She's Outside the Tent

"It's still looking pretty gnarly out there," said my brother, his face plastered to the living room window. The sky was lightening up, as if the storm had passed, but it was still casting our house in a dark emerald glow.

A round of thunder from far away startled Oscar out of his kitty slumber. He looked at me and I scratched behind his ears.

"What did I say?" called dad from the kitchen. "Get away from the window, Danny." 

Dad had just come in from his workshop and was wringing out his Brewers baseball cap in the sink.

Danny turned to me. He had that grin he wears when he's up to something. I hate that grin.

"What do you have in mind?" I asked.

Danny put his finger to his lips, glancing toward the kitchen.

"What if we snuck--"

The lights flickered and we both looked up.

Dad popped his head into the living room. "Ahh, crap. Guys--"

The lights went out and Oscar scampered away, down the hall.

"Dad!" I shouted, still thinking about Danny's grin.

"It's fine, Joey. Danny, find the--"

Danny's face lit up in front of me, a flashlight under his chin. 

"Yow!" he screamed.

"Bah!" I gave him a shove.

"...find the flashlights," finished dad, grabbing Danny's out of his hand. "Look, the storm is past us now. If the power doesn't come back on in the next couple minutes it means a power line is down and the city isn't gonna get out here until late in the night. What if we got the tent set up in the backyard?"

"Hell yeah!" exclaimed Danny.

"Watch it," said dad, shooting him a glare before crouching in front of me. "Joey, you OK with that? We can read some stories and hopefully watch the stars."

I knew these two were gonna wanna do something in this storm. Why couldn't we just stay inside? Why do they always push and push?

It was no use fighting them. Two-on-one meant it was happening and I didn't want to stay in here alone. It made me miss mom.

"Fine," I sighed.

---

“See, this is nice. Some good family time,” said dad, pounding in the last tent stake.  

“What if I have to pee in the middle of the night?” I asked. “I don’t wanna go outside in the dark.” 

“You can use dad’s beer bottles.”

“Danny.” 

Dad crawled inside and tucked himself into his sleeping bag and the three of us just fit in the old tent. He left the rain cover off the top for now (the storm’s passed) and he and Danny were on either side of me, pointing out stars and satellites. 

“If you gotta go,” dad said, “just walk around to the back of the tent. It’s part of camping.” 

I didn’t push the subject and decided to hold it in, but as soon as the conversation on constellations died down and their snoring started I felt it again. It was time to go. 

So I crawled out of my sleeping bag and unzipped the tent, taking care not to disturb Danny or dad.

Outside, the night was crisp, our lawn blanketed in a soft blue light from the moon. My bare feet kicked up dew as I walked around the tent. It was cold after the storm and I could see my breath…

My breath. I could see the fog, but it wasn’t rising. It was going down to my toes. I looked up at the moon, but the moon wasn’t shining down on Earth, either. It was there, but not casting any light. I wheeled around toward the house and the porchlight was doing the same thing - its light casted upward into the night. 

Then a light turned on in my bedroom.

Someone was in there.

A moment later Oscar pounced on the bedroom windowsill, looking out at me. He didn’t look right. It was hard to explain and I started to get scared until I realized what it was. This window wasn’t my bedroom. Sure, it was on my bedroom’s side of the house, but the room inside was dad’s bedroom. 

The whole house was like that. Like a mirror. 

“Da-dad?” 

I didn’t like this at all.

“Dad? Danny?” I rushed back to the tent but before I could get back in I froze as a face appeared in the lit window, peering out at me alongside Oscar.

It was her.

“DAD!” 

I scrambled back into the tent, zipping up the flap as quickly as I could behind me. Danny was sitting upright and dad was coming to his senses. 

“Dad!” 

“What? Wha-what’s going on, buddy?” 

“Dad, I saw her. She’s outside! She’s outside the tent in...in your room at the window but everything’s backwards and--” 

“Slow down, Joey. Who did you see?” 

“He saw mom,” said Danny.

“How did you know?”

“What?” said dad.

“Because you were scared and it scared me, too,” said Danny. “And the scariest thing I could think of would be seeing mom again.” 

“Jesus, boys…”

“Mom’s gone, Joey,” Danny continued, raising his voice now. “She’s dead.”

“DANNY!” said dad, but I couldn’t handle it. I didn’t care that she was out there and I didn’t care how scared I was. I knew these two wouldn’t believe me but they had to. I’d show them.

I unzipped the tent again.

“Look--” 

The world was ablaze. I covered my mouth and walked out of the tent. The outside was thick with heat and smelled of campfire, the sky burning auburn and the horizon masked in haze. Ash hung in the air like dust in a forgotten attic. Our house was billowing flames from each window. 

“Dad--”

I wheeled around but the tent was empty. I spun toward the house again.

“Dad! Danny!”

Something big flew overhead, masked with ashy haze. I squinted at the approaching form and its eyes lit blue, burning through the orange sky. 

“Joey, come fly with me.”

No. What the hell?

“Danny?”

It flapped its great wings and lowered to the ground. Danny’s face resolved into view, his eyes burning bright blue.

“She’s here,” he said. “Come fly with me.” 

“What’s happening? What...happened to our house? To you?”

Danny curled his lips into that grin again. 

“It’s my world. She’s here. Let’s make her pay for leaving us.” 

“Danny I don’t like this. Where’s dad?”

“To hell with dad. Let’s make her pay!”

Danny dove at me, his wings extended, but narrowly missed as I leapt back into the empty tent and zipped up the door. 

Catching my breath, I realized the heat was gone. So was the ash and the bright light of our burning house outside the tent.

Maybe...maybe I was dreaming. Maybe Danny and dad were outside looking at the stars and I had a nightmare, that’s all.

So, once again, I set out. 

Brilliant sunshine and blue skies greeted me. Chick-a-dee birds called overhead and I stepped into a lush green garden dotted with white, yellow, blue, and pink flowers. More than that, this garden was alive. Eyes peered from the shadows under the vegetation and bigger creatures with long legs like stilts stalked through the endless field in front of me.

I walked forward and some of the creatures took notice. All of them were smiling. Some were animals from my world -- lizards and deer -- and others looked like they were from a dream. They had smiling faces with long, slender logs. A frog’s head with the body of a blue shrub. A bird with long slim wings that twirled into the air.

And pixies.

These little flying creatures buzzed through the air ahead of me, smiling down and heading in one direction: a small hill at the end of a lone path which led to the edge of the clearing.

Mom sat on the hill. 

She was smiling, too, and the pixies were delivering flowers. They flew up to her, placing them in her hair, behind her ears, and between her bare toes. 

She was covered in the beautiful, colorful foliage of the garden. 

I ran toward her and she, too, took notice, smiling at me.

“Mom! Mom, please. Come back. I miss you. We miss you. Dad is so sad all the time and Danny -- even if he doesn’t say it, he misses you as much as I do. Please. Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.”

She stood and ushered me forward, beyond the hill where I couldn’t see. A fox trotted next to me and a lumbering bison with long, slender legs stopped in the path, nodded, then moved on.

I followed her, up and over the hill, to see where she was leading me.

It wasn’t far. Beyond the clearing, staked down just as it was in my own backyard, was my tent. 

Mom opened the tent flap, peered inside, then ushered me in. 

“I don’t want to go.” I was still a good distance away. “I want to stay here. With you.”

She closed her eyes and shook her head “no.” Another pixie delivered a bright blue hydrangea and placed it in the bouquet on the top of her head.

I felt my eyes well with tears but I didn’t want her to see me cry. 

“Please.”

Mom walked off, away from the tent and beyond the pale, into the clearing.

As much as I wanted to, I didn’t follow her. She didn’t ask me to. So I got back in the tent. 

As soon as I did, the brilliant sunshine outside died off. It was night in my backyard. But dad and Danny were still missing. 

Was this it? Did I have to keep going out there? Why did we come out here in the first place? It was those two -- always up to something, always planning crap I didn’t want to be a part of. And it was her, too. She was outside.

So, my hands shaking, I once again opened the tent flap.

A cold mist wrapped around my ankles as I stepped into a barren junkyard. Scrap metal and broken concrete scattered the scene in front of me, piled in little clumps and arranged in rows. Pools of stagnant water surrounded each pile. There was no moon here tonight.

As I approached the first row I noticed a name etched on one of the pieces of scrap. There was a name on each pile nearby. This was a graveyard.

Much like the garden before it and the hellscape before that, this graveyard seemed to span into eternity. 

“Hello?”

“Joey,” a deep voice called back. 

A moment later its owner stepped out from behind one of the junk pile graves.

“Dad?”

“I don’t know how to do this without her,” he said. 

“None of us do,” I said.

Then a third voice joined us.

“I have a plan if you two don’t.”

It was Danny, wearing that grin again.

“Would you stop?” I said, not able to muster anger any longer. I was tired. “Just...stop, Danny.” 

Dad looked down at his shoes and Danny started to climb a junk pile nearby.

“She’s down here, in this one,” he said.

“Stop!” 

I rushed to his side and grabbed him by the shirt. “Leave her alone. She’s...she’s not coming back and it wasn’t her fault.”

“Joey’s right,” said dad, still staring at his feet. “It’s all my fault.”

Danny started picking through the rubble on mom’s junk pile grave, tossing pieces of scrap aside.

“It’s not your fault either,” I said, tears again welling to my eyelids. “It’s no one’s fault, it’s just...she’s just...gone, guys.” 

Danny stopped. Dad looked up at me, tears in his eyes, too.

“She’s gone,” I repeated, and went back to the tent, wiping my cheeks. 

This time I went inside, curled up in the corner and shut my eyes.

She was supposed to be gone, but I knew she was still outside the tent somewhere. It made me feel rotten, like a patch of mold on a soft lemon.

“Joey?” 

I opened my eyes. 

“Joey, time to get up, buddy!”

It was dad. 

“Joey?”

I cleared my throat. 

“Is she out there still?”

A few seconds of silence.

“What?”

I held the tent zipper for a moment, knowing this time I’d find what I knew to be true outside.

When I opened the tent again, everything was back to normal. Our house was fine, it was a bright, clear morning, and dad and Danny were on the deck looking out at me.

“You slept in!” Danny called. “I was gonna wake you up earlier but dad wanted you to get some sleep. He said you were restless last night. I dunno, I slept right through it.”

“Come on inside, buddy,” said dad. “Power’s still out but we got some sausage going on the grill for breakfast.”

I tiptoed out of the tent. “Did you guys...see anything...weird last night?”

“Other than that storm?” asked Danny.

“Yeah...never mind,” I said. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

Danny went back inside and I gathered my stuff from the tent. When I turned around again, I saw that dad had joined me in the yard and Oscar was brushing against his leg.

“What’s going on, bud?”

I looked at Oscar, who glanced back at me for a moment. It almost looked like he was smiling.

“She was out here last night,” I said. “Outside the tent.”

Dad sighed, then smiled, too. He put his hand on my shoulder.

“I know she was.” 

I looked up at him, tears welling in my eyes again.

“She’s out here now,” he continued. “Watching over us.”

I let the tears go and dad bent down to give me a hug. I held onto him.

When we finally let go, the power came back on.