Previous installment: The Wheel: Part 15, The Cave
Start at the beginning: The Wheel: Part 1, Jack Colby
Where we left off: Jack finally inspected the cave inside the nearby rock formation and was relieved by what he found. The “cave” was nothing more than an opening between the ground and the rootbed of a cedar tree that had fallen over.
Voiceover narration: Andrew Thomas
Art: Jenelle Thomas https://alovelygiraffe.com
These Dreams
It was nine in the morning. Sun streaked through the trees and into the cabin. The greenish light mixed with the yellow patterned wallpaper to create a sepia-toned atmosphere usually reserved for the living rooms of great aunts or elderly grandmothers. Jack was at the stove frying eggs and bacon when Justin came out of his room.
“Morning, bud!”
“Hey, Dad.” Justin smiled and entered the bathroom. Moments later, he emerged. “What are we having for breakfast?”
“Eggs and bacon. Sound good?”
“I guess.”
“You like your yokes runny, right?”
“Can I have mine scrambled like last time?”
“Oh…well, I already started. I can mix yours up a bit, though.”
Justin’s half-scrambled eggs proved satisfactory enough, but only after some encouragement. As they ate, Jack decided it was time to try and move on from his paranoia.“How did you sleep last night?” he asked.
“Good.”
“No bad dreams?”
Justin thought about this for a moment.
“I don’t think so.”
“Good to hear,” Jack nodded. “Me neither.” He took another bite of bacon and said between chews, “Hey, guess what?”
“What?”
“I checked out those rocks over in the woods last night. You are good to go play over there if you want.”
The effect was instantaneous. Justin brightened, breakfast now forgotten, and said, “Yay! Can I go there now?”
Jack laughed. “How about you finish eating first, and we’ll go from there.”
“Awww…” Justin began to pick disinterestedly at his eggs again.
“Hey, you can go as soon as you are done, I promise. I’m sorry I kept you off of there, but I’m not worried about it at all anymore, you’re good.”
“Why were you worried about it?”
Jack looked his son in the eyes. He considered telling him the whole crazy truth, but couldn’t.
“Mmm, I didn’t know what was up with that cave, but it turned out to not really be a cave at all.”
Justin looked confused. “Why didn’t you just come look?”
Jack sighed. This conversation was suddenly a lot more frustrating than he had expected. “There was more to it, bud. Remind me to tell you on the way home.” He had no intention of following through on this but was pretty sure Justin wouldn’t remember to ask anyway.
“When are we going home?”
Thankful for the change in subject, Jack looked out the window in contemplation. “In a couple of days, I think. I’m not sure yet, but I feel like it’s time that we try to get back into the swing of things again. It’s nice here, and it’s definitely been good for us, but at some point, we have to face our new reality.” He looked back down at Justin. “Sound ok?”
“Yeah, can I go to Trevor’s house when we get back?”
Jack smiled broadly and ruffled Justin’s hair. “Yeah, for sure.”
After breakfast was finished and cleaned up, Justin put on his shoes and ran out of the cabin. Jack followed him and stood on the porch, taking in the peacefulness of the woods, and checking on Justin’s progress towards the rock periodically. He noticed they left some of the s’more ingredients by the fire two nights before and went to gather them up. When he stepped up onto the porch, he saw Justin had reached the creek and was trekking along it, looking for a log to cross on. Jack watched him until he found a way across, at which point he turned around and waved. Jack waved back, smiled, and retreated to the cabin to put the s’more stuff away.
Twenty minutes later, he emerged with swim shorts on and a Bloody Mary in hand. It was early, but he was eager to send the stress of the last month packing. He stood on the porch for a short time, looking over at the rock formation in the distance, which had vexed him so until today. He didn’t see any sign of Justin, but after last night’s expedition, he wasn’t worried in the slightest.
Down by the lake, he found the chairs in their usual places. He situated his drink safely on a rickety camp table and sat down, soaking in the morning light and view of the lake. Mere feet away, minnows flitted here and there amongst the weeds. A duck quacked on the other side. He lay his head back and closed his eyes.
Jack felt at peace. He couldn’t even say why, exactly. Sure, he had cleared the so-called cave, but that didn’t rule out the possibility that there was still something humanoid and hairy roaming the vast wilderness up here. Maybe it was because their recent nightmares didn’t seem so premonitory anymore. Maybe it was because they had finally talked about their feelings and shared loss on Chapel Beach. It was probably both. He turned his head and watched for Justin again. Nothing. He smiled, thinking of the stories he would have acted out in that place.
A slight whiff of body odor caught in his nostril and ran a few laps before shooting back out again. Jack lifted his head, making a perplexed face while also squinting in the sunlight. He lifted an arm and ducked his head towards his armpit to sniff.
“Shit, I haven’t showered in days.”
He had been so caught up in his mind that he forgot he had a body to take care of. A bath in the lake seemed like the perfect way to fix that. He went back to the cabin to grab soap and shampoo. When he came out, he stopped to look for Justin again.
Still nothing.
A little bubble of anxiety surfaced and popped inside him, but he simply closed his eyes and tried to envision what he saw last night. There was absolutely nothing to be worried about, and he knew it; he just had to convince himself again. Mentally talking himself off the ledge, he walked back to the lake and waded into the water. Mid-wash, it dawned on him that there wasn’t a single soul within at least a half mile, so he stripped his shorts off and continued. Afterward, he dove in and swam across the lake and back, enjoying the feeling of freedom that only skinny-dipping could provide.
Back on shore, he struggled to pull his wet swim shorts on and reclined in the chair again. Remembering the Bloody Mary next to him, he took a drink and then stole another glance in Justin’s direction, but saw no sign of him. He wondered how long Justin would play over there. The fact that he still hadn’t seen him moving on our about the rocks still made him uneasy, but he told himself there were probably plenty of times that Justin popped out when he wasn’t looking.
Jack sighed, lay his head back again, and this time, he dozed.
Circus music crept into Jack’s ears. It was a happy sound laid over the top of a dull chorus of voices undulating beneath it. He was staring at the clear blue sky, unaware of his surroundings and watching two seagulls wheel and glide about. Suddenly, there was a shot and the clang of metal on metal. Jack turned left and saw the wheel, towering above the crowd, one gondola swinging haphazardly. Unwilling to watch what came next, he shut his eyes tight. The droning chorus of voices raised in harmonizing screams around him and cut off almost instantly, leaving only ghosts of themselves behind to reverberate hellishly through the air.
Jack sat bolt upright, his eyes wide and searching. He was at the lake, but something wasn’t right, like the edges of his vision had been burned by a lighter. He turned in his chair and saw that the cabin looked like their house in Traverse City, like it had been trucked in and dropped here in the middle of the woods. Then he thought of Justin off in the woods all by himself. He peered through the trees and watched and watched, but never saw any sign of his son. He called Justin’s name loudly many times, but the trees seemed to eat his words. There was nothing for it; he had to go check on him. He got up to walk there and found himself at the creek within a few steps. He called out again but still received no response. He began to run and, in several long strides, he was at the rock formation. Silence rushed in to fill the void left behind as Justin’s name echoed through the woods, becoming smaller and quieter with each bounce. Still, his son did not appear.
Breath catching in his throat, Jack made the same small climb as he had done the night before. He stood with his hand on the leaning tree, holding on to a broken branch. Tears sprang to his eyes before they even beheld the tragedy before him.
At long last, his chest heaving, Jack looked down. Below him in the so-called cave, Justin lay. Even against the dirt, the blood was clear to see—it pooled around his head, and there was a dash of it on a nearby rock protrusion. Justin’s eyes were wide and ghostly, just like they had been when Jack found him scratching at the wall in his sleep. His little mouth hung open too far.
Jack crumpled on the spot, all motivation to stand, to live, gone. He screamed. He bellowed. He hyperventilated his fury and his sorrow until his vocal cords were shredded to ribbons. He beat his fists against the rock until they bled. When he was utterly spent, he lifted his forehead from the cold rock and crawled on all fours to the body of his son, a body that was now cold and stiff. Jack lay down next to it, heedless of the dirt and detritus of the trees. He put his arm around what was once Justin, held him close, and cried until the summer shadows enclosed him; until metal crashed into pavement and he screamed again.
Jack woke with a start, his voice flying back at him like bullets ricocheting off every tree around the lake. He shot forward in his chair, flinging Bloody Mary everywhere. It looked like a crime scene blood spatter. That was all he needed to see, and he was half running, half stumbling through the woods. It had been over an hour, way longer than he would have expected since he saw any sign of Justin. He came to the creek and leaped across without slowing until his foot caught an exposed root and he fell, sprawling forward.
“Aww fuck, come on!”
Covered in needles and fragments of cedar leaves, he rose and continued without bothering to wipe off. At this point, he started shouting his son’s name. Tree after tree after tree flung back Justin! and still, Jack ran. Some of them seemed to shoot back his own name, or was it Dad!? He flew into the vague circle surrounding the rocks and stopped to grab what remained of his breath.
“Justin!”
“Dad?”
He looked up. Justin was standing there next to the tree.
“Oh my God.”
Jack dropped to his knees, head in his hands, and cried. Justin, wary, climbed down the side of the rock and approached slowly.
“Dad?”
Jack took a great, quivering gasp. “I’ve been calling for you over and over.”
“I was calling back.”
“I thought I had lost you,” Jack sobbed.
Justin shuffled closer.
“I’ve just been playing in the cave,” Justin said as innocently and carefree as only a seven-year-old can.
Jack looked up slowly. Here stood a boy, alive. His cheeks were flush with the blood that coursed beneath them. They were garnished by dirt and dust and flecks of tree roots. His fingernails were long and dirty underneath. There was a rip in his shirt just above his left nipple.
“Dad, why are you covered in pine needles?”
“I…I tripped.”
Jack smiled through the tears, and Justin smiled back with a small laugh. That laugh coursed over Jack and plucked him like a guitar string. He began to vibrate; he began to laugh.
“Come here.”
Justin did, and only the trees know how long they were there; Justin standing, Jack kneeling with his head on his son’s shoulder, laughing and crying and holding him as close as he could.
At some point, Jack felt as if he was standing too, and in his arms was his adult son, experienced with age and happiness and his own sorrow. Justin’s small arms seemed to grow around him. They had lifted a wife over a threshold, shoveled snow out of a driveway, and carried a baby car seat. The hands at the ends of them had changed diapers and fixed faulty light switches and broken toys.
Maybe it was these visions—these dreams—that would next come true.
After a time, they pulled apart, and Jack asked, “What have you been doing in there?”
“I’m pretending it’s a pirate ship,” Justin responded brightly. “Do you want to see?”
Jack said he did and got up, brushing needles from his sweaty torso and his knees. Justin showed him how the one rock was the front of the boat, and the other was where you steered from. The tree in the middle was like a mast with its sail unfurled, pulling them forward with the terrible, beautiful wind.
Thank you so much for coming along on this journey—it means the world.
Afterword and Acknowledgments will follow soon.
"At some point, Jack felt as if he was standing too, and in his arms was his adult son, experienced with age and happiness and his own sorrow. Justin’s small arms seemed to grow around him. They had lifted a wife over a threshold, shoveled snow out of a driveway, and carried a baby car seat. The hands at the ends of them had changed diapers and fixed faulty light switches and broken toys."
This paragraph is especially well written. Damn. I read the whole dream sequence and ending with my mouth agape, and the relief is so, so real.
Bravo, man. I love the backdrop of Bigfoot juxtaposed with trauma and healing. Very well done
The ending was perfect 🥹 what a wild ride, I’m so glad you finally decided to share this with the world. So heartwarming despite the horror. An excellent depiction of grief and how to live through it 💚