Authors: Aaron Starmer
Martin spent his thirteenth birthday at a campsite in the
forest. Memories of other birthdays consumed him. His eleventh birthday still haunted. The sight of the skiff, appearing like a ghost on the sea, was something he would never shake. He had seen inside. He knew his father wasn’t there. All he could make out was that branch. Yet the reason he swam after it was to check if something else might be there too, hidden in the crook of the bow. A gift. Another birthday memory.
It was from when Martin had turned eight.
There had been no celebration, only a simple dinner and an evening spent by the fire. Just before heading off to bed, his father had handed Martin a small round alarm clock with two bells that stuck up from the top like ears.
“It doesn’t work, but I want you to have it,” his father said.
“It’s a clock,” Martin said, and held it in his lap and stared at the two hands. The big hand was stuck just past the four, the small hand just past the twelve.
“It’s the moment I learned you were born,” his father told him. “I received a call. In my excitement, I knocked the clock off a nightstand, and it stopped. It was the happiest moment of my life.”
His father rarely said things like that, so Martin cherished the gift, and he took extra-special care of it. He wrapped it in a piece of silk and kept it in the dresser next to his bed. On most days, he would take it out and clean its glass face and shine its bells. His father told him that he must never fix it. He wanted it frozen on that moment.
On the day his father set out to find the final piece to the machine, Martin pulled the alarm clock from the drawer. He wasn’t worried that his father wouldn’t come back, but in
the book of stories about men traveling to other planets, there were always scenes in which the space travelers were presented gifts. Martin had never given his father a gift. Then again, Martin’s father had never left on a journey.
So as his father prepared the skiff, Martin handed him the clock. “For good luck,” Martin said.
In the stories, the men who received the gifts would always say things like “Don’t worry, I’ll be back in a jiff,” and then they would cluck their tongues and snap their fingers and graciously hand the items back. That was what Martin hoped would happen. Instead, his father cupped the clock in his hands and looked at it as if it were the most precious thing on earth.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “By giving me this, a part of you will always be with me.” Then he carefully placed the clock in a tackle box at the stern of the boat.
“I just wanted to make you happy,” Martin said.
“You did,” his father said. “More than you could imagine.”
He smiled at his son. They said their goodbyes. He promised to be back by Martin’s eleventh birthday. Then he pushed off from the dock.
The clock, and Martin’s father, had set off into the world.
The day after his thirteenth birthday, Martin reached the stony peak of a mountain. Along the trail, there had been peaks to summit almost daily. Most of the time they were covered in trees, or shrouded in cool fingers of fog, so Martin was rarely treated to views. On this morning, he could see for miles.
A large range of mountains was behind him, and another,
even bigger one was ahead of him. In the valley between was a thick, unbending river. An imposing brick building studded with lines of dark, rectangular windows sat along the edge of the river, and Martin could just make out the roofs of houses and the white steeple of a church farther downstream. By the looks of it, he would be able to make this town by sunset.
A few paces away from the peak, where views of the river were at their best, Martin came upon a circle of rocks stacked neatly, as if to form a pen. It was only about three feet high and ten feet in diameter. On first examination, it appeared to be completely empty. But after climbing inside, Martin found some smaller stones stacked in the middle and arranged in a series of letters, forming a cryptic message.
A G F L K A Y D C M E M
I’M SO SORRY
What was it supposed to mean? Who was sorry? And for what? Were the letters some sort of code? Martin climbed out of the stone ring and got back on the trail. Another sign, he thought. Like the Jolly Roger, it means this is the right direction.
At the base of the mountain, Martin walked through a lupine-specked field toward the setting sun. A whiff of peanuts lingered in the grassy air. A hunger-born and odorous mirage, he thought. He was simply craving those addictive snacks he had found in the cars at the beginning of his journey. However, the smell got stronger as the sky got darker, and by the time Martin had reached the other side of the field, his nose was nothing but peanuts.
He followed the scent through a small patch of trees, until
he found himself in the studiously clipped backyard of a modest farmhouse with a wraparound porch. In the middle of the porch, blanketed in a gauzy glow, something was moving. He stopped for a moment to be sure.
No, it wasn’t a bear.
It wasn’t a deer.
It was quite clearly a person.
Martin hurried through the grass toward the house. It didn’t matter who it was. It was someone. He was finally someplace.
A portly boy dressed entirely in soft gray fabrics was gently rocking in a wooden rocking chair on the porch. A burning lantern was set on a table nearby. At the boy’s side, a barrel was sending off ripples of steam. Each time he rocked forward, the boy reached into the barrel and pulled out roasted peanuts. And as he cracked them open with his teeth, shells fell over his chest.
“Howdy,” Martin called out, because books had taught him it was best to be friendly with the natives. It was a moonless night, and Martin had managed to come within fifty feet of the porch without being noticed.
The boy planted his feet, lowered his hand into the barrel, and dropped his uneaten peanuts back inside. “Kelvin?” he asked softly.
“No, it’s not Kelvin. It’s Martin.”
The boy stood up. He brushed the shells from his chest and reached over to the table to grab the lantern. “Martin?” he said. “We don’t have a Martin here.”
“I’m new,” Martin said, moving closer so that he could be seen.
“No kiddin’, dude,” the boy said, his eyes ablaze. With
that, he turned and just about tore the screen door off the house as he bolted inside.
“I come in peace,” Martin called as he followed through the door. “Kelvin has sent me. This is the land of Xibalba, right?”
A few mangled candles flickered, revealing a cramped and cluttered abode, but Martin couldn’t make out much detail. The lantern’s steady glow appeared to bounce around the house, and what Martin couldn’t see, he could imagine from the sounds of the boy crashing his way through the bric-a-brac.
Martin followed the lantern and the sounds, carefully tightroping the few bare bits of floor through what he assumed was a dining room, until he reached a door that was swinging wide open.
As Martin moved outside onto the front steps, the boy stopped about forty feet ahead of him, in the middle of a wide street that led away from the house. He turned to look back.
“Stay put, hoss,” he said nervously. In one hand, he held the lantern; in the other, a large bell.
“Sure,” Martin said, and he buried his hands in the pockets of his pants.
The boy raised the bell over his head and gave it a steady shake. Its clang pattered down the dark street. It was followed by a long silence.
Lines etched a picture of worry in the boy’s face. Martin stayed put, but he too was getting nervous.
When it seemed nothing else would happen, the bell was answered with the sound of a higher-pitched and faster bell. It rattled off a frantic
ding-a-ling
.
Moments later, a powerful gong.
Then, almost immediately, the quiet of night was shoved aside by a cacophony of instruments. Martin had never heard such a racket. It wasn’t music. It was madness.
Soon globes of light began appearing along the street, like a school of fish reflecting the moon. Martin couldn’t stand still any longer. He crept down the steps and into the yard to get a better look.
The boy didn’t stop him. He appeared less worried now, but sweat had burst through at his temples, and he was panting heavily. He set his bell on the ground. Taking in a deep breath, he placed his hand to his mouth, then hollered, “A Forgotten! A Forgotten!”
The rest of the instruments faded away and were replaced by a series of kids’ voices, all echoing the same thing.
“A Forgotten. A Forgotten. A Forgotten …”
“I
t’s been about a year since we’ve done one of these,” a girl who had introduced herself as Darla said. “Forgive us, Martin, if we’re a bit rusty.”
Martin sat on a wooden stool, in the middle of a church. The pews had been removed, and in a haphazard circle around him, a group of approximately forty kids reclined on sofas and plush chairs. A stocky boy with a mess of curly red hair circled the room with a large candle, lighting smaller candles that had melted into the ledges next to the soot-caked windows. Yawns were contagious in there, but Martin’s pulsing blood had no interest in sleep.
“I’m just happy to have made it,” Martin said.
Darla swept her sandy bangs away from her face and gave him a tight-lipped smile. She straightened her back and scooted herself closer to Martin. The wheels on her chair squeaked as they slid across the wood floor.
“And we’re delighted you could join us,” she said. “How it usually goes is this: you tell your story and then we all go around and tell our stories and then you get to pick your house. Don’t worry, there are still plenty of good ones left.”
“Okay,” Martin said. “But I don’t know if I have much of a story.”
“Just tell us about your life before the Day,” Darla said. “And tell us how you got here.”
“I don’t think I know when the Day was,” Martin admitted.
“Yesterday,” the redheaded boy said, turning accusingly from a candle. “Two years ago, yesterday. How couldja not know that?”
“I’m from an island,” Martin explained. “I’ve been living there alone.”
“Really?” Darla said, and as her mouth opened in wonder, Martin saw a flash of metal on her two top front teeth.
“Yes,” Martin confirmed. “I lived on the island my entire life. Just me and my father. He left more than two years ago. You’re some of the first people I’ve spoken to since.”
“Fascinating,” Darla said.
The redheaded boy grumbled and grabbed a chair. As he sat, he cradled the burning candle in his lap. It made Martin more than a bit nervous.
“I—that’s—how I—I am,” Martin stammered. “I came to the mainland about a month back. I saw some bears. I followed a trail and ended up here, just like Kelvin thought I would.”
“Kelvin?” Darla craned her neck forward. “You met Kelvin?”
The other kids perked up. They traded whispers.
“Yes,” Martin said. “Near the ocean. He looked good. Fantastic. He looked fantastic.”
Darla gave a single satisfied nod. “Good,” she said. “I’m happy for him, then.”
The rest of the kids continued to whisper.
An olive-skinned boy scribbled something down on a block of wood that rested on his knee.
“Where was he going?” a girl stretched out on a sofa asked. Her hair was long and straight and black, and her body was shaped like a pear. But Martin was struck most by her eyes, which, in the flickering candlelight, appeared to be silver.
“I’m not sure,” Martin answered. “I don’t think he wanted me to know.”
“Sounds like our Kelvin,” Darla said. “So is that it, then? Your story? That all?”
“Yes. That’s it, mostly.”
“You’re a Forgotten, all right,” Darla said. “But my story, if you don’t mind me telling it, is a bit more interesting.”
The girl on the sofa rolled her eyes, but Martin didn’t know why. Stories were food to him. The more interesting, the more nourishing.
“Please,” he said. “Tell.”
Darla scooted her chair closer to the center of the church and wiggled her body, as if she were shaking dust off it. Then she began.
“I’m a West Coast girl, Martin. Sunshine and sand instead of snow. That’s my blood. So it’s kinda crazy that I made it all the way here. But as we all know, you find your way. Somehow.
“Anyhow, on the Day, I was sitting by the pool and all the
dogs in the neighborhood began barking up a storm. Howling and yapping, and even my pup, Dr. Fuzzbucket, was going crazy, and he was the sweetest, quietest thing. That must have been the exact moment they left, but I didn’t know it till later. Mommy and Daddy were at the lake house, where they usually go on weekends, and I was gonna sit by the pool and eat honeydew and maybe write in my diary. But when the barking finally ended, I opted for a nap instead. Fell asleep in the pool chair. It was the middle of the night when I woke up and smelled the smoke.
“Now, I’d seen forest fires before, driving with Daddy into the mountains. So I thought that maybe that’s all it was. But I could totally feel the heat on my skin and I knew it was so much closer than the mountains. I coulda jumped in the pool, but I’m a pretty selfless person, so I decided to save Fuzzy-B first. I ran into the house and found him whimpering in Mommy’s closet. Grabbed him and decided to head to the street, ’cause firemen were probably there and they would toss me on their truck and get the sirens spinning.
“By the time I was in the driveway, the fire had gotten to my house, and it was all over the roof. I’m telling you, the whole block was in flames. Houses and trees burning everywhere. And there was absolutely no one around. Not even voices. Only the sounds of explosions and car alarms and roofs caving in and I didn’t have the time to cry or even scream. I got into Daddy’s pickup, which he kept in the driveway ’cause he thought it made the neighbors think we were regular even though we definitely weren’t regular. I dug the extra keys from the visor, where Mommy kept them hidden, and I started it up.
“Eleven years old, Martin, and I’m driving. Can you
believe that? Mommy had let me do it in parking lots before, but this was prime time. I was swerving around cars that were exploding and sizzling in the middle of the road, and I was like a pro out there. The stereo was blasting and I had to keep the AC pumping ’cause it was crazy hot.…”