I still haven’t heard from you. It makes me nervous. Your letters were the only rhythm to my rhythm-less existence.

 Even the silent postman seems a bit shaken. You’ve become part of his rhythm, too. When I walked in to his tiny post office a few hours ago, his face had an actual expression on it for the first time that I can remember. It wasn’t quite sorrow. It was more nervousness, I think.

 The smell of blood drew me away from Carl’s numb side and back to this seaside town. I knew what it was from the first subtle scent. It was that bloody boat. Just the smell of it made the woods seem even more dead—more lacking in sensation.

 I stumbled out of the trees into the dim light of this place. I followed the smell down to the pier, just in time to see the boat pulling away from the dock. Sung-Hee came out of her restaurant, wiping her hands on her dingy apron. She looked at me with only the slightest of interest. Then she turned and walked back inside—she had two new customers on whom she could foist her miserable coffee.

 The boat still terrifies me, but it pulls on me, too. I think it is the only choice I have here. Because I can’t stay in this in-between town. And now I know what the woods are. They’re death. They’re hell. So what does that make the boat?

 If it’s heaven, it’s a terrible kind of heaven. If it takes me to another level of hell, at least it’s a hell with some kind of something. I mean it’s not nothing. It may be all blood and violence, but I tell you, Trevor, that scares me less than those woods. I’d rather go down in blood than go down beneath the moss.

 Trevor, write me back. I’m on the brink. I need to hear from you.

 Dad

 I haven’t heard back from you for a number of days. I’ve been rereading the letters you sent during my absence over and over. My God, Trevor, you’ve been living. So much of it may look like pain to you, but all of it looks like life to me.

 That’s the lesson of the woods, I think. That true death is not doing. It is simply being. The woods, I believe now, are hell. That is where life really stops. The best case scenario in the woods is a kind of nothingness—a stopping of doing. A stopping of living. A burrowing under the moss and a returning to the soil. The worst case? That is Julia and the others with her on the far side of the chasm. With her? That is not the proper term. No one is with her. She is all alone. She is pure, longing loneliness.

 Your life, Trevor, with your idiot of a basketball coach making you miserable every day, is so far from this. That may be all that you write, but here’s what I read: I read that Mr. Schick gave you a great gift by making you feel miserable. You felt something. So many teachers and coaches seem bent on making you feel nothing. I read that you forged a new friendship with this boy Brian, who obsesses over cars. God bless him! He cares about something!

 In the woods, Trevor, there is nothing to care about. That’s why Carl sat down. That’s why he ignored my pulls and pleas. He sat there, uncaring, as his body sank into the damp dirt. The wet didn’t stir him, nor did my bullying. What did I have to tempt him? His miserable cabin? Sung-Hee’s lousy coffee? My companionship?

He sat there while I yelled at him. He sat while I told him stories, while I talked about you, while I reminded him about our boxing matches, while I recited bits of Yeats to him. I told him every tale I could remember, about getting in fights or getting drunk or hurting myself or having a belly laugh. I talked to him about the taste of a tangerine at Christmas and the way the sharp juice stings your mouth with flavor. I talked about watching your brother Rhett crash his bike and imbed gravel into the flesh of his knee. I talked about the feel of your mother’s hair against my mouth, about breathing in her scent.

Carl sat there. For days, I think. Maybe weeks. Long enough for the moss to grow onto him. I’d scrape it away, but he barely noticed. He breathed at me.

I nearly sat down next to Carl. But something saved me. A smell. A scent made it all the way into those smothering woods.

It was the smell of blood. I followed it back.

Dad

 I want to hear about your conversation with Mom. If I have to tell you more about the woods to do so, here it is:

 As we stumbled along through the heavy moss, I had to badger Carl at every step, just to get him to continue. I thought about just taking him back to the town, as he was slowing me down, but I didn’t want to be in the woods alone. If I’d taken him back, he’d still be—alive, I suppose, is the closest word. He’d be one degree less dead.

 At one point, I let Carl rest for a couple of minutes. He wanted to sit down, but I told him to lean against a tree. When he complained, I told him about Martin. That shut him up. We sat there in the woods, listening to Carl’s heavy breathing and the drips falling off the trees. “Come on,” I said, tugging at Carl’s arm.

 “My feet are stuck,” he said. I yanked him free. It took a mighty pull.

 We walked on—I have no idea how long. Time barely exists in this land. In the forest, it seems to stop altogether. There was no trail. There was no sun. I tried to keep walking straight, but the ground was so lumpy with moss and moss-covered mounds that I had no idea which way I was going. I’ve always had a lousy sense of direction anyway.

 Those mounds—they were everywhere. They reminded me of moss-covered anthills.

 Carl was about to collapse when I heard the sound of running water. I pulled Carl forward, my hand holding his, and we followed the sound. The ground sloped down until we came to the edge of the chasm. We’d reached the river, but at a different spot than I’d come to before. I had no idea if I was upstream or downstream from where I’d left Martin and Julia. I guessed and we turned left and began walking downstream along the chasm.

 “How far are we going to go?” asked Carl. I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know. The ground continued to slope downward, following the flow of the river. None of it looked familiar to me. Near the bank of the river, the moss was even thicker and the mossy mounds crowded even closer together.

 I was looking along the bank for any sign that looked familiar. I was looking across the chasm for any hint of Julia’s presence. On the far side, I saw what looked like movement. I shouted, “Julia! Is that you?”

 “Help me!” shouted a man’s voice. “I’m alone!”

 “I’m alone!” shouted another voice from across the chasm, a woman this time. “Someone please help me!” I could make out their shapes on the far side of the chasm, but couldn’t see their faces.

 “Have you seen Julia?” I shouted. My question sounded stupid as it left my lips. I knew before they responded that they would have no information.

 “Is someone there?” shouted the man in reply.

 Another voice—a much younger man—shouted in response. “I heard something! Someone please help me! I’m so alone!” I could see the shapes, standing nearly shoulder to shoulder, crying out for help, for company. But I could make out no way to get across the chasm. Even if I saw a way, I don’t think I’d ever have tried it.

 Then I heard Julia. “Help me!” she cried. “If you’re there, please help me!” I could see her in the dim light, looking blindly around.

 Carl’s head jerked briefly at her cry. He looked over at her halfheartedly. “I suppose we should do something.” He sat down. “I’m so tired.”

 I yanked Carl to his feet, Trevor. I pulled him away from the bank. I gave up on Julia. My intention—the most I knew I could do right then—was to try to save Carl and myself.

 I failed Carl. I saved myself. Or, I should say, my self was saved.

That’s enough for now.

 Dad

Dear Trevor,

O Carl, I miss you, too. Yours is a face that’s smoked 10,000 cigarettes. You told the same stories of closing deals on suburban split-levels until I wanted to punch you in the mouth. You were unable to make even the simplest decision. And you were the best friend I had since I died.

Carl is still in there, Trevor. Right where I left him. I stayed by him for what must have been many days, trying to get him to come back with me. He simply couldn’t decide what to do. So he did nothing. And now, like Martin, he’s turning back into nothing. Or into compost. His elements are coming unlimbed and unchained.

I know what happened to Martin now, because Carl showed me. It was a horror, albeit a slow, conversational one. The kind of horror that might happen over an afternoon of television and sandwiches. It was just as final and just as eternal.

I’ll tell you more tomorrow, Trevor. I’ll tell you everything.

Dad

Dear Dad,

Dang it, this whole advice-by-mail thing totally sucks. I come home from school after trying to hide my black eye all day, after trying not to talk about it, after getting called a wussy-boy by Mudgett. Then I open a letter from you that says, “Don’t hide your black eye. Tell everyone how you got it.”

Our timing stinks.

I talked to my English teacher, Mrs. Henry, today. I’m not sure she believed me when I told her I got the black eye boxing with my brother. I think half the school figures that Mudgett creamed me in a fight. Heck, he hasn’t even fought me yet and most people already figure I’ve lost.

Mrs. Henry tried not to stare at my eye when we talked, but she failed on that one. She was having a conversation only with that corner of my face. My black eye has its own gravitational pull.

“If you were trying to learn about life aboard a ship, I’d have you read Melville or Jack London,” she said. “If you were trying to learn about, oh, I don’t know, bullfighting, then I suppose Hemingway would be your man. But what you’re talking about, Trevor, is The Other. It’s Heaven and Hell and God territory. There’s only one kind of writer for that—a theologian—which is literally someone who studies God. Unfortunately, very few theologians died, came back from the dead and wrote about it. Lucky for us, some of them were smart enough to speculate. To try to fill in the gaps with both logic and intuition.”

The Other—that’s what Mrs. Henry calls everything religious. She talks about it like it’s science fiction. In The Other, there are laws that control how things happen. And, according to Mrs. Henry, these laws are on a higher level than our regular laws.

“I know space and time don’t matter to God,” said Mrs. Henry. “if they do, he’s not much of a god, is he? When we pray for others, we pray that God will intervene in their lives the next day, or in a different place. We pray to a single God, asking him to insert himself into our lives, knowing that a few other million people around the globe are asking the same of him. God could only answer these requests if space and time do not matter to him. If he lives outside of it. In The Other. And if he does, then past, present, future, are all the same to him. So are heaven, hell and earth.

“Death? Well, that shouldn’t matter either, because God conquered death a few thousand years ago.”

I was going along with Mrs. Henry. And all she said sounded pretty encouraging to me, until she sucked all the air out of my tires with just a couple of sentences.

“Before we go farther down this road, Trevor, we need to be completely clear on something. This is speculation on my part. This is conjecture. I don’t begin to pretend to know what happens when we die. Those who do claim to know are almost certainly wrong.”

I protested. She just got done talking about how clear everything looked. How logically laws operated in The Other. She said that she’d be getting input from the smartest guys who’d ever lived. Then she says that even they don’t know. So what’s the point?

“There are only a few tiny things I know for sure,” Mrs. Henry said. “I can tell you those with utmost certainty. Those are the things that matter. These other things—how was the world made? What happens after we die?—we can only make educated guesses. And that’s OK, Trevor. We don’t have to know everything.”

“I’m not asking to know everything,” I said. “I just want to know about my dad. Can he help me or not?”

“Ahh,” she said.

I hated that “ahh.” Even Mrs. Henry could be annoying sometimes. That “ahh” meant, “I have just figured you out.”

But she hadn’t. Not a chance. I walked out.

By the way, tomorrow is thanksgiving.

Your son,

Trevor

The poor postman only just met me yesterday and by the way he frowns when I come in the door, he is already tired of me. I pestered him all day today, waiting for the mail to come. He never says a word—just shakes his head and scowls. But now I sit writing on the little bench right outside his door, with your letter tucked safely away in my hip pocket. It is such a treasure to me.

I will try my best to answer your questions about this place, but I first must say that I hope you do not wait at home for letters from me. You should go back to school. You should kiss the girl. You should fight the boy, if it comes to that. Do not spend your life waiting for things. Go to school, even if the things there fill you with so much worry they make you sick. As soon as you get this letter from me, take a vow to go back to school and face your fears.

OK, that’s enough fatherly advice for one day. I don’t know if I have earned the right to advise you at all, having only known you for five brief years before I left. And I fear that I spent far too little time with you during those years. The memories I have are some of my most cherished, but they are fading. I hope you can help me recall them.

Where am I? Not hell, certainly, but likely not heaven, either. Some of my neighbors disagree with me and claim it is one or the other. I’ll sit over a plate of fish and chips at the Laughing Gull with my two neighbors. Martin, who was a city councilman, will claim we’re in heaven. Carl, who was a realtor like me, is sure we’re in hell. My vote is neither. Meanwhile we’re all in the same place and all eating the same food.

It’s not a bad place, I suppose. We’re on the water—either a sound or a bay. There are a couple of shops—two restaurants, a general store, a small library and a post office. There’s a fishing pier that juts out over the water, but no one fishes there, so I’m suspicious of its real purpose.

I stay in a small cabin set about a quarter mile back from the shore. When I arrived here, the cabin lay empty and no one stopped me from moving in, so I did. The cabin has a single large room and a bathroom with a toilet and a shower. It has a covered porch with a porch swing, which is where I spend most of my day. From the swing, I can look out over the center of town and over the water. It’s very foggy here much of the time and you have to keep an eye out if you want a view of anything. So that’s what I do most of the time. I swing in my swing and look out toward the water. It probably sounds very boring to you, but it gets me from morning to night.

And no, I can’t see you from up here. I can’t see much of anything, except the tide coming in and going out, twice a day if it’s not too foggy. I suppose it goes in and out even if it is foggy, but then I can’t see it. I wish I could see you. I think about you and your sister and your brothers and your mother more than anything else, worrying about how you all are doing without me. I have so many questions that I want to ask you.

The first time I went into the post office, the postman looked at me suspiciously when he handed me your batch of letters. I’m guessing he doesn’t get many letters from your side of things. But he didn’t say anything. Matter of fact, I’ve never heard him say a single word. I don’t know if he can even speak.

I can tell you more about this place. Not a lot. But I’ll save that for another day.

Dad