by C M Muller
Around her, the woods seemed darker than the afternoon sun should have allowed. The thick legs of trees stood in her way and the ground threw up root walls and bramble bolls that funneled her onwards. This should be the right path, she thought, but then why did it never seem to end? Would the next twist bring her around the safety of the outcropping, or was it hiding something else?
As she began to run, she thought how foolish she must look. Wouldn’t that be just what people would expect from her father’s daughter, running from shadows and barking at the walls like he had in his final days?
That was, of course, if there was nothing behind her.
Sarah flew down the path, down around the bend, and came to the hook in the trail that she’d been anticipating. Around it she ran, pressing her feet deep into the ground to make her mark, then further, further, then she leapt off the trail. The small leap carried her to a table of partially exposed stones that would hide her tracks until she could make it to a deeper leaf cover. Two giant strides then, and she was clear.
As Sarah made her way up the incline of the ground, she crouched behind the sparse cover of the brush as deftly as her youthful memories could pull her aging body. She remembered to distribute her weight on elbows and palms, knees and toes. Her palms sank into the cool, dark soil, and she remembered in her bones how to hide before she fully realized in her mind that she was doing so. And when she did realize it, when she was pressed into the ground and shadows beneath the dying overgrowth and watching over the trail from above, it struck her how ridiculous all this was.
But only if there was nothing there, of course.
Except for the percussion of her heart and the rasps of her breath, the world was silent. Everything else was silent.
Everything except the sound of breaking twigs, snapping like fingers, coming down the trail.
Down below, moving slowly with knees and elbows held high in a marionette’s exaggerated gait, the man crept around the rock. A bushy black beard like a squirrel’s nest bobbed with each tiptoed step. He wore a green field jacket and stained jeans, but his boots, even from the distance, were shiny and new.
Whether from the dim light or her own failing eyes, Sarah could not see his face clearly, but she knew she did not know him. Unbidden, the thought that came to her was of an uncomfortable photo of her father as a young man standing next to his own father—a silver-haired and wild-eyed presence that Sarah never knew. The character below was too thin and too strange to be either of them, really, but he had the same uncanny look of being out of place and out of time.
Sarah dug her fingers into the dirt as if she could pull herself down into it and away from him. The way the man swayed like a hollow tree in an unseen breeze made her nauseous. As his loose steps carried him past her hiding place, she could tell by the way he rolled his head from side to side that he was scanning the trail.
Against her better judgment, she shut her eyes. The methodical creak of the forest underfoot continued as he meandered past. She let herself exhale slowly in the self-inflicted darkness.
The sounds stopped. The forest was a tomb again.
She opened her eyes.
A few strides beyond where she had left the path, the bearded man had stopped. Oh please, she thought, oh please, keep going. She willed him onward, as if her prayers could convince unseen hands to pluck at him, cuffs and collar, and carry him out of her life.
But he did not move on. Instead, he bent at the waist, almost in half. Close enough to sniff the ground, Sarah thought, and to see where her footfalls ended. The lolling of his head became more agitated as he surveyed the ground, and the thinness of her defenses beneath the brush struck her in the stomach. The entire forest was thinner, weaker, than she had thought even a moment ago.
No, she thought, no, no, no.
Like a birdsong in the silence, her thoughts seemed to pierce the still world around her and the man stopped. As he drew himself back to his full and unsteady height, Sarah recognized the look of someone who felt the pressure of hidden eyes.
He turned head first, his body following. He looked back the way he had come. Then to the downhill slope off the trail, towards the lake and away from Sarah. Then, rolling like a searchlight, he turned towards the uphill slope, towards Sarah and her father’s house beyond.
Calm, she thought, just be calm. Maybe he was a neighbor, or a hunter, or a fisher or even a meter man. Maybe he thought she was an intruder or that she was lost. Maybe he was here to help. What other reason could there be?
She should stand up then. She should call to him.
But she didn’t. Instead, she watched as he raised his long, pale fingers to his face. She watched as he slowly peeled away his beard and crumpled it beneath deft, insectile movements before pressing the now abandoned disguised into a jacket pocket. Through the dimming light-dappled shade, Sarah could see the smile that split his naked face.
The man lowered onto all fours in the middle of the trail. It wasn’t necessarily animalistic, but an exaggerated style of crawling that her father had once tried to teach her. One for cover and for quickness, for stalking and passing undetected.
Then he moved, scurrying into the undergrowth on Sarah’s side of the trail and disappearing into the thin vegetation. The leaves whispered in his wake, spreading like the ripples from the canoe’s prow as it cut the water. But that momentary susurration faded, and then the breeze began to blow.
Below her on the hill, she heard the fallen leaves shiver. But if it was the man, bent over and scuttling on all fours, or the reawakened wind worrying the ground, she did not know. The birds and the bugs were still catatonic, but the rest of the world seemed positively cacophonous as every creak and crinkle in the dead and dried woods around her seemed to cry at once.
Behind her, further up the slope, was her father’s house. The house with doors and windows and locks. She knew the general direction was back towards the setting sun, but there was no direct path from here. She would have to stumble towards it, groping back for its safety.
Down the slope was the lake. More than one path to the water, as her father had said, and all of it was downhill. That way was a sure thing, the slopes all leading into a single depression and, from there, to her father’s canoe on the embankment’s high edge. But beyond that was the flat and empty water. Maybe there were fishermen, though, in their own boats or even on the distant landing, but she didn’t know. There could be anything out there.
Small stones dug into her hands and legs. She became very aware of the fragility of the shell of the bush surrounding her. She had to make a choice, but which way to go? The house, of course, was clearly the safest and most familiar destination.
She would rise and turn and slowly, very slowly, begin to make her way back. If she could just get high enough, get close enough, she could find her way back and lock herself in.
But then the leaves rustled behind her on the hill, maybe fifteen, twenty feet away. They whispered to her of something circling around, cutting her off.
It was humming a song.
So Sarah ran. She burst through the flimsy concealment and sprinted down the slope, surrendering to gravity as it pulled her away from the noise between her and the house. She may have screamed, but she couldn’t tell.
The velocity of terror guided her acceleration around trees and over stones. She stumbled as branches clawed at her clothes, her face, her hair. Everything in that forest seemed to drop its final pretense at summer and grasp with raw splinter fingers to hold her back, to never let her leave.
But she refused.
As she ran, her feet caught on the bones of bedrock that pierced the earth’s soft old skin. The granite teeth of the ravine bit at her, the years having pulled back the soil to reveal the colossal skull of the world that had always been hiding beneath. She burst through clots of dry kindling and tore past an uprooted tree that squirmed with ten thousand legs in the gathering shadows. Down, she ran, towards the end of
the forest and the rim of the lake below.
She could not hear anything above her own thrashing, but she knew that the man was still behind her. She knew, in her deepest heart, that he was dancing down the hill like a spider, the rest of his disguises falling off of him like the autumn leaves.
Oh please, Sarah thought or even said, please let it still be there. Let the canoe be there and let it not be chained. Of all the things that time has made strange and taken from me, please let it have left me just this one.
And there it was, unclaimed by the years, perching on the lip of the embankment as if it were waiting to set off for the horizon’s empty edge. Without breaking stride, Sarah gripped the bow, wrenching it down the slope and across the short and rocky bank. It groaned and gasped, but neither the nails of the undergrowth nor the teeth-sharp stones could hold her back as she flung it and herself out into the lake’s cold and black expanse.
Her pants soaked through to her calves, her knees. Sarah shivered as she hoisted herself into the canoe, rocking wildly, then grabbed the paddle and smashed it against the dull water, beating her way further out into the empty spread.
She knew it wasn’t very deep, as far as lakes go, but it looped around bends and inlets that spread like crooked fingers along the shore. On the farthest side, the fishermen’s landing pushed out into the stagnant mirror of water, away from the woods and the pursuer, but away from the house, as well. Far away from the doors and the walls and any safety she could have found barricading herself in her father’s old homestead.
But just then, and for just a moment, the serenity of the lake took Sarah like a drug. For just a moment she forgot the frenzy of the last few minutes. She forgot the havoc of the last few months, of all the death all around.
“How could anything ever be wrong out here,” her father had asked her once. Years ago, under the clear blue sky and unblemished sun, with the strong summer forest cradling them in its palm, she couldn’t disagree.
But now, with the wilting trees gripping the black lake under the bruising sky and the sun setting behind the house in the distance, she didn’t know how it could ever be otherwise. She stared at the golds and reds of the forest and it seemed as if that whole shore behind her was burning with the dying foliage, giving off the smoke of the night. She could never go back; she knew that now.
She turned to look at the distant landing, but there was not a light or a soul to be seen. Of course it was empty. No one ever comes down here but you and me, her father had said. It was too late in the season, and surely too late in the day, and there was nothing on that far side but an empty shore and uncertain terrain. Many paths leading from the water, she imagined, but she didn’t know where to.
So Sarah laughed. Laughed at the darkening plateau of the pond. Laughed at the absurdity and at herself and at the absolute isolation reflected back at her on every side.
And as she laughed, as she looked back to the silent immolation of the autumn leaves and the sunset consuming her father’s house and the woods behind her, the man emerged onto the shore. Like the memory of a picture, his details were smeared beneath the gloaming’s thumb.
She watched as he stooped to pick up fist-sized rocks from the water line. She watched him stuff them into the pockets of his field jacket.
Even now, as the darkness won the sky, she saw his glistening smile as his shiny boots broke the water’s mirror surface. He smiled as he went in past his knees, past his stomach, past his chin. His head disappeared without any bubbles, leaving only a gentle ring of ripples that spread like the whisper of the leaves before it vanished.
The water was still again, its murky shadows concealing fish and driftwood and a grinning man and who could ever know what else. Sarah was alone here, in the wide spread of nothing, with only that thin membrane between her and that hidden depth and everything within it.
Sarah dug her paddle’s blade into the waters and pushed forward, towards the far and darkening shore.
And Elm Do Hate
Nina Shepardson
1.
wych-elm or witch-elm, n: A species of deciduous tree, scientific name Ulmus glabra, found throughout much of Europe and western Asia. Also known as witch-hazel.
2.
“Abner? Abner, where are you?” Abigail turned in a circle, leaves crunching under her feet. “Abner, I give up! You win!” Her lower lip trembled, and she clenched her hands into fists. “I don’t want to play this game anymore! Just tell me where you are!”
A cry came from where the sun was setting, so faint she almost mistook it for the wind. “Abby…”
Abigail sprinted toward the sound, weaving around tree trunks and ignoring the underbrush that tore at her dress. The wails grew stronger. “I’m here! I’m in the tree!”
Abigail pushed through the low-hanging branches of a pine and emerged in a clearing. A tall wych-elm stood in the center. Drooping boughs festooned with bright green leaves formed a cave around the wrinkled gray trunk. The branches were shaking, and Abner’s shouts were clearly coming from somewhere within. “Abby! Abby, I’m in here! I’m stuck!”
Abigail slipped under one of the branches, its leaves brushing her face and hair like their governess’s hands. It was dim under the tree, as if the sun had already set. She peered upward, but Abner was nowhere to be seen.
Then the tree trunk shuddered and bulged as if something was pounding against it from inside. Edging closer, she spied a patch of blue: Abner’s checked trousers showing through a hole in the trunk.
Abigail jumped and grabbed a low-hanging branch. Swinging her legs up, she pulled herself into the tree and scrambled in toward the trunk. It was thick but hollowed out, and Abner crouched in the well in its center. His hair was mussed, his waistcoat was torn, and sweat streaked his face. “Take my hand; I’ll pull you out!”
Abner reached up, his slim fingers locking around her pudgy ones. Abigail wrapped her legs around the tree branch in what their governess would have considered a most unladylike way, and yanked. At first, nothing happened, but then Abner began to slide upward. The tree trunk felt like it was molding itself around him, and Abigail could have sworn there was a popping sound when he finally came free. His hand slipped from Abigail’s grasp, and he tumbled off her branch to the ground. “Abner!”
Abner stood up, wincing as he put weight on his left foot. “All’s well, Abby, I’ve only twisted my ankle a mite.” Then his eyes widened. “Abby, get down! Get down now!”
Abby put her hands on the branch and swung her legs down, hanging from the branch for a moment before dropping to the earth. “What—”
“Please, Abby! We must get home!”
“I’m not arguing with you, but—” Seeing how frightened Abner was, Abby stopped. She let him wrap an arm around her shoulders and helped him limp out from under the confines of the wych-elm’s branches.
3.
All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep
Saying, “Where shall we shelter or where shall we sleep?”
For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down
And the walls of bonny Portmore are all down to the ground.
—from “Bonny Portmore,” a traditional Irish folk song
4.
Colonel Jacob Bradford strolled through the forest, whistling a cheerful tune. His homecoming celebration had been delightful, but the soft breeze, the twittering of birds in the high branches, and the sunlight peeking through those branches to illuminate the forest floor were even more appealing. The unspoiled countryside where he had spent much of his boyhood had come to symbolize everything he loved, everything he had fought to protect.
He entered a clearing and saw a great wych-elm standing before him. Green leaves spilled down from a lofty crown like fountains, shifting in the breeze to reveal a trunk so big he wouldn’t have been able to put his arms around it. Colonel Bradford ducked beneath the branches and sat down on the mossy ground, leaning back against the trunk with a grateful sigh.<
br />
The bark wasn’t as rough as he’d expected; on the contrary, it felt soft, as if he were sinking into a down mattress. He closed his eyes, breathing deep of the rich smell of loam and leaves.
Colonel Bradford was disconcerted to detect another scent underlying the wholesome one. It was earthy, but not the smell of soil. Mud. It was mud, though the ground beneath him was dry. Mud, and the kind of rain that doesn’t wash things clean but instead turns the world into a dreary, soggy mess. And rising up through the mud like bubbles, another stench, sharp and coppery. All at once, the softness of the trunk at his back wasn’t the welcome comfort of a down mattress, but the sticky give of a trench wall soaked by never-ending rain.
He lurched to his feet, and something with the consistency of pudding pulled away from his back. He stumbled out from under the branches and into the open space of the clearing. Turning to look back over his shoulder, he no longer thought that the bowed branches resembled graceful fountains. Now they looked like green slime bubbling over the lip of a cauldron.
It’s shell shock. Shell shock, nothing more. Beating a hasty retreat out of the clearing, Colonel Bradford almost believed that.
5.
A species that evolved on the open savannah will naturally be uncomfortable in an impenetrable forest, where predators and odder things may lurk within a few steps of the unwary traveler. We can see this discomfort reflected in traditional folklore: the witch who captures Hansel and Gretel lives in a forest, as do Baba Yaga and the Erlking. A number of modern stories intended to horrify center around trees or forests as well, such as Algernon Blackwood’s “The Man Whom the Trees Loved” and H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Tree on the Hill.”
6.
Harry lumbered through the thick underbrush, leaving the sound of heavy machinery and the smell of asphalt behind. Other members of the crew actually used their coffee break to drink coffee, but Harry had something better than that.
Nettles and saplings gave way to a clearing that exuded an air of seclusion despite being only a three minute walk from the new road. The single tree in the center of the clearing was magnificent, and Harry felt a fleeting gladness that their plans didn’t call for them to chop this one down. With a grunt, he sat down against the trunk and pulled out his stash and rolling paper from an inside pocket of his coat. This was almost as comfortable as sitting in his recliner at home. The only things missing were the can of beer and the football game on the telly.