Day One

Sasha woke up to boy voices….

Arguing in hushed whispers? Wriggling deep inside her sleeping bag she tried to shut them out. But it was too late, her brain was awake and had to know what was worth arguing about at zero o’clock in the morning.

Brian? She identified the first.

“—stole the whole parking lot too?” Horatio was the other, sounding exasperated.

Their feet swished through wet grass coming toward her tent, probably on their way to the fire. Sleep was a lost cause and her interest was piqued. Jingling to the entrance on her elbows she unzipped the door and stuck her head out. “S’goin on?”

Brian and Horatio froze.

“Shit,” the scribe looked particularly shaken.

“Dude, Sasch, check this—” Brian started, trying to keep his voice quiet.

Horatio shushed them both, with a lingering glare at the jock. “It’s nothing, dear. Go back to sleep,” he said in a mollifying tone Sasha didn’t care for.

“Wha’?” she squinted up at him. It wasn’t that she didn’t hear, it’s that he was obviously lying.

Horatio looked around at the other nearby tents and turned back to her with a whisper. “We’re going to the fire. Just be quiet.” With that he strode past her tent before she could say anything else.

Looking at the jock for an explanation, he just shook his head like a warning and followed. Was Brian scared?

Something was definitely up. Was it the cops? She hurried through dressing. Digging around in her sleeping bag to retrieve the pants she kicked off to get to sleep.

Brian caught up with Horatio outside the tent “—didn’t want Sasch—?”

Sliding into the still-warm jeans, she mentally thanked Meg for the tip.

And only caught the end of Horatio’s reply, “—not yet.”

Snatching her sweatshirt pillow, she fought her way into it, muffling the constant tinkling of her bracelets. She pulled on her sneakers without socks and ducked out into the cool morning air. Half-zipping her tent closed, she started up the hill.

The sun wasn’t even over the trees, she noted with a chill. The fire wouldn’t be any help, only the barest smoke smoldered from the ashes. The boys watched her approach in silence. “The fuck’s going on?” she whispered obligingly and sat heavily in the same place as last night. An evening’s worth of dew soaked into her jeans. Well, that would itch later.

“The fucking cars are missing,” Brian blurted.

Horatio sighed. “Real subtle, Bry.”

Sasha remembered the first thing she heard this morning, and snapped to the obvious conclusion. “Someone stole the fucking cars?” Her car was down there. She needed her car. They all needed their cars. It was how they got places.

“Someone stole the parking lot,” Horatio replied glumly.

She didn’t know what that meant, but presumed he was confirming it was all the cars. How were they going to get back to campus? How were they going to get help? They were camping illegally with an ass-load of pot, they couldn’t exactly call the cops. She liked her car. “That’s Kevin’s dad’s Jeep,” she added another chip to the misery pile.

“Listen, we… we need to be together on this,” Horatio swallowed hard and looked seriously between them. “We can’t let on the possible… size of this.”

As was his specialty, Brian stated the obvious. “I think everyone’ll figure it out when it comes time to leave.”

Sasha was glad she wasn’t the only one confused. “Yeah, and besides… maybe…” she struggled for an explanation that wasn’t terrible, “… I mean, Kelly was on acid. Maybe she…” Sasha quickly abandoned that theory. “I mean, Meg and Jimmy think stupid shit is funny, maybe they—”

“Sasha,” Horatio harshly cut her off. “The parking lot is gone.”

He kept saying that, Sasha noted, trying not to be annoyed he just snapped at her. “What does that—?”

“The gravel: gone. The oil stains: gone. The driveway: gone,” his list grew increasingly frantic, “It’s not just the cars, it’s the whole fucking thing.”

But that was impossible. Surely, Horatio knew that. Just as impossible as his getting lost and only thinking the parking lot was gone. He knew the Rise better than any of them. Maybe it was a joke? If so, it wasn’t fucking funny. She opened her mouth with nothing to say until, “But—how?” came out.

Pulling at his beard, the scribe shook his head. He had no idea. Not one earthly explanation for how. Or even what. Because they still didn’t get it. Sighing, he pointed toward the neighboring hillside.

The opposite direction of the parking lot. Confused, Sasha and Brian followed the finger’s path. It was a whole lot of woods.

“What’s missing?” Horatio prompted them.

Missing? She didn’t see anything missing. Did Horatio have a favorite tree he expected them to know about? It was just—Sasha’s blood froze.

“What… the… shit?” Brian exhaled.

The power lines were gone.

Sasha’s brain reeled for purchase, but there was none. They weren’t just fucked… they were lost. “Horatio, if this is some kind of joke, stop,” she warned.

He couldn’t look at her. Just shook his head and uttered somberly, “No joke.”

She didn’t want to believe him. This was just some elaborate set-up, some smoke and mirrors to punish her for not calling him. Problem was, no part of her conspiracy sounded like Horatio. “And the parking lot?”

Horatio took his hand away from tugging his moustache down over his lip to confirm. “Gone.”

“When you say gone….” It was Brian’s turn to hope for some detail to emerge that put his world back together.

“I mean the place I was standing this morning was no place I’ve ever seen before,” his eyes fixed on Brian’s, tears blurring his vision. If this was a joke, Horatio had no part of it.

Suddenly Brian stood and strode over to sit next to Sasha, and started fishing around in the front pocket of Kevin’s backpack.

“What are you…?” Horatio half-asked, afraid he knew the answer already.

“I’m blazing.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No, I am not fucking kidding you,” Brian glared, all-but literally daring him to say something about it. When he didn’t, the jock reached for the Dark Side and poked around for any leftovers worth hitting.

Without holes being stared into him, Horatio’s indignation-fueled courage rose. “Has anyone ever accused you of having a problem dealing with reality?”

Stuffing a bud unceremoniously in the bowl, Brian rounded on him again. “In case you haven’t noticed, Rache,” he growled his friend’s name like a curse, “reality’s having a bit of a problem dealing with us right now.” He pointed a finger to where the power lines weren’t. “That’s a little fuckin’ freaky over there. Yer fuckin’ right I don’t know how to deal with it. Do you?”

The boys stared at each other in something straight out of the primate playbook. “Can we not get into a dick measuring contest right now?” Sasha interrupted their little High Noon scenario.

Horatio’s glare switched to her. She stared back. She could do this all day too, buddy. “I just think we should keep sharp,” he argued with Brian by way of her.

“Too fucking late, man,” Brian took it up, thankfully directly with the scribe. “Are you sharp? Is that what you call trying not to tell anybody?” he challenged.

Their staredown returned but Horatio looked away first. For only a split second, but it was enough to cede victory. Brian took that as his cue to press, if with a slightly cooler head. “I don’t know what to do, man. Neither do you. No one expects you to.”

Horatio’s glare slipped. Sighing heavily, he seemed to relax ever so slightly. Maybe he needed to hear that. “Just… don’t be stupid.”

“I’m not,” Brian defended more bitterly than he intended.

Sasha was taking inventory of their surroundings. The tents appeared to all be here, and the firepit was the same, more or less. “What else is missing?”

“The outhouse,” he answered, wiping his eyes, “and the grill.”

So, stuff that wasn’t theirs? Sasha tried to find a common thread. The cars were theirs, she remembered. Half a Moon Pie wrapper sat scorched among the ashes in the pit. That was here, but their cars weren’t? Nothing made sense.

Brian nudged her with the Dark Side and she didn’t know what to do. Ostensibly she was on Horatio’s side: there was no way that could help. On the other hand, it’s not like anything made sense anyway. With an apologetic glance toward Horatio she took the bong and Brian’s lighter. Carefully, she took a small hit, she only wanted to take the edge off.

Horatio stared at the bong, she offered with a shrug. His eyes met hers. “No,” he said a little too deliberately, softening his voice he added, “thank you.”

Brian took it back without apology. When she refused to take it back, he nodded and put it aside.

“I mean, this is otherwise still the Rise, right?” Sasha accounted for their immediate surroundings.

Horatio shrugged. “It certainly seems like it,” he agreed. “At least until the tree lines.”

Where the parking lot wasn’t, she read his meaning and nodded. All her evidence still didn’t add up to anything.

“So… what the fuck does that mean?” Brian looked between them.

“You don’t even want to hear what I think,” Horatio shook his head at the fire pit.

“Really, dude?” he asked incredulously, “Because it’s going to be weirder than all this shit just up and disappearing over night?”

Well, he had a point, Sasha thought.

Unable to put voice to his thoughts yet, Horatio motioned for the bong, and took the littlest hit he could manage. Putting it aside, he acknowledged it didn’t help. “Well…” he started, second guessed himself, but continued anyway, “I may have an overactive imagination, but… it was the equinox. A time historically believed to… have a kind of magic to it….” He struggled to layer any kind of sense into his observation, but there wasn’t any.

“And…?” Sasha prompted before his pregnant pause carried to term.

“And… maybe something magic happened,” he concluded incompletely.

None of them laughed, Sasha noted. Why weren’t they laughing? Wasn’t that ridiculous? Sasha knew a few kids who wore occult symbols and claimed to perform rituals that met their desired outcome, but she’d never seen anything that couldn’t be explained by coincidence. But Horatio wasn’t talking about burning a Good Luck candle, or someone praying for money and finding 20 dollars on the street.

“Like… a time warp?” Brian asked, at least as hesitantly as Horatio, and far too seriously to be suggesting such a ludicrous thing. Again, no one laughed.

“I am not prepared to rule out time travel,” the scribe answered matter of factly.

Sasha broke the no-laughing streak with a half-hearted chuckle. “That seems a bit of a leap… I mean, maybe someone took down the power lines sometime in the winter or something.”

“And stole our cars? And the outhouse? And the grill?” Brian had gotten here after dark, so he couldn’t confirm if the towers had been there yesterday or not. But all together the disappearances added up to too much to be a series of misunderstandings.

“And sodded and seeded the driveway?” Horatio added. “Besides, they were there yesterday.”

“Yeah, but….” But what?

“I’m not saying it is time travel, like I said, I have an overactive imagination. I’m just saying it would explain why we don’t seem to have moved, but things built in the last 20 or 50 years are gone.” He made it sound rational somehow, even likely.

“But not the tents? Or the fire pit?

Horatio shrugged. Of course he didn’t know. Maybe she had been expecting Horatio to have all the answers after all. “So now what?” she abandoned talking about magic and time travel for now. Here they were, wherever – or whenever, she added reluctantly – that was. They had to focus on what they could do. Unfortunately nobody else seemed to have any suggestions. “Wake the others?”

Horatio shook his head.

“They’re going to find out,” Brian rushed to point out.

“Of course they will, but right now they’re sleeping. I’m content to let them. Let them enjoy whatever peace they have left.”

Brian looked to Sasha but she shrugged, it was hard to argue with that. It was a hell of a way to wake up, they agreed. “I want to see the parking lot,” the jock decided.

Horatio nodded. That was something they could do. “I want to gather some wood, and get the fire back up,” he said, marrying his idea to Brian’s suggestion. The boys reached a consensus and stood.

“I don’t think I’m ready to see it,” Sasha admitted.

Horatio opened his mouth to say something, but nodded and started moving. Squeezing her shoulder on his way past, Brian followed suit.

Staring into the smoldering fire pit for a full minute, Sasha considered taking another bong hit. No, she was already buzzing, it would only make her paranoid. This had to be some kind of mistake, right? An epic prank, and not the stuff they made X-Files episodes about. Not that she’d complain if Gillian Anderson came to rescue her.

She should pee, her body urged. A convenient enough excuse to move instead of just sitting here. Pushing up she stumbled to the nearest treeline – where the grill used to be. Risking a glance over, sure enough it wasn’t there.

Wading into the weeds to ensure privacy, she tripped over something and almost fell flat on her face. Recovering with a stumble, she turned to glare at the offending log or branch. It wasn’t a log… it was Kelly.

Passed out and shivering next to a pool of vomit.

Next Chapter: Chapter 1: With a Little Help From My Friends