Gone

Bryan W. Alaspa

Published: 2009
Tag(s): horror, thriller, suspense, fiction, novel

Gone

By

Bryan W. Alaspa

Copyright 2009  Bryan W. Alaspa

For my friends J.D. and Lazaro

It was Christian’s idea to head out into the woods for the weekend.  It was supposed to be some kind of bonding experience, I guess.  I never really understood what crapping in the woods, sleeping on the ground and gutting fish had to do with bonding, but Christian loved the outdoors.  For me, roughing it meant that the hotel room cable didn’t come with any movie channels.
Let’s see, there was me, Jay, Carlos, Joe, Christian’s wife Nancy and Karmen.  We had all just recently started working at the same company.  Well, let me back up a bit.  We all knew each other from another company we had all worked for.  That company had closed down and then Christian had started his own company.  We were the elite, I guess.  We were the ones he hand-picked to help him get this endeavor off of the ground.  Maybe what you get when you are sitting in a loft office using card tables as desks and in a room with no walls is some kind of hysteria and the desire to go sit in a tent in the woods.
Of course it was Christian who decided we all needed to bond.  I thought we had already bonded over the hassles we had gone through with the other company.  When Christian gets that glassy-eyed stare, though, you know that he is on a set track and nothing short of his own death is going to get him off of that track.  I expressed my distaste for camping and suggested we do anything else but, however, Christian had his mind set.
I should have known it was a red flag when he used the phrase “I’ve heard about.”  Rather than indicating we were going to go to a place where he had camped and fished before he indicated he knew of another place that was supposed to be better than anything he had seen before.
“Last time I was up in Wisconsin,” he said, “I heard about this place that’s supposed to have the most fantastic fishing.  Gorgeous and peaceful too.”
“Do you actually know where this place is?” I asked, figuring that someone had to.
“Not exactly,” he said, “but I can talk to one of my friends.  He knows.  He told me about it.”
I shrugged and hoped that the whole idea would just go away.  When you’re starting a new business there is, as you might imagine, a lot of work to be done.  I plunged into it.  This was the first start-up where I had really been there from the beginning.  This was my chance to help create something from the ground up.  It was also my chance to really learn how to start a business, something I had been kicking around in my head for years but never had the information and intelligence to get going on my own.
Three weeks ago, however, Christian came into the office and declared he had the directions and he knew exactly where this camping area was.  He declared that we would all be going camping for a four-day weekend in three week’s time and we should all make arrangements.  Joe and Karmen had gone camping many times before, sometimes with Christian, and they seemed excited.  Jay, Carlos and myself did not seem particularly thrilled.  Nancy, Christian’s wife, also seemed excited.
I was probably the closest with Jay and Carlos.  We had been the three musketeers at the old place.  We were tight almost from the get-go and Jay even started at the other place on the same day as me.  It was a day in winter where the parking lot had been a sheet of ice.  Jay and I had been amused that the first day at our job seemed to provide us with a test that we had to survive getting into the building without injuring or killing ourselves in order to qualify for our jobs or something of that nature.  We had both passed.
Jay was the kind of guy women were instantly attracted too.  He was Greek and generally fair-skinned but there was just enough of an exotic look to him that women were attracted to it.  He was tall, well over six feet, and he liked to work out.  He had a handsome face and a mop of dark hair on the top of his head.  He had played football when he was younger and you could still make out the shape of a football player in his build.  He may have been past those days in his age, but you would bet he would be the star player in any pick-up game of football he ever played in.
Carlos, on the other hand, was like some sort of devilish imp out of some long-forgotten fairy tale.  He was the kind of guy who would ask you questions you knew he knew the answers to just because he knew you would find it irritating.  He was also instantly amused by everything and willing to laugh and make fun of anyone at any point.  At the same time, he was always one of the mist disorganized people I had ever met.  He was always overwhelmed with work and could never seem to get his priorities straight so that didn’t happen.
The rest of the team were people I knew and I counted them among friends but I certainly wasn’t as close to them as I was with Jay and Carlos.  Joe was the scary guy of the group.  One of the most fascinating things about him was that he would bring an entire cantaloupe for lunch.  Wait, the weird part was yet to come.  It was amusing to watch him show up in the lunch room with the fruit and this humungous knife just one step below a samurai sword.  He would then set about very systematically and methodically dismembering and eating the cantaloupe.  I was never sure what was scarier, the fact he had such a huge knife tucked away in his desk or the anal way he ate his lunch.
Joe had a past that involved working in the Pentagon at some point.  He never talked about it much.  He also had a love for strange music that ranged from dark heavy metal to some kind of renaissance fair kind of music.  He also was a big fan of things like “Lord of the Rings.”  You kind of get the idea why Joe was the scary one.
Then there was Karmen.  I hardly know where to begin about her.  She was the gorgeous blonde that every guy instantly fell in love with.  You see, not only was she stunningly gorgeous but she was also smart and funny.  She had the kind of sense of humor that you appreciated as a guy.  She could be totally perverted at one moment and then totally sweet the next.  She could also party her ass off and this was a trait I admired as well.
Christian, Nancy, Joe and Karmen had all known each other long before the rest of us came into the group.  They were all members of some kind of clique from the college they attended.  It was a little weird at times.  It was like stumbling into some kind of fraternity party half of the time and they often talked about people the rest of us had never met and never knew.
Still, they were all generally good people.  Christian was a big baseball fan and that endeared him to me.  He also was a pretty forgiving and understanding boss and this was a big plus as far as I was concerned.  The only problem I had with him was his obsession with this whole camping thing.
I delayed dealing with the situation for as long as I could.  Kept hoping it would go away.  Instead the talk between Nancy, Karmen and Joe intensified.  Jay and I would look at each other and roll our eyes.  We would talk in hushed tones throughout the day trying to determine if they were all really serious about all of us living in tents for four days and three nights in the middle of Wisconsin.
“Do you even have a sleeping bag?” I asked Jay once morning over coffee.
“I’ve never needed one,” he said.
“I had one when I was a kid,” I replied.  “I just never had a need for one as an adult.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, “I lost my taste for sleepovers when puberty hit.”
“You just got a taste for a different kind of sleepover, you mean,” I said with a smile.
I soon found myself in a sporting goods store on a fine Saturday buying a sleeping bag and other camping supplies.  There was a time when I loved to fish and would spend time sticking a pole in the water at this cottage my parents had near a manmade lake.  I never caught much, but I sort of liked doing it.  I was now buying a new fishing pole.  I was buying one of those stupid fishing vests with more pockets than I knew what to do with.  I bought the sleeping bag.  I got a tent.  I thought I was ready to tackle the outdoors.  While I might never be confused with a mountain man, I figured I could survive those four days and three nights.
The one that I thought would somehow manage to weasel his way out of the thing was Carlos.  Carlos was notorious for never knowing his own schedule.  Many times Jay and I would make plans to do something on the weekend and we could invite Carlos.  He would say yes and then we would get a call the day of the event and he would say his wife reminded him that he had a family function that had been planned four months ago and she had been reminding him about for weeks to attend.  I figured this would be no exception.  Although he repeatedly told Christian that he would go, I was certain his wife would step in and tell him he has responsibilities elsewhere.  Imagine my surprise when the day arrived and we all met up in the parking lot of our offices and I saw Carlos there with his own sleeping bag and luggage.
“I thought your wife was going to tell you that you had plans already,” I told him once I had unloaded my stuff from my car.
“No,” he replied, “ she thinks this is a good idea.  Supposed to build character or something.  As soon as I told her about this weekend she blocked the whole weekend out on the calendar.”
“Hey there, partiers!” A voice interrupted at that point.
We both turned to see Jay strolling up from across the parking lot.  He had a bag slung over his shoulder and a sleeping bag in his other hand.  He was dressed in shorts and a t-shirt and was wearing dark sunglasses.  He was also smiling the goofiest grin.
“Isn’t this hot?” He said and then laughed.
“Yeah, thanks Paris,” I said.
I looked up at the sky.  I had to admit that it was a gorgeous day.  It was late August and much of the heat that had been beating down the city of Chicago seemed to have left for the moment.  The sky was a crystal blue, the kind of blue you normally see in the middle of winter, and there was a nice breeze coming off the lake.  It would be nice and warm in the sun but the humidity was low and it shouldn’t be uncomfortable.  At least, I hoped that was the case.
“Can you believe we’re doing this?” Jay said and laughed again.
“Believe it,” said Christian, who had arrived and was joining us.  “We’ll be at the spot in a few hours.”
“You know I have food allergies right?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied, stuffing supplies into the trunk of his car.  “Thanks to your constant reminders.  Now you and your food allergies need to get in the car.  We have a good long drive and then we have to take a canoe to get to the place where we’re camping.”
“We have to take a boat to get to where we’re going?”  I asked.
Christian smiled and nodded.  I noticed his wife Nancy was already in the passenger seat.  In the car right next to Christian’s Joe and Karmen were loading things into Joe’s car.  They seemed to be laughing and enjoying themselves.
“Not a boat,” Christian said, “a canoe.  There is a difference.”
Jay let loose with the “Dueling Banjoes” theme just for my amusement.
“Yes,” I said, “you’re much closer to the water and more likely to get wet.”
Christian just smiled and indicated I had better get my stuff in his car.  I added my modest amount of supplies to the ones in the trunk.  Jay did the same thing.  Carlos joined Karmen and Joe in the other car and then all of us climbed into the vehicles.  I was sitting right behind Nancy with Jay sprawling next to me.
“Hi, David,” Nancy said to me.  “Are you excited?”
“Thrilled,” I said.
“Oh, you’ll be fine,” she said.
Nancy was a great girl, I had to say.  She was a natural flirt and loved to flirt rather openly with other guys in front of Christian.  What was doubly strange was that Christian would jump in and go along with the flirting.  For example, there was this long-running joke that Joe was having a torrid affair with Nancy.  This couldn’t have been further from the truth, but Joe and Nancy would each make jokes about it and Christian would play along.  It certainly made lunch times more entertaining, I could vouch for that.
Christian leaned out the window and shouted something to Karmen who then relayed the message to Joe.  Joe gave a thumbs up.  I saw Jay pull out the ear buds to an iPod and then wished I had brought something to listen to.  Instead I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes as the car back out of its spot.  I did not bother to look at the building or my car or anything around me.
I have never been one who found it easy to sleep in a car.  My father insists otherwise.  He claims I slept through every family car ride and vacation from the time we left home until we arrived at the hotel.  I say that was mostly pretending on my part because most of this country is god-awful dull to look at.   If you live in a Midwestern state then there is generally even less to look at, unless you have a fetish for corn, of course.  Mountains and the ocean are great to look at for a  while but eventually even majestic things like that grow boring.
Chicago slowly dissolved behind us.  The trip between Chicago and Milwaukee is ridiculously short.  There may have been a time when the two cities were truly distinct but these days one is really just a suburb of the other.  There is even a huge shopping mall that practically connects the two cities these days.
I dozed, if that’s what you could call it.  I never really fell asleep.  Music was playing on the radio and Nancy and Christian were talking.  Jay would occasionally make a comment and I would acknowledge him.  The only highlight really came when Joe’s car pulled up next to our own and Karmen flashed the car from the passenger seat.  I was just glad I managed to catch the site before she put her shirt down.
We did settle onto the highway that runs along Lake Michigan for quite a while.  You have to put Milwaukee behind you to really see this.  It is rather beautiful, especially on a day when the sky and the water almost seemed to meet at the horizon.  The lake may not be an ocean but when you stand on its shore and look out at all of that water and you can’t see the other side you really can’t tell much of a difference.
The drive seemed to go on forever.  I might have fallen asleep for a few minutes but Christian seemed to be a driving machine.  He ate from prepared lunches that Nancy produced magically at one point from somewhere on the floor between her feet.  He never stopped.  To my amazement my own bladder did not sit up and try to make itself known.  I had brought some of my own food as well and ate a little bit.
All in all it was a long, relatively uneventful drive into Wisconsin.  Civilization disappeared behind us.  The plant-life seemed to grow higher and higher on either side of the highway.  When Christian turned off the major highway onto a lesser-known one is when I felt my first pang of unease.
I have never been a fan of the wilderness as my hatred of camping may have already indicated to you.  I always got nervous the further away form cities I got.  I also was not a fan of those back roads you find in places across the country.  Those roads that are just two lanes with acres and acres of nothing but corn on either side for miles and miles always make me uneasy.  I enjoy tall buildings and crowds and traffic and noise.  I don’t like how dark it gets out in the country at night without the comforting glow of the city on the horizon or the night-sky obscuring glare of street lights.
Christian exited from the highway, holding a paper map in his right hand, and made a left turn onto one of those two-lane blacktopped roads.  I immediately swallowed hard enough to produce a dry click in my throat.  I felt my stomach tighten.  I looked around and saw nothing to indicate a town or a city anywhere around.
We did run across a town a few minutes later.  We stopped to get gas and stretch our legs.  I wandered into the gas station and convenience store combination and bought a fresh bottle of water and used the restroom.  When I came back out Karmen, Carlos and Jay were huddled between the two cars.
“Thanks for the show, there,” I said to Karmen.  “That will help get me through any cold nights we run into up there.”
She laughed and looked down at my legs.  “Where are your shorts?”
I was wearing jeans.  She was in shorts and flip-flops.  She was wearing a blue t-shirt as well.
“I don’t wear shorts,” I said, “I figure it’s a public service.  I don’t want to look at my legs so I figure no one else does.”
“Well,” she said, “I’d like to see your legs.”
“You are welcome to come have a private show any time you want,” I replied.
“I hope you guys brought a tent big enough for the two of you,” Jay said and slipped me a wink.
“Oh yeah,” Karmen said, sarcastically,” Dave and I are banging all of the time these days.”
“Yeah,” I said, playing along, “you just think I’m going to the bathroom all of the time at work.”
“We love those handicapped stalls,” Karmen said and then we both laughed.
“You wouldn’t want to bang her anyway,” Carlos said.
“No, not her,” I said with fake disdain.  “Who’d want to have sex with a gorgeous blond with blue eyes and a killer body?”
“You wouldn’t,” Carlos said.
“Oh and why not?” I asked.
Carlos shrugged.  He rarely thought his jokes all the way through.  “You just wouldn’t.”
“Does this have anything to do with the colonoscopy?”  I asked.
I had had one of those about six months ago.  Carlos had been horrified as I talked about the procedure.  He seemed to think the procedure involved the doctor repeatedly ramming a broom-handle into my rectum or something.
Carlos laughed and shrugged again.  “I dunno.  Maybe a guy who likes those things may not want to have sex with a woman like Karmen.”
“I never said I liked them,” I said.  “I just said it wasn’t as bad as you might think.”
Carlos laughed again.  “Sounds like you liked them.  Didn’t it hurt afterwards?”
I sighed.  “It’s not like they ram the thing into your ass over and over again.  It’s a tube.  Oh never mind.”
Jay, Karmen and Carlos all laughed.  I looked over at the cars and saw that Christian was now done with the gas pumping and was emerging from the station with more snacks and a soda.  Joe was behind him and Nancy was following behind Joe.
“Let’s ride!” Christian said with dramatic wave.
“He thinks he’s John Wayne now,” I said.
“Let’s go, Bear,” Jay said towards me.  “Time to camp our asses off.”
Jay loved to give nicknames to people.  For me, I was Bear.  This was because I told him I once worked at a place down in the city.  I used to take a bus to and from my apartment.  The place I worked was near a strip club that advertised both male and female dancers.  As I stood near the bus stop a drunken man staggered over to me.
“Are you a bear?” He asked.
I was confused.  I had no idea what that meant.  Since I was in Chicago I thought maybe he thought I looked like someone on the Bears.  My puzzled expression must have given him the answer he needed.
“You’re not gay?” He said in a way that was more statement than question.
“No,” I said.
“Too bad,” he replied, swaying as though it were windy even though the air was calm, “you’re a very attractive man.”
I was never one to pass up a compliment.  I thanked him and then put my headphones back on and tried to avoid him.   Two buses showed up at once and I stayed to see which one he got on and then got onto the other one.
When I told Jay this story he thought it was hilarious.  As far as he was concerned my name was Bear from that point forward.  He even spread it around the office a bit so others started calling me Bear.  Only Jay really knew the story behind it, however.
We piled back into the cars.  Jay settled in next to me.  Christian and Nancy climbed back into the front.  Christian shifted the car into gear and pulled away from the pumps and the last of civilization that we would be seeing for some time.
There was nothing to the town.  There was the gas station and there were a handful of houses.  There was a firehouse that was most-likely volunteer and it looked like no one had volunteered there for some time.  There were no people.  Not even someone standing outside watering their lawn or anything.  There was the kid behind the counter at the gas station and that was about it.  The last houses disappeared past the back of the car in mere minutes and then there was nothing but corn and fields.
We drove down one two-lane highway and then made a right and drove down another.  There were no street signs.  I have no idea how Christian knew where he was going.  That nervous feeling was back in my stomach and the butterflies were kicking my ass completely.  I kept looking out my window expecting to see something.  I kept expecting to run into another town.  At some point I realized we hadn’t even passed another car in ages.  I saw an occasional broken down barn in the distance or perhaps a grain silo but I couldn’t see any houses.  It was like we had stepped back in time or fallen off the face of the planet.
The sun began to make its way down the other side of the sky and the shadows stopped pooling beneath us and started extending out from the side.  We continued north.  Then we made a turn towards the west.  Suddenly we were on a road that was not even blacktop and had no line down the middle.  We drove down that for half an hour before Christian stopped in the middle of the road.
The car came to a kind of skidding halt.  I put my hand to the back of Nancy’s headrest and braced myself.  Jay seemed to be startled out of his sleep.  Nancy let out a small squeal.  I turned immediately to look behind and saw the Joe was leaning hard on his own brakes.
“What the hell?” I heard Jay ask.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, concern sliding out of my mouth.
Christian did not reply.  He looked down at the paper he had been hold in his hands.  Then he peered out his windows.  Then he looked back down at his hand.  Then he looked back out the window.
“Please tell me you aren’t lost,” I said.
“I’m not lost,” he muttered.
Christian cursed and then he opened his door.  He stormed back past the car and over to Joe’s.  Joe rolled down his window and Christian leaned down to talk to him.
“Do you know where we’re going?” I asked Nancy.
Nancy had turned around to peer out the back of the car after Christian.  She was still looking at him and did not answer.
“Nancy?” I asked.
She blinked and then focused on me.  “What?”
“Do you know where we’re going?” I repeated.
She shook her head.  “Not really.  Christian never really told me directions or anything.  He has the map.”
“Where did he get this map, anyway?” I asked.
“A friend of his,” she replied.
“Another one of your group from college?”
“Yeah,” she said.
There was a tinge of worry in her voice that did not settle the butterflies in my stomach.  I felt a few of them flutter up into my throat.  I paused just long enough to worry about whether or not I had packed all of my acid-reflux medication and increase my butterfly population.  I wondered if Nancy was hiding something.  I turned to look at Jay.
“Ready to head back yet?” I asked.
“I was ready as soon as I stuffed a sleeping bag into my car,” he whispered.
I was about to ask Nancy for some further clarification on the origin of the map and where Christian had learned about this supposed nirvana camping site when Christian opened the driver’s door and settled back in behind the wheel.  He ran a hand through his hair.  He paused to smile at Nancy and squeeze her hand.  He looked the map again and then shifted the car into drive and executed a Y-turn that made me worry about what was on either side of the narrow road we were on.
I decided it was not the time to continue this particular line of questioning.  Christian seemed a little irritated.  Once he had straightened the car he stepped on the gas.  We drove back to the point where we had turned onto the road and made a left.  We drove about ten more miles and then he made a left again.  The road was nearly identical to the one we had turned around on but this time Christian seemed satisfied.
I looked over at Jay.  He was looking out the window.  His iPod ear-buds were on his lap like the tentacles of some strange sea creature.  He seemed to sense that I was looking at him and he turned and looked at me.  He smiled but I could see that there was worry behind his eyes as well.
I settled back in my seat.  It seemed like the sun was moving much too quickly.  I could see that Christian was clutching the steering wheel very tightly.  He glanced at the map.  He made another turn.  This road was much rougher than the others.
We bounced along for a while.  My stomach was alternating between being tied in knots with nervousness and cramping with hunger.  It seemed like days since we had eaten those sandwiches.  We still had not passed another car and I could not find another house anywhere in site.
“Where the hell are we?” I heard Jay whisper.
I turned to look at him and I shook my head and then shrugged for emphasis.  At this point I would not be surprised to see us run into someone with a Canadian flag on their lawn.  We hadn’t been driving long enough to make it that far north, at least as far as the clock said, but it felt like we had been driving for days.  When Christian made another turn and I heard gravel pecking against the underside of the car and nearly hit my head against the ceiling as he drove through a pothole I nearly lost it.
“For Christ’s sake!” I yelled.  “Where the hell are we going, Christian?”
“We’re here,” he said.
He hit the brakes again.  The car slowed and came to a halt.  I sat up and looked out the window.  We were at the end of the gravel road.  We had pushed a little past it and into a grassy area.  Beyond the small clearing here were tall weeds of some sort.  It looked like the weeds would come up to my waist.  There were trees all around but they stopped and made a kind of clearing directly in front of us.  There were just those tall weeds and other plants.  I could just barely make out a sliver of blue water in the distance.
“Are we still in America?” Jay asked.
“North America, sure,” Christian said and then laughed at his own joke.
Christian was happy now.  The tension I had seen before was now gone.  He had found his spot and now he was happy.  He was nearly vibrating with excitement.  He got out of the car and immediately began untying the canoe that had been strapped to the top of his car.
I moaned and began to discombobulate myself from the car.  I sort of fell out of the back seat and tumbled onto the ground and gravel.  Pins and needles shot through my legs from my hip to my toes.  I winced and jumped up and down to get the circulation back.  Jay stood up on his side and stretched.  Nancy was busy packing up whatever she had unpacked while riding shotgun.
I looked behind us and saw that Joe’s car was also unloading itself.  Karmen and Joe were busy undoing the ties on the canoe that was on top of Joe’s car.  Carlos looked as though he were as lost as Jay and I.  He had that smile still plastered across his lips because that was his natural state, but he looked just a little nervous about all of this.
“Come on,” I said, “we’d better get our stuff out of the car.”
Christian had opened the trunk.  I removed my pack and sleeping back.  I also removed the roll that was my tent.  Jay did the same thing.  I then helped Christian with the canoe.
We slide the metal canoe down off the top of the car without scraping too much paint off of the car.  We flipped the canoe over and placed the various pieces of luggage into the canoe.  Christian also checked to make sure the paddles were in the canoe.  I felt the urge to remind him that such a thing might have been something you wanted to check before getting all of the way out into the middle of nowhere but I held my tongue.
Once we had Christian’s car unloaded and the luggage and tents and supplies tucked away into the canoe we turned to help Joe.  I ran into Karmen as I was helping with that canoe and helped her get her luggage out of the trunk.
“You did remember to bring your vibrator, right?” I asked.
“Well, of course,” she said without batting an eye, “I never go anywhere without it.  More importantly, did you bring yours?”
“Sure,” I replied, “but I forgot the lubricating jelly.”
Karmen shook her head.  “Too bad.”
“Well we are roughing it,” I said and she laughed.
We loaded the second canoe.  Joe grabbed the front end of that canoe.  Carlos grabbed the back end.  Karmen helped out by grabbing a spot in the middle.  I grabbed the back end of the canoe form Christian’s car.  Jay grabbed the front end.  Nancy took her spot in the middle.  Christian carried a few backpacks and supplies and studied his map.  There wasn’t much of a debate as to where we were going so we started to walk through the tall weeds.
I was right.  The weeds went up to my waist.  We tromped through them, flattening the plant-life and making a path for ourselves.  At this point I was glad I had worn jeans as some of the plants looked like they might leave cuts and scrapes on bare legs.
“Still glad you wore shorts, Karm?” I asked.
“I haven’t shaved my legs for two months,” she said.  “That offers enough protection.”
“Well, then you’d better be careful you don’t get any tics caught in that fur” I said.
“Why not?” She asked.  “They can keep my crabs company.”
Everyone groaned at that one.  Joe laughed hard enough that he nearly dropped his end of the canoe.  Christian pointed towards the water.  The sliver of blue had grown.  I could see a lot more trees ahead.  I could also make out what looked to be a good-sized lake.  I looked down into the canoe at that point.
“Hey,” I said, “ do we have life vests or something?”
Christian turned around and smiled at me.  “It’s a canoe.  It doesn’t really qualify as a boat.”
“So that would be a no?” I asked.
“No,” Christian said.  “I don’t think the lake is that deep.”
“Swell,” I said.  “I can’t swim, though.  Wouldn’t take much to drown me.”
Christian laughed.  “Well my advice to you would be not to fall in.”
“Great,” I whispered.
I looked over at Jay.  He looked back and me and shook his head.  I rolled my eyes.  Carlos laughed.
We continued through the brush.  I felt the plants tugging at my jeans and shirt.  I stumbled a bit once but mostly, and remarkably, managed to keep my feet.  The sliver of lake grew wider and wider.  It was amazingly blue even with the sun slowly sliding down the edge of the sky.  I could see the other side of the lake and there was a narrow passage just off the right that seemed to form a kind of channel.
“How far do we have to go in these?” I asked.
Christian pointed.  “See that channel there?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Through that and just on the other side is another lake.  On he other side of that lake is the camping spot,” he said.
It sounded pretty simple.  I was nervous though.  I was not a big fan of water.  The water looked very calm but I had also been seasick many times.  I also had fallen underwater in a pool once and been pulled up by my hair by my father.  It was not an experience I wanted to duplicate.
We reached the edge of the water.  There wasn’t really anything that I would call a beach there.  There was just a kind of ending to the plants and the weeds and then some rocks.  Very small waves lapped against the rocks.  The water looked clear but I could see seaweed clinging to the rocks.
We put the canoes down.  There was a brief discussion over who would paddle.  It was determined that my decided lack of canoeing and boating experience was not conducive to having a paddle.  That was fine with me.  That left me more time to sit in the middle and worry about drowning and the outcome of this entire weekend.
Those of us who were not paddling got in.  Christian, Nancy, Carlos and Joe got into one canoe.  Jay and Karmen got into the canoe with me.  I noticed Karmen give me teasing look as she took up one of the paddles and settled in the rear of the canoe.  Once we had pushed off and everyone had settled in their seats the actual trip was relatively calm.
We paddled slowly and steadily across the lake.  The water was amazingly blue.  All around were trees.  I had to admit that it was rather beautiful.  The sun was still far enough above the trees that I figured we would make it to the site and have time to set up a decent camp and even get something to eat.  I even thought I might be willing to head out into one of these canoes again to do some fishing at some point.
There was little talking.  Everyone was looking around and taking the scenery.  There was the steady lapping of water as the paddles touched broke the lake’s surface and then exited the water.  I looked down at the water.  I gasped.  The water turned for a dark blue into a black almost immediately.  The lake was very deep and it got deep very fast.  I had the sensation of standing over a gigantic hole.
I was hypnotized.  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the blackness that was skirting beneath our canoes.  I thought I could see things moving down there but I figured that had to be my imagination.  The water was not really that clear and I doubt I could really see fish or anything of that nature.  My mind filled with images of giant squids and such pulling innocent canoes down with ease.
“Beautiful out here, huh?” I heard Karmen say.
I turned to look at her.  She was looking all around at the trees and the edges of the lake.  The mouth of the channel was pulling steadily closer.  I caught a flash of blue form her eyes and flecks of light from the sun bounced off of them.  I smiled at her and she smiled back.
“I am so not a fan of water,” I said.
“I won’t let you drown,” she said.
“That’s good,” I said, turning around to face forward again, “I think Jay would, though.”
“That’s right, man,” Jay said, “it’s every man for himself out here this far from civilization.”
“Well I know that Carlos would let his own grandmother drown out here,” I said a little loudly for Carlos’ benefit.
Carlos smiled and shrugged.  “Hey man, you know some cultures drown their elderly?”
“Is that so?” I responded.  “Which cultures would those be?”
####“The, um,” he searched.  This was the funniest part of Carlos’ jokes.  He rarely thought them through.  “They Po Pooey Indians.”
Everyone laughed at that one.  For Carlos that was startlingly original in its idiocy.
“How do you know so much?” I asked and shook my head.
“It’s all of that home schooling,” Jay said.
One of Jay’s favorite jokes was to pretend that Carlos was home-schooled.  It wasn’t true but, if it were, it would sure explain a lot of why Carlos was the way he was.  How Carlos’ wife could stand him sometimes was beyond me.  Carlos was usually a lot of fun unless you were actually trying to get some information from him or were trying to be serious.  He was so rarely serious about things that his teasing and pretending to be ignorant could make you want to throttle him.
We continued on.  The channel came up and we made for it.  Since this was Wisconsin there were no rapids or anything to deal with.  Instead the foliage just got a little closer to the canoes.  There was a flow to this channel so most of the paddling stopped and became just steering.
A hush came over us.  We looked at the trees on either side.  Just like the lake the light vanished quickly into the trees.  The branches spread out and into the channel like reaching fingers.  The tree trunks were big and thick with smaller trees poking up, struggling for light between them.  It was as though nature had just completely run wild here.  Your eyes drifted into utter darkness mere feet from the edge of the water.  It was like the lake and light were devoured by the trees on either side.
I stared at those trees.  Again, it was like the Lake.  I couldn’t stop looking at the branches, the leaves, the trunks.  I wouldn’t say I saw faces in the bark of the trees, but it was close.  In fact, I could have sworn I saw things moving in the blackness again.  Unlike the giant squids I day-dreamed about in the lake, however, it was entirely possible deer and other animals might be in these woods.
“Any animals in these woods?” Jay asked.
Christian shrugged.  “Probably deer.  Raccoons.  Possum.  Who knows?”
“Bear?” Jay asked.
“Yes?” I said.
“Not you,” Jay said with a laugh.  “Well, not this time.  I mean are there bear in these woods?”
“No,” Christian said.  “I don’t think so.”
“You aren’t sure?” Carlos said.  He looked nervous.
“There are no bear in Wisconsin,” Joe said.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“I just do,” Joe said.
With that kind of logic firmly in place I shrugged.  I looked at Carlos to try and give him an encouraging look but he was eyeing the trees.  Carlos looked completely out of place.  I imagined that this was how I looked.  Somehow Jay didn’t seem that out of place although I had my doubts he had ever gone camping.
“Have you ever been camping before, Jay?” I asked.
“A long time ago,” he said.  “I didn’t like it much.”
“Well, wait until this weekend is over,” Christian said.  “You’ll love it.”
“So you keep saying,” I said, “but so far I see a deep scary lake and creepy scary trees.”
We passed out of the channel and into the next lake.  This one was much bigger than the previous one.  I could see the trees ringing this lake were as big and scary as the other one.  I could also make out a clearing on the far side.  Finally, I made out another channel just past the clearing.  I imagined there was another lake somewhere over that way.
“That’s the place,” Christian said and he pointed towards the clearing.
“I guessed that much,” I muttered.
We paddled our way across the lake.  The water seemed darker this time.  I guessed this was because everything was getting darker.  The trees seemed to be reaching out further at us as we paddled.  I couldn’t shake the feeling that the trees and everything around us was alive.
I closed my eyes.  I couldn’t shake my creeped-out feeling.  I just wanted to get on shore and start building a fire and setting up my tent and not necessarily in that order.  Our cars seemed like they were thousands of miles away.  I remembered the abandoned roads and realized that civilization was even further away than that.  We might just as well have fallen off the face of the earth from the way things looked around us now.
It didn’t take very long before the canoe bumped into something.  I opened my eyes and was convinced that a giant tentacle would be hovering out of the water.  For a moment my certainty was so solid that I actually saw a tentacle.  Then I realized it was a tree trunk and I laughed at myself.  We had made the trek across the lake and were pulling up on the small beach area that then led up to the clearing.
This was the first sign of civilization I had seen since the gas station.  There was an area that had obviously, over the years, become the place to build a fire.  The traditional circle of rocks was already there.  The area was very tramped down.  There was even a metal garbage can at one end of the clearing and a very sad-looking picnic table as well.  I could see paper and other scraps of garbage from previous campers lying around the edges.
I managed to get out of the canoe and only get slightly soaked.  I helped pull the canoes up onto the land and then I helped unload the canoes.  We were laughing again.  Carlos was casting uneasy glances at the trees.  I was doing the same thing because now I couldn’t shake the feeling of movement in the spaces between the trees.  I wanted to get a fire going as soon as possible.  I was starting to feel the first signs of fatigue creeping into my bones as well.  I thought I might actually manage to sleep well tonight.
I had bought one of those tents that sort of folded in half and popped up when you opened it like something out of a pop-up book.  I found a spot as far from the water as I could get without being in the woods.  I unzipped the case it was in and then threw the tent onto the ground.  The whole things popped open into a kind of dome that was the general shade of blue.  It certainly did not look particularly roomy or comfortable.
“Do I have to do something to make sure this thing stays on the ground when the wind blows?” I asked.
“You have to hammer the pegs into the ground,” Joe said.
“Pegs?” I inquired.
Karmen sighed and walked away from assembling her own tent and came over to me.  She rooted through my stuff and then found the metal pegs that she then hammered at the corners of the tent.  Quite honestly I couldn’t tell you exactly what she did but it looked like hard work and I had to admit I was glad I wasn’t doing it.
“You’re such a man,” I said to Karmen.
“Well, someone around here should be,” she replied.
“Hey,” I said, “this tent is big enough for two.”
She turned and looked at me with mild surprise.  She smiled.
“Just, you know,” I said, “in case something happens to your tent.”
Karmen smiled and walked back to her tent.  In a flash her tent was up and secured.  Hers was easily big enough to fit four people.  She stood next to the tent and continued to smile at me.
“What was that about two people?”  She asked.
“Hey, it’s not the size that matters,” I said.
“It’s what the Bear does with it,” Jay said.
Jay had just finished with his tent.  He was also bigger, but his way also of the pop-up variety.  He had managed to find and then pound his own pegs, however.
“Nice tent, Jay,” I said.
“When the hell do we eat around here?” He asked.
“What do we eat around here?” I asked in turn.
We turned towards the rest of the camp.  Joe and Christian were just about done with their tents.  Both of their tents looked well-used and both were rather roomy.  Carlos was having a little trouble with his tent and Jay and I paused in our quest for food long enough for him to set things up.
“What now?” I asked Christian once we had finished.
“Well, I would suggest we gather some wood and start a fire,” he said.  “Nancy and I brought some food that we can cook up tonight.  Nothing too exciting, but it is very traditional camping food.”
With that mission well in hand we set about finding wood.  I did not feel very comfortable traveling far into the woods so I stuck to the perimeter of the clearing.  I found a few branches.  I figured with my general lack of knowledge when it came to wood that none of what I had found would be any good.  Joe, of course, was willing to travel into the woods.  He had a large knife again but at least this one wasn’t being used to slice up melons.  I would not have been surprised to find out that he had brought a few melons with him, however.
I returned with a decent arm-load of wood.  Christian, to my surprise, was delighted with the wood I found and he began assembling the wood for a fire.  Joe, Carlos and Karmen each returned with more wood and kindling.  I have expected Joe to have stalked, killed, gutted and cleaned some kind of small woodland creature.  Instead he just had wood.
It turned out the food was the traditional hot dogs cooked over an open fire.  Thankfully Christian had some kind of long metal forks instead of us having to find sharp sticks.  There were chips and marshmallows for s’mores after the sausages had been eaten.  I found myself hungrier than I had thought I was when I sat down and ate three hot dogs.  I skipped out on the marshmallows and I hoped my stomach did not reject the dogs.
“So,” I said once the food had gone down, “What is on the agenda for tomorrow?  Are you one of those people who is going to wake us all up at four in the morning to go fishing?”
“No,” Christian said, “I’ll let you sleep until about five-thirty.”
“You even try to wake me up at five-thirty in the morning you had better be prepared to go swimming,” Jay said downing another marshmallow.
“What happens if it rains?” I asked.
“You get wet,” Joe said.
“Are these tents waterproof enough?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t want to throw one in the lake,” Karmen said, “but I think they’ll handle rain.”
“Man,” I said, “I always check the weather days in advance.  I completely forgot to check about this weekend.”
“Relax,” Christian said.  “We’ll be fine.”
“I only went camping once,” I said, “ and it was a long time ago.  We ended up in a huge thunderstorm the last night and it was a nightmare.  We found out the next morning that there had been tornadoes in the area and everything.”
“But you survived, somehow,” Nancy said.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said.
“You are so negative,” Carlos said.
“You are only just now figuring that out?” I said.
“You would look at a sunny day and complain about the clouds passing overhead,” Carlos said.
“Well this is true,” I replied.  “I tend to worry about the weather a lot.  If it’s a sunny day but the weather guy is predicting storms that night, I spend the whole day worrying about it.”
“You gotta learn to live in the moment, Bear,” Jay said.
“Is this weekend really some kind of intervention?” I asked.  “Are you all going to try to teach me some kind of life lesson?”
“Maybe these guys are,” Christian said gesturing to the others, “but I’m just here to camp.”
“What else happened that weekend?” Karmen asked.
“Which one?” I replied.  “The camping weekend?”
“No the fourth of July weekend,” Karmen said.
“All right,” I said, “ no need to get snotty.  It was prom weekend my senior year.  To start things off the girl I really wanted to go with lied to me.  She kept telling me she couldn’t go to prom.  Then, when I finally asked out this one girl I really didn’t want to go with she went and accepted an invitation to the prom right in front of me.”
“Ouch,” Christian said.
“Yeah,” I said.  “I should have known that was a bad omen.  None of us knew where to go or what to do after the dance.  We ended up at some guys house and I fell asleep on the couch.  We had all been invited to go camping with this one girl in our group.  Her family evidently always had a kind of reunion slash camping trip.  We all thought it would be better than going to some damn amusement park or something.”
I paused.  I yawned.  I looked up at the sky and was amazed at the sheer number of the stars.  When you live in the city and you look up you are lucky if you can count the stars you see on your two hands.  These were numberless and so clear.
“Anyway,” I continued,” we were all pretty tired the next day.  We all piled into these huge Suburbans and fell asleep in the back.  It was one of the few times I actually fell asleep in a car.  I got to sleep right next to that girl I had the crush on, though and that was cool.  I was pretty sure that I had my hand on her bare leg for most of the drive.”
“Yeah, naughty Bear,” Jay said.
“I wish I had a naughty story,” I said.  “Things went downhill from there.  The girl I had the crush on was having all kinds of medical and mental problems.  To this day, I don’t really know what was wrong or what was going on.  I just know she couldn’t sleep.  She would be moaning in pain and then screaming in the middle of the night.  I couldn’t sleep the whole time.  I just wasn’t used to sleeping on the ground.
“The girl who had arranged for the whole trip had a really nice family.  Her brother taught me the proper way to throw a Frisbee.  Then we all went hiking and when we got back we found out her brother had been goofing around with some other family members and broken his nose.  He’d been rushed to a local hospital.”
I laughed again and shook my head.  I could remember his face in my head.  He looked like he had had his head puffed up by an air pump.  He couldn’t talk right because he had landed on his face and injured his mouth.
“Then came the storm,” I continued.  “It hit the last night.  The girl’s tent flooded and several of the girls ended up in the guy’s tent.  That was a positive.  However, the storm was so intense I was too terrified to care.  I sat there with my hands over my ears trying to drown out the noise of one of the worst storms the area had seen in years.”
“The next morning the mother of the girl who had invited us was near to cracking.  Her son was injured.  The campground was flooded.  Watching out for all of us had frayed her nerves.  She had been jovial and joking the entire time but that morning she was not in the mood to laugh.  We all ate breakfast and then loaded up the Suburbans.”
“Nothing naughty in the tent with the girls, huh?” Jay asked.  He tended to have a one track mind.
“Again, I can only say I wish,” I said.  “On the way home the Suburban I was in stalled.  We ended up on the south side of Chicago on the side of the road completely stalled.  A state trooper car came by.  There were too many of us to fit in the tow truck so my friend Wolfie said he thought his father would be at his office downtown if the state troopers would just give us a lift.”
“Wolfie? Carlos said.
“Yeah, his name was Wolfie,” I said.  “It was a Sunday.  It made no sense as to why Wolfie thought his father would be at work.  This was in the days before cell phones so we couldn’t call.  I found out that state troopers listen to basketball games and make comments about women in other cars instead of listening to their radios.”
“Damn cops,” Nancy said.
“We arrived at the office and Wolfie had no way to get into the building,” I said.  “We ended up walking to the train station.  As we were getting to the train I realized my wallet had fallen out of a hole in my jeans that I wasn’t aware that I had.  I got lucky and found that someone had turned my wallet in to Lost and Found untouched.  We took the train back to Wolfie’s house and I got into my car.”
“That was all?” Christian said.  “I was expecting you to say someone ended up dead.”
“Trust me,” I said, “it was exhausting.  It made me never want to camp again.”
“Yet here you are,” Joe said.
“Here I am,” I replied.
Silence fell over everyone.  It was that strange silence that always falls over crowds when they’re gathered around talking.  No one ever know why they happen but they are always awkward.
“Hey, Carlos,” Christian said, “how’s your son doing?”
Carlos had two very nice kids.  He had a daughter who was about four and a son who had just turned one.  Just before his son’s first birthday his son was diagnosed with a type of cancer.  That’s a word that you never ever want to hear when it is in connection with any of your children.  His son had an operation and a very serious one and now appeared to be recovering well.  However, the days before he and his wife knew for sure what kind of cancer their son had and what could be done with about it was the only time I saw Carlos nearly lose it.
“He’s doing fine,” Carlos said.  “It’s amazing.  The day after the operation he was running around like nothing had happened.”
“I’m telling you,” I said, “he’s so young he won’t even remember anything.”
“I hope so,” Carlos said.  “I just worry about him.  There’s no guarantees that the cancer won’t come back.  The doctors can never say just yes or no about anything.”
Carlos was the kind of guy who was always looking for something absolute about life.  No matter how many times I tried to tell him that, in this day and age, a doctor could not say anything was absolute for fear of being sued if something other than what he had said happened it never satisfied him.  Carlos wanted to see the world in black and white and tried to think that way himself.  It was a source of constant frustration for him that he couldn’t always do that.
“I’ve told you why they can’t,” I said.
“I know,” he replied, “but it still bugs me.  This is my kid here.”
“So, Karmen,” Jay said, “have you finally found a man who lives in the same state as you to date?”
Jay had never been particularly comfortable with kids.  We had a mutual friend from work who had a young son.  Once Jay had gone over to this woman’s house and he ended up making an attempt to hold the child.  What the result was was so funny that she had taken a picture.  In the picture Jay is holding the kid at arm’s length as though he might explode or something.
Meanwhile, Karmen had a reputation for dating men who lived out of state.  This did not deter her.  She would tell stories of getting up in the middle of the night and driving all the way to St. Louis, for example.  She would do this just for a day.  As for me, the five hour drive to St. Louis was enough to wear me out for the rest of the day.
“Not yet,” she said with a laugh.  “I’m too gorgeous and important to just confine myself to the local guys, you know.  I need to spread myself around.”
Jay laughed a goofy laugh.  “Yeah, you said spread!”
That set everyone off.  It was a good thing Jay was always willing to take things to the base-level.  Things had gotten a tad too serious when you started talking about children with cancer.
I paused to look at the sky again.  The last of the color of the day was fading.  The fire was burning brightly and I felt warm.  However, there was enough of a chill in the air for me to tell that if I were to move away form the fire I would get chilled pretty quick.  I tend to like cooler weather, but even I have limits.  I felt that sleeping in the tent might be more uncomfortable than I had first thought.
I stared at the star again.  I found myself unable to tear myself away.  I couldn’t even make out any constellations there were so many stars.  They seemed so bright.  I had seen stars like that once before and that was when my family had visited South Dakota.  We were in the Black Hills and above sea level.  I remember thinking the stars looked bigger.  There was no moon that I could see at this point, however.
“Hey, look at that.” I heard Carlos say.
I turned and looked at him.  I found that most of the others were also staring off into the sky or into the woods around us.  The fire created strange shadows on the trees and foliage that grew and shrank and then grew again.  Carlos was staring off into the sky but he was staring over my shoulder.  Christian looked in that direction.  A strange look crossed his face.  This same reaction was copied by Nancy and Joe and then Karmen.
I turned.  I like to think that I kept my cool, but I am not delusional enough to believe that for long.  Just over the tops of the trees and reaching into the sky were some of the most beautiful colors I had ever seen.  Hovering, and seeming to reach right down into the trees was a slowly shimmering curtain of color.  The colors were green and white and blue mixed with oranges and reds.  I think I even saw some purple.  They were not flashing or dissipating but they just hovered there and seemed to be blowing in a kind of gentle breeze.
“What the hell is that?” Christian asked.
“Aurora Borealis?”  Joe asked.
“Which way is that?” I asked.
“Um,” Christian muttered.  He fished around in his pockets and came out with his pocket compass.  “This says that’s south.”
“Then it wouldn’t be the northern lights, would it?” I asked.
“Well what else could it be?” Joe asked in turn.
“Maybe it’s just lights from a distant town or something,” Carlos said.
“We haven’t been near a town for miles,” I said.  “Besides that goes way up into the sky.  I don’t think city lights go up that high.”
“What are you an expert?” Jay asked.
I shrugged.  “Not really.”
We just sat there for a while and watched.  The colors did not cast any light.  They did not move closer or further away.  They just sat there and continued to move slowly as though it were a flag caught in a breeze.  After a while I found myself feeling very tired.  I yawned.
“Well,” I said, “ whatever it is it doesn’t seem very threatening.  It’s probably some kind of damn reflection of something.  Maybe it actually is the Aurora.  What the hell do I know?  I’m not a scientist.”
“It’s pretty,” Karmen said simply.
I turned to look at her standing there in the firelight.  I thought that her sentence could easily have applied to her as well.  Then I felt another yawn.  I noticed others were starting to yawn as well.
“Nothing like a long car ride to wear my out nice and early,” I said.
“I’m beat too,” Jay said.
I stretched.  The others were gathering themselves and stretching and yawning as well.  Carlos seemed to still be watching the colors in the sky.  I could see the dim sparks of the fire reflected in his eyes.
“Hey,” I said and snapped my fingers in front of his face, “you gonna be okay here or are those lights going to freak you out?”
Carlos blinked and then smiled at me.  “No.  They’re just colors.  When I get tired my brain shuts down like that.”
“Only when you’re tired?” Jay said.
Carlos and I smiled and laughed.  I said my good-nights and then crawled into my tent.  I took off the clothes I was wearing and changed into some sweat pants and long-sleeved shirt.  Sure enough, away from the fire I could feel the dampness and coolness of the woods seeping into the tent through the bottom.  I crawled into the sleeping bag and zipped it up to my chin.  I felt my entire body decompress.  I was more exhausted than I had realized.  I figured sleeping on the ground would be almost impossible for me.
I heard some of the others talking.  Karmen said her good-nights and headed to her tent.  I had images in my head of her changing as I had a few moments before.  I listened and Joe and Nancy and Christian attempted to play some kind of card game.  It was obvious after a few minutes, however, that all of them were too tired to really concentrate on the game.  Soon they were headed into their tents and to sleep as well.
I listened to the silence for a while.  I was the kind of guy who fell asleep with the television on or maybe a fan.  I tended to need some kind of noise to feel comfortable and sleep.  I could hear insects making noises in the woods.  I expected my mind to play tricks on me and imagine things moving in the woods.  However, my imagination seemed exhausted as well.  I found my eyes were too heavy to keep open.  I was soon sound asleep.
I would guess that just after midnight or possibly 1 a.m. I heard thunder.  Normally this would have a completely detrimental effect on my sleeping.  When I am trying to sleep at home, in a brick building, surrounded by civilization I will wake up and pace.  I have a true obsessive compulsive disorder when it comes to thunderstorms.  I am paranoid about them.  I pace around and carry a small, batter-powered weather radio with me.  You cannot imagine what being outside during a storm that this one sounded like would have sent me into spasms.  This night I slept.
Well, that is to say, I wasn’t entirely asleep, obviously, if I heard the storms.  However, I did not feel the urge to stand up or cower in my sleeping bag.  I just laid there.  There was even a part of my brain that said I should be scared.  It was like there was something or someone standing inside my brain screaming at me that this was what I was afraid of.  It was like someone was trying to tell me I should wake up and do something.
I heard the thunder crashing.  I heard trees and branches falling.  The tent rocked around me.  What I did not hear was anyone else in the camp getting up or yelling.  When I had been camping in high school and the storm hit everyone seemed to be yelling and screaming.  The rain pounded onto the tent.  I heard louder poundings and I thought that might have been hail.
The wind whipped through the trees.  I felt wind seeping in through the tiny openings in the tent.  I could feel the tent wanting to lift off the ground and hurtle into the woods.  The wind roared and it did indeed sound like the freight train you always heard people who have lived through a tornado talk about.  It sounded like hell out there.
The lightning flashed followed immediately by the thunder.  The lightning light up the tent and burned into my retinas even with my eyes closed.  The thunder was deafening and left my ears ringing.
I lay there as though I had been drugged.  I tried to move and found that I couldn’t.  I had heard of people who wake up and find themselves paralyzed.  I knew that our own bodies released a chemical that would prevent people from getting up and acting out their dreams.  However, I had never experienced this before.
The storm raged fiercely for several minutes.  I completely lost track of time.  I lost track of everything.  All there was for those minutes was sound and thunder and noise.   Then it began to fade.  The wind died.  The lightning stopped.  The thunder became distant.  Remarkably I slid back off into sleep.
I remember no dreams.  It was like I slipped into a coma or something.  There was just blackness.  I wouldn’t even call what I sank into as restful.  It was like I just shut off.  The next thing I was aware of it was morning.
I felt refreshed.  One moment I was asleep and then I was awake.  This was something new for me as well.  I am not a morning person.  I struggle to wake up from a deep sleep.  I claw and fight my way.  I stretch and moan.  I lay in bed with my eyes closed while the minutes tick away.  This morning though my eyes snapped open and I was funny awake.
I stretched more for ceremony than need.  I unzipped the bag and started to crawl out.  I had no idea what time it was.  I looked at my watch and saw that it was just after five.  There was no sound in the camp.  I listened more closely and realized there was no sound from anywhere.  There was no breeze.  There was no sound of water lapping at the edges of the lake.  There were no birds.  No one else seemed to be moving.
I crawled toward the opening to my tent.  I unzipped the zipper.  I peered out and the scene was breathtaking.  The stillness made the entire area look like a photograph.  There was a low-lying fog clutching the ground and hovering over the lake.  The sky was lightening in the east and there were slivers of color.  I looked up and could see the remnants of the clouds and weather system that had passed by overnight.  The ground was wet and my hands were damp when I put my hands on it.  I could hear water dripping softly from somewhere.
I stood and stretched again.  I felt really good.  I ran my hand through my hair.  I walked down by the lake.  My body parted the low mist and then the mist closed behind me as I walked.  The water looked gray with milky swirls from the mist.  I bent down at the edge and felt the cool water.  I took off my shirt and ran some of the cool water over myself.  I shuddered and held my hand over my mouth to prevent myself from screaming.
I looked around to make sure I was still by myself.  I took off the sweat pants and ran water over the rest of my body.  I did it quickly.  I had forgotten to bring soap but I felt a little better getting the sweat from sleep washed off my skin.  I slide my clothes back on.  No sooner had I done so when I heard clapping behind me.
“Nice one,” Karmen whispered in the morning air.
“Thanks,” I said.  “It’s only fair that I see you now.”
She smiled.  She was wearing shorts and t-shirt.  She hadn’t put any shoes on and her hair was a mess.  To my surprise she lifted the shirt over her head and tossed it at me and then walked down to the lake.  I think my jaw must have hit my shoes.  I was polite, however, and kept my back turned while she washed.  She came up from behind me when she was done and grabbed her shirt.
“Careful what you ask for,” she said, “or else don’t be surprised when you get it.”
She walked back towards her tent.  She put her shirt on as she walked.
“Pick your jaw up,” she said, “it’ll get dirty on the ground there.”
I shook my head as she disappeared into her tent.  I walked towards my own tent and crouched inside.  I couldn’t shake the image of her out of my head.  I wondered if I should have chased her into her tent.  That was the problem with Karmen.  She was daring and flirtatious and you were never sure if she was joking or she really meant what she was saying.
I found some clothing and got myself dressed.  By the time I had unzipped my tent and stepped back outside the sun had finally risen.  The sky was much lighter.  The mist was starting to burn away.  Christian, Joe and Nancy were sitting at the picnic table and there was a pile of fishing gear.
“Hey, it’s Bear,” Christian said.  “You ready to try your hand at fishing?”
“Is fish what we have for breakfast out here?” I asked.
“Yep,” Joe said, “well, unless you don’t catch anything.  Then we have some other things as back-up.
“Can’t we just skip the whole boat and bait thing and just get right to the part where I don’t catch anything at eat the back up stuff?” I asked.
“So negative,” Nancy said.
“Well, I’ve never been particularly good at fishing,” I said.
“Come on, Bear,” Christian said, “you’ve just never fished here.”
“Neither have you,” I said.
“That is a good point,” Christian said.
Without further questions or debate he slid off the table and grabbed a couple of fishing poles.  He walked over to me and handed me one.  Joe laughed and stood up.  He grabbed a pole and then grabbed the blue tackle box that was sitting on the ground near his feet.  Nancy followed with her own pole.  She smiled at me as she walked past.
I sighed and turned to walk towards the lake and the canoes.  As I started to walk I saw Jay emerge from his tent.  He was wearing shorts and a white t-shirt.  He took one look at me with my pole and laughed.
“Nice pole you got there, Bear,” he said.
“If you hurry you can probably come too,” I said.
“No thanks,” he said, “I’m allergic to fish.”
I walked past him because I could see the others waiting for me at one of the canoes.
“Well, I hope not,” I said, “apparently this is what we eat for breakfast around here.”
“Oh, I’m not allergic to eating them,” he said.  “I’m allergic to catching them.”
I smiled at this and then tromped my way down to the edge.  Joe had already made his way to the front of the canoe.  Nancy had taken I up a spot behind Joe.  I groaned.
“I hate boats,” I said, “have I told you that?”
“Repeatedly,” Christian said.  “Now, remember what I told you yesterday.”
“Oh yes,” I replied, “your great advice about not falling out of the boat.”
I found my seat.  Christian stepped into the canoe behind me after pushing us off.  I began staring at my fishing pole.  I hadn’t touched one in ages.  I had also never been fishing out in the middle of the lake.  I had fished on the shore plenty of times.  I was not used to catching things.  I mostly did it because it was something to do when visiting the cottage my parents owned when I was growing up.
Joe and Christian paddled.  There wasn’t much talking.  We were once again taken up by the beauty of the morning and of nature.  The sky was lightening.  The mist was burning away.  The sky was a remarkable blue.  It looked like it would be a gorgeous day.  The water was dark like it was yesterday and it seemed to go on forever.  I had the idea of hovering over a gigantic hole again.
We reached a spot that looked close to the middle and slightly towards the left from where we had pushed off.  There were no currents.  Joe took his fishing pole and checked the hook and the bait.  He cast a short distance away from the boat and the bobber bobbed easily.  Christian followed suit and then Nancy did the same.  I hoped I remembered enough about fishing to cast without hooking anyone or strangling myself with the fishing line.  I managed to get the hook into the water.
“See,” Christian said, “aren’t you glad you came along?”
I laughed. “Like you gave me much of a choice.”
“Hey, you could have said no,” Christian said.
“I did say no,” I replied.  “As I recall I tried to say no several times and I got out-voted.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” Christian said, adjusting his line and slowly reeling it back in.
“How could you remember much?” I asked, doing the same with my own line. “You didn’t really listen to anyone else as soon as you decided we should all go camping.”
“Hey, do you have to argue?” Nancy said.  “Can’t we just enjoyed this?”
“Yes,” Joe said, “can’t we just enjoy this?”
“Come on, Joe,” Christian said, “you have to back me up here.”
“I’m not backing anyone up on anything,” Joe said.  “I came along because I wanted to.  I have to say that Dave, Jay and Carlos don’t seem much like experienced campers.”
Christian fell silent.  I felt bad, I have to admit.  The problem with Christian was that he could become so certain that he was right that he couldn’t or wouldn’t listen to anyone else.  He was cocky.  He walked around with a swagger.  When he got an idea it was hard to get it out of his head.
The sun was just peeking over the very top of the trees when we first heard someone shouting.  At first we didn’t react.  It was like the sound of a strange bird or something somewhere in the distance.  I had heard stories of birds like loons making cries that sound human.  I wondered if that was what this was.  Then I realized it was a human voice.  It was a moment or two later before it registered that it was Karmen.
“What the hell?” Joe said, turning around.
“That’s Karmen,” I said.
“No kidding,” Christian said.
We all turned.  Karmen was standing on the shore near the edge of the water.  I noted that she had managed to get dressed.  She was waving her hand in the air and shouting.  Christian, unsure of what was happening at first, actually waved back at her.  When she jumped up and down and starting waving her hands to motion us that we should come in was when we realized that something was not right.
I felt the bottom of my stomach fall out.  My mouth dried up.  I became certain that there was something coming towards the boat.  I looked around expecting to see those tentacles I imagined yesterday or maybe a giant fin.  For all I knew the Creature from the Black Lagoon was coming out of the water.  There was only calm water and trees and sky.
“What the hell’s wrong now?” Christian muttered.
“We’d better head back,” Nancy said.
“We haven’t caught a fish yet,” Christian protested.
“She doesn’t seem much interested in fish,” I replied.
Christian swore under his breath.  He reeled in his line.  The rest of us followed suit.  We put our poles in the boat.  Christian and Joe picked up their paddles and began paddling.  Christian seemed reluctant.  Joe, on the other hand, seemed a little anxious.
I had always suspected that Joe and Karmen had a thing.  As I mentioned, it was often tough to tell with Karmen.  She flirted so much that who could be sure if she was serious or not.  Joe certainly seemed to have a thing for Karmen.  They spent a lot of time together outside of the office.  Others said they were just friends but I heard rumblings at the office we used to work at that they were more than that.  Of course, any office has rumors about romances.
We reached the shore.  Karmen came running.  Jay was climbing out of his tent having changed into some clothes.  He looked passive but then he always looked passive.  I had never seen Jay panic about anything.  Karmen, on the other hand, looked like something was wrong.
“What’s wrong?” Christian demanded with some irritation.
“It’s Carlos,” she said.
Again I felt that feeling in my stomach.  I nearly leapt out of the canoe.  My feet and pants were soaked.  Karmen was nearly panicked.
“What about Carlos?” I asked.
“He’s gone,” she said.
There was a stunned silence as we processed this.  Joe and Nancy stood in the water beside me.  Christian looked puzzled.
“Gone?” He asked.  “What do you mean gone?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “I went into his tent to wake him up.  His sleeping bag’s there and so are his clothes and the clothes he wore last night and he’s gone.”
“Well, did he get up?” I asked.  “Did he go off to go to the bathroom or something?”
“I was out here the whole time,” Karmen said, “I didn’t see him.  Jay and I were talking for a while.  We were making jokes about Carlos being the last one awake.  When Jay decided to go get dressed I started yelling for Carlos.  I walked over to his tent and when he didn’t answer I opened the tent.”
She shrugged.  We stood there and stared at each other.  Joe and Nancy looked at each other and then at me.  Then we all turned and looked at Christian.  Christian was staring at Karmen.  His lower jaw was working.  He didn’t seem to know what to do next.
“Well,” I said, “what about last night?  Could he have gotten out of his tent and wandered off last night?”
“In that storm?” Joe asked.
“If he wandered off why would be zip up the tent afterwards?” Jay said.
“Maybe he didn’t want water to get in,” Nancy said.
“Everyone shut up,” Christian said.
We all stood in silence.  Christian looked at each of us.  Then he dropped his fishing pole and headed for Carlos’ tent.  I followed suit, dropping the pole in the water and tromping after him.  Karmen followed right behind me.
We reached the tent and Christian opened it.  He crawled inside and I followed him.  Just as Karmen had described the tent was empty.  His bag was zipped up.  There was another bag containing clothes and other items like deodorant.  There were hiking boots in one corner.  The clothes Carlos had been wearing yesterday were crumpled in the corner.  Whatever he had been wearing in the sleeping bag was gone.
“What the hell?” Christian muttered.  He was squatting next to the sleeping bag.
I knelt down next to the bag.  I lifted it and looked at it.  I undid the zipper.
“It was like he was sleeping in the bag and he just disappeared,” I said.
“That’s impossible,” Christian whispered.
“Well, I know that,” I said, “but it looks like that just the same.”
Christian made a strange hissing sound and actually pushed past me.  I remained on my knees and let him pass.  I looked at the barren tent and the crumpled clothes and bag once more and exited the tent.  I gave Jay a look as I stood up.  He nodded but showed no other emotion.
“Well, he must have wandered off,” Christian said.
“Didn’t we just have this conversation?” I asked.
“Well what else could it be?” Christian said.
He had walked back toward the lake.  He was standing with his back towards us.  His eyes seemed to be searching for something across the lake.  I saw a bird take flight from a tree over there and disappear a moment later.
“What about an animal?” Joe asked.
Christian turned to look at him.  My eyes grew wide.
“OK,” I said, “first, let’s not think that way.  Second, his tent and his bag are still in perfect order.  An animal would have to get through the tent and his bag to get at him, right?  Plus, there’s no blood.”
“He could have gotten out of the tent,” Joe continued.  “He could have gotten out of the tent and something could have gotten him out here and dragged him off.”
“Wouldn’t he have made some noise?” Nancy asked.  “Screamed or something?”
“Not if something bit his neck just right,” Joe said.
“It wasn’t an animal,” Christian said.  “There’s no animal out here big enough to carry off a person.”
“Well, Jesus,” Karmen said, “what if there are other people out here?”
That brought fresh terror into my stomach.  I could see by the reactions on the other’s faces it was not doing much for their digestion either.
“They could come in and get him,” Karmen said, her eyes staring into the distance like Christian’s, “and they could do it silently.  They grab him and cover his mouth.  The drag him out and zip everything back up so we think he’s just sleeping late or something.  By the time we find out he’s gone they would be too.”
Again there was silence.  I wanted very badly to walk over to my tent and start packing and then paddling myself back across the lake.  I wanted to be anywhere.  My feelings that there were things in the trees looking at me and watching me returned.  I felt gooseflesh rise on my body.
“But who?” Christian said.  He was still staring across the lake.  “Why would they do that?  Why just him?  It doesn’t make any sense.”
“So far very little of this makes any kind of sense,” Joe said.
“We need to search the woods,” Christian said.
“What did you just say?” I asked.
“We need to search for him,” Christian reiterated.  He turned to face us and I could see he was determined.  “He might be out in the woods there and hurt.”
“He could also have been carted off and killed,” Joe said.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to go wandering off into the woods,” I said hesitantly.
“Of course you don’t,” Christian said, “that’s because you’re a coward.”
I froze at that as though he had just slapped me.  My mouth fell open.  Then it shut.
“That’s not exactly fair,” Karmen said. “We don’t know anything yet.  Maybe he wandered off and went into the lake.  What if he drowned?  Maybe he wandered off during the storm and zipped up the tent so the tent wouldn’t flood and got washed away.”
“So tell me what you want to do,” Christian said.  “He’s our friend.  He has a family.  Do we just leave him?  Do we not search for him?”
Everyone looked down at their feet.  No one wanted to say anything.  Everything felt like it was spinning out of control.  My brain was still in shock for being called a coward.  This was heaped on my brain after discovering that my friend had disappeared.  It was Joe who broke the paralysis first.  He turned and ran into his tent.
“What the hell is he doing?” Jay asked.
Joe emerged a few moments later.  He had a large hunting knife strapped to his belt and tied to his thigh.  He also had a pistol in his right hand.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
“Look,” Joe said, “if we’re going into the woods then we had better be prepared.  If someone carried him off then we had better be prepared.  If some animal did manage to get him through some way we can’t figure out then we had better be prepared.”
“What are you Rambo?” Jay asked.
“No,” Joe said, “but I am a guy with a gun and I do have some idea how to use it.”
“How the hell are we going to do this?” I asked.  “Are we all going in the same place and head in the same direction?  If we all go off in different direction what’s to prevent half of us from getting lost ourselves?  I am very much including myself in the group of people likely to get lost.”
Christian thought about that.  He had a compass and I am pretty sure he knew he was the only one who did.
“No one else has a compass, right?” He asked.
“No,” I said.
Christian and I looked at the others.  Everyone else shook their head.  Joe had a compass that was attached to the back of his hunting knife.
“Well we can’t all go in the same place and at the same time,” Christian said.  “We won’t be able to cover enough ground that way.”
“We could each walk into the woods,” Joe offered, “ and stand a certain distance apart.  We each walk in a straight line.  We call out for Carlos and keep our eyes open for anything.  We set a time because I think each of us has a watch.  Everyone walks a certain distance for a certain amount of time and then walks straight back to the camp.”
Again we all stood there.  I was still shaking my head.  Inside I was torn.  I wanted to help find Carlos but I definitely did not want to head off into those woods.  I was not a woodsman and I knew I would get lost.  We had no idea what kind of terrain we would find in there.
“Well?” Christian said impatiently.  “Are we just going to stand here and stare at the ground?”
“We should leave,” Karmen said quietly.  I could have kissed her.
“What?” Christian said.
“We should leave,” she repeated.  “We should get into the canoes and head back.  There has to be a town or something somewhere.  We should report that he’s missing.  Let people who are trained to run around in the woods and search for people do this.”
“When did you last see a town?” Christian asked.  “We drove for hours without seeing a town.”
“The last piece of civilization I remember was that gas station right after we got off the main highway,” Nancy said.
“Then we drive all the way back there,” Karmen said.   “We drive as far as it take to find the police.”
“No,” Christian said.
“What?” I said.  “No?  You just say no and that’s it?”
“We only do that as a last resort,” Christian replied.
“Last resort?” I countered.  “Exactly when do we reach last resort status?  He’s missing.  That sounds pretty last resort to me.”
“We need to look first,” Christian said.  “We need to look and see if we could find something.”
“Jesus Christ!” I shouted.  “Do you think this is some kind of junior mystery adventure here?  We’re in the middle of freaking nowhere.  What if someone falls and kills themselves while we we’re in there looking?”
“Dammit!” Christian screamed.  “Will you stop being negative!  For crying out loud just walk and be careful.  We’ll each walk in one goddamn direction for twenty minutes.  When twenty minutes is up we come back here.  If anyone finds anything just scream your goddamn head off.  If you fall, scream.  If you get scared just scream and then come back.”
Christian’s voice echoed a bit through the trees.  He didn’t wait for anyone to say anything.  He simply walked to his tent and came out a moment later with his compass.
“You,” he said pointing to Joe, “go over by the picnic table.  You walk straight ahead from that spot.  Karmen, you walk into the woods about five feet from that point.  Nancy you walk five feet past.  Jay you five feet over from Nancy.  I’ll start five feet over from that.  Dave, do you think you can handle this?”
“I don’t seem to have much of a choice,” I said.
“Good, then let’s get this started,” Christian said.
Everyone headed over to their positions.  We took a moment to make sure our watches were synchronized like characters out of some bank heist caper.  Christian didn’t seem to want to argue.  I was very tempted to wait until everyone else had walked off into the woods and then turn around and head for the canoes.  Instead I looked straight ahead.  Trees and branches were what greeted my eyes along with branches and bushes and God knew what the hell else was there.
“All right, remember,” Christian said, “twenty minutes.  Head right back.”
“Unless you’ve been murdered by rednecks,” I muttered.
I stepped forward.  It took three steps and then I was stepping through branches and leaves.  Another five steps and trees on either side passed me by.  I had no idea what kind of trees they were I just knew that the trunks were thick and that there were roots beneath my feet.  This was going to be about as easy as trying to walk straight across water.
The darkness came next.  The sun was up and high over the trees but the trees swallowed the light.  I looked up and saw only branches and leaves.  I could hear a breeze moving the tree branches.  My feet crunched branches and sticks.
I could hear the others yelling.  I decided it was time I let loose with a call or two before inciting panic.  I called Carlos’ name.  I heard a bird chirping somewhere.  I heard the breeze.  I heard the others moving and their voices calling.
I looked around at the brush beneath my feet.  It didn’t look like anyone or anything had been through here.  I turned to look at the path I had taken and could see broken branches and leaves.  My path was pretty easy to follow.  If anyone had come through here they must have had magical abilities to bring the plants and branches back to their original state.
“This is insane,” I said.
I looked down at my watch.  I hadn’t been in here for two minutes.  I could hear the other voices.  They sounded like they had gotten ahead of me.  I continued forward.  It seemed to be getting darker.  Somehow the trees seemed thicker and more dense.  It was like fingers tugging at my pants and legs and arms as I moved.
“Carlos!” I screamed.
I got no response, as I figured.  The sound didn’t seem to travel far.  It was like the trees as ate up the sound as well as the light.  I moved forward.  My heart was beating faster.  My breath was coming out in rasps.  I didn’t feel winded, but I did feel nervous.  I was anxious.  I heard more shouting from the others but now it was also a little erratic.  It seemed distant.
I kept moving forward.  The trees seemed to be pushing in on me from all sides.  I began to have this feeling that they were closing my path off from behind me.  I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.  I turned and saw only more trees and branches.
“Carlos!” I yelled again.  The sound seemed forced and fake.  I felt like I was drowning.
I became convinced that the woods were trying to swallow me alive.  Everything around me seemed to be alive and moving.  I thought I heard twigs and branches snapping to my left and then to my right.  I turned around in a small circle.  My breath was whining in and out of my lungs like I was asthmatic.
Something ripped a hole in my jeans.  I cried out as a branch tore a rut in my skin.  A branch grabbed at my shirt and I felt more branches scraping my arm.  I tasted bark as something snapped into my mouth.
“Carlos,” I said but it came out as nothing but a whisper.
I decided I didn’t care how much time had elapsed.  For a moment I wasn’t even sure which way I had come and which way I had been walking.  I turned myself around and began moving very quickly back the way I had come.  My brain was still convinced that something was walking all around me and it wasn’t my friends.  I couldn’t hear them shouting anymore.
This time I did see faces in the bark of the trees.  I saw eyes and mouths.  I saw mouths stretched open and screaming.  It felt like midnight even though I knew it wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning.  I pushed through the branches.  Branches I thought I had stamped flat seemed to be reaching back up at me.  I wondered if maybe Carlos could have been brought through here after all.  I felt more scrapes along my arms.  Something tore at my head above my eye.
I stumbled into the clearing near the lake.  I almost fell sprawling onto Carlos’ tent.  I managed to gain my footing.  I stumbled all the way down to the lake.  I fell on the ground there and put my hands in the water.  I ran water over my face.  I looked at my dim reflection in the water.  I had scratches everywhere.
I stood up and looked back the way I had just come.  It was as if I had never walked through.  It was like the woods had just moved back to the way things were when I walked in.  I felt completely alone at that moment.  I could not see where any of the other had walked either.   I couldn’t hear them.
I didn’t know what else to do.  I waited.  It seemed like it took forever.  The sun rose higher into the sky and over the treetops.  I felt sweat beading on the back of my neck and running down my back.  I was slowly nearing a panic.  I wondered if I could maneuver the canoe back the way we had come.  I didn’t know what I would do once I got back to the car because I was sure that the keys were with Joe and Christian.
I heard branches breaking and moving.  I had a moment to wonder if the someone coming through would be one of my friends or someone else.  I wondered if it was an animal.  I wondered if one of my friends would come running through with some sort of pursuer hot on their heels.  Instead Karmen burst through the trees and branches looking as though someone had attacked her with a straight razor and gasping for breath.
“Jesus, Karmen!” I said and stepped towards her.
“I was freaking,” she said between gasps, “ I thought the trees were closing in.  I turned and ran.”
“Same with me,” I said.
I came towards her and put an arm around her.  She let herself be helped to the water’s edge.  She and I knelt down and I used part of my shirt to wash her face and wipe some of the blood away.
“I am guessing you didn’t find any sign of Carlos,” I said.
She shook her head.  “Nothing.  I thought I was alone.  I couldn’t hear anyone else.”
“Yeah, all of that happened to me too,” I said.  “If he did walk off into the woods like that and got lost I don’t think we’ll ever find him.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” she said, “ why would be do that?  When would he have done that?”
“Nothing makes any sense,” I replied.  “Nothing has made any sense since you started yelling.  I don’t have a better explanation, though.  He couldn’t have just vanished.”
“After what I just felt in there,” she said, “I almost wonder if that’s really true.”
There was the sound of more branches breaking and Jay stepped into the clearing.  He was gasping as well but he managed to keep his feet and not sprawl on his face.  He did sink to his knees once he was in the clearing, however.  He looked up at us and made a strange wave with his hand.  He had scratches along his face and arms.
“You all right, Jay?” I asked.
“I will be,” he said, “I just need to catch my breath.”
“Did the trees close in on you?” Karmen asked.  She was shivering a bit.
Jay nodded.  “That was about the freakiest thing I have ever experienced.  I say we get the hell out of here.”
“What about everyone else?” I asked.
“At this point,” Jay said, “I don’t give a damn about anyone else.”
As if on cue Nancy suddenly burst through the bushes and trees.  She managed to keep her feet and I had to give her credit for that.  She was out of breath and put her hands on her knees.
“Nothing,” she said between breaths.  “I found nothing out there.  I started to get claustrophobic and I ran back.”
“Yeah,” I said, “we all did that.  It was like the trees were closing in or something.”
“We need to get the hell out of here,” Jay repeated.  “We need to get the hell out of here now.”
“What about Christian and Joe?” Nancy asked.
“We need to get out of here,” Jay repeated.  “We can send someone back for them.”
“Just wait a minute,” I said to Jay, “let’s just wait for a few minutes and see if Christian and Joe come back.”
“After what you just said you went through you want to hang around here?” Jay asked. “They’re not coming back.”
“Shut-up, Jay,” Nancy hissed.
Jay turned to look at Nancy.  “I’m sorry, Nancy.  There’s something out there.  I don’t know what it is but there’s something out there and it took Carlos.”
He turned to look first at me and then at Karmen.
“I think it’s gotten Christian and Joe too,” he continued.  “I think we all felt it closing in on us and if we had stayed in there any longer none of us would be here right now.”
“Shut-up!” Nancy yelled.
“No!” Jay yelled back.  “What did it really feel like, Nancy?  Did it feel like the trees were reaching right out for you?  Did it fee like fingers clawing at your clothes and your feet?  Did it look like the woods had closed up and swallowed you when you finally decided to turn back and run?”
Nancy’s mouth dropped open.
“It didn’t look like that at first,” I said.  “When I first went in and before I freaked out I turned back to look and everything looked tramped down.  Then, when things got weird and I turned back it was like I hadn’t even walked there.”
“Where the hell did Christian get that damn map?” Jay asked.
“He-he-he got it from a-a friend,” Nancy said with her voice cracking.
“What friend?”  Jay asked.
“He just said a – a friend,” Nancy said.
Jay advanced on her and I noticed his fists were clenched.  “What friend, Nancy?  Did he give you a name?”
Nancy looked confused.  She stole glances back at the edge of the clearing.  “No – no – he – he …”
“You have no idea where he got that map, do you?” Jay asked. “You let him take us out here and you have no idea where he got the directions or even where the hell we are!”
Jay took more steps forward.  I noticed he was shaking.  I couldn’t be sure if it was from fear or from rage.  I started to move towards him and he turned to face me and there was such anger on his face I took a step back.
“We are getting in one of those canoes,” he said through gritted teeth, “ and we are going to paddle our asses back to the car.  If you want we can leave the other canoe and the other car.”
“I don’t have the keys,” Nancy said.
“You what?”  Jay asked.
“I don’t have keys!” She screamed.  “We aren’t going anywhere without Christian.  He has the only set of keys to the car.”
“What the hell kind of married couple are you?” Jay asked incredulous.
“We aren’t going anywhere!” She screamed.
“I see,” Jay said.  “So you’re plan is that we stay here until each and every one of us has vanished into the netherworld or wherever the hell they all went?”
“My plan,” Nancy said, “is to stay here and wait for my husband.  You can do whatever the hell you want.  If you want to swim back you can for all I care.  Right now, I just want to sit down and wait for my husband to return!”
With that Nancy turned and walked toward the picnic table.  She sat down there and put her head in her hands.  I could tell she was crying but I was past the point of worrying about that.
“Dave,” Jay said, “you see that I’m right, don’t you?”
“I don’t think that anything is going to get us,” I said.  “I think we can afford to wait for a little while and see if Christian and Joe get back.  If they aren’t back by this afternoon then we should make a run for it.”
“I don’t think Nancy will go with us,” Karmen said.
“Then we’ll leave her here,” Jay said.  “I’ll find a way to hotwire the cars or something.”
“You grew up in the suburbs,” I said, “when would you have learned to hotwire anything?”
“Then we’ll walk back to town,” Jay said.  “Christ!  There has to be a fucking town or something somewhere around here!”
Just then there was gunfire.  I crouched down.  Jay looked up towards the woods in surprise.  Karmen shrieked.  Nancy let loose with a small scream as well.  Joe burst through the trees with his pistol in his hand.
He collapsed near the picnic table.  He was breathing hard.  He held the gun up and pointed it back towards the woods.  He fired another shot.  Karmen screamed this time.  I think I screamed too.
“What is it?” I screamed.
“The fucking woods!” Joe screamed.  “It tried to grab me.  It was dark.  Things were closing in!”
“Things?” Jay said.  “What things?”
Joe turned to look at us.  “I don’t know!  It was like fingers and hands tearing at my clothes.  Like everything around me was moving and alive.”
“Did you shoot anything?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Joe said.  “I turned back and I just kept moving.  It seemed to take forever.  It was like the woods were growing or elongating or something.  I just kept walking and then I was running.  Then it was like hands all over me and I pulled out the gun and I fired.  I think I hit a tree.”
“Oh great,” Jay said, “just give the woods another reason to hate us.”
There was that now-familiar cracking and breaking sound.  Joe raised his gun.  Nancy yelled and put her hand over it.  Christian came walking slowly out of the woods.  He was not breathing hard.  He did not appear particularly scratched up.  He looked at all of us.
“What the hell?” He said.  “We’re all supposed to be out there for another ten minutes.”
“Then why the hell did you come back?” Jay asked.
“I walked until I reached this river or stream,” Christian said.  “It was moving too fast and appeared too deep to get across.  I turned back.  What the hell happened to you?”
“There’s something out there!” Jay said and pointed.
“Out where?”  Christian said.  “Did you see something?”
“We all felt it,” I said.  “Even Joe felt it.  Like the woods themselves were coming to life.  Like they were swallowing us up as we walked through.  Like there was something alive and reaching out to us.  All of us ran back here.  Even Nancy.  All of us.”
Christian looked at me.  He looked at Jay and then at Joe.  He seemed to note the gun in Joe’s hand.  He looked at Karmen and then Nancy.  He knelt down in front of Nancy.
“Are you all right?”  He asked.
“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “I felt like there were hands and fingers all over me.  Like it was trying to pull me down or hold me back.”
“That was the brush, honey,” Christian said.  “I felt them too but it was just the brush.  It was bushes and branches.”
“It was not just bushes and branches!” Jay screamed.
I looked over at Jay.  He was always so calm and collected.  Even when he was upset or concerned or mad he never really showed.  It was like he was coming completely unglues before my eyes.  He was almost shaking.  His face was quivering.  I began to wonder exactly what Jay may have seen while in the woods.
“Jay,” Christian said and then seemed to read my mind, “you’re losing it here.”
“It was like the trees were reaching for me,” Jay said.  “I saw faces in the trees.  I saw things out there.  Where the hell did you lead us, Christian?”
“What do you mean?” Christian said.
“Where the fuck are we?” Jay screamed.
“Jay, please, calm down,” Christian said.  “You got spooked.  You all got spooked.  The thing with Carlos freaked you out and getting out into the woods there just added to it.   You got –“
“I was not spooked!” Jay screamed.  “Jesus Christ!  What the hell is the matter with you?  Why won’t you listen?  Carlos is gone!  We don’t know where and we are dicking around here like we’re park rangers or some fucking thing!  We need to get the fuck out of here.”
“Jay may be losing it,” I said, “but he’s right about that, Christian.  We have to get out of here.  We need to get help.  We need to find the state police or somebody and get helicopters and search teams out here.”
“We didn’t even search,” Christian said.  “You guys maybe went in there, what, ten or twenty feet?  We didn’t even search.”
“If the next words out of your mouth are some kind of suggestion that we go back in there I punch you in the face,” Jay said.
“Joe,” Christian said turning on Joe, “I can’t believe you are falling into this mass delusion here.”
“I don’t know whether or not this is a delusion,” Joe said, “but you know me Christian.  I don’t have hallucinations or make shit up.”
“So, what are you telling me?” Christian said.  “Are you telling me you saw the trees move?  What do we have line dancing trees here?  Maybe some kind of ‘Riverdance’ trees?”
“How can you make jokes?” Jay said.  “How can you stand there and make fucking jokes while Carlos is missing?  He could be dead for all we know!”
“That’s exactly the point,” Christian said.  “We don’t know anything.  We don’t know what happened.”
“So what?” Jay asked.  “What do you want to do?  Do you want to keep going into the woods until one of us gets hurt?  Until we all disappear?”
“Nancy,” Christian implored.  “Please tell me you’re not buying into the boogeyman trees thing?”
“I just think we should go get help,” she said.  “This is Carlos, Christian.  He’s missing.”
“What if he comes back while we’re gone?” Christian said.
“He’ll wait,” I said.  “Or, if you really want, you can stay here.”
“No!” Nancy yelled.  “If we go he goes with me.”
“How long do you want to wait, Christian?” Karmen said.  She was standing near the edge of the water.  “How long is long enough for Carlos to be gone for you to want to get help?  Maybe he’s alive and injured somewhere right now.  Maybe we can get him help that can give him some kind of medical attention.  If we wait too long he’ll be dead.”
Christian sighed.  “I can’t believe this.  Did any of you even see anything while you were in there?  Any blood?  A scrap of clothing?”
“Nothing,” Jay said.  “None of us saw anything.”
“Are you sure?” Christian said.  “Are you sure there was nothing or were you too busy running to really look at anything?”
Jay advanced on Christian.  I was certain he was going to hit him.  “Christian, so help me God, if you say one more word to me beyond telling me we are leaving here, I am going to pound you into the ground.”
Christian moved towards Jay.  They were inches from each other.  Both of them had eyes that were more intense than I had ever seen.  The air was suddenly electric.  I heard more birds moving and I heard the trees.  It was like the trees were sighing or moaning around us.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of them.  Jay’s hands were clenching and unclenching.  Christian’s jaw was tight and set.  It seemed to extend on forever.  Then Christian lowered his gaze and his hands.
“Fine,” Christian said.  “We’ll get in the boat and head back.”
“Thank you,” Jay said and then he lowered his hands.
“Great,” I said.
I felt relief.  I turned and ran back to my tent.  I packed up my clothes and stuffed them into my bag.  I ran out of the tent and stood near a canoe.  Jay followed closely.  He looked relieved but he also continued to look angry.  Neither of us bothered fold up our tents.  Right then and there I knew I would never sleep in another tent and never go camping again.
“What about your tents?” Christian said.
“I won’t need mine again,” I said.
“Me either,” Jay echoed.
Christian stood there and studied his own tent for several moments.  He seemed unsure what to do and then decided against dismantling the thing.  He walked over to the canoe.  By this time Karmen was also heading over along with Joe.  Only Nancy seemed to be delaying.
“I’ll come back with the police and get the tents,” Christian muttered as he tossed his stuff into the canoe.
“Yes,” Jay said, “please continue to worry more about your fucking tent than Carlos.”
Christian gave Jay a look and I wondered if maybe the storm I thought had passed before was going to break all over again.  Instead Christian just sighed again and climbed into the canoe.  I climbed in behind him.  Jay climbed into the other canoe along with Karmen.  Nancy finally came out of her tent and climbed into the canoe behind me.  Joe took up the final spot in the canoe with Joe and Karmen.  Before the last of them stepped in we pushed the canoe away from land.
Almost immediately there was something wrong.  Those with the paddles tried to paddle the canoes toward the way we had come.  Instead the canoes began to drift towards the channel nearest the beach and the clearing.  We had just been in the canoes before and there had been little if any current.  Paddling had been easy.  Now they were paddling enough to make grunting sounds and sweating and the canoes were not moving forward.   They were moving sideways and to the left.
“What the hell is this?” Christian said.
“It wasn’t like this when we were fishing,” Joe said.
“Harder!” Karmen yelled.  “Paddle harder.”
I leaned over and started paddling in the water with my hands.  My sleeves were soaked.  The water was cold.  I stared down and had that feeling yet again of standing over a huge void.  I felt like the water was sucking at my fingers and my hands and trying to pull me down.
“Christ, Dave,” Christian said.  “Don’t lean over that far or you’ll tip the canoe over!”
I sat back up.  The water was flying on either side of the canoes.  Joe was leaning forward and I thought maybe he would tip the canoe right over or sink the damn thing.  Still the canoes drifted closer to the mouth of the channel.  I could see the water rushing into the channel.  I could hear the water rushing.
“Where did all of this come from?”  I heard Jay ask.
The canoes reached the opening of the channel.  We each went into the channel backwards.  Joe began paddling and turned the canoe around.  Christian did the same.  It turned from frantic paddling into frantic attempts to steer.
I had never had any desire to go whitewater rafting.  Since I cannot swim the idea of getting thrown into a rushing river never seemed like a good plan.  This, however, was as close as I wanted to get.  I could see small caps of white on the waves around us.  The shore was rushing past us.  Yesterday, when I had looked at this channel from across the water and just past our camp site, I swear I could see the end of it and into the next lake.  Now the water turned around a bend and then continued on.  I had the feeling of being on a raging river instead of a simple channel of water connecting to small bodies of water.
“What the hell is going on?” Christian screamed.
“Are there rapids?” Karmen asked.
“Do they have rapids in Wisconsin?” I asked.
“Well,” Jay said, “we’re in Wisconsin and these do look like rapids.  So, whether or not there are usually rapids in Wisconsin we are currently experiencing rapids in Wisconsin.”
We rounded another bend.  There were rocks and small falls of water.  It was like looking at a scene out of some wildlife documentary.  Before I had a chance to scream both canoes went over a small waterfall.  The bow of each canoe slammed into the water and water splashed over us.  Our heads snapped forward and then back.  I felt the wind rush out of me.  The canoe I was in started to careen sideways.  I heard metal scraping against rock and was jolted to the left.  Christian screamed.  I heard Nancy and Karmen scream in unison.
The canoe was sideways now.  The back in dipped down into the water.  I felt wetness around my ankles and up my calves.  I lost track of the other canoe save for the noises and the screaming.  I held onto the sides of the canoe and felt whatever might have still been in my stomach try to evacuate from me very quickly.
Christian was paddling now.  Several times I saw him paddle at air.  Behind me I could hear splashing as Nancy tried to paddle as well.  Christian was trying to tell her how to steer.  It seemed that no matter what she did the canoe would do the opposite.  I heard more rocks scraping along the bottom of the canoe.  We took another huge dip into the water.  I lurched forward so hard I collided with Christian’s back.
The canoe spun around.  I felt the back of the canoe hit something hard.  I had no idea if it was another rock or some kind of branch.  The entire landscape was spinning around in front of me now.  The trees were spinning around me on either side.  The sun was spinning in its place in the sky.  There was another drop and there was another huge splash and water sprayed all over my face.
Christian screamed.  I heard it and it chilled me.  Then the world seemed to drop out from under me.  I lifted away from the canoe.  I was actually in the air and there was a total moment of weightlessness.  My legs flew out in front of me.  Then I felt myself turning onto my back.  My body slammed into the water.  I gasped and air flew out of my lungs.  The coldness numbed me instantly.
I drew in a breath out of reflex and cold water ran down into my throat and lungs.  I was coughing.  I broke through the surface and I was flailing my arms and legs.  I lasted above the water for mere seconds and then fell below the surface again.  I turned around in the water and my head broke through again.  I inhaled more water.
“Help!” I managed to scream.
I was coughing again.  I was rushing forward.  I felt rock beneath me.  I fell over another small fall of water and was underwater again.  I saw the shore rushing past me on either side again.  There was water everywhere and nothing I did could break me free of it.  I had no idea where the canoes were.  I hit a rock and whatever wind I had managed to regain was knocked right out of me.  I was feeling tired and like my strength was being drained right out of me.
My ass and feet were over my head and my feet broke through the water.  I inhaled more water and when I coughed I inhaled more.  My head broke the surface and water sprayed from my mouth.  I gasped at air and choked.  I fell again and landed in more water.  I didn’t want to lift my arms.  I could barely move my legs.  I was struggling to feebly that I was having no effect on anything.  I could only hear rushing water.  I saw green when I went underwater and the shore rushed past my vision as I came above water.  I could not see any of the canoes.  I couldn’t hear anything or anyone else.
I fell once more and this drop seemed to go on forever.  I was able to grab some air and let loose with a scream.  Then I hit the water again and went under.  I sailed forward and then the water was suddenly calm.  I was beneath the surface.  The water was no longer rushing.  I couldn’t hear anything. Everything was muffled and strangely peaceful.  I was holding my breath in my lungs and I let it out slowly.  I watched the bubbles cascade upwards.  I could see light above me but it seemed a very long way away.  My lungs were tightening but everything hurt.  I couldn’t move.  Things were getting gray around the edges and I felt the urge to inhale and felt my body sinking.  Then, suddenly, there were fingers in my hair and I was yanked upwards.
I broke through the surface into sunlight.  I coughed.  Water streamed from my lungs.  I choked and spat more water.  I was pulled into a canoe.  I had no idea who had me or what had happened for several seconds as I vomited water over the side and watched it float away or disappear into the voice beneath.
“You OK?” I heard a voice ask.
I looked up and saw Jay hovering over me.  There was a strange haunted look in his eyes I had never seen before.  I puzzled for a moment before a realization of what had happened hit me.  I struggled to sit up.  I hurt everywhere.  My arms and legs hurt.  My ribs ached.  My head hurt.  I was starting to shiver despite the sun.
“Did we get through?” I asked weakly.  “Where’s everyone else?”
“You won’t believe this,” Jay said quietly.
I turned and found the canoe with Christian and Nancy in it.  Nancy had her head in her hands and she was weeping.  Christian was staring fixedly ahead.  In Nancy’s hand was a broken wooden stub of a paddle.  Christian appeared to have lost his entirely.  I turned to see Joe sitting at the front of our canoe and he had lost his paddle too.  Karmen was in the rear of the boat and the look on her face spoke volumes of terror I could not comprehend.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.  “What’s – “
I looked over Joe’s shoulder.  The words caught in my throat and I felt like I was going to choke on them.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  I shook my head.  I rubbed my eyes.
“I’m dreaming,” I said.  “I have to be dreaming.”
There was the clearing.  There were our tents.  We were coming towards it just as we had the night before.  It was like we had just come through that short channel we had come through the night before.  It was as if we had gone in some kind of giant circle.  Whatever it may or may not have been like it was impossible and yet there it was staring me in the face.
The sudden current that had not been there yesterday pulled us toward the clearing.  No one moved.  No one spoke.  Nancy wept quietly.  Christian kept shaking his head.  Jay seemed lost in his own thoughts and Joe’s lower jaw kept working as though he were chewing something.
The boats came in gently against the clearing.  They nosed against the land.  Both of them were horribly battered and twisted.  There was at least two inches of water in the one I was in.  I barely noticed having been soaked through to the bone.  We all just stared as the land got closer and then we sat staring at the tents once the boats came to rest.
Karmen got out of the canoe first.  She stepped into water that went up to her knees.  She stepped onto the land and walked into the center of the clearing.  She walked over to her tent.  She looked inside.  She turned and looked back at the rest of us.
“How is this possible?” She said.
None of us moved.  No one wanted to say anything.  No one could say anything.  How could anyone say anything?  There was no way to explain what we had just experienced and what we were staring at.
“What’s happened to us?” Karmen yelled.
She walked around the camp.  She tore open all of the tents including Carlos’ as if she was trying to confirm that this was, indeed, our camp site.  She staggered back into the center of the camp and then sat down at the picnic table.  She held her head in her hands.
“What’s happened to us?” She screamed.
Joe stepped out of the boat next.  He walked over to the picnic table and sat down next to Karmen.  He put his arm around her.  Despite nearly drowning and the unreality of what was happening around me I still managed to feel a twinge of jealousy at that.
Christian stepped out of his canoe next.  He walked backward and guided Nancy out of the boat.  Nancy seemed inconsolable.  Her shoulders were heaving.  She still clutched the broken and splintered stub of the paddle in her hand.
“I need help,” I said to Jay and he nodded.
He put his arm around me and lifted me out of the boat.  I managed to bite back a scream as pain shot through my body from toe to head.  I was nearly dragged onto the land.  I couldn’t seem to put one foot in front of the other.  I was beyond exhausted.  Jay set me down in the grass near the picnic table.
Karmen stopped her tears and came over to me.  A few moments later and Nancy did as well.  I no longer cared much about who saw what and they helped me undress.  My wet clothes were piled up and they helped me get into dry ones.  Karmen found Christian’s first-aid kit and did her best to disinfect and dress my cuts.  I think it was nice just to have something else to do instead of thinking of the situation.  No one spoke.  No one else got up to help or say anything.
When I was bandaged and wearing dry clothes again I was helped back to the spot near the picnic table.  Karmen spread out a blanket for me and she sat down next to me.  No one else had moved.  No one else spoke.  It continued for what seemed like hours.  Birds flew in the distance and the trees rustled as though whispering to one another.  The water bubbled and made some noise.  The wind blew and rustled the brush.  The sun continued its arc across the sky and clouds moved across it.  Still, no one spoke.
It was as if we were all afraid to speak out loud.  To say out loud what had happened was to make it real.  To make it real was to acknowledge the impossible.  It was to acknowledge that we had somehow been trapped in a way we could not explain.
“The lights,” Joe said quietly after a million eternities of silence.
“What?” Asked Christian.
“Those lights we saw last night,” he said.  “I think that had something to do with it.”
“How did you come to that conclusion?” I asked.
“Because nothing else makes any sense,” he said.
“Saying it was the lights doesn’t make any sense either,” Jay said.
“Well there was no explanation for them,” Joe said.
“So what makes you think they were responsible for what we just saw?” Christian asked.
“I don’t know,” Joe said with a hint of despair.  “I’m grasping at straws here.”
“Aliens?” I asked.
“Maybe,” Joe said.
“You can’t be serious?” Christian said.
“Well do you have any better suggestions?” Joe screamed.
“What about the storm?” I asked.  “That storm was freakish as well.  I slept right through it.  I never sleep through storms.”
“How could a storm have caused this?” Joe asked.
“How could aliens?” I retorted.  “Maybe that storm did something.  Maybe it wasn’t an ordinary storm.”
“All we have is maybe!” Jay yelled.  “We have no idea what the hell just happened.  We don’t know where Carlos is.”
“Maybe we got sucked into some kind of parallel dimension,” Joe said.  “Maybe we all got sucked in and Carlos got left behind.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, “that makes a lot of sense.  Even if you buy it what the hell kind of portal leaves a person but sucks in their tent, sleeping bag and clothes?”
“Just face it,” Karmen said, “ we all have no idea what happened here.  We have no idea what’s happening here.  We have no idea what will happen here.  We don’t know how we got here and we don’t know how to get out.”
“Whatever put us here,” I said, “evidently doesn’t want us to leave.”
There was more silence then.  I lay back on the ground.  I closed my eyes and felt my body adjust to laying on my back.  I was still so sore.  I was amazed that nothing felt broken.  I wasn’t feeling any ribs moving or anything but I supposed that something might have been cracked.
“So, what are we going to do?” Jay asked.
I opened my eyes and saw that Jay was sitting at the picnic table as well.  His shoulders were sagging.  He appeared to be staring at the grass aimlessly.  Karmen was laying next to me on the blanket and she was staring up into the sky.
“What can we do?” I asked.
“Well,” Jay said, “we have to get out of here.”
“Yes,” I replied, “thank you Captain Obvious.  However, we just discussed the fact that we no longer know where here is.  And, in case you missed it, we just tried to leave and we ended up going through rapids and ended up right back here.”
“There are other ways to get around besides canoes,” Jay said.
“You aren’t suggesting we try walking through the woods, are you?” Karmen asked.
“You just tired that a little while ago too,” I said.  “It didn’t go so well.”
Jay stood up and walked down to the water.  He seemed to be studying the canoes.  They were beyond even being called canoes at this point.  The one I had been in looked as though it would sink as soon as got into water that was deep enough.
“What else can we do?” Jay asked.  “Just sit here?”
“That sounds like the best plan you’ve had all day,” I replied.
“What happens tonight?” Nancy said.
I opened my eyes again and raised my head to look at here.  Her eyes were red from crying.  Her hair was a mess.  Her face was pale and she looked haunted.
“What?” Joe asked.
“What happens tonight?” She repeated.  “Carlos disappeared in the middle of the night.  No one else has disappeared during the day.  Maybe whatever is doing this to us takes us in the middle of the night.”
That sent a whole new fresh spear of fear twisting through my gut.  I felt like I was in a horror movie again.
“What are you suggesting?” I asked.  “That we stay up all night?”
Nancy just shrugged and put her head back in her hands.  “I don’t know what I’m suggesting.  I don’t know anything anymore.”
“What do we do about food?” Joe asked.  “We were going to catch fish.  I don’t think we’ll be going out into the water in those canoes.  I certainly haven’t seen any animals running around either.”
“We have food,” Christian said.  “We have food enough for days tucked away in our tent.”
“Is it the kind of stuff that will keep?” I asked.
“Enough of it will,” Christian replied.
“I’m hungry,” Joe said.
With that Joe stood up and walked over to Christian’s tent.  No one else stood up.  A few moments later he came back with a bag of something that looked like jerky.  My stomach did some very vicious rolls at the idea of living off of that for a while.
“The next issue is water,” I said.
“Well, we have water,” Christian said.  “Even that lake is fresh water and Nancy and I have a filter system we bring with us when we go camping.  We’ll have plenty of food and water.”
“We can always eat each other,” I whispered and Karmen let loose with a  very small laugh.  I was glad to hear her laugh.
Jay kicked the canoe.  I heard the sound of his foot hitting the metal.  He sat down near the water with his knees up and got lost in his thoughts again.  I stared up at the sky and watched clouds roll past.  No one talked.  All of the life was gone from this group.
The day passed that way.  I quite literally watched the sun arch across the sky.  My skin finally felt dry by the middle of the afternoon.  I finally felt the urge to move around three.  I went behind the tents to urinate and was glad when that did not hurt and I didn’t see any blood.  I made sure that no one could see me but I didn’t want to get too close to the trees.  The trees were waving in the breeze and that looked too much like beckoning hands and fingers.
Christian set about starting another fire as the sun started to make its descent towards the trees.  There was tension and fear as the sky began to think about darkening.  No one talked about it, however.  Once again it was like giving voice to the fact that the darkness was coming and what might happen might make it come true.  It’s like thinking you have cancer but not wanting to say it out loud in case that might make it come true.
Christian and Nancy managed to produce enough food to make various sandwiches.  It was determined that we might as well use up the lunchmeat while we still could.  I indulged in quite a bit of the sliced turkey.  I figured my stomach would rebel but that usually took a few hours.  So, if that woke me up in the middle of the night maybe I wouldn’t be the one to disappear.
None of us bothered with Carlos’ tent.  In fact, for hours no one had mentioned Carlos at all.  It was like my brain was numb when it came to thinking about him.  I could barely picture his face anymore.  I couldn’t remember his wife’s name.  I couldn’t remember if he had two kids or one.  It was like my head was purging itself of Carlos entirely.
The night before we had been chatting and joking.  We had been poking fun at each other.  The night before we had been tired but looking forward to fun.  Tonight we could barely look at each other.  The only sound made was the occasional rustle of plastic and the sound of munching.
When we had finished eating we all seemed to take turns staring into the fire.  I was feeling tired again.  It was like the night before when that strange tiredness crept over us.  I felt like I could fall asleep right where I was and stay asleep through the night.
“Maybe we should all sleep out here,” Karmen suggested.
“Maybe” Christian agreed.
“Think we can all keep an eye on each other?” I asked.
“It will be harder for something to sneak up on us if we’re all here,” Christian said.
I couldn’t really argue with that.  My tired bones and sore body had dispelled much of my cynicism.  I was beyond being cynical about things.  I was in the middle of something that could not possibly be explained.
I walked back to my tent and got my sleeping bag.  I dragged the bag back to the spot around the fire.  I laid the bag down and then sat on it.
Once again we grouped around.  We were watching the sun descend.  The sky in the east was turning darker and darker.  It looked like it was going to be a remarkably clear night.  The sunset was spectacular.  The skies were a dazzling array of red and pink and orange.  Stars began to peek out in the sky.
I spent time looking for constellations I recognized again.  I found I still could not find any constellation that looked familiar.  The stars were huge and bright again like they were the night before.  I wondered if it was the same sky I had always known.  I wondered if I was even on the same planet that I had been on this time the night before.
“There it is,” I heard Christian mutter.
I looked over at him and saw that he was looking west and south and over my shoulder.  I turned to look and there were the strange shimmering lights again.  They slowly undulated as though blown by a breeze that I could not feel.
“What the hell is going on?” Karmen said quietly.
No one had an answer for her.  How could any of us?  We just watched the lights.  A breeze did turn up and the air got chilly.  I even put on a jacket.
“Where do you think Carlos is?” Jay said and the mention of Carlos’ name made me jump.
“Jay, I don’t think I can answer that,” I replied.
“I like that idea that he was left behind and we all got taken away somewhere,” he said.  “That would mean he could find a way to get home.”
“I suppose we’ll know more tonight,” Joe said.  “If we wake up tomorrow and we’re all here then we’ll know it’s likely he got left behind.”
“What if one of us is missing?” I asked.
Joe shrugged.  “Then I guess we’ll know the rest of us will just need to wait our turn.  Eventually we’ll all know where Carlos went.”
“I think it’s aliens,” Nancy said.
“What?” I said.  Just when I though my former cynicism was gone I found it flooding back quite nicely.
“Aliens,” she said.  “If I had a chance to chose, I guess I’d rather it be aliens.”
“Why is that more comforting?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.  “It makes me feel better for some reason knowing there are other living things out here doing this rather than just some random rip in dimensions or something.”
“See,” I said, “ the idea of some alien intelligence does not do anything to comfort me.  Aliens doing this seems cruel and that would mean a vastly superior and intelligent race was also completely sociopathic.  That would mean I am some kind of experiment.  It might also mean they want to take me apart and dissect me.”
“OK, OK,” Karmen said.  “We’re already scared enough without thinking about anyone being dissected.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s a good point.  Does anyone think they will actually sleep tonight?”
“You would think no one would be tired,” Christian said, “but I feel like I could drift off right now.”
“Me too,” Joe said.
“Yeah,” I said, “me too.  I felt that way last night too.  That’s what I was saying before about the storm.  I never sleep through storms.  When a storm like last night hits and I am in a building I can’t sleep.  I woke up and heard the storm last night but it was like I couldn’t move.  I couldn’t even put my hands over my ears.  I’ve never experienced anything like that before.”
“You know the brain releases a chemical that prevents you from getting up and acting out your dreams,” Joe said.  “I’ve heard of people who will wake up in the middle of the night and not be able to move.”
“Did you hear the storm?” I asked.
“No,” Joe said.  “I can sleep through pretty much anything.”
“I wish I had that ability,” I said.  “Although, quite honestly, I could fall asleep just about anywhere.  I’ve even dozed off in a dentist’s chair.”
It was good that we were talking again.  It’s always been a knack among men in my family to want to chat and talk after eating.  I guess I had picked up my tendency from my father.  He was the kind who loved to talk during dinner.  Everyone else would be done with their meal and he would still only be about half-way through his steak and wondering why he was still eating.  Most of the time it was because he had been talking and he tended to need both of his hands to do that with all of his gesturing and that tended to make eating rather difficult.
“Maybe whatever is doing this to us is drugging us somehow,” Joe said.
“I just wonder if they have anything to do with those colors,” Christian said.
“Well we saw those colors last night,” I said, “and I was running under the assumption that whatever happened to us happened after we went to sleep.  So, if we were all transported some other place then why would we see the same colors again tonight?”
Christian yawned.  This was then taken up by Joe and then Nancy.  It made its way around the circle to myself.  I closed my eyes and when I opened them again I was surprised that twenty minutes had gone by.
“I just dozed off,” I said.
“We noticed,” Christian said.  “I think we’ve all felt the urge.”
“I’m so sore,” I said.
“We’re going to try to keep at least one of us awake throughout the night,” Joe said.  “Someone to keep watch.”
“That’s fine,” I said.  “Unless they decide to just take the person who’s on watch, of course.”
Joe frowned at that.  I moved and nearly let loose with a scream as the muscles in my chest and torso screamed.  Me legs hurt too.  I never knew it was possible to truly feel like one giant bruise and yet here I was feeling exactly like that.
“What time is it?” Jay asked.
“I think it’s getting to be around ten o’clock,” Christian said.
“You think?” Jay asked.
“Time feels funny,” Christian said.  “My watch fell off into the river earlier so I was just trying to judge by the sky.  I don’t recognize any of the stars, though.”
“I noticed that too,” I said.  “I’ve always studied the stars.  I even took an astronomy class and we spent a lot of time looking at planets and stars and star-clusters.  I don’t see anything I recognize.”
“Where’s the moon?” Karmen asked.
“I haven’t seen that either,” Christian said.
“I may not be able to move by tomorrow morning,” I said.  “Especially when you add a night spent sleeping on the ground to my being banged up in the river today.”
“Go to sleep,” Karmen said.  “We’ll try to stay up and watch.  Someone will try to stay up all night.”
I wanted to protest.  I honestly couldn’t believe that I would be able to sleep.  At the very least, if sheer exhaustion just took over, I thought I would have a head filled with nightmarish dreams of aliens of all shapes and sizes pulling out my intestines.  I had felt this way before and it was always after a day spent in the water.  Something about that time in the water always made me feel drained.  I had nearly drowned today and I was banged up more than I had ever been.  When you added the terror of the situation in general and you understand the exhaustion that was bearing down on me.  It was bearing down on all of us.
I dozed off.  I fell asleep there on the ground with my sleeping bag beneath me.  I drifted right off.  I could hear the others talking but they all talked in hushed tones.  No one wanted to go to sleep but I could sort of hear them drifting off one by one.
I lost track of everything.  I know this is typical for sleep but it was like I was in a coma and not just dozing.  It was like someone reached into my head and turned off a switch.  I was aware of certain things around me like the fire and the breeze blowing gently across my face.  I was aware of the feeling of someone’s body pressing up against my own.
Time seemed to get all funny and elastic again.  That night seemed to last forever.   I was down in a dark place and yet there was a part of me that was totally aware of what was happening.  I heard nothing that was out of the ordinary.  There was no growling from animals.  There was no shuffling of feet.  There was no sound of something breaking through the brush.  Just the soft ruffling of the trees and the branches rolled through the night and into my brain.  The aching in my body left me.
There was no storm that night.  There was only peace.  Everyone fell asleep, as it turns out and everyone had the same total darkness marked by a  strange awareness.  The strange sky turned above us.  The strange lights eventually dimmed and went away.  The sky began to lighten as morning approached.  Once again, much earlier than I was hoping, my eyes snapped open and I was awake.
The first thing I noticed was the lack of pain.  All of the aching in my muscles and bones was gone.  I reached up the feel the cuts on my head and face and most of them were gone.  I reached with my fingers to the other places  that had been cut and found those had healed too.  I moved and it felt like every joint in my body popped and cracked.
I stretched and sat up.  The others were still sleeping.  I looked around and saw that most of them had simply fallen asleep and dropped over.  Joe had his head down on his chest.  Christian was laying on his side.  Nancy was sprawled next to him with her head on her arm.  Behind me and pressed up against me was Karmen.  Her back was against me and her face was towards the water.  I looked to the sleeping bag next to her and it was empty.
I frowned.  I looked up and around.  I saw only water and trees and brush and our clearing.  I looked around again and counted bodies.  I turned back to the empty sleeping bag where Jay should have been sleeping and it was flat.  I looked again at the water and then over at the canoes.  Both canoes were there and both of them were just as dented.
I stood up and felt my knees pop.  I was waiting for the aching and pains in my legs to start as I walked and there was nothing.  I actually felt better this morning than I had the pervious one.  I walked to the sleeping bag and kicked at it.  There was nothing in there.  It was empty.  I stomped on it.  I knelt down and looked at it.  It was zipped up completely and there was no blood anywhere.
“Karmen,” I said.
Karmen moaned and shifted a little in her sleep.  She did not open her eyes.
“Karmen,” I said and reached out to shake her.
She moaned again but this time her eyes fluttered.  She opened her eyes and then sat up in a kind of panic.  She looked around as if she wasn’t sure of where she was.  When she realized where she was it seemed to bring more panic.  Then her eyes rested on me.  She looked down at the sleeping bag.
“What?” She asked in a voice still filled with sleep.  “Where?”
I nodded.  “That’s exactly what I want to know.  Jay’s gone.”
Her eyes got wide again.  “No.”
I nodded.  “The canoes are there.  His bag is zipped up.  There’s no sign of any blood.  There’s no sign of a struggle.  He’s just gone.”
Karmen’s eyes seemed to sink into her head.  Her lip quivered.  She was beyond scared and it finally broke through the mask she had been wearing.   At some point we all reach a point where things start to break.  She had held it together the day before but it was too early in this morning and it was just one thing too many.  Her terror was complete and it was palpable.  We both realized at that moment what this meant for the rest of us.
“He’s gone, isn’t he?” Joe said suddenly and a scream nearly escaped my own throat.
I nodded.  Christian and Nancy were stirring as well.  Christian sat up first and looked at Joe and then over at me and Karmen.  Karmen had pulled her legs up to her chest and chin and was weeping.  I looked into Christian’s eyes and then into Nancy’s once she awoke.
“What happened?”  Christian asked.
“Jay’s gone,” I said.
“He’s what?”  Christian said as he wiped sleep out of his eyes.
“He’s gone,” I repeated.  “Just like Carlos.”
Christian seemed to understand what I was saying for the first time.  He crawled over to the sleeping bag and poked around.  He looked at me like I had just played some kind of cruel trick on him.  Nancy was assuming a pose similar to the one Karmen had taken.  Christian pushed me out of the way and I let him.  I fell back on my butt on the grass and watched him.
He tore up the sleeping bag.  He snarled.  He actually growled.  He picked up the bag and shook it.  He growled again and let loose with a small scream and then he threw the sleeping bag.  He kicked it.  He kicked it several times.  He continued to kick it until his feet were caught up in the bag and he fell in a heap.
“Where is he?” He screamed.
He turned and he looked at me.  He advanced on me with his hands at his side.  I was stunned and amazed and just sat there with wide eyes.
“How would I know?” I asked.
“You’re in on this,” he spat.  “You and Jay and Carlos.  The three of you are like the three fucking musketeers.  You’ve always made fun of me and the rest of us.  Do you think I don’t hear it?”
I was incredulous.  Sure, we had made fun of Christian and his friends.  It was weird and hard not to make fun of.  He had been part of this whole unofficial fraternity from a local college near Chicago.  They had all rented a house together near campus and been a close group and acted like a fraternity without being an official fraternity.  So many in this unofficial fraternity had come to work at the place where we had all worked before setting out on our own it became a joke that the only way to get a job there was to know Christian and his group of Lizards from college.  That was what they called themselves; Lizards.  They were all crazily dedicated to their jobs too and prone to working long hours and doing whatever they could and serving any corporate master in an attempt to get ahead.  Yes, we had made fun of them.
“You’re out of your mind,” I said.
“You planned all of this,” he hissed.  “What, were you going to disappear tonight?  Are you going to hide out in the woods or something?  Wait until we are all good and scared and then come out and say ‘surprise?’”
“I don’t even know what to say to that,” I said.
“Where are they?”  He screamed.  He turned and faced the brush and the trees.  “Are you out there?  Where are you?  Come out!”
His voice echoed through the trees.  Birds stirred in the trees and the brush.  He looked up at the sky and his hands balled into fists.  He was quivering with anger.  Then, slowly, slowly, he sank down to his knees in the grass.  It was like watching someone kneeling down to pray.  He put his head in his hands and his shoulders began to hitch.
At that moment I realized he was just a man and he was just like I was.  He wasn’t a party boy and he wasn’t my boss.  He wasn’t even a friend at that moment.  He was just a man consumed by terror just like the rest of us.  I felt myself relax again.
Karmen scooted over to where I was sitting.  She pushed herself up against me.  I stole a look towards Joe and saw his brow furrow.  It wasn’t much of a time for jealousy though.  I put an arm around Karmen.  Joe reached over and hugged Nancy.
“I guess we have our answer,” Joe said.
“Not now,” I said to Joe.
“When would be a good time?”  Joe asked.  “Shall we have a meeting around lunch?”
“It hasn’t even sunk in yet,” I said.  “Give it a few.”
“What do you want to wait for?”  Joe said.  “Is there a good time to realize that you’re going to disappear forever?  When is a good time to start coming to terms with that.”
“Shut up!” Karmen screamed.  “Everyone just shut up!”
She pushed closer to me.  I held her close.  I wish I could say that I comforted her but there was no way to comfort someone in a situation like that.  Joe had spoken the unspeakable and it was sitting there like a giant purple elephant for everyone to try and ignore.
“We need to try getting out of here,” Christian said.
“We tried that,” I said.  “Do you remember that adventure in the water from yesterday?”
“Speaking of which,” Joe said.  “How the hell did you get so spry after all of your injuries.”
I had forgotten about my bruises and about how things were feeling better.  I pushed Karmen gently aside and stood up.  This time nothing popped and nothing groaned.  I stood up and then bent my knees.
“I feel better,” I said.  “I don’t know how but I’m not sore.  Even some of the cuts and scratches on my body are gone.”
“Well,” Joe said, “how nice for you.  Why should anything start making any sense right now.”
“Why would they do that?” Christian asked.  “Why would they make you better?  Wouldn’t it make more sense to make you worse so you couldn’t try to run?”
“Who’s ‘they?’” I asked.  “You keep using that word like you know who’s doing this.  You have no idea.”
“But why make you better?” He repeated.
“Like Joe said,” I replied, “ nothing about this makes any sense.”
“It’s all a big experiment,” Joe said.  “We’re just the rats in a giant maze right now, folks.  They throw crazy things at us and see how we react.  Then, sometimes, you have to take one of the rats and dissect them.”
“Shut up!” Karmen screamed and put her hands over her ears.  “Stop talking!”
“We need to try getting out of here,” Christian said. “We can try going over land.  Maybe we can move further down the edge of the lake here and then swim out that channel or something.”
“First off,” I said, “ maybe that’s exactly whatever is doing this wants us to do.  Like Joe said, maybe we’re just rats in a maze.  Do you think they’re going to let us out of the maze?  Secondly, I can’t swim.  Once again, I point you to yesterday when I nearly drowned.”
“Then we’ll just keep trying to get through over land,” Christian said.  “We got spooked yesterday.  We all came back because we were scared.  If we just keep pushing forward maybe we can break through.”
“You didn’t come back scared,” I said.  “Remember?  You came back and said we were all crazy.”
Christian’s head sank.  “I saw it too.  I saw everything you described.”
I walked over towards him to look into his face.  His chin would not come up from his chest.  He was looking at some spot on the ground that only he could see.
“You what?”  I asked.
“I saw everything,” he said.  “I saw the trees moving and I had the feeling like the woods were swallowing me up.  I came back because I was scared too.”
“What the hell is this?” I asked.  “Were you trying to pull some macho bullshit or something?  Are you trying to show off?”
“I don’t know all right!”  He screamed.  “I don’t know what I was thinking!”
“Nice to know you’re human, Christian,” I said.  “Nice to see you admit you actually don’t have all of the answers.”
“We need to try to get out of here,” he repeated.
“Yes,” I said, “you keep saying that.  However, if we couldn’t get through the woods yesterday what makes you think we can get through it today.  Aren’t we going to run into the same thing?”
“We were divided yesterday,” he said.  “If we all stick together maybe we can get through.”
“Yeah,” I said, “ that worked great yesterday too.”
“Well, goddamnit!” He screamed.  “What do you want to do?  Do you want to just sit here and wait?  Eat beef jerky and wait for night fall?”
I stepped back.  Once again my cynicism had taken control of my tongue.  It was my turn to look down at an invisible spot on the grass.  He was right, of course.  I don’t think I thought that it had a prayer of working.  I don’t think I believed for one second that whoever or whatever wanted us right here in this clearing to be taken away one by one was going to let us plow through the woods and emerge into the sunlight.  Still, he was right.  The only alternative was to sit here and do nothing and either go numb, crazy or disappear entirely into terror.  We had to try to do something while we could still try to do anything.
“When do we leave?” I asked.
“We’ll pack everything up,” he said.  “We should bring as much as we can.  We may not be able to walk out of this place as quickly as we paddled in.  We’ll have to go around all of the water.  We may need to camp somewhere else.”
“I don’t like the idea of camping in those woods,” Nancy said.
“Neither do I,” Joe said.
“We may not have any choice,” Christian said.
“What about Jay?” Karmen said.
“He’s gone,” I said.  “He’s gone just like Carlos is.  We have to get over that and get on with this.  If we don’t want to be next then we have to do something.  Christian’s right.  It’s best if we die trying rather than just sitting here waiting to do the same thing.”
“Is there an option that doesn’t involve dying?” Karmen asked.
“I guess we’d better find out,” Christian said.
There didn’t seem to be much point in arguing any further.  Christian turned and walked into his tent.   After a few moments Nancy joined him.  I walked back to my tent and folded it back up.  I packed everything up and then put as much of it onto my back as I could.  Karmen and Joe did the same.  We looked like real campers at that point with sleeping bag rolls on our back and everything.
I don’t know how long it took.  I do know that we all gathered in the clearing after what turned out to be a rather short amount of time.  I was actually glad to see Joe had his knife and his gun strapped to his body.
“We’ll walk along the edge there,” Christian said pointing to an area near the edge of the water, “we’ll try to keep the water in view.  It looks like we can walk along it and around it.”
I nodded.  Everyone else did too.  There was a haunted look in everyone’s eyes.  Behind that had grown a kind of fierce determination and it burned like embers just behind everyone iris.  This was our last stand.  We either made it through and found ourselves in front of our cars again or we were stuck here in the woods until the woods decided to take us.
Christian walked first and Nancy followed closely behind him.  Joe was next and then came Karmen.  I came up the rear.  We walked and we stepped over the line of the clearing and into the woods.  The water was to our left.  It looks blue and deep and cold.  The sky was also a crystal blue.  If the situation were any other than the one we were in it would have been a perfect day.  It might have even been the perfect day for a hike.
We continued on.  The brush crunched beneath us.  The trees seemed to get thicker and taller the further we moved in.  Christian moved to the right around what appeared to be a large root and we moved slightly further away from the water.  Then we moved back towards the water.  There were more trees.  Suddenly the water wasn’t as easy to see and I could only see slivers of blue between tree trunks.
“Do the trees seem bigger?” Joe said.
“No,” Christian said in his best Mr. Denial voice.
“They do to me,” Karmen whispered back.
We continued to move forward.  There were bushes and trunks all around us.  I looked up and the tree trunks seemed to continue to go up and up and up.  The branches blocked out the sky.  It was like the trees had thrown their arms around each other.  That same feeling that things were closing in around us began to sink in.  I looked to my left to try and find the water and I saw only trees.
“Did we move further inland?” I asked.
“The lake is just beyond those trees,” Christian said and pointed to his left.
“I can’t see it,” I said.
“Then you aren’t looking hard enough!” Christian screamed.
I felt sweat sliding down my neck and my back.  I swatted at something that felt like it was crawling on my neck.  I could see a small cloud of insects flirting and flitting around Karmen’s neck as well.  I looked up again and saw more clouds of insects.  Something buzzed in my ear and I swatted at it.
There was a root the size of a van in front of us.  I never knew trees could be this big especially in this part of the world.  That feeling that we were no longer on the same plane we had arrived on came back.  All of us climbed over the root and fell on the other side.  The breath was screaming in and out of my lungs.  There were just more trees on the other side.
“It’s like we’re in a fucking jungle,” Joe said.
“Where are we?” Karmen asked.
“The water is right over there,” Christian said again but now doubt had crept into his voice.
“You keep saying that and I keep still not seeing it,” I said.
“What do you want me to do?” Christian yelled.  “Chop down the trees?”
“Where did these trees come from?” Joe asked.  “There weren’t any trees that big when we came into this place yesterday.  These things are as big as fucking skyscrapers.”
“Just keep moving,” Christian said.
“Christian,” Nancy said, “maybe we should go back.”
“No,” I said and I was as surprised as everyone else to hear me say it.  “We have to keep moving.  If we go back there we’re as good as gone.”
“So you’d rather we die out here in the woods?” Nancy said.
“I’d rather die fighting,” I said.
We kept moving.  We climbed over more roots.  We turned back a few times as the trees grew together in front of us at points and formed walls.  The spaces for us to walk became more and more narrow.  We were walking single-file behind each other and then suddenly we were inching along sideways.  The bugs became more numerous.  I was constantly swatting and then eventually I just gave up.  They didn’t really seem to be biting but their constant whining in my ears was maddening.
“Where did all of the bugs come from?”  Karmen asked.
“And me without my DEET,” I said.
Suddenly the trees seemed to open up ahead.  The clearing wasn’t much but it was in a rough circle shape.  For just a moment the trees looked normal again.  I could see the lake but it was much farther to the left than it should have been.
“See,” Christian said pointing yet again towards the water, “the lake is right there.”
“Yeah,” I said and put my hands on my knees and swatted at the insects flying around my neck.  “I see it.  How the hell far along are we?”
“I can’t tell from here,” Christian said.  “I’d have to get closer to the lake.”
“No,” Nancy said.  “You’re not going off anywhere.”
“We need to keep moving,” Christian said.
“I know,” I said.  “I just need to catch my –“
I broke off as sounds of something moving through the trees reached us.  My eyes got wide.  The others gasped in unison and then all fell silent.  Each of us backed away from where the sound was coming from.  It was coming from off to our right.  It was coming from deeper in the forest.  It was something moving and stumbling.  My mind imagined monsters of all shapes and sizes coming through.
“Joe,” Christian said.
“Right,” Joe whispered.
Joe took out his gun.  He held it in his hand.  I wondered again what it was Joe had done before he came to work with us but it was only a fleeting thought and concern.  Mostly, at that moment, I was really glad he was here and he had brought the gun.  He pointed it ahead of him.  He held the gun with both hands.  He turned his head slightly to site down the gun barrel.
Something burst through the trees.  The figure was stumbling.  I saw two legs and arms.  I saw hair that was strangely colored and skin that was much too pale.  Then, in an instant, I recognized the face and the body and I stepped forward.  I knocked Joe’s arms up and he fired into the trees over our head.
“What the hell?” Joe screamed.
“It’s Carlos!” I screamed.
Joe looked at me with confusion at first.  He looked from me and then back to the stumbling body that had now fallen and sprawled into the clearing.  He looked back and me and then back at the body.  He put his hand to his mouth and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Jesus,” he said.
Christian moved forward.  Nancy ran to the body that was quivering on the ground.  Karmen had dropped her backpack and was also running.  I left Joe quivering and shaking and ran to the body as well.
It was Carlos, but it was a Carlos I had never seen.  Christian rolled him over onto his back.  I took a step back when I saw what was there.  His eyes were nearly white.  I could see his pupils and irises but the eyes were clouded over with a film of white.  His hair was lighter and not as black as though streaked with gray.  His skin looked leathery.  He looked like Carlos at age 120.  His skin looked like it was hanging off of his bones.  His whole body was shaking.
“Carlos,” Christian was saying into his face.  “Carlos!  Can you hear me?”
Carlos said nothing.  He made noises but they were strange mewling noises.  There was no sign of blood on his clothes.  There were no scratches on his arm.
“Is he hurt?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Christian said.  “He’s shaking all over.”
Karmen ran her hand over Carlos’ face.  She made a sound to try and quiet him, whispering at him.  Carlos seemed to calm for a moment.  His eyes rolled around in his head but they didn’t seem to focus on anything.
“Carlos?” Karmen said.  “Carlos, can you hear me?”
Carlos’ mouth moved.  His lips pulled back from what remained of his teeth.  There wasn’t much in his mouth.  His gums looked like they had bled and scabbed over.  What few teeth were left were yellow and rotten.
“You,” he said.
“What?” Karmen asked.  “What is it Carlos?  What happened?  Who took you?  Where have you been?”
“Ease up,” I said to Karmen.  “Look at him.  He’s barely alive.  It’s like he’s aged a century.”
“You,” Carlos whispered.  “All – of – you.”
“Yes,” Karmen said.  “We’re all here, Carlos.  We’ve been looking for you.”
His eyes seemed to search for that voice.  The milky eyes fell on Karmen’s face. I could see that she recoiled a bit as they settled on her.  Then the eyes continued to move.  They were searching.  Searching.  Searching.
“All- of – you,” he repeated.  “None – of – you – “
“What is he trying to say?” I asked more to myself than really expecting anyone to answer.
“None – of – you,” he said, “will – get – out – of – here.”
He convulsed then.  I saw a tiny bit of red fleck his gums and the corner of his mouth.  Karmen and Christian held him until the convulsion stopped.
“They – won’t – let – you,” he said.
He convulsed again.  His mouth opened and he raised his head.  He looked as though he was going to say something else.  His mouth opened wide and I prepared myself for him to start screaming.  I was not prepared for blood to come jetting out of his mouth in a huge thick glut.  The blood caught Karmen in the chest and it seemed to knock her back.  For a second I thought she might have been hit so hard it sent her back just like a fire-hose.  Then I realized she jumped back in revulsion.
Christian let go.  Carlos sat up without assistance.  The blood pumped form his mouth.  His head turned and he made horrible guttural noises.  The blood pumped in steady rhythm with what I imagined was his heartbeat.  I could hear the liquid splattering against the floor of the forest.  Over and over again the blood splattered onto the floor of the woods and every time I thought it had to end it kept going.  Carlos turned and I saw his face and I saw blood streaming from his nose and his eyes.  I saw runnels of blood running from his ears.  Carlos was erupting.
Nancy was screaming.  Karmen was screaming and looking at the blood all over her chest and her arms.  Her legs were coated with it.  Christian was pale and looked close to fainting.  Even Joe looked lost in terror.  I could only imagine what I looked like.
Carlos seemed to wind down.  The blood slowed.  His body sagged.  His eyes fluttered.  He fell onto his back.  The blood poured out of his mouth.  He was completed coated in gore.  I could smell the blood and I felt my gorge rise.  I stepped back from him and watched as his breathing became erratic and his chest hitched.  The noises he made became less and less distinct.  Then it stopped.  He just stopped and was motionless.
Nancy and Karmen continued to scream.  Christian turned and vomited.  Joe sat down on the floor of the forest.  I sank to my knees.  I felt tears streaming from my eyes.  I could feel my own scream building in my throat.
Christian turned and wiped his chin.  He stared down at the body before him.  Then he flung himself at it.  He began smearing his hands in the bloody clothes.  He was wiping blood away from Carlos’ face.  He was tearing the clothes away from the body.
“What are you doing?” I asked and felt my gorge rise again.
“What did they do to him?”  Christian said.  “What did they do to him?”
“He looks so old,” Karmen said weakly.  “He looks like he’s a thousand years old.”
“I can’t see anything because of the blood,” Christian said.
“What are you expecting to find?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said.  “Maybe cuts.  Something to show he was cut open or put back together.  Something.  Anything.”
He wiped away the blood but succeeded in only smearing the blood around.  I could see that Carlos’ skin was leathery and dry.  It was like Carlos was just a husk.  Like whatever had taken him had hollowed him out and then animated the skin.  Carlos was a kind of puppet.
“I can’t find anything,” Christian said.  “His skin feels like corn husks or something.”
“Like he was taken apart and put back together,” I whispered.  “Like he’s a hollowed out husk.”
“Oh Jesus,” I heard Joe say from behind me.  “Oh sweet Jesus what is this shit?  What’s going on?”
“We need to go back,” Nancy said with a kind of moan.  “We need to go back.”
“Go back?” Christian said.  “Go back and what?  Go back and wait for this to happen to us?”
“What else is waiting for us out here?” Nancy said.  “Are we going to keep going until Jay comes through and explodes all over us?”
“I’m not letting that happen to me,” Joe said.  “I’ll fucking shoot myself before I let that happen to me.”
“We keep moving,” Christian said.  “We have to keep moving.  There’s got to be a way out of here.”
Karmen was shaking her head.  “He said they won’t let us.  They won’t let us out of here.”
“We don’t even know who they are,” Christian said.
“Well they’re obviously powerful enough to sneak into our camps and take one of us without waking anyone up,” Karmen said.  “Then they’re powerful enough to gut one of us and send it back as some kind of flesh puppet.  Who gives a shit if they’re aliens, wizards, demons, elves or garden gnomes?”
“Well, I don’t want to sit back there and wait for them whatever they are,” I said.
“Me either,” said Joe.
“No,” Karmen said with a sigh, “I guess I don’t want to either.”
“Nancy?” Christian said and he looked at his wife.
Nancy had turned away from us.  She put her head in her hands.  She shuddered once and then twice.  She seemed to be swallowing the sobs that wanted to wrack her body and send her into hysterics.  Eventually she nodded and looked up at the rest of us.  Her eyes were red and her face matched but she had set her jaw and looked determined.  She let Christian help her up.
“What’s the plan, boss?” I asked Christian.
“This looks like a break in trees right here,” Christian said and pointed to the spot where Carlos had just run through.  “We’ll just have to go in a little ways and then head back that way and along the lake.”
“It would be great if we can get back closer to the lake,” I said.
Christian nodded.  “We’ll try.”
There was no point in further discussion.  I suppose I thought about what to do with Carlos’ body.  I am willing to bet the thought about what to do with it crossed everyone else’s mind.  The fact was none of us wanted to carry it.  None of us had the equipment to bury it.  All of us thought that it was no longer really Carlos.  Whatever Carlos had been was long gone now and only the dried out husk was left.  Besides, if we didn’t get out all of our bodies would be left to rot out here.  If we did get out we could always try and come back for the body.  Regardless of whether or not those reasons were valid or they are reasons I have come up with to justify leaving the body behind the fact is we left Carlos’ body behind where it had fallen.
We stepped between the trees.  Almost immediately the sunlight faded.  We walked forward.  The brush was thick and branches tugged at my clothes and my pants.  I tripped a few times but never fell.  I felt like if I fell the brush would close over me and swallow me.
We reached another clump of roots and had to climb over one and then under another.  I had never seen trees as massive as these.  I never knew trees like these could exist in Wisconsin.  Again, the feeling we were not on earth any longer held strong in my mind.
We tried to cut to the left and make our way back towards the lake.  We had only walked a few feet when a seeming wall of trees blocked our path.  If we had remembered to pack dynamite we might have been able to blow our way through but I had carelessly left my supply  of high-explosives at home.  We turned again and trudged through more trees.
The insects returned.  This time I noticed slightly larger insects buzzing about mixed in with the small gnat-like creatures.  These looked darker and buzzed more angrily in our ears.  Again, we weren’t bitten but I had this feeling some of the insects might be taking a chomp or two before too long.  We were all sweating profusely.  I could see the sweat staining Karmen’s shirt and running down the back of her neck.
Bark rubbed against my shoulders as we pushed through the trees.  I never knew there could be so many trees packed so tightly together.  The ground beneath must have been thick with roots.  It would have been impossible to try and dig beneath the surface we were walking on.
“I’ve never seen so many goddamn trees,” I said.
“There are more trees here than in a fucking rainforest,” Karmen said.
“We’re going to run out of room to move,” I said so Christian could hear.
“There has to be room,” he said.  “Trees can’t grow together into walls.  There has to be space between them.”
“Someone must have forgotten to tell these particular trees,” Joe said.
We made another attempt to turn to the left and head back towards the lake.  We were able to walk a little further.  We came through a couple of trees and suddenly there was a wall of bushes.  The bushes were thick and choked with branches.  Christian made an attempt to tromp right through the branches and gave a yelp and then backed away.
“Thorns!” He yelled.
I looked closer and sure enough there were thorns from every branch.  Even the leaves had spines that looked like small teeth.  Several of the thorns looked to be three or four inches long.  A white fluid ran from the end of each one.
“Christ,” I said.  “I’ve never seen bushes or plants like this before.”
“I don’t think bushes or plants exist like this,” Joe said, “that’s why.”
“It’s like it has teeth,” Karmen said.
“I think it does,” I said.
“We should turn back,” Nancy said.
“Not now,” Christian said.  “We’ve come too far now.  We’re closer to the other side of the lake than we are the camp.  We have to be breaking through all of this soon.”
“Somehow that is a lot more optimistic than I feel right now,” I said.
“A mortician is more optimistic than you most of the time,” Christian muttered.
So we continued.  We ran into more walks of bushes with teeth.  I scraped along one of the thorns at one point and my arm began to itch like crazy.  I saw a deep red welt on my arm where the thorn had scratched.  I could see some of the white fluid in the scratch.  I wondered if I had been poisoned.  I decided I didn’t care.
“Shouldn’t we be there?” Joe asked.
“We’ve been walking forever,” I said.
“We’re close,” Christian said.  “I can feel it.”
“Great,” I said.
It seemed to last hours.  I have no idea how long we trudged through that forest.  I can’t begin to describe some of the things we saw in there.  I swear I saw creatures that haven’t existed on this planet for centuries.  Things were moving and flying in the treetops.  I think I saw something leaping from branch to branch above us.  If Bigfoot himself had stepped out and said hello I don’t think anyone would have been the least bit surprised.
Every time we made an attempt to turn back towards the lake something blocked our path.  There were more thorn bushes.  At one point there was an entire tree at least as big as several city buses lying across the path.  There was no way we could even climb above it.  Not only was it too big but the entire tree was crawling with something that looked like gigantic red army ants and they took a nice bite out of Joe’s hand when he tried to put his hand on the trunk.
The insects did start to bite.  I swatted at one and my hand came away slick with goo and droplets of my own blood.  I could hear them buzzing against my ear.  Their wings were like buzz-saws.  At one point we stumbled into a horde of flying insects that looked like dragonflies except that each tail ended in a barb like a scorpion.  We beat a hasty retreat and went around the cloud of them.
“I’m getting hungry,” Joe said at one point.
“We’ll stop and eat soon,” Christian said.
“You said that hours ago,”  Joe said.
“No, I said we’d be through all of this hours ago,” Christian said.  “This is the first time I’ve ever talked about eating.”
I strained my eyes up into the trees.  I could just make out spots of blue from the sky.  I could just barely see sunlight touching the uppermost leaves of the trees.  The trees moved in the breeze and cut off my view of the light and the blue sky.
“Hey,” Christian said.  “Hey, I think the trees are getting lighter.  I think we’re finally coming to a break in all of this.”
I had turned my head and eyes back down to watch where I was stepping.  I looked up and looked ahead of where Christian was.  Sure enough he was right.  The trees were not as thick.  I looked up and could see huge chunks of blue and I could see streams of sunlight striking the forest floor.
“Damn,” I said with relief.  “You’re right.”
We started to move faster.  The trees now looked like trees that you would imagine to find in a forest in Wisconsin.  I know nothing about botany and couldn’t identify a tree by name with a map and someone feeding me the answers but that feeling of being lost in some prehistoric time was gone.  Even the bugs had gone back to normal sized and eventually disappeared all-together.
I decided to fix my eyes on Karmen’s back.  I didn’t want to get my hopes up too much.  For all I knew it would be a short break in the trees and then more prehistoric monstrosity trees waiting for us on the other side of whatever clearing we were coming to.  Karmen was nearly running.  I could hear the breath wheezing in and out of my lungs as I tried to keep up.  I could hear her breathing too.  In fact all of us were breathing harder and moving faster.  Christian was nearly laughing.  The trees got further and further apart.  I could feel the sunlight on my face and I closed my eyes just for a second.  That was when I ran full on into Karmen’s back.
“No,” Christian whispered.
I apologized to Karmen and then realized that she wasn’t even paying attention to me.  I looked at her face and saw that all of the color had drained out of it.  She was staring straight ahead.  I didn’t want to look.  I didn’t want to see what fresh horror or monstrosity waiting for us but I turned my head anyway.  I saw that Joe was leaning against a tree with his head in his hand.  I saw that Nancy had resumed her continued practice of sitting on the ground and weeping.  Then, finally, I saw Christian who was at the head of the line and he was staring straight ahead like Karmen was.  His face was filled not with horror and it had not gone pale.  His face was red with rage.
“NO!” He screamed.
I moved my eyes from looking at Christian’s face into the clearing.  When I saw the battered picnic table and the equally battered canoes I felt my jaw drop open.  I felt my stomach and my hear sink.  I felt my knees get weak.  I reached out my hand and nearly toppled over until I found a tree to lean against.
“They kept pushing us to the right,” Joe said.  “Whenever we tried to get to the left something came up and pushed us back to the right.  They walked us in a giant circle.”
“No,” I said.  “No, they didn’t.  It’s just like the lake yesterday.  This is a maze.  There’s no way out.  Whichever way we went we’d end up right back here.”
Christian moved into the clearing.  He was moving his head left and then right and then back again.  His fists were clenching and unclenching.  He ran at the picnic table and kicked at it.  He slammed his fists down at it.  Then he ran over and kicked the garbage can, denting the side, repeatedly over and over and over again until he missed with a kick and fell down hard.  He sat there on the ground breathing hard and then screamed into the air.  He screamed until he just couldn’t anymore and then he put his head in his hands.
I walked into the clearing.  I put my backpack down roughly in the same spot where my tent had been.  I felt exhausted.  I felt beyond exhausted.  I was defeated.  I knew at that point it was over.  I would not be joining the others on any more attempts to escape.  I would not be moving from this spot.  If they took me and chopped me up and then put me back together, aged me a hundred years and sent me back just to explode like they had for Carlos, I would let them.  They had sucked the fight out of me.  No more thorn bushes.  No more scary trees.  No more rivers and rapids.  No more insects.  I was done.
I sat down at the picnic table and I folded my arms and then put my head down in my arms.  I closed my eyes.  I didn’t weep.  I didn’t feel any tears.  I was even beyond crying.  I wasn’t in pain.  I was just tired.  My bones felt tired.  My body felt tired.  My brain just wanted to shut off.  I suddenly had an idea of why some people break from reality and just become catatonic.
Karmen stepped into the clearing and I heard her walk over to me.  She sat down next to me and I felt the weight of her head and she rested her head against my shoulder.  At any other time this would have excited me and been the realization of a dream.  Instead, I kept my eyes closed and my head in my arms.  Maybe I should have turned and held her and kissed her or something of that nature.  When I think about it now I think that is what I should have done.  I probably could have had sex with her right there in front of everyone and on the picnic table.  What the hell, the realization we were doomed must have sunk into everyone’s mind.  If we had all stripped down and done some kind of group sex thing it wouldn’t have mattered.  What do you always wish you were doing when you die?  Maybe having sex?  Doing something you have always wanted to do?  Well the realization that that was upon us had hit and yet all we could do was sit in silence.
“I’m not doing it anymore,” I said into my arms and to the surface of the table.
“What?” Karmen asked.
“I’m not trying to get out of here anymore,” I said.  “No more canoes.  No more hiking.  No more anything.  I’m done.”
“Me too,” she replied and somehow I found that much more sad than my own defeat and admission of defeat.  Karmen was giving up.  Karmen who had always had a positive outlook on everything.  Karmen was the one who always had a smile, a sympathetic ear, and a quick joke and a smart comment.  She was giving up.  She had resigned herself to her fate.  She wasn’t making jokes.  She was done.
“This can’t be,” I heard Christian say.
I raised my head.  Christian was sitting in the same place he had been.  His head was down.  Nancy was sitting cross-legged next to him.  Joe was still standing at the edge of the clearing.  Christian was absently pulling up handfuls of grass with both of his fists.
“We had better set up our tents again,” I said with as little enthusiasm as I could manage.  “I’m not sleeping outside again.  It doesn’t help and it just makes me cold.”
I turned and gave Karmen a kind of hug.  I then stood and walked over to where my tent had been and I unpacked the tent.  Silently, without really thinking about it, moving as though I were some kind of pre-programmed robot, I set up the tent.  I staked the corners down.  I unpacked the sleeping bag and set it inside.  In a way it felt good to concentrate on something completely meaningless and very simple that would allow me to shut down a bit.  When I was done I turned around to notice that everyone else had put their tents up again as well.
I walked back to the place where we had set out fires every night.  There was still quite a bit of afternoon sunlight left and the sun was shining in a mostly cloudless sky.  Still, I felt cold.  I felt numb.  Plus, starting a fire was relatively mindless as well.  I arranged the wood as I had seen Christian do.  I started the fire and then sat back.
Joe eventually came over and sat across from me.  Karmen came out and sat to my right.  She crossed her legs and stared into the flames.  Christian and Nancy came last.  They had unpacked some more of their food.  I ate some kind of leathery jerky treats and chewed and swallowed.  I had no appetite and was not remotely hungry but I ate anyway.  I was working on remote power and just moving and acting.
We sat in that circle the remainder of that afternoon.  We listened to the wind blowing in the trees.  I listened to the water lapping gently against the metal hulls of the canoes.  I watched some birds flying in a kind of flock performing aerial dips and swirls in perfect formation.  Eventually I just laid back and closed my eyes again.  I think I may have even dozed off because when I opened my eyes the sun was much lower and the sky darker.
“Do you think there’s anything we can do?” Karmen asked me.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said back to her.
She was also laying back.  She was right next to me.  I raised my head and saw the others were all away from the fire.  Joe seemed to be staring off into the lake.  Christian and Nancy were sitting together near the opening of their tent.
“Me either,” she said.
“I wish we could have some idea of who was next,” I said.  “Why would they take Carlos first?  If they wanted our strongest out of the way, why not Jay first?”
“Maybe because Carlos had a family,” Karmen said.  “Of all of us he was the only one with kids.”
“Makes about as much sense as anything else,” I said.
“Can I ask you something?” She asked.
“Sure,” I said.
“Do you have a crush on me?” She asked.
I should have been surprised.  I wasn’t.  “Yeah.”
“Have you thought about sleeping with me?” She asked.
“Lots of times,” I said.
“Would you mind if I came into your tent tonight?” She asked.
“Not at all,” I said.
Once again, at any other time I probably would have had an erection that could have been used to cut diamonds.  Instead I still felt that strange whole-body numbness.  Yes, I still wanted her.  Yes, she was still beautiful.  If she was in my sleeping bag and rubbing against me I would probably respond normally.  However, at that moment, instead of a head filled with pornographic pictures I just felt tired.  I stared up into the endless sky.  I felt her hand brush against mine and I let her hold my hand and I curled my fingers around hers.
I sent out a mental curse.  I cursed whoever was doing this.  I cursed them for allowing this to happen between me and Karmen when it no longer mattered.  I cursed them for taking the joy of what should have been the finest moment in my romantic life and making it next to meaningless.  I hated them for taking this moment away from me than all of the other moments in my life I would probably never have because of them.
“I think Christian and Nancy are going to be doing it soon,” Karmen said.
“Probably,” I replied.
“I kind of feel bad for Joe,” Karmen said.
“He seems a little gone,” I said back.
I raised my head and looked at Joe.  He was still staring fixedly into the middle of the lake.  I wondered if he might just get up and walk into the water and just keep walking until it was over his head.  I wondered if he had managed to shut down like I had been wishing that I could just a few minutes earlier.  He seemed beyond caring and beyond pain and beyond fear.
“I hope it doesn’t hurt,” Karmen said quietly.
“Me too,” I said in agreement.
“I don’t want to end up like Carlos,” she said and I heard the faintest quiver in her voice.
“I don’t think that’s normal for them,” I said.  “I think they sent him back as a warning.  Maybe that’s why Carlos’ body fell apart like that.  They don’t normally do that.”
“I wish I knew who they were,” Karmen said.
“That’s too many wishes,” I replied.
“You can never have too many wishes,” she said.  “You can never have too many because they never come true anyway.”
I heard movement and raised my head.  Christian and Nancy were heading into their tent.  I saw them disappear inside.  I saw Christian’s hand zipping the opening closed.  I wondered if we would hear them.  I decided I didn’t really care.
“There they go,” Karmen said.
“Yep,” I said.
“Should we head into your tent?” She asked.
I laid my head back and watched the sky for a bit longer.  Here was a woman I had lusted after for what seemed like forever and she was offering herself to me right now.  There had been a time I would have dropped my pants and had sex with her in the middle of the office if she had offered.  Right then I was just numb and tired.
“I’m not sure how much fun I’ll be tonight,” I said.
“Yeah,” Karmen replied, “I know what you’re saying.  I just don’t want to be alone tonight.”
I nodded.  I liked the sound of that.  I didn’t want to be alone either.  It had been far too long since I had held anyone anyway.  Maybe we could fend off whatever was coming for a little bit longer, I thought.  I looked over at Joe.  He was still sitting there staring off into space.
“What about him?” I asked and tilted my head.
Karmen lifted her head and looked at Joe.  “I know he always had a thing for me.  Nothing ever happened?”
“Nothing?” I asked, doubtful and surprised.
“Nothing worth mentioning at this point,” she said and I nodded at that.
“Well, what about him tonight?” I asked.  “He’s all alone.”
“Well,” Karmen replied, “would you rather he come with us?  Besides, judging from the look on his face he’s already gone.”
I turned back and looked at Joe again.  She was right.  He was gone.  He has managed to escape into his brain or something of that nature.
I looked back up at the sky.  The sun was starting its downward track.  I decided I didn’t want to sit out here tonight and watch the sunset.  I didn’t want to watch the strange lights come out.  I didn’t want to see the jeweler’s cloth of diamonds that the stars resembled.  At that moment I wanted nothing else but to crawl into my sleeping bag with the most beautiful woman I had met and had ever wanted to sleep anywhere near me before.  I wanted to pretend like this wasn’t happening.
“Yeah,” I said, “I think I’m ready.”
Karmen nodded and she stood up.
“I hope your sleeping bag is big enough,” she said.
“Well,” I said, “we’ll have to be pretty close.”
She looked back over her shoulder at me.  “That sounds good to me.”
“I don’t smell so good, you know,” I said, remembering that I had managed to only sort of bathe myself the day before and hadn’t even made an attempt this morning.
“Like I smell like a bed of roses,” she said.
I couldn’t argue with that.  Without a second glance I stood up and followed her.  She crawled into my tent.  I crawled in after her.  She began to undress.  I began to undress.  She stripped down to her panties.  I stripped down to my underwear.  I unzipped my bag and slid in.  Then I held the bag open for her.  She slid in right next to me.  I felt her body sliding against mine.  I felt her hot skin brushing against my own.  Her breasts looked perfect, like I had always imagined.  Her nipples were hard.  She was breathing hard.  She slid all the way in and I closed the bag over us.  She folded her arms around me.  I felt her leg slide over my hip.
“Yes,” I said, “you’re right.  This is much better.”
“I agree,” she said and moved against me.  “You don’t feel quite as tired as you said you would be.”
“Well I do have a gorgeous woman in my arms,” I said.  “Nice tits by the way.”
“You speak in such romantic terms,” she said.
We laughed.  We actually managed to laugh.  It was good to laugh again.  I kissed her at that point.  She closed her eyes and pressed against me and we got lost in the kiss.  Of all of the kisses I have ever experienced that one has to have been the sweetest.  Our tongues touched.  Our hands wandered.  I found her breasts and her hard nipples.  She ran her fingers over my back.  The longer we kissed the more our hands wandered.  When she touched the part of me that was hard and eager I nearly exploded.
I’d love to tell you it was some long slow marathon love-making session.  It wasn’t.  We worked ourselves into a kind of frenzy.  Both of us were breathing hard, moaning, panting, but trying to keep the noise down.  Neither of us wanted the others to hear or, perhaps, to have whoever was with us, watching us, taking us to hear.  I rolled on top of her and slid inside her and she bit her lip.  We rocked slowly and steadily as the light faded.  We moved and sweated and sighed as Joe continued his lonely vigil outside.  She came an instant before I did just as the crazy colors must have come out.
We fell asleep not long after.  I don’t think I even pulled out of her.  I awoke in the middle of the night and she was still there and we were still entwined.  I was relieved when I awoke in the morning to find her still there.  The look on her face when she looked into my eyes confirmed she felt the same thing.  We kissed again and things were just starting to get interesting again when we heard shouting outside.
At first I wasn’t sure what it was.  I felt gooseflesh pop out all over Karmen’s body.  We looked at each other in terror.  We disentangled ourselves and began fumbling for clothes.  The screaming went on and on.  It was a scream of agony and loss.  I thought maybe it was Joe.  Then, for a while, when the scream became one long, loud, extended scream of rage and agony I began to wonder if it was really human.  I wondered if the creature that had been torturing us had finally made an appearance.
It seemed to take forever for Karmen and I to get dressed.  The terror never left her eyes.  Before she went out the opening of the tent she paused to kiss me again, like she needed to gain just a little more strength or a little more of my life energy before she emerged into the light to face whatever new horror was waiting for us.
We emerged into a gray light.  The sky was overcast.  Joe was still sitting in his spot and he was staring out into the water.  He seemed to not even hear the screaming.  The screaming was coming from Christian and Nancy’s tent.  It was then that I realized it was Christian I was hearing scream.
Karmen reached the tent first.  She tore it open.  Then she stepped back.  I came up behind her and I stared in fear into the tent.  There was Christian, on his knees, in the tent.  His face was a mask of agony and terror like I had never seen.  I hope never to see the like again.  His mouth was open.  The sounds were coming out of his throat with each breath.  Drool ran from his mouth and onto his shirt.  He was rocking back and forth and appeared to be holding one of Nancy’s shirts in his hands.
“What?” I asked.
Christian didn’t seem to know that I was there.  He just kept screaming and rocking. I couldn’t imagine the damage he must have been doing to his vocal chords.  He just kept rocking and screaming.  He would scream until he ran out of breath and then hitch a huge breath and scream again.  His voice was cracking.
I climbed into the tent and grabbed Christian by both hands.  I shook him from side to side.  When he continued to scream I slapped him hard across the face.  His scream cut off in the middle.  His eyes were dazed.  He looked at me for several seconds like he wasn’t sure who I was.  Then he had a moment when I thought he was going to punch me.  Then his face cracked.
“She’s gone,” he said through his cracked voice.  “She’s gone.  They took her.”
It finally sank in.  My heart had been hammering so loudly in my chest and the adrenaline running through me so hard and fast I hadn’t had time to register what was going on in the tent.  I sat back stunned for a moment.  Now it was my turned to be confused.  I wasn’t sure who he was talking about for a moment.  Then I looked down at the shirt that he was clutching in his hand.  I looked around the tent and realized Christian was in it alone.
“Oh shit,” I said.
“She’s gone,” Christian repeated.
I reached out and clutched at Christian.  He fell into my arms.  I felt him quivering and weeping against my shoulder.  I had nothing I could say to him.  What possible comfort could I give him?  Should I tell him that Nancy wouldn’t be chopped up and put back together so that she would explode in our midst as Carlos had?  How was I to know?
“What happened?”  I asked.
Christian had calmed down enough to talk.  “We came in here and we were sleeping together.  I had her in my arms all night long.  When I woke up this morning my arms were empty.  I got up and walked around the camp.  I checked the tents.  I realized she was gone.  Where did she go?  What did they do with her?”
I could only shrug.  Christian clutched at the shirt and wept.  He was quieter now.  I couldn’t think of any reason to sit there any longer.  I slowly got up and walked out of the tent.  Karmen was kneeling at the opening of the tent.  Silent tears coursed down her face and dripped from her cheeks and off of her chin.  She looked at me with wide eyes.
I walked past her and out into the light.  I looked up at the gray sky and felt light rain falling on my face.  I wanted to scream at the sky.  I wanted to tear apart the entire camp.  I wanted to destroy the woods around us.  Had I been able to start a fire and burn the entire forest down I would have.  If I had been able to turn the water into napalm and throw it into the trees I would have done that.  I wanted to scream at whomever or whatever was doing this to us but I knew I would just make my voice hoarse like Christian had done.
Instead I walked to the picnic table and sat down.  I put my head in my hands and did some weeping of my own.  My heart was still pounding and I was sick to my stomach.  The reality that Nancy was gone had only just begun to sink in.
Nancy had never harmed anyone in her life.  Nancy who was closer to her mom and dad.  Nancy who had a great sense of humor and was the coolest wife ever, as some of us liked to say.  Nancy who had loved Christian despite all of his faults and foibles and silliness.  Nancy was gone and whatever was doing this to us had taken her.  They hadn’t cared about us and what we were.  They were going to take each and every one of us.  They were going to take us and see what it was that we did.  We were still rats in a maze.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to look at Karmen.  I reached out to her and we enfolded ourselves into each other at the table.  I clutched at her and she clutched at me.  I think we both realized that one of us was likely to disappear soon.  If it wasn’t tonight then it would be the next night.  Perhaps tonight it would be Joe.  Maybe it would be Christian.  More than likely it would be myself or her.  We didn’t want to stop touching each other.  We wanted to hold each other.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said to her.
“Me either,” she whispered back.  “Just hold onto me.  Just hold me until they take us away.”
“I don’t want to wake up like that,” I said.
“I don’t either,” she replied.
“Dear God,” I said, “how the hell did we get into this?”
“What are we going to do?” She asked.
I held her.  We rocked against each other and held tight.  We both cried.  We were both exhausted.  I was so tired at that moment I could barely move.  I just lost myself in her hair and her smell.  She was the only thing in the world for me.  I just wanted to remain like that.  I wanted them to take both of us if they had to take us at all.
I don’t know how long we sat that way.  At some point the light mist turned into an all-out rain and we didn’t care.  We let it wash over us and we held each other.  Christian was still weeping in his tent.  Joe never moved.  I wondered if Joe was even still alive.
“Someone should check on Joe,” Karmen said as though she had been reading my mind.
“Is he even still alive?” I asked.
“I’ll go check,” she said.
I stiffened a bit.  “Be careful.”
“Why?” She asked.  “It’s just Joe.”
“He’s crazy, Karmen,” I said. “You never know what someone who’s crazy is going to do.”
“I don’t think he’ll do anything to me,” she said.
She walked over to him and knelt down in front of him.  I saw her face wrinkle as though she smelled something truly foul for just a moment.  I couldn’t hear what she was saying but I could see her lips move.  She was whispering to him.  Joe’s eyes did not stray from whatever it was they were fixed on either out on or across the lake. His mouth did not move.  He didn’t even seem to blink.  After a few moments Karmen stood up and gave a brief kiss to him on the forehead.  She came back over to me.
“He didn’t say anything,” she said. “He’s so far gone.  He didn’t even blink.  He’s messed himself.”
“I thought that might happen,” I said.  “He hasn’t moved in hours.  I wonder if he was there all night.  I wonder if he slept.  Did he see anything?”
“I don’t think we’ll ever find out,” she said.
She sat down near me.  She was staring out at the lake.  I stared at her.  She didn’t seem to notice or she didn’t seem to care.
“What do we do?” She asked.
“There’s nothing we can do,” I said.  “I guess we just live like it’s the last day of our lives.”
“What have you always wanted to do on your last day on the planet?”  Karmen asked.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Well,” she replied, “I can deal with that.  Is that all?”
“I don’t know,” I said.  “I always imagined it would happen too fast to do much else.”
“Well,” she replied. “I appreciate the idea but they seem to want to take us in the middle of the night.  So, I guess we have a day to waste before finding out who’s next.”
“Well,” I said, “there are about a million places around the world I would love to see before I died.  However, unless they are going to let me visit Sydney Australia I don’t think I am going to get a chance to do that.”
“Australia?”  She asked.  “Is that where you’ve always wanted to go?”
“Yeah,” replied, happy for this diversion and mentally blessing Karmen for providing it.  “I’ve always had a thing for Australia.  I even wanted to live there when I was a kid.”
“I’d like to see Europe,” she replied. “I don’t even care which city.  Paris would be nice.  So would London.  Joe’s been to Ireland a few times and that always made me want to see that.”
We fell silent for a moment and were lost in thought.  I stared up at the gray sky.  The sky was filled with thick clouds.  It was the kind of day where you just knew it would rain all day.  Those days didn’t usually bother me.  I just hated the thunderstorms.  I never understood the purpose of all of that noise and destruction that came with thunderstorms.  If the world just needed water then why not just have days where it rained all day and that was enough.  What was the purpose of those destructive storms?
“I think it’s going to rain all day,” I said.
“Well, we can always go into the tent,” she said.
“I wouldn’t mind catching a nap,” I said.  “I guess if I have the time why not take a nap.  It’s not like I could get a final meal.”
“What would that be?” She asked.
I thought for a moment.  “I guess pizza.  I always loved the stuff and then I developed all of those food allergies and crap and I couldn’t eat it anymore.  However, if it were my last day on earth, who the hell cares about an upset stomach?”
“Well,” she said, “you wouldn’t want to go out sitting on the toilet.”
“I can think of worse places,” I said. “Elvis went out that way, why not me?”
“You’re not the king of rock and roll,” she said.
“This is true,” I agreed.
“I wish it was sunny,” she said.  “I’d like to see the sun again.”
I nodded.  “I never used to mind days like this as a kid.  You could get on your bike and ride wherever you wanted on a rainy day like this.  No one else would be out to bother you.”
“A loner even as a kid, huh?” She asked.
“I have always had that tendency, I guess,” I answered.  “I like being alone with my thoughts.”
“You may get that chance now, you know,” she said.
“That is true,” I replied.  “Is it too late to change that aspect about myself, you think?”
“It’s never too late to change,” she said and held her hand over mine.
“I wish I had had the courage to talk to you about how I felt before now,” I said.  “I was always too scared.”
“Well, that’s obvious.  I always knew, though.”
“I always wondered if you did.  I just was never sure if you were interested.  You are a bit of a flirt.”
“Not my fault you can’t take a hint.”
“I think women would be much easier if they had to wear signs.  They should just have big neon signs over their head that flash green or red or maybe just say ‘I AM INTERESTED IN YOU’ when they are actually interested in you.  I am terrible with reading signs from women.  They kind of need to smack me in the head with a two-by-four.”
Karmen grabbed my head at that point and pulled me toward her.  She kissed me.  I closed my eyes and put my arm around her.  I felt her tongue press against my lips and I let mine touch hers.  I’ll be damned if the situation we were in didn’t manage to completely slip my mind at that point.  Somehow, despite it all, it was as if it were only the two of us.  I wish that kiss had lasted forever.  It was over all too briefly.
“I’d rather do that than a two-by-four,” she said.  “Unless you’re really into that, of course.”
“No thanks,” I said, “I’ve never really been into pain.”
A strange look crossed her face.  “That’s too bad.  A little pain can be a lot of fun.”
“Oh, I don’t mind inflicting some,” I said, “I just don’t want any given back.”
“Low threshold, huh?” She asked.
I nodded.  We paused for a moment to just stare at each other.  Her hair was dirty.  She had it tied up on top of her head.  We both could use a bath and I wondered if the two of us should try taking one in the lake.  Her eyes were still a gorgeous blue.  They were the kind of blue I associated with autumn or late winter days.
“I’ve never been so scared in my entire life,” she said quietly.
“I know,” I said.  “And yet, right now, I don’t think I care all that much.”
“I just don’t want to be the last one left,” she said.  “I don’t want to be sitting here on that last day just staring into the lake like Joe.”
I turned to look at Joe.  He hadn’t moved.  He didn’t seem to blink.  His eyes were open.  I couldn’t even see if he was breathing.  He might not even have been alive.  His face was pale.  His mouth was open slightly.
“Where’s Christian?”   I asked.
“I guess he’s still in the tent,” Karmen said.
“I wonder if we should do something for him,” I said.
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“I don’t know.  He’s not like Joe yet.  We should offer him some food or something.”
She nodded.  Both of us stood and wandered over to where Nancy and Christian had stored the food.  We rooted around until we found some things to eat and some water.  We both entered Christian’s tent.  He was still there holding an article of Nancy’s clothing.  He was rocking gently.  He was weeping quietly.
“Christian?” I asked.  He didn’t respond.  “Christian can you hear me?”
He seemed to turn toward me.  His eyes were so red I nearly backed away from him for a moment.  His eyes seemed to have sunk into his skull.  His whole face seemed to have pressed against his skull.  I had always heard the legend of people going crazy and their hair turning white and always heard it was bullshit.  Standing there looking at Christian I would have sworn his hair looked grayer than it had earlier.
“Would you like something to eat?” I asked and held out some of the food.
Christian looked down at my hands.  He looked like had never seen food before.  He looked like he wasn’t sure what to do with the hands I held before him.  He stared for a while, tears coursing from his eyes, and then slowly shook his head.  Then he turned his head back, as though they were on rusted hinges, and kept rocking and weeping against the shirt he held.  I turned toward Karmen and shrugged.
Karmen stepped forward.  “Christian, you have to eat.”
This time he didn’t even turn to look.  He just shook his head and kept rocking.  Karmen looked at me and sighed.
We left the food there right next to Christian.  If he did get hungry he would have food.  We slowly climbed out of the tent.  We stood there in the dim light for a moment.  Karmen was looking out at the lake.  I was looking down at the ground.  After a moment we looked at each other.  There was a strange moment of electricity between us.  She grabbed my hand.  I reached out and took her other hand.
“Let’s go,” she said.
I nodded and let her lead me back to my tent.  I watched her enter the tent and then followed.  I was barely inside the tent when her arms grabbed my neck.  I thrust myself at her and nearly knocked her onto her back.  We were fumbling with clothes and they began to fall away.  I could feel her body and her skin against mine.  Our mouths devoured each other.  We were like animals.  I tore clothing away from her body and she ripped apart my shirt.  Her teeth sank into my shoulder.  I slid inside her with an ache that was unlike anything I had had before.  We didn’t have to worry.  There was no tomorrow.  No worries about disease or anyone getting pregnant.  Nothing mattered but here and now.  We tore into each other, me thrusting and her thrusting to meet my thrusts.  We rocked against each other, sweating, our bodies colliding.  When we came she clawed at my back and I thrust deep inside her.  We collapsed onto each other, with me still inside her and panted.
“Wow,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” I said.
That’s how we spent that afternoon.  As the gray sky grew darker and then lighter.  Outside rain fell and then stopped.  Christian continued to weep silently in his tent and clutch at his wife’s shirt.  The wind blew through the trees like a sigh.  Karmen and I held each other and made love repeatedly.  I tasted every inch of her skin and we let ourselves run wild.  It was like we each had the energy of someone much younger than we were.  We couldn’t get enough of each other.  Nothing was off-limits.  All we wanted was there in our tent.
At some point evening came.  We managed to find some food and eat a bit.  It didn’t last long.  Outside the sun was going down behind the sheet of gray and the sky was getting dim.  Before we went back into the tent I noticed that some of those lights were visible in the sky.
We were back in each other’s arms in moments.  I have never kissed someone so much in my life.  I just wanted to be inside her, connected to her, with her.  If we were together, united as one, then maybe they couldn’t take one of us away.  Our moans became like prayers that maybe we would get through this together somehow.
Eventually we lay there, each of us naked, still entwined and held each other.  The sweat dried on our skin and I ran my hand through her hair.  I felt her breathing against my chest.  Her fingers were tracing little circles around my chest.
“I hope this never ends,” she said.
“But it will,” I replied.
“I hope we’re both still here in the morning,” she said.
I felt her crying.  I had nothing to say to that.  I hoped it too but, like her, knew it was unlikely.  One of us would probably be gone.  It seemed like the goal of whoever or whatever was doing this to us was to leave us all alone and mourning the loss of the one we wanted.  I hoped it would be me and then changed my mind.  I couldn’t decide if it was better to leave her alone or for me to be alone.  I still don’t know which thought was more noble.
I let her weep.  I felt her tears against my chest.  I think I cried too.  Mostly I just ran my fingers through her long blonde hair.  I wanted to remember the feel of her hair in my fingers.  It was silken and yet slightly greasy.  Like I said, we both needed a bath.  At that point I think I would have killed someone for a shower.
We made love one more time.  This time slowly.  I rolled here onto her stomach and rocked with her.  I remember she clutched at the sleeping bag with both hands, the bag entwining between her fingers.  It was sweet and loving and the opposite of what it had been before.
When it was over there was no more talking.  I kissed her again and she kissed me back.  We held each other, laying on top of the sleeping bag, and we fell asleep.  It washed over us like a drug.  I struggled against it but it was futile.  I fell into a dreamless sleep.
When I awoke I was alone.  My arm held air where the night before there had been the breathing body of the most beautiful woman I had ever known.  Her clothes were still scattered about.  She hadn’t awakened before me.  She hadn’t gotten dressed.  She was gone.
I don’t even know how to describe that moment.  I knew it was coming.  We had both known that one of us would be gone the next morning.  Yet it still hurt.  It was like a physical blow.  It was like someone had taken a sledgehammer to my gut.  It was like my heart had been grabbed by unseen hands and twisted.  Everything inside me hurt.  There was a kind of buzzing in my head and I thought for a moment I might just go over the edge and into madness like Joe.  I wanted to shut down completely and just sink into oblivion.  I didn’t though.  The world came crashing back into me and I wept.  I wept for a long time before finally putting on my clothes and crawling out of that tent.
The day was gorgeous.  The sky was back to that crystal blue that reminded me of fall and winter.  The breeze was gentle and blowing through the trees making them wave like hands and arms.  Joe was still in his place staring out into the water.  I noticed that he now had company.  Christian was sitting on the picnic table also staring out into the water.
I had let the tears dry on my face.  My nose was completely stuffed up.  I walked slowly toward the picnic table.  Christian did not look at me.  His eyes were red-rimmed and his face was equally red.  I imagined he had spent a lot of time rubbing his face and eyes.  He looked as though he had dressed without really thinking about what he was doing.  Nothing was tucked in.  His hair was a disaster.  His lips looked cracked and dried and I wondered how long he had been here.
“She’s gone, right?”  He asked me as I sat down on the bench of the picnic table.
“Yeah,” I said quietly and stared out at the water.  I suddenly understood what Joe found so fascinating.  I couldn’t take my eyes off of the undulating water.  It never stopped moving.  I had seen the ocean but, for some reason, at this point this small lake was more interesting and more beautiful than any coastal view I had ever seen.  I felt a strong urge just to sit here and stare.  I wanted to just let my brain stop thinking and just get lost in the small waves.
“I’m sorry,” Christian said.
“Yeah,” I said.  “I’m sorry about Nancy.”
“Yeah,” he said.  “How the hell did we end up her?”
“As you recall,” I said, “I didn’t want to go camping.”
Christian actually laughed at that.  It was a very raw croaking sound but it was definitely a laugh.  I looked at him and saw that he was not smiling despite the laughter.  It was like some kind of conditioned response.  I made a half-hearted joke and he had to respond with a laugh.
“What did you want to do?”  Christian asked.
“I think I suggested bowling,” I said.
Christian made his strange barking laughing noise again.  “What I wouldn’t give for a bowling alley right about now.”
I nodded.  “My kingdom for some of those goofy shoes.”
“Yeah,” Christian said, “I’d even like to see some of that funky spray they shoot into the shoes when you turn it in.”
“What is that stuff anyway?”  I asked.
“Not sure,” Christian replied.  “It must be strong stuff if it can supposedly kill every germ and fungus on all of those feet.”
We fell silent, personally I was amazed at the silliness of our conversation.  How come it was that we could have both lost the loves of our life and still be sitting here discussing bowling?  How could we discuss bowling shoes when we both knew we weren’t getting out of this place?
We stared for a while.  The lake moved and undulated in front of us.  I noticed the waves slowly washing over the small spit of beach.  I saw more birds flying.  They looked like the same birds I had always seen before.  They weren’t alien birds or anything they were just Canadian geese and crows and the occasional hawk or falcon.  I think I may have seen a fish or two break the surface of the water.  I longed for a moment to be fishing for those fish and making jokes to the guys on the shore.  I wished I could see Karmen wearing a bathing suit and jumping into the water.  I felt the tears starting to form again and I decided to just let them come.  Everything in front of me doubled and then trebled and quadrupled and then it became just a mass of color and dim sound.
At some point Joe must have moved.  I didn’t notice him moving.  Christian didn’t make a sound and when things finally focused for me again I saw that he was staring out into the sky and not aware of anything going on around him.  It looked like maybe he had been crying again.
I first noticed that Joe was gone just after I rubbed the tears out of my eyes.  His rock was empty.  I rubbed my eyes again expecting that I was seeing something.  I then became concerned that he had been taken like everyone else.  I thought maybe whatever was doing this to us had decided to step things up and move to daylight hours.  Then I heard something behind me and turned to look at him.
“I think I’ve discovered something disturbing,” he said.
I noticed his eyes were darting around and not settling on any one thing.  At first he was looking at me and then Christian and then out over the lake again.  Then his eyes turned back to me.  There was a strange twitch happening under his right eye.  His clothes were wrinkled and there were stains on his pants that I didn’t even want to think about.  I also noticed that in his hand he held the pistol he had brought.
“What are you doing, Joe?” I asked.
Christian seemed to come out of his stupor.  He blinked and turned to look at the two of us.  He looked Joe up and down and then his eyes settled on the gun as well.
“I’ve figured something out,” Joe said.  His voice cracked and broke as he talked.  I wondered how long it had been since he had a drink.  “They won’t let us leave.”
“We know that, Joe,” Christian said.  “We’ve discussed that.  We’ve tried to leave, remember?”
Joe shook his head slowly.  I realized the twitching and the eyes darting was Joe trying not to stare back out into the lake in front of him.  It was like an irresistible pull for him.  He just wanted to stare out into the water and forget.  He was fighting that urge to stand and talk.
“No,” he said. “They won’t let us leave no matter what.”
I think I knew what was going to happen next.  Some part of me was able to put together the gun and what he was saying.  However, as I said, I had been lulled into this sort of hypnotic state.  In a flash that a day ago I would not have thought Joe was capable of any longer he raised the gun to his chest.  He turned the gun toward his chest and put his thumb over the trigger.  He managed to squeeze the trigger twice.  He pressed the gun right to his shirt and I saw his shirt burn and the skin around the wound sizzle.  Blood flew and I felt it splatter on my face.  I heard Christian make a choking sound and I knew he was hit by it too.  Joe’s body jerked and leapt and I saw blood jet from his back and noticed the bullet plunge into a tent behind him.  He fell like a puppet whose strings had been cut.  The gun clattered out of his hand.
“Sweet Jesus!”  I screamed.  I looked down at my lap and my shirt and saw blood everywhere.  Droplets covered the ground and the picnic table.
Behind me Christian screamed.  He was screaming Joe’s name over and over again.  My eyes were locked on Joe’s body.  The blood was pumping in time with his heart.  Then it started to slow down.  The blood seemed to run backwards.  It was like watching a movie run in reverse.  The gaping wound began to run backwards as well.  The skin closed around the wound.  It closed and was just a collection of lines that slowly faded and disappeared.  Even the powder burns started to fade.
Joe sat up slowly.  His face was blank for a moment and his eyes were open and staring.  Then they came into focus again.  He blinked.  Then he coughed.  He leaned over and vomited blood into the grass.  Then he dissolved into coughing.  I could see that his shirt was still torn and burned in places but I could also see that his back had healed just like his chest.  He got to his knees and bent down to catch his breath.
“Oh my God,” Christian whispered.
“Sweet Jesus,” I repeated but this time in a hush.
Joe stood up wincing.  He rubbed his chest.  He coughed some more.  He looked down at the ground and saw where the gun had landed.  Calmly, casually, he walked over and bent down to pick it up.
“When did you figure this out?”  I asked.
“I haven’t eaten or had a drink in days,” he said.  “I haven’t done anything to nourish myself and yet I don’t feel tired or thinner.  I should be weak and barely able to move.  You can’t live more than a few days without water.”
I nodded.  “The canoes.”
“The what?”  Joe and Christian said at the same time.
“When I fell out of the canoe,” I said, “that time we tried to paddle out of here.  Remember?  I was all banged up.  I hit rocks and the bottom and the canoes.  I noticed the next morning that I was feeling better.  I could barely move that night when we all fell asleep.  By the next morning I was good as new.”
It was time for another hush to fall over us.  Joe looked down at the gun in his hand.  Christian was staring down at his own hands.  I looked back out toward the lake.  Again, I felt that pull and that desire just to sit here and look at it.
“How did we get here, Christian?”  Joe asked.
“What?” Christian said and he seemed to be startled out of his revelry.
“How did we get here?”  Joe repeated.
“You followed me,” Christian said.  “You know how we got here.”
“I know what roads we took, sure,” Joe said, “but I don’t know where you found out about this place.  How did you find out about this?  How did we end up here?”
Christian looked puzzled for a moment.  “Larry.”
“Larry?” Joe asked.
“Yeah, you know, Larry,” Christian said.  “I got the directions to this place from Larry.  He said he’d been here before.  He came here with his wife.  They had a great time, he said.  Then he gave me the directions.”
I knew who Larry was.  I had even spent some rather agonizing months working for him.  We had not gotten long.  Larry was a man who had sold his soul to the company we had both worked for.  He had a wife and a baby and yet he was still likely to be spending a Sunday in the office trying to deliver some meaningless thing to some equally meaningless client.  When the company started laying people off, Larry ended up just as laid off as the rest of us.  I also knew that Larry had not disappeared.  So, if he had been here as Christian was indicating then whatever was happening to us had not happened to him.
“He said it was beautiful but isolated,” Christian said.  “Which, you have to admit, he was right about.”
“Yes, well,” I said, “let’s all give Larry a big pat on the back for getting it right that there’s a spot in the woods in the state of Wisconsin that might still be isolated.”
“Well, it’s not like he’s behind this,” Christian said.  “He made it back.”
“If he was really up here,” Joe said.
“So, what, you’re telling me he lied about being here?”  Christian asked.  “He sent us up here for some nefarious reason?  Are you telling me Larry is behind what’s going on around here?”
“I’m just saying Larry had a reputation of not always keeping his word,” Joe said. “Plus, something has to be behind this.  This all seems to neat and pat to be an accident.  It’s like whatever is doing this picked us.”
“It’s like we’re being erased,” I said.
Joe and Christian stopped looking at each other and turned to look at me.
“Yeah,” Joe said.
“I don’t know why,” I said, “and technically no one was entirely erased.  If that were so their clothes and tents would be gone too.”
“Maybe that will be gone after we are,” Christian said.
“Why at night?”  Joe asked.  “Why not just all of us at once like the Bermuda Triangle?”
“Who says it always happens all at once in the Bermuda Triangle?” I asked.  “The people who disappear there never come back hence the whole disappeared thing.”
“This is true,” Joe said, ”but you know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but once again you’re looking for logic where there doesn’t seem to be any.  It’s just happening Joe and we don’t even know who’s doing this to us or why.”
Joe looked down at the gun again and he sighed.  It was a hug, deep sigh that seemed to come from somewhere in his shoes.  He wanted, I think, to put that gun to his temple and pull the trigger and have this all just be over.  Instead he let the gun fall from his hand and thud against the ground like something dead.  He walked back over to his spot near the water and sat back down.  He stared down at his hands for a few moments and then lifted his head to look out at the lake.
“There’s something about the lake,” Joe said.
“I feel it too,” I said. “I just want to sit here and stare at it.  It’s like I can’t take my eyes from it.  I just want to get lost in it and stare at it.”
“Maybe that’s what they want,” Christian said.  “They want us to get hypnotized by the lake.  Maybe that makes it easier for them to take us.”
“it’s like you just stop thinking,” Joe said and his voice had taken on a thick sound.  It was like he was drugged.  “You just get lost in the movement of the water.”
“I bet they won’t let us drown ourselves either,” I said.
“They didn’t let you drown,” Christian said.
“Good point,” I said.
I let myself look at the lake.  Almost immediately I felt something take hold of me.  It was like a syringe was stuck into my arm.  All I could see was the water.  It was moving slowly, up and down, undulating, moving, hypnotizing.  I watched it and felt the world spin beneath me.  I forgot about Nancy or Karmen.  I forgot where I was.  I forgot how I got there.  All I wanted to do was stare at the lake and let them come and take me.  I forgot about Carlos and how his body had exploded when we found him.  I didn’t care if that happened to me.  I didn’t care if they dissected me or vaporized me or just made me disappear.
I don’t know how much time when by when I felt the hand on my shoulder.  I don’t know how long Christian was shaking me but it must have been a long time because he was yelling my name and shaking me rather violently when I became aware of it.  Sound and sight suddenly rushed back into focus.  I heard Christian yelling my name.
“What?” I asked loudly.
“Snap out of it,” Christian said.  “You were turning into Joe.”
He pointed.  I looked back and saw Joe was back in his catatonic state.  He was sitting there and not blinking and staring into the water.  I doubt he would have heard dynamite detonated right next to him.
“What do you care?”  I asked.  “Why not just let it go?”
“I don’t want to be alone,” Christian said.
I looked at him.  He was staring down at something and not looking at me.  His shoulders were slumped.  I noticed that his face was pale.  He wasn’t going to survive this much longer, provided whoever was doing this would let him slip away of course.  At the very least his mind wasn’t going to hold much longer.  I figured he must have been looking out into the lake and feeling the temptation to let it all drift away.  Somehow he had pulled himself away from that.  When he looked around and saw himself surrounded by zombies he had shaken me awake.  Judging from what I could see of Joe I could see why he did that.  I wasn’t as far gone.  Joe wouldn’t be coming back.
“I know the feeling,” I said.  “I’ve always been afraid of being alone.”
“Really?” Christian asked.  I could tell he really wasn’t interested but it was noise and it meant he wasn’t alone so he wanted me to talk.
“Yeah,” I said.  “ I used to be afraid of being alone all of the time when I was a kid.  I never wanted to be left alone in the house when my folks went out.  When I was little I had this irrational fear that when I got home from school my parents would have left and I would find an empty house.”
“Ah yes,” Christian said.  “That old chestnut.”
“Yeah, but I was convinced it would happen,” I said.  “When I was really little I was in the hospital a lot for various things.  So, I got used to when mom and dad left me somewhere I would end up staying there for a long time with people who had needles and wanted to stick me.”
“That must have fucked you up pretty good,” Christian said.
“I guess so,” I said. “I was always on the verge of tears when I was a kid.  I didn’t want my mom to leave me that first day of pre-school.  I clung to her legs and screamed.  I don’t know what I though the teachers and kids were going to do but I must have thought it was pretty awful.  I was such a mess they didn’t even want me to go into kindergarten after pre-school.  They didn’t think I was emotionally ready.  Then they tested me and decided I was too smart or something.”
“No wonder you’re such the sensitive type,” Christian said.  “I can relate, though.  My dad died when I was pretty young.  That messed with my head too.  I guess that’s why I don’t want to be alone.”
“If I’m the last one,“ I said, “I’m just going to sit here and stare at the lake.  Maybe it makes the time go by faster.  What time is it now, anyway?”
“Gotta be close to noon,” Christian said.  “I don’t even know if we have any food left.”
“I think we do,” I replied.  “There was plenty yesterday when Karmen and I – “
I froze for a moment.  Karmen came rushing back in all of her glory.  I could smell her scent on me.  I could see her hair clearly in my mind.  I could see here crystal blue eyes.  I could feel her skin under my fingers.  I could feel her legs around my waist.  She was right there in front of me, just behind my eyes, in my mind.  I swear to God I could hear her laughing somewhere in the trees.
“I’m sorry,” Christian said.  “It’ll hit you like that.”
“I should have told her sooner,” I said. “I always chicken out when it comes to women.  I just never know.”
“None of us do,” Christian said.  “Nancy wasn’t the first girl I was with but it’s not like I had a huge laundry list.  She was just the first one I ever loved.”
Now that we had both suitably twisted the daggers in our own hearts we both fell silent.  I found a place on the ground to stare and Christian stared at some spot or stain on the picnic table.  I could feel the pull of the lake tempting me to look at it.  I could hear the sound of the water lapping against the shore.  I wanted to look up and then get lost again.  I wanted to get the image of Karmen moving beneath me as I made love to her out of my head.
“I hope they give me just a chance,” Christian said.
“A chance at what?” I asked.
“A chance to fight back,” he said.  “I just hope they don’t take you away in your sleep and you don’t wake up.  I hope I wake up and then get a chance to fight back.  I want to punch something or someone.”
“You don’t even know what’s doing this,” I said.  “You may be too terrified to punch anything.”
“I’m already terrified.  I’m terrified beyond belief.  That just make me want to hit something all over again.
“Maybe that’s what they want.  Maybe they want us to be terrified.  Maybe they’re looking to see just how much fear we can handle.”
“I just think that whatever they want this whole things ends up with us strapped to a table being dissected and studied.”
“I’m not much of a fan of pain,” I said.
“I don’t think you’ll have much of a choice,” he replied.
“Maybe already died,” I said.  “Maybe this is some kind of holding area.”
“Wasn’t that something in a television show or something?”  Christian asked.  “People on and island or something?”
“Yeah,” I nodded.  “Maybe that’s where I got it.  At the very least it’s like we slipped into some other dimension or something.  Like we’re here but not really here.  Like we can see the place where we were through some kind of dimensional window but we just can’t get through it.”
“If that’s the case,” Christian said, “then maybe the others just slipped through that spot and we’ll all be there on the other side.”
“That doesn’t explain Carlos,” I said.
“You just had to go and spoil my good mood,” Christian said.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Are you hungry?” Christian asked.
“Not really,” I said, “but it’s something to do.”
“Have you had to go to the bathroom in a while?” Christian asked.
I frowned and thought about that.  “I can’t remember the last time I had to go.”
“Just another thing to add to the list of weird,” Christian said.
I nodded at that.  The list was already too long to contemplate and the answers would not be forthcoming anyway so what was the point.  I had always been the guy who had to go to the bathroom all of the time anyway so not having to didn’t really bother me.  Considering whoever was doing this wouldn’t let me drown or be beaten to death from rocks and wouldn’t let Joe shoot himself I was betting they wouldn’t let waste materials in my body build up and kill me anyway.
Christian and I foraged.  We found some food in his backpack.  Christian also found some things growing nearby that were edible.  Again, it didn’t really seem to matter.  I was betting I could put a poisonous mushroom in my mouth and swallow it whole and not have anything happen to me.  On the other hand Joe did actually fall down and bleed when he shot himself so I would probably have one hell of a stomach ache.  I didn’t want to have a stomach ache during my last few days.  I had had enough of those in my life too, thank you very much.
“Are you scared?”  Christian asked after we had finished.
“Yeah,” I said, “but it’s like anything.  Like living next to an airport.  You get used to the noise.  I guess you just learn to live with fear.”
“I’ve heard from people who were in wars.  They talk about that.  You just learn to live with the fact that, at any moment, you might die.  Your foxhole might get hit with a mortar and then it’s all over.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I heard that in World War I, when the guys were living in trenches, they just got used to bodies.  Some even used bodies to shore up the walls of their trenches.  Some of them would hang canteens from the arms of dead bodies that were hanging out into the trench.  You just got used to the sound and the smell.”
“Maybe that’s what they’re studying,” Christian said.  “They want to see how much we can take and how far they can go before someone breaks.”
“You could build a tower with all of the maybes we have,” I replied.  “Maybe they’re just psychotics who want to torture the lab rats before they dissect them.  Maybe there’s no reason for anything that’s happening.”
“You’re pretty cynical, aren’t you?” Christian said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m the type who walks into a doctor’s office assuming I am dying.  That way when it turns out I’m not it’s a pleasant surprise.”
Christian and I laughed at that.  I looked up and saw that the sun had made its way past the halfway point.  I was amazed to see that.  I felt that twinge of fear in my gut.  I felt like it was all slipping away.  I wanted to hold on to that blue sky.  I wanted to hold on to everything.  I had a moment of near panic attack.  I wanted to jump into the lake.  I wanted to do a million things.  I felt tears spring out against my eyelids and I closed my eyes.  The hot liquid fell from beneath my eyelids and fell down my cheeks.
“Almost lost you there, didn’t I?”  Christian said.
“Yeah,” I said.  “It’s all just moving too fast.  This could be my last day and it’s almost over and nothing I can do will stop it.  Everything is just slipping away too fast.  There’s so much I still haven’t done.  There’s so much I still haven’t seen.”
“Yeah,” he said nodding.  “Do you suppose this is what prisoners on death row feel?  Do they sit there and watch the clock tick down and just go crazy?”
“I would think so,” I said.  “I’ve always wondered.  I bet that would be even worse.  At least we have a bigger cell.”
“And it’s got a pretty nice view,” Christian said.
“I wonder if Joe will outlast the both of us,” I said.
“Nothing else has made any sense so far,” Christian said, “so why not add that to the list.”
“That list is getting pretty fucking long,” I said.
I had gotten myself back under control again.  I was breathing normally again.  The world had come back into focus.  There was this constant knot of fear and terror in the pit of my stomach but it wasn’t overwhelming me at the moment.  I leaned my head back and felt the sun on my face.  I closed my eyes for a moment.  A bug buzzed around my ear for a moment and I let it buzz.  I heard the breeze rustling through the trees.  It was like a whisper.  It was like the trees were telling me it would be all right.  That I was just going to fall asleep and then be gone and there would be nothing else.
“Maybe the trees got them,” I said.
“What was that?”  Christian asked.
“The trees,” I repeated.  “The woods.  Maybe we’re just being reclaimed by the woods.  Maybe eventually the tents and the clothes will just be absorbed by the ground.  Maybe the ground just opens up and they sink into it.  Maybe the woods are alive and they just swallow you up.”
“You’re freaking me out,” Christian said.
“I’m tired,” I sighed.
“It’s still a while before the sun sets,” he said, “and weren’t you just saying time is moving too fast.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but a man has the right to change his mind.  And he has a right to feel tired, I think.”
“If you want to take a nap you go right ahead,” Christian said.
“Well, did you have any other great ideas?”  I asked.  “Maybe another escape plan?  We tried walking and we tried boats.  Maybe we should build some kind of aircraft from tents and bent canoes.”
Christian looked at me for a moment and I thought maybe I had gone too far.  It had come out a lot harsher than I had intended.  In the end I think he realized there was no fighting it.  There was no denying he had attempted to escape and it had ended in disaster twice.  His wife was gone.  Most of his friends were gone.  Whatever he had been building back in civilization was gone.  Everything he was and would be was gone.  So, instead of firing back and me he just closed his eyes and sighed and then looked down.
“No,” he said, “there’s no getting out of here.”
With that he stood up slowly and then walked away from me.  I watched him go.  He walked over to where Joe was.  I heard him try to talk to Joe.  Joe was back in whatever netherworld he had been in before this morning.  He stared out wordlessly at the water.  Christian tried a couple of times and I think he offered Joe food and then tried to talk to him about the weather.  Joe didn’t budge.  I wondered if Joe’s eyeballs would dry out since he seemed to no longer blink.  Apparently Joe had come back to us long enough to tell use we couldn’t kill ourselves and then checked back out.  I wondered if whoever was doing this to us was behind that as well.  Joe was just barely a notch above the white zombie Carlos had been.  Maybe whatever they were had put Joe back in his body and animated him and moved his limbs just enough to warn us that there really was no escape and then whatever was controlling him had left and left behind the empty husk.
Christian finally gave up.  He looked up at the sky for a moment and then walked away.  He kept his head down.  He walked back to his tent and then crawled inside.  He kept the flap open and I watched him rummage through the things he and Nancy had brought with them.  He finally found a book and pulled it out.  I saw it was one of those huge war novel tomes he was fond of reading by some guy who always put so much research into how the military stuff worked but little into how people behaved.  He loved those things.  He was maybe half-way through the novel.  I wondered if he had the time he needed to finish it.  I knew he had taken a speed-reading course at one time.
I laid my head back and stared up at the sky.  I watched white puffy clouds cross a seemingly endless sea of blue.  I decided at that moment I missed my dog.
I had had a dog up until about a year ago.  She was a crazy little thing.  I was married when we got her.  My ex-wife insisted she wanted a dog.  Before that we had cats and she always loved the cats when they were kittens.  Cats, however, always grow up and become the kind of animals that act like your existence is such a nuisance.  Anyway, she decided she wanted a dog.  I warned her that a dog was more responsibility than she would want.  She insisted and before I knew it I was in some family’s living room looking at litter of squirming fur-balls that they were giving away for free.
We picked the girl.  She was this little cotton ball of white fur.  She was the cutest thing.  My ex-wife bonded with her.  That dog followed my ex all over the place.  Then my ex wanted a divorce and said she didn’t want to take the dog with her and locked the dog in a bedroom when she moved out.  My dog was crazy and over-protective of me from that point forward.  It made having people over to my house or apartment impossible when I had to worry about whether or not the dog would bite their toes off.
My dog lived to a ripe old age.  For a long time it was me and that dog against the world.  She was the only woman who never betrayed me, I would tell her.  She was my best friend for years and my companion and then she just got sick and died.  I considered it lucky she died on her own and I didn’t have to make the decision to put her to sleep.
Right now I missed that crazy little barking furball.  She hated having her fur brushed so she was always clumpy and a mess.  She was so ornery I didn’t want to take her to a groomers.  Right now I would have given anything to run my hand through her clumpy furry fur on top of her head.  I would even have put up with her barking.
I realized my face was wet and that I had been crying.  I hadn’t though of that dog in months.  Now I couldn’t stop thinking about her.  I remembered how she had barked and jumped on me whenever I came home.  No matter how bad the day was that I had had or how bad I may have screwed up throughout the day that crazy four-legged thing was glad I was alive.  Now, I wondered who would even notice I was gone.
I stayed there that afternoon staring at the sky.  I wept.  I thought.  I remembered.  I remembered my family.  I remembered my brother and my parents.  I wondered what they would do.  Would they ever know what had happened to me?  I doubted that they would.  What would that do to them?  Would any of them spend the rest of their years looking for me?  How long before I was declared dead?  Would any trace of me be found?
I had once thought I was a mistake.  I was terrible with women and so lonely all of the time.  I thought that being in love was the end-all and be-all of life.  If you didn’t have that then you weren’t really alive, I figured.  So, if I didn’t have someone to love and someone who loved me back then I must have been a mistake.  I even wrote a short story about it one time.
I figured at some point life would realize its mistake.  I figured life or the universe would realize I was supposed to die as a teenager or a child and so the special someone that was meant for me was never created.  I figured that if that were the case then it was only a matter of time before the universe corrected itself and I would just vanish out of existence.  Now it seemed like that would happen anyway.
I swear I felt the earth moving beneath me.  I felt the breeze blow across my face.  I felt my tears run tracks down my checks and fall onto the earth beneath me.  I mourned for myself as selfishly as one person can.  I would love to tell you that it helped and that I came to peace with everything.  Instead I think I just got tired and ran out of tears.  When I stopped it was nearly dark and the sun was hovering just above the trees.
I looked over at where Joe had been sitting.  He was just a shape in the shadows.  I looked back toward where Christian was and saw that he had closed the flap of his tent.  There was a light from within and I knew he was reading with a flashlight.  I stood up and then walked slowly toward my tent.  I climbed inside and pulled off my clothes.
I stopped and looked at the pile of clothes that had belonged to Karmen.  I could still smell her on my sleeping bag and in the air locked in my tent.  If I closed my eyes I would have sworn she was in there with me.  I had a sudden and stark memory and picture of her in my mind.  I gasped with the suddenness and vividness of the picture.  I held out my hand and, for a moment, felt her skin beneath my fingers.  Then the image was gone and when I opened my eyes I was alone in the dimness.
I slid into the sleeping bag.  I zipped it up to my chin and then lay there in the darkness.  I breathed in Karmen’s scent.  I felt tears welling up again.  I started to fight them and then decided that alone in the dark of what could be my last night on earth it was acceptable to weep.  So, I wept again.  Somewhere, while weeping and thinking of her, I fell asleep.
I think it was a noise that woke me.  It was a noise I had not heard before.  It was low and mournful.  At first I thought I had dreamed it.  Then I thought it was Christian or perhaps Joe weeping.  It was faint, in the distance, perhaps beyond the wall of trees.  It seemed to fluctuate with the wind, rising and then falling back as the wind blew.  It chilled me to the bones.  I huddled further into my sleeping bag and was tempted to zip it all the way over my head.  It continued on and on for what seemed like forever.  It was like a horn or some large animal slowly dying and braying into the air as it did.
The sound faded and I sat there in a kind of cold sweat for a while.  I started to fall asleep.  Just as I started to drift off I heard a whisper.  It wasn’t a word I recognized just the sound of  voice, sharp and quiet in the darkness.  I froze with my eyes wide and heart hammering.
There were other whispers.  Again, there weren’t words I understood.  The voices were high-pitched like children.  The whispered were short and urgent like whispered orders.  I realized I was holding my breath and let it out slowly and quietly.
Something brushed against my tent.  I nearly screamed but then bit the inside of my cheeks.  I felt hot blood squirt into my mouth.  I looked without moving my head.  Something was running along the outside of my tent.  Something moving slowly and moving from the back to the front.  It was like something was walking past but dragging its hand against the fabric of the tent.  I heard another whisper.  This one was just outside the flap of my tent.
“Don’t do it,” a voice said into my ear.  Once again I nearly screamed.
I looked back in front of my face.  I saw Karmen’s face in front of me.  Her eyes were haunted.  Her face was lined with age.  Her hair was white.  Her skin looked dry and leathery.  Her blue eyes had gone milky like she had developed cataracts.
“Don’t scream,” she said.  “Whatever you do, don’t scream.”
I stared into her face and nodded.  She began to fade.  As she did I swear I saw tears of blood flow from the corners of her eyes.  I wanted to reach out and touch her.  Instead she faded into the darkness.
I listened to the whispers.  The scraping against my tent had stopped.  I heard more whispers but they seemed to blend in with the rise and fall of the wind again.  Now I heard the mournful cry in the darkness again, this time closer.  This time the cry went from low to high and, for just a moment, turned into a kind of scream.  This time the sound did not die down but was cut off abruptly.  Somehow that terrified me more than the noise itself.
The whispers got further away.  Then, suddenly, the ground itself seemed to shake.  It was like a deep bass note from a speaker.  I felt it in my chest.  The tent rattled for a moment and then it was gone.  There was silence.
I realized my eyes were closed.  My heart was hammering.  I felt like I was swimming in my own sweat.  I opened my eyes and saw that the tent was light and that it was morning.  I sat up, the sweat chilling my body almost immediately.  Had it all been a dream?  Had I heard anything?  Was I having nightmares?  Nothing was certain anymore.
I put on my clothes in a rush and opened the tent.  The campground was as it had been since we had set up tents.  It was only a moment before I realized that Joe was gone.  His rock was empty.  I stood and walked toward it.  Beneath me the grass crackled with a light layer of frost.
The rock was empty.  Where Joe had been sitting was his pistol.  I was sure the pistol had been in the grass near where I had been laying when I climbed into the tent.  Christian’s tent was still zipped tight.  I wondered if he had finished his book.  I looked out into the lake.  The water was as smooth as glass.
I walked back to the picnic table and sat down.  I rested my head in my hands.  At that point I didn’t even know if Christian was also gone.  I figured that he was probably in his tent as whoever was doing this didn’t seem to want to break their pattern.  I wasn’t even that upset that Joe was gone.  He had been mentally gone for days.  No, at that time I was more worried about whether the things I had heard were real or imagined.
I wondered about the whispering.  Had it been real?  Had it been the wind?  Had it been a dream?  I wanted to believe it was all a dream.  Maybe it was the fear and the emotions manifesting themselves in my dreams, is what I wanted to think.  There hadn’t been anything any of the other nights.
I looked up and noticed that the trees and brush seemed closer to the tents.  The tent Jay had set up next to mine seemed to be covered with vines or branches.  Karmen’s tent also had greenery draped over it.  My questions about whether or not the woods would reclaim the area seemed to be answered.  I noticed branches over my own tent and thought maybe the slithering along the tent could have been the branches moving in the wind.
“Joe’s gone, isn’t he?” I heard Christian ask me from his tent.
I turned and looked at him as he stood in the open flap of the tent.  “Yeah, he’s gone.”
“Thought so,” Christian said.
“Did you hear anything last night?” I asked.
Christian shook his head.  “Nothing.  I was out like a light just like all of the other nights.  It’s amazing.  All of this terror and yet each night comes and I am out like I’m in a coma.”
“That’s probably their doing,” I replied.  “They want us sound asleep when they come.  I thought I heard something moving around last night.  I thought there was something running along the outside of my tent.  I thought I heard whispers.”
“Whispers?”   Christian asked.  “What kind of whispers?”
“I don’t know.  Just things whispering.  Then there was this other noise too.  It was a deep braying sound like some kind of animal caught in a trap or something out in the woods.  Then came more whispering and the sound like someone was trailing their hand along the outside of my tent.  Then the braying sound came back and got cut off right in the middle.”
“Sounds like you had a bad dream,” Christian said.
“Have you had any dreams since this all started?”  I asked.
He thought about that for a moment.  He shook his head.  “I can’t remember any.  Then again, I seldom remember my dreams.”
“I guess you’re not too upset about Joe being gone,” I said.
“Surprisingly no,” he replied.  “Then again Joe hasn’t really been here for  while, has he?”
“So, what do we do with this day?  We know it’s going to be one of us and we can’t kill ourselves or each other.  Shall we go hiking?  Maybe we should try fishing again if we can keep a canoe from sinking.”
“If it does, who cares?” Christian said.  “They won’t let us die.  Hell, we should just walk along the bottom of the lake.”
I frowned at that.  “I wonder what they’d do if we tried that.  Just kept walking but under the water.”
“I have a feeling this fresh water lake would suddenly sport man-eating sharks or maybe other nasty fish.”
“That might be pretty cool,” I said.
“You can go play Cousteau if you want,” Christian said waving in a general way towards the lake.  “I want to finish my book.”
I looked back and watched him as he went back to his tent and found his book.  It looked like there was maybe a hundred pages left.  I shook my head and then turned back around.  I looked out at the waves as the lake moved gently from a breeze I could barely feel.  I looked up at the blazing blue sky and watched some clouds for a while.
I wondered at that moment what condemned men feel.  You know it’s coming.  They give you the hour and the day.  You can’t walk very far.  You are confined to a small cell with little but your thoughts for company.  It’s certainly the time for about five billion questions.   Would it hurt?  What happens when it’s over?  Is there a God?  Is there a heaven?  Is there a Hell?  Is it as hot there as they’ve always said.  What do you do with that time?  There is nothing you can do about it and so you just have to sit there and wait.
I looked around at my cell.  It was a lot bigger than the cells the prisoners on Death Row had but it was still a cell.  I had trees and birds and fresh air but hardly anyone to talk to.  I had water to look at but no way to cross it.  I had land everywhere without an iron bar to be seen but I couldn’t walk away.  I just had to sit there and wonder.
I stood up and walked toward the lake.  I didn’t quite feel the pull to stare like I had the day before.  Whatever drug or hypnotic power the water had the previous day seemed to have at least faded a bit.  I stood at the edge of the water and watched it slowly ebb and flow over the bit of sand.  I watched it for a few moments and then I walked forward.
The water was cold and spilled over my ankles and into my shoes.  I felt the water seep up my jeans and soak the skin.  I had never learned to swim.  I had always had a fear of the water, but this time I didn’t think I would care.  If I were wrong, the worst that would happen was I would drown.  When that compared to Carlos exploding all over the forest it didn’t seem so bad.  Maybe it would just be like going to sleep or something.  I doubted it, but it had to be better than jetting all of the blood in my body out of my mouth.
The water reached my thighs.  I noticed the waves seemed to have gotten a bit choppier but it wasn’t to the point where I was concerned.  My jeans were clinging to my skin.  I have always hated that feeling of wet jeans.  The water rode to my waist and my shirt started to float out in front of me a bit.  I kept walking.  I heard the sound of a bird’s call but didn’t pay any attention to it.  The water rose to my chest and I kept walking.  My shoes were sinking in the muddy bottom and I felt them sucking at the soles of my shoes wanting to hold me fast.  The water rose to my neck and I felt the first surge of true panic.
I stopped and looked around.  The waves were a little higher.  Water swept over my head and I spat water.  I turned to look and see if Christian was watching and could just barely make out his shape still huddled in his tent over his book.  I turned back out toward the middle of the lake and took another step, my legs struggling against the water and against the suction of the bottom.  The water reached my chin and then it was over my mouth.  I felt water go up my nose and then closed my eyes as my head sank below the surface.
I heard a rushing noise in my ears.  Then everything became muffled.  I held my breath and kept walking forward.  Against all of my instinct I forced my eyes open.  The world was murky and greenish.  I could see seaweed floating in front of me.  I let the breath I was holding go and then moved forward.  My lungs were already burning and my heart was hammering.  I felt an urge to turn back and walk back up the beach but I resisted the urge and kept moving forward.  A shape darted past my face and I turned in time to see the tail of a fish disappear in to the darkness.
I turned my head up and saw sunlight shimmering and dancing.  It seemed like miles away.  I moved forward and felt the ground still sloping away from me.  I had wondered how deep this lake was and now it looked like I might be able to see for myself.
My lungs were burning.  I wondered if I had made a mistake.  I remembered how Joe had fallen to the ground with his brains splattered all over the ground before everything had run backwards like a time-lapse film run in reverse.  I wondered if I would just drown and then float to the surface and then come back at some point.  I decided it didn’t matter and just kept moving forward.  I looked down and saw more fish darting around my feet and moving amidst the rocks and murk at the bottom.  I looked back up at the shimmering light.
I breathed in.  The water rushed through my mouth and into my lungs.  I panicked immediately.  My lungs felt heavy.  My throat felt coated with slime.  I staggered and coughed into the water which only caused me to inhale more lungs.  I closed my eyes.  I felt everything fading away for several moments.  I felt light-headed.  I started to fall towards the sandy murky bottom.  Then, I shot my hand out and it sank into the murk at the bottom.  I opened my eyes again.  I forced my lungs to work.  It was much harder to breathe water out of my lungs but my lungs continued to work.
I don’t know how to explain it.  I didn’t feel like I was drawing oxygen from the water.  I am willing to bet that I could have just stopped moving my lungs all-together and not felt that burning sensation that I had felt before.  Whatever wanted us here was keeping me alive by somehow feeding oxygen where I needed it and it had nothing to do with me suddenly growing kills or my lungs changing to suddenly be able to draw oxygen out of water.
I got to my feet.  I looked around and held my hands up in front of my face.  They looked strangely pale and had wrinkled with the water.  I laughed.  Bubbles erupted from my mouth and floated to the surface.  The water was cold but it didn’t bother me.  I knew then that hypothermia was now something that wouldn’t be a concern for me anymore either.
I walked forward.  I had no intention of trying to cross the lake.  I knew that I would just reach the other side and come up on the same beach I had just left.  We were in a fishbowl now.  I knew then what fish in a fishbowl must know.  They can look out at all of the world going on around them but can never reach out past the glass to touch any of it.  I could see the other side of the lake and the rest of the world but no matter what I did I would always end up back where I started.
I just moved for a while until the light faded and it became hard to see.  Since it didn’t make much sense to look at things underwater when I couldn’t see them I stopped.  I looked around.  I watched fish swim around me.  I watched what looked like a turtle swim past slowly and lazily.  I saw more seaweed than I ever wanted to see in my life.
I don’t know how long I stayed down there.  At some point I just felt the desire to talk to someone.  I had to pull my right foot out from the muck and it had sunk ankle-deep while I had been standing there.  I moved forward and back the way I had come.  I felt the ground sloping back up towards the beach.  The water began to get lighter.
As I neared the shore I felt something coming towards me from my right.  I turned to look into the murkiness and nearly screamed when Karmen suddenly emerged from the muck.  She was nude, her hair floating all around her.  She wasn’t emitting bubbles so she wasn’t breathing.  She seemed to be smiling at me.
“Hi,” I heard her voice say in my head.  “What are you doing down here?”
“What are you doing down here?”  I asked.
“They want me to talk to you,” I heard her voice clearly in my head.  Her lips didn’t move.  She folded her hands in front of herself.
“Who does?”
A smile crossed her face.  “You know.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t.  Who’s doing this?”
“You heard them whisper last night,” she said.  “You know who they are, but you won’t admit it.   They want me to tell you that you shouldn’t be afraid.”
“But, after what they did to Carlos – “ I said.
“That was an accident,” she said. “They had to do that to prevent us from leaving.  If we hadn’t done that then it wouldn’t have happened.”
“Why are they doing this?”  I asked.
I saw her shrug.  “They have always done this.  There have been disappearances going back centuries.  There was that whole colony that disappeared here hundreds of years ago.  They want you to not fear.”
She moved towards me then.  I felt a powerful urge to move towards her.  Her arms opened as though she sensed that very thought.  Then I noticed something about her eyes wasn’t right.  Karmen had such beautiful blue eyes.  Her eyes now were dark.  I thought I could see something behind those eyes moving and squirming.  I stepped back.
The smile on her face faded and she stepped back.  “Go back.  Don’t try to escape.  Look at the water.”
“What?”  I asked.
“When it gets to be too much,” she thought.  “Just look at the water.  It helps.”
“Are you real?” I asked.
“Is anything?”  She replied.
She faded away into the murkiness.  There was just a ghostly image in white against the blackness for a moment and then she was gone.  I stood staring at the place where she had been for a while.  I wondered if I had really seen what I thought I had.  Then again, here I was underwater not drowning so at this point we were well beyond the looking glass.
I kept walking.  I felt the top of my head break the surface.  Then my eyes came up above the water.  My nose came up and I sneezed water out of my nostrils.  My mouth broke the surface and then my head and neck.  As my chest started to come into view I gagged and coughed and then had to bend over and vomited water into the lake.  I coughed and gagged and spewed water back into the lake for a few minutes and then slowly staggered the rest of the way out of the water.
Christian was sitting on the picnic table looking at me.  I fell onto the ground once I had crawled up the beach.  I was still coughing.  I pulled seaweed out of my hair.  My jeans were stuck to my skin.  Everything I had on was sodden and felt much heavier.  My shoes squished and it felt like they were full of water.
“I was starting to wonder,” Christian said.
“It’s amazing,” I said.  “It’s like you can just suddenly breathe water or something.  It freaks you out at first when the water goes into your lungs and then it all just stops.”
“Think of what all of those oceanographers would be able to do if they would only end up being experimented upon by unknown beings,” Christian said.
I laughed at that and got to my feet.  My head felt light for a moment and I swooned a bit.  Then I regained my footing and walked toward the picnic table.  The sun felt good on my face.  I sat down on the bench in front of Christian.
“Have you seen anything?” I asked him.
“Other than you marching out into the middle of the lake and then walking back up from the same place like it’s nothing?”  He asked.  “No.”
“I think I’ve seen Karmen at least twice,” I said.  “Last night and then while I was underwater.”
“Was she a mermaid?”  He asked.
“I’m serious,” I replied.  “No, she was just Karmen.  She said that whoever is doing this has been doing it since we’ve been on the planet.  That some people are just chosen.  She said to look out at the lake if things got too bad.”
“How was she able to speak if you were underwater?”  Christian asked.
“It was like telepathy or something,” I said.  “I could hear her in my mind.”
Christian was silent for a moment.  I looked down at my clothes.  To my surprise my jeans were almost completely dry already.  I reached up and felt my hair and was not surprised to find that it had already dried.
“I saw Nancy,” he said.
I turned to look at him.  “When?”
“Just as you went into the water,” he said.  “I saw you do it and got up to go after you.  I was running toward the beach when I heard her voice.  I turned and she was walking out of the woods.  She was naked.  She talked without moving her mouth.  She told me not to worry about you.  She said that nothing would happen to you while you were underwater.  Then she said the same thing Karmen said to you.  She told me to look at the lake if things got too bad.”
“Did she just kind of fade back into the woods?”  I asked.
Christian nodded.  “Yeah and then she was gone.  She told me it wouldn’t be bad and not to fight it.”
“Have you noticed the foliage?” I asked and pointed.
Christian nodded.  “Yeah, it’s gotten closer to us.  It’s like the woods are reclaiming the area or something.”
“There won’t be any trace of us before too long,” I said.
“I wonder what our families will do?”  Christian asked.
“Probably cry a lot,” I said, “unless whoever’s doing this will just make them forget.”
Christian nodded.  “I kind of hope that’s what happens.”
“Yeah, me too,” I said.  “When did Larry come up here?”
Christian blinked and he seemed to come back into focus.  “What?”
“You said Larry was the one who came up here,” I said.  “When did he come up here?”
Christian shrugged.  “He didn’t say.  I think it was about a year ago or so.  Why?”
“You’re sure this is the place?”  I asked.
“Yes,” Christian said.  “This is exactly where he said it would be.  It looks just like he said it would look.”
“But you’d never been here before, right?”  I asked.  “You came up here just because he recommended the place.”
“Yes,” Christian replied with irritation.  “What are all of these questions about?”
“Why did you want to take us all out camping, Christian?  Of all of the things we could have done as a team why did you want to take us out into the middle of nowhere?”
“I’ve been camping hundreds of times,” Christian said.  “It’s supposed to be fun.”
“But you knew I didn’t want to go,” I said.  “I told you I didn’t want to go.  Carlos didn’t want to go.  Jay didn’t want to go.  Why were you so insistent?”
“Because I thought we needed to get away,” Christian said.  “We needed to get away from the city and just be together as a team.  I thought it would be fun.  I’ve been camping so many times.  Nancy and I went camping together all the time and we loved it.  I knew once I got you guys out here you’d have a great time.”
“Why go to a place you weren’t familiar with?”  I asked.  “Why go to some place you hadn’t been just based on some recommendation?”
“Why all these questions?”  Christian asked.  “Do you honestly think Larry sent us her knowing his would happen?  That he wanted us to disappear?  Why?  What would be the point of that?”
“I don’t know,” I said.  “I can’t see a point to any of this.  I’m just looking for answers.  Larry and I never got along very well.  Whenever I hear his name connected to anything I automatically think it’s something sinister.”
“I went to him to see if he knew of a place that was out of the way,” Christian said.  “I wanted to go some place I’d never been before.  I wanted to have some fun.  I just thought he might know of a place.  He told me about this place.  He gave me directions.’
“But you got lost,” I said.  “Are you sure this is the place he wanted you to go?  You made the wrong turn, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Christian said.  “I made a wrong turn.  The road he said I should turn on looked like that other road.  The thing was that the landmarks he said I would see once I turned weren’t there.  I had to turn around.”
“None of this makes any sense,” I said.  “Why did I let you talk me into this?”
“Well,” Christian said with a sigh, “if it makes any difference then I apologize.”
“Sorry to say, Christian,” I replied.  “That doesn’t make a lot of difference.  We’re fucked no matter how sorry you are.”
“So, what do you want to do?  Beat me up?  Want to take turns shooting each other with Joe’s gun?  Maybe you could try to drown me.”
“I don’t see much of a point,” I said and it was my turn to sigh.  “I don’t see much of a point to anything right now.”
“I hate this,” Christian said in a whisper.  “I’m a fighter.  I don’t give up.  I never give up.”
“You’ve lost,” I said.  “This is one you can’t get out of no matter what you do.  We’re not walking away from this one.”
I saw Christian tense up at that.  His face got tight and he was visibly angry.  Christian was competitive.  He never gave up.  He loved playing games and when he played he played to win.  Whenever the company had tried any team-building exercises involving games he always played like his life depended on it.  No matter how stupid the game was he was always in one hundred percent.  He was always four-square for whatever the company was doing.  No matter what the initiative and how stupid it was on paper he was always behind it.  All of them were like that.  Larry and Joe and Karmen were always behind whatever the company was doing.
I wasn’t wired that way.  I always had to question everything.  I never did anything easily.  I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing things.  I always believed there was a sinister purpose behind everything the company did.  I had been burned by enough companies to know that they only thought of one thing and it wasn’t my well-being.  No matter how many extra hours you worked if the company wanted to get rid of you they would if it helped them meet some line on a chart somewhere.  So, if you worked seventy hours a week and lost your job you were just as fired as the guy who just put in his eight hours and went home on time every day, is how I figured it.  What was the point of killing yourself.
This new business with Christian and the rest of them had been different, though.  This was something I was helping to create.  The foundation I was laying with this company would have lived on with the success of the company.  This was the incentive I needed to work harder.  I was putting my stamp on this whole company and I was willing to do whatever was needed to make sure my name was attached to something that was a success.  I wanted to be proud of the thing I created.  Now, here I was, just as doomed as the rest of them.  It wasn’t fair and my brain wouldn’t let me stop looking for reasons behind it.
I looked up at the sky and saw that it was already after noon.  My stomach wasn’t grumbling but I still got up and found some food.  I realized I didn’t need to eat or drink because whoever or whatever was doing this wouldn’t let me die.  Still, it did make me feel better to be doing something.
I eventually came back out to the picnic table and sat down.  I stared at the water again.  This time that feeling of being hypnotized hit me and hit me hard.  It was like the water was suddenly swirling like a whirlpool.  I turned away and pounded my hand on the table.  The sting of slapping my hand against the wood cleared my head a little.  So, I slapped my hand against it again.  Then I slapped both my hands against it.  I slapped my hands against the table repeatedly until I saw blood spring from my palms.  I saw blood spattered on the table.
I held up my hand and stared at the splinters and the cuts.  As I watched it was like watching a film in reverse.  The splinters slowly moved backwards and exited the cuts they had created.  I saw them fall on the table.  The cuts stopped bleeding and then they closed up.  In somewhere around thirty seconds all of the cuts were gone.  I looked down at the table and the wood seemed to drink in the tiny droplets of blood.  It was like I was sitting at a giant sponge.
“Dammit!”  I screamed and this time I punched the table.
I stood up and started pacing back and forth.  I walked toward the beach, the canoes getting closer and then I whirled around and turned back toward the picnic table.  Then I turned and walked back.  I was muttered curses underneath my breath.  I was spitting them.
“What the hell are you doing?”  Christian said.
“What are we doing?” I asked.  “I feel like I’ve given up.”
“That’s because we have given up,” he said.  “Don’t you remember having conversations about that before?  There’s no way out of here.”
“I bet we could try walking across the bottom of the lake,” I said.
“You would rather drown?”  Christian asked.  “You know as well as I do that you are not going to get across to the other side of that lake.  Either something will happen that makes you come back or you’ll just find yourself walking up onto this very beach.”
“I thought you were a fighter!”  I screamed at him.  “I thought you never gave up.”
“I didn’t give up!”  Christian said.  “I lost my reason to keep fighting.  When I lost Nancy I lost my reason to keep fighting.  I don’t want to fight anymore because I don’t want to fight for something I no longer care about.”
I felt my jaw open.  I had never seen this side of Christian before.  He was the guy who always kept fighting.  He played games and he always fought until there was no way to keep fighting.  Most of the time he won the game which is why he did so well in business and this wasn’t like him at all.  Christian never sat down or walked over to the sidelines and threw up his hands.  He never threw in the towel.
I walked over to him and punched him hard across the face.  He was stunned more than hurt, I think, but he fell down hard on his ass.  He put a hand to the corner of his mouth and saw blood.  He looked at me and growled.  I had never heard him growl either but I greatly preferred that sound over the sound of his giving up.  He was up on his feet in a flash and charged at me.  I didn’t even try to get out of the way and he caught me in the mid-section like a football player.  I felt the air rush out of my lungs.  He carried me along for a few feet and then slammed me down on the ground on my back.
He was on top of me, his weight against my chest.  I couldn’t catch my breath and decided to stop trying to breath.  I reached up and hit him in the neck.  He made a strange squawking noise and then fell sideways.  I got to my feet and kicked him in the face.  He fell back with blood running from his nose.
He wiped the blood and came at me again.  I dodged around him this time.  He still managed to swipe at me with his left hand and his fist looped into my chest.  The pain stabbed through my chest and I thought I felt something snap inside me.  I wrapped my arms around his fist and moved with the momentum of his lunge and he went flying over me, tripped and ended up in a heap in the middle of a tent.  I think it was Jay’s tent.  I no longer remembered.
I didn’t give him a chance to get up.  I fell on him.  I started hitting him in the back.  I pounded the back of his head and I felt a knuckle in my right hand break.  I held up my right hand and saw that it was deformed from the broken finger but I kept hitting him.
Christian heaved up with his whole body and I tumbled backwards.  He moved so hard and fast I was actually tossed into the air and landed on something sharp.  I heard fabric tear and looked down to see a tent spike sticking through my left leg.  Blood was jetting in time with my heart from the severed artery.  As I watched the blood spurted twice and then stopped.  I stood and the spike stayed in the ground.  The hole in my leg sealed shut.
Christian punched me hard in the face.  I felt my nose break.  I felt the teeth in my upper jaw and toward the front of my face loosen.  I tasted blood.  He punched me again and I fell.  I felt my feet get caught in the fabric of another tent and I fell again.  He was on top of me again and this time his hands were around my throat.  I gagged but lifted with my pelvis and legs.  Christian tumbled over my head and landed behind my head.  I stood and turned and stomped directly onto Christian’s face.  I felt bones crunching beneath my heel.
I stopped, breathing hard.  Christian groaned.  He rolled over onto his stomach and I heard blood streaming from his face onto the ground like water poured out of a pitcher.  I felt parts of me that were bruised healing.  I felt things that were lacerated stitching up.  As I watched Christian’s face I saw it twist and pop back into shape as he stood up.
“Why did you do that?”  He asked.
“Because we have to fight,” I said.  “We can’t fight them.  Nothing we do to them will stop this.  We don’t even know who ‘them’ is.  So, let’s fight each other.  Let’s beat the hell out of each other and push the limits of what they can do to keep us alive.  If we pound each other to the point where neither of us can stand will they still even bother with us?”
“That doesn’t make one fucking bit of sense,” he said.
“Probably not,” I replied, “but what about any of this does?  I was just walking underwater and talking to dead people.”
“You don’t know if they’re dead!”  Christian screamed.  It was then I realized he held out some hope Nancy was sitting on a spaceship somewhere waiting for him.
“They’re gone and you know it,” I said.  “Nothing they tell us is the truth.  I think the closest we came to the truth around here was when Carlos came through the trees.  What we saw then was a hastily put-together ‘Franken-Carlos.’  They dissect us.  They study us.  They probably keep us awake and alert the entire time while they pull out our organs and dissect them.  They’re sadists and they don’t care.  We’re some kind of experiment and what do you do with rats in an experiment, Christian?  You kill them and dissect them.”
Christian clapped his hands to his ears.  “Shut up!”
“Do you think I like that idea any better than you?”  I screamed back.  “Do you think I like the idea of Karmen lying on a table somewhere being slowly hacked into pieces.  Do you think my own thoughts aren’t haunted by the idea of her screams echoing through hallways with no one responding?  We have to face the facts here, Christian.  We’re dead once they come and get us.  So, what do we do?  Do we actually just sit here and let them get us or do we try everything to get out of it?”
“Why the hell does beating the hell out of each other qualify as fighting to get out of this?”  Christian asked.
“Because,” I said, “maybe they can only handle so much.  If we keep pounding each other maybe at some point they can’t bring us back.  Maybe we’re too damaged for them to care anymore.”
“You’d rather I beat you to death?”  Christian asked.
“Doesn’t going down fighting sound better than being taken your sleeping and being dissected?”
“They weren’t dissected!”  He screamed.
“Fuck you, Christian!”  I screamed back.  “I never wanted to go fucking camping anyway you pushy son-of-a-bitch!”
We charged at the same time and collided over the crumpled remains of the tent we were standing on.  I think the tent might have been Carlos’, but I wasn’t sure.  We clutched at each other, both of us growling and grunting.  I had a hand full of his shirt in my right and my hand on his neck with his left.  He had his hand on my belt with one hand and my shoulder with the other.  To my surprise he lifted me off the ground and slammed me down.  I blacked out for a moment.
When I woke up I growled and sat up and was surprised to feel something sliding through my neck.  He had dropped me right onto another tent-spike and it had plowed right through the base of my throat.  Blood had apparently splattered all over Christian when it happened and there was blood down the front of my shirt.  I grabbed the spike and lunged at Christian.  He was too stunned to move and I drove it into his stomach.  Warm blood spurted over my hands and down my wrists.  He screamed and I twisted the spike.
“I never would have been here,” I screamed, “if you hadn’t wanted to go fucking camping!”
He grabbed the wrist holding the spike and pushed back.  I fought him but eventually the spike came out, still clutched in my hand.  He began to push it toward my stomach, his hand clamped down over my fingers.  I fought back and for a moment the spike hovered between the two of us quivering like something alive.  Then he began to overpower me and the spike rammed into my stomach, twisted and ripped my entire stomach open with a sickening tear.
I fell to the ground clutching my mid-section.  I could feel my intestines tumbling from between my fingers.  Blood flowed in sheets down over my pants and legs and into the ground.  Then the blood stopped.  I actually felt the loops of my intestines retract into my body like a retractable cord from a vacuum cleaner.
“This is fucking amazing,” I said looking up at Christian.
That was how we spent the afternoon.  We beat the hell out of each other.  It was a truly epic battle.  We punched each other until the other stopped moving and then stood back to watch the skin and bones repair.  Scott and I stabbed each other over and over.  He beat me with a plank out of the picnic table at one point and when I came-to in a moment I had the feeling of my skull knitting back together over my brain.
At some point it actually became fun.  I know that’s hard to understand.  We were laughing at some point.  This must be something men dream about.  Men just seem to want to fight sometimes.  They would rather resort of violence or threatening people than actually talking things out, I think.  However, what restrains most of us from exploding into violence against others is the instinct not to kill.  We fear the ramifications of what happens if we end up murdering the other.  Now, we were stripped of those restraints.  Not only could we not seem to actually kill each other, neither of us actually cared if we did manage to kill the other.  Both of us were dead anyway and death at the hands of someone was knew was somehow better than at the hands of something we couldn’t even comprehend but had branded as “they.”
Perhaps none of this makes any sense.  I am not sure it made any sense to me at the time.  I do know that there had been anger building in me towards Christian for a while.  I hadn’t wanted to be here.  I had tried to talk him out of taking us to this place.  I hadn’t wanted to be out of my element.  I wanted to be on a street corner flagging down a cab or waiting for a bus.  I wanted to get lost among the skyscrapers downtown.  I wanted to be surrounded by busy, rude, rushing crowds of people.  I wanted to have exhaust blown into my face and cover my ears as a fire engine screamed down a busy city street.
Still, I had to admit I had given in.  Christian was not as powerful as he liked to imagine.  I could have stood up to him.  I could have forced him to my will.  I could have vehemently decided not to go.  Hell, I could have come up with a fake family emergency and backed out of the whole things with a lie.  I had certainly done such things to call off from work enough times.  I was quite good at lying to get out of things.  However, I had felt some kind of obligation toward Jay and Carlos and I had gone.  I really had no one to blame but myself.  Still, it felt better to punch than to try and kill myself.
At one point I tried to drown Christian in the water.  Just like when I had gone into the water he had eventually stopped struggling and he realized he could breathe underwater.  He actually stayed under there, with my hands around his neck, for several minutes just laughing and staring back at me through the water in wide-eyed amazement.
No matter how big the gaping wounds we inflicted upon each other were they always closed up.  Brains would leap back into skulls and skulls would heal over.  Hair would grow back over the scalp.  Broken bones would heal.  Arms and limbs bent at unnatural angles would fix themselves with sickening snapping sounds.  Intestines, muscles and organs that were knocked clear out of the body would leap into the air and all back into place like things alive on their own.  We never grew tired.  The sun made its way across the sky in that afternoon and the sun blazed down on us.  We never stopped to eat or drink and we never felt tired or hungry or thirsty.  We were immortal right then an there.  Whatever was studying us wanted their rats to stay alive until they saw fit to kill them.
At some point we were standing near the middle of the now-destroyed camp and breathing hard with our hands on our knees.  We still weren’t tired physically.  We were a little out of breath but even that wasn’t bad.  I had just slit Christian’s throat with a jagged piece of glass I had found in the over-turned trash can.  His throat had just closed up and he was staring at me and looking down at the blood already drying on his shirt.  We had both bled so much that either of us should have collapsed from blood-loss alone.
“Well,” he said, “I think that’s enough of that.”
I nodded.  “So much for that theory of getting out of here.”
“They seem to have good mojo,” he said.  “I bet we could dismember each other and we would still come back together and get up for another round.”
I nodded.  I looked up at the sky.  The sky was turning from blue into that kind of purplish-blue color it turns when the sun starts going down.  It was that moment where the sky turns from that blanket of welcoming blue into that disturbing blackness that makes the sky look like a giant hole that you might just tumble into.  I could see some stars winking into life as I stared.  To me they suddenly looked very much like eyes.
“Fuck,” I whispered.  “So, what do we do now?”
“I plan on sitting down and watching the stars come out,” Christian said.  “If you want to come over later and beat in my head with a shovel please feel free.  Right now, I just want to do nothing.  Maybe I’ll fall asleep but maybe I will be able to stay up late tonight.  Maybe I’ll actually look at whatever or whoever is doing this to us right in the eyes.  Maybe I’ll try to see if they are as indestructible as we are right now.”
I nodded.  That sounded like a good plan at the moment.  I didn’t want to fight anymore.  I had seen more gore in this afternoon than I had my entire life.  “Want to start a fire?”
Christian shrugged.  “Why not?”
We had pretty much disassembled the picnic table.  The board had then, in turn, been reduced to splinters over our bodies.  We gathered up what we could find in the dimming light and used that to start a fire.  At one point I reached right into the fire to adjust some of the wood and watched my skin turn black and then turn back into pink flesh almost as soon as I pulled it out of the fire.  I felt no pain.  I was now numb to pain, it seemed.  I wondered if that would carry over to the dissection table.
“Maybe Joe didn’t feel it,” Christian said suddenly.
“What was that?”
“When they came for him and then dissected him,” he said.  “Maybe that’s what they mean about staring at the water.  Maybe that hypnosis makes it so you don’t fight or feel anything.”
“It makes about as much sense as anything else,“ I replied.  “The thing that looked like Karmen told me to look at the water when things got bad.  She did not exactly specify what that meant.
“We pretty well fucked up the camp, didn’t we?”  Christian asked.
I looked around.  Yes, it was pretty fucked up.  “I notice we managed to not destroy our own tents.”
“Yes, I guess we didn’t suddenly develop the desire for self-sacrifice even in our rage,” Christian said.
I looked at the carnage and shook my head.  I laughed.  All of that rage and anger had just fled from me.  I had no idea where it had come from.  Suddenly the whole idea about beating ourselves to death seemed ridiculous.  I suppose it was ridiculous.  Everything about this was ridiculous.  In the end it made as much sense as anything else we had done and anything else that had been done to us.
So, that was how we spent the evening.  We watched the sun go down over the tops of the trees.  The sky darkened and turned a blazing orange and then a pink and slowly purples were added.  Before Christian sat down to stare out into the water we had a last meal together.  We barely spoke.  I stared at the sky.
I have always loved sunsets.  I rarely saw sunrises mostly because I was a fan of sleeping in.  I loved sunsets, though.  During the fall and winters months I even loved the fact that the sunset came at four in the afternoon.  I would take a walk during those colder months and enjoy the crisp air.  You could usually smell someone burning leaves or perhaps something in their fireplace.  You could hear the crunch of the leaves beneath you and the jacket I usually wore always made me feel more comfortable.  I generally enjoyed having to wear more clothing than less of it when traveling outside.
So, eventually the sun set and the blanket of darkness covered everything.  The start began coming out.  I was so busy watching the sky I realized Christian hadn’t spoken in a while.  When I looked over at him in the flashing reflected glow of the fire I saw that he had assumed the same position that Joe had assumed.  His eyes were not blinking.  His mouth was slack just a bit.  There was even some drool hanging from his mouth.
I leaned in toward him and said his name a few times.  There was no response of any kind.  I snapped my fingers in front of his eyes and he didn’t blink.  I wondered what he was looking at.  I wondered if he was seeing colors or just thinking of something happy.  For all I knew he was listening to Nancy speaking to him right now.  I reached out and put a hand on his shoulder and then let it go.  I went back to studying the sky.
I kept the fire going and let the warmth bring me to a sweat in my clothes.  I realized it really no longer mattered if I sweat too much or how bad I smelled.  I was no longer trying to impress anyone.  I also realized that, for all intents and purposes, I was already alone.
I had always been afraid of being alone.  Back when I was a kid I was convinced that when I left for school or whatever that when I came home I would find the house empty.  I have no idea why I thought my parents would leave me but I had a feeling it had something to do with being in the hospital a few times when I was very young.  I learned at a young age that when my parents took me some place I would end up left there and men and women would stick needles in me.  I had always had a fear of being abandoned.  On the first day of pre-school my mother had to be nearly escorted out of the building because I wouldn’t let go of her leg.
Yet, here I was all alone.  Not only was I alone but it was dark and I was in the woods.  These were also fears for me.  I found that I was not afraid.  I figured I would be once the morning came or whatever was doing this came for me that night.  Still, I was fairly calm right then and there.
The colors started to dance in the sky again.  I watched them this time.  They were like curtains blowing in some cosmic breeze.  They really did look like the Northern Lights but they were in the wrong direction.  Of course we had apparently crossed into some opposite dimension at some point on this trip.  So, perhaps on this side of the world the Northern Lights appeared in the southern sky.  Once again, it made about as much sense as anything else.
I looked up at the stars and figured I could make out some familiar constellations.  Of this I could not be sure.  I figured if you looked up at the stars you could eventually see patterns and if you traced the stars you could probably make any shapes you wanted.
I stared up into the sky.  As I watched I saw something high in the sky blinking lazily.  I wondered if it was an airplane or if I was somehow able to see a satellite stretching lazily across the sky.  I had seen satellites before even though some told me it was impossible.  I said you just needed a sky that was clear enough from the smog of the city.
I started to feel tired.  I wondered what time it was.  I couldn’t locate a moon anywhere so I couldn’t even hazard a guess.  I hadn’t worn a watch in ages and my cell phone had stopped working a while ago.  I didn’t think this had anything to do with what was happening with us I figured there were very few cell phone towers out this way.  Besides, it was hard to plug in a charger in the middle of the woods.
I decided I didn’t want to see what would happen to Christian if he was the one who was going to be taken tonight and I didn’t want to make it easy for them if it was me.  I stood and walked to my tent.  I crawled into my tent and crawled into my sleeping bag without getting out of my clothes.  I was asleep almost instantly.
I awoke again that night and it was to that scraping noise along my tent.  I tried to open my eyes but I felt something like pressure on my eyelids.  It was like someone was holding my eyes closed.  I was fully awake this time.  I didn’t feel like I was dreaming.  However, I couldn’t move.  I tried to shout and found my lips were sealed shut.  I listened as something slithered across the fabric of my tent.  Again I heard the whispered voices.
The voices walked from the back of my tent toward the front.  Once again I heard the voices gather at the zipper that was the door to my tent.  It was like they were discussing which of us to take.  I made a moaning sound and the chattering sounds sped up.
I fought.  I fought against the forces that were holding me down.  I summoned my strength and forced my eyes open.  I heard more chattering from outside my tent.  I lifted my head off the ground and my chest followed.  I pushed and pushed.
Suddenly there was light in my tent.  The light seemed to emanate from the back of my tent.  A beam broke through and hit me directly in the forehead.  My eyes got wide and my mouth fell open.  I wanted to say something but could only make an inarticulate gargling noise.
“Lay back down,” a voice said in my head.  It was a huge booming voice and it filled my head.  “Lay back down and go back to sleep.  Tonight does not concern you.”
“No,” I tried to say but managed to only say it in my mind.  “Leave us alone.  Don’t leave me alone.  Don’t take Christian.  Let us go.”
My thoughts were coming in a rush.  A flood of words were pouring through my brain.  I made threats and then plead to whoever had my head in its hands.  I could see nothing but bright white light.  I could not hear the chattering sounds.
“You will lay back down, now,” the voice said as though I had not said anything.  “Your time is not now.”
“Why are you doing this to us?”  I asked in my head.  “Who are you?”
“We are what has always been here,” the voice said.  “We are what put you all here.  You are our experiment.  You are our creation.  We are what will always be here.  We are what is always going to be here.  We are what you wish you could be.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“We know this,” the voice replied.  “Now lay back down and go to sleep.”
“Please,” I said, “don’t make it hurt.”
“Pain is not a matter for us,” the voice said.  “You are whatever we want to do with you.  You will sleep now.”
I felt something like a giant hand against my chest.  I was slammed back to the ground.  My head hit the ground.  The hand turned into fingers and slammed the lids of my eyes closed.  My mouth was slammed closed.  Noise began to fill my head.  I couldn’t seem to hold a thought in my head.  I wanted to scream and scream.
The pressure let up but I could still not open my eyes.  The world was fading away in my ears.  I heard the wet slithering sounds against the front of my tent and then the chattering noises started again.  They began to fade as well.  I tried to fight against the darkness but it was a losing battle.  I would not say what I fell into was sleep but it was like being bludgeoned into submission.  Darkness enveloped me.
I saw light piercing right through my eyelids and for a moment felt a pang of both anger and fear.  I thought that whatever had been shining in my eyes the night before had come back.  As if whatever it was had decided it wanted to come back for me after all.  Then I realized it was sunlight.
The sunlight was much brighter than it had been on previous mornings.  I opened one eye first.  I was surprised to see myself looking up at the branches of a tree and, beyond that, the blue sky.  My tent had been split open and branches from the trees were now in the space that had once been the top of my tent.  It was like the trees had bent down and torn open my tent.  I had a moment when I thought fingers were reaching down toward me and I breathed heavy and staggered backwards doing a strange kind of crab-walk.
I stood up in the camping area slowly.  I ached.  Whatever had slammed me back down had done a good job and then whoever was doing this must have decided to let me feel it this time.  My knees popped as I stood up.  This was followed by more cracks from my spine, shoulders and elbow.  I then twisted my neck and felt that crack as well.
It was daylight.  In fact, it looked to be somewhere toward the middle of the morning.  I had a moment of absolute panic that I was sleeping away my last day on earth.  Of course, I then realized I had no reason to believe I was on earth anymore anyway.  I looked around.
The camp looked as though it had been attacked by shrubbery.  I couldn’t even see what had been Christian and Nancy’s tent.  It was completely overgrown with grass and branches.  Christian and I had pretty much destroyed the other tents but even those were completely overgrown now.  I could just make out some of the fabric of what had been Karmen’s tent beneath what looked like bushes.
Christian was gone, of course.  There was nothing left of him.  I walked over to the branches where their tent had been and pushed some aside.  I found the tent beneath, nearly collapsed entirely from the weight of the foliage.  Their stuff was still there.  Nancy and Christian were together again, or so I hoped.  I had my doubts about that.
I felt the fear creep into my stomach.  I was alone now.  The thing I had always feared was now a reality.  I was the only one left.  I wanted to shout but I knew no one would hear me.  I swore I could almost see the glint of sunlight off the cars we had driven in even though I knew that was impossible as well.  I wondered if they were now overgrown.  I guessed they probably were.  Whatever was doing this was erasing our existence and that would mean getting rid of the cars.  Soon they would be rusted out wrecks completely buried beneath branches and grass and weeds.  Animals would probably take up residence in the vehicles.
I turned to look at the remnants of the picnic table.  There wasn’t anything left to sit on.  I looked at the metal garbage can.  It only then struck me to wonder who was supposed to empty out the garbage can.  Were there park rangers or something?  Maybe there had been at one time, I figured, but apparently they didn’t come around much anymore.  The can itself was rusted and falling apart.
I walked toward the beach.  I noticed that the canoes were gone as well.  As I got near the water I could just barely make out the shape of the badly damaged one beneath the water.  The thing had sat there for days without sinking and now it was gone.
Karmen started to walk out of the water toward me.  Had this been two weeks before I probably would have been scared by the way the figure in the shape of Karmen glided out of the water.  She was naked at first, but as I watched, clothes seemed to materialize out of thin air.  She walked toward me and stopped when the water was still over her ankles.  There was still something wrong with her eyes.
“What do you want?”  I asked.
“You’re the first one to fight that hard,” the thing with Karmen’s face said.  “No one has ever come that close to waking up before.”
“Does that mean I win a prize?”  I asked.
“You don’t get to leave,” it said, “if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“I didn’t think that was the case,” I said, “I’m just another lab rat.”
“Yes,” it said, “you are.  Does that upset you?”
“Does it matter?”
“Again, I guess the answer to that is no.  You have a lot of questions.  I cannot answer them.”
“I still don’t know who you are.”
“You couldn’t understand.  It would be beyond you to understand what we are.”
“Awfully full of yourself, aren’t you?”  I asked.
“I only speak the truth.”
“What do you want with me now?”  I asked.
“I have been authorized to stay with you, if you wish,” it said.  “I can make myself just like her.  I can keep you company.”
“Why not just take me now?”  I asked.
“Again, there are things that we do that you cannot understand.”
“Go away,” I said.  “Leave me alone.  I don’t want a fake.  If I can’t have the real thing then I want nothing.”
“If that is what you wish, then it shall be so.  We find you very curious.”
“How great for me,” I said, “Maybe you can mount my head on the wall of your study when you’re done gutting me.”
The thing with Karmen’s face tilted its head as though listening or looking at me curiously.  “Is that what you would call a joke?”
“I don’t know anymore,” I said.  I walked over to a spot near where the picnic table used to be and sat down in the grass.  I stared out at the water.  “I don’t care about you or where you come from.  I don’t want to do anything but look at the water for a while.”
The thing with Karmen’s face stared at me for a few more moments.  Its head was cocked to the side again as though listening to something far off.  Then it simply turned and started to walk back into the water.  The clothes disappeared.  As the figure sank below the water the skin and muscle started to disappear like the clothes.  I watched the whiteness of the skeleton disappear beneath the waves.
I stared out at the water for a while.  I felt the desire to just let go and sink into a catatonic state.  I fought it for a while.  I felt like there was something I should do.  I stood up and rummaged around the stuff that hadn’t been covered by foliage.  I eventually found this notebook.
I had wanted to be a writer for most of my life.  I always wrote in my spare time.  I had even self-published a couple of novels.  None of them had sold very well which was why I was still working in an office instead of going on book tours.  Still the blank pages inside the spiral notebook had a strong pull on me.  I rummaged further and eventually found a pen.
So, I sat down on the grass that was trampled and flattened by us over the past several days.  There were pieces of the picnic table scattered around me.  I watched the sky and the trees for a while and then I opened the notebook and started writing.  I have been writing for hours and hours.
It has seemed like time stopped as I wrote this.  I imagine the green-skinned buy-eyed monsters who did this to us all with their heads cocked to the side and waiting for me to finish.  I have my doubts anything I have written will be seen by anyone.  Like everything else this will be erased.  The pages will deteriorate much faster than paper should.  Either that or the entire notebook will end up at the bottom of the lake with the canoes.
I would love to tell you all that there were some answers revealed to me.  I can’t even say for sure I actually saw a figure shaped like Karmen come out of the water and talk to me.  For all I know this was a conversation entirely in my mind.  I don’t know what is doing this to us.  I don’t know if they are aliens or demons or something else entirely.  Perhaps it is some force of nature itself.  The way nature seems to be reclaiming our camp site I wonder if they are some kind of wood nymphs or something.  Maybe the trees themselves can come alive and come after us.
For the record, I never wanted to go camping.  I don’t think Christian knew what would happen when we got here.  I am still not sure about Larry at this point but I have such resentment against the man I would probably blame him for the sun turning into a black hole if it were to occur.
I think we did everything we could to get out of here.  Whatever had lured us into this trap was not going to let us out.  It’s like a giant pitcher plant.  That’s a plant that has a funnel shape that secretes a liquid that collects in the bottom of the funnel and gives off a sweet scent.  Flies and other insects are attracted to the plant and it falls in.  The sides of the funnel are coated so they can’t climb out and they slowly drown in the liquid collected in the plant.   Once again that makes me think of nature itself devouring us.
I would like to say to my family that I hope this does manage to find you.  I wonder if your memories of me will be erased like our existence.  I prefer to believe that, but I can’t be sure.  I wish I could call you and see if you even know who I am.
I do know that there are things out there that we cannot understand.  There are forces at work behind the fabric of normality we put up to get through every day.  There are things behind that fabric watching us and monitoring us.  They have teeth and they have claws.  Whenever they want to, they can tear that fabric down and do with us whatever they please.  The fabric between them and us is so thin.  It is so very, very thin.
I am scared, and as the sun has moved slowly across the sky the tension in my stomach has increased.  I fear that there may be pain.  I wonder if I will see my friends or if they are already dead and so there is nothing to see.  Of course, I wonder exactly what will happen to me.
I have been looking around the camp again as I come to the end here.  The tent I brought is now almost completely gone.  I guess I have no more need for it.  My hand hurts and the notebook is nearly filled with my words.  I may have to write some of this on the cover.  I wish I could think of some safe place to hide this notebook but I can’t.
The sun is starting to head toward the top of the trees.  My stomach feels like it’s turning barrel rolls.  I have no desire to eat or go to the bathroom and have not done so the entire day I have sat here writing.  I wonder if the lights in the sky have anything at all to do with this or if that is just some strange phenomenon.  I wonder about that thunderstorm and if that had anything to do with this.  So many questions and I know I won’t ever get any answers.
I am glad I was able to spend that day with Karmen.  I wish I had had more of a chance.  I am sorry I didn’t get to spend more time with Jay and Carlos.  I am sorry about a lot of things, but none of that matters now.
I guess I am dragging this out because I am scared.  By stopping my pen and finishing this I realize I have nothing to face but whatever has befallen the rest of my friends.  My hand is aching and the light is fading and I can’t think of anything else to say.
Christian wanted to go camping and so we went.  We had a great night and then Carlos vanished and the terror and horror and unexplained started to happen.  Nothing has made sense since.  We crossed over to the other side of the curtain and we have been there since.  Now it is my time to face what is there full in the face.
I am thinking I may watch the water.  The thing wearing Karmen’s face told me to do that when it got bad.  I have a feeling it may get very bad.  So, that is the story and that is where I am and I wish I could give you more answers than I have.
I am going to watch the water now.  The sunset looks very beautiful.  The water looks full of colors.

www.feedbooks.com

Food for the mind

Table of Contents

Title

Gone