Finding Jake by Bryan Reardon

two teachers reacting kind of funny.”
    “Really, like how?” I said.
    “Nothing big. Just like it was different. But the kids always thought you were pretty cool. Max said I was lucky. He thought you were pretty laid-back. I mean, you let us eat cake for breakfast sometimes.”
    I laughed. “Laid-back? That’s funny.”
    “Why?” Jake asked.
    I didn’t answer him. For days after that, I’d felt really good. That seems so long ago now.
    I park the car off the road and get out. The path runs between a local handyman’s house and a big colonial with perpetually shaded windows. My body feels as if someone else sits behind the wheel. Imove, with purpose, yet a haze falls over reality and I meander through it. If I stop and think about the fact that I am visiting an ancient, uncanny graveyard hidden deep in the woods, then I might consider how others might view the fact that my son felt a connection to this place.
    I walk among the high, straight trunks of oaks, my pace chopped and rapid. My movement among the underbrush creates a kaleidoscope view as I scan, searching, praying that Jake will appear out of this awful dream, blissfully unaware of the tragedy engulfing our lives.
    The closer I get to the spot, my destination, the slower I walk. Dread and I become magnets, opposing poles, pushing against each other. I need to get there and find Jake; yet, in getting there, another shard of hope might peel away, falling into the pit that I dare not even consider.
    The path before me narrows. Briars and grasping branches pull at my clothing as I push past. A few feet ahead, it opens. I take my first step into the clearing that once held a house of worship. The ghosts of the past hover over the place, blanketing the mossy ruins and the sinking stones scattered around the hilltop like old bones.
    “Jake,” I call out.
    The call of a red-tailed hawk answers, its screech far in the distance. I look up for the briefest of moments, trying to find it. I don’t know why I do that.
    “Jake,” I whisper.
    I search the ruins. I jog among the long dead, as if I might find him hiding behind a bush, smiling, waiting to jump out and surprise his old man so that I might clutch my chest and laugh. I know Jake is not there, but I look frantically nonetheless.
    One corner of the old church still stands. It rises up, block upon block, to where I assume the roof once rose. I slow, placing a hand on the cold mortar and stone and bend around, looking into what once was the interior of the church. My heart misses a beat.
    A doll hangs in the air, dangling from a frayed green cord oftwine. The noose around its neck is perfectly tied. I stare at the weathered face of the doll, one eye gouged out, the other eyelid drooping closed, the red-painted lips stretched and smeared by rain, the once-blond hair jagged and jutting out in matted, dirty clumps. I fall to my knees, the tears exploding from me with violent pulses. I cannot breathe. I cannot think. I sob, coughing and sputtering, and I am not sure I will ever stop. For the first time, I truly doubt my son.
    Darkness lifts me out of darkness. The sun sets behind the skeletal tree trunks. Icy pain radiates from my knees, whether from the age-related pain of kneeling for too long or the frigid wetness seeping up from the ground into my bones, I am not sure. All I realize is that I have knelt in the remains of the old church for too long. Time I could have spent looking for Jake is now lost. I must get hold of myself. What kind of father am I? Yet the doll haunts me. At first, I cannot touch it. What it hints at cripples me. The fact that it hints at anything makes me feel the betrayer. Worse, it makes me feel like a stranger.
    I have to support myself as I stand, the circulation grudgingly returning to my jellylike legs. The doll, with its insane eyes and tattered and mildewed clothes that look more like melting skin, overwhelms my vision. It is all I see, but I can’t let anyone else see this