Broken Things Read online

  He wished he had his own cell phone. He could call them up and find out when they were coming back. They didn’t even trust him with theirs, though. What could they have forgotten? If there were important things that they hadn’t brought, it had to mean they’d come back. They hadn’t brought any books, but that was okay. They didn’t bring the portable movie player, and they hadn’t let him bring his portable game unit. He’d tried to sneak it, but they had found it and made him leave it in his room. Their definition of camping didn’t match his. They shouldn’t be making rules for camping if they weren’t going to stay. If he had to spend it by himself, then he should’ve been allowed to do whatever he wanted to. He doubted that they had ever gone camping before either.

  He gazed up at the mountains. They encircled him in every direction. Mountains had always been distant things, breaking up the horizon whenever you got out of the city, but had always been so far away. Once he thought he could walk to them, if he was so inclined, but this had been an awfully long drive, and it made the notion of walking seem silly. They’d given him a stash of granola bars and fruit snacks for the drive up, all of which were now gone. He’d eaten all of them within the first half hour of the drive. There would be more in some of the food bags. He should eat them now and make them go back for more when they returned.

  He should climb a mountain while his parents were away. They wouldn’t let him when they got back. They didn’t like him climbing stuff, especially his mother. She always thought he was going to break something.

  But he was already broken. He pushed the thought away.

  From the top of a mountain, would he be able to see his house? Maybe at least he could see the city. Maybe he would also be able to see when his family came back. It didn’t look too steep. He thought about it for a bit until he decided he was still hungry and instead dug through the grocery bag until he found more fruit snacks.

  He had to do anything other than think about how long his family had been gone already. He wouldn’t worry. And they would never know that every once in a while he’d go into the tent and cry.

  It became dark much earlier than he felt it should. The day passed by with him rummaging through the food (and eventually finding the junk food snacks) and watching the road. Could his dad find his way back here again? He’d taken a side road, and he knew his dad was smart, but that didn’t mean he still couldn’t get lost. He’d seen other people here, back at the lake. Some of those people had to be camping. Maybe they’d come by eventually. He could hike to the lake tomorrow maybe, and then one of them could give him a ride home. Or if his parents were coming back, he could just camp there with the other people, just for safety. Even being with strangers would be better than being alone.

  He’d never felt so alone. There had always been a feeling of someone nearby, if only a house away. He’d heard of people getting lost in the wilderness. If he tried walking, what would happen? If he followed the road, would he wind up deeper in the mountains? All of the maps he’d seen of Idaho showed a lot of wilderness, once you were in it. A lot of wilderness with towns spread out far and wide. He wouldn’t leave the roads, no matter what.

  With the night the mountains and trees transformed into looming shadows of pure darkness that felt as though they could hide anything. And though the stars were bright, the mountains hid the moon. He hid in the tent to await the morning, and somehow managed to find sleep.

  2

  It crawled, dragging itself down the mountain. Once the earth gave way beneath its weight and it had tumbled painfully down into the draw between two ridges. It had never felt so weak. It couldn’t tell how far away the kid was, but the fear called to it. The emotion, so primal, filled the air, a conglomeration of sensations that urged it on. Its desiccated flesh tingled with it. It hadn’t detected fear so great in such a long time. If only its legs worked. It had grown horribly weak.

  It slowly made its way through the trees, over roots and through the foliage that tried to hold it back. Long grass and brush wrapped around its wrists. It forced itself on, one arm in front of the other, gripping rocks and hard earth, grabbing roots and such to drag its broken form ever closer to its destination.

  Reach. Grab. Pull. The fear became thicker, more tangent, as it drew ever nearer.

  3

  The chill of the morning permeated the tent. Josh huddled in his sleeping bag, preserving what warmth he could. The cacophony of nature made it difficult to sleep. Once he thought he heard something, and he hoped his parents were back, but he couldn’t bring himself to call out. Where during the day he suspected bears or wolves, night had brought thoughts of other things, like monsters. If anything truly horrible existed, it would be here within these woods. For all he knew, it would be a Sasquatch, and he had no idea if such a creature had a taste for eating children.

  It made his fears back home seem almost silly. Sometimes he’d been afraid to get up and use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Being downstairs alone had always felt a little creepy, like another world in the same house. Even in his bedroom, with his parents but down the hallway, odd shadows became ghosts, and the trees outside his window became horrific demons. None of them compared to whatever would lurk here, in the woods. This place made childhood fears so trivial. When he got home, he’d never be afraid again. The forest, its potential, it was simply overwhelming. Here the monsters would be ancient, devoid of humanity, alien in the way they saw the world. People would be snacks. The tent alone remained his only protection from the unknown.

  Despite the cold, despite his fears, eventually his bladder decided for him. The sun lit his orange tent in strangely opaque neon, a light only possible with such fabrics. The outside world filled with the sounds of singing birds and a raucous cacophony of crows. He exited the tent, hoping beyond hope to see his parents. He pictured his mother fixing pancakes and sausages on a portable grill, and his dad would be at the campfire, brewing coffee. Instead he met a barren campsite.

  But things were different from the night before. Bags of food were strewn everywhere, torn open and scattered across the camp. Nothing looked untouched and only scraps remained, and the wrappings were shredded, drifting across the ground back and forth with each gust of breeze. He sat down at the table and found more tears wanting out, but crying no longer brought him any comfort, only a headache. Worse, beneath the trash, large paw prints were everywhere. Had it been a bear?

  After emptying his bladder, trying to look everywhere at once just in case whatever had raided his camp came back, he gathered up what scraps he could find. The animals had left him with very little. Some granola bars and fruit snacks were still untouched. They were enough to satisfy the hunger, if only to remove the edge, and his cooler of soda cans were also intact. He found a partially eaten bag of bagels and a box of fruit that had been ignored, and quickly ran them to the tent. He’d have to make them last.

  How long would his parents stay away? They had obviously been fighting, but they couldn’t stay away for more than one night. They should be back any time. They’d have to come back and fix him breakfast. If only he could warn them that something had gotten into the food, they could stop somewhere and bring more. There were small towns before the mountains. They could stop at any one of those. But if they had to leave again, he would go with them.

  But what if they didn’t come back? The only reason they wouldn’t return for him would be if something had happened to them. They loved him and they wouldn’t abandon him. They must’ve wrecked down the road, and with nobody around, needed help. Perhaps they weren’t that far away!

  Josh ran down the road, around the first few bends. As he ran, he found himself quickly becoming short of breath. His legs suddenly didn’t want to support him. He stumbled over to rest against a tree as a strange tingling filled his forehead. The world about him moved in an odd rocking manner. Though he knew it was only in his eyes it didn’t give him any comfort, and for a few seconds he felt as though he might vomit. His eyesight shimmered and hi
s world lost color, bleached out into gray tones. He covered his eyes and rubbed them, and sat down in the middle of the road, rubbing the tears away with his fists.

  Though he couldn’t measure time, nor did he try, thirty minutes later his head had cleared enough for him to walk back to the camp. His vision had cleared a little, but everything still looked a little gray. The ringing in his ears seemed to get unbearably loud. He crawled back into his tent and closed his eyes and waited for it to pass.

  I don’t want to be sick, he thought, what’s wrong with me? What little he knew only came from conversations that he overheard. His parents had spoken of it frequently over the last month, though never to him. Josh only received reassurances. At first, the conversations were about him. They worried, wondering how bad the damage was and how much he could heal (and if he ever pressed, that’s what they’d tell him: “You’ll be fine.”).

  He knew that his head didn’t work right since the accident. He had frequent headaches, and once had a brief nosebleed. The noise in his head varied in volume. Sometimes it would get so loud he thought his head would split, while at other times it become so soft that he could hardly hear it. He realized rather fast that the more physical he got the louder the noise, as though it strained whatever parts were going bad in his head. Why hadn’t his dad just let the tech replace them?

  There were benefits. For a while he got new things to keep him entertained, as they tried to help him keep his mind off of the condition. He didn’t care. It just was, like needing to breathe and eat, and sometimes he could use it to get a new toy or video game. They let him watch TV all day long if he wanted to. He just had to stay out of the way. It would’ve been nice to replace the bike, but the look in his dad’s eyes made him think twice about bringing that up.

  As the day went on he felt better, enough so that he felt he could leave the tent. But the heat of the day made it feel like it was an oven. Sometimes a breeze would come up strong enough to shake the tent, but it didn’t provide any comfort from the sun. In the daylight, the only noise beyond the wind and the water were the birds and bugs, and so many different kinds! He saw beetles larger than anything they had back at home, in every different color.

  The state of the site filled him with despair. If his parents didn’t come back soon he would starve to death! Or worse, whatever had eaten all of his food would come back looking for more and eat him! Why would they leave him alone? They knew he was broken. It wasn’t fair. They were wasting their time trying to teach him some lesson that made no sense. The accident hadn’t been his fault. And he didn’t care if they never bought him another stupid bike. Maybe they wanted him to be afraid. If that was the case, he wouldn’t let them know. They would never do this to him again. They’d be lucky to drag him to the mall.

  A sudden piercing cry from above made him to look up. High in the sky an eagle soared, not flapping his wings yet staying aloft as though it were the most effortless thing in the world. He’d never seen an eagle before. It soared so high he couldn’t make it out clearly, despite being the largest bird he’d ever seen. It seemed so much more powerful than other birds, flying beyond all of the others, as though removed from their lesser concerns.

  The eagle could probably see where his parents were, if they were down the road. It could probably see the city! If only he could get that high! He needed to climb a mountain. Yet the very thought of climbing made his mind spin again. He watched the eagle until it too, like his parents, disappeared beyond the mountains.

  4

  Three days later Josh’s scraps of food ran out. Dirt and grime filled the tent from his entering and exiting, and it drew in every conceivable bug, when unfortunately he’d left the zipper on the flaps open. Earwigs hid under everything. He’d decided that if his parents weren’t coming back he would go out to find them. He resolutely stood by his decision that they wouldn’t have abandoned him. Therefore they had to be in trouble. They must’ve driven off the edge of the road, or crashed into a tree, or something. It was the only possible explanation that made sense. Not a single car or truck had come down the road the entire time.

  He spent his days wandering around his small piece of the wilderness. He spent the most time by the river skipping and throwing rocks, but he couldn’t see the road, and between his head and the water he wondered if he could even hear a car if it approached. He wandered through the trees for a bit, always careful to keep the camp in sight. He found a branch that made a good sword to fight trees with, threw rocks at a chipmunk until it ran away (he never hit it), and trekked half-way up a mountain before he’d got bit by a horsefly, ruining the experience. He even saw a few deer pass by. They stared at him curiously, and traipsed away, unconcerned by his presence.

  He felt things changing in his head though he couldn’t tell what exactly was happening. Maybe things were slowing down or wobbling. He vowed to stay true to what he’d told his dad. He would fix himself. There had to be a way. They hardly ever let him on the tablet computer, but there would be something on the internet. He’d study and learn what he could do. Too bad there weren’t computers in the woods, he could’ve got started.

  Each night went by much the same. He would hear creatures outside his tent, rummaging through the garbage of what had once been his food, the stuff not worth picking up, searching for scraps they had missed. Josh prayed that whatever was out there wouldn’t try to get into the tent for what he had. Once one of the animals actually put its nose against the tent and sniffed, rubbing against the fabric as though trying to decide if getting in would be worth it. It sounded small, like a fox or raccoon. He’d dug through the boxes his mother had left, but all he had were spare clothes. They hadn’t even packed him a flashlight. It made his nights nearly unbearable.

  Evening came and his stomach felt unbearably empty. He had one can of soda remaining, but he decided to save it for breakfast. But there was something else, tonight felt different. It felt just as uncomfortable as the other nights, but he sensed a new element. As the sun dipped behind the mountains and the shadows grew longer it felt as though something were watching him.

  It grew too cold and dark to remain outside much longer. He turned, sensing something, or someone, in the trees. He could nearly look right at where he could feel the eyes, but he only saw trees and brush and shadows.

  “Hello?” he called out, but nothing answered.

  He couldn’t tell if anything were out there. Could it be another deer? His mind played tricks on him every night, making monsters out of shadows until he would rush to the tent and hide in his sleeping bag. Fortunately nothing had eaten him yet. But the shadows tonight felt alive, sinister, much more than usual. Sometimes he just knew when he was being watched, like feeling eyes on the back of his head. This felt much like that. The shadows seemed… real. If the wind would die down, and if he could separate noises from the river and his head, he thought perhaps he could almost hear breathing.

  If it were, it belonged to someone sicker than him, or not human, someone that had bad lungs, rasping like a smoker needing to cough. Every hair stood up on the back of his neck, and he felt an overwhelming need to run. But where would he run to in the dark? He had nowhere to go. And how did it get dark so rapidly? As he’d sat there staring, watching for movement, the night blanketed his campsite until even the shadows were indiscernible from one another, and the tree tops were black silhouettes against a midnight blue sky.

  Josh forced himself to walk as nonchalantly to his tent as possible. Don’t show fear. That’s what they tell you about animals. What if it’s not an animal? Don’t think about that. Just… walk… It’ll be gone in the morning. It’s just shadows, nothing more.

  Hiding in the tent felt a little safer, if only in the fact that he wasn’t lost in the woods. Well, technically he knew he was lost. Otherwise he’d be home in his warm bed. His ears strained against the natural cacophony of the environment, trying to separate and discern different sounds, praying to not really hear anything. The high-pitched whi
ne from his head fought to blanket out everything else. Perhaps the damage was a blessing, giving him the bliss of ignorance.

  No. There was something there. It sounded like… something pulling itself across the ground.

  Drag. Silence. Drag. Silence. Drag. He could hear it pull itself across the twigs and dirt and leaves, coming closer, getting louder. It moved so slowly, yet steadily. Whatever it was it had seen him enter the tent. And it sounded big.

  The darkness of the tent was absolute, no light, not from a moon nor the stars, penetrated the fabric. Though a barrier from the outside, Josh felt like a mouse in a thin cardboard box. He squeezed his pillow tightly and scrunched deep into his sleeping bag. He could no longer hear the whining in his head over how loudly his heart beat in his chest. He was sure that whatever approached could hear both.

  The thing continued ever closer and closer, right up to his tent. Josh’s eyes were wide but he couldn’t see anything. He tried to breathe quietly, to control his whimpering, and to mute the sound of his brain. He couldn’t stop any of it. Something like a paw, or a hand, moved along the tent, the structure shifting, fighting to remain up as the thing’s weight pressed against it. Somehow it didn’t collapse. He strained his eyes to see it, he could barely make out the walls of the tent, see the impression of something leaning into it, coming dangerously close to collapsing his tenuous shelter.

  He fought to find his voice but his throat wouldn’t work. He only emitted a tiny whimper. It patted the tent, searching. And then Josh heard the zipper.

  It unzipped slowly, sounding impossibly loud against the stillness of the woods, a premonition of something horrible, unknowable. The thing slid down with the zipper, using its own weight to pull it open. If only he could see. What was it? But he didn’t want to see it! He closed his eyes tightly, willing himself to be quiet, to become invisible. Maybe it couldn’t see him in the dark either.