Penpal (9 page)

I looked at Josh; he was in even worse shape. Tears were running down his cheeks, and he was actually biting his hand to suppress a rising fit. Josh and I stood with our hands to our mouths allowing only the occasional snort and squeak to escape. The more I saw him trying to hold back his laughter, the more I felt that I no longer could. As I sensed the storm reaching its crescendo, I quickly turned around so I wouldn’t be caught in a feedback loop with Josh, and gradually I calmed myself down.

As I regained composure and could focus on something other than being quiet, I saw a flashlight sitting on a workbench. I walked over to pick it up and followed Josh back into the house. When we were walking back to Josh’s room, I could still feel the rumblings of laughter in my chest. The situation had
passed,
and
I had stifled myself, but just as you can suppress a sneeze with enough effort, the irritants are still there. Before I could even think to stop myself, I began giggling in the hallway, and Josh shushed me harshly as he ushered me into his room.

“I’m sorry, man!” I managed to force out amongst my laughter.

“Dude, shut up!” Josh snapped. “You’ll wake up Veronica!”

I had been focusing so hard on not laughing in the garage that, after the dam had finally breached, I had forgotten for a moment that Josh’s room was right across the hall from his older sister’s. I was so embarrassed by the thought of her hearing me giggle that the laughter inside me died, and with it went the brief moment of forgetfulness about why we had gone looking for the flashlight to begin with.

“You ready?” I asked Josh.

“Yeah. Is this everything?” he said, as he gestured toward the flashlight while picking up the walkie-talkies.

I felt a little foolish – I hadn’t even thought to bring the walkie-talkies, despite the fact that this was the one time where we might actually get to use them.

“Yeah, I think so.” I responded coolly. “Let’s go.”

Escaping Josh’s house turned out to be much easier than finding a flashlight in it. The window in his room opened to the back yard, and he had a latched wooden fence that wasn’t locked. The fence opened to the side of the house, and we crept along quietly as we passed under his parents’ bedroom window. We made a sharp turn away from his house and toward the trashcan-lined street. Once we were in the clear, we slipped off into the night, flashlight and walkie-talkies in hand.

There were two ways to get from Josh’s house to my old house. We could walk on the street and make all the turns, or go through the woods, which would take about half the time. It would have taken about two hours to walk there taking the street, but I suggested that we go that way anyway; I told him it was because I didn’t want to get lost. Josh scoffed at this idea and insisted that between the two of us we would have no trouble finding our way. I pointed out that it had been years since I’d walked through these woods; he waved his hands at me dismissively and said that he doubted that anyone knew these woods better than us after the lengths that we had gone to in order to explore them, even at night.

“But what about when we were kids? You remember how thick the woods get.”

“But we’re not kids anymore,” he responded.

Before I could rebut, he added that if we were seen walking along the street, someone might recognize him and tell his dad; he threatened to go home if we didn’t just take the shortcut. I accepted his preference because I didn’t want to go by myself. Nervously, I turned with Josh toward the line of trees across a vacant lot and walked on.

Josh didn’t know about the last time I walked through these woods at night and how hard it had been to find my way out.

The woods seemed much less frightening than I remembered. I was older now, and I found that with a friend and a flashlight the trees seemed less ominous and the sounds less foreboding. We seemed to be making pretty good time, too; though I wasn’t entirely sure where we were. But Josh appeared confident enough, and that bolstered my morale.

While not infused with the general eeriness that I had expected, there was still something surreal about the woods. This feeling was, I’m sure, at least partially informed by my memories of this place, but there was something about the way the trees twisted together in the dim light of the moon, as the wind rustled and whistled through them, that made it feel like a wholly different place than it was during the day. The fact that a place this untamed was wedged between stretches of houses and neighborhoods made it seem even more bizarre, but in truth, I knew there was nothing strange about any of this. My thoughts were just wandering as I tried to think about anything other than what it was like to be lost in these woods. I needed to break the silence.

“How much farther do you think it is?” We were on Josh’s side of the woods, so I thought he might have a better sense of the distance.

“I dunno. A while, I guess.”

“Well what’s ‘a while’ mean?”

“I don’t know, man! On the bright side, how far can you walk into the woods, right?”

The question reverberated in my ears.

“What did you say?” I uttered flatly, as my feet dragged to a halt.

Josh turned his head back a little over his shoulder and said with a half-grin, “How far can you walk into the woods?”

My face felt hot. That question. I hadn’t thought of that question in years – since the night it replayed over and over again in my head as I walked what could have been the same path we were taking now. And with the question now again ringing in my ears, the same panicked feelings that had prompted me to think of it that night as I wandered endlessly through this place began to return. I couldn’t think of why he would say that or where he had even heard it. My mind began whirling in a gyre as it clouded with that familiar feeling of being certain that you are dreaming while also knowing that you’re not.

Josh hadn’t stopped walking when I had, but I could hear him just up ahead of me, and I could see the meandering of the flashlight’s beam through the trees. I began walking again and caught up with my friend.

The bush was getting thicker and the trees more tangled. As we negotiated our way through it all, I was about to press Josh about what he had just said when the strap on my walkie-talkie got caught on a branch. Josh had the flashlight, and as I was struggling to get the walkie free, I heard Josh say,

“Hey man, wanna go for a swim?”

I looked over to where he was shining the flashlight, but I closed my eyes as I did, because I now knew where we were – though I hoped that, somehow, I was wrong. Slowly and fearfully, I opened my eyes and saw that he was shining the light on a pool float. This was where I had woken up in these woods all those years ago.

I felt a lump in my throat and the sting of fresh tears in my eyes as I continued to struggle with the walkie-talkie. I didn’t want to be there. It hadn’t even occurred to me that we might find this place, and once we did, I just wanted to keep walking and leave it behind for a second time. But as the branch clung determinedly to the strap, I found myself trapped there again.

Frustrated, I yanked on the walkie hard enough to break the branch that held it, and I turned and walked toward Josh who had partially reclined on the pool float in a mock sunbathing pose. I didn’t want to tell Josh how I had first found this place, so I knew that I had to temper my desperation to leave it. Slowing my pace, I tried to collect myself, and Josh – either in an attempt to light my way or obscure it – shined the flashlight directly on my face. The whole world went white for a moment, and even after Josh moved the light, its impression remained.

I couldn’t see anything, not even the hole.

I felt the dirt around the edge of the chasm give way, and I reeled back in an attempt to regain my balance, but it was not enough. I tumbled into the crater. It was only a few feet deep, but it had a fairly large perimeter. I was puzzled. I remembered this place vividly from that night– the topography of this particular area was etched deeply into my mind – but I didn’t remember the hole. I rose to my knees as I tried to wind back my mind’s clock.

That’s when I heard Josh scream.

I rose to my feet quickly and scrambled out of the hole. I tried to see what was happening, but Josh had the flashlight, and its beam moved wildly through the darkness as he flailed frantically on the float. He was panicked, and as the light shot sporadically across his face, I could see it was contorted with fear and desperation.

“What’s wrong, Josh?!” I yelled.

But he didn’t respond with anything more than the same cries that had pulled me out of the hole. He was trying to get up, but each time he would rise up even a little, he would fall immediately back onto the float, and the whole process would begin anew. I wanted to help Josh, but I couldn’t move myself any closer – my legs wouldn’t cooperate. I hated these woods. Josh threw the flashlight to free his hand, and I stared at it, still unable to break my paralysis.

It wasn’t until Josh roared coherently that he needed help that I was able to force myself to move. I ran and grabbed the discarded flashlight; I shined it on my friend, not knowing what to expect. The light washed over his body, and I could see that he was writhing violently, the weathered and worn shark-shaped float distending underneath him. At first, I couldn’t see anything near him that could be causing his panic. I shifted my gaze from the surroundings and back onto Josh and stepped closer. His plight came into view.

Spiders.

There were dozens of them crawling in criss-crossing patterns along his arms and across his torso. There must have been a clutch of them in the float. The closer I got, the more there seemed to be as my eyes became better able to distinguish their small bodies. Josh’s hands repeatedly returned to his face to wipe it clean of any spiders that might make the journey up there. His frightened and rapid movements stood once again in stark contrast to my resumed static state. Josh was not really afraid of spiders, at least not by the thought or sight of them, but I was. I stood there and wished that Josh had been plagued by something else –
anything
else. But I had to do something for him; he would have done something for me.

Setting the flashlight on the ground, I ran to my friend and shut all thoughts of the spiders out of my mind – if I thought about them, I would stop thinking about helping Josh. I grabbed his arms and leveraged back, pulling him up as steadily and strongly as I could. Once on his feet, he yanked off his shirt and began savagely beating it against the ground while I tried to brush the remaining spiders from his arms and neck.

When the urgency had passed, we stood there for a moment surveying one another and ourselves; picking and brushing the odd spider off the other, and occasionally slapping our hands against our own bodies in response to some tickling rogue hair or leaf. From a distance, we must have looked like two monkeys with neurological disorders. When the danger seemed to have passed and the spasms stopped, I bent down, picked up Josh’s shirt, and handed it to him. He snatched it out of my hands and shook it violently in case there were any stowaway arachnids, and after he pulled it over his head and slid his arms through, he leaned forward and said with the kind of tone you might hear in someone’s voice as they were punctuating a great argument with a final point, “Fuck spiders.”

We walked on.

I had my bearings back, and Josh knew that we were in my part of the woods, so he dropped back a little and I took the lead. We were getting closer to my house now, so we became more focused on what had brought us into the woods in the first place.

Boxes was my cat, but Josh had known him for almost as long as I had – so long, in fact, that Josh had his own set of stories about my cat. When we were in first grade, Josh was staying at my house for the night and was sleeping on the bottom bunk. At some point while he slept, Boxes climbed in bed with him and was still there when he woke up the next morning. Josh told me that when he opened his eyes Boxes was laying about a foot away from his face and was staring right at him. Josh said, or at least implied, that for a moment he felt like they were sharing something special – that they were making some kind of a connection. This moment lasted right up until Josh smiled and Boxes smacked him in the face with his clawless paws, quickly and repeatedly, just before he dashed out of the room, leaving Josh dazed. Of course, I didn’t witness any of this, but I was somewhat privy to the conclusion since Josh’s shouts were what woke me up that morning.

That night, as we walked through the woods, drawing ever closer to my old house, we took turns telling different parts of that story to one another.

We continued on our path, but as we passed the pile of dead Christmas trees, its weathered ornaments still healthy enough to catch the faintest light and cast it away, what Josh had said earlier in our journey still tugged at my thoughts. I confronted him abruptly.

“Why’d you say what you said back there?”

“What? About Boxes biting me on the nose? I swear he did!”

“No. Not that. You asked how far we could go into the woods. Why’d you ask that?”

“Huh? Oh. I dunno. I thought it’d be funny.”

“Yeah, but where’d you hear that question? Why would you ask me that?” I was trying not to let on that it had upset me.

“It’s that riddle. You told me that stupid riddle in kindergarten.”