Two-Thirds Darkness

In the summertime, I always clung to the precious few hours of nighttime with selfish devotion. For two-thirds of each day, the sun hung overhead, and its unstoppable warmth and light sapped the energy of everything in the forest. I would at times retreat to the shade of my porch and wait there until the sun went down, so I could go breathe cool air and stare up at the stars in peace.

As the months went on and summer crumpled up into the past, sunlight grew rarer, and I realized that winter would bring the opposite problem. By late December, darkness took up the majority of every day, and I grew weary of the stars. I would shut myself up in my cabin, light every lamp, toss a few logs in the fireplace, and try to imagine summertime.  

           On those winter nights, that is how any visitor would find me. Zoned out, lying in bed, with a fire roaring. My cabin’s shape (a small, enclosed, one-room lean-to) and its position in an elevated clearing led to huge snowdrifts forming along two of the walls. Add in some wind howling past the door, and winter had sealed me in a warm acoustic bubble that no outside sound could penetrate.  

           Hence, I found myself very surprised on one such January night when I heard a sudden knocking at the door. At first, I thought I heard some log in the fireplace breaking apart in an odd way, or perhaps a squirrel running around on the roof. But the sound kept on repeating, so I went to the door and unlatched the piece of wood covering the peephole.

           I had expected, first of all, to see no one there—for the knocking to be some trick of the wind or a hallucination brought on by cabin fever. And there were really only two visitors I even halfway expected: an annoyed sheriff’s deputy doing a welfare check on the request of my concerned family back in the cities, or the landowner offering to let me ride out the storm in his much sturdier house. Both had happened in the past.

           Through the peephole, however, I instead saw a man huddling on my porch, coated in snow. He wore a hat that said “Sysadmins: The Thin Digital Line”, a flimsy sweatshirt emblazoned with the Blues logo, jeans, and a pair of tennis shoes. He shivered so much his whole frame quaked, and he buried his hands in his pockets.

           “Can I help you?” I asked, shouting over the blizzard.

           The man slowly turned his face towards me and opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, as if to warm his muscles enough to speak, but nothing besides a string of babbling nonsense came out. Something about “dog” and “location” and “park”. I asked him if he had been sent by the landowner, or if he had come off of the county road. He just screeched in response and clawed at the door, complaining of the cold.

           Such an odd and demanding fellow! Everything about him was odd—the sudden appearance without warning at the beginning of a terrible snowstorm, his lack of winter clothes, and the fact that he didn’t seem to know where he was. Concerned that he might have gone delirious from hypothermia, I decided I had to let him in.   

           I re-covered the peephole and undid the deadbolt. A mass of freezing air rushed into the cabin, and then the man tumbled in and collapsed on the floor. I grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him out of the way so I could close the door, then grabbed my hatchet in case he proved to be hostile.

           “Thank you, thank you…” he mumbled. I looked down at him and saw water dripping from his clothes. Soaked to his bones, in conditions like this, he must have been hypothermic. I set my hatchet down on the desk and started setting up the samovar—a neat Russian tea-making mechanism that needs no electricity.

           “You could’ve died out there. What the hell were you doing?” I asked.

           The man shivered and started to crawl towards the fireplace, wincing each time he pulled himself forward.

           “I…don’t know,” he mumbled, “I don’t know.”

           I finished setting up the samovar and picked the man up by the shoulders. He offered no resistance, and I noticed his clothes were even colder and wetter than I had presumed.

           “That’s no good. We’re gonna have to get you some dry clothes, okay? I have a couple extra outfits; you can borrow one for now. And you can have the bed, too. But what on earth were you doing?”

           I sat him down on the edge of the bed and tossed him some clothes from the cupboard. He clutched them close to his chest but then just stared at me distrustfully. I realized that he did not want to change in front of me, so I told him that I had to go to the outhouse and would be back shortly.

           I put on my coat and indeed did go out and use the outhouse, taking pains to ensure that the guidewire was looped onto a nail on the cabin’s doorframe. If the weather worsened to white-out conditions, it would be necessary to go outside without getting lost. I did my business quickly and made sure I had left a blanket and some TP in there. As I came back, however, I was suddenly hit by a sense of the oddity of the situation and approached the door quietly.

           Cautiously, now, I opened the door and peeked into the room. The bed sat across the room from the door, so right away I could see that the man no longer sat on it. I could also see my desk, and my hatchet wasn’t sitting there anymore. I cursed at myself for not bringing it with me. Then I slammed the door open as hard as I could, and it crashed into the man, who had been standing right behind it. He yelped and crashed to the ground, and I came running in.

           He writhed there on the ground, dressed in the dry clothes I had given him and holding the hatchet, babbling and drooling. I kicked his arm before sitting on top of him and prying the hatchet from his hands. He gasped in horror but soon stopped fighting, and I dragged him to the bed, where I tied him down. He thrashed about, trying to resist, but the elements had weakened him, and I bound his arms and legs without much difficulty. He passed out shortly thereafter, while I sat in my desk chair, hatchet in hand.

Around then, I was reading Brothers Karamazov for the third time, and I tried to get through some more while I watched over him, but I could hardly read a page without getting distracted. I didn’t have much else on my shelf. A Bible, a copy of a novel called Meet Me in St. Louis, and a wilderness survival guide. Each I had reread several times. Slowly, I bored myself enough to fall asleep.

           In the morning, I awoke to the man trying to untie the knots binding him to the bed. When I cleared my throat, he noticed that I had woken up, and this turned him towards panic. I guess the whole situation made me look like some crazy serial killer in the woods. To wake up, in a strange cabin, tied to a bed, with a smelly bearded man holding a hatchet as he watches you sleep? Horror, utter horror. I chuckled a bit at the absurdity.

           “Shhh, shhh,” I said. “Here, I’ll untie you. And I’ll go set the hatchet over by the door. You were hypothermic or something last night and acting funny. Do you feel better now? Do you need something to drink?”

           He nodded vigorously, so I brewed some tea with the samovar and brought it to him. He sat up in bed and began slurping it down. Halfway finished, he turned towards me and began to shake his head back and forth.

           I then grabbed some tea for myself and sat down at my desk. “I’m Robert, or Rob, if you’d like. The landowner lets me keep this little cabin on his property, since he really only uses the back part during hunting season. I live here year-round, trying to be a modern-day Thoreau, I guess. There’s not much more to know about me.

           “But about you I am curious. I don’t know how much, if anything, you remember, but yesterday you came a-knocking on my door, and when I gave you shelter, you preceded to lie in wait with that hatchet and try to kill me. I don’t blame you; you were clearly hypothermic and not thinking clearly. But what on earth were you doing out in these woods, and where did you come from?”

           He sipped some more tea and sat up straighter, pausing a bit to think through his response. I took the opportunity to glance out the window. Outside, the blizzard had kept up, and indeed turned into a white-out. There would be no travelling out for now, and I doubted that even my radio could pick up a signal.

           “I was just walking my dog, in the park. He got loose and ran into the trees, and I ran after him. All of a sudden, it started snowing all crazy, and I couldn’t find my way back. I walked for, I don’t know, maybe half an hour, and then I found this cabin. I knocked on the door, and you let me in, and that’s all I remember,” he explained.

           I set my teacup down and stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘the park’? Were you camping in the state forest?”

           “The state forest? Do you mean Forest Park? No, I was just in my local one…Eberwein Park, that’s it.”

           By this point I found myself puzzled. “Eberwein? There’s nothing of that name anywhere near here. The State Forest is the only park of any sort for miles.”

           “Well, it’d be easy for you to overlook it; it’s only a small neighborhood park. It’s on Baxter Road, right by Dierberg’s.”

           At this I stood up and started pacing, to calm my nerves. “Neighborhood park? There aren’t enough houses here for those. And even if there is, I know for a fact that there’s no ‘Baxter Road’ anywhere in this county. Sir, with the greatest respect, and I say this only because you are my most unexpected guest and I worry for your health, I am concerned you may have gotten concussed last night, that’s how little sense your answers are making. Can you just answer some quick questions for me? Just to make sure nothing’s wrong?”

           The man shifted around uncomfortably. “Sure.”

           “What’s your name?”

           “I go by Bobby.”

           “What day is it?”

           “Wednesday, I think, if I slept a whole night just now.”

            “Can you spell your name backwards?”

           “Uh…sure. Y, B, B, O, B.”

           “And what city are you in right now?”

           “Chesterfield, Missouri, I think. I’m pretty sure, but I might have crossed the city limits.”

           My mind was racing, and I needed to do something with my hands, so I started making breakfast in the kitchen area on the opposite side of the cabin. Bobby knew his name, and he could still reason enough to spell it backwards, and, furthermore, he seemed oriented in regard to time. But, in regard to space, he seemed utterly lost. The name ‘Chesterfield’ seemed familiar to me for some reason, but I knew for sure it was nowhere nearby.  

           “I’m afraid you must be confused. There’s no city named that anywhere near here. We’re actually in an unincorporated part of Koochiching County.”

           He moved to the edge of the bed and stretched his arms. “Koochiching County? Where’s that, Illinois? How far did I walk?”

           “Oh, you really must’ve gotten concussed, if you’re not messing with me. We’re in far northern Minnesota, almost to Canada. Where the hell are you from, where you could accidentally walk into Illinois? Milwaukee?”

           Bobby suddenly dashed over to the door and started shoving his feet into his tennis shoes, which still hadn’t dried out fully. Seeing that my hands were full—I was in the process of grating up some potatoes into hash browns—he started to yank on the deadbolt, but he couldn’t get it to go. I dropped the grater and hurried over to calm him down, and he punched me on the arm, before dropping down with a blood-curdling wail and crumpling up into a ball.

           “Just kill me!” he begged. “If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with! Don’t try and brainwash me! I know that I’m Bobby, and that I’m in the city of Chesterfield, Missouri, and that some crazy guy in the woods is keeping me prisoner. Oh god! Why me? Kill me or let me go! Get over with it! I’m not going insane!”

           I held up my hands and backed up into the kitchen. I slowly lowered myself down until I was laying on the floor, while keeping my hands visible, to make it clear I wasn’t threatening him, and then nodded towards the door.

           “You can undo the deadbolt easily, just do it slowly or it’ll jam. I’m not gonna keep you here against your will—it’s only that there’s a blizzard outside, and you came here saying you’re in Missouri, which makes me concerned. I can tell you with certainty, and I promise to God above that I’m not bullshitting you, we’re in rural Koochiching County. You don’t need to be afraid of me, you can take that hatchet there if it’d make you feel safe. Just, please. Don’t go out in the blizzard. You’ll die.”

           Bobby sniffled and wiped some tears from his eyes. He sobbed for a couple minutes before sitting up and asking for a phone charger.

           I motioned wearily at the fireplace. “That thing’s my only ‘charger’ of any sort. I left everything electric behind when I moved up here, besides the radio. Big change for me. I used to do I.T. for a biotech company in St. Louis, if you would believe that. Got sick of it, grew to hate the modern world and love nature. Now I live off my investments, read some old book, and romp around in the woods. Great, isn’t it? Or it would be, if I weren’t so alone all the time.”

           Bobby nodded and started to get up. “Hey, Rob, thank you for the tea, by the way. And for the shelter. I wish I had a place like this. But, uh…I need, uh…where the hell is the bathroom?”

           “Don’t have one,” I said, while pointing at the door. “Downsides of living in the woods. There’s an outhouse, though. Just borrow one of my coats—there’s no heating—and follow the guidewire there. I’m pretty sure I left some TP out.”

           “Thanks,” he said, while getting ready to go outside.

           While he went out, I continued making breakfast. Living in a place so isolated, and without any reliable form of refrigeration, I had defaulted to the same breakfast menu every day—hardtack biscuits with grape jelly, hash browns, some smoked pork, and canned fruit. Normally I drank plain water, but, on account of my guest, I poured two cups of tea instead.

           When I had finished everything, I realized that Bobby was taking a long time in coming back. I figured that he was just having a bad time in the shitter—recovering from hypothermia will do that to some people—but I figured I should go check on him, nonetheless.

           When I went out, however, I noticed that the guideline had disappeared, and realized with trepidation that it must have fallen down when I had been restraining Bobby the night before. Cursing my foolishness, I grabbed a rope from the cupboard and tied one end to my belt loop, and the other to the doorknob before venturing into the snow. After a couple of minutes of searching, I found the outhouse without Bobby inside. I spent maybe twenty minutes then searching for him, yelling my head off and running circles around the cabin, but I didn’t hear him so much as whisper or see from him as much as a pair of footprints. It was as if he had never existed at all. And I, feeling the cold seeping through my clothes, went back inside. I would call the landowner once the storm stopped, but, in the meantime, I would just wait. I knew, somehow, that Bobby would eventually find his way back.