Abe knelt in that soft earth. The pendant brushed his skin beneath his shirt, and he reached up to grip it instinctively. He read the inscription on the gravestone, counted the years of his father's life, and tried to associate his memories with the rectangular plot of ground and the weatherworn stone. He thought of the cracks and crevasses that had been his father's smile, the lines of laughter at the corner of those deep, perceptive eyes. The stone had cracks of its own, but they were not laugh lines, and they did not originate from his father. If there were peace to be had between them, it wasn't waiting buried in this earth, surrounded by clinging vines and eroding slowly back to dust.
Abraham rose and turned, exiting the graveyard without looking back. He returned to the path, followed it past the gates of the graveyard, and into the woods, where it turned back up the mountain. The overgrowth was less forgiving on the upper path. Either someone had been clearing the churchyard occasionally, or something wanted to swallow all remnant of this second trail and cut the stone church off from the mountain's peak cleanly. It was rough going, almost harder than walking through the trees to either side would have been, and the moment he crossed the threshold into the forest the world shifted again.
The disjointed, otherworldly sensation returned. His surroundings took on an ethereal, almost surreal quality, as if he'd left one world behind and entered another, darker place.
Roots snaked across the dirt trail and snatched at Abe's boots. Vines and whip-thin branches lashed his arms, and his face, no matter how carefully he made his way past them. Within a few minutes he was breathing harder and coated in a bright sheen of sweat from the effort. He couldn't shake the sensation of resistance. Something didn't want him in the woods. He was just about to turn back and return to the church in search of a hoe and an axe when he caught sight of his goal through a break in the trees.
He stopped short and stared. He gasped, and then cursed himself for the lack of control, but until that second he had been certain he'd find nothing but a pile of rubble. Instead, he saw the edge of a second stone roof through the waving branches.
The clearing wasn't more than a dozen yards away, but it might have been miles. The path disappeared into a snarl of greenery and hedges. Abraham started forward, but the hedges were thorny. They snatched at his clothing and cut his hands wherever he gripped them. He had rolled the sleeves of his flannel shirt up before climbing up to the old church. Now he rolled them back down and pulled his hands inside for what protection they could give. Carefully, one step at time, he pressed through. Within moments, he was swallowed, front and back, in the clinging, stabbing branches, every motion tearing clothing or skin.
As he worked his way through the foliage, he could make out the walls beneath the stone roof. They were green with moss, but sound. The wall facing him had a single window in its center. He couldn't tell if the glass was intact or not, but every inch of that building that came into view drew him onward more powerfully.
Blood streamed down his wrists and soaked his shirt. His legs screamed with the pain of deep gouging cuts, but he couldn't stop. He pressed into the vines, and they wrapped him and clutched him, caressed him and cut him. His throat had grown very dry, and he had the sudden sensation that if he looked back over his shoulder, he would see nothing but green. No path, no trees, only more vines, and more thorns.
Sound rose around him. He thought it was the wind, or that he'd walked into another storm unaware, but sunlight poured down through the gaps in the trees above and the heat soaked moisture from him like a great solar sponge. There was no direction to the sound—it pressed in from all sides. As the vines and thorns tore at him and threatened to hold him immobile and bleeding the distant hint of laughter teased at his senses. There were words, as well, and a behind it all an insistent hiss.
Abraham was lightheaded with the heat. He stared up into the sun for a moment, then, as if slowly becoming aware of the glare and the pain in his eyes, he turned back toward the clearing. The static, hissing sound grew louder. He brought his hands to his ears, tearing new stripes of blood and flesh with the motion. The sound was muted, and then gone, and he closed his eyes.
Less than six feet of hedge prevented him from entering the clearing. He knew this, but it did nothing to still the hammering of his heart, or to quiet the thoughts slamming through his mind. That sound. What was it? His mind conjured demons, and whirling clouds of insects that rose to blind him and drive him back from his goal. He was aware of the insanity inherent in these thoughts, and he fought it as he fought the rising panic.
His arms were above the worst of the hedge now—they'd torn free when he raised them to block the sound, but his legs were snarled, and he knew that if he moved too quickly, or lurched forward, that he would fall face first into the thorns.
Abraham opened his eyes. He breathed slowly and pulled his hands away from his ears. The hissing returned, but there was something familiar in the sound now. He concentrated, trying to keep the blood pounding through his temple from crushing his thoughts before they took form. Something was wrong—something very real and very imminent, but he couldn't put his mental finger on it.
He studied the trees, and then lowered his chin and swept his gaze across the briars, vines, and hedges, wondering how they had come to be there—who had planted them. Surely they couldn't have randomly grown to block the path. And why had he plunged into them so eagerly? He tried to make out his ankles through the murky shadows in the undergrowth, and in that instant, he knew. If anything, he froze more completely than he had been before.
Not a foot from his ankle, wavering in the air like a dark-skinned metronome, was a rattlesnake. The serpent's head wove back and forth with an eerie fluidity, tongue flickering red and wet between its gleaming fangs. It was not advancing, but Abe knew that if he moved quickly—maybe if he moved at all—it would strike.
He didn't know if he could back away without tripping. His legs were hopelessly bound up in the vines and the lower branches of the hedge. Thorns dug into his flesh and promised new cuts regardless of what he did. His flannel shirt was damp with sweat and fresh blood. His arms, still held above the level of the thorns, ached with the effort. His gaze locked with that of the snake, and he almost swayed in time—would have done so had it been possible in the forest's primordial grip.
Something—someone?—moved in the periphery of his vision. Abe didn't look up. He didn't call out. He focused on the snake. He was a tree—a stone—a part of the mountain. His shoulders screamed with exertion and his arms trembled, but they didn't fall.
Something moved in the periphery of his vision. A branch broke with a snap. Sweat poured down his face and burned the corners of his eyes. The sun burned down on him and the lightheadedness was returning, full force. Another branch snapped.
Abe stared at the snake. It had grown very still, hovering between the idea of striking, and the sound approaching from the direction of the clearing. Abraham didn't breathe, but his lips moved. He brought the words up from deep inside, half-formed prayers—his father's words, lost and forgotten, just as the man had been; just as the stone church on the mountain had become. There was a sharp intake of breath from the clearing, and Abe could stand it no longer.
Abe turned his head, very slowly, and peered through the trees, scanning quickly for any sign of someone who might help. He wanted to call out, but was afraid the sudden sound would startle the snake.
There was nothing there. No one moved. For just a moment, he caught sight of a set of branches that looked wrong. Then he focused, fighting the urge to close his burning eyes and squeeze the sweat out at the corners. They were not branches. They were antlers, half-lost in shadow. They were there, and then they turned and slipped back into the forest.
Abe snapped his gaze back to where the snake had been only seconds before. It was gone. He glanced to either side, trembling with the effort of keeping his arms up and free of the brambles. Nothing. He forced his chin lower, checking the ground at his feet. It was
n't possible to tell for certain—the brush was very think, and he'd managed to tangle himself almost completely, but he didn't see the snake. There was no sound.
Abe let out a slow breath that he hadn't been aware he was holding. Sweat streamed down his face, but he had nothing to wipe it away with. He lowered his hands and winced as they dropped back into the thorny hedge. He moved his right foot tentatively and found it was reasonably loose. The same was true of his left, and the vines that wrapped about him were suddenly just that. They were soft, pliant, and while a chore to press aside, no real barrier to his forward progress.
He didn't allow himself the luxury of thought. If he did, he knew he would panic. The snake might not be poised to bite his ankle, but that didn't mean it hadn't moved a few feet away to wait and see if its prey were really alive. He gripped a vine in each hand, yanked them to either side and plunged forward. He made slow, steady progress, looking neither to the right, nor the left, and listening carefully for any sound of the rattlesnake.
Moments later he burst from the tree line into the clearing and stood, alone and panting for breath, streaming sweat and blood and near hysteria, before a low-slung stone cottage. It was even smaller than his mother's place, the walls built of layer upon layer of stone. The mortar that held them in place formed of silt and sand and clay from the mountain's crust. The window, he saw, had indeed held up against the onslaught of wind and time.
Abe stumbled forward and rested a hand on the wall for support. He saw that he had left the print of his blood on the stone, and a thrill ran up his arm, lodging in his throat and constricting his breath for just a moment. His father had helped to build this, as he had built the walk around the church. Others had come before, his grandfather, and before him a different family altogether, but just as old. All of their blood had soaked the stone at some point, joined in its permanence and strength. The thought sprung full-blown into his mind, and he stood very still and studied the vision.
The sun was high in the sky, and the clearing was awash in the brilliance of its light. The grass and weeds had not encroached too closely on the foundation—or someone had cleared them. Abraham stood slowly and turned. He walked along the wall and trailed a finger across the stone as he went. His mind was years away, and though he heard voices again, they were not those of snakes, or the whisper of antlers through the trees. He heard his father, and he heard himself, and the tears came again unbidden. He passed around the corner of the cottage and out of sight.
Then, as he rounded the rear of the building and glanced into the trees, Abraham screamed.
TWELVE
The scream echoed down the mountain. Abraham backed so suddenly into the wall of the cottage that he cracked his head. His boots ground into the soft soil as he tried to drive himself through the stone.
His mother hung suspended before him. She was crucified. Her head lolled onto her left shoulder. Her arms were flung out on both sides, wound round and round with damp, clinging vines. Her eyes swarmed with insects, and her hair was so bedraggled and frayed that it shifted about in the grip of the breeze like a nimbus of dandelion seeds that were ready to let go and blow away.
Her clothing hung in tatters, and her legs, bound similarly to her arms, were held tightly together at the ankles and knees by thicker vines. There didn't seem to be anything but the vines supporting her, but she hung as motionless as if she'd been nailed to a cross.
Abraham shook his head, felt his hair grind against the stone wall behind him and pushed off slightly. He gulped in huge breaths of air and fought to steady his knees so they could continue to support his weight. The other choices were to black out, possibly crack his skull on the cottage wall, or come too close to the woods. He remembered the thorny hedges that had blocked his progress, and he remembered the snake. He had the feeling he didn't want to be in among those snake-like vines and thick shrubs without his full wits about him.
"Jesus," he breathed. He walked toward his mother. His steps were slow, unsteady, and weak, but he forced one foot in front of the other, and he never shifted his gaze from her face. There was no expression he could read, no emotion stamped onto her final visage. He stepped closer and studied her. He traced the lines the years had etched into her face, mentally smoothing the ravages of death. He tried to imagine the sparkling, deep-set eyes and quick smile he remembered so clearly, but the images would not reconcile with the husk hanging limp before him.
Tears burned the corners of his eyes, but he didn't look away. Abe pulled out his pocketknife, a blade his father had given him at age ten, and that he still carried. It was sharp and well cared for. The blade opened easily to a flick of his thumb.
He cut the vines from her legs first. They weren't wrapped as tightly as they'd seemed to be. Once he'd stripped them away her legs dangled, and she swayed slightly. Abe reached for the vines wrapped about her left arm.
With a sodden, rotten sound, she fell. The vines retracted. It was the only word that worked when he tried to sort them out in his mind. He stared at them with his arm raised, the knife poised to slash, but there was nothing left to cut. Where strong, green strands had held his mother in place, limp green tendrils dangled in the air. He reached out, grabbed one of them and pulled on it. The strand broke off in his hand, and he frowned. It wasn't possible they had supported his mother's weight. Not one or two of them, probably not ten, but he'd seen it.
He reached out again, but the vine shifted. It was only a slight motion to one side, but it stopped him cold. There was a rustle in the weeds, and, again, he remembered the snake. Abe glanced down at his mother's body, and his tears flowed freely. He bent at the knees and squatted, grabbed her arms by the wrists, and spun her. Marveling at how little she weighed, he dragged her toward the wall of the old cottage, then along the wall. He laid her out carefully just beyond the doorway, careful not to lay her too near to the woods.
His mind raced. He knew he should rush back down the mountain and find a sheriff. There was no real law on the mountain, but they had a sheriff up in Friendly, and there was a State Trooper's shack out on the coast road. He could call from Greene's store, tell them what happened and where he'd found his mother.
Then he thought about explaining the church, and the note he'd received. He thought about telling the story of how he'd had these dreams, and then a note had come from his mother, so he'd packed up a few possessions and left his life and lover behind to come back to a place he hadn't visited in years because he had a bad feeling. They would ask only a few questions, and the conversation would end badly.
"Where were you the night of your mother's death?"
"Why were you alone on the mountain?"
"What were you doing, and why?"
"Why did you come all the way back to the mountain to kill your own mother?"
Questions without answers. They all knew what they wanted to hear, and they would all get back to their beer and reality television quicker if he confessed. Telling the truth would not be easy in a situation like that, and almost certainly would not prove successful.
He could go down to his family on the mountain—his father's family. He could gather some of those who'd attended services when his father was alive, if any such still lived on the mountain, and he could put together a burial party. They had no minister, and after the fiasco at Jonathan Carlson's burial it wasn't likely they'd send to Friendly, or anywhere else, to get one.
Abraham turned to the cottage and walked along the walls again. Around one side was a smaller structure, tucked into the shade of two tall pines. Abraham walked to the small building. The hinges were rusted, and they screamed in protest, but with an effort he managed to get the old door to swing outward. The interior was shadowed, and he heard something scurry deeper into the interior. He waited for his eyes to grow accustomed to the gloom, and for the dust to settle, and then he stepped inside.
He saw the shadows of implements lining the walls. Rakes and hoes, a pickaxe and several saws lined the wall. He knew most of them
would be rusted and corroded from disuse and lack of care. There was time to deal with all of it later.
A spade and a shovel leaned against the wall by an old, decrepit wheelbarrow. Abe saw that the solid rubber tire had finally suffered enough dry rot to cripple it. A large chunk was missing from one side, and the rest was flaked and crumbling. He flashed on the stone walk at the church below. He felt the handles in the old wheelbarrow dragging left, then right as he pushed across rough earth. He heard his father's softly spoken instructions and encouragement as clearly as if he'd stood in that past moment, and the tears he'd finally managed to bring back under control slid wet and hot down his cheeks.
He took the spade and the shovel out the door and searched the yard surrounding the cottage. He didn't want to come too close to the building, nor did he want his mother's final resting place too close to the trees. He had the sensation of something waiting, just out of his sight, writhing vines and clawing roots. The sun was well along its path to the west, and Abraham doubted that the clearing yard would provide much protection against the encroaching darkness.
He chose a spot to the right of the two large pines by the shed. It was just to the left of what was, once again, the entrance to the path down to the church below. Abraham glanced down that half-cleared expanse, and then averted his gaze. There was no sign of the thick hedges. There were shrubs and vines slipping free of the heavier growth to either side that sent feelers across the trail, but for as far as he'd seen in that quick glance, the path was relatively clear. Impossible, but right in front of his face.
Abraham dug as quickly and carefully as he could. He shaped the grave in a rectangle about five feet long. He knew he'd never reach six feet through the rocky soil with only the spade and shovel, but he worked steadily, placing the dirt in mounds to either side, and after about an hour he had to step down into the grave itself to go deeper. He stopped at a little over three feet and clambered back out of the grave.
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