Chapter 2 – Me Ajuda

My phone rings. I don’t notice it, staring out the window trying to fit the puzzle pieces together. They just need more pieces. This isn’t it. Then, my phone goes to voicemail. “Honey. It’s me, Lauren. Our little bulb wants to know when you are coming back. Call me, honey.”

As that went off, I sat right there. Till now, thinking of what death is. Is it like discarding a soul that isn’t needed anymore?

My thinking comes to an abrupt end as an ugly beep plunges into my earlobes making my eardrums feel like a drum skin in use after the voicemail. As it went on, it became louder and louder. My windows shattered and the glass I had has also become one with the splinters on the bamboo floor.

However, something changes in the beep near the end. It goes deeper and distorts. Then, a soft beep follows after which I hear my wife cry and beg for mercy. Then, I hear a knife jam through someone. My wife, Lauren begins choking. Then, my little bulb, a newborn begins crying, hoping for help. A cascade of worry and surprise holds me down in place as the voicemail goes off with a soft beep.

Then, I wake up. I jump up and sit up in bed as I say to myself, “One little, two little honeybees. Three little four little honeybees…”

From the wooden door, a knock on the door jolts its way to my all-knowing ears. I go and check on it. It’s a local man dressed in a vest and a cloth wrapped around his waist, covering up to just under his knees. He lifts his finger and points towards the woods. It seems that he wants me to take a look.

So, I step out of my little hut and put on my shoes. As soon as I raise my head after tying my shoelace, the sun does a staring contest at me, without me. It’s all around, the sun. It’s all so… bright and jolly. But not for me. Because I am like glass. The sun shines right through me.

The old man then sneaks up behind me and ties my hands with a rope. I don’t panic. He then puts a blindfold on me and drags me to a railroad. Onto the tracks, he ties me.

“Burn in hell, you filthy soul!” He says. “Not today,” I say as calm as a bar of soap. He ties me up in the middle of the railroad. I simply pull my wrists away from each other and snap out of the ropes. Then, the old man looks at me in puzzle and rejection of what he just saw… and what he sees.

I then watch as he tries to run away. As soon as the train passes from the rope, I pick up the sliced bit. I close my eyes and feel my face change. When I open them back up, there I am, in front of a waterfall with the old man running towards me.

He stops running and gasps, “This is not possible, you were just there…” he points out. “Now, I’m here.” I reply with a grin growing leisurely towards my left ear, “you’re coming with me.” I say and put the rope on his wrist.

I take him to the railroad and tie him up perpendicularly to the tracks. Then, I begin the interrogation. “You tell me everything you know, or you get sliced and survive with nothing more than your chest and head.” I point out, “So, where is he?” I ask him. “I don’t know man!” He replies. I say, “I don’t believe you. WHERE is he?”

He replies the same for the next three times. But then, the tracks start to vibrate. A train’s noise comes into range. So I ask him one last time.

He panics and cracks, “I had him tied here but he got away. I swear I didn’t hurt that little kid!”

“Finally,” I say. “Get me out of here now!” Screams the old rag. I turn around and slowly walk away. “HEY!” He screams. I pull my fedora down, dust my raincoat, and snap my fingers.

The rope snaps with my fingers and he drags himself clear, barely a meter away from the train. I grab a cup of tea and take a seat on a rock, staring at the undisturbed surface of the water. Is that death? Stagnant nothingness?

I take out my phone and click on the beheaded telephone icon. It’s Lauren, she has given me a missed call. Not knowing what to expect, I call her phone. I look down at the lake and I see the rippling reflection of the face the old man is afraid of. It is colored brown overall and a lighter brown fades in at every peak on the skull. Canines long as fingers and shaped like a giant claw, growing out of the gum and completely exposed due to no lip.

I blink, and then it’s me again. Just a father hoping to hell that his son is alive. His name is… was Hopper.

The call gets sent to voicemail. “Hey honey, I…” I stop as I notice blood splatter on the damp soil. I finish the voicemail by saying, “I might be here long. Hold on to yourself and little bulb Amy.”

Very leisurely, I knock over the top of my flip-phone with an index and fit the little thing into my pockets. I push my sunglasses higher up my nose and begin walking there, not knowing what to expect, with a shadow of worry behind me.

The blood splatter continues behind the bushes. I follow it until I see something/someone on the floor, dead. I walk over the bush and spot the body. It’s just a poor bore except, it’s not JUST a bore. This is the first bore I saw that has claws. I’m probably not seeing straight. So I turn my attention to finding more leads.

Seconds turn into minutes, which turn into hours. Seven hours of walking, searching, and digging later, I find a trail of footsteps about a mile out of the village. They’re bare feet, and no one in the village wears shoes. And they are small. There is a good chance that this may have been someone who has something to do with the vanishing of Morgan.

I follow the footsteps and they kept getting fresher every step along the way. In the distance, I see a kid run. Not knowing the context of this, I sprint to catch him. Several minutes later, along the same path, I catch up to the boy.

He is tensed out and his heart is a fist moving as fast as an engine’s piston, sweat rolling down his chest and his breath shaking from terror.

“Let me go! Let me go!” He screams, “You can’t protect me from what’s coming.”

“Oh, trust me, I can,” I reply. Then the feeling of my face changing strikes again. The boy freezes in my hand. He then screams for help. “Hey, stop!” I tell him, “I am not here to hurt you, boy. I just need some answers about Morgan if you know him. He went missing two days ago.”

“Morgan? Is this about him?” He asks. “All right, good start, you know him. You a friend or what?” I ask. “Follow me.”

He leads the way to a cabin in the middle of nowhere. “This is where Morgan and I played last time I saw him.” he continues, “That night however was different. There was something evil in the air. We decided to sleep in the cabin for the night, just to be safe. But when we fell asleep, I heard something. It said…--” I interrupt him with, “Those dented bushes were there before?” He nods and says, “That’s where I lost Morgan.”

Good, that is a solid lead. “What did you hear while you were sleeping that day?” I ask. He replies “I heard Morgan say ‘me ajuda’.”