chapters of isolation

Chapter 1

Shaun clenched and unclenched his jaws with a force that after much repetition in his agitation cracked a tooth. The chip was sent tumbling in the desert of his mouth. He then pushed it forward with his arid tongue, caught it in a quick nip of his front teeth, formed his lips into a barrel, and shot it with an airy spit across the room. It bounced in a distant corner with a dull tap and ting as it ricocheted off the floor and hit the washbasin in the dark. Carmine looked up from his whittling and acknowledged the noise over his shoulder then turned a blank stare toward his companion, then back to the knife in hand.
“Funny thing…” began Shaun, Carmine didn’t look up from his work. “Us being trapped here like this, by nothing at all really. I mean really, you look out there and you see what? Clouds, nothing but clouds, and trees...” Shaun drifted into a waking sleep as he peered out the window, “…and a wall of trees fortressing us in.” He turned abruptly back to Carmine, his impatience boiling over, “What are we doing here, I say. Why can’t we just walk off this mountain? I ask you.”
“How’s that?” Carmine said finally, the noise of Shaun not registering as speech until now.
“I said, how come you and I have to just sit here, starving like this? What’s stopping us from getting out of this god-forsaken little shack?” Not waiting for a reply he adds anxiously, “huh?”
“You know the answer to that,” Carmine replied.
“I suppose I do,” there was a long pause as Shaun leaned back on his chair from the table where the two men sat, looked again out the window and folded his arms to an imagined chill, “but what if I don’t care anyway?”
“It’ll make you care. Get real personal in a way neither of us would like.” Carmine, head still bent towards his hands covered in little wood shavings, cut Shaun in two as he stared through the brow of his own skull for the severity of the angle at which he held himself. He looked angry, not angry per se, but serious beyond a joke. - the seriousness and finality for which someone might chance to lose his or her own life defending a decision.
Shaun was no longer defiantly leaning in his chair, batting around admittedly, even to himself revealed in his defeated expression and obedience to Carmine, stupid ideas. He was instead sitting like a school child, erect and attentive in his chair, the sick jaundiced flicker of the candle flame between them did nothing to mask his sheepishness. Shaun’s chair sounded like an atom bomb returning to the floor; the quiet of the room was vacuous by the thrust of Carmine’s voice. Shaun was no irrational youth having just turned thirty, nor a foolish adventurer, but Carmine was still the older and more experienced of the two, easily twenty years his senior. So he yielded judgment to Carmine and remained indoors.

Thirteen days had passed since they first found shelter having been caught in a rather abrupt coastal range storm. Shaun had been hiking alone for a weekend away to recharge as many outdoor enthusiasts do. Carmine’s purpose wasn’t known, but Shaun surmised it to be much the same as his own, even though he seemed stern and joyless at the time of their meeting and still. Shaun and Carmine had met up both searching for some place to make camp or shelter from the storm. Drenched, hungry and getting dark this little wooden cabin had seemed providence, instead of the prison they now regarded it as.

They are no longer penned indoors by weather, the sky not having dropped a drip in weeks, rather they are quite free to wander the grounds around the cabin, which is no more than a clearing on a wooded hill top, with tufts of thick grass, bracken, a bramble of blackberry full of desiccated fruit and thorns, and rocks. They are however, not free to wander further. The Woods it seems is the boundary. Why or what they don’t know, but they can see it and are aware of it, this unexplained arbitrary boundary of forest. The woods are just visible beyond the ever-present fog that surrounds their solitary mound. Huge Firs stand as ghostly sentries in a sea of Alders barely visible beyond the white shroud. And that is their limit. They have tested it again and again. Most of the time without hardship, merely returning confused, tired, another day wasted, lost and found again at the cabin. Both men have, one time or another, been at last brought to tears when the futility was realized; all work and strain reaped nothing toward their goal of redemption. Food is all but gone. Shaun, usually one to pack heavy on the calories when marching into the backcountry, had enough to stretch a week. Carmine, seemingly of similar mind, also had rations to spare…and continues to. Shaun has become suspicious of his companions ready food. Shaun has investigated Carmine’s backpack to no avail when he leaves it unattended for a suitable amount of time for such things. Yet, whenever their need seems dire and thoughts turn toward their growling stomachs, Carmine seems to reappear with something, however little. Still, Shaun refuses to get too worked up about it, because he fears his own sanity and questioning the food of the one who provides sounds like lunacy.

Shaun that night tossed and turned on his sleeping bag, too hot to zip inside, too cold to stay completely uncovered he wrestles. It was still early spring in Oregon, so temps were cool, yet he was sweating. His situation was uneasy at best, so fertile is the breeding ground for anxiety. Flashes of lightening dashed through the window, illuminating the slumbering back of his cabin-mate against the wall. Similarly a flash of admiration for how easy sleep and calm comes to Carmine, then contempt and suspicion. Shaun rolls and feels the warm sweat on his back turn icy that sends a shiver through his body. Calmed a bit now, one eye buried in the pillow the other staring wide eyed awake out the window. The white, the fog, the cloud, their prison rolled back a moment and revealed a star. Shaun blinked, and when he re-opened his eye the hole in the sky had closed once again. He disregarded it as hallucination, the stars he sees in the back of the eye-lid buried in his pillow are no more real. He heard no thunder accompanying the lightening, but faintly he thought he heard its resound, albeit quite late. But this thunder was odd, it didn’t rise and fall, flash and fade, heave like the breath of slumbering giants as typical thunder might. This was a steady roll, like that of a drum. Varying its pitch only a little in its slow cadence. Wind maybe? No. Then it grew and became familiar, not thunder at all. How strange after all this time that it should be there. Never far from the coast was he on his hike before becoming lost, but in all his time here he never heard the tussle or break of water, nor a single gull. Yet now, growing louder in the middle of the night unbeknownst to his companion, clear as day it was there. Nearly drowning out all else, becoming the light, the room, encompassing and dissolving all, maddeningly, the ocean. Shaun gripped his pillow, sacred, in disbelief. He then cautiously as though afraid of being seen, rose from his bed and crept to the window and peered out.

Chapter 2

Black. Black is all that he saw. No further help from those rare flashes of lightening from before. Whatever storm there was in the distance somewhere was now gone. The ocean was still there. Not nearly as loud, instead believable, a volume that seemed in keeping from days, now weeks before he’d ended up here. He quickly and quietly stepped from the window and out the door; perhaps outside he’d be able to surmise its direction. Maybe this would be a way out. On the porch of the cabin it seemed all around him, defeating him every second he remained outside. He moved cautiously into the yard and began searching about and peering with his ears. Focusing his ears each way he turned he hoped for some source of the sound. Excited and nervous his heart pounded and lungs bellowed; he had to concentrate on controlling his breathing so he could hear over it. At times he simply held his breath to listen, feeling and hearing his heart in his ears. Suddenly he felt for sure he noticed it was a bit louder there, just beyond a blackberry bramble at the boundary of the wood in front of the cabin and began in that direction. All this time trapped, everything seemed an arbitrary attempted to make sense of their situation and hope at random they might stumble on a way out. Now, no matter how small, Shaun truly felt there was a chance here. He began to feel empowered by his decision and the certainty of that sound calling him on. No sooner had he been striding across the spongy glade, he was in the fog and out of sight. The ocean was calling him deeper and he felt assured this was it and no fear possessed him, but then it grew quiet and the sound began to fade. He began to walk faster in a vain attempt to catch it, but Shaun’s confident stridulations slowed to a clumsy saunter as fear and uncertainty closed back in to reclaim him. Then he stopped completely as the last of the ocean left him. It was black and he was firmly in the woods.

He spun around and immediately marched back the way he came. His once confident steps falling on solid ground were now met with marsh, tufts of fern, trees, logs and decaying detritus. The fog began to relent and he thought he could see the outline of the cabin beyond, but then something grabbed him. Cold and hard by the neck it pinched, and as he struggled to free himself his feet alighted from the ground and the only record of the disturbance was one broken chanterelle.

Chapter 3

A woman sloped into the room. Languidly, her gown draped around he body, falling open off of one of her breasts, intentionally, inviting. Shaun fell back a bit; he’s a taken man, but still a man he watched as she walked toward him. Suddenly, behind her, the walls of the room burst into pieces and following close behind, a wrecking ball. As if pulled by a thousand rearing horses tied to a rope around his waste he is pulled from the scene through an open window behind him revealing the exterior of the house. It is his father’s house. The further he gets, the more the house disappears, crumbling on its foundations and becoming a pile of rubble. No more than100 feet away he finds himself no longer being dragged away, he claws his way back to the house. As he gets closer the house begins to reappear unharmed by the wrecking ball. Shaun looks in through a window to see the inside is destroyed; the house was but an empty shell now.

A cold wet tickling awoke Shaun. He opened his eyes to the dull soft light of the sky flooding through the fingers of a fern, and a blade of grass at his nose. A singular drip disturbed when he stirred, landed directly on his lens causing him to quickly close his eye and clasp his palm over his socket. Confusion set in a moment later when the cold sting of the droplet faded and recollection of what had happened began to form. He looked around and found he was in the middle of the clearing in front of the cabin and standing over him was Carmine.
“It was you!”
“What?” Carmine screwed his face.
“That grabbed me.”
“I haven’t touched you.’
“Last night, in the dark. You grabbed me from the fog.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I awoke just now to find you laying in the middle of the shrub here.”
“Uh, then…” Shaun trailed off as he looked narrowly into the wall of fog that seemed thicker today.
“What are these marks on your neck?”
Shaun, for a moment had thought it a dream and perhaps he sleep walked out into the yard in his stressed state, having been surviving short of sleep and food. Then he felt at the back of his neck and what he hadn’t felt until then appeared as dull pain and deep gouges, three of them, running vertically up his nape, only slightly crosswise. When he bent his neck and looked around then, they stung him severely, odd that a moment ago he had felt nothing. “I don’t know. Last night I thought I heard the ocean. I thought I could find it and maybe find my way off this hill. I felt for sure… I can’t be sure now if it was a dream or not…I don’t know. Then the noise faded, I came to sort of, and found myself in the woods.”
“You idiot” Carmine scoffed disapprovingly.
“I know…but it seemed so plausible. I saw the cabin and was making my way back here, when I felt something grab my neck. Then…I don’t know,” he finished rubbing his neck carefully.
“You’re bats…or it was a dream and I’m hoping for your sake it was. I can’t take it being stuck here with someone verging on insanity.”
“I’m not insane…I can’t explain it…” Just then Shaun trailed off noticing the drag marks. “Here what’s this?” He stood up, groaning with stiffness and the pain of his neck and pointed to the marks.
“Odd, they seem to start just over there,” Carmine noticed. “If I hadn’t been witness to strange things already I’d probably tie you up until we get out of here, just to prevent me from being dragged down by your stupidity.” Carmine turned back for the cabin and Shaun watched him go, feeling like a child.

Then a metallic baying rose from the fog. Carmine froze and Shaun saw the muscles in his back tense, as if he could feel the hard hot breath of hungry jaws upon him, and his head slowly perked up and swivelled over his shoulder. He first regarded Shaun on the ground looking sheepishly towards him and then to the white wall of fog. Shaun followed his gaze. Again, a low, hardly discernable sound, but they both recognized it as the same. They’d heard it before on their first night in the cabin, but both at the time refused to give it credence. Then it came again from the undergrowth beyond the glade, like the iron chest of a barge laid open on the rocks, bellowing deep hollow tones as it strums against the stone. This time it came thundering home, and planted firmly in forefront of their minds without apology. This unseen thing, became the headpiece of their fear. Whatever will was beyond the fog, keeping them there, this voice growling death became its mouthpiece at that moment. This time it commanded the full spectrum of their sympathetic nervous systems: their ears perked, hair stood on end, blood ran hot and goose bumps surfaced – all symptoms of flight response, yet they could not. They couldn’t feel more helpless. They both slowly crept backwards, fighting their paralysis, feeling their way with infant footsteps to the cabin and through the door, shutting it silently and latching it. What use was the latch? They hadn’t a clue; it was a minor action that made them feel only remotely more safe. But how do you keep yourself safe from the unseen, from the supernatural, if that is what it was, with a door latch? The rain then re-began.