Falter Kingdom (15 page)

I keep on walking.

Soon it's back to a narrow dirt path.

Past that, it's pure forest.

This is where it's tricky, but somehow I know where I'm going.

When I get there, I shine the light up at the crown, staring at the tunnel. I stand at the opening, tuning in to the noises surrounding Falter Kingdom.

I don't hear anything.

The moon hides behind clouds, making it hard to even see the ground at my feet. I sit down cross-legged at the opening of the tunnel.

I stare into the darkness.

I say that I don't know why I'm here but it's a lie.

I've been holding it back until it's appropriate to just say it.

And that moment's right now: I'm here to see you.

I'm curious. I want to see what you look like, H. And I mean really what you look like. I figure this is the place where it's most possible, the place where we first met. I don't know a whole lot about how this works, how energy is used and transferred and stuff, but I figure if it's near a weak spot where demons can and will exist, then this is where I might see you.

I'm right here, H.

“I'm right here,” I say aloud.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Listen to the quiet.

I have to be patient.

I have to calm down my nerves. I'm shaking. I've been trying to focus on other things to avoid the fact that my heart is beating so hard it's like it's coming out of my chest. This isn't easy for me. I have to believe that I'm here for a reason. It's the only way I'll be able to calm myself down.

And I'll wait.

H, I'm right here.

I'll say hi first.

“Hey.”

I wait—wait for some kind of noise.

I sit here, back straight, staring into the void, trying to remain focused on what I see—which is nothing—but my mind quickly goes to different things. The word “void” is one thing. Is it really the right word to use in this situation? I've always liked the word “void.” It has this eerie kind of connotation. I hope I'm using the word “connotation” right. I think I am, but I can easily doubt myself the more I think about things.

I look up at the stars. You can't really see them so easily from back home. But out here, you can see every single one. Some of them twinkle. More than a few just stay there, all bold.

“H, you there?”

I feel a cool gust of air escaping the tunnel.

Then nothing happens for a really long time.

It feels like forever, and I watch it go light, then dark, and light again, as clouds roll past in the sky. Mostly it's just the moon and me.

I know H is nearby, somehow.

I don't really know how it works, but I want to know. That's why I'm here. I have to know. It's either be curious or be a fucking pussy. It's easier to be a pussy and just run away from what's happening, but then I'd never be able to forgive myself, because what I'm seeing and feeling is nothing I've ever experienced before. It's both crazy and cool. I don't know how to describe it. That's basically why I'm so curious.

Life can be so dull when every day it's school and then home and then parties and everyone acting like some concert or football game or dance is like some big deal. When it really isn't. It isn't. I have a hard time finding interest in what's already there, everything laid out in front of me like it's already been lived, prepackaged for all of us graduating high school. We go through steps and never really make our own footprints in the ground.

We just step where everyone else has stepped.

No new paths.

I don't like that. I hate it, really.

But this, what's happened, it's different. You hear so much about demons and hauntings and possession, but it's just like being in a movie or becoming a rock star: it never really happens to you.

But it's happening to me.

See? I can't just be afraid.

What's happening is worth understanding as long as I keep my distance.

I've thought about it and I've made up my mind: I want to understand; more than anyone would want to understand me, I want to understand this. Everyone around me just wants to be around me, like some entourage.

I want to care.

Most people probably don't care about anything other than themselves.

So what, then, if I sit here all night?

It gets lighter around me, but it remains dead-end night in that tunnel.

I hear footsteps nearby, but it passes.

Just someone, a person, or maybe my imagination.

But I'm here. I'm here to say hi.

I'm here to understand.

I'm here to see H.

Shortly before dawn, I stand back up. My legs ache like hell, but I stand there for, like, another hour.

I talk into the tunnel: “How are you feeling?”

When the sun finally replaces the moon, I say into the tunnel, “Good morning.”

But there's nothing there for me to see.

I'll walk back at some point, but I know that it was right to have gone here. It was the right choice. I needed to sort things out. Not everything is sorted, but I'm beginning to understand where my priorities are. There'll be an exorcism and there'll be all the usual stuff, step by step, that will end up being my life... but something is happening here that doesn't happen to everyone. Only, like, 40 percent of the world ever experiences stuff like this. It's common enough that you know all the symptoms, but it's special in that way that you end up on a short enough list.

It's true, though I didn't want to admit it:

I will be remembered at Meadows as the guy who was haunted.

I'll be like the others who ended up the same way.

But I really don't care. I don't care what they think because what they think is clearly what everyone else has already said. Nothing new there.

I understand all of that.

So I'm ready to understand everything else.

Before leaving, I say into the tunnel, “See you around.”

And I make the not-so-long walk back to my car.

I don't realize how tired I am until I'm almost home. I start to nod off while driving. It's bad, yeah, but that's why I drive slower, and I keep things under the speed limit. I look at the time on the dashboard, and it's early enough that only the morning people are really going to be out.

The sky is a shade of blue. It's more a mixture of the end of night and the first couple blinks of new day.

It's dark enough still that I need my headlights on.

Funny to note: I didn't have them on the entire time I was on the interstate. I thought the trucks and cars honking at me were just doing me a favor, trying to keep me awake. I'm okay though. No accidents.

I pull into the driveway and rub my eyes.

Yawns can feel so good sometimes, you know? Same way there's nothing like a good stretch. I glance up at my window the way I always do and I'm surprised to see that the lights are on. Not only that, I see a figure in the window. I blink and it's gone and I'm kind of like, “Was that you, H?”

Maybe I made that part up.

I am pretty tired. I probably just imagined it.

I leave the car where it's going to be left and head up the walkway to the front door. Inside the house, I don't notice the change right way. It's kind of like a slow burn, how sometimes you light something on fire and it doesn't flare up the way you expect, not right way. I notice the laptop first; it's right where I left it, but it's been opened. A video plays, an ASMR video I haven't watched.

All the empty bottles and garbage, even the board and its pointer—it's all gone. Went missing or something. I'm not playing stupid. I know what happened. I can put all the pieces together.

So I might not completely understand it, but yeah, I know what just happened. Scratch that—I know what happened while I was gone. There's no mess and no sign that there was ever a party.

I sit down on the couch. I laugh. “But I like the version where the party still happens because, like, everyone still gets a good scare.” Then I add, “And we get a good laugh.”

I lie down on the couch, laptop on my stomach, and I start up the ASMR video from the beginning.

Just as I'm beginning to nod off, I hear it.

It's my voice but it's not me who's saying it. It's different from the other times.

The voice says, “Welcome home.”

And I know it's you. It makes me shiver but I let it pass.

Keeping my eyes on the video, right before I fall asleep, I say: “Home sweet home.”

I think that's supposed to be funny.

I wonder if H laughs, or if it's possible for H to laugh.

I've been waiting for this. It's so sudden—know how sleep sort of pulls over you like a sheet, like you're a body being covered but you're not actually dead? Yeah, that's how it starts. Pure sleep, the kind that just works, and you don't have to work for it. It just comes. Just sleep. Guess it's there, waiting for me. I find it even though I don't really know what I have. It is sleep in the most basic kind of way. It's nothing and everything until I see it open in on a familiar setting. I can't put my finger on where I am, only that it's happening again.

Like I said, I've been waiting for this.

It feels like before. So real, I can sense that this is reality, but then I know I'm dreaming. If I really need confirmation, I can hear myself breathing. I don't know how to really explain it all but it's there. I'm just outside of anything real. I'm in this, right now, and I recognize these people.

Here's how it all comes to me:

I see the bright blue sky first. Second, I see the trees, the forest, and I hear the various trappings that make a person know immediately that he's out in the middle of nowhere. I'm talking the sound of birds, the bugs biting at you, the smell that's supposed to mean that there's no smog, none of the usual pollution. It's all there, and it wraps around me like I've never left.

Then we're walking.

I say “we” because there are three people with me.

There's a girl and two guys. We're all talking, daring one another to jump into a nearby river. We're talking usual talk, the kind of stuff that's all about toys and games and the stuff that's supposed to fill a young person's mind in movies. But see, I'm right in the middle of another scene.

The movies never really get it right. They make some things so much fancier and prettier than it really is.

The people with me, they get along.

And I'm not saying I don't get along with other people; that part is easy. What I'm really saying is that people usually don't have such perfect conversations. They don't just go from talking to arguing and back so smoothly. I'm not sure what I'm trying to say except that I think... I think that the movies get it so right, get it perfect, and because it's perfect, it comes off fake. Yeah, that's it. I'm walking with three characters from an adventure movie I watched when I was a kid.

I watched the hell out of this movie.

We're about to find a dead body.

It's the discovery that defines our summer.

But it's also the discovery that defines our lives. Some of us never make it past this discovery. It kind of warps our minds.

But we're living a perfect moment. It's summer and we're kids and we're friends. What gets better than that? In this dream, the dream I'm gripping on to, just waiting for its strange turns, it doesn't. We walk through that forest to the rocky line where it slopes into a gorge.

One character says something.

Another character says something.

A third character says something.

And then I say something.

But there's no overlap unless we're supposed to be arguing. There's a rhythm to the way we talk. We're friends. That's how we're defined. I don't know anything about them—let's just say that I don't even though I've seen the movie a thousand times—and we're best of friends, looking for some great adventure.

It's just like that Friday when I ran. There was Brad and Blaire and... that other kid. Steve, yeah, that's his name. I barely knew him and he barely knew me. It's just like that day, except the characters here are written in the script to get along.

I walk with them and I say my lines.

I walk with them, but I'm more interested in the knowledge that this is about to change. I can almost sense it coming. In my dream, I'm able to think my way through the events as they happen. It's so cool that I can, that I know how this will come together. I should be bored, but it's like I'm walking through the scene of the movie as it's being filmed.

I'm like, “Where's the camera?” right as it all changes.

Instead of the gorge and the dead body, it's Falter Kingdom. I can see the crown, the dark tunnel, the sort of doom and gloom that you always feel around the place. One second I'm in a movie and the next second it's me, standing there with the rest of them; I'm talking about Blaire and Brad and Steve. We're as we really were, and there's Brad talking to Steve.

This is how real people talk. It's not pretty. It's more annoying than anything else.

I hear them talking about Nikki. It's just like the usual, Brad always bringing up the gossip, Nikki at the top of the list.

“You guys hear?”

No, I didn't hear, Brad.

And then there's Blaire. Blaire looks miserable. She's always so focused on school and the future. All that stuff. Then there's that kid Steve, but let's just move on because whatever.

Who's left but, oh yeah, me. I'm drinking beer, downing them one after the other, which makes Blaire kind of worried; she notices while Brad gets competitive.

I knew that he would and there I am, knowing just what to say to make it not be about me. But on this day, it becomes all about me. Everything turns and the dream does too. It turns all on me. Eyes on me, like I asked to be the main character. Even
I'm
looking at me. But then I start tossing and turning in my sleep. Something's weird about this.