#dudders

We are a group of so called treasure hunters. this is a world where treasure hunting is a kids game. The treasure usually amount to a lunchbox filled with marbles or maybe a couple dirty magazines. We've had success in the past following the maps past treasure hunters have made. It seems like that's wheat you're supposed to do. Leave a treasure and a map once you have enough treasures for yourself. The hobby seems more about the hunting than the treasure itself. Like a 1950s geocaching.

It is some sort of sunny time of the year, summer or spring break. We have gathered at a pair of tree stumps below the boughs of a large maple tree in the middle of a field. One of the stumps is for sitting and the other is for our maps and clues. We have a variety of papers on the stump, held with a variety of rocks. The smoothest of which we carry with us for such a purpose. Touching the rocks during school to remind ourselves of the fun we will have when the bell rings.

It feel remote, the edges of the dry grass field surrounded by mixed wood. But at the same time we got there just minutes after leaving our homes. As if you could turn around and be back on 17th street in Forest Grove. A narration, or some other out of character force, tells me that this is why Treasure hunting is a game for the young and young at heart. The wilderness where the best treasure lies is lost to the Euclidean world of adults. Where point A and Point C are always connected by Point B. The field and the forest is just a short bike ride away, but an adult on the bike would only find themselves a few blocks further into the small town we are all from.

With us today is Dudders. The simple child with the gift that Stephen King gives most simple folk in his stories. Dudders is a boy with a short blonde haircut and a red shirt. He looks as he did in the movie Dreamcatcher. When we ride out to hunt treasure or just play at the park, our moms would often force us to take Dudders with us. His worried mother is a friend of theirs and they want to let her rest. Dudders is part mascot of our crew, and part albatross around our necks. He often has migraine headaches where he does nothing but sits and cries. During these fits we usually have to wait ten to thirty minutes before he's OK again. Sometimes we have to carry him home.

The same out of character force shows me what Dudders sees during these episodes. The migraines start as just pain, but then his vision wavers. At first it is just blurred by his tears, but then the middle of the blur opens onto a patch of clarity. The blur is only along the bottom, like the heat waves off an asphalt road. Like the waves of a river glinting in the sun. Above and past the rippling is a lush green corn field. There are woods to the right that curve back behind the corn field. When Dudders has this kind of headache he is crying in pain, but it is when there is motion in the corn field he sobs in fear. There is a young man who steps out of the corn field.

His skin is powder white. He has greasy black hair that falls past his shoulders. His shirt is a strange combination of black mesh and torn fabric. He wears black jeans and boots on his long legs. His face has dark, but human eyes. The lack of eyebrows is what gives it an alien, dangerous appearance. The creepy teen bothers Dudders. He frightens him. All the teen does is hold his hand out and ask for Dudders to come with him. Dudders can't, shouldn't. He knows it's bad.

As usual, while we discuss which oak tree a particular treasure map is referring to, Dudders begins to have one of his fits. We glance at him, curled on the grass, then go back to our discussion. He'll be fine.

A few minutes later and Kid 3 looks at Dudders. Dudders looks terrified becasue he can see the teen. Kid 3 suggests that we just stop for the day and take him home.

Kid Corey Feldman has had it with Dudders. He says that the group should just leave him here. The big oak in the woods isn't far. We'll finish the treasure hunt in an hour and if Dudders is still like this when we get back then we can take him home.

Mikey looks at the terrified expression on Dudders' face and knows he shouldn't abandon him. He says that he'll be fine in a few minutes, right Dudders? They should wait. Kid 3 and 4 voice their own opinions while my POV shifts from the kids, to what Dudders sees. While he can hear us arguing, muffled outside his vision, he sees the rippling road and the corn field and the wood and the teen. this time he does not gesture. This time he locks eyes with Dudders.

The vision slowly turns. Dudders is laying on his side but the vision turns widdershins to become perpendicular to the ground. While we argue the wavering road becomes part of our field. The mixed wood is replaced by the corn field the teen steps onto the road and for the first time and approaches.

When his foot touches the heat blurred pavement we all hear it though there is no sound. Thanks to the magic of the vision, none of us question the road that now runs a mere twenty feet away from our stumps. Kid 3 and 4 put their backs to Dudders and step between him and the creepy teen.

Mikey pulls out a zip gun, a piece of plastic and scrap with a .22 bullet in the barrel. He then sets it down. Not wanting to threaten the newcomer. Kid Corey Feldman says "let's not give that up just yet" and picks it up before joining Mikey and the other kids.

The fact that we have a gun, even if it is a .22 caliber zip gun made from scrap. Is not unusual. In the world where kids will often go on treasure hunts into pockets of reality, the parents don't mind them being armed. There is no magic narration or out of character knowledge on this. I don't know if it is part of the era we lived in or the particular small country town we were in. Guns are just another tool and not the stigmatized weapon of death that many see them as today. They were no more of a weapon than a pocket knife. Meant to ward off strangers or wild animals more than do any real harm. As it was, Corey kept it down at his side, out of sight, and something told me that wasn't the only gun in the group.

The creepy teen stopped a few feet away from us and offered us a smile "I see Dudders is having another one of his episodes." In a voice that is just slightly too deep. I cant hear a little reverb but I think nobody else can. My psychic gift in the dream is represented by out of character genre savvyness when it comes to Stephen King. Hence the previous narrations and exposition. "I know a place where he can get help for the pain. Let me take him there." The teen smiles. Mikey considers Dudders for a moment as the others stare at the creepy teen.

Floating psychic image of a more coherent Dudders appears before me. "No, not Dudders." it says dreamily "You wouldn't do that to poor old me, would you?" then it fades. He looks morel ike the young kid from Jerry Macquire than himself, complete with glasses. As if Dudders saw the kid in a movie and wished himself to look like that. During the vision, Dudders' upper body is floating in front of the lush corn field with woods on the right. Though the field we are in is now just dry grass once again the woods beyond are a different mix of trees.

Mikey picks up on this and refuses. Saying something about how our moms put us in charge, something about how old Dudders will be just fine in a minute.

The teen begins to step towards Dudders, past us. "Are you sure-?" he says before Kid Corey Feldman brandishes the zip gun at him, stopping the creepy teen in his tracks. Corey is breathing quick through flared nostrils, clearly scared. The creepy teen looks at the zip gun quizzically, as if it is an alien object. He casually takes the gun from Corey's hand and begins pacing a circle around the group and our tree stumps. I can sense a deep thrum, a sign that there is magic afoot. We all just shuffle our feet to stay nominally between him and Dudders.

The creepy teen paces several circles around us and the tree stumps. considering the zip gun slowly. testing the weight. Checking the sight. When his finger snakes into the trigger guard I expect him to shoot one of us. Instead he points the barrel into his mouth and pulls the trigger.

Click.

Nothing happens.

He lazily pulls it out o his mouth and regards it with exaggerated slowness before setting it on the stump and picking up one of the other tiny weapons. This is a store bought gun. It is too small to fire more than a few BBs but in the dream this hand sized, chrome AK-47 on a key chain is able to fire normal bullets. small bullets our parents trust us with, but deadly at close enough range. He takes this too and points it into his mouth.

Click.

With a long sigh he looks at the gun with an expression of boredom. He hands the gun back to kid three and begins walking back across the shimmery asphalt to the corn field with the woods on the right. I look at the guys, who are now looking at their guns, perplexed. When I look back at the teen he has vanished, along with the shimmery road and the corn field. There is still the deep thrum of magic and we are all still acting in an enchanted gaze. Corey and kid three begin clicking the triggers of their guns. At the ground, at the nearby tree...

I realize that the guns were not just misfiring. Mikey's zip gun might, but the AK was purchased from a high end tobacco store in the city. Kid 3 had a gun made by a gun company. It would misfire unless...

Echoing from the back of my mind I hear the quote "I do not shoot with my hand, I shoot with my heart." I see a flash of images of Randall Flagg from the Stand, Walter from the Dark Tower comics, and a few others. I snap out of the enchantment just as the boys are slowly turning the guns to put them in their own mouths. I shout for them to stop and then they realize what they're doing. They put the safeties back on and pocket the guns, not scared, but more embarrassed.

Dudders is finally recovering from his headache. Kid 4 is helping him up as wind blows through the trees. A massive cloud covers the sun and thunder rolls in the distance. A storm approaches. Part of me wonders if the storm is Flagg's anger at the defense of Dudders and the thwarted suicides. The storm has a malevolent feel to it.

The window picks up and we clamber to grab out notes and treasure maps before they blow free of the paperweight rocks. As we turn to leave, it is now suddenly so dark it may as well be night time. The sky is a dark blue glow that offers no light, and so we activate our flashlights. we are now on a neighborhood street corner.

Mikey says that we need to leave a note. A message to warn others about the guy we just met and say not to trust him. There is a rock in the grass near the sidewalk here. For treasure hunters, kids and the rare few adults in the know, it acts as a sort of message board. I force myself to stay in character and ask what we should say. I turn over the rock, dirt blowing away in a puff from the strong winds, now so loud we are raising our voices to be heard. The papers in the hole try to blow away but I pin them with the side of my hand.

Mikey tells me to write "Look out for the Bullet Proof Kid". In my psychic out of character head I can see this as the title of the book. it is a significant phrase in some way. This piece of paper with my quick scratched letters will be filmed in daylight, sitting at the top of this stack. Found in some later day by an adult who is investigating. Then I'm back to the Now of childhood.

I put the top sheet on the flat rock and look at my dull pencil. I press hard so it will write and the paper tears! I begin to write again but behind me I hear a sound like a bicycle tire skidding to a stop, or maybe a quiet hiss of a big cat.

And it wakes me from the dream.

- - - -

Epilogue My fridge was making weird knocking and dribbling sounds the whole time I typed this and it was really freaking me out. Like something was trying to come out of the fridge, or the pantry door next to it, and stop me. I actually got so bothered by the noises, I turned the heat back up. Then I went over and opened the pantry and both doors of the fridge. Maybe something had fallen. Nope. All fine. I shut the doors, only slightly comforted. Then my eye came inline with the inch wide gap between the wall and my fridge. The natural light of the windows at either end of my house did nothing for this space. The black void of nothing that lay just a hands length into that gap made my lizard brain reel. I stepped away quick , my body moving before the flight response shot me with adrenaline.