A Reason to Live
Birch Island, New York
Liko Greenman stood at the crossroads, looking not for the Devil, but himself.
In one week, he’d learned how many roads a rural town like Birch Island could have, and he’d just about walked them all.
From every charming street in the town proper, to the clusters of residential roads, to two-lane highways along the outskirts.
From sidewalk to gravel shoulder, he’d walked up one side and down the other, checking off each trek on his map.
He’d combed the town thoroughly with no success.
He’d either have to give everything a second look, or go home and admit he’d been had.
He felt in his pocket for the letter which had sent him on this so far fruitless journey.
JHG
Jonathan Henshe Games
“Greater Understanding Through Play”
Dear Mr. Greenman,
Your recent post on Reddit was brought to our attention.
We extend our deepest condolences on the tragic loss of your son and applaud your desire to solve the mystery of the Three Hares game in his memory.
No words can make things better, but a perhaps a clue to start you on a journey would make things different.
Go to Birch Island, New York, and look for yourself along the roadside.
With our sympathy in this time of great sadness,
Jonathan Henshe Games
When the letter arrived, Liko was reminded of the apathetic Milo in The Phantom Tollbooth, coming home to find the mysterious gateway to Lands Beyond and deciding there wasn’t anything better to do.
It was probably a cruel hoax, and Liko didn’t post about the letter on Reddit or any of the gaming forums. Still, coming up on a year after Kyle’s death, Liko was running out of ways to pass, waste and kill time.
Maybe mid-winter wasn’t conducive to a tramp around unknown Lands Beyond—he opened Google maps and learned Birch Island wasn’t on a coastline or in a body of water, just a dot in landlocked Orange County.
But he had to do something. It was a drive to New York, not a flight to Mongolia.
After years of saying he could work from anywhere, he should put it into practice.
Take a week, have a change of scene, go on a little quest. What the hell, even if the letter were a hoax, it had a bit of intrigue and magic that made Liko’s soul lift its head in curiosity.
He hadn’t felt curious about anything in a long, long time.
He booked an Airbnb, packed a bag and went. He opened his mind, suspended his disbelief and followed instructions.
Go to Birch Island, New York, and look for yourself along the roadside.
After a week of walking and searching, he suspected he’d been conned.
He didn’t want to be conned.
It was just too cruel.
“Don’t do this to me,” he murmured to the crossroads.
Was it all some Zen exercise? Walking up and down these byways, he found nothing but himself. He glanced around, ascertaining he was alone, then shut his eyes and whispered, “Self, show thyself.”
He opened his eyes.
Nothing. Except himself.
He closed his eyes again. “What, I’m all I have left? I still have me? Is that the metaphor? I know already. Having only me is my problem. I don’t want to be out here searching for myself. I’m sick of myself…”
The blare of a car horn startled him out of the lament and moved him onto the shoulder. “Find myself dead by the roadside. Funny.”
He sat on the stacked stone wall by the sign reading Schoenfeld’s and exhaled a cloud of steam. Let the record show he moved out of the way. He didn’t stand still and let the car mow him down. He had a reason to live.
Dear Mr. Greenman, your recent post on Reddit was brought to our attention.
Liko reached for his phone and opened the Reddit app. He had 132 new messages, all of them comment notifications on his famous post.
r/Three Hares Mystery
RIP Kyle Dalusio Greenman (@kgr33n) ·Jan 14 2017·
Lkgr33n
Hey gang. This is Liko Greenman, Kyle’s dad, and you can see I’ve made my own account instead of using Kyle’s old one.
I wanted to come on this forum and thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your love and compassion and support.
I was astounded how many of you messaged after he died, telling how much you loved and missed him.
I didn’t have the strength or bandwidth to respond but I promise I read every single one and I go back often to read them again.
They keep him alive, especially on the days when it’s just so hard to take in he’s gone.
On the really bad days, I come to this community and I always find a recent post or two that mentions him.
So I know he’s not forgotten. I don’t have words to say how it comforts me.
I’m not a gamer, but from the perspective of a tragically unhip dad keeping tabs on what his teenage son was doing online, even I knew Three Hares was something special.
I told Kyle if I had time, it was a game I could easily learn to love.
Usually I told him as I was shutting him down for the night.
By the way, what time is it? Shouldn’t you be in bed?
Anyway, it seems now I have nothing but time, and sleep isn’t a friend of mine, so I’ve joined the community as a player.
Last night I finally finished the game and arrived at the Chamber of the Green Man and its yet-unsolvable mysteries.
Needless to say, as a Greenman myself (ha ha), I’ve become really invested, and I’ve been lurking this sub to read all the latest harebrained theories.
Sorry. Children may die, but Dad jokes never do.
Yikes. Anyway. The point of this post is my son died and I’m just wandering around lost. Everything is awful.
I need a job. Well, I have a job. I mean I need a purpose.
I’m not good company and I don’t want people.
I need a single-player obsession. A quest. I need to finish something Kyle started.
He loved this damn game and died without knowing all its secrets.
I need to find them. I need to solve this mystery.
I’m going to crack this chamber if it’s the last thing I ever do.
You read it here first. Now get off the computer and go to bed, all of you.
Love from your new dad,
Liko
The post had over 65,000 comments. Sixty. Five. Thousand.
His thumb scrolled down the thread. Comments about Kyle. Tributes to Kyle. Memories of Kyle.
God, that kid was so loved.
Liko was weeping now. It ceased to surprise him anymore.
Crying was part of his daily routine and he’d reached an almost casual treatment of the jags.
Every day at some point, he’d take a piss, brush his teeth, eat something and cry.
He was reminded of Kyle’s mother, Janelle, who suffered morning sickness for seven out of nine months and came to regard vomiting as part of her daily commute to work.
She’d pull her car to the shoulder, nonchalantly puke, pop a piece of gum and proceed on her way.
Come to think of it, she’d divorced Liko in much the same manner, bringing the marriage to a gentle rolling stop on the road of life. She cracked the door, hurled him out and drove off, folding a minty-fresh new start into her mouth.
The sun was slanting toward the western fields.
It was colder and Liko’s eyes and nose were clogged.
He almost mopped both with the Henshe letter, then went for his sleeve instead, just as a car came along Oak Hill Road and slowed by the wall.
The passenger window slipped down and the driver leaned across the console to speak.
“You all right?”
“Yeah,” Liko said, too embarrassed to make eye contact. “Yeah, just feeling some shit.”
“I see.”
“I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“Well…” The man sat back, then leaned on the console again. “Don’t stay out too long. No need to freeze on top of feeling shitty.”
Liko managed a weak laugh. “I won’t.”
“All right then.” The man did his little dance again, sitting back, then canting sideways toward the window. This time he pointed at the farm within the stone wall. “Listen, I live there. When you’re done feeling your shit and you need a drink of water, knock on the door.”
“That’s cool of you. Thanks. I’m all right. Just…out here looking for myself along the roadside.”
What the hell, he thought. Maybe it’s a code phrase only people in Birch Island understand.
No such luck. The man just gave a puzzled smile. “Well, be careful.”
“I will.”
“Take care.”
Liko watched the taillights as the car drove another fifty yards, then turned through an opening in the stone wall, flanked by two pillars.
The car stopped. The driver got out and went to the mailbox built into one of the pillars.
He got back in and the car headed up to the farmhouse and parked.
In the thin, crisp air, Liko could hear the muffled ker-thunk when he shut the door.
He raised his chin, almost certain the driver was holding still, fingers on the door handle, looking back toward the stone wall.
Liko raised a hopeful palm.
I’m right here.
Along the roadside.
Can you help me?
His eyes and face were freezing. His nose was still running. His ass was numb. Crying was thirsty work.
He got up.
Snow had fallen recently in Birch Island.
The roads were clear but icy drifts ringed the fields and dirty, salt-encrusted hills remained at all four corners of the intersection, still showing teeth-marks from the plow.
Schoenfeld’s driveway pillars were half-buried in snow.
Liko walked by them, his eyes bleary from crying.
He almost didn’t see it. He shouldn’t have seen it. He had no reason to see it.
Except maybe he was supposed to see it.
Emerging from the pile of dirty snow against one of the pillars was the top of a circular, carved decoration. A plaque attached to the stacked stones.
Liko stopped.
The carvings were leaves.
He reached his ungloved fingers and dug at the icy mound, breaking it off in flakes and chunks.
A foliate face emerged, leaves arranged around the eyes, nose and mouth.
Just the way it looked in the Three Hares game.
Liko was shaking now, but not from the cold.
“You,” he whispered.
The Green Man smiled back.
And you, he said. Along the roadside.
Liko’s frozen hands scraped at the snow, digging it out of the carved crevices.
It was a beautiful piece, a good foot in diameter.
The Green Man: ancient pagan symbol of nature, fertility, and mysteries older than God.
The motif adorned thousands of churches and cathedrals, a tenacious reminder of all that came before.
It reigned in the chamber at the end of Kyle’s favorite video game, guarding tantalizing secrets of what might be in the future.
Along the roadside in Birch Island, New York, a Greenman stared at the Green Man.
Suffused with relief, gratitude and some old, forgotten emotion that might have been joy.
The letter wasn’t a cruel hoax. This was real.
It was real. The Green Man was here, and it was magic.
Liko had solved the riddle, completed the quest, achieved his objective, completed the mission. He’d found himself along the roadside.
He hesitated, then put a palm on either side of the plaque and kissed the Green Man smack between the leafy eyebrows. Then he thrust his icy hands in his pockets and walked up the driveway.
He rang the front door’s bell. A dog barked from within. The porch light went on. A man in a backward ball cap appeared, looked through the thin side window, and opened the door, smiling broadly.
“We meet again.”