{1} Abditory

                                    

                                              
Abditory, 
                          
(n.),
                          
a place to escape
                          
Let the record show that it had been a fairly normal day to begin with, maybe a bit shittier than usual. 
                          
Holden had ended up in the same place where he usually ended up on the sorts of days when he just didn't want to go home. Home to a house that seemed haunted even in the daylight and a look in his mother's eyes that seemed to stare through the living and the ghosts. So he wandered through Widow's Woods, the forest on the edge of town. Towering trees surrounded him from all sides. Holden had always liked the world best during autumn, when the leaves were a thousand different reds as they fell to the ground and the air nipped playfully at his face. Right now, when all Holden needed was an hour or two to clear his head, he could think of no place he would rather be. Silence held his hand as he walked through the dense layers of trees and crunching fall leaves.
                          
He had ran into an old friend of his father's on his way out of school- Mrs. Lewis who had lived down the street from them until Holden was in third grade and his family had moved from one side of Suburbia to the other. With only two square miles, one small high school, and a singular road that ran down the middle of it all, the town definitely lived up to it's name. The move hadn't been much for Holden, but it was enough for Mrs. Lewis to stay out of the gossip of their lives. She might have been one of two people in the town who didn't know about what had happened last summer. The other was probably Bernie, the autistic man who likely wasn't certified to be a crossing guard but smiled at the passing kids from the middle of the street anyway.
                          
Mrs. Lewis had stopped Holden on his walk home from school with a plastic smile that was much too white, asking about how his day had gone and commenting on how much he had grown. Holden wanted to snap back at her that it had been almost ten years since she lived down the street from them, so yes, he had grown, but he kept his mouth shut and nodded politely. She asked how Rick was doing, and Lucy and Jax, and bile rose in Holden's throat like a knee-jerk reaction. He swallowed his heart back down and told her curtly to check the news before turning sharply and speed-walking away.
                          
His hands shook the whole way to Widow's Fields, but he fought to keep his breathing steady. It had been three months since The Incident and he was doing considerably better, as his therapist would agree. He didn't burst into tears at the sounds of Jax's name anymore and he hadn't had a panic attack in two weeks. He wasn't going to let Mrs. Lewis, who always put out stale animal crackers and apple cider at Halloween, spoil his record. 
                          
So Holden clenched onto his backpack tighter and let the forest swallow him whole. No one else ever really came out to Widow's Woods. Occasionally there would be a jogger or someone would walk their dogs along the winding path, but they almost never went as far out as Holden preferred to. There was an old tire swing he would frequent. He could recall the feeling of Jax's strong hands on his back as they pushed eight year old Holden up and towards the sun. There used to be children out there all the time, but the town had built a jungle-gym next to the soccer fields by the entrance to the woods, so not many parents deemed it worth the trek to the swing when there were perfectly good ones even closer.
                          
He remembered the time Jax snuck him out to the Field's in the middle of the night to get high. It was his third week back from college and no one knew what had happened yet. Holden could tell from the minute he crossed over the threshold that something had changed in his big brother, but he could have never guessed the magnitude of it. Still, Jax would tell him what was wrong when he wanted to, so Holden held his tongue and passed the joint back over. They sat on the roots of the Swing Tree for what seemed like hours, staring up at their smoke as it swirled through the air and off to Neverland. 
                          
Jax had turned to him then, eyes not quite reaching Holden, and asked if he ever heard the story of how Widow Field's got its name. He had, of course he had, he had heard it about a million times. Despite this, he lied and told Jax he was unfamiliar with the tale, then listened as his brother spun the words into a story, almost verbatim to the first time he told it to Holden, a decade and lifetime ago.
                          
The property had formerly belonged to an extremely wealthy couple, two of the original founders of Suburbia. They had the entirety of the forest and fields to themselves, and watched over it each day from their mansion up on the hill. In their youthful days, they had invited the town children over to play every afternoon and always had treats inside for after. They could not have been more loved by the town, nor each other. 
                          
They were married for fifty years, until the husband fell ill and eventually passed away. After that, the gates were sealed and the new widow screeched at any child who dared to request entry. The townspeople started referring to her solely as the Widow, and continued to long after she had passed away in the decaying mansion. Some say she had starved herself out of grief, but the romantics liked to believe she died of a broken heart.
                          
Holden hadn't noticed as he walked along, but he had been repeating the tale quietly aloud to himself as he walked, trying to recall the exact wording and inflection Jax had used as if it could bring him back to that moment, between the smoke and roots. He would have kept going, too, if not for a flash of deep green in the corner of his vision. He stopped short, the hood of his black sweatshirt falling down as he snapped his head up sharply.
                          
A boy in a forest green hoodie stood further out in the woods, and Holden should have just kept walking, should have continued along his normal path, but something about the way the boy bounced anxiously caught his attention. He seemed to float above the ground. As Holden's feet carried him closer unbidden, he realized that the boy was not absurdly floating, but was rather standing atop something, bouncing on the balls of his feet. 
                          
There was one rail-line running through their small town, coming in from the north with a station right in the center of downtown. It ran south out of town, passing through the forest on its way. The tracks were fenced by a three and a half foot cement wall to stop people from falling over. This was where the boy stood and Holden came to the sudden realization that he was about to witness another suicide.
                          
Holden didn't even have to check the time to know it was exactly 3:27, as the tell tale scream of the oncoming train reverberated through the previously calm woods. He saw it as if in slow motion as the boy lifted his arms out to his sides and began to lean forward, slowly, as if suspended there. He wondered if this is what Apollo saw in the seconds before Icarus fell. 
                          
A scream may have left his lips, maybe, Holden wasn't sure, but he was sure that something had taken over his body and suddenly he was lunging across the leaf-covered ground that separated them, his fist curling tightly into the back of Icarus' green hoodie. Knuckles white, Holden wrenched them both to the ground. He landed harshly on the dirt, his breath being knocked from him as Icarus' head landed right above his heart with a pained groan and he should have known then that he was totally and completely fucked. 
                          
Paralyzed by shock, they both laid there until the train had passed undisturbed and the forest quieted again. Holden didn't even realize he was still holding onto the green hoodie until Icarus jumped to his feet, ripping the material from his grip. He only spared one terrified glance back at Holden, catching his breath on the ground, before sprinting away, but it was enough for Holden to catch glimpse of eyes the color of blue delphiniums frosted over with the harsh bite of winter.
                          
When the green of Icarus' hoodie faded into the forest landscape and his rapid strides were no longer audible, Holden sighed heavily and let his head drop back to the ground. He watched his frosty breath curl and dance upwards towards the chilled autumn sun and decided that his day had just become significantly less normal.
                          
A/N: This is the first draft of my second novel. I hope to publish as I write, which I hope will be on a weekly basis. Any comments, reviews, and critiques are welcome as long as they are constructive. Please vote and share with friends! Xoxo, Evie
                          
Song for this chapter: "Skyway Drive-in" by Shane Alexander