Jumping Read online

  Copyright © 2014

  by Jane Peranteau

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Hampton Roads Publishing, Inc. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

  Cover design by Jim Warner

  Interior designed by Frame25 Productions

  Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

  Charlottesville, VA 22906

  Distributed by Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

  www.redwheelweiser.com

  Sign up for our newsletter and special offers by going to www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter/.

  ISBN: 978-1-57174-719-8

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  EBM

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  www.redwheelweiser.com

  www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter

  Dedicated to Jake.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter One: Babe Arrives in Town

  Chapter Two: Duncan Robert

  Chapter Three: Jumping

  Chapter Four: The Void

  Chapter Five: Standing at the Void, Again

  Chapter Six: The Return

  Chapter Seven: The Group

  Chapter Eight: Did You Hear Me?

  Chapter Nine: The Conclusion

  Chapter Ten: And Then They Know

  Chapter Eleven: Carrie Jean

  Chapter Twelve: Miles

  Chapter Thirteen: Miles and His Students

  Chapter Fourteen: The Students at the Void

  Chapter Fifteen: Babe Remembers

  Chapter Sixteen: Babe and Her Sisters

  Chapter Seventeen: Babe and Her Sisters at the Void

  Chapter Eighteen: Babe—Tandem Jumping

  Chapter Nineteen: Babe's Jump

  Chapter Twenty: Miles's Jump

  Chapter Twenty-One: Miles's Second Jump

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Carrie Jean

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The Students

  Introduction

  She stands at the edge, where he stood. The wind whips her skirt around her legs, persuasive. She sways.

  She has stood alone at this spot in her dreams for as long as she can remember, feeling the Void's call. It always feels familiar. In her dreams, she jumps. She falls and falls, twisting and turning, grabbing for a handhold, a ledge, anything, as panic grabs her breath. She never sees what's beyond this upending fall into darkness. She never touches bottom. All she's left with, when she jolts awake, gasping for air, fighting her sheets, is the taste and smell of her fear. She has it now.

  What her dreams didn't have was the massively ancient presence that surrounds her now at the edge. It is as permeating and knowing as wind. It has found her and she will follow.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Babe Arrives in Town

  HOW DID I GET HERE? For a moment I can't remember. I didn't walk, though I could have. It's only a little over three miles north of town. I drove the narrow dirt Forest Service road that branches off from the paved county road—the one that comes directly through town. It's afternoon, and things are a bit drowsy.

  I parked on the edge of the Forest Service road and walked the half-mile to the Void, which is on public land. I walked through knee-high grass right up to it. I notice it doesn't feel drowsy at the edge of the Void. I stand at the edge, feeling the wind come up all of a sudden, its sound masking any other sound, as if I stand in the middle of a pause—just me and the wind. The energy of the Void is palpable, unmistakable. I can almost hear it hum. It's familiar, as if I remember it, though it's too unsettling to be comfortable. It feels like the first time I took mushrooms and the walls of my small off-campus apartment started to undulate, and I could see through the cat to what it carried, and I had a new understanding of reality after that.

  I had to come here first, as any good reporter would, and I'm trying to remain the reporter, the recorder of facts, as I stand here looking in. I can't help but envision Duncan Robert falling, gravity causing him to pick up speed. I can feel the pull of gravity in the Void, especially here at the edge. It's dark in there, past the opening, with nothing to stop your fall.

  It's been waiting for me. It knows I've wanted to know it. I know that's crazy, and it gives me the willies. I laugh at myself, but I can't escape the feeling. Probably everyone feels this way, I tell myself, when they're standing at the edge. Then I notice the light behind me has changed. More time has passed than I realized, and I'm not sure how that happened. The afternoon sun is dipping toward the horizon, the light through the woods getting dimmer, and I back away from the edge. I wouldn't want to be caught here in the dark. I turn and quickly follow the faint path back through the woods to my car.

  As I drive the dirt road to the county road that takes me back to town, I think about how glad I am to be here, in this corner of the Northeast. I've been waiting for this for a long time. I grew up not far from this town of Dexter, New Hampshire, and had heard about the Void from the time I was a child. In school, I wrote essays about it and used it as an example whenever I got the chance, from physics to poetry to religion to philosophy. Could the Void illuminate the meaning of life? You had to go in to find out, I glibly said.

  Later, as an adult, even as I was piecing together a writing career, the Void remained in some back corner of my mind. As I wended my way through the research and development of other stories—bald eagles raiding the town dump as they followed their migration pattern south, adolescents bullying each other via social media—it was there. I work freelance, as a stringer, for the county paper, which is close to 150 years old, for an editor who is almost as old. He is a business-minded liberal—two things that make interesting bedfellows. His name is Henry Carey, and he's been in the newspaper business for almost four decades. He shows no sign of giving it up soon, either, but seems to hold onto it all the more ferociously the older he gets. Usually, his interests align in ways that suit my interests, which is why I continue to stay on as a stringer, for minimal and sporadic wages.

  I know, too, that he is just about as interested in the Void as I am, though maybe for different reasons. That business-minded side of him knows that Void stories sell papers—fear, danger, mystery—all contained within a very real geographic feature. That's all you need for a good horror story.

  When I first heard about Duncan Robert's jump last year, I was dumbstruck. He went in. Much as I had written, thought, and talked about the Void, doing what he had done was un-thinkable to me. I was caught between immediate hero worship and viewing him as some kind of freak. I had to know more.

  I wanted to start tracking the story immediately but I couldn't find a buyer. Editors were cautious. They wanted to see if it was a hoax, a lover's ploy, a simple suicide, or an accidental death, each of which would be covered differently, by a reporter with that particular agility with words. They've seen everything, so it's hard for them to believe an act is what it is, without an angle. They waited, and now it's the anniversary, a safer reason to do a story. My editor thought it was worth following up because there might be more than just an anniversary story here. We could be on the trail of something bigger. Duncan Robert hasn't been filed as a dead person yet. Someone might know something.

  I came to town in the early spring, as soon as the roads were clear enough to chance it. Nothing was blooming yet—the cold still hadn't released its hold, but nothing was entirely frozen either. Everything was waiting, it seemed, for the weather to go one way or the other. It waited warily, knowing, as the poets say, spring could be the cruelest time. I felt the same
. I was waiting for something, too, something that needed to occur in its own time and in its own way, and might even be cruel. All I could think about was the Void, and it was all I tried not to think about.

  Henry, through a friend of a friend, found me a place to stay, for free. It is a small studio apartment above the one bank in town, and I like it, though I won't tell Henry that. The bank building has historical status, having been built in 1790, and is located in exactly the center of town. The best place to eat, Alpine Alley, is two blocks south; the laundromat is across the street; the one movie theatre is two blocks north; and in between is a bookstore, a clothing store, and a drug store. What more could anyone need? The apartment itself has high ceilings and huge windows in the front and in the back, with east-west exposure, affording great morning and afternoon light. It comes furnished, and I spread my World Market Indian and Asian throws over everything for atmosphere. My sister Kelly, the musician, would love it; its lack of a coordinated decorating theme would make my sister Marla, the mom, uncomfortable.

  My sisters would, however, be united in their feelings about jumps into the Void. A responsible mother can't condone anyone jumping into the unknown, not on her watch, and a musician might appreciate the poetry inherent in a jump but would want to be around to put her guitar to that poetry. I'm their sister and they love me. They certainly wouldn't want me around the Void. They know the attraction it has for me. Since our parents died when we were in high school, we've watched out for each other, guarding the ties we do have. Void talk would just incite more caution.

  Henry had come to be sure I had his thorough instructions, and for his own chance to be near the Void. “It's got all the elements of a good ghost story, Babe!” he exhorted, one more time.

  “What?” I said, teasing him, but listening, too. He hadn't gotten where he'd gotten by being dumb, and I admired him for that. “What ghost story?”

  “Well, the Void stands in really well for a haunted house, don't you think?” he said, pushing his point. “So we start out afraid. And you have the innocent idealist, Duncan Robert, who decides to go in, looking to become the hero in his own life. We can identify with that, so we're scared for him. And we don't know what's happened to him, so there's lots of room for speculation, for asking ourselves what we can believe in, how far out on this branch we'll go. That's scary, too! You can't see this?” He's getting grouchy by the time he gets to his last point.

  “Yes! Sort of,” I say, because I can see his point. It is scary. It scares me. I know it scares Henry, too. That's why he wants to do this story. He knows scary sells. He's a big buyer of scary.

  “So, you'll talk to the yokels, you'll talk to the family and friends, you'll get to the bottom of who this Duncan Robert is and why he'd jump. And meanwhile, you'll be finding out everything you can about this Void. Is it just a geologic phenomenon?” he asks.

  “No!” he answers his own question before I can. “It holds some history in this town, so I imagine it's carrying more than just air and rocks.”

  “Is it seen as a magical place?” he asks. I know better than to try to answer. “Even a spiritual place? I wouldn't be surprised,” he says sagely. “You know, there's a Native American community just north of town.”

  “Was your mother a witch?” I ask, just to rattle his cage. “Why are you convinced he didn't just jump to his death?”

  “Because it's a Void!” he shouts, his face getting red. “Voids aren't about jumping to your death! There's got to be more to it than that.” He paces to calm himself. “You just need to find the angle. I'm banking on you, Babe,” he says, looking at me with his don't-cross-me look, “or I wouldn't be paying for all this.”

  I have to laugh. “Well, I'm not sure what you're paying for, Mister Man, since the place is free,” I say, giving him my don't-cross-me look back. “And on what you do pay me, I can barely afford reporter notebooks.”

  “Don't whine to me. You're getting the standard rate,” he growls, “and we don't even pay that to everybody. Not in these times. And don't forget, I found the place for you! A nice place, too.”

  “Okay, okay. I'll name my first story after you,” I concede. I change the subject. “Have you been out to see it?”

  He looks at me, not even having to ask. “Yeah.”

  “What did you think?”

  “Spooky. Like it's alive, sleeping there in the sun, but not really sleeping. Waiting.” He shakes his head. “You been out?”

  “Not yet,” I say. I don't want to tell him about my trip out there yet. I don't know how to talk about it to myself yet. “I thought I might go out there next week.”

  “Don't wait too long,” he says, shaking his finger at me, “or everyone will already have told you how you feel about it.”

  That's one of his pet peeves—that reporters are regularly told their stories rather than discovering them for themselves. I know what he means. People are pretty opinionated about the Void. They would write this story for me, if I let them.

  Henry pats me on the head on his way out of the apartment, his sign of misplaced affection. He's got three daughters, and he regularly forgets I'm not one of them. He can't help himself. I don't complain. There's lots of reporters who are either afraid of him or who actively dislike him. He's definitely a tough old sod, known for being merciless to those who miss deadlines or make excuses. He's old school. In his book, you just do the work. Period. I guess I don't disagree with that. Plus, I like the work. I'm pleased he's even interested in doing a far-out story like this one and letting me do it. I never thought such a day would come. So, no, I'm not complaining. He can pat me on the head all he wants.

  I start by hanging out in the village—Alpine Alley, the post office, the library, the drug store. As I said, I'm a stringer, taking whatever stories are assigned to me, used to building them from whatever scraps of information I can scrounge. But at heart I'm a beat reporter, longing for my own assigned, well-known and well-loved territory, so I operate like a beat reporter. I love the routine of it and the gadgets and gear and creating old-style contact lists, all of which help to unearth a community. Us beat reporters start with trying to generate “the person on the street” reactions, attending community events, going where people gather—looking for what one reporter called “listening posts.” I could go directly to community leaders—business people, elected officials, religious leaders—but because this story is about a community phenomenon over which they have no control, I'd rather hear it straight from the people first, without the “expert” opinion. I'll use a little electronic media, too, like blogs and email, and see what kind of response I get, but the town doesn't seem very technologically minded, so I'm not expecting much there.

  People are generally friendly, but not everyone trusts me—I am, after all, “the press.” A teller at the bank said, “What you're writing about is really sensationalism. It doesn't make us look good. We'd like to keep it private.” But, still, they want to talk.

  Most people's talk is pretty general—their opinions of Voids, of the jump and the town's reaction to it. So, I moved from the general to the specific and began to identify and talk to those who actually knew Duncan Robert. I found that those who knew him tell me all kinds of things, starting with what Duncan Robert looks like. They like doing this, because they like him and it makes them feel informed. I see a fair number of pictures, taken at town picnics, school events, and just regular school pictures. I stare at Duncan Robert—medium height and build, fair hair, hazel eyes, nice smile, dimples.

  I learn he used to be a big green-chili-cheese burger fan and then became a vegetarian. That he preferred watching movies to watching television. I could build a somewhat interesting general sketch of him as a person but I couldn't feel I'd captured his essence. I remember reading that Charles Lindbergh slept with his bed next to the window, the window open, his head literally on the windowsill, or that Einstein didn't always wear socks, and you'd see his bare ankles as he walked briskly down the street in his suit.
Things like that hint at something that might be profound, if you could just put your finger on it.

  It was like that with Duncan Robert. Hints were plentiful, but essence not so much. As word got out about what I was doing, people I ran into anywhere shared their anecdotes, insights, or the thing that still haunted them. Duncan Robert slept outside every chance he got—often without benefit of tent or sleeping bag—in the woods and fields. He kept odd hours, and he was occasionally seen taking late-night walks alone. No one ever saw him eat very much at one sitting—the Alpine Alley waitresses said he usually left food on his plate. He kept to himself—most thought he preferred his own company, except perhaps in the case of Reggie, his best friend and girl friend. Blue was his favorite color; he even drove a '75 powder blue VW Rabbit he'd bought with his own money, earned from doing handyman jobs around town. Anyone he'd worked for said he was a hard worker and did a good job. He loved the Beatles, especially their early music—songs like “Imagine.” His mother told me he had come to her when he was twelve and asked her if, as a child of the '60s, she'd ever heard of this group called “the Beatles.” She tilted her head back in a wide-mouthed laugh in the telling of that. One woman, who'd gone to school with him and claimed she still harbored a crush, said he was a good kisser.

  Lists and lists of casual observations and a series of photographs, versus the real story of someone. That's not enough for a legacy, let alone a decent article. I could describe him—his likes, his dislikes—but I couldn't tell you the whys of any of it, the what-made-him-tick. Or what made him jump.

  Miles, his uncle, was still the best logical source for the story. He's a teacher of writing and argument at the community college in the next town over. He was the one who had been closest to Duncan Robert, everyone said, and the one most interested in making sense of the jump. As I talked to people, I learned almost as much about Miles as I did Duncan Robert. I learned that, to try to understand the why and how of the jump, Miles got as close to the Void as he could get without actually jumping in himself. He went to the Void's edge a lot because he considered Duncan Robert's act an argument for everyone jumping, and he worked hard to frame it that way. He talked to everybody about the Void. He tried to assess what the aftermath of the jump might be, especially for Duncan Robert, that would make it worthwhile, because, more than anything, he wanted it to have been worthwhile.