19.

Wednesday twentieth of September 2017 ... and a friend, a neighbour and whatever else she may be to Terrence, arrives home from having gone to stay with family. It is seven o'clock and the evening darkness has well and truly begun to set in, to the point that streetlights are on and to a point that lights would need to be turned on at home to safely navigate one's own living space.

There would appear to be cause for concern. There are no lights on in Terrence's home and his car, the Ford Mustang he has owned for a couple of years now, rests in his driveway. Any and power outages due to the storm have been dealt with and all has been restored that needs to be restored. It is possible that Terrence has just gone for a walk, or for a drink in a local tavern or it might be possible he has simply decided to have an early night for he did say he would not do anything silly before Mary would have a chance to return home.

If he were to have himself an early night, then doing so at just seven or a little earlier would not be very likely. In the relatively short time, she has known him she has not observed Terrence to be one who would be interested in going for alcoholic beverages either for to bring home for consumption or to have out down the town alone, with her or anyone else.

Mary's own instinct tells her that he has gone to that park and if he has done this then who knows when he will be back ... if he will be back at all. She attempts to call him on his phone, it is off, and her call goes straight to voice mail. With what happened last time as in Terrence going missing for five days when he himself had been sure no more than forty five minutes had passed, Mary has made sure that she'd have access to his home in case of the possibility that an accident has occurred within it.

It comes as no great surprise that Terrence indeed is not home. There is something within his home that catches her eye, however. Checking the house over to ensure that Terrence is not home, Mary finds a notebook. Normally Mary would not even think about going through such a thing but under the circumstances she believes it is best that she has read through what Terrence had written within that notebook.

Candles, what he has written about the candles he so happens to have ... this gets her thinking. If Terrence is lost to time, if he is lost to that park, then maybe Mary can do something as with aiding him to find his way home. She may not have been able to find her own brother, but can she find Terrence?

Her brother being lost to time ... such a thing can explain quite a bit no matter how odd such a thought can be. If her neighbour has gone the same route then maybe in finding Terrence, she also finds Todd, if she can, if she does find her brother then what could that actually mean? In those notes she sees it confirmed, Terrence was indeed going back in.

***

For Terrence, prior to arriving back to that park entrance, it is Saturday morning, five days before Mary returns home from having stayed with family. Inside this park, and maybe within the proximity of the park too, time is irrelevant, time does not matter, and it may not even exist.

This has come to be obvious and clear by now from information gathered and from experience both his own and that told to him of others. Any attempt at figuring out why this time situation should be so, can only be futile and would only add to the headache that is figuring out anything he has come to know about a place that takes names and collects souls from its immediate surroundings and from who knows where else.

He comes to a halt about twenty-five feet away from the park entrance. It is not too late, he still has a choice, and he doesn't have to go in. No this is not so, if there ever had been a choice then it has long since been made, in fact there may never have been a choice at all. As he stands on the outside he may already be on the inside too as indeed time no longer matters. Sure, even looking in towards where he is about to go, he can see a difference to where it is he currently stands.

A storm has come to town, the worst of which occurred the day previous, rain still falls, and a wind still blows almost urging Terrence to move forwards. Beyond that entrance appears to be unaffected by the weather, the ground appears dry despite the rainfall and the wetness which pools right by where Terrence stands.

Yeah, there are plenty of trees, the place is as much a forest as it is a park, the ground still should be wet from the rainfall though it clearly isn't. The trees themselves should be swaying with the winds which are still blowing rather strongly but they completely stand still, they are completely unaffected. No point delaying the inevitable, it is time to go do what he has come to do.

20.

Anticipating something would occur on this occasion, the occasion being a return to that forest like park, something does occur. Entering the park Terrence straight away feels different. He feels lifted as if something from up above him has grabbed him under the arms and has carried him up into the sky yet at no time does he actually leave the ground.

He feels as if he were on a level high up with the tops of those trees closest to him while being close enough at the same time to the leaves along the ground that he could reach down and take them in his hands. It is not so much a feeling that the park is taking him or even a feeling of allowing it into his soul, there is so much more than that to what is happening.

This is a kind of elation, a pure elation of mind, body and soul. It hits all at once ... in him, of him and through him.

It might be best described as a kind of mergence, a coming together, kind of like Terrence is joining with his surrounds and all that comes with it. There is also a sense, a feeling, that if Terrence would wish to leave this place at any point from here on in then this would be something which would be both easily and not so easily done for this mergence, this connection or whatever it currently is has yet to become complete ... yet it is complete.

It is complete the instant he walked right into the park ... but it always has been complete ... this right here is a center ... it is the beginning ... it is the middle ... it is the end ... all at once.

Whatever happened to all those who went before and those who are still to come, not that an order of entry can have anything to do with it, what is happening to Terrence is something very different to all those other souls. On this occasion there is no point in counting steps as he had done once before, this feeling that is being sensed, this coming together makes initial movement something very different to any other way Terrence has ever moved before and this makes any attempt at counting steps impossible.

'You more than live here in this place' Terrence speaks out loud, 'you are this place, and it is you. Why do you want me? What makes me so special? I don't need an answer, do I? I am you now ...'

In a way Terrence does expect answers to his questions, what he feels is nothing more than an assumption ... a euphoria coursing through his veins. A truth still needs to come, he does not know how this truth is to come, still he expects something to come his way right away and, in this moment, something does come his way.

Something is happening at the park entrance which right now is more than a few feet behind him, and Terrence gets to watch it from a height as if he indeed were no longer on the ground but a number of feet in the air. Also, in this moment it is clear to see that on the town side of the park there is no rain and there are no winds blowing, strong or otherwise. There is no evidence at all of there having been a storm prior to Terrence having come inside.

A large plastic ball bounces and rolls right into the park before coming to a halt. A young boy soon follows and he in turn is soon followed by a young girl. The boy is gigging and laughing and goes straight for his ball. The girl calls out for him and to Terrence it looks as if the girl cannot see the boy even though he is right in front of her. The boy laughs some more believing the girl is playing by acting as if she cannot see him, but she isn't playing.

'Todd' she calls out. 'Todd' she calls again, this time a little louder.

'Mary?' Terrence asks.

This girl cannot be the Mary that Terrence knows. Mary is a grown woman, not a little girl though then again, this place knows no time and Mary had lost her seven-year-old brother to the park when she had only been nine-years-old. The little girl leaves the park having in an odd way having not been able to find her brother. Todd tries to follow and no matter how hard the little guy tries to do this, he cannot exit the park.

The boy turns towards Terrence who now no longer feels as if he is watching from high up. He is ground level and right by he who is lost in more ways than one.

'I can't get out' the little fellow complains.

Looking beyond the park entrance Terrance can see that there is no little girl close by, there is also no adults close by. Yeah, it's a long since known fact by now that the park does not deal with time so despite seeing a little girl only seconds ago, it is more than likely she and her parents are not in the immediate vicinity, they are long gone.

Despite knowing what it is he does know and having known this for a while now, it is so difficult to take in the fact that the little girl is the neighbour he knows as Mary, a lady he had no intentions of feeling anything for, a lady through whom, no matter what intent had in store, he has discovered that his own heart actually works. The little girl, Terrence was able to see in her eyes that the child Mary and the adult Mary are both one and the same. Her lost brother is not quite exactly lost, then again ...

'That is alright, Todd' Terrence tells the boy in response to his fear that he can't get out and offering his own hand to the boy. 'My name is Terrence, and you can call me Terry, if you come with me, I promise that I will get you back to your sister.'

Without any trouble, Todd does take Terrence by the hand and together they head further into the park.