Chapter Twenty-One

Jonathan woke with relief and terror, shivering and cold like poor Thomas Terrywile on that night. His back was wet with lake water from the small pools nestled between rocks on the shore. The water soaked through his jacket. Small, light snowflakes fell from an expanse of gray clouds, which rolled like ocean waves overhead. He woke with a gasp, terrified that he was still alive, like being born again, from one hell into another. Now he was among the living, though unsure what that meant. Here in the cold, he could feel the gravity of the world again and realized now the trap laid for them – the trap they had built themselves, stick by stick with guilt and fear throughout their lives. They had imprisoned themselves for the hunter.

Jonathan had never even put up a fight.

It was not a cage. Rather, it was like a grisly maze. Jonathan realized that he had been led to this very place from the beginning. They were not ahead of the thing that stalked them in the woods; it was miles and eons ahead of them. He had suffered under the guilt of killing Thomas Terrywile; his life – all their lives – were tormented with the memory of that night.

But they were not guilty. They had freed Thomas Terrywile from an eternity of hell, from being a plaything for a demon summoned by crazed men with dead faces. He saw it all in the dream, the hallucinogenic vision that left him paralyzed on the rocks. He and the Braddick brothers thought they had come back to Coombs’ Gulch to save themselves; instead, their trip was a desperate attempt to cling to the trappings of their lives – an elaborate fate set in motion by a being that could see in and out of time and space. They were here to be tortured and killed. They had taken its plaything away and would suffer for it.

Jonathan sat up quickly, his back frozen and wet from lying on the rocky beach. His face numb with cold. The open case with Thomas Terrywile’s remains sat inert and uneven before him, the lid open to the world. He saw the raft where they had left it, stirring slightly in a breeze, snowflakes gathering on its swollen sides. He heard Michael’s voice, choking, insane. Jonathan turned and saw him sitting on that lonely shoreline, rocking back and forth, his eyes staring at the box, his lips whispering something Jonathan couldn’t make out. Conner stood on the other side of the coffin, still staring down into the darkness. He looked up at Jonathan and then back down at the box. “We have to finish this and leave,” Conner said.

The sky was darker now, but not just with cloud cover. Jonathan checked his watch. Four hours had disappeared. The snow fell gently. It would grow worse.

“What happened?” Jonathan said. “What did you see?”

“I don’t know. It was just a nightmare. Some kind of reaction.…” Conner said.

“None of this is right,” Jonathan said. “I don’t think we know what we’re dealing with here.”

Michael sat cross-legged before the case. He whispered and mumbled. Conner walked to him and pulled him up by the collar. Michael’s eyes refocused for a second on his brother, and they stood, face-to-face, in a momentary embrace, staring into each other’s eyes.

“Pull it together,” Conner said softly to him.

“We’re not pulling anything together,” Jonathan said. “We’re just walking into this thing! We’re just doing what we’re told! It’s like being stuck in a film. It’s all predetermined.”

“I don’t believe that,” Conner said. “This is reality. This is where we are and this is what we have to do. It doesn’t matter what you dreamed up. If it’s all fate, then it won’t matter what we do anyway. You said it yourself! So we might as well do what’s in our best interest.” Conner bent down and took a large rock from the shore and dropped it into the case. Thomas Terrywile’s former body splashed up and spattered his pants, black droplets that blended in with his hunting fatigues. He grabbed another rock and another. “I’ll sink this thing to the bottom, so deep it will be like it never existed.”

“You’re overloading it,” Michael finally said, clear and cogent.

“Are you helping or not?” Conner said.

Jonathan looked at Conner for a moment and then at the mountains around them, dark and wet. He looked out across the lake and up the hill they would have to climb to get home. There was no other place he could be right now. He was here, trapped in an unfolding tragedy of his own making. He waited a moment for the veil to be lifted, but nothing came. He imagined himself transported to another reality where one wrong decision hadn’t set his life on such a fatal course, but it was pointless. The true horror of life is that it continues on without miracle, without reprieve, until the end. We are powerless before it. He thought of the creature in his vision: Do you see? He picked up a small stone, walked to the box and dropped it inside. He crossed himself and said a prayer he didn’t believe, the same as he had done over Gene’s casket.

Conner closed the lid and sealed it shut again. Michael kneeled before the case, took out his Bowie knife and plunged the stainless steel through the hard plastic as if he were killing a man. He did it with violence and speed, his features distorted under the strain. The box they had carried across miles of forested mountain was now riddled front and back with thick gashes. It leaked onto the rocks.

Jonathan took one hundred feet of nylon rope from his backpack, tied one end to the raft and left the rest coiled on the shore. The snow fell harder now. The air was wet and heavy, his back numb. He could see the brothers shivering beneath their coveralls. There was no way they could attempt a hike back to the cabin tonight. They would need to set up camp, make a fire and dry their clothes. The temperature was dropping as evening approached. Conner looked frantic to leave, his normally calm demeanor replaced with desperation and fear.

“We will have to set up camp,” Jonathan said. “There’s no way we’ll make it back tonight.”

“We’ll make it back,” Conner said.

“You’re freezing,” Jonathan said. “And so am I.”

“We’re dropping all this stuff here,” Conner said. “We’ll be able to move faster. This will all work out. It’ll be fine.”

Jonathan saw no use in arguing further.

“Just get in the goddamned raft,” Jonathan said.

Jonathan walked to Michael, and together they took up the coffin one last time and clumsily walked it over the rocks and placed it in the center of the raft. It was heavy – much heavier than before, now that it was laden with stones. Jonathan nearly slipped under its weight.

Conner sat down in the rear of the raft so he could paddle, keeping his mass in line with the case, and waited; he looked like a traumatized child waiting on a mother who would never arrive. Jonathan saw the image of Conner’s body gutted and strung across the trees of Coombs’ Gulch.

Do you see?

He saw. It was the fate of a bullet fired ten years ago that traveled still, never stopping, no matter who or what it struck.

Michael and Jonathan stepped into the water and pulled the raft behind them into the shallows. The water rose quickly up to their thighs and shocked the breath from them. They pulled the raft and together set Conner adrift with the box and then walked back to shore. Conner took out a small paddle and began to row toward the center of the lake. The raft sagged with the weight. Jonathan took up the other end of the nylon rope. His legs felt frozen and stripped to the bone. The rope spooled out, and they watched as Conner floated silently away from them. The lake reflected a glassy gray from the skies; snowflakes kissed the surface. The rope went taut, and the raft stopped and turned slightly as if looking back at them.

Jonathan watched the ghostly scene – Conner alone on an overburdened raft with the body of Thomas Terrywile, drifting with unseen forces. Above there was only a gray expanse of nothingness and below a terrible cold. A deep nausea and dread overtook him.

Do you see?

He didn’t want to see, to accept it – few did. He searched himself for some remnant of faith, but found nothing. Why would God be here? They had left the holy far behind.

Conner steadied himself and attempted to get purchase of the sides of the case. His first attempt to lift it nearly sunk him. Water poured in from both sides.

“It’s too heavy,” Jonathan said.

“He’ll get it,” Michael said. “He’s good at this kind of stuff.” Jonathan remembered Conner deftly flipping those plastic cups at the East Side Tavern the night they shared this plan with him – the precision, the concentration, the soft touch. But this was not a parlor trick or a game. He gripped the rope tighter in his hand.

Conner tried again. He lifted one end of the case and attempted to tip it over the side into the water. The raft seemed to hold as he stood the case upright on its side at the bloated edge and began to push it over. With a final shove, the case splashed down into the lake. The side of the raft collapsed, and the water seemed to leap up and grab Conner by the shoulders. The opposite side of the raft kicked into the air and flipped over. Conner let out a small cry and fell beneath the surface.

The case floated for a brief moment and then sunk like a stone. In its place a dark bilge flowed upward. Bubbles coated in grime shook to the surface. Conner splashed around in the middle of it, his coveralls soaking through with water, overwhelming him. His hands scrambled for the overturned raft, but he was being pulled below the surface, unable to fight against the weight of his clothes, unable to strip them off.

Then Michael was in the water, shedding his clothes till he was bare-skinned. “Pull it back!” he screamed. “Pull it back now!”

The blackness flowed up from the bottom of the lake and spread. It was more than what should have been contained in the case, more than just the decomposed body of Thomas Terrywile. It spread like an oil slick across the surface so the whole lake turned from sky gray to the same deep blackness Jonathan had seen in his unconscious delirium.

“Pull him back!” Michael screamed again.

Jonathan pulled the raft, but Conner couldn’t reach it to grab hold. His head dipped below the surface again. He reappeared sputtering and splashing like a child who has fallen in the deep end of a pool, seconds from drowning. The black water poured into his mouth.

Michael dove into the lake and swam hard and fast. Jonathan followed, but the bottom fell off quickly and he was up to his waist in the shocking cold, his coveralls soaked through. He stopped. Michael was halfway to where Conner struggled and gasped, Michael’s pale white skin pulled tight and prickled with cold as he cut through the black slick. Jonathan could only stand and watch, the useless nylon rope in his hand.

Conner disappeared beneath the surface and was gone.

Michael dove and followed his brother down.