u/Bigtimegush

“Kid, I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.”

 

My father used to say that to me whenever I felt the urge to be a smartass. Sure, I know what he meant, but I think about that saying a lot these days. It’s funny how much we truly do forget over the course of our lives. When we’re young things can seem so serious, world-ending, even, but after a few short months those same things fade into a distant memory. Give it a few years and it’s a foggy thought that barely crosses your mind.

 

Hell, a few decades down the road you think about it so little that it may never have happened in the first place.

 

Some of these things you’ll never think about again. They were nothing more than an inconsequential bump in the road of life. Sometimes you find the right trigger, and it all comes rushing back. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad…some things I suppose are just inescapable.

 

My father passed away last month. Pancreatic cancer.

 

We knew it was coming, of course, but even then, you’re never really ready for it. No matter what they say, nothing really prepares you for that moment it happens, let alone what follows.

Hospital bills, property taxes, burial costs, dealing with lawyers and wills and bequeathments.

 

Dying is a lot more expensive and complicated than it has any right to be.

 

My mother’s older and can’t really do much to help, I mean, my parents split when I was a teen, but they always were able to put their differences aside when it came to me. We don’t have much extended family, and as an only child everything kind of fell on me.

 

I’ve spent the better part of the last couple weeks getting my dad’s affairs in order, having to finalize bill payments, setting up the cremation services, and going through a lifetime of belongings trying to figure out what to keep and what needs to go. It’s a massive headache, but truthfully, I think it’s been distracting me from the grief, plus I’ve found a lot of things from my childhood and is bringing back to many great memories. So many moments we took for granted and never gave a second thought to.

 

That’s when I saw it.

 

That old red and black Schwinn cruiser Dad had gotten me for my tenth birthday.

 

I ran my fingers over the old chrome, spotted with freckles of rust, brushed off the old cracking leather seat; God…the good times I had on this bad boy. We used to ride all over town getting into trouble. We’d head over to old man Al’s hole in the wall comic shop, pedal out the creek and fish all day, ride up to the top of hills and glide down so fast our only options were only neighborhood glory or a trip to the emergency room. We took this old thing everywhere, just me and Tommy.

 

Tommy…

 

It’s been almost 30 years since I’ve even thought about him.

 

We met the first day of preschool, I was so nervous but so excited to make friends. We live in the pacific northwest with our backyard leading right into Deschuttes National Park, it’s not crazy isolated, but there weren’t a lot of kids around the neighborhood where I grew up.

 

How could I have forgotten…he was such an unassuming little boy, quiet and shy. Slightly chubby, round face and glasses too thick for someone his age. His messy brown hair in contrast with surprisingly clean clothes for a five-year-old. He was wearing a He-Man shirt and playing with Legos when I approached him.

 

“I like He-Man too! Who’s your favorite character?”

“..I like Man-E-Faces…” he replied, not looking up from his budding Lego tower.

“Oh he’s cool, I like Skeletor!”

“…you…you like the bad guys?”

“Well they’re all cool! Can’t have He-Man without the bad guys! I’m Chris!” I said excitedly jolting my hand out as my father had taught me.

“I’m Tommy,” he said, finally meeting my gaze. “Nice to meet you.”

 

That was that, we were inseparable from that day on.

 

Its incredible how simple the basis for a childhood friendship can be, but things carried such weight back then, everything just seemed to matter more when the entirety of your life span was shorter than the wait between seasons of Stranger Things.

 

From there on out that we did everything together. Every weekend was a sleepover, every afternoon was an adventure, but like most kids, summer vacation was what we spent all year dreaming about.

 

Tommy would usually come by my house in the mid-morning, his parents’ place wasn’t quite as large, and my house offered us a vast and mysterious woodland to explore. Well, okay it wasn’t vast nor mysterious, at least not the distance from the house that we were allowed to go, but imagination is a hell of a thing.

 

In second grade, with my dad’s help, we built a tree fort right at the property line of the woods, and that became our yearly base of operations for the summer’s exploration. We’d map out areas and landmarks, pretending we were Indianna Jones searching for magical lost treasures.

Every year the boundaries we could explore grew further and our map became more involved. Of course, my parents weren’t neglectful, and we weren’t idiots. Full grown adults go missing in national parks every year, we were strictly forbidden from going beyond a certain point away from the house, and that point was small rock face a couple hundred yards from the house.

 

Of course we’d push it, what kid wouldn’t, but we understood the very real danger. Hell, we’d both seen bears and bobcats tearing up trash cans in the neighborhood, we knew being smart didn’t mean we couldn’t be bold.

 

Sixth grade had just let out and we had plans to make it our biggest summer to date. We were heading off to middle school come the Fall, big kids at last, and we were growing painfully aware that as the years went by, our days of searching for the Arc of the Covenant in the forests of Oregon were slowly but surely coming to an end. We couldn’t be kids in fantasyland forever.

 

Neither of us had ever been what one could consider the “cool” kids, not that we cared, but social stigmas and the desire for acceptance start to become a pretty big deal, eventually, especially when you start wanting to girls to notice you and not because of your rad Dragonball Z t-shirt. Seventh grade was a new school, new people, a chance to reinvent ourselves.

 

Regardless though, we had to make this summer count, it had to be one we’d never forget.

 

But I did forget. I think I had to.

 

Tommy came riding up the driveway around ten in the morning, more excited than I’d seen him in years.

 

“Chris! Chris! We’re doing it this year; we’re going past the old rock face!” He yelled as he ran towards me.

“The rock face? Man, you know my parents said we can’t go beyond that, it’s a pretty steep drop…and we’ve never really explored the area,” I said, trying to hide my own excitement.

“Yeah but come on, we aren’t gonna get to do this much more, and you know this summer has to be our greatest yet! Don’t you wanna know what’s out there?”

“Well obviously, I just would rather us not die before we get girlfriends you know?”

“Pfft, you’re gonna be waiting a while for that,” he laughed, “but duh, we gotta plan it out. We’re not gonna go in there blind, we’ll make sure we’re stocked up on supplies and whatever else we need. Come on, man, this one’s gonna be epic!”

 

He’d become so confident in himself over the years, it was almost infectious. I knew trying to argue wasn’t going to work, not that I even wanted to.  So, we began to plan to go deeper into the woods than we ever had, defy my parents, and maybe even find a fortune in the process.

 

Tommy had been obsessed with pirate treasure for years, and while Oregon wasn’t exactly a hot bed of notorious pirates, there legitimately had been a number of old shipwrecks off the coast over the years. Could a rag tag group of buccaneers have buried their treasure in what would eventually become a national park?

 

Probably not, but so what? The journey was always what mattered most, that’s what we told ourselves.

 

The journey wasn’t worth it.

 

After a week of careful planning, we finally decided it was time. We were going to head out Saturday morning right after dawn. We made sure to stock up on everything two growing boys would need to survive the wilderness: Doritos, Mountain Dew, some rope and a flashlight, just in case, and of course trail mix.

 

We were set.

 

We told my parents we were staying in the fort for the night to make our preparations. Just after dawn broke, we loaded up our backpacks and headed out. It was such a nice morning we decided we’d make a whole hike out of it, leaned the old Schwinn up against the side of the fort and headed out towards the forbidden lands. It wasn’t a terribly long walk, after about 45 minutes or so we had finally arrived.

 

We stood atop the cliff overlooking our destiny and stared out into the unknown. We were so excited to finally see what lay beyond the border of our imaginations.

 

I mean, of course we knew what lay beyond the rock face. More trees, more rocks, an ever-continuing expanse of what we had already seen for years, but the sheer excitement of crossing into the forbidden dead zone, to actually know what lay beyond was truly thrilling for our pre-teen minds.

 

What we had built up in our minds as a massive rock face separating us from the great beyond, was in reality more like a 15 foot rocky angled incline, any abled body person would be able to maneuver their way down. Still, we threw down a line of rope tied to a tree near the top to enact a dramatic descent down a dangerous cliff side. For all we cared we were scaling down the side of Everest.

 

After some careful steps and angular movements, we had finally reached the base of our imagined mountain. Finally, the great beyond.

 

Looking back, we were so excited over nothing. There were trees, rocks, a small stream, much of what we had seen our entire lives. Visually we may as well have never left the protection of the backyard, but an explorer never rests. Who knows what secrets were hidden here in the unexplored new world?

 

We quickly got to work plotting our position on our homemade map. Naming nearby rock structures and trees as if they were incredible landmarks, knowing that future generations would one day see the area we had single handedly tamed.

 

God…it was all so innocent. Just two dipshit kids having the time of their lives over literally nothing, but at that moment, to us? It was everything.

 

We walked around pretending like we were naturalists we’d seen on TV, naming plans and trees, pretending we were avoiding being chased by wild animals, snacking on chips and soda, seeing whose ridiculous joke could get the other to break…honestly? It was so meaningless, so childish.

 

It was a perfect day. Maybe one of the last ones I’ve ever had.

 

As the sun began to dip close to the horizon we decided we’d better make our way back, we’d already broken enough rules, we certainly didn’t want to get caught out past dark. As we made our way back to the small rock face, however, we noticed something we had entirely missed on the way down.

 

A cave.

 

There at the base of the rock was a noticeable fissure in the stone. How had we not seen this before? It wasn’t particularly small, maybe four to five feet high, three feet wide, hell a lot of adults probably could have squeezed in there, but for a couple of twelve-year-olds it would be cake.

 

“Have you ever heard of any caves in this area..? I mean, it’s basically in your backyard,” Tommy said.

“No…I mean, I’ve never really looked into it…I know there’s cave systems all over the park but I never knew one was so close…maybe that’s why my parents always warned us to stay away from this area?”

“Maybe…but…what do you thinks inside??”

“I don’t know, Tommy, bugs? Bears? Bugbears? It’s a cave, caves are dangerous, we probably shouldn’t fuck with it,” I said, knowing full well what was about to happen.

 

We both stared as deeply as we could at the inky darkness beyond the stone.

 

Sure, I had my issues with the dark in general, but even just being near this was unsettling me.

 

It was like staring at an open wound. Like a void of absolute nothing had cut itself through the side of the small cliff. Nothing about the cave entrance even looked particularly odd, just…something about all of this felt unnatural? The feeling that ran down to my very core was so deep and primal I still really can’t properly put it into words.

 

I shone my flashlight in, but it simply could not penetrate the unyielding blackness. It wouldn’t even illuminate the walls of stone surrounding the entrance which rightfully should already have been visible even without the torch.

 

“Something is wrong about this,” I said before noticing Tommy stepping forward.

 

“Come on, man, you don’t wanna just check real quick? What if there really is treasure buried out here? A big last hurrah of adventure is what this summer is all about!”

 

Tommy was right, I did want to check it out. Why did I want to check it out? The thought of going in there was filling me with dread I still can’t properly explain, yet the longer we stood there, the stronger the allure became. My internal conflict didn’t have time to resolve itself before Tommy stepped across that boundary between the world and whatever it was we were staring into.

 

It was all so fast. Neither of us had time to react.

 

Long black fingers emerged in an instant and wrapped themselves around his shoulders, arms and hands extended from all directions enveloping Tommy before he could even yelp. There were so many, dozens and dozens of spindly jointed arms, ending in a multitude of long delicate fingers, too many fingers.

 

God there were so many fingers.

I call them arms but…that’s not really what they were…I still don’t know what they were. There was a form in there, the darkness in the cave wasn’t the absence of light, it was alive. I could feel it. It was malice and rage and hunger; it was all encompassing and yet it exuded no presence. It was the absence of physical form given shape.

 

The multitude of impossibly long fingers closed around his tiny frame, and all I heard was a sickening wet snap as he was ripped into the void at impossible speeds.

 

Then he was gone.

 

 

I’d like to tell you I screamed Tommy’s name, that I ran after him headfirst ready to do battle with whatever lied beyond the veil of the forest and this…thing. I’d like to tell you I went straight to the police, to our families. That we searched for Tommy, day in and day out. I’d like to tell you a lot of things, but none of that happened.

 

I just ran.

 

I turned and ran faster than I’ve ever run in my life, I had no thoughts, no emotions, all encompassing fear and the desire to survive overcame my very being. I don’t even know how I found my way out. I don’t know how I got home, but when I did, I went straight to my room and I climbed in bed and cried. I cried harder than I ever had in my life, not out of sadness or even fear, my body released every conceivable emotion at once and I collapsed into tears and pure exhaustion.

 

The next morning my mother woke me up for breakfast.

 

I was filthy.

 

Still in my clothes from the previous day, caked in dirt and sweat, I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? What do I say? My mind wrestled with what I had witnessed, I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t deal with this.

 

So, I didn’t.

 

I walked downstairs for breakfast, made mundane small talk with my mother as she prepared for her daily routine, watched cartoons and played video games. I just pretended like it was all okay. After a while I went outside, the air felt still, but all was normal. Just a regular summer day. I made my way down the clubhouse, my feet felt like they were made of concrete, my legs made of gelatin.

 

Everything’s fine. Everything has to be fine.

 

There it was, my Schwinn, lying in the field next to our fort where I’d left it the previous day. Looking at it made me feel ill, I just couldn’t do this. I picked it upright and started walking it back to the house. I rolled it into the garage, placed it in the corner behind some pieces of paneling, and that’s where it would sit. I couldn’t bear to even look at it.

 

My parents never asked about Tommy, actually…nobody did. Police never came asking questions, kids at school never brought him up. Teachers didn’t either for that matter, it was like…nobody knew to ask. It was so hard but day after day, it became easier and easier to carry on, to ignore it. Nothing happened, obviously nothing happened, if something happened people would notice it…wouldn’t they?

 

Why didn’t anyone notice?

 

I find myself back in the present. Staring at that old bike, right where I left it all those years ago. My phone is already in my hand opening the address book before I have a conscious thought about it. After a few rings she answers.

 

“Hello sweetie,” Mom says absent mindedly, “how’s everything going at your dad’s? Did you need Uncle Matt to help with anything?”

 

“Hi mom, no, no it’s not that…just going through things, really stirring up a lot of old memories, you know?”

 

“Oh of course, hon, I’m sorry I know your father and I didn’t get along much after the divorce, but I still have such fond memories of the old days, everything back then just seemed right.”

 

“Oh no I get it, I’m a grown man, Mom I’m well over the divorce just…do you remember my old friend, Tommy? We used to explore the woods out back and had that tree fort we’d set up every year?”

As soon as I finished speaking, I could hear here physically tighten. She was quiet for a long while, I started to worry she hadn’t heard me.

 

“Tommy? I…I don’t remember a Tommy? You really didn’t have many friends until middle school and by then you weren’t exploring the woods like you used to.”

 

“What?” I asked, already feeling sick, “no, no Tommy, you remember, I met him in preschool, he used to come over damn near every day? You know, Tommy…” I stopped. What was Tommy’s last name, again? Why couldn’t I remember his last name?

 

“Honey…are you feeling alright?

 

“Yeah…yeah, I’m fine, Mom, sorry I must just be exhausted. I think I’m gonna head in and take a break for a while, order some lunch, I just wanted to hear your voice is all.”

 

“Aw, well don’t push yourself too hard, call me later, love you.”

 

“Love you too, mom.”

 

 

 

I’ve been sitting in the garage staring at that god damn bike for over an hour now. I considered reaching out to Tommy’s parents but I can’t remember their address. I can’t even picture their faces.

 

Why did nobody ask about him? How is that possible?

 

I walk around to the back yard and off in the distance I see it, that crumbling old plywood fort. The decaying physical embodiment of my childhood.

 

The smell of mildew and dust fills my nostrils as I pry open the plywood door. The floor is littered with decades of filth and grime, tattered posters hang haphazardly off the walls, discarded soda cans strewn across the ground rusting like ancient relics.

Honestly, I doubt anyone’s set foot here since that day all those years ago.

 

I find what I’m looking for before I even realize I’m looking for it.

 

The map.

 

Discolored and brittle from years of moisture and the elements, I gently untie the fraying twine keeping it rolled up and lay it out on the collapsed desk before me, crude drawings of boundaries and streams, drawings of trees and animals only recognizable to a child. Ridiculous titles for landmarks like King’s Boulder and the Creek of Madness. All annotated and meticulously put together, truthfully all things considered, it wasn’t half bad, and right there at the bottom signed and dated.

 

Tommy and Chris – 1994

 

As I step outside the dilapidated child’s attempt at a building, I stare off into the distance. I can see it, that old rockface.

 

It’s mocking me.

 

I don’t know where you went, I don’t know why no one else seems to remember.

 

I don’t know how I forgot.

 

I’m sorry, Tommy.

 

I’m coming.

“Kid, I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.”

 

My father used to say that to me whenever I felt the urge to be a smartass. Sure, I know what he meant, but I think about that saying a lot these days. It’s funny how much we truly do forget over the course of our lives. When we’re young things can seem so serious, world-ending, even, but after a few short months those same things fade into a distant memory. Give it a few years and it’s a foggy thought that barely crosses your mind.

 

Hell, a few decades down the road you think about it so little that it may never have happened in the first place.

 

Some of these things you’ll never think about again. They were nothing more than an inconsequential bump in the road of life. Sometimes you find the right trigger, and it all comes rushing back. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad…some things I suppose are just inescapable.

 

My father passed away last month. Pancreatic cancer.

 

We knew it was coming, of course, but even then, you’re never really ready for it. No matter what they say, nothing really prepares you for that moment it happens, let alone what follows.

Hospital bills, property taxes, burial costs, dealing with lawyers and wills and bequeathments.

 

Dying is a lot more expensive and complicated than it has any right to be.

 

My mother’s older and can’t really do much to help, I mean, my parents split when I was a teen, but they always were able to put their differences aside when it came to me. We don’t have much extended family, and as an only child everything kind of fell on me.

 

I’ve spent the better part of the last couple weeks getting my dad’s affairs in order, having to finalize bill payments, setting up the cremation services, and going through a lifetime of belongings trying to figure out what to keep and what needs to go. It’s a massive headache, but truthfully, I think it’s been distracting me from the grief, plus I’ve found a lot of things from my childhood and is bringing back to many great memories. So many moments we took for granted and never gave a second thought to.

 

That’s when I saw it.

 

That old red and black Schwinn cruiser Dad had gotten me for my tenth birthday.

 

I ran my fingers over the old chrome, spotted with freckles of rust, brushed off the old cracking leather seat; God…the good times I had on this bad boy. We used to ride all over town getting into trouble. We’d head over to old man Al’s hole in the wall comic shop, pedal out the creek and fish all day, ride up to the top of hills and glide down so fast our only options were only neighborhood glory or a trip to the emergency room. We took this old thing everywhere, just me and Tommy.

 

Tommy…

 

It’s been almost 30 years since I’ve even thought about him.

 

We met the first day of preschool, I was so nervous but so excited to make friends. We live in the pacific northwest with our backyard leading right into Deschuttes National Park, it’s not crazy isolated, but there weren’t a lot of kids around the neighborhood where I grew up.

 

How could I have forgotten…he was such an unassuming little boy, quiet and shy. Slightly chubby, round face and glasses too thick for someone his age. His messy brown hair in contrast with surprisingly clean clothes for a five-year-old. He was wearing a He-Man shirt and playing with Legos when I approached him.

 

“I like He-Man too! Who’s your favorite character?”

“..I like Man-E-Faces…” he replied, not looking up from his budding Lego tower.

“Oh he’s cool, I like Skeletor!”

“…you…you like the bad guys?”

“Well they’re all cool! Can’t have He-Man without the bad guys! I’m Chris!” I said excitedly jolting my hand out as my father had taught me.

“I’m Tommy,” he said, finally meeting my gaze. “Nice to meet you.”

 

That was that, we were inseparable from that day on.

 

Its incredible how simple the basis for a childhood friendship can be, but things carried such weight back then, everything just seemed to matter more when the entirety of your life span was shorter than the wait between seasons of Stranger Things.

 

From there on out that we did everything together. Every weekend was a sleepover, every afternoon was an adventure, but like most kids, summer vacation was what we spent all year dreaming about.

 

Tommy would usually come by my house in the mid-morning, his parents’ place wasn’t quite as large, and my house offered us a vast and mysterious woodland to explore. Well, okay it wasn’t vast nor mysterious, at least not the distance from the house that we were allowed to go, but imagination is a hell of a thing.

 

In second grade, with my dad’s help, we built a tree fort right at the property line of the woods, and that became our yearly base of operations for the summer’s exploration. We’d map out areas and landmarks, pretending we were Indianna Jones searching for magical lost treasures.

Every year the boundaries we could explore grew further and our map became more involved. Of course, my parents weren’t neglectful, and we weren’t idiots. Full grown adults go missing in national parks every year, we were strictly forbidden from going beyond a certain point away from the house, and that point was small rock face a couple hundred yards from the house.

 

Of course we’d push it, what kid wouldn’t, but we understood the very real danger. Hell, we’d both seen bears and bobcats tearing up trash cans in the neighborhood, we knew being smart didn’t mean we couldn’t be bold.

 

Sixth grade had just let out and we had plans to make it our biggest summer to date. We were heading off to middle school come the Fall, big kids at last, and we were growing painfully aware that as the years went by, our days of searching for the Arc of the Covenant in the forests of Oregon were slowly but surely coming to an end. We couldn’t be kids in fantasyland forever.

 

Neither of us had ever been what one could consider the “cool” kids, not that we cared, but social stigmas and the desire for acceptance start to become a pretty big deal, eventually, especially when you start wanting to girls to notice you and not because of your rad Dragonball Z t-shirt. Seventh grade was a new school, new people, a chance to reinvent ourselves.

 

Regardless though, we had to make this summer count, it had to be one we’d never forget.

 

But I did forget. I think I had to.

 

Tommy came riding up the driveway around ten in the morning, more excited than I’d seen him in years.

 

“Chris! Chris! We’re doing it this year; we’re going past the old rock face!” He yelled as he ran towards me.

“The rock face? Man, you know my parents said we can’t go beyond that, it’s a pretty steep drop…and we’ve never really explored the area,” I said, trying to hide my own excitement.

“Yeah but come on, we aren’t gonna get to do this much more, and you know this summer has to be our greatest yet! Don’t you wanna know what’s out there?”

“Well obviously, I just would rather us not die before we get girlfriends you know?”

“Pfft, you’re gonna be waiting a while for that,” he laughed, “but duh, we gotta plan it out. We’re not gonna go in there blind, we’ll make sure we’re stocked up on supplies and whatever else we need. Come on, man, this one’s gonna be epic!”

 

He’d become so confident in himself over the years, it was almost infectious. I knew trying to argue wasn’t going to work, not that I even wanted to.  So, we began to plan to go deeper into the woods than we ever had, defy my parents, and maybe even find a fortune in the process.

 

Tommy had been obsessed with pirate treasure for years, and while Oregon wasn’t exactly a hot bed of notorious pirates, there legitimately had been a number of old shipwrecks off the coast over the years. Could a rag tag group of buccaneers have buried their treasure in what would eventually become a national park?

 

Probably not, but so what? The journey was always what mattered most, that’s what we told ourselves.

 

The journey wasn’t worth it.

 

After a week of careful planning, we finally decided it was time. We were going to head out Saturday morning right after dawn. We made sure to stock up on everything two growing boys would need to survive the wilderness: Doritos, Mountain Dew, some rope and a flashlight, just in case, and of course trail mix.

 

We were set.

 

We told my parents we were staying in the fort for the night to make our preparations. Just after dawn broke, we loaded up our backpacks and headed out. It was such a nice morning we decided we’d make a whole hike out of it, leaned the old Schwinn up against the side of the fort and headed out towards the forbidden lands. It wasn’t a terribly long walk, after about 45 minutes or so we had finally arrived.

 

We stood atop the cliff overlooking our destiny and stared out into the unknown. We were so excited to finally see what lay beyond the border of our imaginations.

 

I mean, of course we knew what lay beyond the rock face. More trees, more rocks, an ever-continuing expanse of what we had already seen for years, but the sheer excitement of crossing into the forbidden dead zone, to actually know what lay beyond was truly thrilling for our pre-teen minds.

 

What we had built up in our minds as a massive rock face separating us from the great beyond, was in reality more like a 15 foot rocky angled incline, any abled body person would be able to maneuver their way down. Still, we threw down a line of rope tied to a tree near the top to enact a dramatic descent down a dangerous cliff side. For all we cared we were scaling down the side of Everest.

 

After some careful steps and angular movements, we had finally reached the base of our imagined mountain. Finally, the great beyond.

 

Looking back, we were so excited over nothing. There were trees, rocks, a small stream, much of what we had seen our entire lives. Visually we may as well have never left the protection of the backyard, but an explorer never rests. Who knows what secrets were hidden here in the unexplored new world?

 

We quickly got to work plotting our position on our homemade map. Naming nearby rock structures and trees as if they were incredible landmarks, knowing that future generations would one day see the area we had single handedly tamed.

 

God…it was all so innocent. Just two dipshit kids having the time of their lives over literally nothing, but at that moment, to us? It was everything.

 

We walked around pretending like we were naturalists we’d seen on TV, naming plans and trees, pretending we were avoiding being chased by wild animals, snacking on chips and soda, seeing whose ridiculous joke could get the other to break…honestly? It was so meaningless, so childish.

 

It was a perfect day. Maybe one of the last ones I’ve ever had.

 

As the sun began to dip close to the horizon we decided we’d better make our way back, we’d already broken enough rules, we certainly didn’t want to get caught out past dark. As we made our way back to the small rock face, however, we noticed something we had entirely missed on the way down.

 

A cave.

 

There at the base of the rock was a noticeable fissure in the stone. How had we not seen this before? It wasn’t particularly small, maybe four to five feet high, three feet wide, hell a lot of adults probably could have squeezed in there, but for a couple of twelve-year-olds it would be cake.

 

“Have you ever heard of any caves in this area..? I mean, it’s basically in your backyard,” Tommy said.

“No…I mean, I’ve never really looked into it…I know there’s cave systems all over the park but I never knew one was so close…maybe that’s why my parents always warned us to stay away from this area?”

“Maybe…but…what do you thinks inside??”

“I don’t know, Tommy, bugs? Bears? Bugbears? It’s a cave, caves are dangerous, we probably shouldn’t fuck with it,” I said, knowing full well what was about to happen.

 

We both stared as deeply as we could at the inky darkness beyond the stone.

 

Sure, I had my issues with the dark in general, but even just being near this was unsettling me.

 

It was like staring at an open wound. Like a void of absolute nothing had cut itself through the side of the small cliff. Nothing about the cave entrance even looked particularly odd, just…something about all of this felt unnatural? The feeling that ran down to my very core was so deep and primal I still really can’t properly put it into words.

 

I shone my flashlight in, but it simply could not penetrate the unyielding blackness. It wouldn’t even illuminate the walls of stone surrounding the entrance which rightfully should already have been visible even without the torch.

 

“Something is wrong about this,” I said before noticing Tommy stepping forward.

 

“Come on, man, you don’t wanna just check real quick? What if there really is treasure buried out here? A big last hurrah of adventure is what this summer is all about!”

 

Tommy was right, I did want to check it out. Why did I want to check it out? The thought of going in there was filling me with dread I still can’t properly explain, yet the longer we stood there, the stronger the allure became. My internal conflict didn’t have time to resolve itself before Tommy stepped across that boundary between the world and whatever it was we were staring into.

 

It was all so fast. Neither of us had time to react.

 

Long black fingers emerged in an instant and wrapped themselves around his shoulders, arms and hands extended from all directions enveloping Tommy before he could even yelp. There were so many, dozens and dozens of spindly jointed arms, ending in a multitude of long delicate fingers, too many fingers.

 

God there were so many fingers.

I call them arms but…that’s not really what they were…I still don’t know what they were. There was a form in there, the darkness in the cave wasn’t the absence of light, it was alive. I could feel it. It was malice and rage and hunger; it was all encompassing and yet it exuded no presence. It was the absence of physical form given shape.

 

The multitude of impossibly long fingers closed around his tiny frame, and all I heard was a sickening wet snap as he was ripped into the void at impossible speeds.

 

Then he was gone.

 

 

I’d like to tell you I screamed Tommy’s name, that I ran after him headfirst ready to do battle with whatever lied beyond the veil of the forest and this…thing. I’d like to tell you I went straight to the police, to our families. That we searched for Tommy, day in and day out. I’d like to tell you a lot of things, but none of that happened.

 

I just ran.

 

I turned and ran faster than I’ve ever run in my life, I had no thoughts, no emotions, all encompassing fear and the desire to survive overcame my very being. I don’t even know how I found my way out. I don’t know how I got home, but when I did, I went straight to my room and I climbed in bed and cried. I cried harder than I ever had in my life, not out of sadness or even fear, my body released every conceivable emotion at once and I collapsed into tears and pure exhaustion.

 

The next morning my mother woke me up for breakfast.

 

I was filthy.

 

Still in my clothes from the previous day, caked in dirt and sweat, I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? What do I say? My mind wrestled with what I had witnessed, I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t deal with this.

 

So, I didn’t.

 

I walked downstairs for breakfast, made mundane small talk with my mother as she prepared for her daily routine, watched cartoons and played video games. I just pretended like it was all okay. After a while I went outside, the air felt still, but all was normal. Just a regular summer day. I made my way down the clubhouse, my feet felt like they were made of concrete, my legs made of gelatin.

 

Everything’s fine. Everything has to be fine.

 

There it was, my Schwinn, lying in the field next to our fort where I’d left it the previous day. Looking at it made me feel ill, I just couldn’t do this. I picked it upright and started walking it back to the house. I rolled it into the garage, placed it in the corner behind some pieces of paneling, and that’s where it would sit. I couldn’t bear to even look at it.

 

My parents never asked about Tommy, actually…nobody did. Police never came asking questions, kids at school never brought him up. Teachers didn’t either for that matter, it was like…nobody knew to ask. It was so hard but day after day, it became easier and easier to carry on, to ignore it. Nothing happened, obviously nothing happened, if something happened people would notice it…wouldn’t they?

 

Why didn’t anyone notice?

 

I find myself back in the present. Staring at that old bike, right where I left it all those years ago. My phone is already in my hand opening the address book before I have a conscious thought about it. After a few rings she answers.

 

“Hello sweetie,” Mom says absent mindedly, “how’s everything going at your dad’s? Did you need Uncle Matt to help with anything?”

 

“Hi mom, no, no it’s not that…just going through things, really stirring up a lot of old memories, you know?”

 

“Oh of course, hon, I’m sorry I know your father and I didn’t get along much after the divorce, but I still have such fond memories of the old days, everything back then just seemed right.”

 

“Oh no I get it, I’m a grown man, Mom I’m well over the divorce just…do you remember my old friend, Tommy? We used to explore the woods out back and had that tree fort we’d set up every year?”

As soon as I finished speaking, I could hear here physically tighten. She was quiet for a long while, I started to worry she hadn’t heard me.

 

“Tommy? I…I don’t remember a Tommy? You really didn’t have many friends until middle school and by then you weren’t exploring the woods like you used to.”

 

“What?” I asked, already feeling sick, “no, no Tommy, you remember, I met him in preschool, he used to come over damn near every day? You know, Tommy…” I stopped. What was Tommy’s last name, again? Why couldn’t I remember his last name?

 

“Honey…are you feeling alright?

 

“Yeah…yeah, I’m fine, Mom, sorry I must just be exhausted. I think I’m gonna head in and take a break for a while, order some lunch, I just wanted to hear your voice is all.”

 

“Aw, well don’t push yourself too hard, call me later, love you.”

 

“Love you too, mom.”

 

 

 

I’ve been sitting in the garage staring at that god damn bike for over an hour now. I considered reaching out to Tommy’s parents but I can’t remember their address. I can’t even picture their faces.

 

Why did nobody ask about him? How is that possible?

 

I walk around to the back yard and off in the distance I see it, that crumbling old plywood fort. The decaying physical embodiment of my childhood.

 

The smell of mildew and dust fills my nostrils as I pry open the plywood door. The floor is littered with decades of filth and grime, tattered posters hang haphazardly off the walls, discarded soda cans strewn across the ground rusting like ancient relics.

Honestly, I doubt anyone’s set foot here since that day all those years ago.

 

I find what I’m looking for before I even realize I’m looking for it.

 

The map.

 

Discolored and brittle from years of moisture and the elements, I gently untie the fraying twine keeping it rolled up and lay it out on the collapsed desk before me, crude drawings of boundaries and streams, drawings of trees and animals only recognizable to a child. Ridiculous titles for landmarks like King’s Boulder and the Creek of Madness. All annotated and meticulously put together, truthfully all things considered, it wasn’t half bad, and right there at the bottom signed and dated.

 

Tommy and Chris – 1994

 

As I step outside the dilapidated child’s attempt at a building, I stare off into the distance. I can see it, that old rockface.

 

It’s mocking me.

 

I don’t know where you went, I don’t know why no one else seems to remember.

 

I don’t know how I forgot.

 

I’m sorry, Tommy.

 

I’m coming.

Hi all, never tried writing a story before, but Creep Cast weekly keeps giving me the kick in the ass to try, so if anybody reads and has any advice or pointers or critiques please let me know! I had a lot of fun writing it and would definitely like to try more. Thanks!

“Kid, I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.”

 

My father used to say that to me whenever I felt the urge to be a smartass. Sure, I know what he meant, but I think about that saying a lot these days. It’s funny how much we truly do forget over the course of our lives. When we’re young things can seem so serious, world-ending, even, but after a few short months those same things fade into a distant memory. Give it a few years and it’s a foggy thought that barely crosses your mind.

 

Hell, a few decades down the road you think about it so little that it may never have happened in the first place.

 

Some of these things you’ll never think about again. They were nothing more than an inconsequential bump in the road of life. Sometimes you find the right trigger, and it all comes rushing back. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad…some things I suppose are just inescapable.

 

My father passed away last month. Pancreatic cancer.

 

We knew it was coming, of course, but even then, you’re never really ready for it. No matter what they say, nothing really prepares you for that moment it happens, let alone what follows.

Hospital bills, property taxes, burial costs, dealing with lawyers and wills and bequeathments.

 

Dying is a lot more expensive and complicated than it has any right to be.

 

My mother’s older and can’t really do much to help, I mean, my parents split when I was a teen, but they always were able to put their differences aside when it came to me. We don’t have much extended family, and as an only child everything kind of fell on me.

 

I’ve spent the better part of the last couple weeks getting my dad’s affairs in order, having to finalize bill payments, setting up the cremation services, and going through a lifetime of belongings trying to figure out what to keep and what needs to go. It’s a massive headache, but truthfully, I think it’s been distracting me from the grief, plus I’ve found a lot of things from my childhood and is bringing back to many great memories. So many moments we took for granted and never gave a second thought to.

 

That’s when I saw it.

 

That old red and black Schwinn cruiser Dad had gotten me for my tenth birthday.

 

I ran my fingers over the old chrome, spotted with freckles of rust, brushed off the old cracking leather seat; God…the good times I had on this bad boy. We used to ride all over town getting into trouble. We’d head over to old man Al’s hole in the wall comic shop, pedal out the creek and fish all day, ride up to the top of hills and glide down so fast our only options were only neighborhood glory or a trip to the emergency room. We took this old thing everywhere, just me and Tommy.

 

Tommy…

 

It’s been almost 30 years since I’ve even thought about him.

 

We met the first day of preschool, I was so nervous but so excited to make friends. We live in the pacific northwest with our backyard leading right into Deschuttes National Park, it’s not crazy isolated, but there weren’t a lot of kids around the neighborhood where I grew up.

 

How could I have forgotten…he was such an unassuming little boy, quiet and shy. Slightly chubby, round face and glasses too thick for someone his age. His messy brown hair in contrast with surprisingly clean clothes for a five-year-old. He was wearing a He-Man shirt and playing with Legos when I approached him.

 

“I like He-Man too! Who’s your favorite character?”

“..I like Man-E-Faces…” he replied, not looking up from his budding Lego tower.

“Oh he’s cool, I like Skeletor!”

“…you…you like the bad guys?”

“Well they’re all cool! Can’t have He-Man without the bad guys! I’m Chris!” I said excitedly jolting my hand out as my father had taught me.

“I’m Tommy,” he said, finally meeting my gaze. “Nice to meet you.”

 

That was that, we were inseparable from that day on.

 

Its incredible how simple the basis for a childhood friendship can be, but things carried such weight back then, everything just seemed to matter more when the entirety of your life span was shorter than the wait between seasons of Stranger Things.

 

From there on out that we did everything together. Every weekend was a sleepover, every afternoon was an adventure, but like most kids, summer vacation was what we spent all year dreaming about.

 

Tommy would usually come by my house in the mid-morning, his parents’ place wasn’t quite as large, and my house offered us a vast and mysterious woodland to explore. Well, okay it wasn’t vast nor mysterious, at least not the distance from the house that we were allowed to go, but imagination is a hell of a thing.

 

In second grade, with my dad’s help, we built a tree fort right at the property line of the woods, and that became our yearly base of operations for the summer’s exploration. We’d map out areas and landmarks, pretending we were Indianna Jones searching for magical lost treasures.

Every year the boundaries we could explore grew further and our map became more involved. Of course, my parents weren’t neglectful, and we weren’t idiots. Full grown adults go missing in national parks every year, we were strictly forbidden from going beyond a certain point away from the house, and that point was small rock face a couple hundred yards from the house.

 

Of course we’d push it, what kid wouldn’t, but we understood the very real danger. Hell, we’d both seen bears and bobcats tearing up trash cans in the neighborhood, we knew being smart didn’t mean we couldn’t be bold.

 

Sixth grade had just let out and we had plans to make it our biggest summer to date. We were heading off to middle school come the Fall, big kids at last, and we were growing painfully aware that as the years went by, our days of searching for the Arc of the Covenant in the forests of Oregon were slowly but surely coming to an end. We couldn’t be kids in fantasyland forever.

 

Neither of us had ever been what one could consider the “cool” kids, not that we cared, but social stigmas and the desire for acceptance start to become a pretty big deal, eventually, especially when you start wanting to girls to notice you and not because of your rad Dragonball Z t-shirt. Seventh grade was a new school, new people, a chance to reinvent ourselves.

 

Regardless though, we had to make this summer count, it had to be one we’d never forget.

 

But I did forget. I think I had to.

 

Tommy came riding up the driveway around ten in the morning, more excited than I’d seen him in years.

 

“Chris! Chris! We’re doing it this year; we’re going past the old rock face!” He yelled as he ran towards me.

“The rock face? Man, you know my parents said we can’t go beyond that, it’s a pretty steep drop…and we’ve never really explored the area,” I said, trying to hide my own excitement.

“Yeah but come on, we aren’t gonna get to do this much more, and you know this summer has to be our greatest yet! Don’t you wanna know what’s out there?”

“Well obviously, I just would rather us not die before we get girlfriends you know?”

“Pfft, you’re gonna be waiting a while for that,” he laughed, “but duh, we gotta plan it out. We’re not gonna go in there blind, we’ll make sure we’re stocked up on supplies and whatever else we need. Come on, man, this one’s gonna be epic!”

 

He’d become so confident in himself over the years, it was almost infectious. I knew trying to argue wasn’t going to work, not that I even wanted to.  So, we began to plan to go deeper into the woods than we ever had, defy my parents, and maybe even find a fortune in the process.

 

Tommy had been obsessed with pirate treasure for years, and while Oregon wasn’t exactly a hot bed of notorious pirates, there legitimately had been a number of old shipwrecks off the coast over the years. Could a rag tag group of buccaneers have buried their treasure in what would eventually become a national park?

 

Probably not, but so what? The journey was always what mattered most, that’s what we told ourselves.

 

The journey wasn’t worth it.

 

After a week of careful planning, we finally decided it was time. We were going to head out Saturday morning right after dawn. We made sure to stock up on everything two growing boys would need to survive the wilderness: Doritos, Mountain Dew, some rope and a flashlight, just in case, and of course trail mix.

 

We were set.

 

We told my parents we were staying in the fort for the night to make our preparations. Just after dawn broke, we loaded up our backpacks and headed out. It was such a nice morning we decided we’d make a whole hike out of it, leaned the old Schwinn up against the side of the fort and headed out towards the forbidden lands. It wasn’t a terribly long walk, after about 45 minutes or so we had finally arrived.

 

We stood atop the cliff overlooking our destiny and stared out into the unknown. We were so excited to finally see what lay beyond the border of our imaginations.

 

I mean, of course we knew what lay beyond the rock face. More trees, more rocks, an ever-continuing expanse of what we had already seen for years, but the sheer excitement of crossing into the forbidden dead zone, to actually know what lay beyond was truly thrilling for our pre-teen minds.

 

What we had built up in our minds as a massive rock face separating us from the great beyond, was in reality more like a 15 foot rocky angled incline, any abled body person would be able to maneuver their way down. Still, we threw down a line of rope tied to a tree near the top to enact a dramatic descent down a dangerous cliff side. For all we cared we were scaling down the side of Everest.

 

After some careful steps and angular movements, we had finally reached the base of our imagined mountain. Finally, the great beyond.

 

Looking back, we were so excited over nothing. There were trees, rocks, a small stream, much of what we had seen our entire lives. Visually we may as well have never left the protection of the backyard, but an explorer never rests. Who knows what secrets were hidden here in the unexplored new world?

 

We quickly got to work plotting our position on our homemade map. Naming nearby rock structures and trees as if they were incredible landmarks, knowing that future generations would one day see the area we had single handedly tamed.

 

God…it was all so innocent. Just two dipshit kids having the time of their lives over literally nothing, but at that moment, to us? It was everything.

 

We walked around pretending like we were naturalists we’d seen on TV, naming plans and trees, pretending we were avoiding being chased by wild animals, snacking on chips and soda, seeing whose ridiculous joke could get the other to break…honestly? It was so meaningless, so childish.

 

It was a perfect day. Maybe one of the last ones I’ve ever had.

 

As the sun began to dip close to the horizon we decided we’d better make our way back, we’d already broken enough rules, we certainly didn’t want to get caught out past dark. As we made our way back to the small rock face, however, we noticed something we had entirely missed on the way down.

 

A cave.

 

There at the base of the rock was a noticeable fissure in the stone. How had we not seen this before? It wasn’t particularly small, maybe four to five feet high, three feet wide, hell a lot of adults probably could have squeezed in there, but for a couple of twelve-year-olds it would be cake.

 

“Have you ever heard of any caves in this area..? I mean, it’s basically in your backyard,” Tommy said.

“No…I mean, I’ve never really looked into it…I know there’s cave systems all over the park but I never knew one was so close…maybe that’s why my parents always warned us to stay away from this area?”

“Maybe…but…what do you thinks inside??”

“I don’t know, Tommy, bugs? Bears? Bugbears? It’s a cave, caves are dangerous, we probably shouldn’t fuck with it,” I said, knowing full well what was about to happen.

 

We both stared as deeply as we could at the inky darkness beyond the stone.

 

Sure, I had my issues with the dark in general, but even just being near this was unsettling me.

 

It was like staring at an open wound. Like a void of absolute nothing had cut itself through the side of the small cliff. Nothing about the cave entrance even looked particularly odd, just…something about all of this felt unnatural? The feeling that ran down to my very core was so deep and primal I still really can’t properly put it into words.

 

I shone my flashlight in, but it simply could not penetrate the unyielding blackness. It wouldn’t even illuminate the walls of stone surrounding the entrance which rightfully should already have been visible even without the torch.

 

“Something is wrong about this,” I said before noticing Tommy stepping forward.

 

“Come on, man, you don’t wanna just check real quick? What if there really is treasure buried out here? A big last hurrah of adventure is what this summer is all about!”

 

Tommy was right, I did want to check it out. Why did I want to check it out? The thought of going in there was filling me with dread I still can’t properly explain, yet the longer we stood there, the stronger the allure became. My internal conflict didn’t have time to resolve itself before Tommy stepped across that boundary between the world and whatever it was we were staring into.

 

It was all so fast. Neither of us had time to react.

 

Long black fingers emerged in an instant and wrapped themselves around his shoulders, arms and hands extended from all directions enveloping Tommy before he could even yelp. There were so many, dozens and dozens of spindly jointed arms, ending in a multitude of long delicate fingers, too many fingers.

 

God there were so many fingers.

I call them arms but…that’s not really what they were…I still don’t know what they were. There was a form in there, the darkness in the cave wasn’t the absence of light, it was alive. I could feel it. It was malice and rage and hunger; it was all encompassing and yet it exuded no presence. It was the absence of physical form given shape.

 

The multitude of impossibly long fingers closed around his tiny frame, and all I heard was a sickening wet snap as he was ripped into the void at impossible speeds.

 

Then he was gone.

 

 

I’d like to tell you I screamed Tommy’s name, that I ran after him headfirst ready to do battle with whatever lied beyond the veil of the forest and this…thing. I’d like to tell you I went straight to the police, to our families. That we searched for Tommy, day in and day out. I’d like to tell you a lot of things, but none of that happened.

 

I just ran.

 

I turned and ran faster than I’ve ever run in my life, I had no thoughts, no emotions, all encompassing fear and the desire to survive overcame my very being. I don’t even know how I found my way out. I don’t know how I got home, but when I did, I went straight to my room and I climbed in bed and cried. I cried harder than I ever had in my life, not out of sadness or even fear, my body released every conceivable emotion at once and I collapsed into tears and pure exhaustion.

 

The next morning my mother woke me up for breakfast.

 

I was filthy.

 

Still in my clothes from the previous day, caked in dirt and sweat, I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? What do I say? My mind wrestled with what I had witnessed, I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t deal with this.

 

So, I didn’t.

 

I walked downstairs for breakfast, made mundane small talk with my mother as she prepared for her daily routine, watched cartoons and played video games. I just pretended like it was all okay. After a while I went outside, the air felt still, but all was normal. Just a regular summer day. I made my way down the clubhouse, my feet felt like they were made of concrete, my legs made of gelatin.

 

Everything’s fine. Everything has to be fine.

 

There it was, my Schwinn, lying in the field next to our fort where I’d left it the previous day. Looking at it made me feel ill, I just couldn’t do this. I picked it upright and started walking it back to the house. I rolled it into the garage, placed it in the corner behind some pieces of paneling, and that’s where it would sit. I couldn’t bear to even look at it.

 

My parents never asked about Tommy, actually…nobody did. Police never came asking questions, kids at school never brought him up. Teachers didn’t either for that matter, it was like…nobody knew to ask. It was so hard but day after day, it became easier and easier to carry on, to ignore it. Nothing happened, obviously nothing happened, if something happened people would notice it…wouldn’t they?

 

Why didn’t anyone notice?

 

I find myself back in the present. Staring at that old bike, right where I left it all those years ago. My phone is already in my hand opening the address book before I have a conscious thought about it. After a few rings she answers.

 

“Hello sweetie,” Mom says absent mindedly, “how’s everything going at your dad’s? Did you need Uncle Matt to help with anything?”

 

“Hi mom, no, no it’s not that…just going through things, really stirring up a lot of old memories, you know?”

 

“Oh of course, hon, I’m sorry I know your father and I didn’t get along much after the divorce, but I still have such fond memories of the old days, everything back then just seemed right.”

 

“Oh no I get it, I’m a grown man, Mom I’m well over the divorce just…do you remember my old friend, Tommy? We used to explore the woods out back and had that tree fort we’d set up every year?”

As soon as I finished speaking, I could hear here physically tighten. She was quiet for a long while, I started to worry she hadn’t heard me.”

 

“Tommy? I…I don’t remember a Tommy? You really didn’t have many friends until middle school and by then you weren’t exploring the woods like you used to.”

 

“What?” I asked, already feeling sick, “no, no Tommy, you remember, I met him in preschool, he used to come over damn near every day? You know, Tommy…” I stopped. What was Tommy’s last name, again? Why couldn’t I remember his last name?

 

“Honey…are you feeling alright?

 

“Yeah…yeah, I’m fine, Mom, sorry I must just be exhausted. I think I’m gonna head in and take a break for a while, order some lunch, I just wanted to hear your voice is all.”

 

“Aw, well don’t push yourself too hard, call me later, love you.”

 

“Love you too, mom.”

 

 

 

I’ve been sitting in the garage staring at that god damn bike for over an hour now. I considered reaching out to Tommy’s parents but I can’t remember their address. I can’t even picture their faces.

 

Why did nobody ask about him? How is that possible?

 

I walk around to the back yard and off in the distance I see it, that crumbling old plywood fort. The decaying physical embodiment of my childhood.

 

The smell of mildew and dust fills my nostrils as I pry open the plywood door. The floor is littered with decades of filth and grime, tattered posters hang haphazardly off the walls, discarded soda cans strewn across the ground rusting like ancient relics.

Honestly, I doubt anyone’s set foot here since that day all those years ago.

 

I find what I’m looking for before I even realize I’m looking for it.

 

The map.

 

Discolored and brittle from years of moisture and the elements, I gently untie the fraying twine keeping it rolled up and lay it out on the collapsed desk before me, crude drawings of boundaries and streams, drawings of trees and animals only recognizable to a child. Ridiculous titles for landmarks like King’s Boulder and the Creek of Madness. All annotated and meticulously put together, truthfully all things considered, it wasn’t half bad, and right there at the bottom signed and dated.

 

Tommy and Chris – 1994

 

As I step outside the dilapidated child’s attempt at a building, I stare off into the distance. I can see it, that old rockface.

 

It’s mocking me.

 

I don’t know where you went, I don’t know why no one else seems to remember.

 

I don’t know how I forgot.

 

I’m sorry, Tommy.

 

I’m coming.