Kesh (2 page)

As he forced each foot to move and descend one step at a time, he could feel himself beginning to panic, like a weight pushing against his chest. He stopped at the bottom of the staircase and breathed deeply. He put his hand on the wall to steady himself and whispered, “Calm down, Kesh. You can do this.” He pushed his chest out and raised his shoulders as tall as he could manage, and he set off down the hallway toward the living room to face his fears.

His legs felt heavy, and his heart pounded in his chest. He almost shuffled, forcing his feet to keep moving. The low rumble vibrated right through him, and his eyes watered. He caught his breath with effort, and he considered the wisdom of continuing. He looked back, thinking he might want to turn around, to run back down the hall and up the stairs, when a voice in his head spoke to him, as clear as it could be.

 It said, “Don't worry. They won't hurt you.”

 Kesh stopped and looked around for the speaker. The light from the living room bled into the dim hallway, but nobody else was there. Then he heard it again, a woman's voice he thought. “Don't give up, Kesh. You must do this.”

At that moment, he didn't think to wonder why he was hearing voices. It was a good, gentle, reassuring voice, and it was enough. He felt suddenly calmer, and he turned and continued the short journey to the living room. When he emerged from the hall, his new found confidence disappeared.

Suddenly, the terrible noise stopped and Kesh stood, limp, his eyes and mouth gaping in dumb, shocked silence. It wasn't so much that he couldn't scream. It was more that he couldn't comprehend what he saw in his parents' living room in his ranch-style home on Ontario Drive.

A big worn out overstuffed chair sat just inside the living room and to the left. It was this father's place to hunker down each night to read the paper and watch Jeopardy. Tonight though, instead of his father, a gigantic black cat lounged in the chair, his paws hanging lazily over the armrest and his tail curled around falling to the floor. The creature seemed to look past Kesh before yawning broadly, showing a mouth full of sharp, white teeth. Across the room, a magnificent and terrifying snake coiled itself comfortably on the couch, its huge head lying across the thick loop of its body.

Their nonchalance gave Kesh the impression of an afternoon conversation, but the cat's voice shook the room. Kesh was inside the room before he realized what would meet him there, and the creatures went silent and turned suddenly, staring at him with equally surprised, bemused eyes. The snake rose up tall as if it were preparing to strike, and the great panther roared. Then, without taking a moment to think about his options, Kesh bolted for the front door.

The next instant, twelve-year-old Kesh Jones, wearing slippers, sweatpants, a tee shirt, and a green cotton bathrobe, ran out of 346 Ontario Drive and into the familiar streets of his town, but they didn't look familiar tonight. Everything seemed alien, as if he was in the middle of bad dream. As he ran, he talked to himself to try to settle his nerves. “You're panicking, Kesh. Don't panic. Just keep moving.” He didn't know where he was going, but he let his feet follow the slick pavement. He simply knew at that moment, he had to escape. How could he live with those terrible creatures? He thought,
Who could blame me for being scared, for running away?
Then it dawned on him that the beasts must have killed and eaten his mom and dad. And he ran faster.

The temperature was nearly fifty degrees, fairly warm for an early November night in the north, but Kesh, dressed only in pajamas and a bathrobe, was cold. The street was glossy black in the dark, wet night. He went quickly now, spurred on by fear and the chill that was beginning to creep into him. The McCarthy's house next door was brightly lit with Christmas lights, even though Thanksgiving hadn't arrived yet, and the night streets were as barren as the stale paths of ghost towns.

As he moved farther away from his block, the streets and the world around him seemed less and less familiar. The air was getting colder, and the chill was sinking deeper into him as he moved farther away from the brightly lit street. He had been running aimlessly without a plan, and now found himself on the path that led through the park and down to the riverbank.

He played here sometimes, although his mother had warned him about the dangers from the fast deep water of the river, homeless tramps and drunks, and the dangerous wild animals. She would say, “Somebody's going to kidnap you, or something's going to eat you if you go down there.”

He had never seen any wild beasts out here. The truth is, until that night, he would have had a hard time telling anyone what a wild beast was. Evan had told him it was all baloney anyway. “They just tell you that to scare you, moron!”

Until today, he had believed Evan.

The sky was an overcast mass of shifting darkness and he almost had to feel his way along the path in the park. The air felt thick. It was blacker than any night he could remember, yet he seemed to be gaining his footing and he began to move surely without stumbling. He went steadily now, not so frantically. He went over the events of the past half hour.

None of it made sense, but he was sure it had happened. At least something had happened Now he had to figure out what to do next. He couldn't go home, but he wouldn't be able to stay out here either. It would be best to keep on the path and cut through the park to Evan's house.

He shivered again as a cool mist settled over him. A light rain coated his skin, and a long howl rose up in the distance. The middle of town and Ontario Drive now felt very far away. The howl came again, seeming closer now. He walked along more quickly and began to wonder if something, or someone, was watching him from the woods. As he went deeper into the park, the rain intensified moment by moment, until it drove down hard and soaked through his clothing to his skin.

Lightning flashed above him, illuminating the billowing black clouds. He kept moving. The thunder roared and the electrical storm threw a blinding white light on the leafless trees ahead and the rushing rain-swollen river to his left.

After each flash he counted, “one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three…” He watched the sky, anticipating the next jolt of sound and light. His neck grew tense and ached with the cold. The intervals grew shorter, until the sky cracked open in one terrifying explosion, and Kesh's insides shook with the force. He ran in panic, moving farther and farther into the woods as the thunder and lightning drifted into the distance. Then the rain eased to a dull drizzle, and the air grew calm.

Kesh stopped and gasped for breath, looking all around him. In the daylight, Kesh knew the park well enough to know where he was and where his house would be. Now, the bright familiar paths and neatly arranged maple and birch trees felt strange and ominous. His thin clothes provided him no protection from the driving rain and cold, and his jaw shivered in spite of his trying to make it stop.

He looked around trying to find his bearings – to figure out where he was, and where he had come from, but in the darkness and weather, the world seemed eerily strange and unfamiliar. A chill surged through his body, and he began to run again, along what he thought was still the path.

Even in the near blackness, he could sense the thick trees off to the side. His fingers were stiff, and icy streams trickled down his back. He stopped, his heart thundering in his chest, and he panted for breath. He stood gathering his thoughts and, under his breath, reassured himself. “Okay, Kesh, you're not really lost. It's just the park. You're going to be okay.” He corrected himself. “I'm going to be okay. I just need to get out of the rain until I can figure out where I am.”

Kesh had read about people suffering from exposure where the body temperature dropped until, in the worst cases, they died. He felt much calmer now and, in spite of the danger, he moved slowly, scanning the trees as he went. He noticed he was no longer shivering and the woods and path were brighter, clearer although dawn was many hours off, and the sky remained shrouded in dense black clouds.

He could make out the leaves of the trees, and even the outline of neat little picnic areas arranged just off the road in neatly manicured camping areas seemed almost illuminated.

The rain now seemed to roll off his back and he felt much warmer than he had. It was as if the barrier between his skin and the atmosphere, the air and water, had disappeared. He scanned the area for one of the small utility shacks he had remembered seeing that summer.

His nose caught a familiar odor, and he glanced to his right where a small, narrow shed was set back from the path off of the road. At this point, he would willingly spend the night in a dry outhouse, but that hope was dashed when he saw the padlock on the wooden door. He circled the building looking for a way in, but the door was securely latched and locked and the windows were covered by a thick steel mesh.

He sniffed again. Then he padded back to the main trail. He looked up to get his bearings and a new, different shiver went through his body. Eyes, like glowing embers, peered back at him from far inside the woods. In an instant, they were gone and Kesh began to run.

By now, he was reconsidering the wisdom of taking off so rashly. He was starting to think maybe he should go home, but his mind brought him back to the terrifying image of the big cat, and he kept moving. He looked at the surrounding dark woods, and he suddenly realized how far his panic had brought him. He wondered if he would ever be able to go back to his troubled home.

The rain began to come down again, intensifying with every second until the downpour pounded hard against his skin. The comfort he had imagined a moment before was washed away by the storm's ferocity. His teeth chattered, and his body shook with a damp cold that had settled around and into his bones. More than anything else, he knew he needed to get warm. So, when he saw a glow ahead just beyond the curve of the bank, he quickened his step, hoping for some place to get out of the cold, and some place to get safely out of the storm and whatever else his imagination might conjure.

Then a new, surprising odor stung him so suddenly that he stopped. He would not remember it as a smell. It was more like a feeling, a mixture of confusion and fear. He tried to locate the smell to help him get a bearing on where he was. Something moved in the bushes just off the trail, and he sprinted.

It wasn't a house or a store. It wasn't even much of a building, little more than a crude lean-to, but just then, it looked pretty good. A blazing orange fire greeted Kesh. It was set under an overhang, in front of the crude shack of cast off plywood, aluminum and plastic sheeting, closed on three sides, covered on top, the open side facing the river.

The fire burned brightly, invitingly, just inside the opening. In most circumstances, a fresh fire and a ready shelter would have seemed too good to be true, but Kesh was tired, freezing, frightened, and verging on exhaustion. Right now it didn't matter that ready appearance of a fresh fire and shelter in his moment of need made no sense. Kesh's normal caution and fear were overridden by his need for warmth, so he eased into the dry, warm nest.

He scanned the tiny hut; there didn't appear to be anyone there. Still, it was obvious somebody had been in the hut, and probably just moments before. He called out, “Hello!” The word came out in a chattering, raspy whisper. He cleared his throat and called out again, “Hello! Is anybody here?”

Maybe I scared whoever it was away
, he thought. On any other none of this would have seemed possible, but today was not any other day. So he crawled into the back of the hut and lay down. He told himself he would not sleep and was determined to keep a close watch on the opening. Then his head dropped to the blankets and, wrapped in the warmth, he drifted off to sleep.

“So you've finally come.” The voice startled Kesh and he jumped up from a deep sleep. It came from a pile of rags at the back of the makeshift hut. To Kesh's astonishment, the rags sat up, and the messy pile of dirt became a grizzled face, peering out through a pair of neat little spectacles over a disheveled graying beard. The rags spoke again. “How did you come to be out on such a terrible night?”

Kesh jumped up from his makeshift bed and began to back away from the fire and the strange creature. “I don't know.” The words jumped out between Kesh's chattering teeth. “I just know I was cold, and I needed to get warm.” He backed away half a step as he spoke, but the rain pelted his back urging him to move inside again just enough to keep dry. The man cocked his head to the side as if her were studying the boy.

Kesh said, “I'm freezing and wet. I need a place to dry off.” He realized that he probably looked as weird to the little man as the man looked to him. He was still soggy, lost in the too-big, lime green robe his mother had bought for him, and he was painfully small. He had to admit to himself that he did not look so different from the shrunken creature before him. It was a wonder the odd little man hadn't asked him
what
he was.

“Fair enough, boy. In any case, well done, and welcome.” The creature's small eyes stared at Kesh intently. “Tell me young fellow, what is your name?”

Kesh hesitated, but he was here, and telling the man his name wasn't going to make his situation any worse. “My name is Kesh, Kesh Jones.”

“Ah, Kesh Jones. I see.” Kesh thought he said it as if he recognized the name. The man looked at him over his glasses and seemed to study the boy for a long moment. “Tell me, Kesh Jones, do you know where you are and why you've come to me on this awful night?”

Kesh shrugged. He couldn't take his eyes off the man's glasses. Everything else about him suggested rags and filth to Kesh, but his glasses were crystal clear, and the small, squinty eyes behind them were a deep, dark brown that glistened in the firelight. “I think this must be a dream. This whole night is a dream.”