All the Dynamos Within

All the Dynamos Within

            On cold, wet days I had a habit of trekking into the woods as a teenager, mostly, because no one else did. I enjoyed the privacy and I often needed throngs of nature to think clearer. There’s something about the quiet creaking of old growth trees and the stillness of moss that would help me clean the occasional, wretched thoughts in my head. So last week, many years later and upon the arrival of some ugly news from a dear friend, I decided to drive home and hike through a familiar mountain valley.

            It snowed softly, but the thick canopy above me blocked most of the snow. The forest floor growled with an intense green, save for open thickets of fern and mountain grass, which the snow had enveloped in white. A small creek dribbled nearby, appearing like a shiny scar curving through the undergrowth and air formed as short-lived clouds in front of my face. I stood quietly with my gloved thumbs in my pockets while surveying the area. Two mountains ascended on both sides of me, a sheer cliff on the left and a gentle slope on the right. The lush green gully had not changed much from when I walked through it as an adolescent.

            I continued to walk, absentmindedly palming the underside of my backpack to make sure it had not miraculously fallen from my shoulders. The small pack had three days of survival gear even though the hike lasted only a day. I was halfway through, hugged by mountains covered in crystalline snow.

            When I came up over a rise I nearly fell flat on my face, distracted by the sudden disappearance of the trail. I ignored the entanglement of tree roots at my feet and stumbled forward in disbelief. The trail simply ended.

            “What the – where the hell did the trail go?” I said aloud.

            A thicket of sword ferns swallowed the path. Quickly, I decided a mudslide must have filled in the area years ago. And now, it was colonized by ferns. But my logic seemed to fall short because the footfalls of other hikers and fauna would have produced, at the very least, a sliver of a trail in its wake. Regardless, I pressed on, convinced the trail would reappear at the far edge of the supposed mudslide.

            I walked 200 meters.

            Nothing.

            Just thick vegetation and no evidence of the trampled, muddy path that was supposed to be underneath it. I looked over my shoulder, studying where I entered the thicket. The strange border taunted me, but I shrugged my shoulders and walked another 200 meters.

            Still nothing.

            I arrived at the apex of another rise and realized my pant legs were wet from pushing through the dense ferns. The calm of the forest faded and confusion took its place. Eyes wide, I noticed below me a juncture at which the two mountains touched. I had hiked between these mountains probably fifty times and they were never joined at any point anywhere! No manner of mudslide, or even earthquake for that matter, could have pushed these mountains together within 20 years. Besides, one side of the path always had a moderate slope. The sudden appearance of a second cliff made my head spin. I panicked. I thought I was lost, but I couldn’t be with the trail not that far behind me.

            I inspected the area and an awful heat rose in my chest when I discovered the creek had disappeared as well. The creek was supposed to run the entire length of the hike. I definitely remembered that correctly. Scratching my head, I swiftly backtracked through the ferns to where the path ended. About 20 feet from the path I found the creek again and followed it in the direction of the hike.

            The creek ended just like the trail. The water flowed into a bed of ferns and vanished. My stomach churned and I began to sweat. And then my ears started to ring. I rubbed them with my gloved hands, still staring at the disappearing creek. When I moved my hands away it occurred to me the ringing was getting louder and it sounded more like a tune.

            Someone was whistling!

            The tune was low and somber, and it seemed to emanate from all directions. I left the supernatural creek and hurried back to the trail. No one was there. The trail was empty as far as I could see. The whistling grew yet louder and then it stopped suddenly. I stared down the trail in the direction from which I had originally come.

            Silence and an empty path.

            I felt someone behind me. I palmed the salty sweat from my eyes and slowly turned around.

            “Ahhhhh!” I yelled, falling backwards onto the ground.

            The child had appeared out of nowhere and even though I knew she did this on occasion, it didn’t make it any less frightening. My lungs fought for air while I recovered from the shock.

            “Damn it, my child, why do you – ”

            The child interrupted, pressing her forefinger to her lips.

            “Shhhhh! Be quiet and stay down!”

            She swiftly walked to me and put her hand on my shoulder. Her eyes were serious and ice blue. She wore her normal garb, a heavy charcoal gray dress with strange black runes around the hem and the cuffs. She also wore a knitted black scarf with matching mittens, which occurred to me as odd, but only because since she first appeared to me 15 years ago I had never seen her in the dead of winter. Her hair was odd too. Usually, it was brown and wavy and long. I had even seen it platinum blonde too, but this time it was straight, bobbed just short of her chin and the color of an aging raven, black with washes of gray. The child also looked maybe 13; her age always varied from young to old to young again, but I had never seen her older than, say, 10 or 11.

            “You’re not supposed to be here,” she whispered curtly. “You’re early.”

            “I’m early? What – ”

            “Keep your voice down. He’s coming!” she hissed.

            “Ok – ok, but what in the blazes of hellfire is going on? Who’s coming?”

            I was getting worried; the child was usually all smiles and playful. I had never seen her so serious. And if I wasn’t mistaken, she even looked frightened. I had never seen her scared either. My stomach started to hurt like I had just swallowed a snake whole and it was trying to slither its way out.

            The child looked over her shoulder in the direction of where the ferns had enveloped the trail and then turned back with a quick jerk of her head. Her eyes locked on mine.

            “You’re early,” she repeated. “You were supposed to be here three days from now, when the dynamo killer had long since passed by and I had all this cleaned up.” The child waved her hand at the stunted path behind her.

            “You were impatient, weren’t you?” she asked, her face contorting with frustration. “You just couldn’t wait, could you? You were supposed to be patient and wait it out! You sought refuge too soon!”

            “Um, what are you talking about? You’re never this upset.”

            The child sighed heavily and nodded.

            “You’re right. I must calm myself,” she said, patting me on the shoulder. “We must be ready. There is no time to flee now.”

            “Flee from what?”

            “As I said, the dynamo killer is coming. He was following me. He follows all things melancholy, which is why I was whistling that morose tune. But he was getting too close. So, I pulled the mountains together and covered the path to slow him down, for even I do not wish to encounter him . . . not again.”

            “Who is the dynamo killer?” I asked, pulling myself to a kneeling position.

            “Everyone has dynamos, some have more than others. They are the engines of our souls, the mentors in our hearts . . . they are the generators of life itself. The dynamo killer wants these elements dead; he wants us to follow him . . . to follow him into the caverns of despondency. With each dynamo he destroys in us, the more we become less ourselves and the more we turn into mere husks.”

            A raging explosion blasted over the rise from the where the mountains were touching. I could hear boulders cracking and rocks thudding on the carpet of moss. The child turned to the noise and began removing her mittens.

            “Get up, my dear,” she commanded gently. “He’s here. You must stand and face him. There is no other way.”

            I stood and placed my cumbersome backpack on the ground nearby while the child stuffed her mittens in a pocket.

            “How do we fight him?”

            The child looked up into my face, finally smiling with closed lips, and said, “You fight him by drawing from yourself all the dynamos within. You must place them together an ascend yourself. You must reach past all that you once were. You must divorce from yourself all of your sorrows. And when you’ve done that, you must simply remain standing.”

            “All I have to do is stand?” I asked, sounding astonished.

            The child’s smile vanished and I could hear heavy, volatile footsteps heading in our direction.

            “Make no mistake! The dynamo killer is more powerful than all the human parasites of this world put together! He is not to be underestimated!”

            I nodded at the child and swallowed the spit in my mouth, which promptly ran dry. She returned the nod and gave one last instruction.

            “Remain standing no matter what happens. If you expire to the ground entirely, the battle is over and your dynamos will be severed from your life forever.”

            The footsteps grew closer and then stopped. I looked up from the child. A dark, sinewy figure had appeared on the rise above us. The dynamo killer placed his hands on his hips and let out a deep laugh from the back of his throat, which resonated with a strange softness, a sort of gentle rage.

            The dynamo killer looked nothing like I had imagined. I expected him to be a hulking beast, sodden with hideous malformations. Instead, he was bizarrely handsome, clean and smaller than the average man. His smaller frame, however, was not at all diminishing; his toughness and defined muscles bulged from under his button-up flannel shirt and blue jeans. His shirt was red and black plaid, and he wore it neatly tucked into his pants with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. A plain black belt girdled his waist and plain black boots covered his feet. His hair shone like black tar and was combed with precision. He stood before us as an oddity to modern times, looking like he had just arrived from the 1950’s. If it were not for the child’s quickening breaths next to me, I might have thought the dynamo killer was just a well-mannered gentleman from next door.

            His dreadful laugh hushed abruptly – as if it had run into a brick wall. The dynamo killer turned the corners of his mouth slightly upward into a crooked smile and breathed in softly through his nose. He waited a moment and then walked toward us, speaking with a deep and elegant voice.

            “My child, it certainly has been a long time since we last saw each other, has it not?”

            “A few millennia,” the child said curtly.

            “You seem perturbed, little one. What’s the matter – not happy to see me?”

            “No, not exactly.”

            The dynamo killer laughed softly, but then suddenly pointed his face at me and then back at the child.

            “Wait a minute. Why are you here? I came for him, not you.”

            The child didn’t answer and stared at him, her eyes flashing with defiance. The three of us remained silent and the two of them locked eyes while I whipped my head back and forth between their faces. The forest was so still I could practically hear a snowflake landing on the bough of a fir tree high in the canopy.

            And then the child began whistling that same mournful tune.

            This enraged the dynamo killer. He sneered and spat at the child’s feet.

            “You,” he began, “you were the one whistling! You little bitch! And I suppose you also pulled those two mountains together as well!?”

            The child’s mouth curved into a triumphant smile and she said, “Yes, I did that. Are you surprised? You’re a fool, easily swayed by the sounds of sadness – and you followed me like dog does his master!”

            The child prattled on, making great attempts to enervate the dynamo killer with emotional jabs, but her efforts only worked as a temporary distraction. The child and the dynamo killer continued their caustic exchange, their voices rising higher and higher. That’s when the pressure started building in my head. And then a violent hissing noise, which seemed to stem from all directions, entered my ears. The forest, the moss, the ferns, the snow – all of it started spinning around me. I swayed dangerously, leaning into imaginary winds. My stomach lurched and fiery bile heaved from my mouth onto a bed of mud. I couldn’t focus. Something blurred my vision. I felt heated tears fall from my contorted face and when I tried to wipe them away to restore my sight, the backs of my hands came up smeared with a deep, dark red.

            I was bleeding from my eyes.

            I could barely muster a sound, but I whispered, “My child, what’s happening to me?”

            The sound of delicate footsteps trotted toward me and I could feel the hand of the child on my elbow. Her voice was calm, but her hand gripped me tightly like a hungry bird perched upon dead prey.

            “The dynamo killer has begun,” she said. “You must remain standing at all costs. He will tire eventually. We must make him tired before he draws from us our dynamos.”

            The dynamo killer laughed from the back of his throat again, only it was louder this time and his voice felt like barbed wire in my ears. I sensed he had suddenly gained the upper-hand. I blinked quickly in succession to clear my eyes. Raising my head, I saw the dynamo killer with his whole hand opened in my direction, his palm twitching and his face crowded with a terrifying smirk. I looked to the child and I saw rivulets of blood flow from her eyes, nose and ears.

            “How very sweet,” he began, “the puny child, trying to coach the mortal. Hah! You sound like one of those weak-minded angels.”

            He laughed again.

            “Concentrate,” the child implored, staring into my eyes. “You must remain standing.”

            “Why am I bleeding?” I asked stupidly.

            “We bleed from everywhere as the dynamo killer tries to take all that we are. He needs no needles and tubes to draw from us our blood. He simply pulls it out of us with his will and if you fall, the gates of your heart will open and it’s over. You mustn’t fall.”

            That’s when I noticed the front of my pants and my jacket were growing wet with blood. A red droplet flew from my nose through the air and disappeared into the dynamo killer’s hand.

            But suddenly, I felt a brief respite and I heard the dynamo killer take a few deafening steps toward us. He growled and kicked the child square in the chest. Her body crumpled under his booted foot and she launched into some nearby ferns.

            I was alone.

            “You weak fools,” the dynamo killer said. “I’ve grown stronger since the last time I saw you, my child and now . . . now, I will have both of you.”

            His head jerked in my direction. I watched his face contort with violence into a sneer of conceit. The palm of his hand rose to my chest and began twitching again.

            “You first,” he hissed.

            I screamed. An unbearable pain shot through my sternum and hope departed. The short-lived respite had ended and the dizziness had returned. The muscles in my legs began to shake and my bones were turning to paste against the incredible draw of the dynamo killer.

            I fell . . . to one knee.

            The child screamed and I could hear her moving toward me. I looked up at the dynamo killer. His eyes were wild and spit had formed at the corners of his mouth. And that’s when I noticed something strange about his skin. I started seeing shapes on his forearms, and the more he drew blood from me, the more I could see them. The shapes formed into darkened faces and ghostly bodies, swirling underneath his skin. The images floated up his neck and threatened to take over his face.

            The child reached me and grabbed my hand.

            She closed her eyes and shouted, “You will stand . . . now!”

            And with that the child lowered herself to one sacrificial knee and I, in turn, raised myself from the dirt to face the dynamo killer.

            The child yelled again, “He’s growing weaker! That’s why you see the captured ones on his skin! They are the taken; they are dynamo dead! They try to free themselves as he takes your dynamos! You must resist him until he retreats to contain the captured. Remain standing!”

            The dynamo killer growled and flexed his palm against my chest. My body dipped and I nearly buckled again under the shock of his power. My clothes were soaked with blood and the strain against me grew exponentially, but I stayed afoot.

            “You must find Grace! She will help you!” the child screamed.

            I looked down at the child and she managed to nod at me just before the dynamo killer punched her in the head with his free hand. Blood sprayed from her face and her body went slack.

            Her hand fell from mine.

            My mind raced and my heart hurt. The child told me to find Grace, but she and I both knew that Grace had died nearly three years ago. I watched her die; I held her hand as she shifted from this world into the next, leaving me behind with unrequited love.

            The dynamo killer repositioned his palm on my chest and started choking me with the other. He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes to concentrate. His mouth hissed and clicked with indiscernible words from some ancient language I had only heard from the child. It was a mantra of some sort and it would see me to my end. It would be over soon . . . I would die.

            Clinging to my dynamos, I opened my eyes wide while my strength continued to wane. I wanted to see any part of my world – for as long as I could – before I entered his.

            And then I saw her.

            I blinked twice to clear the blood from my eyes and I saw Grace among the throngs of the other dynamo dead. Her face appeared on the forearm that choked me and like a shadow giving way to dusk, she quickly began to disappear. But even when her face had gone I could still see her hands pushing against the dynamo killer’s skin, which seemed to bubble and fester with her love beneath it.

            From my belt I pulled a buck knife my father had given me many years ago. And while the dynamo killer hummed his mantra, I pressed the blade against his skin and sliced him open with a swift downward motion. Before he had even opened his eyes, Grace was already reaching out. I quickly dropped the knife and took hold of Grace’s hands and pulled with all the might I could muster.

            The dynamo killer shrieked and wailed. His hand released from my chest and he tried to push Grace back into his body . . . but it was too late. I finished pulling her out of him and he could do nothing to stop it. Grace fell from his arm to the ground and then, after a momentary fit of shaking, she stood up to face the dynamo killer.

            Grace was beautiful. I had forgotten her warmth. I thought she was dead. But there she was, standing before me, naked with porcelain skin covered with multitudes of scars and long, dark hair that stretched to the middle of her back.

            The dynamo killer cupped his wounded arm with his hand to prevent others of the dynamo dead from escaping. He whimpered and moaned. Grace walked to him.

            “It’s time for you to go,” she said to him calmly.

            The dynamo killer spat in Grace’s face.

            “I will capture you again!” he roared.

            She smiled at him, sighed softly and said, “You will never learn.”

            And with that she violently clutched his shiny, black hair with one hand and punched him deep in the gut with the other. The dynamo killer fought to breathe, wheezing and squeaking for air.

            “It’s time for you to go,” Grace repeated, and then she pressed her lips against his forehead and gently pushed him away.

            The dynamo killer looked away from Grace and eyed me with great menace. Looking upon his face made me realize just how light-headed I was from the attack. I could barely stand. I looked as though I had just woken from a nap, a slumber spent under the blanket of a recently slaughtered cow.

            With shallow breaths he said to me, “I shall return for you as well.”

            And with that he turned and walked away, holding his slashed arm gingerly. I saw his skin returning to normal with the dynamo dead receding deep into his body once more.

            Grace called out to him with a voice dignified and serious.

            “Dynamo killer!”

            He stopped at the top of the rise among the dense ferns and turned to face her.

            “What do you want now?!” he yelled back, almost sounding embarrassed.

            She cleared her throat, pointed her chin at him defiantly and said, “That wound on your arm – it will yield a scar of uncanny resplendence. It will shine with vigor and remain there for the rest of your days as a constant reminder that love is its maker.”

            The dynamo killer spat on the ground and then stomped off. I started to black out, but before I fell unconscious I could hear the child giggling.

            My legs gave way and my body surrendered to the ground.

            When I came to, Grace was already gone. The child explained she had much to do to make up for the years she had been captive in the dynamo killer; she could not spare another moment to wait for me to wake up. Grace was like that, mysterious and fickle. And I was used to it; my love for her had learned to exceed the consternation of her strange ways.

            “How are ya, keed?” said the child, smiling gently while she smoothed hair out of my face.

            The child was younger again, about five or six-years-old, and mostly looked the same, save for an unusual exception. A yellowish, purple bruise stretched over one of her temples and into her eye. I had never seen the child injured. I reached for the bruise with my fingertips.

            “Oh that. Yep, the dynamo killer sure hit me pretty hard. But don’t you go fussin’ over it, now. It’ll heal.”

            She winked at me and asked again how I was feeling.

            “Alright, I guess. What day is it?”

            “Oh, it’s been a few days. I stayed with you, ya know, to keep you company.”

            With the child’s help I sat up. The snowing had stopped, but I could tell it had dumped quite a bit on the area while I was unconscious. Blankets of white, higher than the child’s waist, covered every clearing, but I was still mostly protected under the thick tree canopy. I sat on a bed of clean moss, undoubtedly modified by the child for warmth.

            “What happened to the dynamo killer?” I asked.

            The child giggled, cupping a tiny fist in front of a wide grin, and said, “He left . . . and not very gracefully.”

            I smiled at her, aware that her humor had returned. But even as I smiled, something felt different. I felt different – as if someone would attack me at any moment. And not even the child’s endearing presence was enough to shake this growing sensation.

            “Something’s wrong with me, isn’t there?” I asked.

            The child rubbed her cheek with the palm of her hand. She appeared to be considering her words carefully.

            “Um . . . yeah.  He got to you,” she blurted finally.

            “He? The dynamo killer?”

            “Yeah.”

            “What did he take from me? Why do I feel so anxious?”

            The child sighed and affectionately smoothed the rim of one of my ears between a thumb and forefinger. She always did this calm me.

            “He nearly took the dynamo that governs your trust in people.”

            “Damn it,” I said under my breath, looking away from her.

            “But don’t worry,” she said with a squeak, “you can build it back up again. It’s just gonna take a little time – that’s all.”

            “Well, I’m not getting any younger,” I said angrily. “All that work I did – gone. All that trust I built sucked out of me by some whack job in a flannel shirt. That’s just great.”

            “I cleaned your clothes! They were really bloody,” the child said playfully, changing the subject.

            “Thanks,” I said flatly.

            “Oh, actually, I missed a spot in the middle of your shirt.”

            I opened my jacket and looked down. A reddish-brown splotch covered the material right over my heart.

            “I couldn’t get that stain out. It was too stubborn, ya know, and besides . . . it’s your job to work on that one.”

            Staring at the impossible stain, I said, “Of course . . . right, but you do realize that – ”

            I had raised my head mid-sentence and noticed the child had vanished, leaving me once again to contend with my lessons. I didn’t even bother to look around for her like I used to. She does this all the time. She comes and goes . . . just like Grace. The warmth from the moss under me began to dissipate so I stood up to get my circulation moving. It was going to be a cold hike, so I zipped up my jacket and rifled through my backpack for warmer clothes. I found a hat and put it on. Farther down in the bag I discovered the child’s black scarf. I grinned, closed my eyes reverently and felt the weight of the child’s care drape around my neck.

            I had to decide which way to go. The child had restored the trail and I was in the middle of my journey still, halfway between the beginning and the end. Stuck between two mountains, I could only go backward or forward. If I went back to the beginning, I would be under the cover of trees with a mostly visible trail to guide me. But if I traveled forward, to the end, I would come to open meadows clogged with deep, frigid snow and a path lost under a thick shroud of white.

            I sighed heavily and began walking.

            My choice was obvious, my direction clear – for all the dynamos within would not let me listen to the one that was broken.