Last week I found out through social media that my brother Rusty’s girlfriend, I think her name was Alicia, had suddenly died over the weekend. I hadn’t spoken with him in months, but I felt like I should say something, so I texted him with how sorry I was. I almost added a platitude about “if he needed anything”, but I was afraid he might take me up on it, and the idea of interacting with him further made my stomach clench nervously.
The sad thing is that me and Rusty used to be best friends when we were young. He was four years older than me, so he automatically had that “big brother” thing going for him, but beyond that, we just really enjoyed spending time with each other. We got each other’s jokes, had similar interests, and had each other’s back. All that changed the last time we stayed at Aunt Karen’s house.
Karen had inherited the house from my grandparents years before I was born, and for as long as I could remember we had always gone there to visit for a week or two every summer. The house itself was massive, with three full stories and a large basement, and it sat nestled in two hundred acres of countryside that was so removed from what we were used to in the city that it might as well have been a fairytale land from one of the fantasy books Rusty loved so much. For her part, our aunt seemed to love the company, and every visit she always had fun activities planned and seemed sad to be left alone in the house when it got time for us to go.
The last time we went to stay at the house, everything was different. It was early November, and our father had packed us off to stay with Karen in the aftermath of our mother abandoning us all to leave the state with some guy she had met through work. Aside from the emotional toll that took on our family, it left a massive financial hole as well. We were going to lose our house, and our father was trying to get a raise or a better-paying job while also figuring out where we were going to be living long-term. To take some pressure off and buy him the time we needed, Karen agreed to let us come stay with her for as long as was necessary.
Karen was still a sweet, loving woman who seemed happy for our company, but she had grown visibly weaker in the last year. We had found out during that year’s summer trip that she had been diagnosed with cancer, and while she was hopeful that the chemotherapy would help, her chances for recovery were slim. The house we loved, that had always seemed so filled with laughter and fun, now seemed coated with some kind of…residue. A taint of sadness and loss and worry that put a heavy film on everything. We would talk to Dad every night for a few minutes on the phone, and we tried to sound positive because of how sad he had been lately, but by the third day we were spending most of our time outside despite the cold and the wet. Exploring the woods and playing games outdoors seemed the easiest way of keeping our mind off all the bad things that were going on.
Then one day we stumbled upon the monster.
We had headed off into the woods with an ill-defined game in mind. Whoever spotted an animal first got a point. If they could name specifically what it was, and the answer matched the little pocket wildlife book we had brought from the house, they got four extra points. Whoever won got full control of the t.v. remote that night, as Karen had taken to laying down early most evenings. Despite the fact that I was eleven to Rusty’s fifteen, the game was actually biased toward me, as he knew I had the better memory and was more interested in animals and stuff like that. Still, he was four points ahead when we entered an unfamiliar clearing and saw the monster that lived there.
Except at first we didn’t realize it was a monster. It looked like a dust devil, or in this case, a leaf devil, as it seemed to just be a small whirlwind of leaves and grass twirling around a relatively open space buried in the midst of a deeper part of the woods. We laughed and watched in amazement as it moved around, both of us expecting that it would peter out or wander away after a few more moments, as those kinds of natural phenomena tend to do.
Except after several minutes it was still going strong, and while it was moving around a good bit, it never seemed to leave a certain space in the middle of the clearing. And, as was becoming increasingly clear, it was unlike anything natural we had ever seen.
“Maybe it’s a ghost!” Rusty offered, not taking his eyes off of it as I stepped closer to him.
I considered it before shaking my head. “Nah, I don’t think so. Papa said there’s no such thing, and why would a ghost be out here anyway? Maybe it’s a freak nature thing like lightning out of nowhere or those places where fish start raining from the sky.”
I saw him frown slightly at that. “Fish raining from the sky doesn’t sound like a nature thing.”
I shrugged. “There’s a scientific explanation for it though. I bet there is for this too. I wish we had a video camera.”
Not wanting to let it go at that, Rusty was about to say more when he realized the same thing I just had. The leaf devil had stopped moving. It was just hovering—an ever-shifting swirl of forest detritus that was at the closest point to us that it could reach and not travel further out than it had gone so far. Almost as though it couldn’t go further out, which was a troubling thought on its own, but which was temporarily eclipsed by something I was thinking just as Rusty said it.
“I think that fucking thing is looking at us.”
I wanted to laugh, to make a joke or otherwise dispel the sense of wonder and fear that was steadily growing in my belly, but I couldn’t find words that wouldn’t sound hollow. He was right. Though it had no eyes or face that we could see, I had the distinct impression that the leaf devil had noticed us and was now studying us with great interest. Swallowing, I looked up at Rusty. “What do you think we should do?”
When he glanced down at me, I could see he was worried, but I could also see excitement flickering in his eyes like a living flame. He looked happier and more himself in that moment than I had seen him since Mom had left, and I think at that moment I would have went along with whatever he said next. As it was, his suggestion was fairly tame.
“Let’s move around a bit. See if it follows us. But be ready to run. If I say go, we run away fast as we can. You know the way back?”
I nodded and he gave my shoulder a squeeze. “This is really cool, but no need for us to be dumb about it.” Looking back up, he puffed out a breath. “Okay. Let’s see if this is just a pile of blowing leaves and we’re both dumbasses.”
Moving slowly with Rusty to the right, I clamped my hands down on my brother’s arm as the leaf devil followed us slowly, seemingly tracing the perimeter of some invisible circle. When we went back the other way, it followed us again, silent except for the quiet rustle of leaves twirling against each other in its inner turbulance.
“Holy shit.” Rusty looked more excited now, but I could tell by the way he was licking his lips that he was more nervous too. Maybe even scared, and I didn’t know if I’d ever seen Rusty scared before. Looking at me again, he pried loose my hands from his forearm. “Tommy, I want you to listen to me now. You go stand at the edge of the clearing. I’m going to go up a bit and get a better look. See if I can tell what it is and what’s got it trapped in there.” He licked his lips again as he glanced back up. “If it’s trapped. I don’t know. It could be a big trick. But you see how it’s been moving like it has an invisible wall or something keeping it from going any farther?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s like a force field or something.”
He returned my nod with a shaky smile. “Yeah. Well, if it can’t reach us, then it may be safe to come back here. Visit it again. But if it’s just playing possum, or if it can shoot something out at us or something…well, I want you to be farther away and go run for help if anything happens, okay?”
“But why don’t we just go and…” Rusty was already shaking his head.
“I have to see more. This thing is like a miracle or something. We might never run across something like this again our entire lives.” He paused and his expression grew sadder as he went on. “There’s a lot more of life like what Dad and Aunt Karen are going through than cool shit like this. If you want to head on back, I’m cool with that. And I won’t ever make fun. But I have to see this while I can, okay?”
I said I understood, and I think even then it was the truth. But either way, I wasn’t going to leave him alone, so I told him to be careful and stepped to the edge of the clearing. The leaf devil didn’t move as Rusty approached, and my brother’s every step was slow and deliberate as he crept closer. Suddenly he stopped.
“There are rocks in the ground. Like big ones buried in the ground it looks like. They go all the way around.” He started moving left in a large circle, and as he moved, the leaf devil went with him. I couldn’t see the rocks between the distance, the angle, and the grown up grass, but it was clear that it was moving along some invisible perimeter as it followed Rusty. It was alive and it seemed to be trapped somehow.
Over the next week, we spent most of our free time in the clearing. Our first day back I had felt sure it would be gone, but there it was, floating near our side of its prison as though it had been waiting for us or knew we were coming. Rusty had brought a tennis ball with us this time, and after we went over the safety rules in case it suddenly did something different, we started experimenting with what it could do.
We’d roll the tennis ball into its circle, and without fail, it would pick up the ball in its restless winds and push it back out towards us. We’d toss it underhand or even throw it overhand, and so long as the ball passed through the circle of stones, it would snag the ball and send it back to us like a game of catch. Every day we would try new things, and while we were having trouble communicating beyond simple games, it wasn’t for lack of trying. It either couldn’t talk or chose not to, but we had still spent several hours peppering it with questions and telling it more about ourselves.
We named it Harvey after the old movie about the invisible rabbit, or “pooka” as Rusty would correct me, and every day we spent with it, the more it felt as though we truly had a new best friend. And while it didn’t speak, it did seem to understand at least some of what we were saying. It knew the difference between the two of us, as demonstrated by where it went when we asked it to “Go to Rusty” or “Go to Tommy”. It seemed capable of remembering things and understanding the more complex rules of games we made up to test the limits of what it could do.
To an outsider, this would probably look like stupid kids playing with something dangerous, or at best, a juvenile and amateurish science experiment. And in many ways, those descriptions would be right. But it was more than that too. The strangeness of it all, the amazing rush of excitement at interacting with something so unknown and magical, elevated it beyond just a game or a childish attempt at solving a mystery. I think it felt like we were touching the Divine, and in turn, it was touching us. By the end of the week we didn’t just feel special, we had accepted that we were special, because who else had such a special friend?
That pride and misunderstanding is what ruined us from the start. We had made a friend that transformed a few hours out of every day into something magical, and naturally we wanted more. So we slipped into Aunt Karen’s shed and found two sturdy shovels before sneaking back out to the woods.
---
Credits
Comments