Boy in the Box

he saw his wife. Mary’s thick brown hair fell heavy down her back. She was clothed, wearing the sweatpants and T-shirt combination he found so sexy on those long, lazy weekend days when they felt cut off from the rest of the world – the early days before the trappings of this life had fully formed and moved in for the kill. The days when they would lounge around and rent a movie, make love in the afternoon and talk about whatever came to mind. She had been his best friend and lover. She had been his whole world. She looked at him now through the trees of Coombs’ Gulch – a ghost, a memory, a reflection of the past. He smiled the moment he saw her, and the same smile flashed across her face, too. Everything he hid from her over the years was out here, buried in this purgatory of mountains and trees, burning through his arms and legs and lungs. But all they had been together was gone, and now there was only this ghostly image beside him. They walked together for a long time deeper into the Gulch. She stayed with him through every step. He fought back the urge to take her hand and hold it as he took her to the place he could never take her before – the place where a bullet was fired and killed everything they had not yet created. In this hidden place, with the air dark and swirling, he hoped she would say something – anything – to make it okay again. To tell him that it would be all right, that he was good and she was with him and loved him. He looked over at her with tears in his eyes, and she looked at him. He held back the urge to cry.

Then Mary was gone, and small, innocent Thomas Terrywile stared at him from the snow. He was closer than Mary had been. He tilted his childish head as Jonathan tilted his; he reached to grip the broken limb of a black spruce as Jonathan did, and he shifted his weight to his downward foot to keep from sliding, just as Jonathan did. His eyes were big and brown. Jonathan was not smiling, but the boy smiled wide and long.

Jonathan continued his hike, and Thomas Terrywile hiked with him, every movement a perfect mirror except his face. Even the land itself was reflected – they touched the same trees, stumbled on the same rocks, walked the same land. The pitch leveled off, and the trek became easier. Thomas Terrywile stayed with him. Jonathan tried not to look, but he caught glimpses from the corner of his eye. He wanted to deny it, but the boy was still there, walking with him. The light was nearly gone and Thomas became harder to see. When Jonathan turned and looked, little Thomas Terrywile looked back. But from the periphery of his vision – when he could barely make out the figure beside him – the boy appeared monstrous and huge, a massive shadow filled with awful angles. And in the moments before Jonathan would turn to look upon it, he could feel its horrifying gaze, its size and presence. Then he would turn, and it would just be the image of a boy staring back at him, mimicking his movements like a boy might do with his father.

The slope of the Gulch flattened as he reached the base of the valley. He neared the stream, the vein through the heart of it where he would turn south for the cabin. The massive thing beside him flickered in and out of existence. He turned his head quickly to face it, to see it in its full form.

Thomas Terrywile was gone. Now there was only his son, Jacob, staring at him in the darkness of the wood. A small gasp of desperation left Jonathan’s lips. Jacob was missing from home, but now stood directly in front of him. Jonathan tried to tell himself it couldn’t be true, that it was a trick, but every ounce of his being told him to run to his son, to take him up and hold him. Jacob’s mouth mimicked his own – a silent scream. Jonathan fell to his knees. Jacob did not move but merely watched him, as if he didn’t understand his father’s pain. Jonathan held his arms open wide to embrace him, and Jacob did the same, his small arms and fragile hands stretched out. “Jacob,” he whispered, but the boy’s face broke into a wide grin; his eyes wrinkled and sunk into deep black holes. Jacob shook his head slowly back and forth, and from his mouth came a deep, cavernous voice as if from the bottom of a well.

No.

Jonathan scrambled to his feet, turned and ran, the image of his child running steadily beside him in a mirror of mockery. Snow began to fall again, hard and fast. Jonathan saw the stream ahead, still flowing with water not yet frozen over. He fell before it, plunged his hand into the icy water and brought it to his mouth to drink. Debris and dirt crunched in his teeth. He turned to look at Jacob, but he was gone and there was only the dark forest in the night. He looked in the other direction, and there was nothing.

Then he felt it just behind him: something there, looming tall over his shoulder.

There was a breath – a chuffing sound that blew up against the back of his neck. He stayed so still that he did not breathe, did not allow his chest to rise and fall. He waited there for what seemed like hours. There was only the slight trickle of the stream in the vast silence, and he waited to be killed, to be run through by some predator he couldn’t fathom. He waited for the end to what began ten years ago, all that time from then till now