“Wistaria”

The Thing They Found in The Woods

A Walk

 

Zephyr careened out of the strip mall’s parking lot. The engine popped like a sonic boom and the tail pipe emitted a puff of smoke like a storm cloud. Like a lost child eager to find its mother, the exhaust followed Zephyr, hoping to unite. 

“I’m sure that’s a good sign,” Branden roasted sardonically referring to the smoke. 

“Oh yeah,” Kurtis responded in a deep baritone, trying his best to imitate the sexy voice he heard in his secret stash of Moby songs. Kurtis made a quick and unplanned left onto Phobos. The couple was gone, as far as he could tell. He stretched his neck until the tendons protruded like cables. 

“Man, give it a rest,” Branden sighed. He slurped the giant ice slushy he’d purchased at the mall and flipped through a comic. Their sale had been moderately successful, not to the extent Branden had expected, however. Kurtis, who felt guilty selling such precious collectables to mere children, sighed with relief when Branden finally gave up for the day. 

“I can’t believe we didn’t sell more today, Code-Man,” Kurtis said, both attempting a change of subject and testing his new nickname for Branden. 

“Code-Man?” Branden asked. The ice in his slushy rattled.

“Yeah, I thought of it this afternoon. What do you think? No?” Kurtis sucked his cheek. 

“Stick with Brando,” he laughed. Kurtis hung a right and Zephyr purred with excitement. Before them was wide open road, Kurtis pressed the pedal to the floor.

“He handles so well,” Kurtis felt the adrenaline surging up his throat, into his face and charging out from the ends of his hair. Kurtis swerved liberally into the opposing lane, feeling the imagined hydraulics. When he drove fast, Kurtis felt he could see into the car’s soul, as if everything the car thought, believed, liked and hated became part of him. His vision became tunneled until he could no longer see and then it was just the car driving, somehow telepathically telling him when to nudge the steering wheel. 

“Kurtis, you’re going like 100,” Branden warned. This catalyst brought Kurtis back into cold, florescent light reality. Suddenly, it was as if all his limbs could not longer control themselves. He looked down and saw nothing but fingers and arms as foreign as the tentacles of octopi. Somewhere between the wormhole void of friction and the ghostly figure walking across the road, Kurtis lost control of the wheel and crashed 1983 Thunderbird.  

Luckily for Kurtis Wavra and Branden Cody, the car had slowed enough, the trees were bent at just the right angle, the ditch provided enough traction and their seat belts had not failed. The only one sustaining life threatening injuries was Zephyr. The hood of the car, bent into an awkward triangle, tented the steam rising from the engine. The car moaned something that sounded like an apology. Kurtis dropped his head on the steering wheel, which was now several inches closer to his face. Branden, lodged beneath the glove compartment, uttered some curse words. He extracted himself. The passenger side door was now open in what Branden considered an ironic twist. For comfort, he swung his feet out and with it flew Kurtis’ backpack. 

“Holy shit!” Kurtis cried. “Holy shit, I can’t believe it! Three days! I had it for three days. Holy shit!” 

“I got better news. I think your Greiger thingy is broken,” Branden huffed and placed the busted measuring device on the dash.  

Kurtis seemed to fabricate a whole new brand of disappointment, “Holy shit. No no no no! What the shit?” 

“Are you okay?” Branden asked, he checked his arms and legs for injuries. His neck was just stiff with whiplash. 

“I’ve been better!” Kurtis screeched, his voice breaking like a prepubescent boy. In his arms, Kurtis cradled the Greiger counter like it was a lion cub. 

“Yeah, I really could have done without a car accident,” Branden eyed Kurtis angrily. Kurtis whimpered. “Dude, check out how far we are from the road.” 

“Wait, is this Deimos Forest?” Kurtis asked. 

“Yeah, think so.” 

“Great,” Kurtis jabbed the heel of his hand into the steering wheeling. 

Branden began to walk away from the car, into the woods, as if transfixed by the crosshatching layers of green, jade and celadon. 

“Hey man, did you see that thing walk across the road?” Kurtis shouted, trying desperately to draw his friend back towards the car. The only answer was the hushed murmur of footsteps through unmanaged tangles of weeds. The only evidence of Branden’s existence became the shuffling of tree branches and the snapping of twigs. “Dude, Brando? Seriously, man, you shouldn’t– don’t leave me– Branden!?” 

Kurtis rubbed away the allergy-caused tears forming in his eyes and slammed his fist onto the dash. The driver’s side door was wedged shut by a tree, so Kurtis climbed out of the passenger’s door. He took one last longing look at Zephyr. He had worked hard to earn the money for the car, and all of it gone after just three days. How many putt-putt balls had he sorted, how many dishes had he scrubbed, how many pieces of pizza had he embellished with slices of cheap pepperoni? Too many. 

“Are you coming, Wavra?” Branden called from the woods. Kurtis bit his lower lip and marched into the woods, violently whacking away low branches and spider webs. He nearly tripped in a gofer hole and the holes in his jeans harbored several burdocks. Thorns tore across his arms. He finally found Branden, sitting on a rock, looking contemplative at a tower of moss. 

“I hope you have a good reason for this,” Kurtis said brusquely. 

“I don’t. I just remember coming back here when we were kids,” Branden said. He turned to where they both knew the river flowed. They could even hear it, if they listened carefully, like the sound of static beneath the call of birds and bugs. 

“Yeah, I know. Hey, doesn’t that look like a path to you?” Kurtis asked pointing to a serpentine clearing that wound its way around the trees. 

“Who’s been back here?” Branden asked, standing. Kurtis shrugged and the walked forward, onto the path marked by rich, dark dirt. 

They walked together, shoulder to shoulder. The path met up with the river and they walked downstream beside the riverbank in silence. The sunlight skipped along the water freckling the ripples with white. Kurtis lifted up some rocks and disturbed the natural calmness. He found a stick and began to tap the trees as the passed, occasionally checking around, hoping to not see men in black cloaks. A log, under the pressure of Kurtis’ foot, disintegrated; millions of ants surged forth. 

“Remember playing back here all the time?” Branden asked. His face showed the signature look of a young man stricken with nostalgia. 

“Yeah,” Kurtis laughed, “remember we’d play X-Files? Only, there weren’t any girls to be Dana.” 

“Right, so we had to be Wavra and Kurtis. We were Dana and Mulder’s FBI friends, based in Wistaria.” 

Kurtis laughed, “Oh, yeah, I remember. Then stupid Leviathan had to lock this down. I doubt there’s anything dangerous about these woods.” 

“Well, didn’t that kid die? That was what they said made them unsafe.” 

“One kid dies in a freak accident– one that goes completely unexplained or investigated– and they shut down everything for good?” 

“Leviathan is– I don’t know anymore. It’s not safe for us to be here, now, that’s for sure. I mean, it’s Leviathan territory.” 

“All of Wistaria is Leviathan– hey, what’s that?” Kurtis pointed with the dirt-covered stick to a drainage pipe at the end of the path. The cement blocks rose like an alter and concealed a black pipe from which rain water flushed into Deimos River. Upon the cement, a pale figure lay. 

“I’m not sure,” Branden said slowly.  

“Looks like a bag,” Kurtis said and swatted a fly away from his face. What seemed like a million gnats were fighting for the tears and sweat that fell down his face. 

“No, no, look, it’s a little girl. She’s wearing a white dress or something.” 

“Is she sleeping?” Kurtis asked. They cautiously stepped forward. 

“Maybe she’s lost.” 

They came towards the alter, which was splattered with dried mud and covered in lace-like vines, now grey and withered. Kurtis reached her first and knelt to nudge her shoulder. 

“Holy shit, Branden,” Kurtis said quietly, his voice rippling like water. 

Branden came closer, he absently removed the missing notice from his pocket. He carefully unfolded it. He stood, his hands shaking, looking first at the girl, then at the photo. 

“Kurtis– it’s… it’s her, it’s her. Is she…?” Branden fell backwards, landing in a sitting position. He crept closer to the girl and touched her tumescent face. 

“She’s dead, Branden.”

“Wistaria”

The Thing They Found In the Woods 

A Girl Gone Missing

Branden Cody always received confused looks from his peers whenever he walked with Kurtis Wavra. Branden, who was 6′1” with short burgundy curls, broad shoulders and at least some notable muscle mass, was the polar opposite of Kurtis. Their opposing demeanor was not only physical. The difference in their personalities, their interests, their social statuses, could also be easily determined at first glance. Kurtis most always carried around a magazine describing super natural events or a recently released pulp science fiction thriller. Branden, on the other hand, with his sunglasses and his right-angle jaw line, was typically being waved at by the flirtatious young girls of Wistaria. Branden once said to Kurtis, 

“I’m no Drake Ojito, but I do alright.”

Kurtis wasn’t very interested in the flirtatious girls of Wistaria, neither was he jealous of the popularity Branden waltzed into around 10th grade. Certainly, Kurtis could have cut his straggly blonde hair and forgone his favorite purple plaid jacket in order to climb the ranks with Branden–but he just didn’t care enough. 

Kurtis was too busy. He had to spray paint his Converses gold so they would look futuristic for his meager attempts at a science fiction film. He was constantly writing essays that sympathized with the notorious Cigarette Smoking Man in “The X-Files” series. He also was building a series of tree forts in case he ever had to hide away. Conspiracy theories and science fiction had manipulated his malleable psyche and had thus created a paranoid, determined, oddity. 

And, despite Branden’s effortless popularity, he still hung close to his best friend, helped film his science fiction movies, read his stories, listened to Kurtis when he called at 3am crying because of some misunderstood smoking character on “The X-Files” and even helped build the complicated system of forts. Branden even began to worry he was starting to believe some of the crazy ideas Kurtis conjured. But this was a very remote worry. 

When Kurtis wasn’t inciting imaginative misadventures, Branden was formulating get-rich-quick schemes. He’d do anything to not work for his father’s roofing business. Today, it was selling some amazing comics they had found in a dumpster. 

“Who, who in their right mind would throw out this superb collection? This guy had to be insane,” Kurtis said while he dragged a bag full of comic books.

“Yeah, I gotta say the guy is probably more crazy than you,” Branden teased.

“You know, I probably should be offended by that, but I’m not. If I didn’t have most of these, I’d never let you sell them. I don’t care how desperate you are for cash.” 

The duo walked beneath the canopied strip mall walkway, they passed 25 cent children rides shaped like rocket ships, park benches full of people and storefronts (most of which were now abandoned). Branden paused and looked into the dark glass of one of the stores. 

“I wonder what they do with these empty stores,” Branden said into the glass. Kurtis looked around and waved awkwardly at some girls, his own attempt at humor. 

“Yeah,” he said distractedly, surveying the parking lot and beyond that a small pond glowing in the cool light and further down, brown unkempt gardens hanging over a dry fountain (a relic of Wistaria’s best years). “You know, sooner of later, this mall is going to be condemned. It’s basically empty now.” 

“You’re right, but take a look around you, Kurt, people still swarm here. It’s ridiculous!” 

They continued to walk. A group of a girls overcrowding a picnic table called out to Branden. He waved halfheartedly. 

“C’mere Cody,” one of the girls insisted, “we’ve got food! What’s that loser got that we don’t?” 

“Maybe intelligence?” Kurtis offered. The girls gave him contorted looks of anger; however, they were too disappointed they’d been ignored by Branden to continue harassing Kurtis.

“Hey, lookit that,” Branden said idly while pointing to a Missing poster on the stonewall of the strip mall. They walked closer for a better look. Kurtis set down the sack with a grunt. 

On the poster, a black-and-white granular photo of a pale girl with dreadlocks was prominently displayed beside the word missing in giant red block letters. Kurtis pointed to the girl’s name, 

“Yeah, Maelle Ion. She graduated last year. She was the girl always hanging around Mr. Helmsley– until he got fired.” 

“I bet he killed her,” Branden joked. Kurts gave Branden a dry look. 

“If anything Leviathan got to her first.” Kurtis then directed Banden’s attention to a Hydra that had marked the stone beside the sign.

“She’s kinda pretty,” Branden ventured. 

“Maelle was one of those art kids, or whatever. She was always doing weird stuff. She probably just packed up and left. She was like that. I think I heard she ran away from home a lot.”

“If you think it weird it must be pretty bad,” Branden laughed. 

“Very funny, Brando, I’ll have you know what I do isn’t weird, it’s science.” 

“If that’s what you want to call it. Who’s that behind her in the picture?” Branden asked squinting. He tried to make out the fuzzy lines of the person in the background. Kurtis stood on his tiptoes and looked with equal earnestness. 

“I can’t make it out, the picture is too pixelated. You know, I just sent away for a program that could adjust that so it was way clearer. You can hardly make out Maelle in that photo,” Kurtis waved his hand in disgust of poor quality images, picked up the sack of comic books and began to walk towards an empty picnic table. 

“Hey, wait!” Branden called out while tearing the poster from the wall. Kurtis had already begun unloading the motley comic books onto the lopsided table. The wood was grainy and splintered along the edges of the seats. Once painted blue and yellow, the colors of the Wistaria High School Serpents, it was now grey with specs of the old paint and ringlets of mold. 

“What did you take that for?’ Kurtis asked once his friend had sat down. Branden still examined the picture intently.

“You think you could clear up this picture so I could see who that is?” Branden asked. 

“What for?” Kurtis asked. His disinterested tone almost swayed Branden’s curiosity. Some kids came over to look at the comic books. 

“I’m just curious, alright?” Branden angrily folded the paper and shoved it into his pocket. 

“Alright, alright, I’m sorry. The software should be here soon,” Kurtis said. 

“Good.” Branden’s composure eased. 

Suddenly, Kurtis said, in between telling potential buyers the approximate prices of various editions, “What the hell was she doing with Isaiah Abel?”

“Wistaria”

As I write this, my jaw throbs with the mind numbing pain only associated with having your wisdom teeth chiseled from your skull. The only remedy for this, it seems, is having an ice pac glued to my face and a series of stomach-churning medications. To say the least, I have been confined to my either too hot or too cold room for the past several days, and these are not the best conditions for writing. Therefor, please excuse both the quality and the content of the following post, it was not only rushed, but written in vain.

The Thing They Found In The Woods

A Secret In The Cemetery

As the car rushed down Miranda, which was deserted except for the occasional wayward cow stumblingly along the the roadway, Branden crawled into the front seat. He tried, with some difficulty, to strap himself in with the seat belt. After five minutes of wrestling with the unruly belt, he managed to secure it, only for it to snap undone once again. Kurtis had the car merely three days and it was already trashed. Six empty ginger ale cans were crumpled and stored amongst several books and magazines, strips of paper were strewn like old confetti, several pairs of shoes with rotted souls decorated the back seat, sweatshirts covered in moist dog hair had congregated into piles. 

“Nice place you got here,” Branden noted. 

“Well, It’s not like I’m expecting the Pope anytime soon,” Kurtis explained as he turned onto Phobos. They passed Old Phobos Cemetery. Within, Kurtis caught sight of Oblique Ravel sitting on the brick wall. Beside her, sat  a tanned boy. He looked complacent, even bored. 

“They say, Oblique sleeps in the cemetery,” Branden laughed. 

Kurtis slowed Zephyr, “Who’s she with?”

Branden struggled in his seat to get a better look, Oblique and the boy’s head turned in unison. They watched the slow-moving vehicle with suspicion. “Keep driving, man, they’re staring at us. Looks like Isaiah Abel to me.” 

Kurtis was silently reflecting on what they had seen. He turned down Callisto Drive towards the strip mall. The engine did all the talking. The car’s voice seemed to reflect whatever Kurtis was thinking, as if they were somehow unified. It crunched bitterly, interrupting all of Branden’s attempts to speak. While impatiently waiting for Kurtis’ nerves to cool, Branden began to dig through Kurtis’ army surplus backpack. 

“So, Kurtis, what exactly is NICAP?” Branden asked curiously, perhaps even timidly. He saw this not only caught Kurtis unguarded, it was equally unassuming and Kurtis lost the jaded spark in his eyes. Branden examined the peculiar device that had earlier fallen from Kurtis’ backpack. With the tips of his fingers, Branden turned the object round and around, surveying every detail. 

“NICAP? Hey, man, careful. I just dropped a fortune for that.” 

“Yeah, but, why?” 

“It’s my UFO Kit. If there’s a UFO around, I’ll be the guy to call. Anything you need in case of an alien sighting, if you think there’s been a UFO landing, you know, whatever, I got it.” 

“I’ll be sure to put your ad in the paper,” Branden said dismissively. 

“NICAP: the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena,” Kurtis announced while making a sharp turn. 

“Careful, mac, I just ate lunch. So, what’s this thing do?” 

“It’s a Greiger counter and I’m sorry but I left my Magnetometer at home,” Kurtis apologized.

“I’m so disappointed in you.” 

Kurtis, ignoring Branden’s comment, continued, “The Greiger counter basically measures radiation. It’s your basic, portable, alpha/ beta measuring device. If I could, I would have gotten a scintillation counter, but then I’d have to sell my kidney. Seriously, I had a guy in a NICAP chat room offer me the trade!” 

“Oh, and you passed that one up?” Branden feigned shock. 

“Yes, I want to keep track of my vital organs.”  

The contents of Zephyr were rattled as Kurtis accidentally rolled on the curb as he entered Ariel Place Mall.   

 

Wistaria

The Thing They Found In The Woods

 

Zephyr 

It looked like a Delorean but without the sleek silver, the doors that opened upwards, the ability to time travel. The 1983 Thunderbird sitting in the front yard was unmistakably boring, blue-grey, with a dent in the passenger door and a jammed driver’s side window. The window, which was stained somewhat orange from an unknown blast of heat, was stuck slightly ajar. The trunk was full of classic comic books, some wrapped in plastic; they were cold glossy paper and easy money. That was the only good thing about the 1983 Thunderbird, nicknamed Zephyr. 

“Come on, use your imagination. I got this thing for a deal,” Kurtis said framing the car with his hands. 

“The way you were talking about it, I figured it was something worthwhile,” Branden said, utterly disappointed in what was before him. Perhaps he had been too imaginative with his expectations. Kurtis had called it, ‘a chariot of wind, a  formidable storm cloud, a sublime creature of the night.’ 

Well, it was hardly any that, but it was pretty fitting in Kurtis’ yard, which was well-equipped with other tacky and disappointing things. It had fake giant mushrooms, one of those wooden Jack n’ Jill teeter totters with the happy-go-lucky painted smiles and miniature windmills. Kurtis’ little sister had a turtle sandbox filled with brown water, Kurtis’ dad had two other cars parked in the lawn, one with a rusted door, the other on cinderblocks, and this menagerie of cliches was placed beside a doublewide in the middle of a great big field.

“All the comic books are in the back. I have collections you couldn’t dream of, all complete, gorgeous editions. I’ll earn the money back from buying Zephyr easily,” Kurtis explained while running his hand along the siding of the vehicle. 

“Yeah! We’ll only need to sell about five dollars worth to cover the cost of this car and get another 1983 Thunderbird with a dent in the side!” Branden noted sarcastically but Kurtis looked displeased. Branden would laugh when he thought about it again; he was always very happy with his sarcastic comments. Just as Kurtis was always very happy with his latest science fiction short story–regardless of its quality. 

Kurtis set his backpack down and it vomited the contents: his entire collection of tapes, his tape recorder, a special device he had ordered from the NICAP website (supposedly capable of reading UFO landing sites). 

“Laugh now, Brando, but this car is gonna drive your ass to school,” Kurtis joked. 

“Hell yes, and to the strip mall so we can rip off some underage comic book collectors. Man, what is all this stuff? Books about alien abductions and stuff? Kurt, you don’t actually believe this shit, do you?” Branden asked, helping Kurtis with the remaining spilt parcels. 

“Well, I was thinkin’. I mean, I did some research. What if Leviathan is run by aliens?” Kurtis suddenly surged. Branden looked into Kurtis’ stormy eyes and saw the ideas brewing within, the thoughts churning, the hyperbolic connections being drawn. 

“Kurtis, the only thing crazier than that is thinking Oblique Ravel is a babe,” Branden nudged his friend’s shoulder.

“Hey, lay off, man.” Kurtis entered the driver’s side. Branden tried to accompany him in shotgun. 

“Dude, this door is busted!” Branden shouted as the engine whirred ecstatically.

“I know, you gotta crawl in through the back!” Kurtis explained, attempting to have his voice climb over the guttural muffler. Branden rolled his eyes and managed to fight his way into the vehicle just as it pulled away into the grey afternoon.