Recapping the day’s events, Zack made a list of the things he could not explain. Twice he had weird time gaps while in the boat. The water, the sun, and all of mother nature seemed to glitch today. The suddenly healthy tree as well as two copies of his lure. Zack did not believe in curses or voodoo magic. Being a quantitative scholar, he knew the difference between correlation and causation. He reluctantly noted the coincidence between being in the boat and time resetting. Zack pondered, what exactly did happen? Did time reset? How did he get moved without knowing it until after it happened. Did he find a glitch in the matrix, for sucks sake he hoped not. Was he having mental health issues like a stroke or psychosis episodes? Was the pressure and trauma of seeing his fiancé down on his mentor causing him to crack?
He had to settle his mind and focus on what was in front of him. He looked closely at the lure, it sure looked like the lure he made with his dad all those years ago. Even had the tell-tale marks where fish hit the lure. On the back of the lure were his initials etched in the top part of the spoon. Suddenly Zack drew in a deep breath as he remembered what happened at the tree. What was that bright light? One moment I am blinded by intense light and falling off a ladder 15 feet in the air. The next moment I am holding onto the steering wheel with the ladder next to me in the boat. Again, it seemed like time reset. He had so many questions with no way of answering them.
As he finished his coffee, he knew it was time to pack up and head out. Considering how bizarre everything was he decided to call it a trip and be ready to board the boat plane in the morning. Zack spent the rest of his day cleaning up the cabin and packing his things for the trip home. He had frozen a ton of fish for his family to eat and prepared the cooler. As night fell, he had his last shore lunch meal and with trepidation he contemplated what he would do when the wheels touched down in St. Paul.
It would be an awful and awkward day. He did not want to see his Shelly. He decided that was probably unavoidable. He was going to go to his parent place and tell them what happened. Then he would go get what he needed from his apartment and arrange to get off the lease. He never ever wanted to see or speak to Shelly again. He would ask Andy to run interference for him. The anger and betrayal he felt towards her was more than he could handle
That night he had horrible dreams and woke up every hour, he did not get quality sleep. Finally with the sun peeking over the horizon, Zack gave up on getting more sleep. He sighed, got up and made his last cup of coffee. The plane was arriving at 11:00am. The morning dragged on forever. At 10:30 he brought all his stuff down to the dock and waited. When 11:00 am rolled around he stared at the horizon looking for a plane to appear and listened for the sound of a distant engine. Nothing came. At 11:15 he checked his watch. As there was no internet out here, he resisted the urge to look at his phone. It struck him that the way he left without talking to anyone, there would be a ton of missed calls and messages on his phone when he regained service. When he looked at his watch again it was 11:35. Not sure what to think Zack went back to the cabin to grab a snack.
At noon he began to feel the first pangs that something was wrong. He remembered his dad telling him sometimes bad weather in St. Paul could cause the plane to be late. Zack remembered Donald's fly in service had a satellite phone for emergencies. It was on a charger in the back closet of the cabin. He decided to check it out and see if there were any messages. He grabbed the phone, it was off. He powered it up and waited for a connection. It did not immediately connect to a signal. He went back to the front window sat on the couch and waited for the phone to get a connection. Zack was exhausted burdened with the anxiety he felt over going home and dealing with his ex-fiancé.
He awoke to a beeping sound which did not make any sense. It was pitch black except for the beeping red light on the floor next to him. He got up turned on the kitchen light and noticed the sat phone on the floor with a blinking red light.
He picked it up and read the screen. One unread message. “Zack, we are on our way, hitting weird weather, will be late, should make it there by 3:30 pm, Donald.” Zack looked at his watch, 1:30 am. They were ten hours late. He turned the dock lights on and saw his stuff sitting in the pale moonlight. Well shit, I better get that back upstairs.
After bringing his stuff back up to the cabin. He grabbed the sat phone and texted a response. “Donald, it is 1:30am, we have had more than our share of weird weather. I will be happy to get out of here. When do you think you will arrive? Zack” The phone beeped at him as it indicated he did not have a signal. The phone screen beeped a system message asking if he wanted the phone to send the message as soon as a connection was established? He clicked yes and set the phone down.
Zack thought, What was he supposed to do now? It’s the very early AM, he is wide awake and sitting in a cabin in the middle of northern Canada. His ride home did not show. Suddenly, the reality of his situation hit him, if they don’t show up, he would be in a real pickle. Zack figured he had about one to two weeks of food in the cabin, not counting an abundance of fresh fish. He was sure his mom was getting worried about him, and he had to get back to continue his job search and academic future…ok take a deep breath, he thought to himself. He was spiraling down a dark hole when there was no reason to panic just yet. Zack considered, maybe Donald had been turned back by the weather. He wondered why didn’t he just text that to him. If it wasn’t the middle of the night, he would just call them. He looked to the phone, still no signal. How long does it take a sat phone to connect.
He would have to just sit there and wait until the morning. Zach cooked up a couple eggs and toast for a little breakfast in the middle of the night. When he finished, he went back to the couch, grabbed the pillow and the blanket from the bed, and hung out there next to the phone. Sitting back in the bed seemed like it was a little too permanent for him. Finally, about 3:30 in the morning, he fell asleep again and had weird dreams.
Fitfully sleeping for a couple hours, only to be woken up by the early morning light of dawn. Zack looked down with the Sat phone and it still said searching for signal and was now down to 30% battery. Shit! he thought. I need to put that back on the charger. It looked like it was going to be a dreary, rainy day. Zach looked down at the lake, and everything seemed normal. The wind was blowing, there was small raindrops falling, and the waves were acting normal. He thought to himself, it’s weird that I must think about the water waving in the right way, but that's the how things seem to be right now.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
It was about 65° outside, so Zach decided by about 1:00 he had enough and got his fishing gear on with some rain gear and went down to the dock. He hadn't had much luck off the dock recently, but he thought this has got to be better than just sitting around staring at the wall in the cabin. He caught a couple of Bass and a Pike, which was actually a pretty good afternoon at the dock.
Suddenly. Everything went white again, like when he was on the ladder before back at the old Cottonwood tree. A loud crack like thunder boomed only for an instant, but it shook his teeth. Out of the corner of the eye. Zach saw something moving in the sky just above and to the right of him. He looked up and saw plane falling to earth about 40 feet up in the air. It crashed into the water 100 yards from the dock towards the north, about ten feet from shore. The noise and light startled him so much he almost fell backwards into the water.
He raced down the shoreline. When he arrived, the plane was half submerged in about four feet of water. As he examined the wreck, he noticed that something wasn't right. Part of the plane was just, missing. Zach waded out into the water. He was concerned there might have been people on the plane. When he got closer, he realized. The front third of the plane just wasn't there. He began to look the surrounding area and couldn’t see any evidence of the rest of the plane. It's almost as if the plane had been sheared off right at the back end of the front door and everything in front of that was gone. The planes contents were strewn around the crash onto the shore. The first thing he did was try to peer inside the hull to see if there were any people in there. It was empty. The next thing he noticed were supplies and boxes in all around the hull. He began to carry supplies and debris to the shore. They were mostly basic supplies like food, light bulbs, and cleaning material. Some batteries, fishing gear, and a big gas can for the boat.
He quickly brought the contents of the plane crash up to the cabin for further inspection. He wanted to get everything out of the water and dried off in the cabin. He decided to take one more last look back in the fuselage to see if there was anything he might have missed. When he went back, he was able to pull the fuselage over a little bit, so it was facing the shoreline. He walked in and took a closer look around. Towards the back of the plane, he found a bundle of clothing strewn around the tail section. He saw the corner of another sat phone buried in the clothing. He moved the shirt away and found that the sat phone was attached to a hand.
Zach screamed as he jumped back. It didn't make any sense. There wasn't enough room for a body under the clothes. When he reached over and pulled off the clothes, he saw the hand was severed just above the wrist. It was still clutching that the Sat phone. Gently, he pulled the Sat phone from the from the hand which easily released and put it in this pocket. Weirdly enough, there wasn't any blood anywhere. The hand was cut at the wrist and looked as if it had been seared shut. As he examined the rest of the fuselage, he couldn't find much else that would be useful.
It was clear, this was Donald’s boat plane and probably the plane that was coming back to get him. Zach retreated out of the body of the plane to inspect where it seemed to be cut off. It looked like it had been sheared off and sealed shut. There wasn't any jagged edges as if it had been sanded down on purpose. It wasn't even sharp like you would expect from torn metal. As if the rest of the plane had never been attached the front portion. Zack did not know how to explain it. He went back up to the cabin to more thoroughly inspect the contents he brought back from the plane. Now he was more positive this was the plane that was being brought back to get him out of the lake and bring him back to Saint Paul.
There were so many questions that was mind racing through possibilities, how does the plane just get cut in half? Where is the other half? How does that just disappear? That doesn't make any sense. Zack realized he had to face the reality that whatever was going on was bigger than just a one-off event. It wasn't just his imagination. He wasn't going crazy hallucinating. Something was really wrong. For the love of God, there was a human hand clutching the sat phone.
Deep in thought, he was startled to awareness by the beeping that came from not only cabin SAT phone on the charger, but also the SAT phone he brought back from the plane. Both began to beat back and forth. Zach retrieved the SAT phone from the charger in the other room and sat down next to the other sat phone in the kitchen. He realized they were getting messages and a signal again. He glanced at the clock. It was about 2:15 in the afternoon.
On the cabin sat phone he saw a message from Donald. It read. “Zach, the weather's getting too crazy. Frankly, it's the weirdest weather I've ever seen. I don't even know how to explain it, but I'm going to turn back. I'll have to come and pick you up when this is done. I'm hitting some pretty crazy turbulence and hard to explain phenomena. I tried calling your phone, but my signal has been coming in and out and I'm not able to sustain one long enough to make a phone call. When I get back to Saint Paul, I will give you a call on the Sat phone, Donald.”
Zach then picked up the other Sat phone and read one unread message. Sure enough, it was his unread message from earlier this morning. It was still set on unread. It said that it arrived according to the phone four minutes ago. The same time Donald's message arrived at the cabin phone. The implications of half the plane being in the water outside of his cabin meant that the other half of the plane had to be somewhere, and chances are Donald was still in it, without his right hand. He shuddered at the thought, He decided to call home. As he started dialing, the phone beeped and said no signal.
Zack threw the phone down on the couch. He briefly thought about how Sat phones worked, weren’t there like a million satellites in space. Why was his signal so limited?
To many unanswered questions began to swirl around in his brain all at once. He felt cold sweats, his mouth went dry, and he was having a hard time getting oxygen into his lungs. He was hyper ventilating. Zack sat down and tried to focus on what he knows for sure to ground himself, he is stuck by himself at lake cabin in the middle of nowhere Canada. There are two thirds of a plane in the lake 100 yards from the cabin. His sat phone works irregularly. It seems the weird things happening in nature were also happening somewhere between here and home. He has at the bare minimum, a month’s worth of food and adequate shelter. A boat, plenty of gas and amazing fishing.
Zack was not sure the fishing was relevant, but it made him feel better. He started to relax, and his breathing settled back to normal. Looking over at the sat phone he had an idea. He picked it up and looked at the previous messages and his attempted calls. He noticed the messages sent and received were marked at two times of day. 2:15am and 2:15pm. The time from when the first message arrived to the when his last attempted call out was about 8 minutes. He set an alarm on his Iphone for 12:45 am tonight.
Zack knew he felt out of control. He decided to slow down and take care of the basics. He was exhausted, his brain felt foggy and overwhelmed. Even though it was 3:00 in the afternoon, he decided to lay down and rest. He set a second alarm for 5:00pm turned over on the couch and quickly fell asleep.