“Gross, Thomas. But, it’s still just a bug! How…?”
“I don’t know, Hannah,” Thomas cut my question short. “All I know is that Grandpa warned us repeatedly not to cross over the colonnades because we might be attacked by the springtail armies. He cautioned, always, that if they got us, we’d never get home again. I’m well aware that they’re just bugs. I’m trying to imagine what a hundred thousand of these things could do to me. If I think in terms of those large numbers, I can nearly understand what Grandpa meant, but not exactly. Now, at least, I know what a springtail is. And I can imagine them in huge numbers.”
“But, they’re so tiny,” I repeated.
“But, their numbers are so vast, Hannah. Thousands! Maybe millions! And they consume dead, rotting things. If you were a dead, rotting thing, they could eat you!”
I just didn’t understand. I simply couldn’t visualize this puny bug as a fearsome insect. How could this little thing stop us from returning home? “I just don’t get it, Thomas. I don’t care if there were millions of the little critters. I can squash thousands with a single swipe of my hand. I can’t figure out what Grandpa was saying.”
“Let me try this to add perspective,” said Thomas. “Imagine the damage a hundred thousand bees could cause you, Hannah, or even a hundred thousand mosquitoes, or a hundred thousand ants.” Thomas tried, but I think my mind was closed to the thought for some reason. This talk of bugs just didn’t make sense in my vision of the world.
We obviously had some thinking to do. Clearly, we needed to go back to visit Grandpa’s house. Neither of us could figure out exactly what Grandpa was saying, and we weren’t going to be able to from our home in Spokane. Don’t forget that at this time, Debbie, we still didn’t know what the portal was. We needed to find it. We needed to see just how these bugs fit into Grandpa’s picture of the world. For the next few days, emails streamed back and forth between us and the Brian/Sarrah team. We needed to figure out how to get back to Grandma’s house all at the same time—all four of us.
*****
6. Brian and Sarrah Are On Their Own
Our ability to visit Grandma was really a function of where we all lived. At the time, Thomas and I lived in Spokane, and you already know how long that drive is. For us, visits to Grandpa and Grandma happened infrequently. Brian and Sarrah, on the other hand, lived in Vancouver, only about two hours to the south. After dad’s first stay with Grandma, much of the responsibility for helping her fell to Brian’s dad since he lived so much closer than we did. In a way, that was good for us because Brian and Sarrah got to visit Grandma every month or so. Those two kids sent Thomas and I emails after ever visit, and sometimes they telephoned so we could talk and get the details straight.
Brian and Sarrah had one visit that actually helped us reach a breakthrough in understanding the springtail armies. It happened the February during Sarrah’s birthday, a perfect time for Brian’s family to visit Grandma. Brian and Sarrah made their plans and used the birthday as a possible excuse for us to come along, but there was no way we could go. That particular winter was absolutely horrible. It was way colder than normal, and the skies seemed to dump foot after foot of snow in Spokane, and even more in the mountain passes. At a minimum, driving through Snoqualmie pass would have been a major pain; in fact, it might have been impossible. Even if we could have made the drive to Grandma’s, there was no guarantee that we could make it back. Getting stuck at Grandma’s might have caused dad to miss more days of work, which he just couldn’t afford to do. He had already missed too many. The forces of nature seemed to be keeping us apart, so the pleasure of this visit belonged only to Brian and Sarrah. And a pleasure it was, too, according to the emails Brian sent us afterward.
Brian and Sarrah told Grandma and their parents they wanted to go for a walk in the woods to visit Grandpa’s favorite place and to see if they could find the portico. Both of them had gone back to the woods before, but this was the first time they had called it Grandpa’s favorite place. It was also the first time since Grandpa vanished that any of us had mentioned the word portico to Grandma. The four of us had previously agreed that this was the best action to take. We decided that Brian and Sarrah should drop more details this time. It was a test. We wanted to see if Grandma knew about this place in the woods, or if she felt about it the same way Grandpa did. As it turned out, she said nothing and gave no indication that she knew of any such place in the woods. Grandma merely told Brian and Sarrah to be careful since it was so cold and snowy out there. She even made sure that they both had on an extra layer of wool, so she put a heavy sweater on both of them over the winter clothes they already wore. Since Grandma seemed to know nothing of the portico, we also assumed that she knew nothing of the springtail armies. Grandma would be of no help to us, but it was also certain that she would not stand in our way. We already assumed that our dads would also be of no help. Neither of our dads had ever reacted strangely to our being in the woods; neither one had ever shown an interest in Grandpa’s travels in the woods, and Brian’s dad had no real reaction to hearing that this place was special to Grandpa. Our assumption was clear. None of the adults knew anything that would help us. Brian and Sarrah were on their own. With that knowledge, and bent on answering a set of questions that had been in the background all along, Brian and Sarrah ventured out the door and into the woods. Why had Grandpa told no one but the grandkids about the portico and the springtail armies? Why had he never shared this secret world with his adult family?
The two shuffled hand in hand, directly into the woods. Their tracks were the first to blemish the virgin snow. Sometimes I imagine the postcard scene that Grandma must have seen out of her windows: fields of unblemished snow, fir and hemlock boughs bending under its fresh weight, white as far as you could see. I often imagine myself standing next to Grandma. I imagine the feelings and emotions that must have pounded through her heart as she watched her grandchildren walk toward those woods. I imagine looking through that large window. I imagine seeing two sets of tracks cutting through fresh snow, and at the end of those tracks I imagine two beautiful kids holding hands and bounding toward that special place that Grandpa had given them. I imagine Grandma’s pain, and I imagine her fear. Surely, Grandma remembered that Brian and Sarrah had been to this place before: when Grandpa disappeared, and many times after. I’m sure that Grandma felt better knowing their fresh tracks could easily be followed should their trip take too long. I also imagine standing at that window feeling Grandma’s hope. Hope that Grandpa would bring Brian and Sarrah back home. He never did.
Once clear of the house, Brian and Sarrah ran directly to the colonnades. They fought their way through snow-squashed ferns that normally stood as tall as Sarrah. They pushed their way past snow-covered tree limbs, and finally through devil’s club stickers that pricked them with every twist and turn. From there, the two walked onto the path between the colonnades; Sarrah pulled several stickers out of her sweater, but Brian didn’t bother. He was much more interested in learning more about Grandpa’s special place. They sat on one of the colonnades and looked across the other and into the space that Grandpa had warned us to stay out of. Of course, both Brian and Sarrah had done this before. Each time, they wrote back to tell us what they saw, but always, it was the same. First, they never saw Grandpa. They saw all the little animals and bugs that one would normally see in these woods. During their several trips, they had seen birds, slugs, worms, mushrooms, the occasional grasshopper, and maybe even butterflies that dared flirt with the shadowed darkness of the woods. They never saw a springtail, but Brian said that he never really cared to look that closely. “How many kids do you know who travel through the woods carryin a magnifying glass?” he asked. Thomas would have responded, “I do.” To be truthful, Thomas was the only kid I ever knew to carry a magnifying glass with him. Normal people might carry binoculars, but a magnifying glass? I think not.
This particular day, Brian and Sarrah sat on that log doing what they had done f
ive or six times before. They did exactly as Grandpa had taught them to do. They sat in silence, shivering in the day’s snowy cold, listening to every possible sound for any kind of clue. The fresh snow seemed to thicken the silence while it amplified the forest sounds all around them—falling leaves, snapping twigs. They listened. They watched. They studied, all the time never crossing the colonnades. Nothing unusual ever happened—until today. Today they saw the chipmunk run through the tree roots. Over there. Those roots. That tree. The one that Grandpa called the portico. I told you about it earlier. It was the “perfect example” that Grandpa spoke about to only his grandkids: the tree that was lifted three feet off the ground because the stump below it had rotted away. At first, the chipmunk just stood there, right in front of them. Then, it ran through the roots. Not “through,” actually. More accurately, it ran right into the space under the roots, but it didn’t come out the other side. It didn’t come out! That little chipmunk simply vanished!
Brian and Sarrah said they must have been in a state of shock for the first few seconds because both of them just stood there staring with their mouths opened in a silent scream. But then, it was like both regained their senses at exactly the same time. Both suddenly leaped up, and both scrambled to reach the edge of the colonnade. They leaned on it. Pressed their weight against that ancient tree. Strained to see the chipmunk or any sign of it. They stopped exactly as Grandpa had told them to so many times. The colonnade. That was the Grandpa-imposed boundary, but, this time was different. After a pause of some brief seconds, Brian made the leap to the forbidden side.
“Brian! Stop!” Sarrah yelled to Brian, warning him exactly as Grandpa had done. “The springtails will get you.” Neither of them really knew what that meant, but they had heard it so many times.
Brian either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He traversed the colonnade with the agility of a gymnast and sprinted directly to the funny looking tree, the portico. Brian told us that he walked all around that tree, twice, in fact, being careful not to disturb the chipmunk’s tracks. Everything looked normal. Everything looked exactly as it was supposed to—except for one thing. The chipmunk was gone. Its snowy tracks entered those roots, but they never came out. Brian said that he kneeled on the ground and looked through the tree roots exactly where the chipmunk had scampered through. Everything that Brian could see appeared to be normal. So, after spending a few minutes to gather all his courage, he looked at Sarrah, cocked one eyebrow, smiled that toothy grin, and stabbed his arm through the space outlined by the tree roots; and well, let me try to quote Brian. In his own words, he said, “AAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!”
*****
7. Brian’s Disappearing Arm
Brian ranted about this event in several emails. He couldn’t seem to get it out of his mind. Who could blame him? As Brian told the story, he had dropped to his knees in the snow, trying to see the chipmunk or its tracks, trying to figure out exactly what had happened, and trying to be careful not to disturb anything. He could see the chipmunk’s path in the snow. Brian said he could see exactly where that little creature came from. He could follow its prints directly into the tree roots where they simply stopped. Stopped! No prints leaving, turning around, or going forward. There were simply no more prints, and there was no more chipmunk.
Personally, I think that seeing a chipmunk disappear into thin air would have been enough to turn me into a cowardly running machine. Brian, however, being the adventurous little cuss that he was, decided that he wasn’t finished looking. First he used his fingers to trace the chipmunk’s path in the snow. He let his fingers do the walking along the exact path that the chipmunk had taken, and apparently, Brian stopped his finger walking just short of the tree’s roots. At this point, he had seen nothing unusual, except for the disappearing chipmunk, so he decided to take the next move. It must have taken a huge amount of courage, but without any warning, Brian thrust his whole arm through that doorway shaped by the tree’s roots. That’s when he screamed.
Brian told us his version of the story a dozen times, and each time was just as scary as the first. His antics always made us laugh, but the truth was seriously frightening. Every time Brian repeated the story, he would pull his arm deep into his jacket sleeve to fake a disappearing arm. Then, he would poke it back through the sleeve, shake it, and brush it, and run screaming around the room. The tale got bigger and funnier every time, but the chilling truth remained. “My arm just disappeared!” he would say. “Gone! As in, not there!” I couldn’t imagine going through this nightmare. Brian finished every version of his tale with the same statement. “My arm was attached to my shoulder one second, an as soon as I stuck it through those tree roots, it disappeared. Yeah, I screamed. What would you do?”
The rest of the story is that Brian was understandably scared out of his wits. He leaped up, and I guess you could say that he scrambled backwards. The fact that his arm was gone scared the heebie jeebies out of him, and he fell away from the tree in an absolute panic. As he fell, his arm reappeared as magically as it had disappeared. When Brian finally took the time to look at his arm with eyes instead of shocked emotion, he saw the bugs. Bugs by the thousands. So thick they swarmed the air around his arm, so tiny they appeared to be a living cloud.
Brian got really animated when he told this part of the story. “Little bitty things! Hundreds! Thousands! Coverin my arm! I had a jacket on, thank God. I couldn’t really tell that they were bugs. They were just these little bitty white things. There were so many of them jumpin up an down that they covered both my sleeve an the air around my arm. It was almost like my arm was travelin inside a fog. I shook my arm as hard as I could, but these little guys just hung on for dear life. I tried to brush them off, but that only managed to squash them by the thousands! Bug guts all the way up and down my jacket sleeve! Yuck! It hurt, too. When I smeared the bugs off, I drove a couple of devil’s club thorns into my arm. They must have been stuck in my coat.”
Thomas took it upon himself to figure everything out. None of us could believe the amount of effort he put into it. Thomas spent hours on the internet searching for other people with disappearing arms. He did a ton of research trying to find stories of disappearing men and springtail armies. He found nothing credible about either. He found nothing about springtails that would lead us to believe they were dangerous in any way. He begged his teacher for help way more than he should have. He asked his friends if they had heard of such things, but most laughed at him and said he was crazy. There seemed to be only one possible answer. Magic.
Thomas had a theory. “That has to be it,” he said during one long-distance conversation. “Grandpa always counseled us not to cross the colonnades and not to go to the portico. Since then, we’ve established that a portico is a colonnade that surrounds a doorway. The portico has to contain a doorway. It’s a magical door, obviously, and it opens to a dimension we can’t see. And Brian has encountered the springtail army that Grandpa told us about so many times. There’s no other possible explanation. It’s a door, and we have to go through it, too. Just like Grandpa did.” There it was. Someone finally said the words. None of us kids ever believed that Grandpa was dead. We only knew that he was gone. We had finally reached the point where the fantasies of children met science fiction. The point where Thomas’s theories faced the test of reality. The test: following in Grandpa’s footsteps through the portal.
*****
8. The Next August Visit
The four of us conspired almost daily on how to convince our parents to meet at Grandma’s house. Conspiring was the easy part. It probably seems like ancient history to you, Debbie, but even then, emails and text messages made for simple long-distance planning. The difficult part was finding a block of time for all of us to be together. When we finally were able to put a visit on the calendar, it happened almost naturally, almost as if our parents had planned it. Our visit to Grandma happened during the next August, the first anniversary month of Grandpa’s disappearance. August was the perf
ect month for us to visit. The weather was warm and dry. The mountain passes were clear. School was still out. Both of our families could arrange some vacation time. It was a perfect month for all of us, and all those factors made it easy for us to convince our moms and dads to get together. In truth, none of us wanted Grandma to be alone at this time of the year.
Spending time at Grandma’s house was always fun, but there are two things we did that create the warmest memories. First was when our families gathered on the back deck. The dads and moms would have a drink of some kind. Grandma almost always had juice. At least, that’s what she said it was. Grandma usually put salt on the rim of the glass, and personally, I never liked the taste of salty juice. At the time, I didn’t understand the relevance, but Grandma always explained it with one of Grandpa’s many favorite sayings, “Everything in moderation.” Really, I always thought there was something in Grandma’s glass that wasn’t too fruity. We always had the best times at those family gatherings, and they still provide some of my warmest memories. All we did was talk, and remember, and laugh. Brian’s dad told the funniest stories. My dad did too. Put them together and those two men were unbeatable. Our dads told stories of how they did the funniest things when they were young, and how they never got caught. Grandma usually just smiled and shook her head. She always said that if she didn’t know about it back then, she didn’t want to know about it now. Sometimes they told stories of how they did get caught, like when dad slammed his foot through the living room wall, or when Grandma was swinging a two-by-four while chased young Brian around the garage. Dad and Uncle Brian kept us in stitches with all the stories of their childhood. Everyone laughed; sometimes we laughed so hard we cried. Sometimes, but not very often, we all just cried.