18 The Woods – Kevin and Jesse (1985) by LV Gaudet

“Where’s the comic book?” Jesse is standing in the living room, staring at the floor, now devoid of one comic book featuring The Thing in epic battle with a green multi-armed monster on the cover.

Kevin stops. “What are you talking about?” He pauses, and then thoughtlessly mutters, “Mom must have picked it up.” He knows even as he says it that it’s impossible.

“The comic. It was here. When we went out to play, before-,” Jesse’s voice trails off. He needs a moment to collect himself. “Every time we came back in, it was here. Now it’s gone.”

Kevin just stares at the floor for a long moment.

Finally, he speaks.

“You’re right. It changed. Like the snow that one time. It changed.”

He feels the pressure mounting.  He’s the big brother, the man of the house in their father’s absence.  He has never hated that being a thing more than he does right now at this moment.

“I’m too bloody young to be the man of the house,” Kevin thinks. He wants to think the thought in stronger language, but he’s afraid their mother would somehow know. She doesn’t approve of that kind of language.

He has to get them out of this somehow.

“First, we are going to eat breakfast. A man can’t operate on an empty stomach.  Then we have to find a way out of here.”

Jesse just stands numbly staring at the empty floor where his comic book should be.

Kevin goes into the kitchen and after moment Jesse follows, not wanting to be left alone.

“What do you want to eat?” Kevin asks.

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’m not either, but we have to eat something.” It hits Kevin as a surprise.  With what little they have eaten, he should be starving.

The thought comes, unwanted.  “Are we dead?”

“No, that’s stupid,” he decides.  “If we are dead we wouldn’t know something’s wrong.  We wouldn’t be trying to get out.”

“We have to eat something.”

Kevin opens the fridge and looks at the contents, deciding not to trust anything there.

“Cereal it is, and dry. No bad guys.”

He finds a generic cereal, featuring his own favourite characters when he was Jesse’ age, Snap, Crackle, and Pop, and pours them each a bowl.

“I don’t want cereal,” Jesse complains, more from a lack of appetite than not wanting cereal.

“Just eat it.”

They eat their dry cereal, crunching in silence.

When they are finished, Kevin puts the bowls in the sink.  He stops, turning to stare at the table with a strange look.  The table sits quietly set for dinner for four with plates, cutlery, and glasses carefully set out. A few stray rice crisps sit next to where Jessie’s bowl was while they ate.

“Jesse,” he pauses, speaking slowly, “do you remember what we did with our bowls the last time?”

Preoccupied with looking around, Jessie shrugs. “Put them in the sink?”

“We left them on the table.” Kevin looks confused. “I don’t remember putting them away. We were so tired. We went to bed.”

He turns to Jessie.  “I think we left them on the table.”

Jessie stops and looks at the table.  “Where are they?”

“I-I think someone else is here.”  Kevin’s face is pale and waxy.

Jessie blinks at him, trying to digest it.

“Y-you mean w-we’re not alone?”  All the color drains from Jessie’s face and Kevin is sure he’s going to faint. He takes a step forward to catch him, but Jessie manages to stay on his feet.

“I don’t know,” Kevin admits. “I just don’t remember putting our bowls and spoons away. But, they are gone now.”

Jessie is still trying to digest the idea.  “If-if someone else is here, I mean, if we aren’t alone, that would be good, right Kevin?”

He turns to Kevin for reassurance.  “Right Kevin?”

“I don’t know.”  Kevin just stares at the table blankly.

“I mean,” Jessie continues, “they could help us, right?”

Kevin turns to him.  “Maybe.”

The doubt in his eyes scares Jessie even more.

“Or they could hurt us,” Jessie finishes.

“Maybe we should be careful, just to be safe,” Kevin says.

Jessie swallows hard.  “If-if there is someone else here, we would have seen them. Right, Kevin? We would have seen them.  If we can’t go nowhere, neither can they, right?  We have just the house, the yard, and the woods.  That’s all they would have too.  We’d have seen them.  Right?”

“Maybe.”  Kevin hopes Jessie is right.  He’s scared he could be wrong.  “We’ll just be careful, just in case.  What were you looking for?”

“My comic,” Jessie blushes.

Kevin thinks about it, his expression serious.  This is serious business.  “Good thinking,” he nods.  “If we find out what happened to your comic, maybe we’ll learn something about what’s going on here. Let’s go look for that comic.”

Jessie follows him as they methodically search the house for the book. He feels like finding the comic will give him some small comfort. He needs to find it. He imagines the Hulk smashing through whatever is keeping them trapped here, letting them finally go home.  “Home for real, not this fake copy of home that seems just a little bit dull, a little bit off.”  The comic is his link to his real home.

“What did you say?” Kevin asks, stopping his search of Jesse’s room.

“Nothing,” Jesse mumbles.

“Let’s keep looking.”

They continue their exhaustive search of the house, finally abandoning it as children will do and plopping themselves on the couch.  The search was as thorough as would be expected of two boys living in a state of panic.

“The comic isn’t here,” Kevin says.

“I don’t get it,” Jessie says. “How can the comic book leave and we can’t?”

Kevin looks at him, sees the loss and desperation, the abandonment of hope creeping into his eyes.  He has to do something.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?” Jessie asks.

“We are going to find the way out of here.”

“How?”

“I don’t know!” Kevin wants to scream.

“Let’s start by testing the perimeter,” he says instead.  “We know that every time we try to leave, we somehow get zapped back into the woods.  We haven’t tried sending anything else through.  Come on, I have an idea.”

They put on their coats and boots, Jessie following Kevin outside with a doubtful frown.

Outside, Kevin looks around.  He walks to the edge of the woods, thinking to grab a stick.  He won’t find any on the ground with the snow.  He looks up at the tree bordering the back yard.  He’ll have to break a branch off a tree.  He steps up to the nearest tree, reaching up and pulling on a branch.

“Kevin! No!” Jessie cries, running forward and grabbing him, tugging at him to pull him back.

“What, Jessie?”

“Not in the woods,” Jessie hisses, tugging on him harder.

Realizing what he had done, Kevin looks at the trees to either side of him.  He had stepped across the border into the woods.  He lets Jessie pull him away.

“Don’t break it off the trees,” Jessie whispers, “they might get mad.”

“They’re just trees. They don’t feel.”

Jessie shakes his head emphatically, eying the trees as if worried about talking in front of them.  He leans in close, whispering in Kevin’s ear.

“I think they’re already mad and that’s why they’re doing this.”

Kevin looks at the trees doubtfully.  They are just trees, but what if?

“I don’t think it’s the trees.  I think it’s something else, something in the woods.”

He looks around the yard.  “We’ll find something else.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Something long we can poke through the edge of the yard to the other side.  Stuff we can throw across.  I want to see what happens.”

Jessie’s face lights up.  “I know what we can use!”  He takes off, running across the yard back to the house.  Kevin follows.

Available on Kindle and in paperback on Amazon:

The McAllister Series

Where the Bodies Are

The McAllister Farm

Hunting Michael Underwood

And  for the teens and middle years kids who like middle years/teen drama and monsters, a fantasy psychological thriller.

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