The Detour
By Doctorpluto
* * *1. Quinn, Saturday Morning
“This isn’t right…”
Quinn paced around outside his tent checking the map again and again. There was supposed to be a river here, if they were on the right track. But there was no river when they got there, and their guide told him it was getting too late, that they needed to pitch camp and wait until the morning. Maybe he was right, but it wasn’t making him feel any better about this. He only agreed to the four-day camping trip because Cait insisted on it.
The ginger-haired young man folded the map back up and put it in the pocket of his white jacket. Out of habit, he checked his phone again to see that not only was there no signal as usual, he was down to 50% battery.
“Of all the times to forget my charger…” He put the device back in his pocket and went to their guide, who was talking with Jesse while the girls were still in their tent.
“Hey, Basil?” Quinn’s voice was casual but firm as he tried to find a polite way to ask their guide if he got them lost. “The weather’s fine, and we’ve got a whole day ahead of us. I think we should try to get back to the trail, don’t you think?” Basil was crouched over their little campfire, stoking it with a dry branch. He stood when he heard Quinn’s voice, then turned to face him.
“Yeah.” Basil cut an imposing figure, standing six feet and nine inches with shoulder-length black hair tied back in a ponytail. His face was angular, with roman features and his skin was tanned from working outdoors for a living. He was better dressed for the outdoors than they were: a dark green shirt tucked into a pair of black cargo pants, with a tan army surplus jacket on over it.
“I’m thinking of taking someone with me to scout ahead, see if we can’t find a path that’ll lead us back to the main route. The trails out here, they’re all twisty.” He made a zig-zagging gesture with his big hands, drawing invisible serpentine lines in the air. “, they loop back in on each other. It’s easy to get lost but if you know which ones to follow, you’ll eventually wind up back where you started. Wanna come with?”
Quinn shook his head and stepped back, glancing over at their campsite. It was a pretty patch of country, an expanse of verdant grass with the dense treeline of the forest looming all around them. Little clusters of white flowers swayed in the breeze.
“Nah, I gotta uh… look after the girls. What about Jessie? He can cover more ground than I can.”
Basil looked over at the tents, stroking his chin thoughtfully. “Mmm… Fine, but I better not catch you sleeping on the job when we get back.”
“I’ll be fine.” Quinn scoffed, returning to his bag to get the paperback novel he’d been reading. He’d packed a couple other books, but he hadn’t started on them yet. “I got plenty of rest last night.”
The dark-haired guide shrugged and went to get Jessie. Jessie was nodding along to some music on the mp3 player he used to listen to music while skating, almost not seeing Basil standing there. Quinn watched as the two men exchanged words between each other. Jessie put his music player in the pocket of his red hoodie and stuck his head in through Cait’s tent.
“Hey Cait! You sleep alright?”
Quinn heard Cait say something, but it wasn’t loud enough to discern what she had said. From the impish grin on Jessie’s face, he guess she hadn’t rested well.
“Sorry! I’m just telling you me and Basil are gonna go out and see if we can find a way to get back on the trail.”
Quinn felt a little weird eavesdropping, especially on just half of a conversation.
“It’s to keep us from all getting lost, okay? Yeah, I know. We’ll be back before breakfast, I promise!”
He watched the two take their packs and head off into the woods. Quinn didn’t know exactly why, but he felt a sense of unease. The atmosphere out here had changed in a way he could just barely perceive: a hint of a smell of ozone that vanished on the wind, a feeling in his skin that made the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Something was wrong.
2. Jesse, Saturday Morning
“Man, are you sure this is the way back to the main trail?” Jesse had been following Basil’s lead for what felt like an hour, he couldn’t check the time because his phone ran out of power on him. That came as a bit of a shock to him; he could have sworn he had it fully juiced up and ready to go, but all of a sudden it was at 2%, then a black screen. Basil had brought his pack and a mahogany-handled hand-axe that looked like it was made by hand in an old-timey workshop, with a blackened steel head that glinted in the sun at the cutting edge where years of use had worn the finish away.
The axe made Jesse a little nervous. He didn’t think the guide was going to turn out to be a psycho killer like in the movies, but its presence did make him think about how little he actually knew Basil. He was a local, he fixed farm equipment for a living, and he made some extra cash guiding tourists through the woods in this part of the country.
“Yeah, let’s just keep pushing and we’ll be back on track, I know these woods like the back of my hand.” Basil said.
“But not enough to not get us lost to begin with…” Jesse muttered under his breath. If his guide heard the remark, he didn’t let on.
They turned and went down a narrow dirt trail flanked by tall, thin trees with pale bark. The grass came up to their knees and Jesse kept looking down, expecting to see a snake at his feet. Every few steps, a branch would snag on the sleeve of his hoodie or scrape against his shoulder. Jessie was just about to weigh the pros and cons of ditching Basil and heading back to camp when they got some relief: their narrow path gave way to a little meadow, with the dirt path turning right and leading downhill.
“Is this it?” Jessie said, picking a stray leaf from his black hair. “Are we finally on the right track now?”
“Yeah.” Basil said, turning his head and casting his gaze down the trail. “We follow this downhill and we’ll be back on the main route, then we can put down markers and go get the others.” He held up a fistful of little metal rods with fluorescent yellow flags on them. “We’re gonna stick this down every ten paces like so…” He knelt down and stuck one of the flags in the soft red-brown dirt and turned it around so the flag could be seen from either direction, then stood up.
“But that’s not all. Come here…” The guide waved Jessie over in the opposite direction of the trail and through a cluster of little conifers to reveal a craggy cliff face, with a jagged rift in the gray rock big enough for them to slip through if they crouched down.
“Do you want to see some cave paintings?” Basil smiled at the young man, excitement in his brown eyes. “They date back to the late paleolithic, and they’re in perfect condition.”
“The what?” Jessie crept closer, his eyes narrowed as he tried to see into the black mouth of the cavern.
“The stone age. They’re thousands of years old.”
“Wow…” Jessie’s blue eyes widened, he looked back at Basil who was already moving towards the cave entrance. “And they’re not like, faded or chipped or anything?”
“See for yourself.”
Basil led him inside and got out his flashlight so they could see inside the cool, dark cave. The dusty floor was strewn with old animal bones, and Jesse stepped around them out of a notion that he ought not to disturb anything in the cave. He wasn’t a big believer in bad mojo, but in his situation he wasn’t about to risk it, plus the cave just had weird vibes.
After rounding a corner, Jesse’s eyes widened as Basil’s flashlight illuminated a big, round chamber covered in colorful drawings. There were scenes of humanoid figures hunting deer with spears, drawings of the sun and the stars and all the different phases of the moon, and one wall was just different hand prints on the stone in a variety of colors: red, yellow, orange, green, brown, and even black.
“This is…” Jessie reached out to touch the paintings, only to draw back his hand at the last moment. “...This is so cool! And how old are these things again?”
“There’s no telling, at least ten thousand years, give or take.” Basil said, silently giving his guest permission to touch them with a nod.
“That long ago?!” Jessie traced his finger around the outline of one of the big deer on the wall, iring how bright the red pigment was. Time had done nothing to fade the color, if anything it looked like it was made just a few days ago. Touching it made Jesse feel like he had connected with something, a force ancient and primal that was opening itself to him. He kept staring at the mural before him, unable to take his eyes away even as his guide spoke.
“Yes, but it’s still got some serious power. I’m sure you can feel it, can you?”
Jessie nodded, closing his eyes and focusing so he could notice what Basil was talking about. There was an energy, a vital force thrumming just beneath the stone of the cavern wall, like it was alive and he was feeling its pulse. He pressed his palm flat against one of the handprints, lining it up with his own hand. It was a small gesture, one he didn’t even think about, but he could feel the pulsing energy travel from the wall up his arm. Before Jessie realized what was happening, it was up to his shoulder before he could pull away, and he started to feel light-headed.
“Ah…uh…what’s going on?” The young man blinked, watching little flecks of green and red light dance before his eyes. He felt something inside his head, a vague pressure that radiated from his temples to his inner ear before fading with the dizziness into a pleasurable buzz, a bit like the time he tried pot, except it felt… healthier. Jessie shook his head; the more he tried to make sense of the feeling, the more it slipped away from him. And he could feel his mental reach getting shorter, his thoughts interrupted by something ancient, something wild emerging from his subconscious.
“Feel, I feel weird…” Jessie muttered, hearing a second voice echo in his mind. It was his voice, but it was also different, less articulate and more simple in how it spoke and how it saw the world.
“A good kind of weird, right?” Basil said, putting his hands on Jesse’s shoulder. At his gentle urging, the young man unzipped his hoodie and let it slump down past his shoulders.
“Yeah… feel hot.” Suddenly, Jessie’s clothes felt so warm and confining, he was getting more and more aware of how his jeans restricted his movement, how unnecessary a sweatshirt was for this weather.
“Gotta dress for the tempera….temp….how hot it is.” As the dark-haired young man shucked off his hoodie and shirt, his vocabulary shrank and shrank. He was forgetting words he didn’t need, and ideas he didn’t understand, which amounted to a lot of them as he was discovering. As Jessie took off his jeans, his wallet fell out and he picked it up to look at the strange papers inside them. Who were these men? He felt like he should know their names, and they did look familiar, but the more he grasped for the answers, the more it all slipped away.
He ed something his father said:
“If you forgot it, it probably wasn’t that important.”
That felt right, it wasn’t important so he forgot.
And forgot and forgot and forgot.
“How do you feel know?” Basil said to his friend, now stripped down to just his briefs.
“Feel good… but where tribe?” He turned to look at his guide, a vacant glint in his eyes.
“Don’t worry.” Basil said, patting the simple caveman on the head. “I help find tribe.”
3. Cait, Saturday Noon
Cait noticed Jessie was acting funny when he got back from scouting with their guide, but at the time she chalked it up to him being tired or purposefully messing with her, though he didn’t really do anything to bother her that much. He spent most of the day with his shirt off, which she certainly didn’t mind; and he wasn’t arguing with Quinn over directions anymore. Him talking a little funny wasn’t going to be a problem. Her brother had asked Basil about that, and he just waved it off as a bit Jesse was doing, pretending they were cavemen for shits and giggles.
Cait didn’t get what was so funny about it, but Quinn getting all irritated over it did make her laugh a couple times.
She checked the time on her phone: 12:30 pm and she had about two-thirds of her battery left. No signal, but that wasn’t surprising considering how far out in the sticks they were. She put it back in the pocket of her shorts and pounded the last stake of her tent down with a hammer. They moved camp back onto the trail, so they officially weren’t lost anymore, or so Basil promised them. She took a bottle of water and crawled inside her tent for a moment’s refuge from the hot midday sun while her brother and Basil argued outside. The ginger unscrewed the cap and took a long, slow drink as she sat back, her feet aching from the past day’s hiking. It wasn’t anything special, just convenience store bottled water, but on a summer day like this, it was divine.
Jesse poked his head in, smiling at her. She smiled back, putting the cap back on her water.
“What’s up?”
“I find this.” The dark-haired young man held out his fist, holding something in it. Slowly, with dramatic flourish, he opened it to reveal a leather cord necklace. He let the thing hang down on his thumb, a brilliant green stone on the end. “You have it.”
“You can drop the act now,” Cait said, turning to look at the green gemstone, her eyes widening when she saw how big it was. And was it glowing?
“Sorry, I… will stop.” Jessie shook his head, clearly putting a significant effort into speaking more properly… or maybe that was still part of the bit he was doing.
She reached out to the necklace, and he took her hand by the wrist as he thrust it into her hand.
“Take it.”
Nodding, Cait accepted the gift and held the green stone in front of her eyes. It was like jade, glowing a soft green that complimented the color of her eyes. She couldn’t look away from it, her eyes following the stone as it swayed in front of her.
“How is it glowing like that?” She said, her mouth hanging open as she stared deeper into the stone, iring its many uneven facets. It wasn’t a professionally cut gem, but that almost made her like it more. It was natural, pure, simple.
Simple things could be powerful and wonderful things in themselves. She knew this well as a witch.
“Dunno, it just does that sometimes.” Jessie said. “‘It’s pretty.”
“Yeah…” Cait put the necklace on and held the stone in her hands, feeling a curious warmth radiating from it. Suddenly, she felt a sudden pulsing sensation in her head. It wasn’t quite painful, but it wasn’t entirely pleasant either, hovering at the threshold of discomfort. Then the dizziness came.
The redhead teetered side to side as she sat cross-legged in the tent, almost falling onto her back before she caught herself.
“Oop, hehehehe.” The two of them laughed as they sat there, sharing a moment of empty-headed bliss. At that moment, Cait had forgotten they’d been lost in the woods to begin with. The forest outside their tent didn’t feel so intimidating or strange anymore. Rather, Cait had come to enjoy being out there, feeling its energies. Maybe she and Morgan could do something out here, this place had some real potency.
Jessie seemed to anticipate this, taking her hand and standing to guide her out of the tent.
“I can show you a magic place.”
“What?” Cait blinked, not sure why now, of all possible times, he chose to take an interest in her hobbies. Normally he wouldn’t care less about magic or the occult.
“A magic place, in these woods?” She spoke in a whisper, feeling that he wanted to keep this thing a secret for now. “Is it far?”
The dark-haired young man shook his head.
“No, it’s close. Big cave, lots of paintings”
“And these paintings are magic?” Cait was skeptical, but it made sense that ancient cave paintings would retain the energy of the ones who made them. She’d personally seen stranger sources of magical power.
“Yes!” He replied in a stage whisper, barely able to contain his enthusiasm. “Come, you need to see it!”
Cait stood and let herself be pulled along, exiting the tent right as Quinn had his back turned, and the two of them disappeared into the bush towards that special place.
4. Morgan, Saturday Afternoon
Morgan woke up from her nap to the smell of incense burning, and it wasn’t hers. Opening her tent, she peeked out to see a galling sight. Cait was burning a bundle of herbs, dressed in a simple green loincloth and matching chest wrap, her body painted in streaks of verdant pigment. Morgan could even recognize one of the painted symbols being from her necklace.
“Cait?! What the hell are you doing?” Morgan got out, narrowing her eyes as she wondered if she was actually seeing her friend dressed as a cavewoman.
Cait turned to look at her, her red hair unkempt and wild like a lion’s mane. Her eyes were bright and attentive yet… strangely distant.
“Making spell. Burn the special plants and it frees spirit, clears head.” She spoke with complete sincerity, like the broken parody of English she spoke in wasn’t part of some joke.
“What? Why are you talking like that?!” Morgan stepped closer, stopping in her tracks as she got hit with a lungful of incense smoke, thick and heady and dizzying. It was a scent that got past her nose and into the back of her throat, making her eyes water. The aroma was so intense that it was making it hard for her to think straight. Coughing, the dark haired young woman waved some of the smoke out of her face before facing her friend again.
“Cait, this isn’t funny. What’s going on for real?”
“Funny… No. This is special. Special herbs, special moment.”
The red-haired witch blew the smoke in Morgan’s face, causing yet another coughing fit. Morgan’s head was swimming, her thoughts slowing down as she took in another dizzying lungful of magic incense.
“What…. Happening?” She opened her eyes, the blurry visage of Cait smiling at her.
“Want you to tribe. I tribe, Jessie tribe. Soon many people tribe. Be happy, be free.”
‘Ngggh…” Morgan shook her head, unable to resist Cait as she lifted her arms and tugged off her purple top, then her skirt. She glanced down to see her friend fumbling with her boot laces.
“Tribe? What are you talking about?”
“Basil bring us into tribe, make us how we meant to be. Free from… tyranny of the city.”
Cait was clearly struggling with the word ‘tyranny’ which made Morgan wonder what kind of brain-sapping juju she had brought upon herself.
“Free?” Morgan tried to understand, but she figured she was overthinking things, maybe if she could just… simplify her thoughts then this all would make sense, but how?”
“Yes.” Cait nodded, her curly red locks bouncing. “Free from metal and concrete. Free to just be people. Real people.”
“Basil… did this? Why?” Morgan shook her head, trying to make sense of it, then she tried the other thing. Underthinking; maybe that’d work.
She blinked the smoke out of her eyes, then looked straight at Cait, their eyes meeting in a moment of synchronicity.
“Basil bring us into tribe.” Cait said, going slow so her friend could keep up. “He is guide, he show the way to freedom. True happiness.”
“Freedom? Is being a caveman freedom?”
“Yes! Basil say civil…civiliz…city was big mistake! We gotta go back!” Cait lifted up one of Morgan’s legs to take her boot off, then she did the same with the other leg. Now the dark-haired witch was stripped down to just her underwear, her thoughts spacing out like bubbles on the wind. She was starting to get it finally…probably.
“Go back? Is that… what this whole trip about? We’re not camping?”
Cait shook her head again, with a vigor that whipped her long hair side to side.
“No. We still camping. But for good. No job, no money, no rules out here. Freedom!”
“Not having to go to work… sounds nice.” Morgan’s shoulders slouched as she relaxed, letting her friend tug her bra off. She wasn’t going to need it where they were going, and she didn’t much like wearing it. In that moment, any clothing beyond what was needed to protect herself from the elements just felt… wrong. Constricting and stuffy and just not good. Not for her or her tribe.
“How… do I ?”
Cait smiled, putting her hands on Morgan’s shoulders.
“First, the ritual. Then you talk to chief.”
“Chief Basil?”
Cait nodded. “Uh-Huh! He very smart, he teach you how to be free!”
“Uhhh….” Morgan sighed, a dopey smile spreading across her face. “Can’t wait.”
5. Quinn
Tree branches clawed at Quinn’s clothing as he ran. Things had gotten bad; seriously, seriously bad. It started yesterday, when Jessie came back acting like a caveman. At first he and Cait thought he was just playing around until his condition, or whatever it was, spread to her, and then Morgan. And that’s when Basil approached him, dressed in a loincloth of all things. Quinn didn’t listen to much of what he said, some nonsense about ing a tribe and living free, but he heard enough to know he was dealing with a man. Now here he was, running through the woods trying to get back to civilization and get help for his sister and friends.
A ing branch tore a hole in the sleeve of his jacket, but he didn’t notice. His heart was beating in his chest like a drum, it was little comfort to him when he saw the dense wood give way to the trail. The forest looked different to him; it was dark, the trees casting long deep shadows and the forest trail twisting and turning like a labyrinth. If he got lost now, he wasn’t getting out.
Quinn glanced down at the com, then looked back down at the worn trail before him. He was on the right track, or at least he was sure he was. Somewhere in the distance, a hawk’s cry echoed. He remained still for a moment, listening around him. He could hear somebody or something else moving behind him at a distance. Was it their ‘guide’ or one of his brainwashed tribe?
Either way, he wasn’t about to wait and find out. Quinn stepped over a fallen branch and kept running, running along the path as it led him through the dark woods. It felt like the path was stretching out, his destination being pulled farther away from him. He was beginning to wonder if he was even going in the right direction when Basil emerged from the tall grass in front of him, dressed in a brown leather loincloth, his skin painted in fiery red body paint forming jagged patterns.
“What the… how’d you get in front of me?!” Quinn said, almost stumbling over his feet as he came to a halt.
“I know these woods better than you.” Basil said, crossing his arms, a cocky smile on his lips. “I’ve had years to get familiar with them.”
“What do you mean?” Quinn could feel the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up, he could perceive something strange about Basil, something mystical and arcane in an ancient way.
“I’m the shaman of a lost tribe.” He said. “I lost my old tribe to civilized men as they pushed into our territory until only I remained, then I waited… I hid among your kind and started to rebuild. A lost hiker here, a member of a logging crew there, I showed them the gift of wildness.”
“The gift of…” Quinn backed away. “This is nuts, why would anyone want to be a caveman?”
“You’d be surprised.” Basil said, reaching into a leather pouch hanging at his side. “Not everyone likes being stuck in a concrete box or working in a factory. We were all cavemen once, and that simple lifestyle is in our DNA.”
He took a pinch of something in his fingers, then tossed it in Quinn’s face. The red-headed young man felt something powdery hit his face and he flinched away, coughing and trying to wipe it away from his eyes with his hands. When he opened his eyes, he saw his hands were covered in a green dust, a sort of simple pigment that nevertheless had an unnaturally bright and rich green color to it.
“Ugh… what is this?!” Quinn watched as the pigment spread across his shirt as the fabric crumbled away into dust, falling away to reveal his now bare chest.
“It’s something to help bring you back to basics.” Basil said, watching Quinn’s jeans dissolve, his underwear replaced with a plain loincloth much like his own.
“B-Basics?!” Quinn stepped back, grabbing his head as a sudden tingly, dizzy feeling overtook him. The sunlight peeking through the tree canopy was intolerably bright for a second, a white-hot haze in his vision that slowly cleared away only as he looked down.
“That’s right. You might call it a ‘primitive’ lifestyle.” Basil said with some bitterness. “But it’s more than that. It’s a way of life that had seen us flourish for thousands of years, the most free and fair we’ve ever been.”
“You’re….gahhh… you’re nuts.” Quinn felt something in his mind pulling at his thoughts, facts and figures and dates being yanked out bit by bit, leaving a full emptiness that gnawed at the edges of his knowledge, eager to fill its new space.
“...Being dumbed d-down isn’t f-freeing…”
Basil just tilted his head to the side, narrowing his eyes at the young redhead.
“Don’t think of it as dumb, you’re just being re-skilled to better fit your new environment, the trappings of civilization will only get in your way out here. Better to have a fresh start.”
Quinn opened his eyes to see Basil standing right in front of him, cupping a clay bowl in his hands and dipping two fingers into it, then painting something green on his chest in a trailing pattern. His touch was precise and gentle, tracing a symmetrical pattern on Quinn’s body, then moving down to add more, a spiral pattern over his navel… concentric rings around his thighs.
Quinn stood there, confused but obligingly still as his guide worked his magic. Some part of him knew he should run, but the thought disappeared as soon as he formed it, along with more knowledge. The paint being applied to his body was soothing, leaving him with a feeling of safety despite the fact he knew he should know better. He did know better…sort of.
Basil painted a pair of stripes on Quinn’s cheeks, and their eyes met again.
“Don’t worry, a life without the internet isn’t so bad.”
Quinn blinked, mulling over what was said to him.
“Inter…net?” That word sounded familiar, only vaguely, and his attempts to recall more only dredged up more fog, colors and feelings without shape or definition. “Whuzzat?”
“Nothing important,” Basil smiled. “Best to forget about it.”
And so Quinn did.
Basil stepped back, iring his work. Quinn’s body was painted in curving lines, each one a loving tribute to the forest and river that gave his tribe everything they needed.
“You’re almost there, can you tell me what this is?” Basil held up a black rectangular stone with a shiny exterior. The sight of the object sparked something in Quinn’s mind, but it was so brief and fleeting as to confuse him further. Confusion was bad. It made him feel bad.
“Dunno…”
Basil smiled, then tossed the object aside. “That’s alright, it’s just a stone.Come, the tribe is waiting.”
Quinn nodded and followed Basil into the woods, eager to re his tribe.