In the Forest of Light and Dark

by Kasniak, Mark

  “Because she wanted you to find it, that’s why.” Terra said, looking at me, her eyes now soulful and worried. “She’s more than eighty years past due on the lease she’d been granted on her soul by the Devil. She must have figured out a way to keep herself here in this realm. A way of keeping Satan from collecting what is rightfully owed to him. I bet her grave has something to do with that, and that’s why nobody has ever found it.”

  After hearing what Terra had to tell us, I just wanted to go home. I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know what to feel. Everything was surreal. I hated the fact of knowing that from this point on I should always be looking over my shoulder. And not just from the likes of Keri, Hallie, Laurie and their meatheads.

  I think Katelyn had suspected that I suddenly wasn’t doing very well with handling everything I’d just found out about, so she said to Terra, “I think we’re going to take off now, Terra. Maybe, go grab something to eat.” and then we said our goodbyes before leaving the Mount Harrison Historical Society. But not before promising Terra that we’d both be back soon.

  Later that evening, just after dusk was when Katelyn said she should get going, and I felt a little tick of nervousness about her walking home by herself. So I had suggested that she wait until my mama came back home from the hospital, and we’d give her a ride. But Katelyn had shrugged me off saying, “It’s only a few blocks… I’ll be fine.” and then she headed off for home only looking back at me once as she gave me an awkward little smile because I had nervously called out to her, “Call me when you get home so I know you’re safe.” And, with that, I kind of wanted to kick my own ass for being such a worrywart.

  I Think I’m in it Deep

  The next morning was Saturday morning, usually my most favorite time of the week because it meant a big breakfast with my mama and my step daddy. But he wasn’t going to be there of course, so it was just Mama and I.

  I had awoken to the smells of bacon, pancakes, and freshly brewed coffee, which was calling to me like that magical steam from the Looney Tunes cartoons. You know, the one that would turn into a hand and a luring, inching index finger as it rose off a freshly baked pie cooling on a window sill.

  When I had rolled out of bed after the aroma, I had noticed right away that Casper was no longer in his which sat directly at the foot of mine. Figuring he was around the house somewhere and me waking too hungry to look for him. I made my way downstairs to the kitchen where I saw that my mama had just finished taking the last of the pancakes off the stove. I then asked her if she had seen him and she told me she hadn’t, but that I shouldn’t worry too much about him because he was probably just somewhere in the house hiding underneath a piece of furniture. She then insisted that I sit down at the table to eat before the food got cold, saying that after breakfast she’d help me find him.

  As we ate, my mama mentioned to me that the doctors had informed her that Step Daddy Cade would be being released as early as Tuesday or Wednesday of next week if everything goes right. I had told her that was great news and that we should do something nice for him when he comes home. She then asked me what it was I might’ve had in mind and I just shrugged, saying, “I don’t know, maybe we should get him some DVD’s or somethin’ since he’ll probably be stuck in bed or on the couch for the next couple of weeks.” My mama thought about it for a moment, then suggested that we should maybe take a ride out to the Walmart tomorrow and see what they had which he might enjoy.

  At breakfast’s conclusion, I had helped my mama with the dishes, and then we set forth on finding Casper. I had taken the downstairs while my mama searched the upstairs for him. A few minutes later I had heard her calling, “You find him yet?” from somewhere near the top of the stairs, to which I replied back, “No!” and then she followed that up with, “Well, he must be around her somewhere. I hope he didn’t get himself trapped in any of this old furniture.” I had to admit, I hadn’t thought about anything like that ever happening, but he was a real tiny kitten and the possibility of him getting stuck somewhere in all these antiques that we owned was probably more of a likely event than I had imagined. Still, the thought that he might be trapped somewhere just waiting to get squished when somebody sat down filled me with yet another sense of dread I didn’t need.

  After not finding the kitten on the first two floors of the house, my mama said, “Well, I don’t know where else he could be. I guess I’ll go check the basement for-the-heck-of-it even though I don’t know how he could have gotten down there. Why don’t you go look in the backyard?”

  I agreed and had set off on my search of the backyard exiting through the patio door in the kitchen. Once outside, I started searching the area around the deck first, and at the start of my hunt I saw and heard nothing at all as I called out to him while probing all around the potted plants and small shrubs that flanked in between the deck and the yard. But then I heard something a little further away. It was a faint meow, soft and weak, but I knew that I had heard it. I quickly bent down, pushing back the leaves of two large ferns in search of my kitten, but as I did it, a gray colored stray shot out from under the plants scaring me half-to-death.

  The stray had made for the very back of the yard and then the Genesee beyond. As I watched the cat disappear my heart rate slowly returned to normal, and I then headed off towards the back-end of the yard following the stray to where the escarpment began descending towards the river.

  Moving cautiously after my scare, I had made it to just a few yards away from where our shed met at the edge of the property line, that was when I heard yet another faint, little meow. This time it was Casper, though, I was sure of it. I knew his meow anywhere. I began to call out for him, and as I did, he let out another little squeak after hearing the sound of my voice. Quickly, I began searching the tall grasses of the surrounding area with my gaze, trying to home in on where his meows—which were becoming more-and-more frequent as I kept calling for him—where coming from.

  I continued walking along the very edge of our yard where our property met the tall uncut grass of the escarpment, and there I saw him. He was just standing atop the angled top half of a pine that had snapped almost in two just below its midsection, most likely by some very high-powered winds that must have cut through the valley some time ago. As I approached, I said to him with a sense of relief in my voice, “There you are.” and then I began to reach for him when suddenly from out behind the remaining stem and branches of the tree stepped Savannah snatching him up in her hands before I even was able to say, “I’ve been worried sick about you.”

  The sight of her stopped me right dead in my tracks and I felt myself gasp as I stammered out, “Savannah… W-w-what are you doin’ here?”

  “Nothing really,” She replied quite casually as she stroked Casper’s soft white fur. “I had seen that your step daddy had been in that horrible accident last week and I just wanted to see how he and you were doing?”

  Looking at her standing there, she didn’t look at all to me like a nearly three hundred-year-old witch now that I knew who she really was. She just looked like any other typical seventeen-year-old girl, but yet I still found myself scared shitless of her. I tried to play it cool though, saying, “He’s fine… Well, he will be fine. The doctors say he should be coming home soon.”

  “Oh, well, that’s too bad.” Savannah then sighed as she held Casper up to her face with one hand while continuing to pet him atop his little head with the other.

  Having still been somewhat shocked by what she had just said. I replied, “Excuse me?”

  “I said that’s too bad. Next time I’ll have to slam his hick-ass into a much larger tree.”

  I felt myself suddenly tense up, and I was barely able to speak when I asked her, “What are you talkin’ about, Savannah?”

  “Don’t play dumb with me, you little bitch!” she spat, “I know you know who I am now, so I guess my fun is over. And, so soon too. Such a shame.”

  “Savannah, give me my cat.” I said, trying to sound
forceful, but I clearly felt and heard the shakiness in my voice.

  “You want this little guy?” Savannah then asked as she held Casper up close to her face at eye level. “Which one are you?” she then asked the kitten. “I’ve made so many of these damn things over the years I can hardly tell anymore. Now let me see… Ah yes, I know which one you are. You’re that little brat that I gave cancer to. I dragged his sickness out for four years too, just to mess with the family. Nice touch, don’t you think, Cera?”

  “Savannah, please give me my kitten?” I said, pleading with her as I held out my outstretched hand.

  “Don’t call me that! You know who I am.” She scornfully snapped.

  “Okay, Abellona, please give me back my kitten?”

  “See, now that wasn’t so hard, was it? All you had to do was ask.” She said and then she held Casper out to me at the end of her outstretched arm.

  I took a tentative step forward to take him from her, but before I even got to within ten feet of him. She pulled him back close to her while wrapping both of her hands around his head and throat where she then snapped his little neck like a twig. I could hear the sound of his fragile bones shatter as he let out one last screech that immediately fell silent when his body went limp in her hands.

  “Nooo!” I screamed as I watched helplessly as she killed my kitten. And then, at that very moment I felt myself snap. Three hundred-year-old witch or not, this bitch was getting too big for her britches, and when you mess with my family, friends, or my pets your fixing to catch and ass whooping.

  “You didn’t ask me to give him back alive.” Abellona then said gleaming with titillation before letting out a wicked laugh from deep within her that was completely genuine in her delight of what she’d just done.

  “YOU FUCKIN’ BITCH!” I shouted and then went for her. But I had made it only one single step in my rage when suddenly she disappeared right before my eyes, only to unexpectedly reappear directly in front of me with her hand closed tightly around my esophagus. I instantly began struggling for air, but her grip on me just kept getting tighter around my throat like an anaconda.

  “You Barretts never learn, do you?” she sneered at me as I struggled to free myself from her clutch. “You should have just stayed wherever that scared little bitch you call your mother took-off to years ago.”

  I felt myself beginning to black out. The darkness was crashing over me in waves.

  “This mountain belongs to me. This village belongs to me. And all the souls within it belong to me, including yours and your mother’s, Cera.”

  I heard my ears pop under the immense pressure she was inflicting on me with just one hand. My knees, then began to buckle, and I started to collapse.

  But then, when I had managed to glance back up at her and the sky. I realized that it wasn’t my ears popping at all. It was thunder fulminating from a storm that was quickly rolling in from down the sides of Mount Harrison.

  “Enough!” Abellona shouted as she waved her free hand back across the sky, and I watched as the clouds parted themselves and then retreated as the sunlight came pouring back down throughout the valley.

  “Nice parlor trick, Cera. But, you can’t hurt me. I am a thousand times more powerful than you’ll ever be.”

  This is it, I thought. My head was about to explode if I didn’t get air soon. I felt myself losing consciousness rapidly and then I felt light, like I was suddenly falling. But I wasn’t falling, and I hadn’t completely gone unconscious either. I felt Abellona’s grip on me suddenly release and with it I sucked in air as quickly and as deeply as I could as I began to fall backwards. I hit the ground, landing on my backside and quickly looked over my shoulder to see whose hands were on me now. And to my surprise it was my mama who was holding me. She had pulled me back away from Abellona, and we were both now lying in the grass together.

  Abellona stepped forward, reaching for me again, but this time when her outstretched arm crossed over our property line it all of a sudden burst into flames. “Argh!” Abellona agonized as she reeled back. The flames rapidly growing on her arm as she feverishly tried to shake them out. She then twirled and spun around trying to pinch her engulfed arm in between the layers of her gray tunic. After having been smothered, the flames extinguished themselves and Abellona stood back up before me and my mama staring at us revoltingly with one burnt-black blistering arm.

  “I should have known one of the two of you would’ve put a protection spell on this land.” she said seething, and I instantly thought of Katelyn when she had taken the container of salt out of our kitchen and poured it out along our property line.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Janine.” Abellona then snickered to my mama while giving her a sadistic smile, her coal-black eyes seeming to pierce my mama like daggers. “I was just getting a little acquainted here with your daughter. Tell me, Janine… Which one of the two of you is protecting this house? I know it can’t be your mother because I’ve already killed that wretched woman.”

  “You stay away from my family, Abellona.” my mama said, summing up the courage and resolve to confront her as she picked herself up off the ground.

  “It’s funny how much you sound like her. Your mother that is, Janine. You know that was something she actually used to say to me too? You stay away from my family, Abellona. You stay away.” Abellona said in a mocking tone. “Do you want to know how I killed her? It was quite simple really. Lyanna was quite the powerful witch and rather intelligent too. But in the end, it was her sheer arrogance that finally gave me the opportunity to do her in. Do you know what it was that I used to kill her?” Abellona said, asking my mama with a raised eyebrow before letting out that sick, little laugh of hers and then saying, “It was wild cucumber.”

  Wild cucumber, I thought feeling confused, but before I could figure it out, Abellona went on.

  “You see, Janine. After you had left Mount Harrison—unfortunately not for good of course—your mother became sullen, withdrawn. She didn’t have you to protect any longer and as a result she didn’t leave her home much more and soon she even stopped going out into the village altogether. Especially, after I had turned up the heat on her with the villagers. She didn’t want to see these people anymore. She didn’t want to deal anymore with this garbage that she’d been protecting all those years. It depressed her. They depressed her. They had tormented her and you for years, ultimately driving you away from her and your home. They did all this while Lyanna worked relentlessly to protect them from me.”

  As Abellona talked I began to get back up on my feet and started peering around for something I could use as a weapon.

  “Well, after a while, your mother had finally slipped up and started coming into the forest—MY FOREST!—to scavenge for things like, roots, berries, leaves—wild cucumber. At first, I let her go on with what she was doing out of sheer curiosity on my part. I had thought she might have gathered these things for her magic, yet another pathetic attempt to create a spell or a potion that could get rid of me. But after a while… I realized that she wasn’t collecting these things for her witchcraft at all. She was actually gathering food for herself. To think, she had thought that she was going to get away with trying to use my forest, My Mountain, as her own personal grocery store right under my nose. What a fool she was to think that I wouldn’t find out about it. That I wouldn’t make whatever she took as virulent as possible. Even the witch in Snow White had poisoned the apple, you know. Your mother, Lyanna, such a powerful witch, and in the end, done in by such a harmless little vegetable. Quite funny when you think about it?”

  By the time Abellona had finished speaking her arm had completely healed, and my mama stood completely speechless—frozen like a statue. I looked into my mama’s saturated eyes all welled up with unshed tears and I wasn’t sure if they existed because of finding out that Abellona had indeed killed my Grandmother Lyanna, or because she was just in shock and horrified over seeing a three hundred-year-old dead bitch burst into flames before her. Bu
t I imagined it was probably a little of both, I guess.

  When I looked back at Abellona, she was gone, having suddenly disappeared. Casper still lay dead on the sloping hillside not far from the broken pine that I had found him standing on earlier. I went for him and my mama no longer tight-lipped grabbed me by the arm, saying, “Cera, No! Leave him be. Stay in the yard.” I then pulled away, telling her that I wasn’t going to just leave him there. She then said that Abellona may have put some of her witchcraft on him, insisting that I don’t touch him. I then acceded to her wishes only because I was in no mood to be fighting with my mama, not at that time anyway.

  We then hurried back into the house where she sat me down at the kitchen table pouring me a glass of sweet tea—she then told me everything. Not only about Mount Harrison and Abellona Abbott which was almost verbatim of what Terra had told Katelyn and me just yesterday, but she also told me all about my Grandmother Lyanna’s life as a witch and protector of the village. Then, she told me the truth about her childhood growing up in the village.

  We had spent the better part of two hours talking as my mama filled me in on all of our family’s secrets. As well as all the accidents and illnesses that had befallen the villagers, including members of our own family, even herself as a child. She recalled cases of scarlet fever, mumps, measles, and rubella to have hit the village, killing scores. She even told me that there was once a bout with Ecoli that had swept through the school killing seven students back in the early 1990’s when she was still a student there. Then, she told me about how she was relentlessly teased and attacked by her classmates whenever the teacher’s back been turned, and even sometimes when their backs weren’t turned. She told me about how every pet she’d ever owned had either got sick and died, or been run over by a car, or was found mysteriously mutilated out in the forest. (I can vouch for how she must have felt on two out of three of those.) She even told me in detail about how each one of her family dogs Trixie, Dolly, and Lucky had died violently. (Lucky, you would’ve thought that after her first two dogs had died in such horrible deaths, she would’ve been a little smarter to name the third one that.)