“This is amazing,” he said. “I’m used to the city stuff… But I’d gladly trade delivery, a free two-liter bottle of soda, and a hot circle of garbage for a box of this any day.”
Rachel started laughing despite her very full mouth, which got Patrick and Dave laughing too. She covered her mouth with her hand until she could swallow, then said, “I almost got cheese up my nose,” which started it up again.
When it finally died down and they all resumed eating, Patrick continued scanning the various wood pieces in the room. His attention was caught suddenly by a lamp that was sitting on a very dark brown bureau by the window, and for a moment he even stopped chewing. It was rather tall for a table lamp, he thought, at least two feet high, and the shade was very decorative with gold embroidery and dozens of little brass tassels. What gave him pause however, was the kind of wood it was made of. It appeared to be made of a single uncut tree branch—a gnarled and twisting thing that was bent in odd ways, almost spiraling from the flat base up to where the bulb and shade stuck from the top. It looked as if the light brown wood had been melted into a liquid state and poured into cold water, where it solidified instantly in this grotesque and seemingly spontaneous shape. The sight of it cracked his focus on dinner slightly, and it wasn’t hard for a certain memory to slip through that crack…
The tree.
The huge gnarled monstrosity that perhaps had birthed his nightmares, or maybe even been birthed by them. The growth in the darkest depths of the beast’s stomach, the thing it swallowed long ago and had since forgotten, the thing that rotted in its gut, smelling ancient, out of place. The thought of the tree didn’t strike him with the fear and dread that it had all those nights ago, but it still stuck, as unmoving in his mind as it was in the middle of those woods.
“So,” Patrick started slowly, pulling his gaze reluctantly away from the lamp and to Dave, “you probably know quite a lot about wood, right?”
Dave shrugged. “A fair amount.” He took a bite of pizza.
Patrick looked back at the lamp. “Well where does that type of wood come from?” He gestured toward it.
Dave followed Patrick’s gaze as he finished chewing. When he saw what Patrick was referring to, his face grew bright. “Oh, the lamp?” he all but yelled. “One of my favorites, though it’s not like I even carved it. Got that branch from a buddy of mine, can’t remember what type of tree it is, but he had one up on his property that he was cutting up. Got all rotten, big ol’ stump, full of termites. I got that one branch, though. That tree was a gnarly ol’ sucker, too. Looked more like a tumor made of wood than a regular tree. Apparently there used to be tons of them around here, but the cedars and the oaks kicked them out over the years. Barely any of them around now. Shame, too; they’re really ugly, but heck if they aren’t interesting.”
“Do you know about any other ones still growing around here?” Patrick asked. He thought the man must know about the one in the woods, yet for some reason he couldn’t find it inside himself to bring it up. Mentioning any aspect of the woods somehow seemed far too revealing…
“There was one down Dos Rios Road, but it got all rotten too, and someone cut it up a few years ago. Not sure of any others.
“Weird,” Patrick said, returning to his pizza. This was extremely peculiar. The tree wasn’t even a quarter-mile away from this very house. He wanted to grab onto this mystery and begin shaking, but ultimately decided that he was enjoying himself too much to care at the moment and dismissed the matter forcefully.
“So what other restaurants are good around here?” he asked.
*****
The evening felt much like a dream; though unlike a dream, the uncanny scene was crystal clear, seemingly more vivid than the rest of waking life, in a way like the nights spent as his other self.
The three of them finished dinner (they had seen to it that the only survivors were a few slices of pepperoni) and talked for quite some time. Patrick told them about where he moved from and why, and they discussed the stark differences between the city and Hillward.
When they noticed that the sun was setting they decided to watch a movie. They spent a few minutes browsing the DVD library, which Patrick decided was rather modest in size compared to his family’s (though he knew this was an unfair comparison, his father being an avid collector of movies and somewhat of a connoisseur of the “Entertainment Arts”). From the two shelves they finally found and decided upon “School of Rock”, which was one of Patrick’s favorites and what Rachel claimed in a rather scholarly manner was Jack Black’s “finest work.”
“Indeed,” Patrick responded in the same deep English accent, “simply the fillet of his repertoire.” Rachel giggled at that.
There was only a single couch in front of the TV (which was also relatively modest), which left very few seating options. Dave sat on one end and propped his feet up on the wooden coffee table, leaving Patrick the only possible human choice of the opposite end. When Rachel was done putting in the movie and turning off the lights, she plopped down beside him on the middle cushion.
As the movie began and Patrick’s mind had time to settle, the world around him became very surreal.
He had expected to spend a very long time at his school before making any good friends, and he had certainly never expected any of them to be girls. Girls were that unexplored part of the world, that aspect of humanity that seemed so far out of reach, so unrealistic. He had seen the more popular kids at his old school talking and joking with girls, even going as far as to touch them comfortably; they hugged, they held hands, they hit each other playfully… Yet Patrick never had any particular reason to even talk with a girl outside of class, and it didn’t seem like they had much interest in him, either. Some of his friends would date girls on occasion, which would just make Patrick uncomfortable, and even more certain of just how ridiculous the concept of dating was when they broke up two weeks later.
But now the thought that kept running through his mind was this one: If a month ago he were to somehow wake up in this situation with no idea of how he got here, he wouldn’t believe his eyes. Every once in a while he would steal a quick glance at Rachel, almost as if to capture this impossible screenshot in his head.
He was sitting in a house, a place of comfort and safety, a fortress of solitude, watching a movie with a girl. A girl who wanted him to be there. A girl with whom he had rapidly become friends. He was comfortable in her company (if a trifle nervous at times) and she was comfortable in his, enough so to bring him to her house for dinner and a movie. The whole thing was bizarre, but that somehow made the image all the more vivid. The world seemed in sharp focus, even in the dim lighting. The smell of the pizza still lingered in the air, mixing oddly with the smell of a dozen or so different types of wood. Rachel was sitting beside him with her eyes shining brightly in the light of the TV, her features made softer by the dark room yet all the more striking in their own way. Jack Black was teaching the kids in his class to play “Smoke on the Water” on the screen, and though Patrick had probably watched it happen on ten different occasions, this time it seemed as if he were watching it in a dream, on a tiny screen far away, fading slowly and giving way to the much more important scene around him.
This mental picture he snapped seemed so strange that he thought he would forever be able to look upon it and be struck by a fresh and equally intense feeling of bafflement.
Rachel turned her head to look at him, and when he caught the movement from the corner of his eye he looked back at her.
She gave him a warm smile.
The one he gave back was genuine and effortless.
*****
After the movie was finished and they had all stretched and sufficiently laughed about and quoted their favorite parts, Dave stood up.
“I’ll bet you’ll be wanting to head home soon.” He stretched again. “It’s funny; your house is three blocks away, but they still say you shouldn’t walk
around after dark.”
“Wait!” Rachel said quickly, looking at Patrick. “I want to show you my room first!” She got up from the couch and beckoned for him to follow. He got up as well, and she led them out of the living room and down the hall.
Rachel’s room was the last one on the right, and the door was already open. The first thing that Patrick noticed about it was that it was much cleaner and well-organized than he was used to; the bed was of a very practical wooden build, and her desk, dresser, and bookshelf were free of any interesting design, embellishment, or most importantly, clutter. He supposed he was used to his sister’s room, which was normally filled with crooked, extremely colorful posters and stickers and knickknacks and clothing and accessories and school supplies. The floor here was spotless—not a single piece of clothing to mar the plainness of the clean wooden floor.
The only items filling the space on the furniture and walls were decorations, and in fact the feature of the room that caught his eye almost immediately was Rachel’s apparent fascination with dragons. As with the rest of the house, it seemed that her father had built many shelves into the walls, and most of them were filled with books (never unaccompanied by matching bookends) and dozens of little figurines. There were a few birds and turtles and at least one tiger present in the collection, but the majority of them were dragons. Some had obviously been made by her father, and others were made of pewter and steel and soapstone, all of varying types and sizes. There was a poster of an enormous dragon perched on a tall cathedral over her bed, and above her computer desk the same “Lord of the Rings” poster he had on his own wall. There were a few other pictures of fantasy landscapes and bits of medieval and Celtic memorabilia scattered throughout the room as well, including a poster for the movie “How to Train Your Dragon” on the inside of the door.
“Your room is awesome!” Patrick exclaimed with genuine enthusiasm. “I love dragons!”
Rachel laughed. “Yeah, I’m pretty much a huge nerd.”
“I’ll have to remember to finish unpacking the last of my posters and stuff before you see my room so you can see that I am, too.” Truthfully, decorating hadn’t really been on his mind much these last two weeks, but he made a note to find some time to do it soon.
“This is the best part, though,” Rachel said from behind him, and he turned away from a glass dragon that he found particularly interesting and saw that she had knelt beside a chest at the foot of her bed. She was looking up at him expectantly. He walked up and knelt beside her.
The chest was maybe two feet wide and a foot or so both tall and deep, and made of some dark, polished wood. Only up close did Patrick see all of the incredible detail that had been carved into the wood; every face and edge was embroidered with both Celtic knots and long, curvy leaf patterns. But what made the piece truly special was the slender, elegant dragon spreading its wings triumphantly across the lid. It wasn’t bearing its teeth or breathing fire or trying to be intimidating like most dragons, but striking a beautiful pose of grace and power; one that reminded Patrick of a lion roaring atop a hill. Like the rest of the chest, it was carved so skillfully that Patrick thought he could spend hours simply taking in every delicate detail.
When he looked up at Rachel again she was beaming.
“This…” she started slowly, “is my favorite and most important possession.”
“Your dad made this for you?” Patrick asked, though he knew the answer.
“Yeah.” She was staring at the chest dreamily. “For my seventh birthday. It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. So beautiful…” She didn’t say anything for a few seconds—just sat, seemingly drunk with the magic of the chest.
“Yeah, it’s really, really amazing…” was all he could manage. Staring at the chest their words grew quiet, as though out of reverence. After a few more moments of studying it, Patrick had to ask the obvious question. “So what do you keep in it?”
Patrick had expected her to open it, or at least start naming off things, but instead she said, “This chest is the most personal and special object I’ve ever had, so I keep all of my personal stuff in it. Everything that’s close to me, or reminds me of something… I keep it in here. The inside of this chest is the only thing that no one else is allowed to see—the only part of my life that is a complete mystery to everyone else in the world. I think everyone should have something like this. It makes you feel safe knowing there’s something only you know. Something secret.”
They stared for several more minutes, Patrick feeling that she was probably right.
*****
When Patrick finally reached his bed and lay down, he felt as though he were floating. The day had been like one long rapids ride, and his mind had been pulled along and splashed and jostled for the last fifteen hours or so, simply holding on tightly and taking it turn by turn. But now the rapids grew slower and finally emptied into some great, quiet lake, and Patrick was left to drift lazily, gazing up at the sky that was the back of his eyelids.
He had of course been put through the grinder when Dave dropped him off around eight o’ clock, forced to endure his family’s questions and teasing. His father had nudged him in the ribs with his elbow while his eyebrows jumped up and down in that certain impossibly rapid way only he could accomplish, his sister repeatedly referred to Rachel as his “girrrrlfrieeeeeennnd” and asked incessantly if they were going out, and his mother apparently deemed that her husband and daughter did enough teasing for the three of them, because she only smiled a whole lot, occasionally making a comment such as, “I’ll bet she’s pretty,” or, “When is she coming over here for dinner?”
But he had survived it all, somehow, and now the call of sleep sounded sweeter than it had in ages. Tomorrow was some obscure holiday, and Patrick would be able to sleep for as long as he wanted. He thought he might just doze well into the afternoon, drifting in and out of consciousness and recounting his evening at Rachel’s house.
But thoughts of the weekend brought with them the question of “What should I do with this free time?” and on the heels of that came the nagging thought of “There’s something I need to be finding out.” The thought was inevitable, and had been trying to get through to him ever since he pushed it out of his mind during the walk home. It was as if it had fallen out of the boat when the rapids got really rough and had clung to the edge, its shouts being swallowed by the crashing waves, and once the river had calmed down it was only then able to slip back in.
He wished he could have pried its fingers from the side.
But instead, he found himself pondering once again about Mr. Vincent. His gut clenched suddenly when he was hit with the image of the man (or the man as his other self, more accurately) standing out by the woods. His eyes darted to the window, but he could only see the sliver of starry sky and the roof’s edge that he was growing quite accustomed to peering up at every night.
He knew it was silly to look, seeing as he had only seen the wolf once, but even the very small possibility of it was too much to handle. Last time he had chased Mr. Vincent through the woods, but the man had opted to leave the safety of the dense trees and venture where Patrick dared not: the open night. If he were to look out the window and see that pale statue staring up at him from the shadow of that wooden wall would it all simply happen again? That would get him nowhere. Besides, his family was still awake; even if he wanted to, there was no way he could get outside with his parents on watch.
Before he could make another consideration, he sat up and looked.
His eyes tried to catch one imagined shape after the other, but after a few seconds his vision anchored to the blurry tree trunks on the edge of the dim yard, and he saw that there was nothing there.
He lay back down and stared up at the ceiling. It wasn’t long before the turtle with the kitty head caught his eye as it often did, and just as quickly he replaced its head with Mr. Poulton’s in his mind. Yet in light of recent events, the imag
e had somehow lost some of its humor.
I guess his shell didn’t really do much for him, he thought, then immediately regretted thinking something so morbid.
Mr. Poulton was kind of a jerk, but how thin was the line between “jerk” and “mild annoyance” for Mr. Vincent? What was the limit on who he would attack? Would he eventually move on to particularly aggravating kids? It didn’t really seem like this sort of thing had happened before, so was it just a fluke?
Patrick doubted it. Seeing the man day by day it was obvious that he was slowly breaking down. Whether it was the stress of trying to control himself or the remorse for what he had already done or the lack of rest or any combination of the three eating away at the man, Patrick was now convinced that Mr. Vincent’s steady deterioration had not, in fact, been a part of his imagination. His weary teacher had been looking worse and worse, and it only made sense. Patrick would probably diminish into sorrow and shame too if he ever lost control of himself and began hurting people.
This thought put a brick squarely in Patrick’s stomach.
What if Mr. Vincent’s case was the inevitable end, and not just an isolated instance? He may have started out just like Patrick: being scared at first, eventually learning to gain control, little by little, until he felt the world was his for the taking… But then perhaps he became too comfortable with his new power, and soon the primal urges took over his mind and the power gained control of him. Now every single night, mind hazy with heightened emotion one hundred percent of the time, his nightmare-self roamed the dreamscape that was the transformed town and brought with it the fierce retribution of his shameful waking desires, and every single morning he awoke to find that the nightmare had followed him back into the world of day.
Was this Patrick’s fate as well?
And what if it wasn’t limited to those he hated? What if he hurt someone he was only frustrated with, but in actuality loved? Maybe Mr. Poulton and Mr. Vincent were dear friends…