G. Wright - Broken Things

He heard the car engine start and he looked at them curiously. Did mom want to go home that bad, or had they forgotten something important? He watched the car pull out and it felt like warning bells going off in his head.

“Dad! Mom! Wait!” He ran after them as they pulled onto the dirt road. He saw his dad’s eyes in the side view mirror, but he didn’t stop. Were they actually speeding up?

He ran harder and faster than he ever had in his life, ignoring the cloud of dust they threw up behind them. He saw his mother’s hand on his father’s shoulder. Please stop, please if there is a God make them stop.

Whether in answer to his quick prayer or his mom, his dad stopped the car in the middle of the road. He didn’t stop running until he reached the driver’s window. His father turned to face him, expression solemn. That meant his father was either in a fight with his mom or Josh had done something wrong.

“Where… where are you guys going?” he asked breathlessly. He leaned on the window, noticing his mother’s red, swollen eyes.

“Let go of the window, Josh,” his father ordered in a quiet, yet firm voice.

Josh ignored him. “Is everything okay, mom? Why are you…”

“She’s fine,” his dad interrupted, “I need you to go back to camp. Now. You need to stay there.”

“When are you coming back?”

“Josh, honey,” his mother said, “You have to do what your father says. Please just go back. Be a good boy and don’t follow us.”

“Why are you leaving? Take me with you!”

“We can’t honey, you’ll like it here…”

“Carol, please,” his dad said. He looked straight ahead, not at his wife or at Josh. “You just can’t and that’s final. You’ll be fine. You’ve got everything you need. Now please, go back.”

“Is it because I’m broken? I’ll find a way to fix myself, I promise! Please don’t leave me, don’t go! I won’t cause any trouble, you won’t have to spend any more money on me, please Daddy, I’ll be good! I’ll…”

“Drive, Dave,” his mother said, “Go, I can’t handle this.”

Josh reached through the window and grabbed his dad’s arm as he gave the SUV gas. He hung from the window as they started down the road, forcing him to stop again. “Let go of me, Josh,” he ordered.

“Don’t leave me, let me go with you! Daddy, please!”

“Stop calling me that!”

His father grabbed his wrist and roughly pried Josh’s hand away. He stomped the gas, his peeling tires throwing a cloud of choking dirt into the air. Josh fell to his knees in disbelief, tears coming unbidden.

“I don’t understand,” he said to no one.

Several miles away something stirred. It awakened upon a hard bed of dirt and rocks, surrounded by bat guano and worms. Only a thin beam of sunlight disturbed its darkness. Long ago the cave had a wider opening, and had been used by Native Americans. The walls were painted with their cave art of a time long forgotten. Hundreds of years ago a landslide had all but obscured the opening, leaving it as a shelter only for the local wildlife…. and eventually something else.

It stretched its arms and legs, disturbing a decade worth of dust and cobwebs. They were stiff and difficult to move, atrophied muscles tearing painfully. Things moved beneath its skin. Bugs , it realized. They’d eaten holes all through it, consuming whatever they could. Still it lived. It didn’t hate the bugs. They did what they were supposed to do. It understood purpose.

Why was it still alive? How was it possible? More importantly, what had awakened it? It felt something it hadn’t felt in a long time. It sniffed the air but the cave only reeked of dust and that of its own decay. It wasn’t a smell then.

It had found the cave by chance, stumbling on it only by providence. Fragments of memory slowly came back, creeping into its mind like the bugs throughout its body. There had been blood, it had killed. It killed and it had been good at it. It had only stopped when there were no more children. But others knew about it by then, forcing it to run to the most remote place it could find. It had crawled in this hole to die.

It dragged its weakened form toward the light, its arms barely able to support it. The light burned its eyes and it shied away. Its skin felt like brittle paper. It would have to wait until the darkness came.

It remembered what this feeling was. It wasn’t a scent at all. Fear ! Child-like innocent fear that called to it, gave it a sense of urgency, and the urgency gave it strength.

If one were back, could there be more?

The mountains loomed over him and the trees pressed in from all directions. Josh didn’t move but sat in the middle of the road and waited. It didn’t feel real. His parents wouldn’t leave him. That just wasn’t something that parents did. They had to come back.

But they didn’t.

The sun rose higher and his stomach growled. He dragged his feet back to the camp. He followed the tire tracks in the dust, following them the wrong way. Going back felt pointless, but it would be better to wait there than in the middle of the road.

Josh sat down at the picnic table, surrounded by many of the comforts of home. When they were packing, everything felt so important, as though he couldn’t live without it, and he’d pushed to bring much more than what his parents had wanted him to. His feelings warred with him. If he were to chase after his parents, he didn’t want to leave everything here. But on the other hand, it all felt empty. If he gave all this up and went after them, he could have his home back.

But they hadn’t said that they weren’t coming back either, had they? It didn’t make much sense, but maybe he’d not understood them. That had to be it! They were testing him! Or maybe they didn’t want to camp, but didn’t want him to be disappointed. Parents were horrible at explaining things. They were always expecting you to know exactly what they meant as though you were a mind reader, and when you asked them to repeat themselves or explain something they got mad, like you were stupid for not knowing what they knew.

That was it, they’d be back.

He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffed. Just keep busy , he told himself, make time pass. They’ll be back any time. He ate his sandwich, picking off the crust and dropping it into the dust to feed the ants. He watched them fight over the crumbs. Every now and then he reached down and flicked it away. The ants were so much bigger here, and redder too. He’d heard that the red ants bit. Those are fire ants, he thought. At home they only had little black ones. His dad had shown him how to burn them with a magnifying glass once. He should’ve packed that too.

He wished he had his own cell phone. He could call them up and find out when they were coming back. They didn’t even trust him with theirs, though. What could they have forgotten? If there were important things that they hadn’t brought, it had to mean they’d come back. They hadn’t brought any books, but that was okay. They didn’t bring the portable movie player, and they hadn’t let him bring his portable game unit. He’d tried to sneak it, but they had found it and made him leave it in his room. Their definition of camping didn’t match his. They shouldn’t be making rules for camping if they weren’t going to stay. If he had to spend it by himself, then he should’ve been allowed to do whatever he wanted to. He doubted that they had ever gone camping before either.

He gazed up at the mountains. They encircled him in every direction. Mountains had always been distant things, breaking up the horizon whenever you got out of the city, but had always been so far away. Once he thought he could walk to them, if he was so inclined, but this had been an awfully long drive, and it made the notion of walking seem silly. They’d given him a stash of granola bars and fruit snacks for the drive up, all of which were now gone. He’d eaten all of them within the first half hour of the drive. There would be more in some of the food bags. He should eat them now and make them go back for more when they returned.