G. Wright - Broken Things

He should climb a mountain while his parents were away. They wouldn’t let him when they got back. They didn’t like him climbing stuff, especially his mother. She always thought he was going to break something.

But he was already broken. He pushed the thought away.

From the top of a mountain, would he be able to see his house? Maybe at least he could see the city. Maybe he would also be able to see when his family came back. It didn’t look too steep. He thought about it for a bit until he decided he was still hungry and instead dug through the grocery bag until he found more fruit snacks.

He had to do anything other than think about how long his family had been gone already. He wouldn’t worry. And they would never know that every once in a while he’d go into the tent and cry.

It became dark much earlier than he felt it should. The day passed by with him rummaging through the food (and eventually finding the junk food snacks) and watching the road. Could his dad find his way back here again? He’d taken a side road, and he knew his dad was smart, but that didn’t mean he still couldn’t get lost. He’d seen other people here, back at the lake. Some of those people had to be camping. Maybe they’d come by eventually. He could hike to the lake tomorrow maybe, and then one of them could give him a ride home. Or if his parents were coming back, he could just camp there with the other people, just for safety. Even being with strangers would be better than being alone.

He’d never felt so alone. There had always been a feeling of someone nearby, if only a house away. He’d heard of people getting lost in the wilderness. If he tried walking, what would happen? If he followed the road, would he wind up deeper in the mountains? All of the maps he’d seen of Idaho showed a lot of wilderness, once you were in it. A lot of wilderness with towns spread out far and wide. He wouldn’t leave the roads, no matter what.

With the night the mountains and trees transformed into looming shadows of pure darkness that felt as though they could hide anything. And though the stars were bright, the mountains hid the moon. He hid in the tent to await the morning, and somehow managed to find sleep.

It crawled, dragging itself down the mountain. Once the earth gave way beneath its weight and it had tumbled painfully down into the draw between two ridges. It had never felt so weak. It couldn’t tell how far away the kid was, but the fear called to it. The emotion, so primal, filled the air, a conglomeration of sensations that urged it on. Its desiccated flesh tingled with it. It hadn’t detected fear so great in such a long time. If only its legs worked. It had grown horribly weak.

It slowly made its way through the trees, over roots and through the foliage that tried to hold it back. Long grass and brush wrapped around its wrists. It forced itself on, one arm in front of the other, gripping rocks and hard earth, grabbing roots and such to drag its broken form ever closer to its destination.

Reach. Grab. Pull. The fear became thicker, more tangent, as it drew ever nearer.

The chill of the morning permeated the tent. Josh huddled in his sleeping bag, preserving what warmth he could. The cacophony of nature made it difficult to sleep. Once he thought he heard something, and he hoped his parents were back, but he couldn’t bring himself to call out. Where during the day he suspected bears or wolves, night had brought thoughts of other things, like monsters. If anything truly horrible existed, it would be here within these woods. For all he knew, it would be a Sasquatch, and he had no idea if such a creature had a taste for eating children.

It made his fears back home seem almost silly. Sometimes he’d been afraid to get up and use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Being downstairs alone had always felt a little creepy, like another world in the same house. Even in his bedroom, with his parents but down the hallway, odd shadows became ghosts, and the trees outside his window became horrific demons. None of them compared to whatever would lurk here, in the woods. This place made childhood fears so trivial. When he got home, he’d never be afraid again. The forest, its potential, it was simply overwhelming. Here the monsters would be ancient, devoid of humanity, alien in the way they saw the world. People would be snacks. The tent alone remained his only protection from the unknown.

Despite the cold, despite his fears, eventually his bladder decided for him. The sun lit his orange tent in strangely opaque neon, a light only possible with such fabrics. The outside world filled with the sounds of singing birds and a raucous cacophony of crows. He exited the tent, hoping beyond hope to see his parents. He pictured his mother fixing pancakes and sausages on a portable grill, and his dad would be at the campfire, brewing coffee. Instead he met a barren campsite.

But things were different from the night before. Bags of food were strewn everywhere, torn open and scattered across the camp. Nothing looked untouched and only scraps remained, and the wrappings were shredded, drifting across the ground back and forth with each gust of breeze. He sat down at the table and found more tears wanting out, but crying no longer brought him any comfort, only a headache. Worse, beneath the trash, large paw prints were everywhere. Had it been a bear?

After emptying his bladder, trying to look everywhere at once just in case whatever had raided his camp came back, he gathered up what scraps he could find. The animals had left him with very little. Some granola bars and fruit snacks were still untouched. They were enough to satisfy the hunger, if only to remove the edge, and his cooler of soda cans were also intact. He found a partially eaten bag of bagels and a box of fruit that had been ignored, and quickly ran them to the tent. He’d have to make them last.

How long would his parents stay away? They had obviously been fighting, but they couldn’t stay away for more than one night. They should be back any time. They’d have to come back and fix him breakfast. If only he could warn them that something had gotten into the food, they could stop somewhere and bring more. There were small towns before the mountains. They could stop at any one of those. But if they had to leave again, he would go with them.

But what if they didn’t come back? The only reason they wouldn’t return for him would be if something had happened to them. They loved him and they wouldn’t abandon him. They must’ve wrecked down the road, and with nobody around, needed help. Perhaps they weren’t that far away!

Josh ran down the road, around the first few bends. As he ran, he found himself quickly becoming short of breath. His legs suddenly didn’t want to support him. He stumbled over to rest against a tree as a strange tingling filled his forehead. The world about him moved in an odd rocking manner. Though he knew it was only in his eyes it didn’t give him any comfort, and for a few seconds he felt as though he might vomit. His eyesight shimmered and his world lost color, bleached out into gray tones. He covered his eyes and rubbed them, and sat down in the middle of the road, rubbing the tears away with his fists.

Though he couldn’t measure time, nor did he try, thirty minutes later his head had cleared enough for him to walk back to the camp. His vision had cleared a little, but everything still looked a little gray. The ringing in his ears seemed to get unbearably loud. He crawled back into his tent and closed his eyes and waited for it to pass.

I don’t want to be sick, he thought, what’s wrong with me? What little he knew only came from conversations that he overheard. His parents had spoken of it frequently over the last month, though never to him. Josh only received reassurances. At first, the conversations were about him. They worried, wondering how bad the damage was and how much he could heal (and if he ever pressed, that’s what they’d tell him: “You’ll be fine.”).