Please log in to recommend or discuss...
Isat alone in my home office; a teabag filled with self-loathing and remorse steeping in the remains of my once exceptional life. Stock tickers and financial projections flashed on a monitor I no longer had any interest in. I stared at a stack of bills to my left. I chuckled grimly as I realized, regardless of how tonight’s events would unfold, I’d likely never have to worry about paying them.
Dusk was turning to night outside my window. There wasn’t much time left to sit and feel sorry for myself. I’d have to meet the Children soon. Head deep into the woods. Finish what we started all those years ago. Stop the cycle we’d been caught in for over thirty years. Make it right.
Or die trying. That was the only other acceptable option.
My temples throbbed from the concussive blows of a tension headache as I sat there, my mind drifting as it often did to the first time we fed the Wheel. The house was empty of voices and footsteps, freeing it to speak in the creaks and ticks that scared me as a child in my darkened bedroom that is now, or was, my eldest daughter’s.
The bedroom that served as a stage for the beginning of it all.
It had been a BB pinging off glass that roused me from my spaceman sheets the night before the first day of seventh grade. Marley, my best friend from across the street, and I originally used pebbles, because actors used them in movies to wake each other up without their parents noticing, but I’d cracked Marley’s window the third time we’d tried it, so we switched over to the carton of BBs we used as ammo for my slingshot. They were just as loud without the risk of breaking anything.
I slid my window open, pausing briefly to lament my lanky pre-teen frame and latest crop of acne in the reflection, and squinted into the backyard. Marley stood there, greasy hair and freckled face bathed in moonlight, poised to throw a brick through my window if I hadn’t answered. It was the last night we’d be able to sneak out before the first day of school, and he wanted to make sure it was the best and longest adventure yet. He offered me our practiced hand sign that signaled the coast was clear. I slid my sneakers on and climbed outside to meet him.
Marley whispered at me like a hissing snake. “Caleb, you idiot. You fell asleep again, didn’t you? I told you to stay awake and wait for me.”
“I couldn’t help it.” I stage whispered back. “Mom gave me Benadryl for my poison ivy. It makes me sleepy.”
Out of pure boredom, we’d started sneaking out of our houses in search of excitement that summer. We explored our quiet little cul-de-sac by the light of the moon, as flashlights could give us away that early in the morning. We rifled through our neighbors’ station wagons and picked through newly built garages that still smelled like fresh lumber, just to see what kind of stuff they had.
inevitably ran out of things to investigate. That was when we took to the woods.
Our houses were surrounded by protected woodlands. It was a miracle the developer was able to carve out a little piece of it for us. That was what the dads would say to each other at neighborhood barbecues as they drank cold cans of beer and traded lawn care secrets. A stretch of road coursed along the western edge of the conservation area, but everything to the east, north, and south of us was nothing but miles of ancient pines and scrub brush. As kids, we were pretty sure those woods stretched to infinity. Our parents allowed us to dip into the trees bordering our backyards, but never so far that we couldn’t see our houses through the ever-thickening branches. And never at night.
For our woodland excursions, we broke protocol and brought flashlights with us. Moonlight couldn’t penetrate that thick canopy, save for the occasional silver javelin bursting through to the forest floor like stage spotlights. We’d enter the woods at the end of the street, where it circled back on itself as a turnaround, to keep anyone from hearing our shoes crunching on the thick leaf crust of the forest floor. Once we were in deep enough, we clicked our flashlights on and explored the forbidden expanse together.
“Which way should we go?” I asked. Marley paid no attention to me, busying himself by adding newly discovered details to a gridded makeshift map as he walked. It was something he often did; beg me to hang out, only to ignore me in favor of something else. A video game. A bag of potato chips. A secret map of the woodlands he kept stashed underneath his mattress so his parents wouldn’t find it. Like our time together was never enough for him.
“Hello? Earth to asshole? Do you read me?”
“What the hell do you want? Why are you always so needy?”
“I’m not needy. I’m asking which way you think we should go.”
“Whatever, Baby Caby. Let’s go this way.” Marley pointed in the general direction of a patch of woods. Pissed about his attitude, I stomped ahead of him, forcing him to follow me instead.
We spent a couple hours zigging this way and that, scrambling over mossy rocks and through pucker brush, Marley complaining behind me as I forged ahead to what I was starting to think looked like a clearing. Marley didn’t believe me at first. We hadn’t found a break in the canopy once in all of our travels, but he could see the leaves above us giving way to a night sky positively riddled with stars as we got closer.
And then we found ourselves at the foot of a stony hill bathed in electric blue moonlight, staring up at that impossible Wheel.
It instantly reminded me of those old millstones you find repurposed as half-buried landscaping features in office parks and upscale condos as some kind of half-assed attempt to honor the local history they’d just eradicated. It was upright, made of what looked like regular old New Hampshire granite, and
had a circular hole in the middle.
inches above the ground without anything seeming to prop it up.
I could tell Marley had noticed that detail at the same time, because he was looking directly to either side of the enormous stone wheel, searching for some kind of guywires or super industrial fishing line; anything logical that could explain how a multi-ton stone disk could stay suspended in the air like that.
My brain screamed to rationalize what we were seeing. We’d stumbled so far through the woodlands that we’d reached a different neighborhood. It was a party; a party rich people threw for their kids in their backyard. We were looking at a Ferris wheel they’d rented, that’s all. But it didn’t stick. The feeling of wrongness about the scene made it impossible to lie to myself.
I was about to be the first one to break the silence, ready to verbalize the “what the fuck” that hung silently between us, when the singing began.
A melodic chorus of children’s voices sounded from the top of the rocky hill. We couldn’t see from our position at the bottom of it, but it was clear as day. It reminded me of the school concerts our music teacher was always forcing us to participate in, only in a language we couldn’t understand. Marley and I looked at each other with terrified eyes as big as drink coasters. To this day, I can remember the feeling of panicked aloneness I’d experienced only once before that night, when I was very young, and my mother had accidentally lost me in a women’s clothing store. It felt like someone had attached jumper cables to my heart. We knew without saying it that we’d finally gone too far, broken too many rules in the name of adventure. We’d been careless, and we’d found real danger because of it.
When we turned our gazes away from ourselves and back up at the Wheel, there was a young girl, maybe six or seven years old, staring back down at us from the top of the hill. She had brown hair that went past her shoulders, and wore what looked like an old-fashioned white nightgown. She had no shoes on. Looking at her somehow made me relax. It didn’t make my fear and sense of wrongness disappear entirely, but it subdued them enough to make them less overwhelming.
I grabbed Marley’s shoulder, signaling for us to retreat the way we’d come. He shrugged me off, and began scrambling up the rocky hill.
What are you doing?! I mouthed.
They’re just kids, dude. Chill. He mouthed back.
I reached the top of the hill, and despite the strange children and giant floating Wheel—and it was floating—I couldn’t pry my eyes away from the night sky above us. Those purplish pink gaseous nebulas that moved as I stared at them, the stars that were green and orange, and somehow meandering through deep space as defined shapes; definitely not the stars I looked at from my backyard. The moon was so big. How was it so big? There were other moons, too. Some with impossibly fast orbits that reminded me of basketballs spinning on the floor of a gym, and some which had fractured to pieces, yet somehow still formed the vague shapes of planets. I was so transfixed I didn’t even hear Marley approach me. He was just standing next to me all of a sudden, marveling at the bright, wrong sky along with me.
A small, cool hand grabbed my own, jolting me out of my rapture. It was the young girl with the brown hair, who smiled up at me so serenely I could do nothing but smile back. These kids are good people, I thought as she led me closer to the Wheel, which seemed to emit a low, droning buzz.
A group of children, ages ranging from maybe
six to ten, all wearing the same white nightgowns, formed a circle around the floating, humming Wheel. Each of them tightly clutched their hands together, giving the bizarre scene the affectation of prayer, or ritual. They sang that unearthly melody, which seemed to repeat the longer I listened. Although the words of the song were foreign to my ears, the tone of it seemed to calm my mind, and made my muscles, tired from all the hiking, feel rejuvenated. My protests to escape suddenly ceased, and an exceedingly rare look of serenity washed over Marley’s perpetually pinched face.
Before we even knew it was happening, Marley joined the circle of children, clasping his hands together as they did, and began singing their song with them. Ashamed Marley would think I was a loser if I hung back, I did the same.
It didn’t take me long to realize the strange words we were singing had somehow translated into English in our minds.
Praises due to Demelae!
Mother of Life and Strength
Blessing us with Her divine implement
We thrive not without offering
The Children of the Wheel nourish Demelae
In Her realm away from realms
Place away from places
Space away from spaces
We satiate Demelae until Her return!
The hum of the Wheel grew stronger as we sang the song over and over, the feeling of well-being and power building, coursing through us like an electrical current made of love and goodness.
Something rustled at the base of the hill, drawing Marley and I out of our trances. It was loud enough for the other children to hear, but
they paid it no attention. Their singing only grew louder as we watched the thick pucker brush part, and something slender and not of this world made its way up the hill with horrifyingly long strides. It was fashioned from bittersweet vines and yellowing old animal bones. Its wooden joints groaned like branches in a high wind, and the dead leaves caught in its reedy ribcage rustled as it went. A grinning moose skull acted as a makeshift head that took in its surroundings with an air of casual superiority. A pair of chipmunks playfully scurried up and down its legs, unbothered by the unnatural being’s presence. I felt hot urine soak my pajama pants, my feet glued to the grass beneath me. I was powerless to do anything but watch as the stilted humanoid creature closed the distance between us and itself.
Panicking, I turned to Marley. Tears streamed down his horror-stricken face, just unable to escape or even stop singing as I was as he took the monster in.
The Children of the Wheel continued their ritual as the monster made of woodland detritus summitted the rocky hill. Hunched over in the posture of a praying mantis, it still loomed over everyone, its head nearly reaching the hole at the center of the giant stone disk that hummed so loudly it made my eyes vibrate. It considered the children as they sang, their white-knuckled hands clamped tighter than ever, before bringing its thorny claws together and joining them in praise of their deity. The thing stood so close to us we could smell it, earthy leaf rot and the minty tang of splintered birch twigs. Its reedy howl coaxed terrified tears from me as we all stood around the floating stone Wheel.
And then, without warning, the monster gently picked up one of the children—the little girl who’d originally invited us up—and held her to its chest in a loving, almost fatherly embrace, which she returned. Flowers burst into bloom in patches across its nightmare body.
A hole, which was the only way I could describe what appeared roughly a hundred feet above the Wheel, materialized like a paper towel thrown on top of an ink spill. Twinkling stars slowly swirled around the
ge of the hole, beyond which was nothing but perfect blackness standing against the multicolored swell of the night sky that was not our night sky.
The monster approached the thinnest edge of the humming disk, and outstretched its arms, effortlessly gripping the little girl’s body so she faced the ground horizontally, and brought her still smiling face closer to the Wheel. Closer. Closer.
And then came the whirring buzz of something hard making contact with a knife sharpener, or a band saw. A streak of wet redness instantly circled the edge of the Wheel as the little girl’s skull gave way.
It was then, in my horror and panic, that I understood why the floating stone Wheel was humming. It was so perfectly balanced that we couldn’t even tell it was spinning, not even as close as we were. Not until we saw that poor girls head ground off to the neck. Gore clung to the underside of the Wheel as the monster fed the girl’s convulsing body to the gigantic grinding Wheel, spraying off of it in a relentless rooster tail that shot directly into the swirling black hole above us all.
The spell of the song finally broken, Marley and I screamed, and frantically stumbled back down the hill, each of us losing our footing and rolling over sharp rocks and sapling pines until we reached the bottom. I remember checking to make sure I hadn’t broken anything, and realizing the children had never stopped singing as their peer was murdered. I looked back once as the monster pressed the last bits of the little girl’s feet into the Wheel, and then we sprinted in the general direction of home, not slowing our pace through the woodlands until we could see the clear-cut seam between the trees and the safety of our neighborhood.
Iremember lying in my bed and staring up at the ceiling the following morning, trying to make up my mind whether I’d simply dreamt the events of the night before, or if Marley and I actually experienced that scene deep in our forbidden woodlands. I finally got up after the third time Mom screamed about getting ready for the school bus.
“Good morning, Mr. Sleepy Head.” Dad said as he pounded the dregs of his coffee cup and stood to kiss mom on his way out to the car. “Have a good first day of school, slugger!”
My mind was still transfixed on the events of the previous night. I watched my body dump a pair of Pop Tarts into the toaster, and open the fridge to grab the orange juice.
“Oh wow.” Mom said as she assessed at me. “Looks like that Benadryl worked.”
I looked down. The raw, red poison ivy rash covering both of my legs had completely disappeared overnight.
Later, as I was in the bathroom washing up before school, I saw the zits on my face had all but vanished as well. I was thrilled. One less thing for the big kids to bully me about.
I waited for the bus at the end of our street with the rest of the kids from the cul-de-sac, desperate to talk to Marley. He never arrived. I sat alone on that green vinyl bus seat in my new school clothes, sweating with panic that a monster might’ve plucked my best friend out of his bedroom window as he was sleeping, making him alone atone for our shared sin of intruding where we didn’t belong. I felt crazy.
Marley finally showed his face in the third period social studies class with Mr. Richter we were both in, still holding his skateboard that a hallway monitor was inevitably going to tell him to store in his locker. He said his dad yelled at him for so long that morning that he’d missed the bus, and that his mom stopped for McDonald’s breakfast as she dropped him off with an excuse note. I wanted to ask him what he remembered about the night before, but the bell rung, and Mr. Richter didn’t approve of cross-chatter during class.
That sort of thing was always happening at Marley’s house. His dad would hammer him about unimportant things, sometimes even joking about it to me in front of Marley as he bullied him over not having mowed perfect lines in the backyard, or told him he was useless because he didn’t load the dishwasher just so. It made me uncomfortable. His mom was forever coddling him, but that wasn’t good, either. She still cleaned his room, years after I’d been made to clean mine on my own. Sometimes Marley said he would purposefully avoid doing a chore, because the odds were high that his mom would break down and do it for her special little guy. His parents were polar opposites that, at least to my underdeveloped sense of how things were supposed to be for kids, seemed like they were playing tug of war with his brain. My mom and dad never took me seriously when I’d bring it up to them, because Marley’s dad was charming at neighborhood parties, and he did so much volunteer work, and he made so
much money, and his mom was just so sweet. “You’re not exactly great at chores yourself, slugger.” I’d assume my parents were right because they were adults, so I’d drop it.
“You have thirty minutes to finish, startiiiiiinng…” Mr. Richter glanced up at the clock on the wall, waiting for the ticking red second hand to reach the black twelve. “Now.”
I hadn’t even noticed the Xeroxed pop quiz that had been slid on top of my desk. My heart thrummed. I rifled through the pages, hoping I’d recognize something. Anything. The first half of the quiz was multiple-choice, which soothed me a bit because at least it gave me a chance to guess, but the ass end of those pages was all essay questions. I was done for, even if I magically managed to guess every single lettered question correctly, which was impossible. I looked over at Marley. The room was still muggy with early September humidity, but not so much to explain away the sweat glistening on his head and neck. He was struggling as much as I was. I remember randomly looking down at his left calf because he was wearing shorts, and wondering why I couldn’t spot the pink little scar he got falling in the driveway while we were playing whiffle ball.
I turned back to my quiz. I couldn’t just hand it in empty. I closed my eyes, and took a few deep breaths, attempting to summon whatever scraps of Great Depression and Industrial Revolution trivia knowledge I had hiding in the nooks and crannies of my young brain.
And then I started.
Marley and I commiserated with each other about starting seventh grade off with what would likely be Fs in the hallway after class. I asked him about the woods.
“I don’t know. Maybe it was just a dream. Listen, I have to get to science. We’ll talk later, OK?”
down the hall, lost in a sea of Jansport backpacks and Adidas Sambas.
The bell rang just as I skidded into the locker room. The other kids were already dressed in their gym clothes and filing onto the basketball court, so I had to scramble to get my shorts and t-shirt on.
I’d immediately assumed I’d jinxed myself by thinking the day couldn’t possibly get any worse, because when I ran out to meet the rest of the class, I saw it was rope climb day. A thin navy-blue pad was situated under a thick white rope, the bane of my school years, that stretched all the way up to the rafters.
“Ah, Caleb. There you are. Almost marked you absent.” The gym teacher, Ms. Banquard, checked my name off on her clipboard. “Congratulations, you get to go first.”
I sighed in resignation, and gripped the coarse, splintery rope with clammy hands. The stares from the circle of students surrounding me felt like drills boring into my tortured soul. I wasn’t going to get three feet off the ground before my gangly arms gave up like they always did, and they were going to laugh about it for weeks. Months, maybe.
“Ready when you are, Caleb.” Ms. Banquard folded her arms across her chest, and impatiently tapped one impossibly white tennis shoe on the squeaky parquet floor.
I gulped, closed my eyes, and lifted myself up enough to partially lock the thick rope between my knees and feet. I kept my eyes crammed shut as I repeated those steps, trying hard to visualize myself rising higher and higher off the ground; so high I could run a sweaty finger through the clumpy dust I’d always imagined clung to those steel rafters.
“That’s enough, Caleb! Jesus H. Christ, you ate your Wheaties this summer, didn’t you.”
I stopped, opened my eyes, and almost fainted. My head was inches away from the knotted end of the rope. I’d climbed maybe twenty-five feet past the red duct tape line that signaled how high you were supposed to go. I wasn’t even winded. I looked down and saw everyone looking up at me, mouths gaping with shock.
“Alright, showboat. Come on down before you hurt yourself. I’ll have to check, but I’m pretty sure that’s a new school record.”
Before I descended to high fives and congratulations, I dreamily ran one of my fingers through the dust of the rafters, leaving behind a mark to prove to myself that I’d actually made it that far.
Marley and I finally caught back up with each other at lunch. We sat at a cafeteria table away from everyone else, and I told him about what happened in gym class.
Marley looked at me unbelievingly as he shoveled a forkful of nuclear orange colored mac and cheese into his mouth. “I’ve watched you climb that rope a thousand times, Caleb. You’ve never made it over my head.”
“I know, dude! It’s crazy! Maybe my muscles are finally coming in.”
My best friend looked me up and down, appraising me. “Yeah. No.”
“Listen, we need to talk about last—“
I was interrupted by the buzz and squawk of the intercom system speaker in the corner of the room.
WILL MARLEY CLANGFORD AND CALEB SMITH PLEASE REPORT TO THE PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE. MARLEY CLANGFORD AND CALEB SMITH. THANK YOU.
We looked at each other as a chorus of “Ooohs” and “They’re in trouuuuuuuuubles” filled the cafeteria.
After a brief wait in the hallway, the school secretary opened a door for us, and Marley and I filed into Mr. Silby’s office. Neither of us had ever been in the principal’s office before. We gawked at the framed wildlife photos he must’ve taken on some African safari vacation, and at the framed photos of his family on his desk, which seemed just as exotic. At that age, the concept of the fearsome authorities in your life also having wives and children and homes is a little jarring.
Mr. Silby was sitting at his desk, and signaled for us to sit in the two chairs in front of it. We did. Mr. Richter, our social studies teacher, stood cross-armed near Mr. Silby, and he looked mad.
“Boys, do you know why I called you in here?”
“No, sir.” Marley and I said in unison.
“Of course they know.” Mr. Richter said, his hands shifting to his hips, leaning in so close to our faces we could smell the rancid coffee on his breath.
“Steven, please.” Mr. Silby gave Mr. Richter a look that made him step back, but he stared at us as if we’d taken turns shitting in his coffee thermos. “Do either of you have anything to say about the quiz you took in Mr. Richter’s class today?”
Marley and I looked at each other with doom on our faces. Had we failed so hard the principal had to be involved?
“I’m sorry, sir. We didn’t read as much as we were supposed to this summer. We just guessed as best as we could. We promise to do better.”
“Please don’t tell my dad.” Marley said, his lower lip quivering.
Mr. Richter barked out a humorless laugh that earned him a second, sterner look from Mr. Silby. The social studies teacher once folded his arms across his chest, and spun around to face the wall behind him as he collected himself.
“Kids, the reason you’re in here is because you both received perfect marks on your quizzes. The only two hundreds out of the entire class, and, well…neither of you have ever demonstrated grades like—“
“You two boys are D students, C at best when I’m generous. You cheated. Admit it.”
“Steven, out. Now. We’ll talk later.”
Mr. Richter snatched their quizzes from the principal’s desk, and offered a huffy “This is ridiculous!” before storming out of the room.
“I’m sorry about that, boys. You see, he’s frustrated because you two, well, you don’t get grades like this often. I’m afraid I have to agree with Mr. Richter. You’re both getting out-of-school suspensions for a week.”
I remember staring down at my shoelaces, feeling as if the air had been punched out of my chest. Suspension? My parents were going to kill me. At the very least, I was staring down the barrel of being grounded for a month on top of the punishment from school, and Marley? His dad might have actually killed him. I could feel the tears coming, and I resented them more than anything in the world. Tears in front of Marley. I’d never live it down.
“We didn’t cheat.”
When those words left Marley’s mouth, I wanted to die. I wanted my soul to levitate out of my body and float anywhere that wasn’t Mr. Silby’s office. I knew Marley was desperate because a suspension would make his life at home unbearable, but he could never just let something go. There was no dignified
resignation in him at all. He always had to find some loophole in an impossible situation that got him what he wanted. Marley was successful enough with kids their own age, but adults? It always ended badly. Marley was about to double our suspension, and I was powerless to do anything but watch it happen.
Mr. Silby sighed and leaned back in his chair. “I’ll be calling your parents shortly. Clean out your lockers. I don’t need the janitor complaining about a rotten sandwich stinking up the hallway while you’re gone.”
“We didn’t cheat.”
“But you did, Marley. You’d be wise to cool your jets and just accept it.”
Marley stood up, red-faced and shaking. I gulped.
“We didn’t cheat.”
Mr. Silby stood and jutted a furious finger at Marley. “You want to make that a two week suspension? Because I can accommodate.”
I had a split second wonder if I was actually psychic and my prediction was going to come true before Marley spat the same three words out at our principal like acid. ...
