Chapter 13 #2
Maybe heaven was hands grazing upper thighs with wind whipped hair, soundtracked by the songs of our youth.
It felt so high school in a way. I pondered that if we met all those years ago would he be the handsome lead in the play who fell for the quiet girl eating lunch in the art room?
Would we steal glances and avoid each other in crowded rooms?
Would he think of me when performing Shakespeare or would I hastily sketch his portrait in smudgy charcoal?
I leaned in to kiss him to remind myself he was still real, as these were the sort of moments that tended to only exist in one’s imagination.
There were likely hundreds of fanfics regarding this exact storyline, alternate universes where the fictional lands and characters of the Sword of Thorndown are swapped for modern day, and the author and reader are both woven into the narrative under the vague pseudonym of “Your Name.”
They were the sort of fics that I would read in secret with my face illuminated by the glow of my phone, but never dared to write.
I could only allow myself to conjure love with a fictional character when he lived in an ancient land far away, yet I’d happily devoured the words of others behind closed doors.
Even still, feeling Evan’s touch felt sinful, knowing how many evenings I’d imagined exactly what it would be like while Nick laid asleep beside me.
Somehow, my most vivid fantasies and the most realistic writing couldn’t compare to the actual thing. The fic writers didn’t know about the small calluses that dotted his palms from years of hoisting a fake sword, or the birthmark on the inside of his middle finger, but I now did.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” Evan leaned into me a bit.
“I don’t have to, we’re here.” A cruel reminder that bliss was only temporary. I pulled off the road into a small parking lot, with only enough spaces for a few cars. From the looks of it, there hadn’t been any visitors in a while.
A weathered metal sign staked into the ground said, “Site of 1958 Everglen Lake Plane Crash.”
Evan looked curiously at it, squinting as he tried to read the faded paint. “This is the surprise?”
“There’s more than a placard, come on.” I led him down a small forest path and began the tour guide spiel.
“In 1958 a pilot flying his plane with a few friends crashed deep into the woods here, because of the location of the crash it took local authorities hours to get to the site, and of the six people in the plane, only one ended up surviving. It was a national news story, and the entire region was swarming with reporters, the National Guard, even Eisenhower came up to pay his respects. Ultimately, they were unable to retrieve the body of the plane and large pieces of debris, leaving what was essentially a metal skeleton in the middle of the woods.” Small pieces of rusted metal showed through the brush and leaves, serving as trail markers.
I was morbidly obsessed with the crash when I was younger.
I had read up on every piece of information I could find regarding it.
After my father died I subconsciously sought out learning about deaths more tragic than his.
A heart attack while in his car on his way to work was such an unceremonious way to die, that my younger self was embarrassed for him in a way.
My adolescent brain believed he deserved a more interesting death.
Going out in an amber blaze careening toward disaster felt more honorable, though it countered everything I felt about keeping life predictable and safe.
I craved danger in a way that one craved a food they were allergic to.
I wanted risk, I wanted impassioned disaster, but I was too fearful of the aftermath.
I didn’t want my life to end up like the ruins of the plane, rusted metal being overtaken by the earth as time passed.
The site had a solemn eerie aura about it, and as we walked down the path it felt like the birds had stopped chirping and even the mosquitos stopped buzzing around us. We reached the destination, the cylindrical body of the plane was reduced to mostly a steel ribcage jutting out of the earth.
Evan stopped a few feet behind, staring at the wreckage. “Imagine, your entire life ends in the middle of the woods in a matter of seconds,” he held a contemplative stare at the plane.
Both of us stood in silence, a few feet apart from one another. The steel ribcage remained still, but we both held our breath as if it were going to rhythmically begin to inhale.
“All this time this has been sitting on the other side of the lake, slowly forgotten by the world around it,” Evan said quietly.
“I used to be obsessed with the crash. I read up on the lives of each and every victim, and I make an effort to come and pay my respects every time I’m up at camp.
I’ve been coming out here for over a decade and it still freaks me out.
Not in the sense that it’s haunted, but in the sense that something so horrible now sits here quietly returning to the earth, you know? ”
Evan nodded.
I reached for his hand, “there’s another part to it, come on.”
I tugged him towards me and we continued walking down the path in silence, Evan following closely behind. We approached a clearing, a cliff overlooking the far end of the lake.
Where we stood was only a mile from camp by way of water, but the lake looked entirely different from this side. I had a passing thought about some metaphor for the way I’d begun to see Evan differently in a similar manner. Same person, different angle.
“In my research about the crash it said that along with the lone survivor, three of the victims’ bodies were found down here, rather than at the point where the plane landed. I’d like to think that the last thing they saw before they passed was this view.”
A vision of orange flames and black smoke crossed my mind as Evan sat himself on a rock. “I’d hope that it was too,” he replied. “What an incredible last image to have.”
We were both sitting on the cliff watching the lake, and from Evan’s unsettled posture, apparently both thinking about death. What a way to connect with a complete stranger.
“Do you ever worry about how you’ll be remembered?” he blurted out.
“No,” I spoke quietly, still holding a reverence for the space. “I’ve spent a lot of my life forgotten, it only makes sense that I’d be forgotten in death. I think it might be the best possible outcome.”
He turned to me, brows furrowing. “What makes you say that?”
“I feel like I haven’t done much worth remembering.
I can leave this world as quietly as I entered it,” I was focusing on my nails, fidgeting with my fingers as I contemplated.
“On one hand, it’s absolutely depressing that I’ll have existed as a mere blip, on the other, it’s nice to know my failures and shortcomings will die with me. ”
Evan chewed at the skin around his thumbnail. An old anxious habit that he must have had a tough time cracking. “My whole life has been meticulously cataloged by strangers. I don’t have control over my own narrative now, I’m certain my corpse won’t either.”
“You’d rather a death in anonymity than be remembered for how the public saw you?”
“I know it’s counterintuitive to every life choice I’ve made in the last decade, but yes. A thousand times over.”
“You’ll have a legacy at least, and your shortcomings will be glossed over by your accomplishments. I mean, thanks to the internet there will be teenage girls finding you and thirsting over you. You’ll be like a regular Gregory Peck or Paul Newman. There’s positives at least.”
Evan scoffed. “Don’t make it seem like it’ll be a good thing that teenagers will be in love with my rotting corpse—”
“Shit, wait, do you see that?” I cut him off. A thick plume of smoke steadily rose from a clearing in the densely packed pine trees across the lake. It towered in a pillar above the treeline then dissipated into the blue sky above.
Evan whipped around from the rock he was sitting on. “No way, it can’t be,” he whispered, as if the hermit could hear us from across the water.
Because it had to be the hermit.
We both stared at the sight across from us, a mix of fear and intrigue swirled through my veins. It was mesmerizing, and seemingly came out of nowhere.
I had seen the smoke one time before, a separate summer from when I heard the lone gunshot.
It had been early in the morning, I was drinking coffee alone on the dock when the smoke plumes began rising from the woods.
Identical to the smoke plume I was presently looking at.
It was easy to write it off as strange fog formations and not allow my mind to revert back to a younger version of myself that was afraid of the mystical hermit.
It wasn’t outside the norm for me to wake up a few times in the middle of the night thinking about the possibility of something or someone else on the lake—be it hermits, aliens, murderers on the lam, or cryptids.
It was a shared experience with anyone who’d come to camp.
Nick, Andrea, Caroline, and anyone else I knew who visited would talk of the dark silence, the mystery of the woods, the eerie nature of it all.
Like all of us were waiting for something to cry out in the night or appear in our vision.
Having an experience with someone else—confirming all the fears that sat dormant in the back of my mind—sent a chill down my spine. It couldn’t be real. I wouldn’t allow myself to fall for the same scary stories that freaked me out as a kid.
“I mean, it could be a camper making a fire,” I said.
Evan gave me a skeptical look. “Or Sue might be right.”
“Or we’re both seeing things.”
“If you’re so convinced that it’s not the hermit we should go investigate.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
Evan took a few steps closer, my nose was practically pressed into his sternum. Every inhale was of his scent. It felt like he was torturing me by standing this close.