Chapter Fourteen

The sun poured through the thick leaves of the forest of Medias, shining directly overhead. Ben, Gus, and Martha walked abreast along the paths that lead to the outskirts of the forest. With the knowledge Ben now possessed of the forces at work in the ground beneath him, he felt more acutely aware of the magic that tugged at him, urging him to return to the center of the hills. In his awareness, he felt more fiercely called to fight the feeling. He only prayed that Tess shared that feeling and was somewhere nearby in the woods, just waiting to join up with them along an adjacent path.

“I’ve definitely got a better one than that,” Martha was saying to Gus. “I heard this from one of the conference center janitorial staff guys. Evidently, Richard—I’m sure you know him from the pond guild, since his brother is in charge of it—well, evidently, Richard has a friend who says he’s been There and came back with all these amazing and pretty horrific stories. I think his name was Sallus or something.”

“Okay, intro done, I hope and pray?” Gus said mockingly.

“So Sallus was staying with a family that lived a good distance outside of Medias,” Martha said, plowing over Gus’ interjection. “There was a mother a father and two children, Sam and Sarah. Sam was older, and didn’t live at home anymore, but he visited the family often and Sallus got to know him pretty well. He was a construction worker, you know, like the guys who repair houses and things.”

“I don’t ever remember a time when any houses needed repair,” Gus said innocently.

“Oh shut up,” Ben said with a laugh.

“Anyway. One day, the mother’s uncle came to visit. He was a big shot Sir-gent Major in something called an Arm Force or a Terry Mill or something. Anyway, he was a famous guy for some reason and he had traveled all over the world with his Arm.”

“He only had one?”

“No, that was the name of his group, the ‘Arm Force’ and when you’re a leader they give you control over one or more Arms,” Martha struggled to explain. “I don’t really get where they come up with names for things in There, but it is what it is, I guess.”

“Back to the story,” Ben said.

“So the Sir-gent’s name was Morris, and he had picked up this weird talisman in some foreign country, this thing called a Monk E. Paw.”

“Are monks animals There?” Ben asked.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Gus said. “How can animals practice religious rites and traditions?”

“I think it’s more that the original monks got their name because they wore fur off an animal named the Monk E,” Martha clarified. “I think I read that in a book somewhere.”

“Why is it called the Monk E, then?” Gus asked. “Are there different kinds of Monk animals? Like Monk A and Monk B and Monk C?”

“Sure. Let’s go with that and get on with the story,” Martha said, shooting him a look that was meant to be something of a spurn on his sudden and uncharacteristic curiosity. “So Sir-gent Major Morris brought Sallus’ foster family the Monk E paw as a gift. He told them that it was given to him by a friend in the Arm Force who had gotten it from a foreign medicine man whose name was Faker. Faker had said that the paw would grant the head of any family three wishes, but Morris suggested that they used them carefully and only one at a time, so that they wouldn’t waste them.

“Richard said then that Sallus and Morris had a private talk in the front garden while the rest of the family was inside discussing what they were going to do with the three wishes the Monk E paw would grant them. Evidently Morris told Sallus that he had actually been bequeathed the talisman in the will of his friend from the Arm Force, and that the will had expressly stated that Morris was supposed to destroy the talisman. Morris said that his friend had used his third wish to take his own life. But Morris explained to Sallus that he didn’t think it was fair that his Arm Force friend should be the last to benefit from such a rare item, and he wrote off the suicide by describing a horrible illness his friend had been suffering from for years, something that would cause Morris himself to wish for death, especially after the first two obviously life-altering wishes had already been granted.”

“Uh, Martha,” Ben said warily, “this story is getting…I don’t know…do we want to hear the end?” They were nearly to the catfish pond my this time, and both the story and the Tess’ unmistakable absence were starting to eat away at Ben’s level of comfort with his situation.

“It’s a good story,” she assured them both, because Gus was looking leery as well. “I mean, it’s different from most Median stories. That’s why I’m telling it: so we can get a better idea of what There is like in comparison to Medias.”

Gus and Ben looked at each other with uncertainty. Martha rolled her eyes and continued. “Anyway, after the meeting with Sallus in the front garden, Sir-gent Major Morris said he had to be going, that he’d just stopped by for a short visit, and that he’d be sure to come again in the coming months, whenever his worldly travels guided him back that way. So Sallus went back inside and sat down with the family, listening to them come to a final decision about how to use their first wish.

“The father, being the head of the family, decided that the best thing to do would be to ask for money to pay off some debts the family had, so that Sarah’s schooling could be paid for more easily when that time came. After some discussion, the other family members agreed and the father said he’d make the with the next morning, giving him time to go over the family books to find out exactly how much money they’d need; they didn’t want to over indulge, but they didn’t want to sell themselves too short, either.

“So the next morning, after Sam had left for his home and Sarah had left for her preparatory school, the mother and the father sat down at the table with Sallus to make the wish. The father held the shriveled little paw in his hands and said, ‘I wish our family came into possession of £359 of extra money that we could use to pay off our debts.’ The three waited for about a half hour without any sign of £359 showing up anywhere. Then the phone rang.”

“The phone?” Gus asked.

“Evidently it’s some wiring device that people There use to contact each other over long distances. It’s too hard to explain, and it doesn’t really matter in this story, except that someone from Sam’s construction company used one to call Sam’s parents and tell them that Sam had died due to someone else’s mishandling of a company machine.”

Gus and Ben’s eyes widened with fear, disgust, and sadness.

“The construction company man asked if Sam’s father could come and identify the body for insurance purposes, since the company was going to have to pay £359 as compensation for the loss of their son.”

“What?” Ben and Gus said together, mouths open and aghast.

“That’s…that’s disgusting,” Ben said.

“Sallus thought so, too,” Martha said, plowing on, though her face was considerably harder than it had been when she started. “He said that when the father came back from the sight, he went up to his study and locked himself in there for three days. The mother was absolutely disconsolate; she was catatonic the whole week, so Sallus and Sarah were left to fend for themselves, and poor Sarah was beside herself with grief and misplaced guilt, thinking that it was her need for school money that had killed her brother.”

“Martha, this is a horrible story,” Gus said. “I don’t care about ‘better understanding the differences between There and Medias; I don’t want to hear the rest of it.”

Martha’s eyes went downcast. “I know,” she said quietly. “I mean, it’s awful. But it’s the kind of things people from There are always worried about—the consequences of their actions and their need to accept things as they are. ‘The natural order of things’ is a concept Sallus mentioned in every story he told.”

“There’s no way Sallus actually went There and came back,” Ben said, more angrily than he had meant to. “I mean,” he said, bringing his tone back up, “Medias told Tess and I yesterday that no one is allowed to return to Medias after going There.”

Now Gus and Martha looked at each other uncertainly. “Why not?” they asked, almost in unison.

“It said there’s a fundamental difference between people from There and Medians, something about ‘outlying emotions.’ I didn’t really understand it, but it said that people born and raised in Medius had better control of themselves than people from There, but that leaving Medias, even for a few days, would break up too much of that control for them to be…” He looked at the fear on Gus and Martha’s faces, and realized too late that he should have told them all of this before.

“Ben?” The soft, nearly whispered word came from a clearing just beyond where the three were standing. Ben heard it and felt his stomach lurch up into his chest before he could clearly articulate why.

“…Tess?” he said, his voice turned quiet by his sudden heedless anxiety. It felt to him as though Gus and Martha had sunk into the earth around them as be began to run, dodging between thinning trees and coming into the light of the catfish pond clearing. There, standing on the other side of the water with traveling clothes he’d never seen before and a knapsack made out of many unmatched napkins and throw-pillow cases stitched together, was Tess.

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P.S. Yeah, the Curse of the Monkey Paw is not my story. Los siento. Originally, it was just a word count thing, but now I'm thinking of leaving it in legit, so I didn't think it made sense to censor it here. But yeah, not my story; fan-fiction-esque disclaimer.