Despite Jack’s worries and private reservations, the rest of the week passed without any further incidents. He did earn a grumble from Emily after she came home and found the remains of the pizza, but she hadn’t the time or inclination to make more of an issue with his choice of meal. The two had enjoyed a couple of black and white movies per the eye doctor’s recommendation, Emily happy to watch ‘It’s a Wonderful World’ out of season, with Jack thankfully learning that his issue seeing monochrome weren’t as bad as he feared. He only had trouble separating details in scenes dominated by white or black, such as in the snow backgrounds.
For once, the weather people had managed to get it right, with some rare sun coming out just in time for the weekend. Jack was happily tying his hiking boot straps while on the couch when Emily came back in with the mail.
“Let’s see,” she mused aloud as she flipped through the small pile, “we have an ad for ulta, some BK coupons, a church donation letter for the previous tenant, again, an insurance letter, lovely, a reminder for the elections next year, yada yada, a personal letter to you, and what look likes bills meant for our new neighbor Tim Scott.”
“I feel like we’ve sent that church at least three emails to stop sending us those,” Jack rolled his eyes.
“What do you expect?” Emily scoffed. “It’s not like phone ad calls or email spam stops either. Worst we can do is tell them to stop, best outcome is we give them money. That’s why I’m an atheist.”
“Best to not bring that up while in public, honey,” Jack teased, “or to my folks and their very methodist network of friends. They might accuse you of equally terrible things, like hating sweet tea, fried chicken, and barbecue.”
“Hey, I like barbecue well enough,” Emily protested, hands on her hips. “I just don’t enjoy the Carolina sauce types. Give me vinegar sauce and I’ll be happy as can be.”
“The horror,” Jack placed his hand over his heart. “For that, we can never be.”
Emily rolled her eyes and lifted her shirt.
“I stand very well corrected,” Jack said with a straight face and unblinking eyes.
“Uh huh,” Emily snorted, lowering her shirt. “Here’s your letter. I’m going to give Mr. Tim his mail before we go.”
Jack waved her a goodbye as Emily left the apartment before turning his attention to the letter. It had his name on it, but only a P.O. box for the return address. Curious, the young man broke the seal and pulled out a folded sheet of paper, from which a card fell out onto the table. The words ‘Get Well Soon!’ were written across the top, but when Jack opened the card, he found nothing written inside it. He rubbed his head with a frown. Double checking, he flipped the card around multiple directions and angled it under the light, but couldn’t find any sign of hidden text. It was just a blank get well soon card one could buy at any pharmacy.
Jack shrugged and placed the card on the coffee table before turning his attention back to his shoes. He finished the knots just as Emily returned.
“Mr. Tim gave us more muffins,” Emily reported with amusement as she set the new basket of confectionary delicacies on the kitchen table, “and thanks us for the mail. What was in the letter?”
“Just a get well soon letter,” Jack said, standing up and testing his boot fit. “No idea who sent it.”
“Huh, that’s odd,” Emily noted as she walked over and looked over the card. “Odd to send a handmade card without a signature.”
“Really? I thought it was a normal card you could buy anywhere,” Jack raised an eyebrow. “How can you tell?” He endured Emily’s pointed eyeroll patiently. “Okay, so I missed something? Is it a girl thing; does it smell like perfume?”
“What kind of store card has a blank inside Jack?” Emily pointed at the inside of the card. “No text, no picture, not joke or reference. And do these words on the front look computer printed perfect?”
Jack opened his mouth, then shut it. He smiled weakly and shrugged, invoking a scoff from his fiancé.
“Saying this isn’t a guy thing just means you aren’t being observant,” Emily grumbled as she looked down at the card again. “Sure you might ‘see’ things, but that doesn’t mean you’re understanding what you’re seeing. Like buying your girlfriend the wrong peanut butter at the grocery store.”
“Fair, but that was only once,” Jack muttered, starting to feel a little annoyed. “I didn’t do it a second time, and how was I supposed to know what ‘hydrogenated oil’ was? I don’t know every carcinogenic-”
He took a deep breath and counted down in his head. “Okay, not the moment to justify.”
Emily also sighed and shook her head. “No, but I’m needling again. This isn’t a moment for you to apologize; I just worry one day you won’t recognize danger when it’s right in front of you.”
“I’m not so blind as to miss a weapon wielding psycho wanting to kill me,” Jack pointed out dryly.
“Point,” Emily conceded, “but you are down half your vision now.”
“Only technically,” Jack agreed. He walked over and the two embraced in a warm hug. “Okay, so we’re ready to go?”
“Let me wrap a couple of these muffins for the hike,” Emily said. “Here, take the keys and I’ll meet you out front. I won’t be but a few moments.”
Jack accepted the car keys and walked out of the apartment. Walking to the elevator, he saw Mr. Tim waiting to head down.
“Ah, Jack,” Mr. Tim smiled warmly. “Heading out to your hike?”
“Yes sir,” Jack said. “Emily decided to bring a couple of your muffins, so I’m getting the car. Thanks for them, by the way.” He moved towards the staircase.
“You’re welcome,” Mr. Tim said. “Oh, you a stair kind of man Jack?”
“My policy is to ride the elevator up, but never down,” Jack answered as he walked down the stairs, inciting a chuckle from the older man.
Jack made it down the ground floor before the elevator and walked through the security gate, nodding politely to Mr. Virgil who only gave a small nod without taking his attention off the small TV in the security office. Jack couldn’t see the two teams playing the football game, but he assumed one of them to be Clemson or some other southern university on one side at least. He didn’t have to walk too far to find Emily’s Accord, the car still perfectly functioning despite its years and miles. Jack unlocked the car, got it, strapped his seatbelt on, and turned the key. He wasn’t exactly a car guy, but he did enjoy the sound of an engine turning over.
After carefully backing the car out, Jack drove around to the front of Farmview Apartments and waited for Emily. His fiancé appeared a couple of minutes later and hopped into the passenger seat with a smile, and Jack drove them away.
“So, which trail was we going to today?” she asked curiously.
“We’re staying clear of the Chattanooga River trails I think,” Jack reasoned aloud. “Everyone likely got a little stir crazy with the rain, and out-of-towners likely will want to see the colors around the river too. So, I was thinking Smokey Trail this time.”
“Good choice,” Emily agreed. “I like the smell of nature on the trail, far away from the city.”
The Smokey Trail was thirty minutes away, toward the uninhabited part of the valley the city had yet to encroach on, so the two used the time to discuss Emily’s first week of internship. Emily was happy to walk Jack through what her schedule seemed to be, taking notes, organizing low-level files, coffee runs, and so on. Apparently, she’d already managed to make a good impression on a couple of the lawyers thanks to her noticing an accidently file swap, but she still had a long road in front of her. She hadn’t even seen the city’s district attorney yet, let alone any of his direct staff. Jack offered her some encouragement, and the two shared some laughs over a couple of rumor stories Emily had managed to overhear from some of the aids. The time passed quickly and before Jack knew it he was pulling into the parking lot for the Smokey Trail.
There were only a couple of other cards in the parking lot, including the local ranger’s truck, so it appeared there wouldn’t be an issue with overcrowding the trail today. Jack parked the car, and got out to open the door for Emily. “My lady,” Jack winked.
“Ah, my hero,” Emily blinked her eyes dramatically.
Warm clothes secured along with the muffins, the two began the hike into the woods.
***
A mix of red, green, yellow, and a little brown covered the sky above as the couple walked along the flattened dirt road. The rain hadn’t managed to dislodge as many leaves as Jack had expected, leaving the tapestry of fall intact for their enjoyment. The air was rife with the scents of the season: a hint of rain, fresh mountain air, the scent of falling leaves. Jack couldn’t be happier, especially with his fiancé at his side. Or, in this case, leading the way.
“I can hear the waterfall,” Emily said happily as she turned around to look at Jack. The young man quickly snapped a photo of his fiancé, his phone having been brought up a while ago at her request to take pictures. He smiled at the picture of her, bundled up for the cold with a bright enough smile to melt any ice all the while surrounded in color. Yeah, he had it bad.
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He hurried up to join her as they rounded the bend, coming across the small waterfall on the Smokey Trail that marked the half-mile point of the hike. A family of three were at the waterfall’s base, struggling to take family pictures with a selfie stick.
“Need help?” Jack called out.
The husband, Jack assumed, looked around before spying Jack. “Ah, yes please! Need some Christmas pictures before she gets cranky.”
“The baby, or the wife?” Jack teased.
“Both,” the man said, before laughing as his wife lightly punched his shoulder. Jack and Emily shared in the chuckle as they set up, Emily directing the shot while Jack took several pictures with their camera. In return, the husband helped take several pictures of Jack and Emily for them before the family left.
“Nice people,” Jack said as he watched Emily happily swiping through the photos. “Hope they get some good photos from that.”
Emily looked up with a wry grin. “Funny.”
“Hm?” Jack cocked his head.
“You don’t know a single thing about them, not even their names, and yet a single positive encounter was it took for you to assume they’re ‘good people’. What if they’re only good in this exact moment, and bad every other?”
“A week in the DA is all it took to make your this salty?” Jack asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Oh shut it,” Emily scoffed. “I have enough salt to be called an ocean. And that’s not my point.” She pointed at Jack. “An assumption based on first impressions without deeper observation; that’s your main flaw. Just like with the card earlier. You have to get used to looking deeper.”
“You’re bringing that up again?” Jack frowned. “What’s wrong with appreciating the oddly human interaction of two strangers taking a moment of their lives to encapsulate a moment in the other’s without worrying about anything?”
Emily sighed and shook her head. “Nothing, really. Okay, my fault bringing it up again. I guess I’m just, still worried about you. It’s only been a week since I got a call in the middle of the night that you were in the hospital after wondering why you hadn’t come home. I’m sorry.”
Jack winced. He hadn’t considered what Emily had gone through during the aftermath. She’d already been stressing about the letter on whether she’d gotten the internship or not; it was amazing she’d managed to hold herself together as she had, in a way. He sighed and walked over to hug her from behind.
“Okay, now that’s I’m sorry for,” he whispered into her ear. “I honestly hadn’t thought about that.”
“I know,” she muttered back. “That’s what a good relationship is for; covering each other’s weaknesses. We do a good job of that, I think.”
“Except you haven’t shown me all of yours yet,” Jack whispered cheekily, moving to lightly bite here ear. The move elicited a shriek from his fiancé, who jerked out of his grasp with a red, annoyed face. Jack smiled at her evilly.
“Not out here,” she hissed at him, fanning her face. “Jerk.”
“You know you love me.”
“I can still knee your two weaknesses, and write off as self-defense.”
Jack held up his hands in surrender. “You got me. Shall we keep going?”
Rolling her eyes, Emily grumbled something under her breath as the two left the waterfall and continued down the trail.
Smokey Trail was a 2-mile trail in total, though most only ever did a single mile before turning around to leave. The two miles each had a small picnic and rest area, but only the half mile had the waterfall to mark it while the mile and a half point only had a small road marker. Jack and Emily didn’t stop at the first mile stop and kept up their hike all the way to the second mile rest area, which sat near a cliff view of the valley and the city. Emily pulled out their picnic blanket, and the two sat under a tree munching on fresh muffins as they watched the valley and the river.
“I always loved this view,” Jack said as he finished a blueberry muffin. “Especially on sunny days, and especially in the fall. It really looks like the whole valley is surrounded by a rainbow barrier.”
Emily let out a giggle as she finished of her second muffin. “Not sure how safe a leaf barrier is, outside of anime anyway. What, you want to call Maples, the city hidden in the leaves?”
“More like hidden in the rain usually,” Jack rolled his eyes as he took a bite from his second muffin. “I just like the contrast of color, of nature, and of progress. There’s the city, the forests, the river, the farms, and all kinds in-between. Nothing is precisely segregated; its all melded together in a kind of harmony.”
“You really should have become an artist, or a poet, instead of pursing a science degree,” Emily noted, leaning onto Jack’s shoulder. “But, I guess then I wouldn’t have met you then. I doubt an artistic younger you would have shown up to that college sponsored dance.”
“If you hadn’t needed volunteer hours, you wouldn’t have been there either,” Jack pointed out. “Then we both would have missed the spiked punch and wouldn’t have taken a chance dancing with each other.”
“No, I’m sure we would have met at some point,” Emily mused as she relaxed into his body. “Some people are just meant for each other.”
Jack held back his initial comment on her atheism and instead enjoyed the moment. The two watched the valley for several long and comfortable minutes before a beep from Emily’s phone boke the moment. Scowling, the young woman grumbled as she leaned up and checked who had bothered her.
“Seriously?” she groaned as she read the text message.
“What?” Jack asked.
“Apparently the police managed to snag a suspect for your incident,” Emily sighed, brushing herself off as she got up. “Or rather, they caught someone connected with violent crime and submitted evidence to the DA office to see if the suspect can be charged. The note comparing is underway, and they want me to come in and help support the lawyers on retainer as they compare the evidence.”
“On a Saturday?” Jack asked flatly.
“Apparently,” Emily said, equally as flatly as she typed away her response. “What a pain, even if they have to pay me double overtime. This is probably going to eat up all of next week too. Real annoying your incident keeps popping up to interfere with our lives.”
“I think its still better than the alternative,” Jack reasoned as he helped Emily fold the blanket up. “But hey, we can at least enjoy the hike back, right? They can’t expect you to run two miles and drive thirty minutes at top speed back to the office?”
Emily held up a finger as a response text came back. She huffed. “No, but they want me in after lunch.”
“Should I make a bloodsucking parasite lawyer joke,” Jack asked.
“Not really in the mood, no,” Emily shook her head.
Jack could only shrug as he stuffed the blanket away. “Oh, need the little boy’s room. Excuse me.”
He walked out of the picnic area into the woods, spying a suitable tree to step behind to handle his business. He pushed down the instinct to whistle while he worked, instead opting to look around the area. In this spot, it seemed, plenty of leaves had fallen and covered the forest floor in shades of yellow, red, and brown. A couple of fallen trees poked out of the leaves, growing little fungi that recycled the fallen into new life. The environment was still as serene as ever.
Zipping up, Jack turned to return to the camp, when he heard and felt something squish under his hiking boot. Startled, he looked down to see he had accidently crushed a small mushroom underfoot. He moved his foot back and frowned, sighing.
“Ah, sorry little buddy,” Jack said as he knelt down and examined his handiwork. Thankfully, it appeared he hadn’t completely crushed the fungi, so he reached around for some sticks and leaved to prop it back up and bury more of its stem in the ground. He patted the mushroom slightly. “My mistake. I hope you recover.”
Standing back up, Jack leaned backwards and cracked his back before stepping forward again, this time making sure to look before he took a step, avoiding more mushrooms by stepping between them. He had to squint to see some of the mushrooms, as they’d only just begun to grow up through the leaves in places. Jack attempted to retrace his steps back to the picnic site, but when he came out of the woods, all Jack saw was a clearing and the cliff. He frowned, looking around but finding nothing recognizable.
“Emily?” he called out. “Emily? You there?”
He listened, but he didn’t hear anything. Jack rubbed his eye and sighed. Maybe he’d taken a wrong turn. His gaze, naturally, turned toward the cliff overlooking the valley. He could see the city still, but for some reason he couldn’t make out the farms anymore. In fact, if he didn’t know better, Jack would have thought it was later in the day given the darker world.
A sound in the woods caught his attention, of something moving through the brush. Jack turned around toward the source, but saw nothing.
“Hello?” Jack called out, “Emily, is that you?”
There was no answer.
Jack frowned. He didn’t like what he was seeing, especially so soon from the last strange incident. Carefully, he backed up towards the cliff, keeping his eyes on the tree line. Nothing moved in his line of sight. He looked back to make sure he wasn’t too close to the cliff, then returned his gaze to the trees.
“Wait,” Jack muttered to himself. “Wasn’t this clearing, larger?” He wasn’t exactly sure, but it seemed like the tree line had been a little farther away. Jack cocked his head curiously, turning his head to check that he hadn’t moved closer to the cliff. He hadn’t, but turning back again seemed to show a closer tree line.
“Okay, if this is a prank, I’m not laughing,” Jack called out. “Who is there?”
No one answered his call.
Jack was feeling unnerved now. Something was wrong, he could feel it. His face felt itchy, something he realized he’d been feeling for awhile. Cautiously, Jack closed his right eye instinctively as it tingled.
The grey haze had vanished, Jack realized, no, rather, the world was all grey. Somehow, he hadn’t noticed that with his right eye open. The sense of a darker world suddenly became very much real as Jack’s left eye showed him a painted world of greys, blacks, and whites. The colors undulated and swam up and down their forms, coalescing into shapes that wanted to reach out and-
Jack gasped as his right eye shot open once more, restoring color to the world. However, this time he could see even more. It wasn’t that the tree line was shrinking; it was the trees moving closer to him. Not all of them; only the ones with eerily human features, faces, bodies. Wooden faces, devoid of all emotion and humanity, stared at him without eyes. Every time he blinked, they seemed to get closer. None were reaching toward him, but the cold horror running down Jack’s back left him with no imagination that he was anywhere safe.
Struggling what to do, Jack began to alternate each eye to ensure one was always open. It was through that act that his left eye spied something shining in the woods, back where he had come. Quickly considering his options, Jack decided that he didn’t have a better option.
“Lord give me strength, I mean speed,” Jack muttered under his breath before taking a deep one. With both eyes open, Jack sprinted into the woods through the space between the formless things. He quickly turned his head back to force his gaze on the inhuman woods, keeping whatever those things were stuck in place as long as he could while paying attention to where he was running.
He slammed into two tree limbs one after the other, tripping on a root as he fell and rolling through the leaves. Groaning, Jack forced his eyes open and looked forward and back to get his bearings. He saw the source of the light, a small mound in the leaves. Hearing something behind him, Jack pushed himself up and ran for the mound. He could hear more things behind him now, the swishing of leaves and the breeze chasing him. Jack though he felt something reach for his neck as he stepped past the mound of light.
Then, he found himself slamming chest first into a tree, pulling a groan of pain out of him as Jack fell. Wincing, panting, Jack looked up at the sky, the clear blue sky, and closed his right eye. The sky was still blue, though with a haze of grey. Still panting, Jack rolled over onto his chest and looked around. His territory mark was still on a nearby tree, and the little mushroom he had almost crushed was nearby still in its improvised cast. Jack blinked at it.
“Was that, you, little guy?” he asked, feeling a little dumb. The mushroom, as expected, did not answer.
Groaning, Jack got up onto his feet and looked around again. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. Everything was fine. He eyed the little mushroom again, noting the circle it made with its compatriots.
“Well, thank you, I guess,” Jack said to the mushroom. “Not sure I deserved the help given what I did to you, but thank you.”
The mushroom remained a mushroom.
“Jack, are you done yet?” came Emily’s voice from back at the picnic area.
The young man flinched before relaxing. “Yeah, I’m coming!” Shaking his head, Jack walked away towards Emily’s voice, avoiding the mushrooms as he did so.
Behind him, the circle of fungi remained as it was, quiet and unmoving. A small breeze blew through the forest, rustling the leaves above and below. When the breeze was gone, no sign of Jack’s accidently crushing remained.