The Warren of Time

A novel by

Les Halfhill

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

    Albert Einstein

"Eternity is a very long time, especially towards the end."

    Woody Allen

Chapter One

Darren Stroud stepped off the porch of his cabin.  It was a late fall morning, and the grass was covered in hoary frost.  He felt drawn to the water laying placidly below.  The cabin faced the western shore of Long Lake, near the small town of Frenchville in northern Maine.  It had belonged to his parents, and he had spent many summers here growing up, escaping the rat-race of life in Manhattan, where his father was an architect.  Now that they were gone, he still came here for two weeks each summer and, as now, the occasional weekend.

He strode down the gravel path, his leather hiking boots squeaking with newness.  In fact, his entire ensemble was new, at odds with everything else in and around the cabin.  It made him look and feel like a stranger here, rather than the life-long visitor that he actually was.  But it had been necessitated by the break-in that he had discovered the previous weekend.  Someone had entered through a window in the guest bedroom, without breaking the latch or glass.  The only things that appeared to be missing were some articles of clothing, his ’round-the-house pair of moccasins, his old pair of L.L. Bean hiking boots, and his toothbrush.  His toothbrush!  What kind of burglar stole someone’s toothbrush?  It was an unusual event for these parts, a sample of what the “real” world held that he thought he had left behind.

As he approached the small dock at the end of the path, he slowed his stride to allow an appreciative look around him.  A light breeze ruffled the surface of the lake, scattering the reflected clouds into fluttering snowflakes.  He loved this time of year.  The trees showing all the colors of a Van Gogh floral palette, the sky a tracery of gossamer, the air chilled to a sharp crispness.

At the end of the dock, tied up with an ancient scrap of rope, sat the canoe Darren and his father had built over a summer, twenty-odd years ago.  Broad of beam and long, yet deceptively light, it had been one of the most enjoyable activities he had ever spent with his dad.  At a time when he was torn between leaving home to escape the crush of the city and waiting until he was old enough to enjoy its mature pleasures, the summer of canoe-building convinced Darren to pursue college at New York University, getting his degree in music.  He had grown up with a piano in their apartment, and was an eager student.  He had both talent and passion, and was hailed as a prodigy.  He had once qualified for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, and had placed in the top ten.

He filled his lungs, then stepped into the canoe.  His first few deep strokes of the paddle sent him gliding away from the dock.  He then settled into a smooth rhythm of left-and-right shallow motions that barely disturbed the lake’s surface.  At once he felt separated from the earth, yet more in touch with it than two lovers in an embrace.

He directed the canoe northerly along the western shoreline of the lake.  He followed a familiar route past an impenetrable wall of thick pines and birch.  After perhaps a mile, he entered Robin Cove, a minor depression of the edge of the lake, hardly deserving a name.  Its only significant feature was as the outlet for a small, anonymous creek.  The creek was always something that Darren had noticed, but which held no particular interest to him.  At this point in his normal canoeing outings, he would have passed it by on his way to Pine Point, his usual half-way layover site.  There he would land the canoe, take his picnic lunch up the sloping grass shore to a flat rock near an old, scarred pine tree, and enjoy a couple of hours of blissful solitude.

But today didn’t seem normal, or usual.  Since his discovery of the break-in, he had felt...off.  Not quite right.  He was unable to qualify it any better than that.  He just had an uneasy feeling that today was going to be different than what he was expecting, or prepared for.

Darren was not prone to the unusual.  His life was always carefully regimented, first by his parents, and later by his own preference.  He had need for a disciplined existence, to feel safe in the familiar.  He was stoic by nature, and had a hard time making friends.  He used his music as a companion, a shield from the world at large.  He enjoyed the works of Chopin and Bach, but was drawn most strongly to the modern classical composers.  It was while performing Ravel’s "Modere" that he felt most in control, while still allowing his imagination to roam free.  The only time he would allow himself that indulgence.

Darren found himself directing the canoe toward the creek’s entrance.  It seemed to be an unconscious act, more a feeling of being drawn in.  But he didn’t fight it, which surprised him.  His strokes became slower, and he took care to avoid entanglement in the low-hanging branches of the trees packing the banks on either side.  They formed a closed canopy over his head for a while, almost entirely blocking out the daylight, becoming an enticing tunnel which drew him forward.  He found that he had stopped paddling, but he was still moving up the creek.  That didn’t seem right.  Creeks flowed toward the lake, not away from it.  But  again, the realization of what was happening did not alarm him as it should have.  He was calm, almost hypnotically so.

The tunnel ended, and the daylight returned.  It wasn’t as sunny as earlier.  In fact, the cast of light seemed more red than yellow.  Not especially unpleasant, just odd.  The creek banks were no longer lined with trees, but with a resplendent array of ferns and flowers.  They were of types unknown to Darren, who thought he was quite familiar with the local flora, but their beauty dissuaded him from further thoughts about their oddity.  As he continued on his journey, he noticed a quietness that was profound.  He heard no birds chirping, no buzzing insects.  No breeze stirred the undergrowth, and the trees in the distance stood still and mute.  It was the type of quiet that seemed to hurt one’s senses.  He let out a whistle, but it was swallowed up by the silence.  He slapped his paddle on the creek’s surface, and though he heard it, it seemed dulled and muted.

Darren brought the canoe into the right-hand bank, and sat still for several minutes.  He wanted to mentally resolve what he was experiencing, but he felt that somehow that would be wrong.  That he was supposed to surrender to the events unfolding, and any attempt to quantify or explain them would end up corrupting the process.  He eventually grasped his belongings and climbed from the canoe, moving up the gently sloping grade toward the nearest trees.  He paused briefly and removed his boots and socks, and rolled his pants up to the knee.  Under his now-bare feet he felt a silky smoothness that appeared to be a blend of grass and moss, somewhat mottled and lumpy, but providing a tactile experience that was erotic in its intensity.  It seemed as though the verdant carpet was responding to his touch, and was actively massaging his feet with thousands of tiny fingers.  It was quite exquisite.  His stride took on a gingerly quality, as though he were afraid of injuring the growth below.  He continued on until he reached a very large tree he took to be an oak.  Its thick lower branches hung to within a few feet of the ground, and its roots were large and exposed for some distance from the trunk.  As he got close, he saw a perfect spot to rest at the foot of the towering giant, a nook twixt root and trunk.  He lowered himself to sit, and realized he felt the pangs of hunger.  He hadn’t a clue how much time had passed since he had left the cabin this morning.  But his stomach assured him that time enough had slipped by that he needed to address his requirement for sustenance.  He opened the meager lunch he had packed, and began to eat in a perfunctory, disinterested manner.  He was much more interested in his environs than in food.

As Darren settled into a feeling of comfort with his surroundings, he became aware of subtleties in this place that he realized were enchanting him.  There were wafts of flowery smells that changed with each errant wisp of breeze, all of them different from each other, but which combined into an harmonious blend that, at once, both soothed and invigorated.  He felt completely relaxed, yet very much alive and alert.  The air now carried the sounds so devoid in his time on the creek.  There were bird calls and songs as glorious as an operatic aria.  The trees now rustled as though whispering to each other.  Chittering animals, unseen in the flora, leant their own contributions to the orchestral din.  The insect noises blended in to complete a symphonic experience.  Darren’s thoughts took him to Shangri-La.  But that was merely a story, a legend.  This was real!  Wasn’t it?  He still had doubts.  Although it was hard to deny what surrounded him, he felt a nagging suspicion that it was too good to be true.

He finished his meal, and carefully repacked any remains.  He’d leave no trash to sully this Eden.  He replaced his socks and boots, and heaved himself to his feet.  He wanted to see and experience as much of this place as he could.  He had a sense that if he closed his eyes, it just might disappear, another Brigadoon.  He decided to parallel the creek rather than risk getting lost further inland.

The landscape remained much the same as he progressed.  It varied little, yet it was all still interesting and new.  He noticed that the stream curved round to his right, following the base of a steep hill covered in thick growth interspersed with large rock outcroppings.  Darren’s eye was caught by a glint of light from further upstream.  As he got closer, to within fifty yards, he saw a strange contraption.  It was spherical, roughly three meters in diameter, with a surface broken by geometric shapes.  It was obviously metallic, and was partially rusted and overgrown, evidence that it had been here for a long time.  He was preparing to approach it, but was distracted by the sound of singing, and came to an abrupt halt.  There, at the edge of the water, with her back to him, was a girl, a nymph, nay, an angel!  Darren thought he had seen beauty before.  He now felt naive in the face of what lay before him.  She was crouched down, with her hands in the glistening water.  She swirled them this way and that, all the while lyrically crooning an unknown tune.  It was ritualistic in appearance, and she seemed so engrossed in her activity that she hadn’t noticed him yet.  He could see that she had very long hair, so pale in color as to seem translucent.  It was straight and thick, and it hid her body from view.  He had an overwhelming sense of her beauty, and he hadn’t even seen her face yet!  And it was at this moment that she stood and turned to face him.  He was not disappointed.  She was as beautiful as he imagined, and more.  At first he thought her nude, but then saw she wore a dress of such diaphanous clarity as to be virtually invisible.  It clung to her body as though afraid that it might be cast off.  As pale as her hair, it had no color of its own, but took upon it the hues of whatever was near.

Darren’s eyes met hers, and his heart felt a shock as potent as a lightning strike.  She was completely calm in demeanor, showing no sign of surprise or fear of his presence.  He took a single step toward her, and she disappeared.  Vanished!  He thought it might have been supernatural, and then realized that she had fled into the water with amazing speed.  Her head bobbed to the surface near the opposite bank, peering at him momentarily, then submerged again.  This time she didn’t reappear.  He feared she was drowning, but then felt that unlikely, that she seemed too at home with water to be destroyed by it.  He moved closer to the creek’s edge, but froze when he heard a sound close by.  It was a growl, but more guttural.  As harsh as the howling of a rabid dog, it deepened to a pitch that caused his bones to vibrate.  So out of place, so out of tune with this place of tranquility, the sound horrified him, and pushed him to flee.  He turned back the way he had come, and bolted toward the canoe.  It took little time at all, in his panicked state, to reach the craft, leap in, and push off with all his strength.  He had known fear before, but not like this.  Everything he seemed to experience since entering the mouth of the creek had been so heightened, so extreme.  The dread he now felt verified that sense.

As his paddle dug into the water, lacking the smooth precision he had shown earlier in the day, Darren now simply thought of survival.  He paid no attention to his surroundings, and didn’t notice any of the sights he had experienced coming up the creek.  He just kept going, ignoring the screaming pain of the muscles in his back and shoulders and the branches lashing at his face.  Then he saw the lake ahead, and was quickly out into it.  He gave a glance back over his left shoulder, fearing he would see some bestial entity bounding over the water’s surface toward him.  But there was nothing, just the Maine panorama he was accustomed to.  Darren slowed his pace, got his breathing more-or-less under control, and angled the bow of the canoe back toward the dock of the cabin.  Soon he was there, and with an absent-mindedness born of fear and fatigue, he made a haphazard attempt at tying up the craft, and fled up the path to the cabin’s front porch.  Rushing inside, he slammed the door behind him and threw the latch, leaning his back against it.  Still panting lightly, he hurried to the pantry next to the kitchen and pulled out a bottle half-filled with Glenfiddich scotch.  Not prone to heavy drinking, nonetheless Darren twisted the top from the bottle, raised it to his lips, and gulped the contents as fast as he could force it down.  Nearly choking with the effort, he repeated the act, and now the bottle was nigh on empty.  He set it down on the kitchen counter and staggered toward the main bedroom.  He collapsed on the bed, not bothering to disrobe or cover himself, and was quickly engulfed by sleep.