘Fool’s gold’?”

“You mean Pyrite? No, it’s definitely not Pyrite. I knew you’d say that, though. Here. This is Pyrite. Compare it.” Andy pulled a small stone from his pocket and handed it to Cade.

Cade held the shiny gold stone up to the light and then examined the larger one again.

“You’re right. This is definitely not the same thing. You figure this is a meteorite?”

“Yeah, I think so. I went looking for it in the area where it went down. There were marks on the trees like something had fallen from the sky. I’m positive it’s the same rock.”

“It’s probably a combination of stuff. But you should take it in somewhere and get it analyzed. Maybe you have something valuable here.”

Cade raised the bottle. “That’s not going to be for a long time, my friend. Here’s to you and your pretty space rock.”

“Gimme that.” Andy grabbed the bottle and took a big swallow. The whiskey wasn’t going down well that day, but he’d had a persistent headache and needed a painkiller.

That was the last time Andy ever saw Cade.

* * *

By the time Andy got home, the headache had turned to chills. He took some Tylenol and went to bed. A good night’s sleep would fix him up.

The next day he felt worse. His brow burned with fever and his joints ached.

* * *

Andy asked how they were enjoying Canada so far.

He drove home at sunset, proud that he had accomplished much of his supply run early. Maybe he would drop in on Cade sooner than expected and surprise him.

* * *

The next day, the fever returned, accompanied by a cough. Andy took some vitamins and washed them down with whiskey. He’d be fine, now that he had plenty of flu medication.

With each day that passed, the cough worsened in spite of all his efforts. He even tried drinking water or orange juice instead of whiskey. Nothing seemed to help.

* * *

THREE MONTHS LATER

“I outta cuss him out, that’s what,” he said. He often spoke aloud. Out in the wilderness there was nobody to call him crazy, and it alerted wildlife of his presence.

Cade reached the front door of the cabin and knocked. All was silent.

“Andy? You here?

Cade left the cabin and walked toward the garage where Andy kept his truck. He expected the truck to be gone, but he had to check.

One of the large double doors was slightly ajar.

As Cade pulled the door open, he heard the buzzing of flies, and then the smell hit him.

Andy lay on the ground beside the truck, keys in hand. It looked like he died where he had fallen. From the look of him, he had been there for a while.

* * *

“Rest in peace, old buddy.”

* * *

But to his surprise, Andy had a different perspective.

“First thing in the morning, we need to get rid of your car.”

“This should do it. Aim ‘er over there.” He pointed at the edge of the cliff.

Following Andy’s instructions, Cade put the car in gear and rammed the accelerator with a long stick. The car lurched forward and plunged into the river below.

“Now, with any luck they’ll find that and think you’re dead.”

Andy took him to the shack in the wilderness, taught him to survive, and brought him supplies every month.

* * *

“Promise me,” Andy said.

“What’re ya even… no, I’m, that’s not gonna happen. You shaddup.” Cade slurred.

It was late, they’d been fishing all day, and the whiskey flowed freely.

“Lissen! I’m telling you something important!” Andy leaned over to grab another log for the campfire and nearly lost his balance.

“You’re talkin’ crazy. Nothing’s gonna happen to you, ok?”

“I can’t go back to my old life.”

“I’ll probably kick off before you. You’re too damn stubborn to die,” Cade said.

That was three years ago. No mention was made of the conversation the next day, or ever again. Cade assumed Andy was just talking drunk.

* * *

Inside was stack of cash and a letter:

I know you don’t think I remember that conversation from a few years back, but I meant every word of it.

Hopefully it will all work out and I’ll see you soon, but just in case I don’t make it back, you know what to do.

Do it. Let me live on.

Stick my shiny rock somewhere nice and have a drink on me.

Andy

* * *

THREE MONTHS LATER

The small town came into sight. It was quieter than he expected. No traffic; not even a little bit. Everything was closed.

Where was everyone?

What the hell happened here?

A newspaper fluttered at his feet. He picked it up. It was dated a month earlier.

The word PANDEMIC! screamed at him from the headline. He scanned the article quickly.

Previously published in DysFictional 4: Apocalypse Aplenty by Mandy White

Avery’s Legacy

~ Photo by Mandy White ~ Clearcut at McClure Mainline, Vancouver Island, Canada ~

Our family tolerated Uncle Avery’s eccentricities, given his service record, but secretly they considered him to be the family nutjob – just another crazy old pothead veteran. Most of my relatives only listened half-heartedly when Avery talked, but I found his stories entertaining. Avery was great company beside a campfire. Many a night I sat, riveted by his often graphic accounts of his many brushes with death during his time as a military pilot in the Middle East. As time passed, Avery’s tales veered away from war stories toward current events, which morphed into apocalyptic and inevitably to conspiracy theories.

He was convinced that “The Big One” was coming any day. He claimed to have seen all the signs: flocks of birds; unusual clouds; numbers in the subway that matched the birthdates of members of our family; all indications (to him) that a major earthquake was imminent. When The Big One hit, he told us, the West coast would be wiped out by a tsunami (which he pronounced trez-nommy), the interior of North America would become waterfront, and Vancouver Island (where I lived) would sink into the ocean. My attempts to explain to him that the island was in fact a mountain, securely anchored to the ocean floor, fell on deaf ears. Uncle Avery would just shake his head, light up another joint and tsk-tsk in pity at my ignorance of the facts as he saw them.

Y2K had Avery practically salivating. He spent the better part of the nineties warning anyone who would listen, of the chaos to come. The banks would go bankrupt and everyone’s money would disappear, he said. Anyone with any sense should withdraw all their funds from banks and carry cash, or better yet, buy gold, because even cash would soon be worthless and society would revert back to the old ways. All electronics would malfunction; Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive wasn’t fiction, but a warning of things to come. Cars would no longer run, except to run down every human in their path. Even seemingly benign items like toasters would suddenly achieve sentience and attack their owners. As much as I enjoyed ol’ Avery’s tales, even I drew the line at killer toasters. He seemed almost disappointed when the world didn’t end on January 1, 2000.

I was glad, in a way, that he didn’t live to see the post-millenium rise of social media. He would surely have been swept up in the tsunami (trez-nommy)of fake news and conspiracy theories that would soon dominate the lives of the weak-minded.

Climate change and deforestation were among his favorite topics (next to aliens and natural disasters, of course). He would gesticulate wildly at the tree-covered mountains around us as he ranted that there were no trees left. None. Not a single one, despite clear evidence to the contrary. The trees – he explained – were sophisticated holographic images projected to hide a barren, clear-cut landscape. Reforestation wasn’t happening; that was just another lie told by the government to appease the public. He had the solution, he told me, and one day they would all see the truth.

Avery did his part to protect the (supposedly nonexistent) forests by signing up to fight forest fires. I wondered if he saw the massive hole in his theory by the fact that the very trees he was flying his water bomber over, that were ablaze with very real flames, were the same ones he insisted were mere holograms. Avery lost his job as a firefighter pilot after just two seasons, due to navigational discrepancies. He was reprimanded for flying off-course several times before he was finally dismissed.

Avery let me in on his secret, and I never betrayed his confidence. Nobody would have believed me anyway. His “solution” to deforestation was almost as outrageous as the idea of holographic forests.

In the end, Avery wasn’t taken out by climate change or earthquake or alien invasion, but ironically, a tragic fire. On the threshold of homelessness, he had been living in an old Winnebago in a low-rent trailer park. According to the fire department, a propane leak sparked by the flick of a cigarette lighter found in his charred hand (to light a joint, no doubt) was the cause of the fire.

I kept Avery’s secret, but curiosity drove me to see if his solution had borne any fruit, so to speak. So, in late August of the year he died, I took a trip to the mountains. Using the coordinates Avery had given me, I followed a dusty, washboard-surfaced gravel road, which narrowed to a single lane at times. Upward I climbed, the road snaking back and forth up the side of the mountain. No guard rails, just the sheer face of the mountain on one side and the dizzying sight of the ever-deepening valley below on the other. When I reached the top I stopped, shouldered my backpack and checked my compass.

I followed a trail that led into a stand of (very real) trees. As I hiked, I reflected on Uncle Avery’s life and what would hopefully be his legacy. It was a crazy plan, but Avery had the tools to pull it off. Avery believed that the only way to reverse the damage done by excessive logging was to not wait years for replanted trees to grow, but to seed the clearcuts with something that would grow quickly and prolifically; to produce oxygen and prevent soil erosion.

I emerged from the treeline on the opposite side and my jaw dropped in wonder. A magical green valley stretched before me. Taller than my head, branches thickening with buds amid thin, serrated leaves. They were magnificent.

Avery’s idea to use his firefighting plane to dump loads of water mixed with fertilizer and germinated cannabis seeds wasn’t as crazy as I’d thought.

Ruby in the Mist

I know it sounds cliché, but it was Halloween night when my neighbor Roy told me his story about the girl in the mist. We were sitting at my kitchen table having a few cold beers, talking about things that go bump in the night and other topics appropriate for that particular eve. We eventually reached the subject of local folklore. Our little town had ghost stories aplenty.

Honeymoon Bay was formed in the late 1800s by pioneers, mostly loggers and later mill workers as the town grew and industry gained a foothold. During the mid-twentieth century, a sawmill dominated the tiny village. The reason I included this somewhat dry bit of trivia is that it has relevance to the story that follows.

At one time, the main road through town was nothing more than a narrow dirt path through the forest. It was there on that main road that Roy claimed to have seen the little girl on more than one occasion.

“She’s always running,” he explained, pausing to take a deep drag from his cigarette, one of many that he had bummed from me over the course of the evening. As I watched my tobacco supply dwindle I once again considered the wisdom of just quitting the habit altogether. Definitely on my to-do list, but not that night.

Roy looked directly into my eyes. “I don’t know what she’s running from but I don’t like it,” he said. “She scares the fuck outta me. She has this… this darkness about her even though you can tell she’s shit-scared. I don’t wanna see what’s chasing her to make her that afraid.”

“Where does she go?” I leaned forward to help myself to one of my own smokes from the package that seemed to have migrated over next to Roy’s elbow.

“I don’t know. She just kinda vanishes, y’know? Like into thin air or something. It’s like she comes straight at me, all lookin’ like she’s screamin’ or something. She passes right through me, I think, then I turn to see where she went and she’s gone.”

“I see. And you want me to see if I can sense anything?”

“Um, yeah.”

I crushed my smoke into the overflowing ashtray before taking a deep breath, then rubbing my palms together, mostly for dramatic effect; it didn’t actually do anything besides set the mood. I had a few beers under my belt so I thought it would be fun to play up the mystic act a little.

“Give me your hand. But don’t get any funny ideas, ya perv.”

Roy laughed nervously. We had known each other for more than five years, ever since I moved into the little house next to the park, one street over from where Roy lived. I knew he was attracted to me but he knew he wasn’t my type and that it was never going to happen. He passed me his left hand and I grasped it firmly before closing my eyes.

A kaleidoscope of images flashed through my mind’s eye, like book pages rapidly flipped. I saw Roy as a boy; then as a teenager, standing next to his mother’s deathbed; then older, masturbating to a photo of a woman I hoped wasn’t me. Finally I saw the object of my search and slowed the flipping of the pages until I arrived at the scene.

Roy stood at the side of the main road. It was night and he was most likely walking home from the local pub. Watching through his eyes, I saw the apparition. It was a little girl, maybe eight or nine years old, wearing what appeared to be an old-fashioned dress. She came running out of a thick mist, which hadn’t been present a moment ago. Her face was unclear in the darkness; all I could make out were the two dark shadows where her eyes were and her gaping mouth, stretched wide in a silent scream. She ran as if the Devil himself was chasing her. She looked over her shoulder, presumably at whatever pursued her and lost her footing, nearly falling. She managed to recover in the nick of time and continued to run full speed past Roy, so close that she did almost appear to pass through him. It was easy to see where he got that impression.

I whirled, watching through my own mind’s eye now, trying to keep sight of her to watch where she went next. To my surprise, she made a sharp right turn up the street on the opposite side of the park from where I lived. She stopped at the first house and began pounding her fists frantically on the door. When nobody answered, she ran to the next house, then the next, hammering on one door after another but finding none who would answer. When the little girl reached the last house on the street, once again finding her knock to be futile she turned abruptly and ran into the park, vanishing in the center of the basketball court.

I released Roy’s hand and opened my eyes. He released a shuddering sigh.

“Phew!” he whistled softly, “Did you see that shit?”

“Yes. Did you see the rest of it? Where she went?”

“No! You saw?”

“I did.”

“Where does she go?”

I described to Roy what I had seen; the girl’s panicked attempts to find a door with someone behind it, finishing with her disappearance in the center of the basketball court.

He rubbed his grizzled chin thoughtfully with one hand as the other reached once again for my cigarette pack.

“Well,” he began after lighting up, “That’s a funny thing there. That court was actually built over top of the foundation of the old schoolhouse.”

“Really? The school was originally in that spot?” That was interesting. I got up and grabbed two more cans of Budweiser out of the fridge and handed one to Roy while he continued.

“Yup. One of those old one-room schools that doubled as a church on Sundays. When the town got bigger, the church got its own building and they built that school up behind the community hall. The old one sat abandoned for years. Rumor has it some kid died playing in there so they tore it down because it was unsafe or something.”

The gears were turning in my mind; filling my head with questions I didn’t dare voice. I wanted to investigate further but had to do it alone.

I stifled a false yawn.

“Well, this really has been a fun night and what a fascinating story! But I think I’m ready to turn in. Doing the psychic thing really takes a lot out of me.”

“Gotcha!” Roy reached toward my almost-empty cigarette package one more time. “Mind if I have one for the road?”

“Sure, take the rest of the pack so you have a couple for later. Next time you’re buying.”

I let Roy out the front door and waited until he had turned the corner toward his own street. I turned off all the lights in the house to make it appear as if I had gone to bed, then put on my shoes and grabbed my winter jacket to guard against the frosty October night. I checked the clock on my way out the door and saw that ironically, it was nearly midnight. This night was turning out to be one cliché after another. As a practicing psychic, I was well aware that the veil between this world and the next was at its thinnest near midnight on All Hallow’s Eve. The timing couldn’t have been more ideal. I slipped quietly out my front door, which faced the park and the basketball court Roy and I had just finished discussing.

A delicate mist floated just above ground level, transforming the picturesque park into an eerie wasteland, the brightly painted playground equipment into ancient skeletal ruins. The eerie mood didn’t faze me in the least. Eerie was my business.

I sat quietly on a nearby picnic table, facing the basketball court. I closed my eyes to shut out all distractions and waited for an impression to come. There was nothing at first. Then I heard something. It was a rhythmic thumping sound, faint at first, then rising to a more distinct beat. Another sound began to accompany the pounding; a high-pitched wail that I soon recognized as a child’s voice. A few words became discernible in between the mournful wails:

“Help! Help me! Somebody! Heeelllp!”

Goosebumps prickled the flesh of my arms in spite of the heavy jacket that covered them.

In my mind’s eye, I was no longer sitting in the park beside the basketball court. I was inside the room from which the noise originated. It was an old building; dust-covered and draped in cobwebs. A shaft of daylight shone through the broken pane of a small window, set high in the wall of the building. The rest of the windows were securely boarded up, keeping the rest of the room in shadows. Seats similar to church pews had once been arranged in two neat rows but many of them were now overturned and shoved helter-skelter against the walls.

BAM! BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM!

I jumped and turned toward the sound and found myself facing the front door of the building. The door and the walls surrounding it were covered in rust-covered stains, some of which could distinctly be identified as handprints. On closer inspection I noticed that some of the marks were redder, fresher. Some of them were still wet. It looked as though the prints had not been made all at once but been added to over a period of… hours? Days? Weeks? It was impossible to tell.

“HELLLP ME! PLEASE!” The girl’s wail tore through me like a dagger. It sounded like she was right in front of me. I homed in on the sound of her voice and struggled to maintain my focus in the midst of the heart-wrenching scene.

The space in front of the door shimmered for a moment, then a human form took shape. I watched as a little girl with long dark hair appeared, translucent at first, then solidifying just as if she was real and not merely an apparition.

She paced back and forth in front of the door with uneven, lurching steps, pounding the palms of her hands against the bloodstained wood. One of her ankles was broken; twisted at a grotesque angle yet she continued to walk on it, half lifting, half dragging the injured limb. Her hands were red, covered in blood both fresh and old from being beaten to a raw pulp from her relentless attacks on the door and the wood that framed it.

I put up mental shields to protect myself emotionally from the devastating spectacle I was witnessing – a tactic taught to me by my mentor, a well-respected police psychic.

The girl’s frantic but fruitless struggle to escape was tragic but I knew there was nothing I could do except watch. My clairvoyant abilities allowed me to witness past events but I was helpless to intervene as much as I wished I could have. God knows I wanted to help her but I was a mere observer, bearing witness to an event that had never before been seen by anyone except for the child who had experienced it.

The little girl lurched and pounded, her hands reduced to little more than bloody claws and her desperate wails heard by no one. I flinched when she changed her routine and began beating her head – her face – against the door, either in frustration or because her hands were simply too sore and raw to strike another blow.

Suddenly she froze. She whirled around and faced me, covering the distance between us in an instant until we were only inches apart. I recoiled from the sight of her purple-bruised face, blackened eyes and inky, dilated pupils. She glared at me with a seething rage that I felt to the core of my being in spite of my mental shields.

“WHY WON’T YOU HELP ME?” she shrieked.

My eyes flew open and immediately I was back in the park, still sitting atop the picnic table facing the nets. Pulse racing and hands shaking, I wished I hadn’t given Roy the last of my smokes. I took several long, slow cleansing breaths to clear my aura of the intense emotional energy I had just absorbed.

She had seen me.

That had never happened before. I was an observer, not a medium. Channeling spirits was not part of my routine and as far as I knew, not an ability I possessed. Never before had any of the apparitions I observed ever interacted with me as I watched.

She had seen me, and she had spoken to me as though I had been right there in that room with her. I’d also gotten a glimpse of her name. The initials were R.T. but I couldn’t quite get what they represented. Renee Tucker was the closest I could come up with but I knew that wasn’t it. Close, but not quite right.

* * *

The plight of the little girl intrigued me but for some reason I didn’t try to get any more impressions of her. In fact, I avoided the main road and the park at night and even refused to look out of the front windows of my house after dark. Sometimes when I was asleep, I heard her pounding and wailing in my dreams, then that horrible bruised face with the blackened eyes would appear, launching me back into wakefulness with a scream caught in my throat. Over time, the dreams faded and I began to make peace with what I had seen and it seemed my life would return to normal. That was, until I learned the rest of the story.

I was browsing through a box of used books at a local garage sale when a title caught my eye: A History of Honeymoon Bay. It was spiral-bound, with a simple cover; a self-published work written by a local woman named Edith Watts. Edith had died several years previously at the tender age of 96 if I recalled her obituary correctly. She was born and raised in Honeymoon Bay and had probably known more about the town’s history than anyone alive. I had no idea she’d actually recorded all of that knowledge in a book. I paid the asking price of fifty cents for my new treasure with the intention of doing some light reading and learning a bit about the town I called home.

I was less than halfway through the book when a particular chapter practically leapt from the page. It was a story about a little boy and girl – brother and sister – who were chased by a cougar. The little boy was just six and his sister eight years old. Their names were Kenneth and Ruby Thatcher. Renee Tucker… Ruby Thatcher. I had been so close! I read on, a knot growing in my gut in anticipation of what I thought was to come.

It happened in the mid-1930’s when most of the road was still a dirt path. The children were picking berries some distance from the village when a mountain lion leapt onto the path with the intention of making a child its next meal.

The children fled for their lives, toward the safety of the village. Being older, the girl ran faster than her brother and in her panic she left him behind. She ran and ran, screaming at the top of her voice, but never made it home. Somewhere near the town site she vanished without a trace. As it turned out, the boy managed to make it home alive several hours later, having hidden in some bushes while the cat pursued his sister. Three weeks passed and everyone gave Ruby up for dead, assuming that she had been carried off and eaten by the deadly predator.

It was around this time that some local boys decided to claim the old schoolhouse as their clubhouse. They pried the boards off of one of the windows and climbed inside, unprepared for what waited within.

Ruby Thatcher was still alive, but just barely. She was starved and dehydrated. Her hands were reduced to blood-crusted claws, flesh worn to the bone in places from relentlessly clawing at the door. Her ankle was shattered, with bones protruding through the flesh.

After inspecting the scene, the townspeople managed to piece together what had happened. Ruby had gained entrance to the old schoolhouse by climbing a tree next to the building and squeezing through the tiny window near the peak of the building. She must have believed she would be safe from the cougar once inside and in her panic, jumped from the window down to the floor without considering the height of the drop or how she would get back out of the building. She broke her ankle when she landed, then discovered that she was trapped.

Terrified and in horrific pain, she must have beaten on the heavy wooden door day and night, screaming for help until her voice was no more. The only explanation they could come up with as to why no one had heard her was that the noise from the nearby sawmill – which ran day and night at that time – must have drowned out her cries. Nobody was looking for her because they had already mourned her loss, assuming she had become cougar bait three weeks earlier.

Ruby survived but was never the same as she was before the ordeal. Her family decided she needed special care and sent her away to Riverview Hospital, a mental institution in Vancouver.

I gasped aloud when I read the name of the person the author had interviewed to get the full story. Kenneth Thatcher – Ruby’s little brother. As of the writing of the book, both he and his sister were still alive. The publication date was 1998 – not all that long ago. It was possible he might still be alive, in his mid-eighties.

I didn’t know why I felt compelled to look him up. I needed to know if he was still alive. I wanted to know how the story ended – what had become of Ruby?

After a brief search, I found him, or at least a name I thought was his. Kenneth J Thatcher lived in Victoria, just a two-hour drive from where I was. I called him and sure enough, he was the same Kenneth who had once fled from a cougar with his sister Ruby. I explained that I was researching the story for an article and was hoping for an opportunity to interview him. To my surprise, he was happy to oblige and invited me to come for a visit the next day.

On the drive to Victoria, I couldn’t get Ruby out of my mind. Did she ever recover and lead a normal life? How did she die? Did I dare ask Kenneth any of those questions?

Kenneth lived in a senior citizens’ assisted living facility located across the street from one of the local hospitals. It was a nice place – not exactly a rest home but an apartment complex, which allowed residents to have full independence while still having help nearby if they needed it. He was an amicable man and I liked him immediately.

As Kenneth heated the kettle to make some tea, I explained to him that I was also a psychic and that a quick reading could speed up the interview and help me understand the details of his story more clearly.

“Well, sure, if you want to,” he laughed good-naturedly, “But I have all the time in the world, so no need to rush if you want to stay and chat.”

I sensed that he didn’t get many visitors and welcomed the company. I smiled to reassure him.

“Of course. I’d love to stay and chat.”

Once he was comfortably seated across the small kitchen table, I offered my hand to him.

“May I?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

I closed my eyes and allowed the book-page images to flash past but not for long. The scene I was searching for was right at the beginning of the book, when he was only six years old.

Through Kenneth’s eyes I saw Ruby, smiling and talking as she filled her pail with blackberries from the heavily laden vines.

“Stop dawdling, Kenny! It’s going to be dark soon and you haven’t even half filled your pail. Mine is almost full.”

“I can’t go fast!” Kenny whined, “The thorns hurt my fingers.”

Ruby gave him an exasperated sigh. “Your slowness will be the death of you one day.” She froze the moment she finished the sentence. “Run,” she whispered.

“What?” Kenny said loudly, “I din’ hear you.”

Ruby grabbed his arm roughly and thrust him toward the path leading home. “RUN!” she screamed.

Kenny chanced a quick look backward as he began to run and saw his sister fling her berry bucket at a large yellow cat. The pail made a ‘BONG’ noise as it bounced off the animal’s head. Kenny ran.

He ran as fast as his little legs could carry him but his sister soon ran past and disappeared down the trail ahead of him. He wanted to call out to her to wait, but he was breathless from fear and exertion. He couldn’t keep up the pace much longer. His legs felt weak and he had already begun to slow. He dove as far as he could into the blackberry thicket that lined the trail. Maybe he could hide in there and it wouldn’t see him. His skin stung as the sharp thorns ripped and tore. He was convinced that teeth and claws were shredding him as the cat devoured him alive. He wet his pants and curled up into a tiny ball, sobbing and waiting for the end.

The end didn’t come. After a while he cautiously opened his eyes and saw nothing but blackberry bushes and heard nothing but the usual late-summer sounds – birds chirping and insects buzzing. It would be sunset soon and already the forest was beginning to darken. He didn’t want to be out there in the dark so he untangled himself from the prickly vines and ran the rest of the way back to the village. He was covered in scratches and caked in blood but otherwise unhurt.

That was when he learned that his sister hadn’t made it home.

I released his hand. “Thank you for allowing me to do that,” I said, “I saw it all – the cat, and your escape.”

“Really?” he asked, seeming surprised. “You actually saw it? You’re the real deal, then, aren’t you?”

“I suppose so,” I replied, “Can I ask you, what happened to your sister?”

“Well,” he paused for a sip of tea. “I suppose it’s just as easy for you to ask her yourself as have me tell it to you. Given that little talent of yours.”

“Wait – you mean she’s still alive?”

“Still alive and kicking at 88. That’s why I picked this place to live. No one in his right mind would want to live across from a damn hospital unless he had a good reason.” He stood. “Would you like to meet her?”

We left the apartment complex and its cheery garden surroundings and crossed the street to the hospital. We passed the main entrance and followed a path that led away from the main building to another wing set away toward the rear. It was surrounded by a fence, and Kenneth entered a code on the keypad to open the gate. He entered a code once again to gain entry to the building. The woman at the front nursing station waved hello to him and buzzed us in through a set of security doors. After winding through a maze of hallways we reached another nursing station, received another greeting from the orderly at the desk and were buzzed through another set of doors.

“Here at Ferndale,” Kenneth explained, “They are equipped to provide long-term care for people who need it. Their primary focus is on therapy and rehabilitation but for some people, the only treatment is… maintenance. Like my sister.” He shook his head sadly. “There are some who just never make it back.”

We reached another set of doors, which were unlocked, and Kenneth held one open for me. “She’s been getting weaker lately,” he explained. “It’s her heart, you know. You may think I’m a ghoul, but it will be a blessing when she finally does pass on. She has suffered so much and continues to suffer each day, I’m sure.” We paused outside a room numbered 312. Beside the heavy-looking metal door was yet another keypad to enter a code. “Are you ready?” he asked, finger poised over the keys.

“Yes.”

“If you want, you may touch her and do your… thing. She can tell you her story better than I can.” He punched in the code once more and we entered the room.

Ruby lay in a hospital bed, situated next to the barred window and adjusted so that she was almost sitting upright and could see outside. The first thing I noticed was the leather restraints she wore around her wrists. The second thing I noticed was the stump of her right leg. The broken ankle. I wondered if the untended injury had become infected and turned gangrene.

Kenneth greeted her with a kiss on her cheek. “Hi Ruby,” he said softly, “How are you feeling today?”

“Who are you?” she asked him.

“It’s me, Kenny,” he said patiently, “I’m your brother.

“No you’re not. Kenny died.”

He crossed the room back to where I stood, lingering near the door. “This is what it’s like every time I see her. Has been ever since… well, ever. I keep hoping that one day she’ll snap out of it and realize that I’m alive; so that she can die knowing I survived.”

He turned to me. “I don’t suppose you can… communicate with her somehow? Pass her a message, maybe – tell her that I’m alive and that I’m here?”

I shook my head sadly. “I’m sorry, but no. My abilities don’t work that way. I can receive information but not give it.”

He nodded toward Ruby. “Well, go on, then. This is what you came here for.”

I tentatively approached the bed, then hesitated before reaching for Ruby’s hand. I looked back at Kenneth for confirmation. He nodded.

“Go ahead,” he urged, “It can’t do any harm at this point. Each day she lives could be her last. If you want the full story, you’d best get it from her while you have the chance.”

Ruby appeared to be dozing lightly, as if tired from her brief conversation with her brother.

“Hello Ruby,” I said softly, “You don’t know me but I’d like to hold your hand for a moment, if you don’t mind.” Ruby’s eyelids flickered but didn’t open.

Ruby’s hands were those of an old woman – twisted and arthritic – but I could still see the scars on the tips of her misshapen fingers where the flesh had never fully grown back. Her eyelids flickered once more as I slid her cold, gnarled hand into my own. She responded to my touch by grasping my hand with a surprising amount of strength. I slowed my breathing, closed my eyes and allowed the visions to flow. The book-page images flew past; taking me almost immediately to the point in time I sought.

Ruby scolded her brother for not being a faster berry picker. She felt frustrated at his whining but didn’t want to return home without two full pails of berries. After telling him that his slowness would be the death of him, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. It was a large tawny-colored cat – a mountain lion or puma, as her grandfather sometimes called them. For one heart-stopping second she met its gaze; she was close enough to see the fine black streaks outlining its yellow eyes like the makeup worn by fancy ladies.

After shoving Kenny toward the trail and screaming at him to run, she did the only thing she could think of – throw the pail at the animal. The children had been taught to throw the fruit if they encountered a bear while picking because the bear would almost always prefer to eat the berries than chase a person. The cougar was not interested in berries but being stuck in the face with the pail might have startled it enough to interrupt its attack, giving Ruby a head start when she ran.

She heard heavy footfalls on the trail; to me, it seemed as if she was hearing the sound of her own feet but Ruby was convinced it was the cougar she heard and ran even harder. She overtook Kenny and passed him on the trail without giving him a second thought as her instinct for self-preservation took over. By the time she did remember him she had reached the village. She looked over her shoulder to see if either Kenny or the cat was behind her and stumbled, nearly falling to the ground.

Ruby ran to the first house she saw and pounded on the door, screaming for help. When nobody answered she ran to the next, then the next. Nobody was home; the men were working at the sawmill and it was harvest time, so the women were in the fields and gardens. The constant screech of the sawmill in the background drowned out her cries for help.

Ruby thought she saw movement at the edge of the forest and was certain it was the cougar, coming to eat her. She needed to find safety, fast. She spied the old schoolhouse and the large maple tree beside it, which she had climbed dozens of times just for fun. As she climbed, she remembered that cats were also good climbers.

Her sanctuary had become a trap.

There was a small window near the peak of the schoolhouse roof. The glass was already partly broken. If she broke the rest of it, she could squeeze through into the safety of the schoolhouse. She inched along the narrowing branch until she could reach the glass with her feet and kicked in the remaining pane. Then she lowered herself into the window feet first, slid through and dropped.

And dropped.

If she had seen how far it was down to the floor she might have thought twice about jumping but because she went in feet first she didn’t see the perilous height until it was too late.

Crunch.

She felt her ankle turn sideways just before a fiery pain shot up her leg, causing her to crumple to the floor. She slipped into unconsciousness from a combination of shock and exhaustion.

When she woke, it was dark. Her ankle throbbed and she was unable to stand on it. A weak sliver of moonlight shone through the broken window from which she had fallen, giving her enough light to get her bearings. She could hear the ever-present roar of the sawmill in the background and remembered that she was in the schoolhouse and safe from the cougar. She had managed to outrun the deadly predator… and her brother.

“Kenny!” She cried his name aloud when she realized that the lion must have gotten him. It was her fault for leaving him behind to save her own skin.

She had killed Kenny!

Ruby hobbled to one of the dust-covered pews, where she curled up and sobbed herself to sleep from the pain of her injury and grief for her little brother.

When she awoke it was light outside and that was when Ruby realized that she was trapped. She pounded and pounded and screamed and screamed while the sawmill screamed back at her twice as loud.

I flipped past the next three gruesome weeks because I already knew what happened next and had no desire to witness it again. I slowed the scenes and watched a shaft of daylight fill the schoolhouse, then the faces of several different people. After that, I was back in the schoolhouse again, experiencing through Ruby’s eyes as she staggered back and forth, hammering and clawing at the door with her bloodied hands.

That was odd.

I must have accidentally gone back instead of forward. That had never happened before. I pushed ahead again and once again saw bright light, people’s faces, then the schoolhouse. Once again I pushed forward with the same result. It was like watching a reel-to-reel film spliced into a continuous loop.

As I watched the loop, I began to see glimpses of things that did not belong in the schoolhouse or in the village where Ruby lived. A white room. Her leg a bloody stump swathed in bandages. Sterile steel objects; people dressed all in white; the pinprick of a hypodermic needle; an object shoved into her mouth, followed by jolts of electricity; restraints, much like the ones she wore now. And pain. Lots of pain. I began to understand.

In her mind, Ruby had never left the schoolhouse. A child’s life destroyed – spent in institutions subjected to all manner of brutal ‘therapies’. None of the torturous procedures she endured did anything to bring that innocent child back from the madness that had become her reality; they only served to fuel the rage that continued to build inside her. She was restrained to prevent her from acting out her frantic attempts to escape the schoolhouse again and again, day after day for what remained of her tragic life.

It was no wonder Kenneth would see her death as a blessing.

I had seen enough. I opened my eyes and released my grip on Ruby’s hand to break the connection but she refused to let go. Her bony hand held mine in an ironclad grip. Suddenly her head snapped in my direction and she glared at me, pupils dilated to the same ink-black I had seen in my first vision of her.

“WHY DIDN’T YOU HELP ME?” she screamed.

I struggled to pull my hand away from hers, looking frantically at Kenneth for help.

“Ruby, look at me!” Kenneth placed his own face between hers and mine. “You have to let go.”

“Kenny?” she whimpered, “Is it really you?”

“Yes Ruby, I’m here. You have to let go.”

“I didn’t kill Kenny?” she whispered.

“No, my dear, you didn’t. You saved me. Please remember that.” Kenneth’s voice broke as he spoke.

Ruby was silent but maintained her rock-solid grip on me. Kenneth had to use both of his hands to pry her fingers loose from mine. I stumbled backward, finally free and eager to put some distance between Ruby and me.

I watched as Kenneth leaned forward and kissed his sister tenderly on the cheek, then stood and closed her eyelids. It was only then that I realized she was no longer alive, and that he had pried her still-clenched dead fingers from my hand.

“There will be no Code Blue here today,” he said quietly, “‘Do Not Resuscitate.’ That is what I requested, as her guardian and next of kin.” He looked at me, his pale blue eyes brimming with tears. “She saw me. Even if it was just for a few seconds, she knew I was alive. My Ruby is at peace now.”

* * *

As I read that last sentence I wrote, it seems prudent to end the story there, with the end of Ruby’s life. After all, there isn’t much else to tell. My doctor told me it would be therapeutic to write it down. He thinks it will stop the dreams. I’ve given up trying to explain to him that they are not dreams. It’s real, all of it.

She’s still with me, you see. Ruby. Maybe that was why she clung so hard to me at the moment of her death. Maybe she wasn’t ready to leave just yet. She’s not at peace like Kenneth said. She is still very disturbed. After all, she was batshit-crazy right up until the moment she died.

She comes to me at night.

Sometimes she lies in wait beneath the bed; waiting for me to place my feet on the floor. As soon as I do, a bloodied, skeletal hand will snake out and grab my ankle, sending me screaming toward the door, where I pound and pound until someone hears me and comes to my rescue. As long as I stay on the bed and remain awake, she leaves me alone. But sooner or later we all have to sleep. When I fall asleep, she takes over. Time after time I have woken to find myself lying before my bedroom door, bruised and bloodied from Ruby throwing me against it.

I voluntarily committed myself to this place to prevent her from killing me. Sooner or later I was bound to wake up with more than just black eyes and a concussion… or not wake up at all.

The doctors call it sleepwalking and of course they have a lot of medical jargon to explain the how and why of it, but I know the truth.

Ruby is inside me and has no intention of leaving.

Now they restrain and medicate me every night, but I get no rest. In my mind at night, I am Ruby and each night the scene inside the schoolhouse replays over and over until the drugs wear off and I awaken. I feel her terror; I feel her pain; I experience her descent into madness each night. It is torture beyond description.

There is a solution, I believe.

I have a secret.

For the past several months I have been tonguing my meds and stashing them in a small hole I made in the side of my mattress. I tell them I prefer to make my own bed because it helps to alleviate my night terrors, and they’re happy to oblige.

I think I have enough now, for a nice potent, no-returnsies overdose. It had better be enough. If I take them now, I should be good and gone before lights-out time. That’s when they come and bind me to my bed so I don’t hurt myself in my sleep. It has to be tonight. I can’t take another night of this.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way I’ll ever be free is to set Ruby free.

I just hope nobody else happens to be nearby when Ruby leaves me.

Featured in the WPaD anthology, Creepies: Twisted Tales From Beneath the Bed

Mesachie Man

Trevor shifted the Jeep into third gear and accelerated. “Pass those beers around, bitches! We are officially off-road now!”

The road to Port Renfrew was a paved public road, but technically it was also a logging road, which created a grey area where the law was concerned. They could still get busted for drinking and driving, but the odds of meeting a cop out there were next to nil.

The Tall Trees Music Festival didn’t start for another three days. By leaving early, they planned to avoid the traffic and inevitable police presence on the normally deserted road. They would lay claim to a prime camp spot and be all set up by the time the crowds arrived.

“This is going to be sweet! Three days of music, sunshine and partying!” Cassie handed Trevor a beer and taking a second one for herself. Cassie’s best friend Nina Charlie was in charge of the refreshments. She sat cross-legged in the middle of the back seat, between her boyfriend Gordon and a cooler full of beer. The cargo space of the Jeep overflowed with camping gear. Coolers were stacked in the space beside Nina for easy access.

The road from Mesachie Lake to Port Renfrew wound through nearly sixty kilometres of scenic wilderness. There were no houses, stores or gas stations, and limited amenities in the tiny towns at either end. Every year, thousands of hipsters converged on the small seaside community of Port Renfrew to listen to live music and “commune with nature” at the Tall Trees Festival. “Communing”, for some, consisted of getting wasted on drugs and alcohol and passing out in their own filth. Paramedics were on-site around the clock and the first-aid tent was well-equipped with overdose kits.

The musky aroma of cannabis drifted from the back seat.

“Pass that up here, Gordo!” Cassie said, turning in her seat to take the joint from Gord. She inhaled deeply and then held the joint to Trevor’s lips. He sucked a lungful of the sweet smoke and then sputtered, trying to keep from coughing.

“Zmooth,” he croaked. The four of them busted up laughing. Everything was suddenly a lot funnier.

They crossed a bridge over a deep ravine. A jade-green river snaked between the cliffs below.

“Gosh, it’s so pretty,” Cassie said, looking down. “Hard to believe nobody lives out here.” She had lived in the city all her life, and had never seen any place so utterly unoccupied.

“This is the real deal, baby! Real Canadian wilderness. I promised you an adventure, didn’t I?” Trevor reached over to caress the front of Cassie’s blouse, then leaned in for a kiss. The Jeep swerved, and Cassie recoiled with a gasp.

“Hey! Watch what you’re doing!” she slapped his shoulder lightly. “Keep your eyes on the road and your hands off my tits!”

“I got it. Don’t worry, I grew up driving these roads.” Trevor gripped the wheel and glared at the road, embarrassed at being spurned in front of their friends.

“Fuck! How do people get here without a truck? This is crazy rough!” Cassie said.

“Most of them come from Victoria. The road through Sooke is better. That’s where most of the crowds will come from. Only us redneck types take the back way,” Nina told her.

Trevor jerked the wheel to the left and veered off the pocked pavement of the main road onto a narrow gravel road.

“You guys are going to love this. We have two days to kill and I’m going to treat you to one of Cowichan’s best kept secrets. There’s a little lake up here where we can camp, rave, fish and swim, and best of all, we’ll have the whole place to ourselves.”

Nina and Gord high-fived each other and whooped.

“Sweet!” Nina squealed. “I haven’t been to Lost Lake in forever!”

Trevor laughed. “See? My girl Nina knows what I’m talking about!”

They were climbing now, and the road had degraded to the gravel equivalent of a moguled ski hill. Trevor downshifted and put the Jeep into four-wheel drive. The vehicle bucked and bounced, turning their beer to foam.

“How much farther?” Cassie asked.

“Shouldn’t be long now,” Trevor said, steering around an outcropping of rock. “Pretty soon you’ll see a little slice of paradise.”

The Jeep bucked down the road for some distance, then the front wheel dropped into a large pothole with a loud BANG. The force of the impact hurtled them forward. An avalanche of tents and sleeping bags buried the occupants of the back.

“Ow!” Cassie rubbed her chin, which she had bumped on the dash. Luckily they hadn’t been traveling very fast.

Trevor killed the engine. “Everyone okay?” He turned to see Gord and Nina emerging from a pile of camping gear.

“Yeah, bro, we’re cool. But that didn’t sound good. Sounded like something broke.”

“Yeah. Gonna check it out now.” Trevor got out of the Jeep and Gord followed. The girls joined them.

“Looks like a broken axle.” Trevor and Gord squatted beside the front wheel, which twisted sideways at an impossible angle.

“What does that mean?” Cassie asked, “Can you fix it?”

“It means we’re fucked,” Nina said.

“Yep,” Gord agreed. “This beast needs a tow truck.”

Cassie rushed to the vehicle to retrieve her phone.

Trevor chuckled and shook his head, glancing up at the treetops. “Oh, honey, you’re so cute. There’s no signal out here.”

“WHAT? No, there has to be some bars somewhere. We’ll take a walk until we find a signal.”

“There’s nothing.”

“What about at the festival grounds? We can’t be that far from there. We could walk.”

“We’re about halfway. It’s about thirty clicks to civilization in either direction. Plus, we’re another five or six from the main road”

“So we can walk it if we have to.”

“Yes, but not now. It’s going to be dark in a couple of hours. You do not want to be out here in the dark.”

“But somebody’s bound to come by. What about the festival crowd?”

“They won’t start coming through here for at least another day or two. And they will be on the main road. Nobody’s going to come up this way. Besides, we will have gotten a tow truck by then.”

Cassie shivered, realizing the truth of what he was saying. They were stranded in the middle of nowhere, at least for the night.

“Your call, friendos. Do we hike to the lake, or camp here?”

Gord and Nina were already pulling camping gear out of the back of the Jeep.

“I vote we hike to the lake,” Nina said. “We were going there anyways. Might as well go ahead with the plan and enjoy our adventure, we came this far. At least we’ll have plenty of water there.”

“Seconded.” Gord looked at Trevor. “Bro?”

“Yeah. I’m up for a hike. The lake is way nicer than the side of the road.”

Cassie huddled close to her boyfriend. She was nervous about leaving the relative safety of the vehicle, broken as it was, but it was obvious she didn’t have a say.

They stuffed their backpacks with camping supplies, which included as much food and booze as they could carry, leaving the coolers behind. They set out down the dusty road, laden like pack mules.

The four friends arrived at the lake within the hour. The setting sun painted the treetops with majestic golden hues, but down below darkness crept over the forest floor. Cassie fought panic with every step, but there was no turning back. Finally they stepped out of the woods into a small clearing surrounding the glistening green gem that was Lost Lake.

“It’s so pretty! she breathed, in both awe and relief at being free from the creepy forest.

The group shrugged off backpacks and began to unpack.

Gord tossed a tent to Trevor. “We might as well set up right away. We’re here for the night.”

Trevor nodded. “Yeah, we are. We can walk out to the main road in the morning and catch a ride to call a tow truck. There won’t be time to fix the Jeep, but with any luck we can borrow something else to drive and still make the festival.”

* * *

The four friends sat around a crackling fire under a starry, moonlit sky. With the abundance of beers and joints, it felt almost like a regular camping trip. If they’d reached their destination as planned, the scene wouldn’t have differed much, except they would have had the Jeep and its booming stereo to scare away whatever lurked in the darkness.

Cassie had never been camping before, except for road trips in her parents’ RV. Those trips had always been to campsites with showers and electrical hookups. Sometimes even swimming pools. She couldn’t understand why her friends seemed so comfortable in such rustic surroundings.

She’d had to pee for hours, and didn’t know what to do about it.

Nina stood and pulled a small flashlight from her pocket. “Back in a minute. Gotta use the ‘facilities’.”

“Wait!” Cassie said. “Can I go with you?”

Nina shrugged. “Sure, c’mon.”

Cassie followed Nina away from the campsite, into a small grove of trees. She wondered what happened next.

Her eyes widened in horror as Nina squatted next to a tree, then pulled some tissue from her pocket.

She couldn’t possibly… but there were no other options.

Noticing her hesitation, Nina said, “You want me to wait for you?”

“Yes, please. It’s so dark out here. You got any more of that tissue?”

* * *

The girls were almost back to camp when a bloodcurdling shriek pierced the darkness.

Cassie grabbed hold of Nina.

“What the fuck was that?”

“You promise you won’t freak out if I tell you?”

“No. Yes.”

They walked back into the safety of the firelight and Nina grabbed two fresh beers from her backpack.

“Did you guys hear that?” Cassie asked.

“Sounded like a cougar,” Gord said. “When they’re mating, they sound almost human.”

“No way! That was – wait – there are cougars out here?” Cassie’s terror refreshed and rose a few levels.

“And wolves too. Actually, Vancouver Island has the highest concentration of cougars in North America. You didn’t know that?”

“It wasn’t a cougar,” Nina said.

Trevor met her eyes. “No, I’ve heard cougars, and they don’t sound like that.”

“Well, if it wasn’t a cougar, then what the fuck makes a noise like that? Jesus, it sounded like someone got murdered out there.”

“Light a joint, Gord. You guys up for a story?” Nina’s dark eyes glinted with a hint of mischief.

“Is this one of those tribal tales from your family?” Gord asked.

“Yessir, it is. But Trevor should know it too. His family has history here too.”

“You’re talking about the Mesachie Man, aren’t you?” Trevor said.

Nina nodded. “When the white people first settled this area, they chose to build their towns and mills at various spots around the lake. One settler, by the name of Frank Green, chose Mesachie Lake as the site for his mill. When he found the spot, he fell in love with it – pretty little place in the mountains, nestled between two lakes. He couldn’t believe nobody had already settled there. Not even the local tribes had claimed it. My grandfather liked to tell us kids the story. Apparently, the reason my ancestors didn’t use the land was they believed evil lived there.”

“Frank Green?” Gord said. “That’s your last name, Trevor.”

Trevor nodded. “I’m named after my great-grandfather, Trevor Green, who was Frank’s son.”

“So you know this story?”

“I know it well. It’s part of my family history as well as Nina’s. Frank settled the area, built a mill and a small town sprang up around it. Not much, just a church, a school, and about sixty homes, owned by the mill, where the mill workers lived. Frank’s wife, Louie, they called her, was curious about the area, and why the natives never lived in the area or even fished in the lakes. She talked to the locals, and they told her a story of a horrible man-beast that lived in a cave nearby. Rumor had it, the thing escaped from a ship that ran aground on the reefs outside Port Renfrew. It was said to have been part man, part ape and was en route to a freak show in San Francisco or elsewhere up the coast. Most people nowadays figure it was just an ordinary gorilla on its way to a zoo. Anyhow, they believed it found the Robertson River, remember that bridge we crossed?”

Cassie nodded, remembering the dark green river in the ravine.

“Well, legend has it, this creature followed the river inland and took up residence in a cave in Mesachie Mountain, which overlooks the town of Mesachie Lake. That’s where we turned off the main road toward Port Renfrew.”

Cassie remembered turning at a flashing amber light – away from the last inkling of civilization.

“So what was it? Did anyone ever find it?”

“No, but if it was a gorilla, it would have died at some point,” Nina said. “The stories from my family go way back to the early 1800s, as far as we know. And there have been reported sightings of something throughout the 1900s, as recently as the 90s. Whether or not it’s the creature from the legend or just a bear is impossible to know, but if it is the same thing my ancestors saw, then there had to be more than one of them.”

“Did anybody ever find the cave where it lived?”

“Nobody knows. There are plenty of caves in these mountains. It could have been in any one of them.”

“Come on! You guys are just fucking with me! Trying to scare the city girl with Bigfoot stories!”

“No, I swear, this is real history from my family and Nina’s,” Trevor said, putting a protective arm around Cassie’s shoulders and pulling her close.

“And there have been a lot of unexplained disappearances over the years. People have just walked into the woods and never returned. Like that guy years ago who took his dog for a walk and disappeared.”

“I remember that,” Gord said. “The dog came back but he didn’t. His remains turned up eleven years later, in a place far outside the search area. It didn’t make sense for him to have gone way up there.”

“The thing was,” Trevor added, “He was something of a legend in these parts. A serious outdoorsman. He knew these woods like his own back yard. The kind of guy you would call to help search when someone went missing. Not someone who would ever get lost out here.”

“What about that old woman last summer? They say she had dementia and drove onto these back roads and got lost. But when they finally found her she was eleven kilometres from her car. How does a woman in her eighties hike that far into the wilderness?” Nina said.

“And that other guy. They found his vehicle running on the side of the road with the driver’s door open, wallet and cell phone inside the vehicle. They also found blood in the vehicle and in the trees nearby. They searched for months, but when his body was finally found it was miles away in a place nobody would have looked.”

“Did they say what all those people died from?” Cassie asked, trying to hide the tremor in her voice.

“Nope. The cops are always very hush-hush about these things, for the privacy of the families. They said there was no foul play in any of the cases, but they all sound fishy as hell to me. I mean, what makes anyone just drop what they’re doing and make a beeline into the deep woods? Where were they trying to get to?”

“Or away from.” Nina said. “One reason for charging blindly into the woods is to escape from something.”

“Stop it, Nina! That’s not funny.” Cassie said.

“I’m not trying to be funny, just stating facts. Panic makes the illogical seem logical.”

Trevor saw the terror on Cassie’s face and leaned down to give her a kiss. “Don’t worry, babe. I’ll keep you safe from the Mesachie Man.”

The shriek echoed through the night again. It sounded closer this time. A wolf howled in the distance, as if in reply.

* * *

WOMAN RESCUED AFTER THREE-DAY ORDEAL IN WILDERNESS

A confused and dehydrated woman found wandering on Pacific Marine Route has been unable to offer police any answers. An abandoned vehicle and nearby campsite was found, but police have confirmed the vehicle was not registered to the woman.

Foul play is not suspected. Police believe the campers may have been en route to the Tall Trees Festival in Port Renfrew when their vehicle broke down. They are being sought for questioning at the festival.

The unidentified woman was admitted to hospital and treated for dehydration and minor injuries. She has been detained for psychiatric evaluation.

Anyone who has further information regarding the whereabouts of the woman’s alleged companions is asked to contact police as soon as possible.

* * *

“I need you to take this patient. I think you could make better progress with her than I can.” Dr. Phillips handed Cecily a file.

Cecily read the name. “Cassie March. What do we have here?” Cecily wasn’t a psychiatrist like Dr. Phillips. Her specialty was counselling victims of rape and other violence.

“Female, twenty-three years old, catatonia due to post-traumatic stress.”

“The source of the trauma?”

“That’s just it – we don’t know. She won’t talk to me. In fact, I can’t even enter the room without putting her into hysterics.”

“Does she react the same way to everyone? What about the nurses?”

“No, she seems ok with the nurses. It’s just me she has a problem with, or men in general, though the physical examination didn’t indicate sexual assault.”

“What were her injuries?”

“Aside from dehydration, just bruises and abrasions. The sort of thing you’d expect from someone who was lost in the wilderness.”

Cecily peeked through the observation window.

A young male orderly was in the room, putting fresh towels in the bathroom. The patient seemed undisturbed by his presence. The patient sat quietly on her bed, muttering to herself.

“What’s she saying? Has she said anything intelligible?”

“She just repeats the same phrase: ‘Mesachie Man’, over and over. I think someone may have done something to her, but I’ve made no progress because of her obvious fear of men.”

“She doesn’t seem bothered by all men, David.” Cecily nodded toward the fresh-faced orderly. “Maybe there’s something about you specifically that bothers her.”

Dr. Phillips stroked his bushy beard, remembering that he was overdue for a trim.

“Hmm… I wonder what it could be?”

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