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[Click]
[LUKE]
Wow, that’s an old tape recorder. Almost as old as…(snicker) your m–
[GRIAN]
(audible sigh) Do you want to give your statement or not? And for the record, I have heard that one before.
[LUKE]
All right, okay, fine, tough audience, I understand. Yeah, I’ll go ahead and give the statement. Although, just so we’re clear, I’m only here because my wife told me to come.
[GRIAN]
You’ve mentioned it. Right…statement of Luke T. Notable, regarding…a series of strange dreams. Recorded direct from subject today, June 2nd, 2022. Statement begins.
[LUKE]
Oh, so I just start talking, just like that? Okay, sure, no problem. Well, wait…where do I start from?
[GRIAN]
(frustrated) You could start at the part where weird things started happening?
[LUKE]
Oh, yeah, that would make sense. Okay. So, I guess it all started with the book.
[GRIAN]
…A book? You didn’t mention a book before.
[LUKE]
Yeah, my wife, Tors, got me this book for Father’s Day. I actually have no idea where she found it–I’ve looked on Amazon, I’ve gone into the big chain bookstores, Barnes and Noble, Books A Million, that kinda thing. I’ve even visited some of those mom-and-pop bookstores just on the off chance it was a regional thing, you know? Like how some bookstores will highlight publications by authors from the area? And I swear to you, for the life of me, I cannot find another copy of this book. Not that I’d really want to, since I’m not a hundred percent sure what I’d do with it, but…I’ve been curious. Tors swears up and down she ordered it from the Internet, but she can never recall the name of the website.
[GRIAN]
Is there anything unusual about the book?
[LUKE]
I mean, not on the surface? It’s kind of beat-up looking, like somebody maybe took it with them traveling. I figured it was a secondhand copy, which is fine with me–gives it more character. The cover art’s nice, it’s got a mountain and some trees and a little cabin like you’d use for camping. I will say, the one weird thing about the cover is that the author’s name isn’t shown anywhere. Nowhere inside the book either. I checked, too. All it has is a little stamp inside the front cover that says ‘From the Library of Joe Hills.’ I looked that up, too, before you ask, but I can’t find a Library of Joe Hills anywhere on the Internet.
[GRIAN]
No, you wouldn’t. Ugh. That man…(muttering)
[LUKE]
…Right. Well, anyway, the title of the book is ‘The Master Survivalist’s Handbook: How to Survive A Hundred Days Anywhere.’ I had mentioned to Tors that now that we have kids, I want to make sure we go camping with them and stuff, you know, explore the great outdoors. My dad always did that with me and my brother Maeder when we were kids, and they’re some of my favorite memories. So I think this was her way of saying yeah, let’s do that, let’s just make sure we’re prepared. I mean, a hundred days somewhere is a little much, but my wife likes to make sure we know what we’re in for. Great Father’s Day gift, I was so excited to crack it open and get myself ready for some outdoor adventures. So after Tors and I put the kids to bed and finished watching our show for the evening, I decided I’d sit out on the couch for a bit and just look at the first chapter. It was all about putting together the gear you’d need for survival in the wilderness, flashlights, rope, water, standard stuff. I was getting really into the reading, so I decided I’d do chapter two, too, which talked about surviving in a forest environment. There’s lots of forested campsites near where I live, so it felt like a good investment of my time. I started reading, and the book was describing a situation where you’ve gotten lost in a heavily forested area, and as I was reading, I could swear…well, you’re going to laugh, but I could swear I smelled it. The forest, I mean. You know that forest-y, mulchy smell, kinda earthy–not bad, not bad at all, just really weird considering that my house is in the middle of a subdivision with only one tree in our yard. I kept reading, though, because like I said, I was really into it, and the smell wasn’t bothering me . At least, it wasn’t bothering me until I took a deep breath and a bug flew into my mouth.
[GRIAN]
Oh…gross.
[LUKE]
Yeah, pretty gross. Bit of extra protein, but gross. I figured a fly or a mosquito had gotten into the house, maybe one of the kids left the screen door open too long. But when I looked up to check…
[GRIAN]
…Yes?
[LUKE]
You’re gonna think I’m crazy.
[GRIAN]
Would it make you feel better if I told you this is probably going to only be the sixth or seventh weirdest thing I’ve heard today?
[LUKE]
…You know, that does kind of make me feel better. Fine. When I looked up to check, my house had disappeared, and I was standing in the middle of the woods. At first I sort of freaked out, as you do when your house vanishes into thin air, but I realized I still had the book in my hands, and if I was going to be lost in the woods, I might as well figure out how to survive.
[GRIAN]
You didn’t panic?
[LUKE]
Oh, no, I was hard-core panicking. But like, kind of on a subliminal level panicking, if that makes sense. Like, the normal, rational part of my brain that had processed the fact that my house and wife and kids were just gone , that part of me was panicking. But some other part of me was sort of…I don’t know, excited at the prospect of having an adventure. Kind of eager for the challenge, or something. It sounds insane when I say it out loud, but honestly all of this is going to sound insane when I say it out loud, so I guess I’ll just go with it. Anyway, the book told me I should look for some shelter and some firewood, so that’s what I did. It wasn’t really that hard, there was a little rock overhang nearby and plenty of sticks and twigs on the ground, so I wedged myself in and got a fire going–oh, I should mention that there was a backpack on my back that definitely wasn’t there before, with all sorts of gear inside–all of the gear listed in the book, actually, now that I think about it. Not my cell phone, though, or any other way to call for help. Not even a flare or a smoke stick or anything.
I got through that first night, and then when the sun came up, I figured I should pick a direction and start walking until I found a road or a cabin or some other sign of civilization. The backpack had a compass, so I picked north and just started walking. And I must have walked for miles , but I never found anything or anyone, just more woods. Eventually I had to make another little shelter, start a fire, eat some granola. I think maybe that was when it set in, the awareness that I was really stuck out here, and nobody was going to come and find me. It doesn’t feel particularly good, but there’s no use wallowing in it when you have to keep yourself alive, you know? And there was that part of me that was still just…sort of eager to see what I could do, left to my own devices in the wilderness. So…I survived. I followed all the directions in the book, which, weirdly—once I was in the forest, it was like all the chapters had changed to be about surviving in the forest. And once I got used to the loneliness and the lack of amenities, it was actually pretty cool. I built myself a little wood shack using just my hands and the tools in my pack and what I could find in nature. I figured out how to trap little critters, squirrels and rabbits and stuff, and skin them and cook them, and use the skins to make things. I had a whole little compound going, and it definitely wasn’t like my life back at home, and I missed Tors, and I missed my kids, but I could make this life work.
And then the sun set on the hundredth day after it happened, and I woke up back on my couch with the sun coming in through the windows on June twenty-first, and Tors was shaking me awake with this anxious look on her face and saying something about how I was twitching and mumbling in my sleep. The book was on the couch next to me, and you’ll think I’m making this up, but it looked more beat-up than it did when I got it. Like it…well, like it had been in the woods for three months.
[GRIAN]
Oh. I see.
[LUKE]
Aha, see, I knew you were going to think I was making it up! (chair scraping sounds) This was a stupid idea–
[GRIAN]
No, no, that’s not what I meant, just sit down! (pause) I mean, please, sit down. I wasn’t making fun of you, I promise. Just invested in the story.
(pause, chair scraping sounds, cough)
[LUKE]
Yeah, fine, okay, I guess I overreacted. (sighs) I guess I understand why someone would freak out. I probably should have, but the first time I figured it was just a really vivid dream, and Tors seemed to think so too when I told her about it, so I just shrugged it off and decided I probably shouldn’t eat cheese so close to bedtime, and that was that. Except, that decidedly wasn’t that.
[GRIAN]
You said ‘the first time.’ There’ve been other times?
[LUKE]
Seven now, to be exact. It seems like it depends on which chapter of the book I read. I try not to pick it up very often, and so far I’ve managed to go at least a couple weeks in between episodes, but it’s like my mind just gets… hungry for it, or something. The second time was the forest again, and my little shack was still there, which was how I started figuring out it probably wasn’t just a dream, because even repeating dreams are never that detailed. It’s a bigger shack now, since I figured out how to cut down bigger trees. Even has a stone wall around it, which I’m very proud of.
[GRIAN]
And…the other times?
[LUKE]
Oh, right. Let’s see, it’s been forest, forest, then a sort of flat prairie thing–think Kansas, in the United States–then a jungle, and then a really cold, I guess Arctic forest? That one sucked, I hate the cold. And then a desert, which sucked more , because the only thing I hate more than the cold is the heat. And then the most recent one was inside a cave system. I hated that one the most. It was so dark, and I could swear there was always something hovering just out of the corner of my eye, beyond where my torches and flashlight would light up. Sometimes I’d think I’d hear things, I don’t know, clattering around in the darkness, or… squelching . I was glad when that one ended. That’s the strangest part, they always end after a hundred days.
[GRIAN]
Do you think there’s a way to get them to end sooner?
(pause)
[LUKE]
(quietly, subdued) Well…I’ve had the thought that they’d end quicker if I…you know. Didn’t survive. I think that’s the whole challenge–it’s the title of the book, right? Survive a hundred days? Only, I get the sense it’s not just the challenge that’d end if I didn’t survive. If…if you know what I mean. Like, I don’t think not surviving is an option. If I have to do it again, I hope I’ll pick the forest again, but I think…I think the book wants me to pick more dangerous options. That’s what it’s seemed like, anyway. Tors thinks I need to see a psychiatrist. Or, well, she’s had me see several psychiatrists, and several medical doctors, and they all agree there’s nothing physically wrong with me, which I think is why she asked me to come here. I don’t know if there’s something spooky going on, or if I’m just losing it a little, but anyway, there’s my statement. I think I need to get going, she’ll get worried if I’m in here too long.
[Click]
[Click]
[GRIAN]
Joe Hills again , hm? (sighs) There’s not much research I can do on this one. Luke’s American, and he never mentioned exactly where he lives, so I can’t really look up newspaper articles. And besides that, if this is all happening in his head, or in a place only he can get to, it won’t be in the newspaper anyway. It’s not as if he disappeared for a hundred days in real life. Sort of like that time… (pause) Never mind. I said I wasn’t going to bring that up again, and I meant it.
(pause)
Maybe I should have mentioned it to him, though? Maybe…? No…no, definitely not. Definitely not.
Anyway, the only other person I could theoretically talk to here is Luke’s wife Tors, but she didn’t come in with him. I suppose I could chase him down and see if she wants to give a statement…(chair scraping sounds)
[Click]