GRAY-HAIRED CHARLES was one of the most well-known men in the town. He was respected as a wise sage, even though he was just in his early sixties, probably because he was one of the city’s founding fathers, a man who had pushed its expansion when few others had the energy to do so. He was tall and handsome, in a crude way, by the fine lines and pliable skin on his face. The thick, chestnut hair he had worn as a young man was now held hostage by a gray, thinning variety. Still, he was an attractive presence to behold because of his stature, and his appearance was a constant presence in his mind. It kept that coveted link to youth, a nostalgia that could sometimes keep him down and in bad humor.
Or maybe he just wanted to forget what he’d done. It had been sixteen years, but it was still there. He was still there, more popular and more powerful than Charles had ever been.
Charles had originally acquired the esteem of the townspeople not because of his reserve and wisdom, but because of his confidence and charm. Years earlier he’d been the best among men at anything he tried. Games, dancing, racing, and man-tasks such as woodcarving were just a few of the crafts he had mastered. He was especially capable with the women, and it was this allure that forced his friends to endure his conceit; after all, if one chose to challenge Charles, one was viewed as humorless and distasteful to the girls. As a young man up into his early forties, he enjoyed a handsomeness unmatched by anyone in the town, a trait that kept his calendar saturated. Even during the immediate years after his marriage to Ruth he strayed, although the only people to ever know of such mischief were Charles and his lovers who kept it secret.
Now, in his sixties, he had not had an affair in many years. Long passed all that nonsense of youth, he told himself. Any stray thoughts or seductive smiles could be assessed to Ruth’s insolence. She needed to try harder to appreciate what she had, and that’s all there was to it.
The truth is that at the time of this story, although his face still bore a weather-worn, time-honored sheen, his magnetism with the ladies had faded. Charles was not the noble, courageous knight that had matured over the years by his own accord. Age and nature were the ones keeping them away.
Charles’s confidence, however, had always been preserved through his knack and love for woodcarving, a vital lifeline to coveted status when his town was continuing its rapid growth, a growth he helped sustain for much of his life. He had either built or helped build most of the houses and community structures, a talent that kept him needed. He told himself status didn’t matter, but it did.
The large cross erected near Charles’s home had been one of his simpler constructions and became the trophy of the city—a symbol of their faith in hard work. Charles had married Ruth beneath the cross, which seemed to shine on their wedding day.
Charles had always enjoyed his skill, but in the years leading up to his tragic deal with fate, nostalgia was overflowing his cup and spilling over as childish fantasy. He began reminiscing on the past and how strong and wanted he was then. He spent more and more time checking the thickness of his hair and the size of his belly, finding it difficult to focus on anything of consequence. He couldn’t see what was right in front of him, that he was still a vibrant man, and that his wife loved him more than he deserved.
Ruth could not remember the last time she felt wanted or loved. She shuddered when she looked at him in church, his body slouched, his eyes staring and his mouth open like an adolescent drooling over a girl’s naked breasts.
Sometime in his early forties Charles began wanting more. Accepting to a degree the aging of his flesh, or what he perceived as the aging, Charles turned increasingly to his building skills as his crutch. Convincing himself that the town was too plain and outdated, a marvelous new land sprung forth in his imagination: stone and wood houses, decorated lavishly, to replace the bedraggled cabins; stone roads and walkways to replace the dirt; and stone sculptures, large and white, to be freckled in strategic spots to honor the people who were central to the city’s growth. It was a fairy tale in his mind, and that’s what he wanted.
But fairy tales have their villains too.
One morning around that time, after a grueling hour in church, Charles approached his wife about his ideas.
“I am tired of living in filth, Ruth. We have lived here for years and not a thing has changed in the valley. Same old falling houses. Same old dusty roads. Same old, same old.”
“Well, what do you plan to do?” Ruth said, hardly interested in his nonsense.
“I will rebuild it. From the ground up. Tear everything down. Start anew.”
“What could you possibly do by yourself, Charles? We aren’t getting any younger. You are over forty years old—”
“Are you saying I’m too old?”
“No, I’m not. I’m just saying why don’t you just let things be and—”
“I don’t want to let things be! I like who I am!”
Ruth could see it now. It had nothing to do with the buildings.
She ceased her stirring in the pot. He had never been this adamant. Charles had approached her about similar things before, nothing serious. She’d always continued what she was doing. Maybe that’s why he’d drifted, she suddenly thought. Maybe she hadn’t really listened to him.
“I remember a few years back a man brought his son here to get help,” he said. “The boy was ill. Violent shakes. His flesh was eating away. And no one here could help him. The doctors couldn’t do anything. That man came in looking for someone to save his son, and the next time he saw him he was dead.
“It’s not just about the building, Ruth. It’s the overall quality of life. We can do better.”
“Charles, I know about the family, or at least I’ve heard of it.” She hesitated. She knew what she would say next might not be the best idea. “But is this about the boy’s twin brothers?”
The rage in his eyes was immediate, she could see it. As quickly as it had escaped her lips, she wanted to take it back, to reign it back in like a wild horse. But it was too late.
Charles had always been bitter about the kidnapping of his own twin brother. A kidnapping he had to witness right after watching his parents get brutally killed on the porch of their home.
And to think that all they’d been doing was playing all day, mere minutes away from their Thursday night supper.
Just as Chase and his brother had been sixteen years earlier.
“You know what I mean,” she said, now fiddling with the rags on the table, trying desperately to reign that horse back in. “Death is a part of life. Don’t dream your life away because one tragedy happened.”
“So you don’t pity that family? You don’t pity me?”
“Of course I do, Charles. Of course. If anything were to happen to our daughter, I’d die. And it kills me to know that you still suffer from the loss of your family. But I wouldn’t want you wasting your life away chasing a ghost.”
“I have a gift of building, Ruth,” he said calmly, mechanically, suppressing his desire to explode. Her patience and soft voice had done the opposite of her intention. “Why not reach further? Why not utilize my gifts? Isn’t that what Father’s always talking about at church?”
“Yes, but—”
“No, there is no ‘but,’ only action!”
He channeled his anger at her into excitement in his ideas, a strange mix of emotion in his eyes. He paced around the kitchen, giddy with his thoughts, stealing peaks through the window and laughing, imagining the whole scene again and again for the first time, every time. Ruth had endured his personal crisis in recent years, whatever it was he was going through as a man in his forties, but it was never like this, and she wore the unease on her face like a widow.
Charles looked back at her and sighed. He repressed the boyish tingle inside for one last attempt at reason.
“I wouldn’t be alone, Ruth. I know plenty of men who would help me. They all say the same things. We are tired of living like this. The valley is too beautiful. We have to spread our wings.”
“It is beautiful because it is untouched, Charles! Don’t you see what force-feeding life can do? Let the city progress naturally, let it grow slowly. Let the youth take the lead. Why go looking for wolves when the sheep are safe and asleep?”
She began to cry, and she gritted her teeth for one last plea. “Stop trying to be a goddamn hero and just love your life for what it is. Love your wife. Love your daughter, for Godsakes.”
It didn’t matter. Charles had decided on action even before his approach to his wife, probably sometime during the wasted hour he’d spent in church. He should have known she’d play the drama queen. And she brings up the Bible and then takes the Lord’s name in vain, he thought. Twice. What a hypocrite.
Coolly, he walked out the door, leaving his wife behind still crying, still pleading with the look in her eyes, still boiling that cabbage that made everything stink. She watched him walk away, just like he’d had to watch his twin brother be taken away forty years earlier.
Later that week Charles would dream. He’d dream that he wasn’t the twin brother being abandoned. He’d dream instead that he was the man in black, the murderer who ripped apart families, the caretaker of the young boy who would eventually rise to power in the city.
Then he woke up.
For sixteen years it was like that.
***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.
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