BEYOND
THE
BARE MAPLE
CHRISTOPHER DAVID
© Copyright 2015
by
Christopher David
It's not a real problem so much. It's just this thing I'm able to do with my mind.
CHAPTER
1
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At twelve years old, I had already been seeing a psychiatrist. And this one wasn't my first. I guess they just didn't seem to know what to do with me.
“Simon, the human brain is a wonderful, fascinating and vastly complex organ. We are learning more about it all the time. I want to know about yours, and I want to help solve your problem.”
My psychiatrist leaned back in his creaking chair, shifted his weight to one side making it creak even more obnoxiously than before and took another puff on his pipe. He stared at me blankly through the haze of tobacco and waited for my response.
I replied with a cold and uncaring voice because my prescription made me act somewhat like a robot.
“It's not a real problem so much. It's just this thing I'm able to do with my mind.”
“I see,” he said.
But he really didn't see. He didn't see anything. He didn't see that I was reading his very thoughts. He didn't see that I knew of his unfaithfulness to his wife, and he didn't see that I was already aware of plans that he would soon make of killing her, even though he had not even contemplated them yet.
I felt like I was trapped because I couldn't do anything with this new found information. Not only had he not committed the crime, but he had not even thought of the idea yet.
I guess you could say that my problem is not the fact that I can often sense or see things before they happen, it's really more about what to do with the information.
People simply don't believe me when I try to explain that I can sometimes see things before they happen. And my psychiatrist, who was just telling me how incredibly wonderful and complex the human brain is, completely shuts down when I tell him about my gift. He thinks I'm lying, or bucking for some kind of attention or something.
Every session at his office always ends up the same way. Either he wants to put me on something else, or change the dosage.
With my last psychiatrist, I became fed up with his putting words into my mouth that weren't true, so I told him to go piss off, but that didn't sit well with him - nor my parents for that matter. Quite frankly, when those words spewed out of my mouth, it shocked me, because that wasn't me. I didn't talk like that, at least not normally. And if I ever did, it certainly wasn't at an adult.
In total, my psychiatrists had been working on me for over five years, installing thoughts and made up memories into my head that were never there to begin with. I finally just figured that I had had enough. I was tired of everyone else telling me what I should or should not do, and what I should or should not say, and what I should or should not think. All they had to do was give me the benefit of the doubt, to at least consider the possibility that I, Simon J. Kruger was telling the truth.
I tried confiding in Dale, my older brother about my gift, but he didn't believe me. Then I approached Mom and tried to tell her about it. She acted like she was listening, but I could see it in her eyes – she didn't really know me. She thinks the drugs I'm on are messing with my brain. And she seemed too preoccupied to pay me much attention anyway. I even tried to tell my sister, Tina, who was the same age as Dale, in fact they were born twins and so they were always very close and shared a special bond that I never was a part of, and so of course I naturally felt some jealousy and perhaps even a level of resentment about it.
I wanted to tell my dad about my gift, but he had taken ill some time ago, so I just didn't want to bother him with it. Besides, I really didn't want to face him because he always looked at me kind of suspicious like. As if I was hiding something, or that I wasn't really his son. I mean he was kind to me and everything, and taught me a lot of things growing up, but I always felt some distance between me and my parents, and with Dale and Tina too, which caused me to often wonder as a child if I was adopted and never told. But as I grew older, I became aware of a few physical characteristics that I share with them, such as high cheek bones and a particular jaw-line that seems to follow all the Kruger's. And since I shared these characteristics too, I doubted that I was adopted, so I put that thought to rest.
But telling my psychologist to piss off was a turning point for me. I was twelve years old at the time, and the way Mom and Dad raised me and my siblings, that kind of language was never heard or spoken in our home. I guess I must have picked it up at school or somewhere. It was completely out of character for me to have said such a thing. I never said it before, and after Dad tanned my hide, I swore I would never say it again. A few weeks after that, things at home started to change, but in a very strange way.
For instance, one day I learned that Mom had been slipping some drugs into my peanut butter sandwiches. She didn't know that I saw her of course, because I saw her in the reflection of the mirror in the hall which joined the kitchen. Later, after school, when she asked me if I enjoyed my lunch, I pretended to have eaten the sandwich, when in fact I had actually fed it to the dog. I didn't want to be on any anti-psychotic drugs anymore, especially when they were given to me without my knowledge and in a sneaky sort of way. I sure as hell didn't like the idea of Mom spiking my sandwiches, so I continued to feed the dog my lunch every day without my parents knowing it, which coincidently required frequent trips to the vet to figure out why he was becoming so sluggish, passive and slow in his youthfulness. Mom and Dad finally had to have him put down because he could no longer walk on his own. He seemed to want to, but he just did not have the energy. I guess it was the drugs in the sandwiches that were meant for me, prescribed by my psychiatrist that resulted in our dog having to be put down. I managed to avoid taking any more of those powerful drugs, and I felt an immense sense of guilt at knowing our dog was dead because of me. But a small part of me had to rationalize it. I kept telling myself that it was better the dog than me.
But things really began to get weird on the day when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. I was doing homework alone at the dining table, and Mom and Tina had gone out to do some more school clothes shopping because Tina wanted fashionable clothes like her friends had, so Mom spent money I knew we didn't have. Tina was kind of spoiled that way, and since Mom and Tina were pretty close, Tina always got her way.
Dad was out harvesting the last of the tomatos from his garden for the year, and my brother Dale was in the basement playing Dungeons and Dragons with his geeky friends Jim and Carl. So I was alone. I pretty much preferred it that way. I mean I wasn't without friends. I had lots of them. But when I wasn't around them, I much preferred to be by myself.
The thing that had caught my eye came from the mirror in the dining room, which from that angle where I sat clearly displayed the reflection of the clock on the wall in the living room.
It was an antique cuckoo clock that Mom got after grandpa passed away that caught my attention. None of her siblings wanted it, so it found its way into our home.
I remember always being drawn to mechanical time pieces, especially old clocks that required human interaction to keep them running. The simple act of winding a clock made the time piece a personal interaction. But the hand-made clocks with actual gears and mechanisms that needed daily winding by a human being seemed to have an effect on me. They drew me in and somehow made me feel comfortable in my own little world. So it was no surprise that grandpa's cuckoo clock produced the same effect on me.
As a child, I would stand on a chair and face the clock, studying
it for what seemed like hours. I could almost hear the tiny gears clicking and chattering as their teeth meshed together, turning slowly by the power of gravity tugging on solid brass pine cone weights which all together worked in an amazing mechanized harmony to keep us informed of the current time.
Mom and Dad thought that I was entranced in the anticipation of waiting for the cuckoo to pop its head out of the nest alerting us of the beginning of each new hour. That may have been true, but what they didn't know was that I was actually staring at the pair of decorative hand carved wooden owls perched on their pedestals on each side of the clock's face. No one ever saw what I saw. Over the years, the owl’s eyes moved. They watched me, and I watched them.
This of course would seem impossible because the owls, like the rest of the decorative clock, was carved from a single chunk of solid wood. The only moving parts consisted of metal gears and springs and such that were hidden inside. The owls were solid, and yet their eyes, nothing more than balls of amber colored glass were fluid and followed my every move. Then one day I began to hear them speak to each other, and I was aware that they were somehow conscious of my presence in the room. It wasn't long before they began talking to me. They had human voices. One male and one female, and their voices were audible just above a whisper that apparently only I could hear.
They had a secret, just like my psychiatrist had a secret. But they wanted to tell me theirs.
CHAPTER
2
_______________
“Honey, where's Dale?” says Mom. She startles me at first. I didn't even hear her come into my room. I'm staring out the window at the old maple in the back yard, thinking about climbing it for the fifth time today. Mom had a habit of sneaking up on us kids. I swear she could be in more than one place at the same time.
“He's downstairs with Jim and Carl,” I reply, my eyes still fixed on the maple outside my window. “That's the last place I saw him anyway.”
“Dinner is in ten minutes,” she shoots back. I turn around and she's already gone. I poke my head out my door and peer down the hall. She's nowhere. I kneel down and put my ear against the heat register in the floor under my desk and I hear mumbling. It's Mom in the basement telling my brother Dale his friends have to go home now.
Exactly ten minutes later, my family is gathered around the table and Mom sets out a big meatloaf, a huge bowl of mashed potatoes and broccoli and carrots from the garden, smothered in melted butter.
Dale is working fast and already serving up his second helping of spuds. My sister Tina eats very little and seems to be in a hurry to be excused, but Dad insists she finish with the rest of us. Mom is quiet and not saying much at the table, but her mind is active enough. I could see that she is in deep thought about some matter or another. Dad peppers his prized potato's and even though I can tell that he isn't feeling well, he eats them with a smile and a mixed expression of both gratitude and satisfaction of knowing that he grew this wonderful bounty and was providing for his family.
I keep my eye on the time. At least that's what Dad thinks I'm doing when he notices me staring at the reflection of the cuckoo clock in the mirror up on the wall behind him. But it isn't the time I'm interested in. It's the pair of decorative owls carved into the cuckoo clock. I wondered if the human voices behind those amber eyes were going to tell me their secret tonight. I wondered what it could be. And I wondered why I was the only one who could hear them. I knew I wasn't crazy. I processed logical thought. I could make rational decisions. I got really good grades in school, and as far as I knew, I was able to avoid the psychotic meds prescribed by the doc that were being secretly administered by Mom in my sandwiches at lunch time every day. So I know that I was not under the influence of any drugs – psychotic or otherwise. In fact, I even dropped a few pounds by secretly avoiding the tainted food and just going hungry in the afternoons. The doc said the drugs were supposed to help me, but I knew better.
There was something the owls needed to say, and I felt lucky. No. Not lucky. Honored is how I felt. I felt honored to have been chosen to be the one who could hear the voices of the owls on grandpa's old clock. I grew up hearing those voices and watching the owl’s eyes follow me about the room. And the older I got, the more clear and understanding their voices became. Yes. I was honored. I was about to learn their secret, and hoped that tonight would be the night.
* * *
It's two-thirty in the morning according to my digital clock blaring those bright red digits at me through the dark from the night-stand beside my bed. The entire house is dark and everyone is asleep. I blink and rub my eyes a little to break up the crust that was starting to form in the corners. I throw back my covers, slip out my bedroom and move silently down the black hall to the short set of stairs that guides me down to the living room.
I can't see the cuckoo clock on the wall yet, but I know exactly where it is. It's drawing me towards it almost automatically, like a magnetic field influencing a compass needle. I get closer, still not quite there, but close enough now that I can start to make out its familiar shape in the near total darkness.
A few more steps and I'm there now, standing in front of it, facing it like a child facing an adult who's about to give explicit, but very simple instructions. I have this feeling that whatever the owls have to tell me will change my life somehow.
While I wait for them, I notice that there's just enough artificial light filtering in around the scalloped edges of Mom's handmade curtains, which is cast by the front porch light outside. This little bit of light allows me to see the owl's glassy amber colored eyes in such a way that it seems as if they are looking right back at me through tiny lenses of pure honey, peering at me through the darkness.
The owls have a power that has drawn me to them, much the same way the porch light outside has drawn the many moths to its shining beacon, which is so strong and powerful to them that they bang their tiny heads and flutter about the light as if their only purpose in life is to fly straight into it, not even realizing that they are there by an unseen force and for no apparent reason, at least none that their simple little minds could possibly contemplate or fathom.
And for a moment, I almost feel like one of those little moths, seduced by a magical force that pulls me in closer and closer. The only difference between me and the little moths is that I'm here to seek to be enlightened, and hopefully learn the secret of the owls. And for this reason, so it seems, the owls are livelier than ever before, and so I anxiously wait for them, standing at attention in their presence.
People say the eyes are the windows to a person's soul, and I find that to be quite true, even when the eyes are mere beads of polished glass pressed into the faces of hand-carved wooden owls on an old clock.
I can hear them whispering now, but only the words that they want me to hear are discernible. I take a deep breath and wait for them to acknowledge my presence.
“Is he the only one awake?” I hear one ask the other.
“Yes,” came a whispered reply, “he is the only one awake.”
“But can we trust him?”
“I think so. I think he is ready. He helped us once before, five years ago - remember?”
“Ah, yes. I remember it well. So he is ready. He's more than ready.”
The anticipation is killing me. I know they have wanted to tell me something for a long, long time, as far back as I can remember, and I somehow knew that when I was old enough, they would eventually tell me. But tell me what? I was dying to know their secret and had sacrificed many sleepless nights pondering it. They owe me their little secret now. They owe it to me because I have never told anyone about them, so they owe me for that. I must know their secret tonight. I must.
Then, their eyes lock onto mine, and one of them speaks. They have my one hundred percent attention.
“Simon, over the years we have watched you grow from a little boy into a young man, and we both feel that you are n
ow old enough, but more importantly – capable enough to do something very important that must be done.”
I feel excitement growing inside me now. I have waited for this moment for a very long time. I'm practically drooling with anticipation. This moment for me is something that I feel that I have achieved, not by actually doing something, or accomplishing some impossible task, but by not doing something, by not letting anyone know that I know about the owls and their presence. I feel as though I have done them a favor for years, ever since grandpa's cuckoo clock came to our house.
“Simon, this may come as a shock to you,” they continue, “but your grandmother poisoned your grandpa. She killed him.”
“And now your mother is doing the same to your father,” added the other.
Was this their secret? I heard them clearly enough, but my mind could not process it. It was such an outlandish suggestion that I had no response. I just kept staring at their eyes which of course were looking right back at me, only occasionally drifting to one side to look at each other, but always returning back to me.
“We have to tell you this because the chain must be broken, and you are the only one who can do it, Simon. Even your sister is now showing tendencies to repeat the past.”
This was too much. Yes, I desperately wanted to know their secret, but I had no idea that it could be something as terrible as learning that my grandmother, and now my mother and possibly my sister are would-be murderers.
“I don't believe it,” I say defiantly, folding my arms across my scrawny puffed up chest. “I don't think it's true.”
“You must believe it, because it is true,” I hear them say. Their whispered voices come at me in tandem, and are loud and sharp inside my head. I try to take a step back, but I'm frozen in place by nothing more than what I perceive to be their sheer will. They have me cemented in place, wrapped up in a giant invisible clenched iron fist. My body does not respond to my simple fleeing command. I stand there motionless and static. The owls have more to say.