In the Forest of Light and Dark

by Kasniak, Mark

  Everything in the room looked expensive to me—as if it were all antiques. (But honestly, what did I know? Up to that point in my life any piece of furniture that didn’t have its cushions turned over to hide the cat piss stains on it, I would’ve considered a Rembrandt.)

  The room also had pictures hanging all over the walls and resting on the furniture. I took to looking at them while my parents were busy off exploring other parts of the house.

  Most of the photos were of people I didn’t recognize, but the one constant in many of them was a woman who I had assumed must have been my Grandmother Lyanna. Though, she didn’t quite look like the woman in the small photograph my mama had kept in her bedroom back in Saraland.

  At times when I had thought of my grandmother in my mind’s eye, I couldn’t help but pictured her as a short, frail, old woman with snow-white hair, tired eyes, and wrinkly sagging skin to go along with a hunched back. But I knew that had been never true. The woman in these pictures wasn’t like that at all.

  I could also say that most of the photographs weren’t really all that old either; both from the style of film they’d been printed on and by the style of clothing in which the people in them were wearing.

  My grandmother—if that’s who the woman in the photos indeed was—had still been a quite youthful looking woman, beautiful even. She had long, raven-black hair, and a well-defined chin. Her eyes were hauntingly bright green like emeralds shimmering on a black canvas, and they gazed out as if filled with knowledge or a wisdom that went deeper than what her age would’ve had you believe. Around her neck she wore a silver pendant that had been unfortunately just too small in any of the photos for me to see clearly. But, her smile was what I liked the most about her, it was what I would’ve had to have called mischievous. Like that of someone who kept a secret that they weren’t about to share with anyone anytime soon. It reminded me a little of the Mona Lisa.

  “Oh, there you are.” My mama said, peering in at me from just outside the room’s archway. “Come on upstairs and pick out which room you want to be yours.”

  “Is this your mama in these pictures?” I asked pointing at one of the photos. “Grandma Lyanna?”

  My mama, then walked up to me somewhat tentatively, her arms crossed over her chest, holding herself as if she was nervous about looking at the photographs. She stood beside me as we both gazed upon the pictures that were all over the room. I then pointed out again to her, the woman to whom I had referred.

  “Yes, that’s my mother.” she said with a tender smile curling up from around the corners of her mouth as she lightly touched the photo’s frame.

  I remember looking at my mama fondly as she gazed down at that photo because I had recalled that smile she wore in my memory. It was the smile from way-back-when I was just a little girl and we’d go down to the park to feed the ducks which was something that the both of us loved to do. I hadn’t seen that smile in an awfully long time. I think sometimes life has a way of taking things like that away from a person.

  “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen any of these photographs.” she said with a sigh before picking a few more up from the old mahogany furniture and examining each fondly. “Look, here’s your grandfather in this one.”

  The man—my grandfather—appeared tall like my step daddy, and in the photo he wore a police officer’s uniform. He stood next to my grandmother and a scrawny woman wearing a cardigan. They were out in the front yard of the house and given the style of car that sat parked forlornly in the back recesses of the photo I thought the picture might have been taken some time back in the late 1980’s.

  The photo—which my mama now held lovingly in her grasp—I hadn’t realized sat encased in an actual silver frame. When I had touched the frame to draw it close, a sudden shock of static electricity pierced through me. The low-level surge of energy making a snapping, popping sound as an arching bluish bolt of lightning jumped from the metal to my finger tips. “Ouch,” I muttered as I quickly reeled my hand back before touching my fingertips to my lips.

  “Oh, did it get you?” my mama asked after having heard the sound and possibly even having seen the spark strike before I jumped back. “Yeah, you’ve got to watch out for that in this house. These old carpets still carry one heck of a charge. I used to get shocked like that all the time when I was a little girl. So… Well, you’ll get used to it. You’ll have to get used to a lot of weird things around here, but I think you’ll be okay.”

  I hadn’t realized at the time what my mama might have hinted at. And honestly, until I sat down and started writing this memoir I hadn’t realized much of anything she’d been hinting at about Mt. Harrison, my grandmother’s house, or what might ultimately happen to me here.

  You’ll have to get used to a lot of weird things around here, yeah—I’d say that was an understatement.

  Just then my Step Daddy Cade came walking up from behind the two of us after having been somewhere else in the house and he said, “I’m gonna finish unhookin’ the trailer then head back into the village to go to one of those supermarkets we’d passed. I’ll get some food for the refrigerator and some things for the house. I didn’t see any shit-tickets when I checked out the bathrooms, so I know we’ll need at least that.”

  “Oh, there’s a dry storage pantry in the basement.” My mama told him as she placed the photo back where it belonged. “My mother always kept it filled with all kinds of things for the house.”

  “Still…” my step daddy replied dismissively while shrugging his shoulders. “There’s no beer, so I’ll be back.” Then, I watched him as he began digging out his car keys from his front pocket, and after he’d pried them free he headed down the hall before escaping out the front door.

  “Come on,” my mama, then said to me while taking me by the arm like we were somehow now school buddies. “Let’s go upstairs and check out the rest of the house.”

  It was weird seeing my mama seem so giddy. It was like she was my age again. As if being home again was somehow working to take the years off her, rejuvenating her to a former self that I had never known existed. It wasn’t a bad thing. It was just… Well… I didn’t know what to think of it.

  “Okay, race ya,” I said, shoving passed her playfully and taking off up the staircase, her close on my tail.

  When I’d reached the top of the stairs, I darted off into the first bedroom I saw which was just off to my left. I could tell right away that it must have been the master bedroom I was looking at, because if all the other bedrooms in the house, whereas big as this one, I was really going to like living here.

  At the center of the room, its back to the far wall stood an enormous, wooden, four-post bed with a white fabric canopy that hung loosely around its over-hang framework like a halo. A soft peach tone had been used to paint the room’s walls and there was a set of French doors that flanked each side of the bed that opened up to a balcony which overlooked the backyard, the forest beyond, and Mt. Harrison.

  I walked out on the balcony to take in the view and noticed I was high enough to see how our backyard gently sloped down until it reached the escarpment my mama had talked about back in the car earlier.

  Even though I couldn’t see it, I could hear in the distance the sound of rushing water that must have been coming from the Genesee River as it snaked its way through the valley somewhere down at the bottom of the escarpment.

  Up on the other side of the escarpment just beyond the river were five or six waves of Pine Barrens that led up the lower slopes of Mt. Harrison, each tree standing straight up at attention like telephone poles. All the spruces were a hauntingly dark green and I could smell faint wisps of pine-sol in the air coming off them when the breeze blew. Beyond the pines, I could see that the forest began to change. It transitioned, becoming lighter in color as what looked like a mix of maples, oaks, cherry, and maybe even ash began their ascension up Mount Harrison heading towards its peak.

  “After we get the trailer all unpacked maybe we can take a walk
down by the river when your step daddy gets back.” My mama said as she came out on the balcony then pausing to look out over the mountain and forest.

  “Yeah, I really wanna check it out.” I said, giving her a fleeting glance.

  We had stayed out on the balcony for another minute or two before going back inside to check out the rest of the bedrooms. There were three others in total, but only one had faced the forest at the back side of the house just like the master bedroom had, the other two had faced the street. Well, they would have looked-out on the street, but all the trees and shrubs that had encompassed what was supposedly much of our front yard cut the view down to just a few yards passed the two sentinel maples.

  The room that I had eventually chosen for myself was the only other one that faced the back of the house like the master bedroom did. It wasn’t as big as one of the other bedrooms were, but like the master bedroom, it had a balcony. I did however notice when peering down from that balcony that just below it, off to the right, was the house’s gas meter attached to the side of the house. I instantly thought about how easy it would be to climb it, giving me access to my room from outside if I ever wanted to sneak out. Plus the room was the furthest one down the hall from my parents who would surely be in the master bedroom, so that was another positive.

  “I think I’m gonna take this one.” I said calling out to my mama who was, I think, a room away.

  She then soon appeared through the doorway telling me, “You know, this used to be my room.” before stretching her arms around me from behind embracing me in a hug.

  “Really?” I asked, looking back at her somewhat astonished. I then tried to imagine her being My age and living in that exact room.

  “Yeah, so don’t you go thinking that I’m not going to notice when you go sneaking out of the house at night via this balcony?”

  Stunned, over the thought that My mama thought she knew me so well, I looked back at her giving her my who me look as if the thought of sneaking out at night would never have crossed my mind.

  “What? You don’t think I never used to sneak out at night when I was your age? Just like you do now.” she then said to me letting me go and walking out on the balcony.

  I have to admit though, up until that moment I had never thought of my mama as being the sort of girl who’d snuck out at night getting herself into trouble. But as they say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and I sneak out all the time. Besides, deep down I guess I’d always known my mama had a bit of a wild side to her. I mean, she did run away from home when she was eighteen and was pregnant with me by the time she was twenty.

  After having settled on which room would be mine, we then went down to the basement to gather up a few things for the house out of the storage pantry that she’d mentioned my Grandma Lyanna had kept down there.

  When my mama had found the light switch, we began our descent down the old, creaky stairs that led us into the dank underbelly of the house. I had noticed straight away that the basement smelled musty and damp like that of a crypt. There was dust thick in the air and cobwebs hung from the rafters. It was the only place in the house that I’d been so far that I didn't find all too pleasant. Every one of the rooms upstairs had smelled of flowers and honeysuckle (Mostly because there was either a plug-in air freshener or a bowl of potpourri in virtually every room.) but the basement was rank, dark, humid, and very dingy, and in certain areas reeked powerfully of mildew and gaseous sulfur like that of a sewer.

  I must have made a face over the odor when we'd reached the bottom of the stairs because my mama looked at me and said, “Yeah, it has always been a little smelly down here. We’ll have to have your step daddy pry open the windows and start airing things out a bit. Maybe that will help, I hope.”

  Soon, I began looking around and I saw that at the far end of the basement there were three rows of storage shelving made from two-by-fours and plywood that contained all kinds of odds-and-ends for the house. My mama had found a little basket that had been left on the floor next to the shelves and dusted it off by blowing on it. It appeared crafted from wicker and looked like the kind you might take on a picnic. She began filling it with items like paper towels and cans of soup, and while she was busy doing that I decided to explore the rest of the basement.

  There was a lot of old, antique furniture stored down there. Most of it looked like it’d been mothballed and covered up long ago with ratty bed sheets that were now thick with dust and cobwebs.

  Near a far corner of the basement a few old-fashioned bicycles leaned up against the wall next to the sump pump.

  “Hey, there are some bikes down here.” I enthusiastically called out to my mama after having seen them. “Maybe we can take a ride out into the village later?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said back to me from somewhere on the other side of the shelves. “There are probably more of them out in the garage too or possibly out in the shed behind the house.” She then popped out from behind the shelves and made a face. “Those are pretty old. I believe they’d belonged to my grandparents if I remember correctly. Anyways... If, we don't find any better bikes upstairs, then I’ll have your step daddy haul these up when he gets back from the store.”

  I then pressed on, looking through the old boxes scattered throughout the basement as my mama continued about her business of picking out more items for the basket.

  As I moved along, peeking under a row of sheeted furniture, I hadn’t noticed it, but off to my right the basement seemed to extend into an alcove just past the boiler and hot water tank. The small room was cleverly sectioned off by a hanging black cloth attached by nails to the wooden floor joist above our heads. I walked over to it, curious to see what mystery lay hidden beyond. Tentatively, I began pulling back the shroud as if there might be something on the other side waiting to grab me. But once I had the cloth pulled far enough to one side so that I could see daylight coming from a window on the opposite end. I was able to see that there wasn't anything there at all that was out to get me and I decided to quit being such a scaredy cat and just pull the cloth fully open.

  What lay beyond was something that I wasn’t prepared to see though. On the floor before me was a pentagram drawn out in what appeared might be white paint. At its points were black candles burned down to just nubs. Inside each of the sections of the pentagram was a symbol that I didn’t recognize for the life of me. But I did recognize a small pile of bones much like that of a rodent or small bird piled in the center of the pentagram. Next to the bones was a large, black feather that lay so that its quill pointed at the pentagram’s northern most point. The whole structure, symbol, or whatever the hell it was, was then completely encircled by a white ring of what looked to me as being salt.

  Suddenly! To my right my mama appeared as she rushed passed me and began ripping down the black cloth from the remaining nails that still held it in place. Hurriedly, she then used the cloth to cover up the pentagram before trying to usher me back up the stairs and out of the basement.

  “W-What was that?” I stammered out as I lumbered slowly up to the top of the stairs, my mama’s hand on my back the entire way guiding and urging me along.

  “It’s nothing,” she said, looking at me with perturbed eyes while continuing to insist that we head back up to the kitchen. Her urgency shown to me by her now less than gentle nudges.

  “No, really, Mama. What is it?” I demanded, as I started to feel a little bitter at her for treating me like a child who couldn’t handle the truth about her grandmother. I thought it was ridiculous, her keeping secrets from me like this. I had a right to know about my grandmother, and about our family’s history in this village, didn’t I?

  “It’s nothing. Really, honey, it isn’t anything.” my mama, then said doing her best to avoid the question as she continued to lead me back to the top of the stairs while I stubbornly fought her the whole way. “It’s just some left over stuff that your grandmother was into that was apparently never cleaned up. I told you about how she w
as a herbalist and a naturalist, and into all kinds of weird ritualistic medicine.”

  “Yeah, right,” I huffed as we finally had made our way to the top of the stairs. My mama staying close behind me so I couldn’t slip past her to go back into the basement.

  That stuff looked like Devil worshiping shit to me. I thought as I’d reached the confines of the kitchen, but I dared not say that to my mama. But, at that moment I had made a mental note to sneak back downstairs the first chance I got so I could really check it out. Maybe even take a few pictures of it so I could try to look it up on the internet. But unfortunately, later on that evening when I had come back from taking a bicycle ride with mama into the village, I had snuck back downstairs to see it again but it was gone. I had suspected that my mama had sent my step daddy to clean it up while we were out.

  After coming up from the basement my mama suggested that we should go grab the rest of our belongings from the trailer in an effort to change the subject. We were in the middle of doing just that when my Step Daddy Cade came rolling back up the driveway in the Truckster. Its breaks squeaking loudly like nails on a chalk board announcing his arrival as the car came to a stop just a few feet from us and the trailer. Its engine continuing to wheeze and clank for a comically long time after my step daddy had turned off the ignition. It had reminded me of one of those pooped out cartoon cars in an old Disney skit.

  “Missed the driveway twice on my way back,” he said to us with a stupid grin on his face as he stuck his head half-way out the window. “Got some chicken for tonight and some corn and they had burgers on sale, so I picked up some of those for tomorrow.”

  “That’s great, honey.” My mama said to him before heading back into the trailer to gather up more stuff. “Cera and I are going to check the garage and shed for some bikes so we can take a ride into the village. If, we don’t find any, can you bring up the ones we saw in the basement?” she asked and as she said all this to him her voice had trailed off the further she went into the trailer.