The Real Ben

Dear Maggie Jo,

If you're reading this, something went wrong. But also, something went right. Either way, this is all my fault.

No one believed me when I said I wasn’t lying this time. The empty cans we’d tied to the tripwire went flying. I sprang ten feet when I heard the clanging. I’m not lying about that either. Ten feet, maybe twelve, that’s how high I jumped before I took off running, my heart pounding like it was trying to crash its way out and beat me back to Milo’s house.

“Why do you do that? Why do you lie about things that don’t matter?” Milo said, looking disgusted like I’d given him a spoiled egg to eat, or worse.

“I’m not lying! Come with and I’ll prove it.” I was gulping air, trying to calm myself so I’d look different from the last time I came in fake-panting, yelling that we’d caught something. It was supposed to be funny. I’d dropped an old Talking Elmo into the hole trap—the voice was all warped and deep-sounding. By the time we reached the hole the sun had gone way down. Lucas and Jada got so freaked out they cried. It’s like no one understands fun anymore.

“No way am I walking into those woods again,” Lucas said. “Not with the sun going down, and not with creeper Elmo dolls and bugs the size of Texas.” Jada laughed and made a face I couldn’t read. I’ve never been very good at reading faces.

“But we caught him for real this time!”

“So go get him,” Milo said, without taking his eyes off the screen.

“Take the rope and the bat and bring him back.”

“By myself?”

No one answered. I stood there feeling stupid. “You guys are harsh.”

Milo pushed his headset back. “No, dude. What’s harsh is you taking video of us freaking out and posting it.”

“It was a prank! And I took it down like five minutes after I put it up!”

Milo’s headset was back around his ears. My face felt hot. I took the bat and rope from the closet, and I took Milo’s bike without asking. My plan was simple. I would take video (for proof), tie a bowline knot around the oak (pretty sure I remember bowlines, something about rabbits), toss the loose end in so whatever was down there could climb out, then bike like the woods were on fire.

I'd gone as far as the old barn plenty of times but never this close to sundown alone. There’s no path in, but there are markers if you know what to look for. Most people think tree bark looks the same, but that’s like saying sheet music looks the same.

I ditched the bike on the side of Old Barn Road and buried it with leaves. I could have just left it in the open. Hardly anyone uses the road, not since they built Route 80. Still, I didn’t want anyone stealing it.

I found the tree door and made my way through the thicket. It’s not really a door, but it’s where Milo and I always enter the woods. There’s a bear tooth stuck high that looks like a doorbell. Milo put me on his shoulders once so I could yank it out but there was no way. It’s stuck deep. When a black bear bites and claws and rubs its back on a tree, it’s theirs for good. They come back to it over and over again. Bears aren’t out this time of year. Not usually. Still, it’s good to remember: If it’s brown, lay down. If it’s black, fight back. If it’s white, goodnight. The idea of a polar bear in the woods is funny. Picture it wearing a straw hat, picking berries.

From the tree door, walk half a mile by counting one thousand steps straight ahead. You won’t see the old barn, you can’t. The woods are too jammed and hardly any sun gets through. Just walk straight. You know how to walk straight in the woods, don’t you?

Something was down there. I could hear it sloshing in sludge. No way was it a bear because there was no breathing or grunting, and it sounded like shoes. Two feet stomping.

I stepped close, bat in one hand, phone in the other. I told myself I was safe—the hole was deep, and whatever it was would have gotten itself out if it could. I peered over and my world went sideways.

“Hey,” he said. “Don’t freak out.”

I dropped to my knees. I felt… crazy. It was Milo. But not Milo. It was Milo from five years ago dressed in the matching Halloween costumes we wore in third grade.

Choking.

I was choking on something—on nothing. On the absence of air. "I can't..."

"Breathe. You can't breathe." Milo said, clawing at the wall of dirt as high up as he could reach. "Get me out and I'll help you."

I tugged at my crew-neck collar. The more I pulled, the stronger the crush on my larynx. I tore open my coat and air rushed my lungs. I crawled as fast as I could on all fours away from the hole. Wings, slow and heavy, stretched above me. Giant herons. Dragons. Wings so large they were out of time. I was delirious.

I shut my eyes and prayed to the void—to nothing. If there was a god, where was he when Lula died? Why would he come here now, to me, when he didn’t go to her, small as she was then. No, no praying. I’m just… hungry. I’m dizzy and hungry and scared and everything will be fine. I’ll get up and I won’t look in the hole. I’ll go home.

I opened my eyes to stillness. I never really noticed how the trees look brighter in the fading light, how the woods breathe as if they’re not a million separate things but one thing.

"Listen, you don't want to be—”

My head snapped at the sound of his voice, slamming hard against the oak and pin-holing my vision. I fumbled for my phone, searching my pockets, patting the dirt and roots around me. My head pulsed with pain.

“Benners? Did you just hit your head…? I can help you.”

The breath stopped in my chest. Milo called me Benners when we were little. I stared at the hole and something in me shifted. Milo, I said without sound. Milo. My lips formed his name over and over.

“Benny, it’s me. I promise. Weird, right?” Milo laughed. It was his laugh but squeakier, like when he was little. I saw the bat at the edge of the hole. My phone was there, probably, but the woods were a midnight blue now. Impossible to see a small black phone. But the bat shone like an oblong moon.

“Benners, you have to hurry. Out here at night, it gets really thin—the line between where you are and I am. You can see it… if you want."

I crawled toward the bat, each limb moving like a stringed puppet, slow and deliberate until my fingers closed around the barrel. I edged toward the opening and peered over.

"See it?" Milo ran his finger across the air, horizontally. "It's right here," he said, pointing to nothing.

I raised my arm into the space between us and he fell back, scrambling to the far end of his hole. The dreg at his feet sloshed.

"Stop! Not yet! Don't touch it!"

I froze, my arm suspended.

"Draw back! Draw back!" He was yelling now. I couldn't understand the words. They were foreign and senseless to me in the panic. From the barn came a high-pitched scream. There was nowhere to run but inward. On my knees, with my hands over my head, folded small, just like they taught us in school for when a tornado comes.

I don't know how much time passed, or if it passed at all. The cold bloomed in my bones, everything about me felt slow and heavy. I wanted sleep, and the forest floor felt warm. If I could just sink into it... I was sure its heat would thaw my blood.

“Benners...? You okay? You'll freeze out there. Come into the hole. It’s warm, and nothing can hurt you here.”

I could no longer make out the shapes of the trees or see the angles of my folded limbs. The night was blank. “What was that scream?” I whispered.

“A barn owl. But he’s not happy. He’s scared or mad. They scream like that when there’s danger.”

“Owls don’t make that sound," I said. "That was a lady being murdered.”

Milo laughed, and memories sped through me—his trundle bed, waffles in the morning while we watched Justice League, his baby sister Lula before she…

“Barn owls scream, they don’t hoot like they do in picture books,” he said.

A light flicked on in the hole and I shot straight up. Milo’s face lit bright. I could see his missing baby teeth, and my phone in his hand.

“Milo… I’m going to die out here in this cold if I don’t get help. Please give it to me.”

He ran his hand across the edges. “There’s so much I want to tell you, Benny. But I can’t do it with words. I can only show you. You’re right though, about you dying out here. It won’t be from the cold. Dying from the cold is easy, you just get confused and tired and then lose consciousness, and your heart stops. Peaceful. You’re not gonna die peaceful.”

“You’re scaring me!”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you—I wouldn’t shout. It already knows you’re here. It can smell you, and the barn owl warned us it was coming.”

“What can? What can smell me?”

“Snaggles,” Milo said, his tiny hand reaching for mine. “Here. I’ll help you get in the hole.”

“Snaggles? The bear... from when we were scouts?”

Milo nodded. He was calm and pensive, like he was doing math in his head or thinking about something abstract.

“You’re not Milo. You’re some kind of a demon trying to trick me. Milo’s back at the house! He’s not little anymore. He’s home playing MortalXross, and he ranks super high. You’re a liar!” My vision pin-holed again. A thousand dancing lights that weren't there. A kaleidoscope in my brain.

“You’re confused, Benners. It’s hypothermia. Look,” he said, lifting his chin. “It’s the scar I got when we jumped off your bunk playing lava-lava. Do I still have it in 8th grade? Did it ever go away?”

The scar. The sight of it, so familiar, so Milo.

“It’s... not that red anymore.”

“Ha! No kidding? Scarred for life, as they say.” Milo ran his hand across his chin. “In my new life, I don’t ever get to 8th grade. You won’t either. But don’t worry, Eight is great! And..." he said, edging closer. "Guess what? You never die.”

I struggled to keep my eyes open, the lids were freighted with something warm and sweet—something I wanted more of. Nothing he said made sense. I can’t be eight. I’m already 14. So is Milo. I’m going to high school in the fall... Behind me, something heavy lumbered in the thicket. 

“He’s here, Benners. He’s going to eat you and you’re going to feel it. Get in the hole. I can save you. It can save you.”

... save me? My voice sounded far away. I wondered if I was talking or just thinking.

“It’s a hole door. Kind of like our tree door. It’s a way in and a way out.” Milo’s words were coming fast. Branches around us cracked like snapped bones.

“If it’s brown, lay down. If it’s black, fight back. If it’s white…” I whispered, my eyes closing.

“That’s right,” Milo said, “if it's white, goodnight.” He took my outstretched hand, pulling me into the hole.

“Is Lula here too?” I asked, leaning against Milo, my body thawing. He was warm as an oven.

“Lula died. We’re not dead, we’re just not here anymore.”

The bear was above us with his hot breath and rheumy eyes. The sound he made sent the barn owl screaming. Milo placed my hand in his and reached for the line. I could see it now, lambent and taut.

“I’m sorry,” he said. "About Maggie Jo. You loved her since we were little. You can't ever be Benny again. Not the Benny who would have married Maggie Jo. You’ll be the Benny who plays with me. Lava-lava!"

The claw struck the side of my face, tearing straight through to the bone. Milo touched the line and darkness took me. At first, a wave of something horrible, but then velvety warmth. And now? Now, I wait for you, Maggie Jo.

Enter through the woods off Old Barn Road. Walk half a mile by counting one thousand steps straight ahead and look for a hole. Tell my mom I'm sorry. Tell her this is all my fault and that I didn't know I would never—no, don't say anything. Just hurry.

Love,

The real Ben