I’m still not sure how I feel about all this.
My name is Dr. Henry J. Carheim. I’m a university professor at a small college down in southeastern Ohio. I teach history, particularly American History, with the Revolutionary War being my specialty. As such, I often dig through the university library for old records, documents, anything to help scratch my addiction for the unknown. I thought I’d learned everything there was to know about Black Oak, the largest town in Barron County. Basically, there’s not much to tell. Founded in 1901, around the same time as the county itself, Black Oak University has been largely forgotten by everyone except for the locals. We get enough students from the high schools in the area to keep operating, but I always did find it odd how no one else seems to know about us. Up until now, I just figured it to be a fluke, a coincidence, something funny to bring up at the start of a conversation, and nothing more.
I was wrong.
But my enlightenment didn’t come from any old tome, or dusty record book. In fact, my most recent discovery, the one that has brought me to the point where I’m relaying information that should be in a dissertation instead of a random post on this website, came from a very modern, very unassuming source.
A notebook.
I found it when I was out, walking the trails in the collegial woods behind the main building of the university. The little black book lay partially covered by weeds alongside the trail, it’s cover water damaged and curling. Half-rotted leaves were plastered all over the poor discarded booklet, but the pages inside were remarkably well preserved, and dry to the touch. Bringing it back to my office, I decided to read it quickly before my next lecture, just to see what the previous owner had been studying, (or perhaps not studying) in their little spiral bound book of secrets.
What I discovered left me stunned. I want to believe that it is fake, but a small part of me seems to know that it isn’t. This is real. This is Ben Elrik’s notebook.
Benjamin Elrik went missing on October 12th of last year, after walking into the collegial forest and never coming out. For weeks, the entire collegial staff, myself included, helped the sheriff’s department comb the woods in search of Ben. No one ever managed to find any trace of him, and it was assumed he’d left town to head for a bigger city, likely for drug-related activities. Soon, his disappearance was overshadowed by a girl down near the New Wilderness Wildlife Reserve being found alongside the roadway, and so Ben’s case went cold.
It was a shame, and at the time I’d been disappointed in the boy. He’d always ranked top in my pre-colonial studies class, despite his tendency to run tardy for every lecture. I never pictured him to be the drug-abuse type and felt bad that he’d fallen into such an abysmal addiction. But now, after reading his words, seeing them mysteriously preserved after months of exposure to the elements, I have begun to question everything I thought I knew about this world. There is something else out there, right on the periphery of our modern psyche that we seem to have lost sight of, ever since the world gave up the horse and quill for car and cellphone. Corrupted by our bottomless need for instant gratification, we no longer believe in anything, and perhaps that is why I myself am so moved, so unnerved, so perplexed by this.
I don’t think Ben ever left that forest.
The rest of this post will be Ben’s account, all of it, as I found it in that odd little notebook by the trail. Let the world judge for themselves the truth of his disappearance, as I wash my hands of this matter. My only parting hope is that, wherever Ben Elrik is, he is happy. What follows are what I believe to be his final words.
October 2nd
My sneakers slid over the dry, crunchy leaves, warm rays from the October sun tickling my back through the canopy overhead. Little yellow honeybees darted between the trees to collect the last of the season’s pollen, and I shut my eyes to breathe deep the rich smell of dark earth from the shaded forest floor. To my right, the narrow creek babbled over its stones, and a few birds sang in the trees with playful chirps, the day pleasant and cozy for this late in the fall.
“Hey.”
The grin crossed my face before I even opened my eyes again. “Hey.”
Myra stood in front of me, dressed in the green ripstop jacket and faded blue jeans I’d gotten her for our one-year anniversary, slanted rays of sunlight causing her crimson hair to glow like a beacon. “You’re early. Don’t you have Anthropology in, like, a half-hour?”
My face heated up, and no doubt my ears turned a darker shade of red than Myra’s hair. “More like five minutes ago. I uh . . . I skipped.”
“Of course you did.” She rolled her sky-blue eyes, but try as she might, Myra couldn’t smother the half-pleased rosiness that tinged her cheeks. “You know, sooner or later they’re going to start asking questions, Ben. How are you going to explain to your professors that you’ve been sneaking off into the woods to see me?”
As if I’d ever tell them.
Hitching my backpack higher onto my shoulders, I sidled up next to her, and relished the sensation of Myra’s hand lacing itself into mine. “I’ll tell them I’m cooking meth, and that I hear voices from God.”
Myra punched my arm, but we both laughed, and I knew she didn’t mind the joke half as much as she put on. Hand in hand, we traipsed through the winding pathways of the collegial woods, leaving the world of expensive textbooks, bland classrooms, and pretentious courses behind.
“So . . . did you hear from your publisher yet?” Myra stepped over a fallen log without ever losing pace with me.
A nervous warmth filled my chest, and I tried not to let it show. “Maybe.”
Seeing right through me, Myra lurched to a stop, and the corners of her mouth tugged upward. “And?”
“They want all three books.” It came out as a happy chuckle, a relief to say the words out loud to someone who genuinely cared. “The head editor says the whole team loved the series, and they can’t wait to get started.”
Myra’s eyes widened, and she threw both arms around me with a happy squeal. I wrapped my own over her narrow shoulders, held Myra tight, and breathed in the sweet piney smell of her ruddy tresses.
Totally worth missing class.
She almost hopped up and down in joy, her grin contagious, and dazzling. “I knew it! I knew they’d sign for them. Did I call it, or what?”
“You called it.” I grabbed her hand again and plunged the two of us further into the world of endless green, my heart swollen with happiness. “Which is why I brought stuff to celebrate with.”
Myra giggled and squeezed my palm. “I knew today felt special.”
It seemed to take no time at all to reach our meeting place, or as Myra called it “Shipwreck Cove”. Myra had a creative knack for odd, silly names that somehow stuck. Combined with my love for high fantasy, it ensured that the little map of the collegial woods I’d made for us boasted such monikers as “Troll Bridge”, “Silverwood Falls”, “Duckfoot Creek”, and “Beer Can Mountain”. Shipwreck Cove, however, held a special place in our hearts.
A jumble of stones covered the ground in odd rows for about fifty yards in all directions, some jagged, some smooth, all faded from years of weather and neglect. But the grass remained iridescent here, the flowers vibrant in their colorful coats despite the coming winter chill, and a large gap in the spreading branches overhead allowed delicious beams of golden sunlight to flood down in rivulets. As far as I could tell, no one save for Myra and I knew of this safe haven, and so it became our secret, a sanctuary where we could be ourselves without fear of the world’s cruel commentary.
Myra’s camp lay toward the least weather-damaged of the stones on the northern side, the red nylon tent that I’d brought her a week after we’d first met pitched right beside the last row. Next to it stood the small log cabin we’d started building together using the hand tools I’d bought Myra for Christmas. Only twelve feet on both sides, the little hut wouldn’t have impressed many other girls, but Myra loved it, and proudly helped me work on it every chance we got.
“It’s our castle.” She would say, with a child-like twinkle in her eye. “And this is our kingdom.”
Today however was a celebration day, as Myra called them, so I busied myself with unpacking the new things I’d collected for her from my backpack. Humming a happy tune, Myra spread a green canvas tarp and some soft goose-down quilts she’d received from me on New Year’s Eve over a sunny spot between the stones. She’d taken her jacket off to reveal the Keep calm and Fire Back t-shirt I’d got her for Valentine’s Day, and between the snug jeans and close-fitting shirt, Myra glowed with an arresting luminescence in the midday light.
Those angels painted on the Sistine Chapel could learn a thing or two . . .
I let her catch me watching, something I would never dare to do with anyone else outside of this magical place, and Myra’s smooth lips twitched into a naughty smirk.
“Admiring the scenery?”
My heart did a flip-flop inside my chest, and I shrugged with more nonchalant ease than I’d felt in days. “It’s worth admiring.”
Myra rolled her eyes at me again, but the way she flushed, and bit her lower lip the second she thought I’d looked away told me everything I needed to know.
Once seated on the quilt beside her, I exchanged gifts with Myra, as we always did on celebration days. In her amazing talent for forest-craft, she’d carved a little wooden owl totem for me and had tanned a deer hide into a rather stylish cloak, as well as stitched up a fuzzy hat made from chestnut-brown rabbit fur. As I expected, Myra loved the caramel-filled chocolates I’d bought for her, the new hiking boots and warm socks for the expected winter snows, as well as the sharpening stone for her little firewood hatchet. Of course, I brought more of my stories for her to read, and she beamed the second I put the three-ring binder into her slender hands.
“Wow. Are these all new?” Myra leafed through a few of the first pages, her blue irises flying over the words with hungry anticipation.
I drank in the sight of her pixie-like features, the upturned nose, rose-petal lips, and pronounced cheekbones, content to never again leave this island of summer in my bleak, fall world. “Every one of them. I even wrote a few pieces and poems about you. I hope you like them.”
“You know I’ll love them.” With an alluring fire in her sapphire eyes, Myra set the binder aside, and put one cool hand to my chest, her gentle touch enough to make my spine tingle with warmth. “I always do.”
Her lips met mine, and I lay back on the soft quilts to pull the deerskin over us. Myra’s hands moved across my chest and back, her silky hair brushed my face, and we both sighed in simultaneous bliss.
“I can’t wait until I don’t have to leave.” I whispered, caressing her soft cheek with my thumb.
Staring into my eyes, Myra smiled, a melancholy expression both heartbroken and overjoyed. “Someday, Ben. Someday soon, I promise.”
In that moment, everything I needed lay right beside me, in the clearing of endless summer. I knew none of my professors would believe me, nor any of the landscaping staff, or my skeptical friends. My parents would certainly never approve if they knew. But I’d accepted such terms long ago, the day I first met Myra, alone and forgotten deep in the forests behind the aged university. From the first gift I brought to make her home among the stones less destitute, to the first time Myra confessed her feelings for me, I’d known my fate, and had embraced it.
Closing my eyes, I clung to Myra beside the stone that bore her name, and let myself forget about the world, college, and my absurd classes. All around, the skulls and crossed bones looked on in silent communion from their various leaning marble towers, guardians of our secret forever. For even they knew something that many living do not.
Love lives eternal in the land of Shipwreck Cove.