Footprints

Another turn for a fiction entry.

“Stressful night's sleep son?”

Frank had been on his way up the cabin's stairs to make sure Chipper was up when he saw him heading to the bathroom.  Apparently something Frank saw about his son's demeanor spurred the question.

“Just a bad dream”, Chipper muttered.  He definitely didn't want to tell his dad what a weird dream he had and he hoped his grumpy answer would end his dad's curiosity.

It did apparently.  Frank turned and rushed quickly back down the stairs.  Now a new concern came to the fore in Chipper's mind.  “Oh no, here we go again”, he thought to himself.  He recognized the rush in his dad's step.  Chipper figured it meant the people his dad worked for were already asking for his time, even as his vacation had barely begun.  They always managed to steal their time and that was probably number three on the list of things Chipper hated, right after the divorce and the drugs he had to take.  Last year was the worst.  They called his dad with some emergency that had him web conferencing with them for most of the week.  Chipper was upset enough to cry.  His dad seemed pretty upset about it too and assured him that he wouldn't let it ever happen again.  Chipper now had to wonder if his dad was not going to be able to back up that up.

By the time Chipper arrived at the kitchen table he had worked through all of the ways he might get his dad to tell him what his work was demanding of him this time, but decided to just act like he suspected nothing and wait for the bad news.  That way he would make it as difficult on his dad as possible.  Chipper figured it's a lot tougher to tell someone something they don't want to hear if they don't seem to see it coming.  Maybe, just maybe if he makes the news tough enough for his dad to tell he might just call his work back and demand that they leave him alone on his vacation with his son.

“Son, I want you to know that I worked very hard to keep my promise from last year to you.”

Chipper waited for the 'but'.

“And I managed to get them to agree to leave us alone this week for the most part.  I just need to web-conference into a morning meeting each day that they assure me wont more than an hour each time.”

What?  No 'but'?  Chipper still wished that they could leave them alone all week but if what his dad just said held true that would make this cabin trip the best they've ever had.

“That sounds good”, Chipper said with a reserved smile.

“The meetings will be at eight in the morning each day so we will want to be eating our breakfast as shortly after seven as we can each morning.  It's half past right now so we will have to just dig in and not talk too much this morning.”

Chipper was fine with that as he had spent an entire long drive the previous day telling his dad everything he could think of about his last year.  Breakfast consisted of serial and milk which his dad seemed a little apologetic about.  He promised that they would have things like bacon, eggs, and pancakes the rest of the week.  Chipper was happy just be eating breakfast with his dad.  It could have been plain rice cakes for all he cared.  When they were done Chipper decided he would spend his dad's meeting time hiking around the cabin area.

The cabin along with several other cabins were spread out on a foothill at the base of a mountain and Chipper liked to hike to where the mountain rose steeply from the surrounding terrain.  It took him about twenty minutes to get there which he figured would give him fifteen to twenty minutes to explore.  He liked to look about in the rocks and piles of other objects that had over the years tumbled down the mountainside.  He remembered his 7th grade earth science teacher teaching him that such a collection at the base of a steep slope was called loess.  An awful word, he thought, to describe what he had come to see as a wonderful collection of interesting objects.  It sounded like something some ugly liquid might do, not the treasures he found.  There were rocks and sticks of all kinds and shapes there.

Upon reaching the mountainside he started looking for just such a treasure. He wanted to find a good walking stick, one with a good wizardly look to it.  He wasn't sure what that would be, knobby, crooked, or strait, but he would know it when he saw it.  He walked along the slope's edge stopping every time he saw a substantial looking stick to pull out from the fallen debris.  He looked over and rejected about a half dozen before he found one to satisfy him.  It was fairly strait, about as long as he was tall, and sturdy enough that he could lean on it without it breaking.  Chipper held the stick out in front of him like he had seen the wizards do in fantasy artwork and pretended he was about to cast a spell upon something out in front of him.  

It was then that he saw something that sent a chill down his spine.  Just a stone's throw out in front of where his staff was aimed he saw a boulder just like the one in his dream from the night before.  He looked about him for a tree, a rock formation, a bush, anything to be different than the scenery he saw at the end of his dream.  As much as he wanted there to be something, there was nothing different.  He knew it was the exact place.  “Ah but”, he said to himself, “I have hiked here before.  That's how it got into my dream.”  He walked over to the rock.  It was about  as high as him, but he found a good foothold and used it to lift himself to where he could see the top of it.  His eyes were drawn quickly to a partial foot print in some caked dirt.  It was not the print of any animal or normal human.  It looked bony like it had been left by a skeleton.  Another chill ran down his spine.  He blinked his eyes hoping it would go away.  He did not like the cold feeling that was beginning to come over him.

“No!  That can't be!”, he said to himself and the surrounding air.

He reached out to it slowly and carefully.  The dirt was very loose and sand like.  He could not be gentle enough to keep the part of it he touched from falling apart on contact.  He knew the print had to have been left very recently.  The cold feeling grew more.  He looked around fearing that something or someone might be near.  Reaching down, he pulled his walking stick up to him and climbed on top of the boulder.  He saw no one, just an ordinary Georgia forest with no noticeable creature about but himself so he resumed studying the footprint.  As much as he wanted it not to be there he could not bring himself to simply brush it away.  That would not make it go away in the place that its existence mattered most, his mind.  He had to give it more study.  Perhaps he could see how it only looked like a skeletal footprint.  Then it would stop haunting him.

“You don't want that dream to be true, do you?”

Chipper almost leaped off the rock but instead only lurched a little and turned to see who had just spoken, or what.  Part of him dreaded what he might see.  The voice seemed that of boy around the same age as himself but considering his recent dream and the bony footprint, his confidence in normality was a little shaken.  So it was with some relief that he saw just what he thought such a voice would normally belong to standing below him by the rock, a boy.  He was taller than Chipper by almost a head but that would be because Chipper was short and not because the boy was especially tall.  He had strait brown hair, a lighter brown than normal almost like the color of maple candy.  It was barely long though his blue eyes seemed to almost peer out from under it, and as Chipper was looking down on him, his fine featured face with its sharp but squared off chin seemed to also peer out from under it.  The eyes were smiling though Chipper could not tell what the mouth was doing from his angle.

“Dream?  What are you talking about?” 

Chipper couldn't figure out he could have just showed up like that, but his life experience had taught him to have another concern first.  When certain other boys at school would discover his interest in things like wizards and dragons, some of them could be quite cruel.  They would often pretend to share his interest for a bit to draw out something they could embarrass him with.  The boys that did such things had a look about them.  Usually their meanness showed in their eyes and the way their smiles would begin to look more like an animal bearing its teeth than that of someone being friendly.  They also would smile at inappropriate times and thus look quite stupid in Chipper's eyes.  Looking stupid did not however save Chipper much from the sting of their mocking.

This boy however looked more like a different group of kids, a group he wasn't entirely sure he didn't dislike more.  They were the ones that ran with the popular kids but would go out of their way to be nice to the kids that didn't fit in.  The reason Chipper wasn't sure he didn't dislike them more was that their kindness – as well intended as it may have been – acted like an official seal declaring his status as an outsider, a nerd or geek.  Even worse, they seemed to carry an unspoken message to kids like Chipper that if they would just conform and be like everyone else they would be better people.  In other words their present selves were to be pitied.  Chipper would rather be made fun of by morons than have someone declare him a misfit with a friendly smile and feelings of pity towards him.  Which kind was this one he wondered?  That became clearer when the boy spoke some more.

“The dream that bony footprint is relevant to.  Take another careful look at it before the wind or something makes it go away.  That is the footprint of a sprin.”

The boy looked away from  Chipper and began to walk about between the rock and mountain slope.  Every other step he would put one foot down extra hard like he was expecting the ground to hollow.  Chipper now had two questions to ask the boy but for now he would do as he asked him to and look more closely at the footprint.

“Count the toes”, the boy said as he stomped the ground again.

One two three four, that's all there were.  Chipper looked back the boy who had one knee lifted high in the air about to bring his foot down extra hard.

“Four, just four toes”, Chipper said before the boy could stomp.

Then with a loud thud the boy brought his foot down and turned back to look up at Chipper with an awkward expression.

“Good solid ground”, he said and then pointed towards the footprint – which he could not see.  “And you'll notice that there are no extra bones in the foot that left that print.  It didn't lose a toe,  It never had a fifth one in the first place.”

Looking back to confirm what the boy said Chipper asked the inevitable question.

“And so what's your point?”

“The point is that if you weren't sure your dream was true, you should be now.”

At this moment Chipper realized that questions were piling up faster than he had been getting answers and he decided to become more direct.  One thing was certain, if this boy merely intended to take advantage of his imagination he sure had quite a good one himself.  It now seemed unlikely that this boy was here to tease him.

“Okay, so you know I had a dream about this thing called a sprin.  How?  Oh and while you're at it can you tell me what else you know about this dream I had.”

The smile left the boys eyes as he took a breath to speak.

“I'm a friend of the Lady of the Wall and she told me to contact you.  You saw through her mind's eye and she some how knew you were doing it.  As for what else I know about your dream, she told me that you saw Prometheus – the last of his kind – standing on that rock saying something about guiding some key player in the salvation of the universe, and they agreed that she would take care of it and he left.  That's pretty much it.” 

“This lady sent you to contact me?  Why?”

“According to her, you are going to need my help.”

“Help?  Help with what?”

“This wont be the only dream like this you are going to have.  It may not even be the first.  She tells me that she knows why you're having them and that it going to involve you in things, things you are going to need my help with.  There's a very high potential for danger.”

“Danger?”, Chipper said incredulously.  “And what are you going to do about it?  Don't get me wrong.  Your bigger than I am but as boys our age go you're no giant.  What are you going to do if something like a hostile sprin comes after me?  Appear out of nowhere and start stomping the ground?”

“You'll be surprised.  I'm not going to show off for you at the moment.” 

Chipper sat down on the rock.  It was going to take him a few seconds to absorb the situation he found himself in.  This boy came out of nowhere, started stomping the ground for some yet unknown reason, and not only knows about part of his dream but knows one the people in it personally.  He also seems to think he can protect him from danger.  Chipper's seen many a boyscout who looked better prepared to be his body guard than the typically thin teen aged boy he saw before him.

“That sprin is the last of his kind”, said the boy as Chipper continued to ponder.  “Creeps me out if you ask me.  I mean what was he doing here I have to wonder?”

And if he admits being creeped out by the sprin, thought Chipper, that's no very reassuring either.

“Yes, it is a little creepy”, Chipper said finally.  “But what about you?  I looked around just before you showed up and I didn't see you coming.”

“I have my ways, shaman ways some might call them.  Allow me to introduce myself.  I am Kieth Lyndsey.”

The name wrung in Chipper's head as another odd chill came upon him.  That was the other dream.  Kieth Lyndsey is the son of the late president Gordon Lyndsey.  Chipper remembered the picture of a younger Kieth Lyndsey riding behind his father's body.  But was this the same Kieth Lyndsey?

“The president's son?”

“Yes.  That would be me.  My father liked this place and so do I.  He was gifted as I am.  He could have seemed to come out of nowhere too.”

“I don't recall anyone ever saying anything about President Lindsey like that?”

“Well actually they did say he came out of nowhere when he became president but I know that's not what you mean.”

Chipper got down from the rock and shook Kieth's hand.  It just seemed to Chipper to be the only proper thing to do when meeting a dead president's son.

“I am Chipper Edmonds”.

“Pleased to meet you Chipper Edmonds.  You can call me Kieth.”

“So Kieth, why were you just stomping around here?  Seems like a strange thing to do.”

“Oh that”, Kieth said with a hint of nervousness, “I guess you could call it one of those shaman-like things.”

Something about Kieth's discomfort in his answer made Chipper think he was hiding something but considering everything else that was happening he decided to let it go.  Besides, knowing that he was now speaking with Kieth Lindsey, son of the late President Gordon Lindsey, there was something else he really wanted to bring up.

“Besides the dream you know about I had one about your father”, said Chipper.

“My father?”, Kieth said with a raised eyebrow, “you must tell me about it”.

Chipper quickly volunteered, “I saw him get shot and there was some guy named Eddie there who figured out where the shot came from and he was very upset at the guy who hired him to watch it all.”

Kieth held up his hand.

“Wait, can you tell me all of this from the beginning.  Your summary is pretty good I'm sure as such things go but I think I really want to hear as much of the dream as possible, exactly the way you dreamed it if you can.  That by the way is what the lady tells me you will need to do for all of your dreams like this, tell me all of them from start to finish, every detail you can give me.

Even though Chipper wasn't at all sure what to make of this strange boy he very mush liked the idea of sharing the dreams with someone.  He looked at his watch to and saw that he needed to start heading back to the cabin if he was going to get back at the end of his dad's meeting.

“I need to be heading back to my cabin”, he told Kieth.

“If it's okay with you Chipper I'd like it if you could tell me all you can about these dreams you had  on our way back.  My Cabin is probably not far from yours.  I'd like it if you could start with the one with my father in it.”

Chipper agreed to tell Kieth all he could about the two dreams as they walked back to his cabin.  Kieth showed great interest in both of them but especially about the fellow named Eddie who watched from atop a camera tower while Kieth's father was shot.  There was just enough time for both dreams to be told along with Kieth's questions before they neared Chipper's cabin.  When they were a few dozen paces from it Kieth stopped.  

“I'll head off my own way from here but before I go I want you to be able to contact me if you have any other dreams like this.  Please trust me.  You are going to need my help.”

Kieth then picked up a smooth brown rock and held it in his palm where Chipper could clearly see it.  “Watch this” he said.

The rock started to glow red from inside it for a few seconds and then went back to its dark brown color.  Kieth then gave the rock to Chipper.

“Keep this with you.  When ever you want to contact me just hold it in your hand and say my name.  It's like a pager in reverse.”

“A pager?  What's a pager?”

Kieth paused before he replied.  “Something from my father's time.  I forget that not everyone has as good a reason to know as much about that time as I do.  Anyway, the next time you have one of these dreams or if you just want to talk or ask me questions, use it.  Oh, and don't be surprised if I happen to know the phone number where you are at or the chat handle you are using at the time.  After all, you will have just contacted me using a rock”.  Kieth smiled.

Chipper looked at the rock and then back at Kieth.  What sort of people were Kieth Lyndsey and this lady from his dream?  His desire to make sense of recent events overcame his manners.

“So Kieth, what are you?”

Kieth's face was semi-stoic yet pleasant.  “My father and I were both gifted with abilities.  Some might say they are shaman-like abilities, like I said before.  Not accurate but good enough for a short description.  Obviously it is not something we wanted people to know about.  I chose to share this with you because I believe I can trust you, and in a way I have to.”

Kieth paused and smiled again for only the second time.  “Besides it seems it would only be a matter of time before you saw it all in your dreams.”

Kieth then suddenly vanished and on the ground where he had been standing there was a white lynx.  The lynx looked for a moment at Chipper.   It winked at him with one of its amber eyes and  darted off into the underbrush and out of sight.

Chipper wondered if maybe he was having a bad reaction to his latest prescription and was suffering from hallucinations.  He looked at the ground where the lynx had been.  There were shoe prints leading up to it and paw prints leading away into the underbrush.  As he pondered the apparent evidence of what had happened he heard the screen door to the cabin squeak open and his dad's voice shortly after.

“Oh good Chipper your back.  Come on in and clean up so we can go drive up to the ranger station and catch some lunch out afterward.”

“Sure dad, but can you come and look at something for me first?”

“If it wont take too long”, his dad said as he walked over to where Chipper was, “what is it?”

Chipper pointed out the tracks and asked him if he saw what he saw.  Frank concurred and even noted that the shoe prints were clearly not Chipper's as the shoes were bigger and the treads different.

“Someone must have gone through a great deal of trouble to make it look like a man turned into a cat.”

He then winked at Chipper as if to imply some son of his was in on it.  Chipper smiled back impishly, knowing he was encouraging his dad to believe it really was a prank, but he was none the less pleased.  His dad had confirmed for him that what he had seen was real.  Hallucinations don't make footprints.  Chipper squeezed the rock and slipped it into his pocket. 

“Let's get ready for the day”, his dad said patting Chipper on the back.

“Looking forward to it”, said Chipper as he ran into the cabin.

The rest of the day his dad and he spent traveling about the mountains, looking at sights, taking pictures of each other, and eating in restaurants with local flavor.  While the weird recent events often ran through his mind, they were not enough to distract him from his cherished time, the time with his dad.