Page 14 of The Otherworld

We have to accept the truth.

He’s gone.

I stand on the edge of a precipice, staring down at the endless void of a life without my brother. If I dive headfirst into that nightmare, there’s no going back. I’ll be falling forever. I’ll be trapped in hell.

I’ll never wake up.

That’s when my phone starts ringing in my pocket. It’s probably Dad, wherever the hell he is. I reach into my jacket with my uninjured hand and pull out my phone. Blinking back the tears, I peer at the number displayed on the tiny screen.

It’s Adam.

Holy shit, it’s Adam!

My bloody hands shake uncontrollably as I answer the call and press the phone to my ear.

“Adam!” I shout hoarsely. “Adam, are you there?!”

There is a long whoosh of white noise; then a girl’s voice crackles through the phone.

“Hello? Hello, is this… Superman?”

3

The Boy

ORCA

Papa is still out fishing when I return to the lighthouse. I hurry inside with the mysterious sack, Lucius clicking at my heels. He seems just as curious as I am to investigate what’s inside—but I don’t open the sack until I am back in my room.

“Shh, shh,” I chide Lucius. “Papa can’t know about this. We have to be quiet.”

Lucius sits back, watching me intently as if the sack will produce some fanciful new food for him.

I begin with the top pocket. Though the outside of the sack is soaking wet, everything inside is dry. I pull out the strange rectangular object from before. It hasn’t vibrated since I first found it, but I’m sure I will puzzle out its purpose in time. I set it on my bed and continue exploring the sack of strange treasures.

Besides the flashlight, fishing line, matches, and pocketknife, I find a small bag of extra batteries, packaged food that looks like nothing I would eat, and a small leather wallet containing a pilot’s certificate and a photo ID.

“Adam Stevenson,” I read under my breath.

Tucked inside the wallet is a color photograph of two young men standing in front of a floatplane, grinning in the sunlight. They’re nearly the same height but not the same age. One looks distinctly older—Adam. I recognize his face from the photo ID, though he looks much happier in this picture. The sunlight catches in his dark brown hair and highlights the shadow of stubble on his sharp jaw. He’s wearing a bomber jacket with sunglasses clipped to the collar, and he has one arm slung over the other boy’s shoulder as if to show off the imperceptible height difference between them.

There’s a wild excitement in the younger one’s eyes, like he either just had the most thrilling experience of his life or he’s about to. The sunlight makes artwork of him, too, etching the lines of his jaw, shoulders, and forearms.

Looking at the photo is like gazing through a magic spyglass into the Otherworld—catching a glimpse of a life I know nothing of. It feels almost… intrusive. Yet I can’t stop looking. I can’t stop studying every detail of the photo, committing it to memory.

The last thing I discover hiding in the bottom of the sack is a little black notebook filled with writing—different color ink throughout, but always the same penmanship. I spread the book open to a random page and begin to read.

02/22/97

If trust is earned, why are children so trusting? If I were born and immediately adopted by another family and grew up knowing them to be my family, I would not question it. I would completely trust that they were telling the truth. But if later I discovered that they lied to me and were not my biological family, this would lead to feelings of betrayal, and only THEN would I have trust issues. So perhaps it’s not that “trust is earned”… it’s that mistrust is learned. Children are born telling the truth. They cannot understand the concept of disloyalty or deceit until they are introduced to it by others.

A bang from outside jolts my attention away from the journal.

Papa’s back.

I snap the book shut and stuff it back into the sack along with the other treasures. My hands tremble as I zipper the pockets shut and slide the whole thing under my bed. The mystery device is the only thing I keep out—tucking it under my pillow before I rush out of the room.

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