Chapter Four #4
Despite his awareness that flat-earthers existed, Miles had never actually met a live one.
He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d expected, but it was someone more superficially brain-damaged than Hugh, who, for all his looseness with the world of facts, had seemed, until that point, more like a run-of-the-mill mansplainer in his late forties.
But Miles apparently had been living in a bubble, because here was a person with all his teeth, sensible sun protection, and an alpenstock, now holding forth on Pythagoras, ring laser gyroscopes, and the 2017 solar eclipse.
Except, he realized after a while, Hugh wasn’t a flat-earther, Hugh was a hollow-earther, and his disdain for flat-earthers seemed to match even his disdain for the general population who believed the world was solid at its core.
Wow, taking it to another level, thought Miles.
The exciting part was that neither Kate nor Miles, in all their lives, had known this was something a person, a nonmedieval person, could believe, that it was even part of the great stock of possible beliefs.
But here it was! And Hugh, who took encouragement from the stunned general silence of these hikers, who were now beginning to doubt not only his credibility regarding snakes and wildflowers, but also their personal safety, expressed surprise that no one else had heard this theory, actually two theories, one that held there was both an Inside and an Outside of the Shell, and another that there was only an Inside, and on the outside was the Void.
“Well, well,” said Serena Rubin, who was sitting with Kate and Miles, a bit apart from the central circle.
But Hugh was up and running. He was in the former group, the “Passage” school, of which he was an “Outie,” meaning he believed they were currently on the Outside, while the “Innies”—
“Lemme guess,” said Serena Rubin.
Hugh went on, a little louder. The Innies believed they were actually on the Inside.
When he wasn’t leading tours at Whisperbrook, when he wasn’t volunteering for the Land Conservancy—an organization which, he said, looking at Dr. Rubin, was a bit myopic in terms of the Big Picture—when he was on his own clock, he was also off in the woods, but this time volunteering for another local organization, dedicated to the Colloquies of Jeremiah Wylkes.
No one of the group, apparently, had heard of this, either—few had ever used “colloquies” in a sentence—and Hugh met their silence with a haughty scoff.
None of them had heard of Jeremiah Wylkes?
Wylkes, who’d had a long career as a pastor before falling out with his flock over his convictions, had retreated to this very corner of Vermont back in the early nineteenth century, where, one afternoon, his dog had disappeared while on a walk.
Where he searched for days, until, at last, he’d heard a barking from a cave, and then, within, found a path descending into the earth.
On the wall was a Native American inscription—
“Not sure we need to bring Native Americans into this,” said Serena Rubin.
—a Native American inscription, said Hugh more loudly, which Wylkes copied onto a piece of bark.
He could hear his little Whiskey whimpering, but without a light, he couldn’t see his hand before him, and after stumbling about in the dark, he’d returned to his cabin.
But the next morning, he couldn’t find the spot, and Whiskey had grown silent.
In town was an old Abenaki man named One-Eyed Jim—
“Come on,” said Dr. Rubin.
—who knew the legend from his grandmother, and translated the inscription, which read “Passage to the Outer World.”
“Cover your ears, children,” said Dr. Rubin.
But Olive and Wesley were rapt.
Jeremiah Wylkes spent the following months searching for the entrance. But he had long been ill—
“That I believe,” said Dr. Rubin.
—and would have died, had not Whiskey reappeared one day and led him back inside the cave.
This time the passage did not fail him, leading him at last to a forgotten civilization, whose medicines cured him, and who welcomed him among their own.
And there he would have remained, his story a secret, had he not met a protégé, who’d recorded Jeremiah’s story in the Colloquies.
“How wonderfully creative is the human mind,” said Miles, softly.
“Having some trouble imagining Beyoncé putting up with this,” said Kate.
“This man volunteered. I did not choose him,” said Serena Rubin.
Hugh then explained that for the last eight years, he had worked with the Jeremiah Wylkes Society to search the forest for the fabled portal.
The forest had been divvied up; he was director of Quadrangle 45, the so-called Highly Likely Quadrangle, which included Claymore.
It was notorious terrain, a magnetic anomaly that rendered their equipment all but useless, forcing them to rely on traditional survey instruments.
He knew every inch of the land, every tree, every stone.
“And let me guess,” said Dr. Rubin. “For some reason, you haven’t found it yet.”
Hugh waved his meat stick in admonishment.
“No kidding,” said Dr. Rubin. “And you went inside?”
He started to reply, but stopped himself. The Colloquies told of the dangers of speaking of the passage to nonbelievers. In fact, he’d said enough.
“So there we are,” said Dr. Rubin, hopping to her feet. For—look at that!—time really flew, they’d best be going.
But Olive had a question.
Yes? The hikers turned.
“What happened to Whiskey?”
And Hugh smiled, and, with his final nub of meat stick, pointed to the battered collie curled up in the leaf duff, who, sensing the attention, lifted her head and looked about, before sighing and settling her chin back on her paws.