Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Slip Back in Time

It all started back in 1999 when I was 19, I had an experience that I can't explain that freaks me out to this day.
My girlfriend and I went up to Poughkeepsie, New York on a trip to visit her sick uncle, a man nick-named Floyd due to his profession as a barber (Mayberry reference) although he also was an avid biker. He had lupus and about a thousand other ailments, it seemed.
He lived on a large tract of land that included nature trails that seemed to go back for miles on up into the woods. One morning after breakfast, Cindi (my ex now) and I decided after breakfast to head out to a location that she remembered going to when she was a kid visiting. She called it the big Indian rock, which she said looked like a profile of an Indian chief.
So at around 10:30 or 11:00 or so, we headed up there. It was a long way up into the woods, but Cindi, after getting some directions, seemed really confident, having not been there in years. But after a while, I was almost sure she was lost, but she saw something that she recognized and headed off into that direction. It was this large white rock with a fort into the side of it like a kids' fort or something. Her exact words were, "Oh my god, I remember this place..." and then began to tell me how she and her friends, a bunch of boys who lived nearby, had built this one afternoon and was totally surprised to see it after all this time.
This was at least 10 years later and this poorly constructed fort was still there, which I thought fascinating too at the time. The fort consisted of a low lean-to almost like a box made of rotted plywood scraps. It sat to the side of the huge white rock and had a bundle of dirty camping gear inside of it, sleeping bags and other dirty junk and leaves, cobwebs, etc. Cindi went up to the entrance of the low-to-the-ground fort and looked in at it as I jumped up on the top of the white rock to have a seat.
I looked over to where Cindi was and she had disappeared from view. At first I thought she maybe crawled inside, but on more careful observation, this wasn't the case at all. I turned to see whether perhaps she had gone around the other side of the huge rock and when I turned I saw two little freckle-faced boys, one taller than the other and staring at me. One wore a ball cap on backward and the other in a dirty flannel jacket. They just stared at me eerily and then suddenly It just seemed like time slipped and suddenly I was walking up a wooded path towards a clearing, and there was Cindi telling me to hurry up and come on.
I stepped into the clearing and there was a side of a big rock with, yes a profile of a face or something, really quite unimpressive, but I suppose it had sentimental value with her. I was still in a daze but I just snapped to and met up with her.
My first question to her was who were those two boys and no doubt she responded, "What are you talking about? What boys?" I said "At the rock..." she just punched me in the arm and began to point out the face in the rocks and then told me how she was a tom-boy and used to ride BMX bikes back there and other such memory lane kinds of stuff.
After a few minutes we headed back to Floyd's place and we were greeted by Cindi's mother who had just arrived. I met her mother and she seemed nice and hung out at Floyd's and had a few beers with him, even though he complained that it didn't mix well with his medication.
So after a while, Cindi came in and we all got to talking and the fort came up and she asked about some kids she knew in the area and if they were still around or whatever happened to, yada, yada kind of thing. Floyd got real dark when Cindi mentioned the "Moriarty" kids and went into a morose story and got rather quiet.
He said to Cindi, "The two boys and their mother were killed by their father before he took his own life." (Having something to do with a divorce.)
When I heard this, my hair on the nape of my neck stood up as my spine tingled as I was not going to spend another night out there at Floyd's place. He went on to comfort her, telling her that they were in a better place, etc. I couldn't dare recount what happened to me at the fort. I just wanted to split out of there; this was too freaky.
I made up a story after calling my roommate back in Bayonne, telling them that I had to get back there and asked Cindi if she wanted to stay but she decided to come with me. While driving back, Cindi kept the two boys as a topic and said that they both had a crush on her. And once even fought over her, and man, that just made me drive faster. We made record time back to Jersey.
By Mr. torrence

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