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Book Two: Sleepless
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When Zac’s eyelids fluttered open, he saw water droplets skipping across the passenger’s side window where his head was resting uncomfortably against the cold glass. |
He rubbed his temple and asked, “Did I fall asleep?”
“You did,” Robert Dryden said. The car made a slow, careful turn at the next street light and then trundled across the narrow Stitchwort Bridge toward their home on the opposite bank. “I’m amazed you could doze off considering how much sleep you just had.”
Zac replied by smelling his hands.
“What’re you doing, weirdo?” his father laughed, watching him from the corner of his eye.
There was no reasonable way Zac could explain that he expected his hands to smell of jasmine and was disappointed to find they just reeked of antiseptic soap. To do so, he’d also have to come clean about the naked-Kasira-coming-in-through-the-bedroom-window dream that had repeated itself in perfect detail at least six times over the last day. Fortunately, this time the jostling of the car had roused him before the dream had reached its inevitable, enjoyable and potentially embarrassing conclusion. No, there was no way he could tell his dad any of this, so instead he wiped his hands on his shirt and grumbled, “I smell like a fucking hospital.”
“That tends to happen when you’re in hospitals,” Robert said. “Just take a shower and it’ll go away.”
“I will.”
“I want you to stay home from school tomorrow.”
This suggestion was more annoying than the odor on his fingertips and Zac immediately bristled. “Why? The doctor’s wouldn’t have sent me home if they thought there was a problem, Dad.”
“I just think you should take it easy for a day or two.”
“You just pointed out how much sleep I got and I feel great. Really, if I have to lie around for another two days I’ll go fucking insane.”
Robert ground his teeth, then replied slowly, “Well, let’s see how you feel in the morning, okay?”
Zac frowned but chose not to argue further. He was not exaggerating how good he felt. Twenty-four hours earlier, he’d been admitted to the hospital in an unconscious state that no one could explain and had apparently produced no lasting side effects — except for the recurring erotic dream about a girl he could barely stand. He’d been released with a clean bill of health, but the lack of an explanation as to what had happened only agitated Robert more. Zac knew that his father’s concern came from a sincere place, but he didn’t want to return to how they’d been with each other in the years following his mother’s death, afraid to let each other out of their sight. Afraid if they looked away for an instant, tragedy would strike again.
“Who’s this?” Robert asked as the car rolled over the crest of their driveway and stopped just a few feet from the slender, graceful figure descending the porch steps. When Zac didn’t reply, he asked, “Friend of yours?”
“Classmate,” Zac grumbled.
“That’s not the same thing?”
“Definitely not.”
Zac took his time getting out of the front seat and approaching the girl who was waiting, with arms folded, next to the only lavender-colored Toyota Matrix with a giant flower decal on the side in the Pacific Northwest and quite possibly the world. Her presence confirmed three things. First, that Kasira Vang knew where he lived despite his best efforts to keep this information from her. Second, that she was audacious enough to impose herself — uninvited and unwanted — in his home life as well as his school life. And third, his recent dreams had replaced the normal irritation he always felt around her with acute self-consciousness.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked, making a sincere effort not to sound snarky but failing completely.
“I was wondering if I could speak to you for a minute about what happened at the arcade?” she inquired pleasantly.
This caught Zac completely off-guard. He couldn’t remember a time when Kasira wanted to discuss anything. She was much more likely to demand, sulk or rage. But discuss? No, discussing anything with Kasira seemed completely unnatural to Zac. Moreover, since he didn’t understand the experience in the arcade himself, he was ill-prepared to try and analyze it. Did this girl — his constant antagonist for the past two years — suddenly think they had some unspoken bond? Did she think what happened in Major Tom’s was one of those things where contrary people bonded over shared trauma? Had there been any trauma? Despite the unexpected hospital stay and being forced to wear a wispy cotton gown that displayed his ass-crack to strangers, Zac hadn’t found the last twenty-four hours to be traumatic, just weird.
He decided to put off Kasira’s request by introducing his father.
“Hello again, Dr. Dryden,” Kasira gushed. She was excellent at interacting with adults. She knew how to speak to their level and how to repress those character traits that scared the shit out of her peers. “I don’t know if you remember me but we actually met before, at an open house during freshman year.”
Robert smiled broadly. “Ah, yes, I remember. Your parents own the Dragon of the Jade Pool, right?”
The mention of her family’s business made Kasira fluoresce, like one of those three-way lightbulbs someone had just flipped to a higher setting. “They do. Have you been there?”
“Many times. You have the best Szechuan pork in town.”
“Thank you. That’s one of my favorite dishes, too.”
The fact that his father ate regularly at a Vang family restaurant felt somehow treasonous to Zac, even though there was no way Robert could’ve known about his son’s history with Kasira.
“I take it you were in the arcade when this incident happened?” Robert asked Kasira, running his fingers pensively over his short beard.
“Yes, me and my friends.”
“And everyone’s okay?”
“Everyone’s fine. Just confused.”
“When did they let you out of the hospital?”
“I never went in,” she answered. “My mother’s paranoid about hospitals. She thinks I’ll get a staph infection or something so they just took me home from the emergency room.” She turned to Zac. “They kept you overnight? Were you hurt?”
Zac shrugged and Robert clarified: “He’s the picture of health. They couldn’t find a damn thing wrong with him, which makes us as confused as you and your friends.” He glanced at his watch as if he was missing something important, even though Zac knew he wasn’t. “Well, I’ll leave you guys to talk. Feel free to come inside if you get too cold out here. Nice seeing you again, Kasira.”
“Same here, sir,” she smiled demurely.
Once they were alone, Zac sighed and said, “I don’t think I can tell you anything more than you already know. The docs did a bunch of tests, everything came back okay. I think they’re leaning toward it being some environmental issue, like a carbon monoxide leak from the kitchen, but no one seems to know for sure.”
This news seemed to displease her. “Same with me,” she said, frowning. “Perfectly normal in every way. Just out of curiosity, how did you feel afterward? When you finally woke up, I mean.”
Zac thought for a moment before replying. “Pretty spectacular,” he admitted. After a strangled pause, he verbalized what they were both thinking: “That’s weird, right? Waking up feeling better than before you passed out. It seems like I should’ve at least felt like I needed to puke or had a bitch of a headache or something. But honestly, I feel like I could run a marathon right now.”
“Do you know,” she asked slowly, “that not a single person was hurt when they passed out?”
It was obvious by her inflection that Kasira found this fact particularly troubling, but its significance escaped Zac.
She continued: “You see, if someone faints, if something renders you unconscious while you are in the standing position, the human body almost always pitches forward.” She used her hands to illustrate although Zac felt this was slightly condescending. “It’s not like you see in old timey films where some woman swoons and then collapses on a sofa. No, they just fall straight onto their faces” — she slapped her hands together — “BOOM! Broken face. Or a head injury or something. But not a single person in the arcade had any injury. It’s like every one just lay down on the floor and went to sleep.”
“How do you know this?” he asked.
“I woke up in the ambulance. I overheard the paramedics talking and then they asked questions and I asked questions. From what I can gather, over a dozen people were affected but I can’t find a single person who had any negative side effects. It’s like everyone took a group nap. In fact” — she hesitated, before asking quite carefully — “did you dream during the experience?”
Zac knew exactly what she was asking and it made him feel enormously awkward. How could he possibly tell Kasira Vang, the person who’d caused him more distress than anyone else in Hidden Rock, that not only had he dreamed but that she had figured prominently in it? “Why do you ask me that?” he stammered.
“Because I dreamed. But if you’re unconscious right, if you’ve been poisoned by carbon monoxide or something, you don’t dream because being unconscious is different from being asleep. That whole rapid eye movement thing doesn’t kick in if you’re poisoned. It’s just nothingness at that point.”
“No shit?” he replied. “I didn’t know that.”
“So, did you dream?”
“Yes,” he said, then waited uncomfortably for her to ask about the nature of his dream or share her own.
She didn't.
Like Zac, Kasira’s mind had gone to a startlingly erotic place during the episode in the arcade and, like Zac, the focus of her desire had been someone unexpected. It hadn’t been Zac Dryden whom she’d wrapped herself around, but rather the dark-haired boy he’d been sitting with. The same boy who’d rudely refused to give up his chair to her. The same boy whose dark, wrinkled clothes and long hair would’ve ordinary repelled her. The same boy whom she later saw walk into the emergency room with a police escort, rather than be wheeled in on a stretcher.
“You know, the only person who didn’t pass out was that guy you were sitting with,” she said. “I watched him walk into the ER on his own.”
Zac was shocked. His surprise didn’t come as much from the fact that John hadn’t dropped over like the rest of them, but that Zach had forgotten John had even been there. But of course John had been there. They’d been eating fried pickles together and discussing John’s pathetic taste in music. How could he forget that? He racked his brain trying to recall those last moments before darkness fell over him like a shroud. Where had John been? There was something there it seemed — some fragment of a memory — but it kept fluttering away every time he snatched for it.
“I guess he was the one was who called 9-1-1 and started carrying people out of the basement,” Kasira added.
“John carried people up those stairs?” Zac asked .
“Carried. Dragged. Helped out. I don’t know for sure. The cops just told me some of us were already on the sidewalk when they arrived and your boy was the hero of the hour.”
“Holy shit, that little fucker must be a lot stronger than he looks.”
“Maybe it was that adrenalin strength people get during a crisis?” suggested Kasira. “Either way, I guess we can be grateful to him for that.”
Zac laughed. “Grateful doesn’t seem like a big enough word.”
“John’s a friend of yours?” asked Kasira.
“We just met a few days ago. So, you know, we’re not besties or anything.”
“What’s his story?” There was something about the tone of her voice and the twitch of her eyebrows signaled that the scheming Kasira had just returned. Almost instantly, her interest in John had morphed from analytical to selfish. Zac felt a sharp pain in his gut, a stab of jealousy. It was a distinctly a foreign sensation. Who was he jealous of, he wondered? A classmate he barely knew or a classmate he could barely stand?
“His story?” he replied guardedly. “I don’t know much about his story. He just moved here from back east. His parents divorced and I guess his mom wanted a fresh start.”
“Are you guys going to hang out more?” Kasira now sounded completely like her old self and Zac’s skin began to crawl.
“Probably,” he said noncommittally.
“Well, I’d love to be invited when you do. I’d like to pick his brain about what happened in the arcade.”
“Uh.” He faked a stretch and said, “I need to rest now. See you later.”
Kasira nodded but she was clearly displeased that the conversation was terminated. “Say goodbye to your father for me,” she called as he started up the steps to the front door. It was an unnecessary thing to say, offered only to impress on Zac how she may not have his attention, but she definitely had his father’s. He closed the front door without looking back.
Ben had left a short stack of homework sitting on his bed. It was light stuff — two chapters to read and a worksheet to fill out — so he pushed it to one side and sat down on the edge of the mattress. Almost immediately the image of Kasira Vang, naked and beautiful, climbing in through the window directly opposite him flooded his brain. That dream — or was it a hallucination, Zac wondered — was the second incident in a week where this particular window had played a prominent role. He lifted the lower sash and stuck his head and shoulders out into the fresh, cold air. The day was settling into twilight. The street lights of Hidden Rock sparkled through the trees and reflected in the river below. It was a beautiful view, one that had lulled him to sleep even when he was a little boy. Strange, he thought, that now this window, the trees outside, even the shimmering view of the town, should be so ominous.
Just as he was about to withdraw back inside, there was a creak.
It wasn’t a creak like the wind moving the tree branches because there was no wind. This was a creak of weight pushing against wood, like a foot pressing against an old floorboard.
“Hello?” Zac called to the large oak trees beyond. They didn’t answer of course and he felt suddenly embarrassed. It had been a very strange few days and Zac began to wonder if he was now looking for weirdness in everything.
Then there was another creak, accompanied by some of the lights of Hidden Rock disappearing as a solid object passed in front of them. He was not dreaming nor hallucinating. Whatever was moving along the top of the trees opposite the house was real, large and undeniably human.
Without hesitation, Zac swung his legs through the open window and leapt off the small sloping roof. He landed with a soggy thump on the lawn below and bolted into the oak thicket that ringed the house. Thick, twisted limbs formed a dark latticework against the amethyst colored sky above his head, making it nearly impossible for Zac to determine where one tree ended and another began.
“Hello?” he called again. “Is someone up there?”
The woodland answered only with the soft plunk-plunk-plunk of dripping rainwater. Whoever was climbing through the canopy had stopped moving. Looking up, the giant trees seemed to be unsurmountable. Very few branches hung low enough to reach. The knobby trunks were so matted with slippery moss that Zac was certain he’d just slide off if he tried climbing them. Still, he told himself, someone had made it to the top of the trees twice now, navigating the limbs successfully in both poor weather and near darkness. His amazement at this feat, along with his irritation at having a creeper hanging around outside his bedroom window, was enough to encourage Zac to pull himself into a nearby oak. The wood proved more slimy than anticipated and he nearly fell twice before straddling a heavy limb, with the cold damp of the wood seeping through the crotch of his jeans.
He leaned back and called again to the canopy, “Hey, whoever’s up there, why don’t you just climb down and save me the trouble of coming up to get your ass? If you think I’m gonna get bored and go home, you’re wrong. I’ll stay out here all night if I need to.”
As if his voice had dislodged it, a hawk broke from the canopy, swooped past Zac’s head and then drifted out over the river. Once the bird had vanished from sight, the woodland grew quiet again. Zac ground his teeth. The cold damp seeping through his pants was growing unbearable but he was no way he was going to leave the tree until whoever was above him came down.
Several minutes passed, as though the forest was deciding what to do next. Then a large dark body fluttered through the limbs, passing only a few yards from Zac. This time it wasn’t a bird on the wing or any other species of forest animal. It was large, dark and human, moving in a corkscrew pattern, evading trunks and limbs as though gravity exerted little or no control over its descent. The only sound it made as it disappeared down the hillside was the snapping of fabric, similar to a flag caught in a gentle breeze.
“What the fuck!” Zac cried, losing his precarious hold on the oak tree. He pitched to the left and fell the remaining six feet to the forest floor where the combination of muddy loam and rotting leaves cushioned his impact. By the time he was able to catch his breath and crawl to the edge of the slope, there was no sign of the person at all.
But far below, a car engine cranked to life.
“You did,” Robert Dryden said. The car made a slow, careful turn at the next street light and then trundled across the narrow Stitchwort Bridge toward their home on the opposite bank. “I’m amazed you could doze off considering how much sleep you just had.”
Zac replied by smelling his hands.
“What’re you doing, weirdo?” his father laughed, watching him from the corner of his eye.
There was no reasonable way Zac could explain that he expected his hands to smell of jasmine and was disappointed to find they just reeked of antiseptic soap. To do so, he’d also have to come clean about the naked-Kasira-coming-in-through-the-bedroom-window dream that had repeated itself in perfect detail at least six times over the last day. Fortunately, this time the jostling of the car had roused him before the dream had reached its inevitable, enjoyable and potentially embarrassing conclusion. No, there was no way he could tell his dad any of this, so instead he wiped his hands on his shirt and grumbled, “I smell like a fucking hospital.”
“That tends to happen when you’re in hospitals,” Robert said. “Just take a shower and it’ll go away.”
“I will.”
“I want you to stay home from school tomorrow.”
This suggestion was more annoying than the odor on his fingertips and Zac immediately bristled. “Why? The doctor’s wouldn’t have sent me home if they thought there was a problem, Dad.”
“I just think you should take it easy for a day or two.”
“You just pointed out how much sleep I got and I feel great. Really, if I have to lie around for another two days I’ll go fucking insane.”
Robert ground his teeth, then replied slowly, “Well, let’s see how you feel in the morning, okay?”
Zac frowned but chose not to argue further. He was not exaggerating how good he felt. Twenty-four hours earlier, he’d been admitted to the hospital in an unconscious state that no one could explain and had apparently produced no lasting side effects — except for the recurring erotic dream about a girl he could barely stand. He’d been released with a clean bill of health, but the lack of an explanation as to what had happened only agitated Robert more. Zac knew that his father’s concern came from a sincere place, but he didn’t want to return to how they’d been with each other in the years following his mother’s death, afraid to let each other out of their sight. Afraid if they looked away for an instant, tragedy would strike again.
“Who’s this?” Robert asked as the car rolled over the crest of their driveway and stopped just a few feet from the slender, graceful figure descending the porch steps. When Zac didn’t reply, he asked, “Friend of yours?”
“Classmate,” Zac grumbled.
“That’s not the same thing?”
“Definitely not.”
Zac took his time getting out of the front seat and approaching the girl who was waiting, with arms folded, next to the only lavender-colored Toyota Matrix with a giant flower decal on the side in the Pacific Northwest and quite possibly the world. Her presence confirmed three things. First, that Kasira Vang knew where he lived despite his best efforts to keep this information from her. Second, that she was audacious enough to impose herself — uninvited and unwanted — in his home life as well as his school life. And third, his recent dreams had replaced the normal irritation he always felt around her with acute self-consciousness.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked, making a sincere effort not to sound snarky but failing completely.
“I was wondering if I could speak to you for a minute about what happened at the arcade?” she inquired pleasantly.
This caught Zac completely off-guard. He couldn’t remember a time when Kasira wanted to discuss anything. She was much more likely to demand, sulk or rage. But discuss? No, discussing anything with Kasira seemed completely unnatural to Zac. Moreover, since he didn’t understand the experience in the arcade himself, he was ill-prepared to try and analyze it. Did this girl — his constant antagonist for the past two years — suddenly think they had some unspoken bond? Did she think what happened in Major Tom’s was one of those things where contrary people bonded over shared trauma? Had there been any trauma? Despite the unexpected hospital stay and being forced to wear a wispy cotton gown that displayed his ass-crack to strangers, Zac hadn’t found the last twenty-four hours to be traumatic, just weird.
He decided to put off Kasira’s request by introducing his father.
“Hello again, Dr. Dryden,” Kasira gushed. She was excellent at interacting with adults. She knew how to speak to their level and how to repress those character traits that scared the shit out of her peers. “I don’t know if you remember me but we actually met before, at an open house during freshman year.”
Robert smiled broadly. “Ah, yes, I remember. Your parents own the Dragon of the Jade Pool, right?”
The mention of her family’s business made Kasira fluoresce, like one of those three-way lightbulbs someone had just flipped to a higher setting. “They do. Have you been there?”
“Many times. You have the best Szechuan pork in town.”
“Thank you. That’s one of my favorite dishes, too.”
The fact that his father ate regularly at a Vang family restaurant felt somehow treasonous to Zac, even though there was no way Robert could’ve known about his son’s history with Kasira.
“I take it you were in the arcade when this incident happened?” Robert asked Kasira, running his fingers pensively over his short beard.
“Yes, me and my friends.”
“And everyone’s okay?”
“Everyone’s fine. Just confused.”
“When did they let you out of the hospital?”
“I never went in,” she answered. “My mother’s paranoid about hospitals. She thinks I’ll get a staph infection or something so they just took me home from the emergency room.” She turned to Zac. “They kept you overnight? Were you hurt?”
Zac shrugged and Robert clarified: “He’s the picture of health. They couldn’t find a damn thing wrong with him, which makes us as confused as you and your friends.” He glanced at his watch as if he was missing something important, even though Zac knew he wasn’t. “Well, I’ll leave you guys to talk. Feel free to come inside if you get too cold out here. Nice seeing you again, Kasira.”
“Same here, sir,” she smiled demurely.
Once they were alone, Zac sighed and said, “I don’t think I can tell you anything more than you already know. The docs did a bunch of tests, everything came back okay. I think they’re leaning toward it being some environmental issue, like a carbon monoxide leak from the kitchen, but no one seems to know for sure.”
This news seemed to displease her. “Same with me,” she said, frowning. “Perfectly normal in every way. Just out of curiosity, how did you feel afterward? When you finally woke up, I mean.”
Zac thought for a moment before replying. “Pretty spectacular,” he admitted. After a strangled pause, he verbalized what they were both thinking: “That’s weird, right? Waking up feeling better than before you passed out. It seems like I should’ve at least felt like I needed to puke or had a bitch of a headache or something. But honestly, I feel like I could run a marathon right now.”
“Do you know,” she asked slowly, “that not a single person was hurt when they passed out?”
It was obvious by her inflection that Kasira found this fact particularly troubling, but its significance escaped Zac.
She continued: “You see, if someone faints, if something renders you unconscious while you are in the standing position, the human body almost always pitches forward.” She used her hands to illustrate although Zac felt this was slightly condescending. “It’s not like you see in old timey films where some woman swoons and then collapses on a sofa. No, they just fall straight onto their faces” — she slapped her hands together — “BOOM! Broken face. Or a head injury or something. But not a single person in the arcade had any injury. It’s like every one just lay down on the floor and went to sleep.”
“How do you know this?” he asked.
“I woke up in the ambulance. I overheard the paramedics talking and then they asked questions and I asked questions. From what I can gather, over a dozen people were affected but I can’t find a single person who had any negative side effects. It’s like everyone took a group nap. In fact” — she hesitated, before asking quite carefully — “did you dream during the experience?”
Zac knew exactly what she was asking and it made him feel enormously awkward. How could he possibly tell Kasira Vang, the person who’d caused him more distress than anyone else in Hidden Rock, that not only had he dreamed but that she had figured prominently in it? “Why do you ask me that?” he stammered.
“Because I dreamed. But if you’re unconscious right, if you’ve been poisoned by carbon monoxide or something, you don’t dream because being unconscious is different from being asleep. That whole rapid eye movement thing doesn’t kick in if you’re poisoned. It’s just nothingness at that point.”
“No shit?” he replied. “I didn’t know that.”
“So, did you dream?”
“Yes,” he said, then waited uncomfortably for her to ask about the nature of his dream or share her own.
She didn't.
Like Zac, Kasira’s mind had gone to a startlingly erotic place during the episode in the arcade and, like Zac, the focus of her desire had been someone unexpected. It hadn’t been Zac Dryden whom she’d wrapped herself around, but rather the dark-haired boy he’d been sitting with. The same boy who’d rudely refused to give up his chair to her. The same boy whose dark, wrinkled clothes and long hair would’ve ordinary repelled her. The same boy whom she later saw walk into the emergency room with a police escort, rather than be wheeled in on a stretcher.
“You know, the only person who didn’t pass out was that guy you were sitting with,” she said. “I watched him walk into the ER on his own.”
Zac was shocked. His surprise didn’t come as much from the fact that John hadn’t dropped over like the rest of them, but that Zach had forgotten John had even been there. But of course John had been there. They’d been eating fried pickles together and discussing John’s pathetic taste in music. How could he forget that? He racked his brain trying to recall those last moments before darkness fell over him like a shroud. Where had John been? There was something there it seemed — some fragment of a memory — but it kept fluttering away every time he snatched for it.
“I guess he was the one was who called 9-1-1 and started carrying people out of the basement,” Kasira added.
“John carried people up those stairs?” Zac asked .
“Carried. Dragged. Helped out. I don’t know for sure. The cops just told me some of us were already on the sidewalk when they arrived and your boy was the hero of the hour.”
“Holy shit, that little fucker must be a lot stronger than he looks.”
“Maybe it was that adrenalin strength people get during a crisis?” suggested Kasira. “Either way, I guess we can be grateful to him for that.”
Zac laughed. “Grateful doesn’t seem like a big enough word.”
“John’s a friend of yours?” asked Kasira.
“We just met a few days ago. So, you know, we’re not besties or anything.”
“What’s his story?” There was something about the tone of her voice and the twitch of her eyebrows signaled that the scheming Kasira had just returned. Almost instantly, her interest in John had morphed from analytical to selfish. Zac felt a sharp pain in his gut, a stab of jealousy. It was a distinctly a foreign sensation. Who was he jealous of, he wondered? A classmate he barely knew or a classmate he could barely stand?
“His story?” he replied guardedly. “I don’t know much about his story. He just moved here from back east. His parents divorced and I guess his mom wanted a fresh start.”
“Are you guys going to hang out more?” Kasira now sounded completely like her old self and Zac’s skin began to crawl.
“Probably,” he said noncommittally.
“Well, I’d love to be invited when you do. I’d like to pick his brain about what happened in the arcade.”
“Uh.” He faked a stretch and said, “I need to rest now. See you later.”
Kasira nodded but she was clearly displeased that the conversation was terminated. “Say goodbye to your father for me,” she called as he started up the steps to the front door. It was an unnecessary thing to say, offered only to impress on Zac how she may not have his attention, but she definitely had his father’s. He closed the front door without looking back.
Ben had left a short stack of homework sitting on his bed. It was light stuff — two chapters to read and a worksheet to fill out — so he pushed it to one side and sat down on the edge of the mattress. Almost immediately the image of Kasira Vang, naked and beautiful, climbing in through the window directly opposite him flooded his brain. That dream — or was it a hallucination, Zac wondered — was the second incident in a week where this particular window had played a prominent role. He lifted the lower sash and stuck his head and shoulders out into the fresh, cold air. The day was settling into twilight. The street lights of Hidden Rock sparkled through the trees and reflected in the river below. It was a beautiful view, one that had lulled him to sleep even when he was a little boy. Strange, he thought, that now this window, the trees outside, even the shimmering view of the town, should be so ominous.
Just as he was about to withdraw back inside, there was a creak.
It wasn’t a creak like the wind moving the tree branches because there was no wind. This was a creak of weight pushing against wood, like a foot pressing against an old floorboard.
“Hello?” Zac called to the large oak trees beyond. They didn’t answer of course and he felt suddenly embarrassed. It had been a very strange few days and Zac began to wonder if he was now looking for weirdness in everything.
Then there was another creak, accompanied by some of the lights of Hidden Rock disappearing as a solid object passed in front of them. He was not dreaming nor hallucinating. Whatever was moving along the top of the trees opposite the house was real, large and undeniably human.
Without hesitation, Zac swung his legs through the open window and leapt off the small sloping roof. He landed with a soggy thump on the lawn below and bolted into the oak thicket that ringed the house. Thick, twisted limbs formed a dark latticework against the amethyst colored sky above his head, making it nearly impossible for Zac to determine where one tree ended and another began.
“Hello?” he called again. “Is someone up there?”
The woodland answered only with the soft plunk-plunk-plunk of dripping rainwater. Whoever was climbing through the canopy had stopped moving. Looking up, the giant trees seemed to be unsurmountable. Very few branches hung low enough to reach. The knobby trunks were so matted with slippery moss that Zac was certain he’d just slide off if he tried climbing them. Still, he told himself, someone had made it to the top of the trees twice now, navigating the limbs successfully in both poor weather and near darkness. His amazement at this feat, along with his irritation at having a creeper hanging around outside his bedroom window, was enough to encourage Zac to pull himself into a nearby oak. The wood proved more slimy than anticipated and he nearly fell twice before straddling a heavy limb, with the cold damp of the wood seeping through the crotch of his jeans.
He leaned back and called again to the canopy, “Hey, whoever’s up there, why don’t you just climb down and save me the trouble of coming up to get your ass? If you think I’m gonna get bored and go home, you’re wrong. I’ll stay out here all night if I need to.”
As if his voice had dislodged it, a hawk broke from the canopy, swooped past Zac’s head and then drifted out over the river. Once the bird had vanished from sight, the woodland grew quiet again. Zac ground his teeth. The cold damp seeping through his pants was growing unbearable but he was no way he was going to leave the tree until whoever was above him came down.
Several minutes passed, as though the forest was deciding what to do next. Then a large dark body fluttered through the limbs, passing only a few yards from Zac. This time it wasn’t a bird on the wing or any other species of forest animal. It was large, dark and human, moving in a corkscrew pattern, evading trunks and limbs as though gravity exerted little or no control over its descent. The only sound it made as it disappeared down the hillside was the snapping of fabric, similar to a flag caught in a gentle breeze.
“What the fuck!” Zac cried, losing his precarious hold on the oak tree. He pitched to the left and fell the remaining six feet to the forest floor where the combination of muddy loam and rotting leaves cushioned his impact. By the time he was able to catch his breath and crawl to the edge of the slope, there was no sign of the person at all.
But far below, a car engine cranked to life.
