LeJeune Media

 

 

Chapter 3

 

THE DISTANT MUSIC blared loud and clear in Chase’s head.

Swinging the axe had always been an enjoyable pastime for him, even when Budduh was there. But the blade had changed. With each crash of the axe, one more step was taken in finishing his latest assault on the wood. Each crash of the axe meant another leak of rage oozing out from inside him. There were visions of spewing wood, and visions of a black-hooded killer that destroyed his family. After sixteen years of peace the anger was back, now more bleak and unforgiving than ever. Budduh had left him alone. After promising to always be there, he’d left him to fend for himself.

The townspeople in the valley below him were reasonably quiet when the light was upon them, as was to be expected after their nights spent drinking and dancing. There was movement in the daylight, but there was a sense of purpose behind it. Hammering, orders being shouted, trees falling in the forest around them. The men were working industriously for the expansion of the city, a growth spurt that had begun only in recent years.

It seemed as if the seductive buzz about the city during the day was either the inevitable hangover from the previous night’s partying or the twitchy anticipation of yet another party just hours away. Even when Budduh was still with him, Chase observed the city’s expansion with curiosity. They seemed to enjoy themselves so much at night that the laughter was enough to hold them together all the next day, the energy echoing far beyond the hollow that encased them.

The frontier was expanding quickly. Budduh had rarely spoken of it, even when Chase pressed. The city’s frontier, which years earlier had embanked it into a moderate area below the mountain, now extended to the fringes of the hollow, threatening to spill over into the adjacent valleys. Bedraggled houses were being torn down every day and new, more fashionable ones were being built. Colorful shrubbery was planted in strategic places to complement the landscape. Gravel was hauled in to line new flowerbeds and bushes, framing the panorama with pearly whites and clever grays. The population was multiplying like new blades of grass, the bothersome forest being scaled back to house them. The expansion made Chase think of thick wet mud crawling through the woods. Like a lion hiding in the grass, he watched them, a hidden eye from the high cliff.

“Come back to the cabin, Chase,” Budduh would say.

“Coming.”

But Chase would always stay a moment longer and Budduh would let him.

As enamored with the city as Chase had been, the exit of Budduh from his life made it bitter, filled with disillusionment. The prevailing colors now were the fresh spattering of red on a wooden porch and the blues of a soul in utter dismay.

In short, anger reigned heavy in his heart.

The city did not escape his anger. His rage swelled at night, when the city in the distance would seem so close, awakening like vampires to revel the night into oblivion. The music, which could be so invigorating before, was now an irritant, splitting his head with its squeals. And with every new leak into unsettled grounds the numbers increased and the noise swelled, scraping his mind like a rock on an iron post. He’d awaken from a sleepless sleep the next morning even angrier that they were now sleeping and he couldn’t, and the noise raged inside him the entire day. Under the moonlight, hell’s birds were loosed, but their shrieks chafed him all the next day, slicing Chase like claws with memories of porches and crosses and dancing and singing and music.

And music. That music. That goddamned, never-ending music.

This chronic scrape peeled his mind until the wood chopping became an obsession, a means to his sanity. Not sleeping only fueled the anger, spreading the pain into his very toenails, keeping the axe hot and heavy. Some days he swung it for an entire day, sacrificing the hunt—his food—just to be able to stay at the grind. He was a man possessed, ripping the axe through the air like a windmill, sweating his body away while it dripped onto the ground. The deterioration of his mind and body was quick, but it was of no concern to him. The lack of sleep and his persistent plunge into hate made him eager for the next day’s wood chopping, where he could again unleash every fiber of his pain onto those logs. The axe was his only friend, his only listener. He felt powerful with that axe. He felt that he mattered. He felt that together they were bludgeoning that monster who took away Mama and Papa and his brother.

And the music continued its appointed work, splintering a distant porch into a hundred pieces, settling the dust on top of a forgotten cross in the quiet corner of home.

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***Dream Chase is the wholly reimagined version of The Final Chase (out of print, but used ones still circulating) and the author’s preferred version of the story. It is better, and frankly, more readable. Please consider this as you make your purchasing decision.