The evening delivered many sensations to the woods that were not readily apparent by the light of day. The mirthful tune of the nesting birds had been replaced by a more menacing sounds of insects, and the scattered pools of sunlight that angled through the treetops to illuminate narrow pathways, had now dissolved under the density of shadows. Each sound, no matter how subtle, seemed amplified in the darkness. Perhaps it was just the mere croak of a bullfrog or maybe a nocturnal creature scavenging the forest’s underbrush for sweet berries or bugs. No matter what the source, the human eye was not meant to penetrate the interior woodlands after dark. Most animals that lived and preyed in such regions were far better equipped to navigate the surroundings. But men rarely failed to test their limitations.
Two such examples were Sheriff Ackerman and Deputy Briggs. Neither of them could’ve claimed to possess previous knowledge of The Bogs terrain by way of darkness. They knew virtually nothing that would’ve prepared them for a blind search in Murden’s peach grove. It was certain that their motivations were fueled by the adrenaline that so often accompanies fear. They progressed through the underbrush like shivering rabbits trying to ward off the assault of a predator. Every three feet or so, they’d squat down into the thicket and shine their flashlights at the trail in front and in back of their position. Upon first entering the woods, it took them nearly an hour to locate the peach grove.
Ackerman hoped that the night would offer a brief reprieve from the humidity, but the temperature was still near eighty and the air felt as saturated as an over-soaked sponge. The sheriff soon discovered that he was perspiring to the point where the bug spray slid off his skin before having a chance to form a barrier. As a result, the mosquitoes feasted freely on every portion of his exposed flesh.
Briggs had more success with the bug repellant, but this did little to make his utter confusion any less tolerable. It was obvious to the lawmen that their time in the woods would be severely limited. They forged into the peach grove with this notion in mind, splattering frenzied bugs against their bodies at will. But immediately upon entering the grove, Ackerman sensed the insects scattering back into the denser environs. It was as though something other than the repellant had forced them away. Neither men attempted to explain the circumstances in words, but it carried into thoughts as they moved forward between the trees.
With his gun drawn and flashlight flickering on the peach trees’ branches, Briggs surveyed the decayed region with a sense of disgust and astonishment. “This ain’t right,” he murmured to the sheriff, while shining the flashlight’s beam along the rotting trunks of several trees. He kicked the tree closest to him, causing the dried bark to peal away like a crusty shell.
“I’ve always heard that these trees are all dead,” Briggs went on, “but I never thought it’d be quite this bad.”
Ackerman, who was sporting a rifle with a floodlight attached to the scope, moved cautiously across the ground. The withered tree limbs dangled in front of his eyes as he walked.
“It’s downright amazing that these trees are still standing,” Ackerman mused. “These roots must be rotted to the surface by now.” The sheriff leaned his upper body against one tree and attempted to topple it by shoving his shoulder into its trunk. Though he pushed with over three hundred pounds behind him, the tree did not budge one perceivable inch.
“Must be stronger roots than you first thought,” Briggs said, rather dull-wittedly.
Aside from the absence of insects within the grove’s borders, there was no other audible sound outside of the officers’ footsteps. Even to a novice woodsman, these conditions seemed atypical. Surely one noise or another would’ve disrupted the silence eventually, but that never occurred.
“It all defies nature,” Ackerman whispered, somewhat tentatively. He then commanded Briggs to stay close to his side; they decided to inspect the grove’s interior in tandem.
After a few minutes of searching, Briggs’s flashlight shone upon an object on the ground near a single peach tree.
“Hold on,” Briggs called out, motioning to the red and white material spread out on the barren soil. Briggs veered off in the direction of where he centered the flashlight’s beam. His voice heightened with a nervous enthusiasm when he spoke again, “Sheriff, I think I found something over here.”
Ackerman retrained his eyes on Briggs’s discovery. He shone his light down on what appeared to be a blanket. This material had been neatly unfolded on the soil without a distinguishable wrinkle set into its surface.
“Looks like those kids might’ve forgot something,” Ackerman surmised as he crouched to the ground to inspect the fabric at closer range. No visible stain, blood or otherwise, could be perceived on the blanket’s surface.
“Well, it proves that they were here,” Briggs thought, somewhat dispassionately.
Even to a simpleton like Ackerman, the blanket seemed too obvious a clue to be considered seriously. Had there truly been an abduction or confrontation of some kind, the crime scene would’ve surely shown signs of a struggle. In the sheriff’s mind, the scene appeared staged.
Ackerman stood to his feet before murmuring, “This is too suspicious. That old man is trying to set us up.”
“He’s playing with us like toys,” Briggs grimaced.
“Maybe,” Ackerman huffed, “but none of this makes sense. Why would Murden leave a piece of evidence in his peach grove for us to find? He must’ve known that we were gonna search here.”
Before Briggs had time to process this information, a soft rustling noise sounded in the nearby thicket. Both officers nervously shone the beams of their flashlights toward the disturbance. The reflected light revealed two oval-shaped orbs peering through the trees. Briggs screamed and pointed his revolver at the amber-colored objects.
Ackerman calmly asked the deputy to remove his finger from the gun’s trigger.
“It’s okay,” the sheriff indicated, pointing to a distant tree limb outside of the peach grove. “It’s just an owl.” He sensed that Briggs was close to firing a shot.
“I don’t like the feel of this place, Sheriff.”
“We’ve got to stay in control of this situation,” Ackerman reminded the deputy. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Briggs expelled a breath that seemed to momentarily drain the tension from his face. His eyes still focused on the trees as he noticed another uncanny light streaming between the branches. Unlike the previous disturbance, the source of this illumination was not immediately identifiable. It was a translucent energy that originated from the appearance of an equally mysterious mist.
The deputy motioned to Ackerman with the strobe of his flashlight and whispered, “Do you see that, Sheriff?”
Ackerman’s eyes followed the gliding fog as it formed at knee level about twenty paces from their position. This time the sheriff forwarded no reasonable explanation in regard to this presence. When he tried to make sense of the mist’s origins, the colors shifted from green to blue and then to a putrid shade of yellow.
“It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before,” Ackerman stated.
After another minute, the officers realized that the fog had expanded around the peach grove’s entire perimeter. What first struck them as an odd phenomenon in nature suddenly instigated a mode of panic, especially for Briggs. He had already concluded that Murden had set a trap for them.
“He’s done something to these woods!” Briggs snarled as he raised his gun. “I’m not gonna let him get away again.”
“Stay calm,” Ackerman advised. “We don’t exactly know what we’re dealing with yet.”
As far as Briggs was concerned, the moment to demonstrate a level of serenity had already expired. Rather than maintain his position in the center of the grove, he opted to sprint forward toward the embankment where the energy first materialized.
“Briggs!” Ackerman admonished. “Get back here. We have to stay together!” Despite the sheriff’s warning, Briggs could no longer contain the fury and fear swelling within h
im. He ran without any true sense of direction, flailing his arms wildly into the air. Ackerman did his best to keep pace with Briggs, but the leaner man dashed between the trees like a startled deer. Within seconds, the deputy was out of range of Ackerman’s line of sight.
Somewhere near the thickening mist, Briggs took aim with his firearm. Though he couldn’t distinguish anything that warranted a shot from his gun, Briggs squeezed the pistol’s trigger three consecutive times. The bullets sliced through the surrounding tree branches, but connected with nothing of noticeable consequence.
A feeling of fatigue suddenly caused Briggs to slow his progress. He paused for a second to evaluate his next move. During this time, the mist had coiled around his legs and consumed him nearly to waist level in an opaque light. The mist’s color was more consistent now; it appeared bluish-gray on all sides of the deputy. Even with the aid of his flashlight, Briggs couldn’t detect the lower portion of his body.
Up until this point, terror had not forged its way into Briggs’s subconscious, partly because he believed that he had the physical advantage over anything Murden might’ve devised. He hoped the old man would reveal himself in these woods tonight. In his mind, such an appearance would’ve justified the deed of ridding the town of Murden’s presence forever. But as Briggs soon discovered, it was what he couldn’t see that presented itself as the real danger.
When Briggs regained the stamina necessary to continue his pursuit, he attempted to walk closer to the embankment in order to examine the trees just beyond the peach grove. But as he raised his foot to take a step, he realized that both of his ankles were somehow affixed to the soil. Adding to the deputy’s bemusement, he couldn’t shift his legs in any direction. It was as though his boots had been immersed in a quick-drying cement. He was certain that something had a stranglehold on him, but his eyes couldn’t penetrate the swirling fog. After several seconds of thrashing proved to be an exercise in futility, Briggs began to scream for the sheriff’s help.
The decibel of Briggs’s holler prompted Ackerman to run more swiftly than he ever remembered doing, but it still took him several moments to locate the deputy. Briggs had dropped his weapon and flashlight by now, rendering them lost beneath the mist. His tone had become audibly altered by fear when he the sheriff finally reached him.
“I can’t move my legs,” Briggs cried in near agony. “Something has got me!”
Ackerman inched closer to the deputy. He concentrated the strobe from his light on the mist around Briggs’s legs, but he failed to discern the source of the deputy’s immobility. He watched Briggs tugging at his own thighs in an effort to dislodge his feet, but his actions became increasingly desperate.
“Keep still,” Ackerman instructed, while kneeling to the soil near Briggs’s position. Though he couldn’t see, the sheriff used his hands to find the deputy’s legs. He then slid his fingers down the length of Briggs’s pants, hoping to feel the obstruction.
“What the hell is happening?” Briggs screeched as though an acute pain had invaded his body.
Ackerman didn’t reply. He dragged his fingers over Briggs’s feet and realized that his boots were knotted in a bed of shallow tree roots. Somehow the deputy had become tangled in the cords of wood and this proved to be a sturdy enough manacle to withstand both of the men’s efforts of dislodgement.
“For God’s sake, sheriff. I can’t feel my legs—get me out of here!”
Before Ackerman could assess the seriousness of the predicament, Briggs released a blood-curdling scream that seemed to be wrenched from the depths of his soul.
“Oh, God, it’s sucking me under!” Briggs roared, his eyes flashing with excruciating pain. “Help me—please!”
Ackerman sensed the roots thickening around the deputy’s boots, and now it appeared as though they had fastened onto Briggs’s legs with ten times the grip of a constrictor. The branches slithered up to Briggs’s knees and tightened to a degree where no space existed between the rough bark and skin. Briggs’s body buckled with agony as the roots gnawed through his clothing and embedded into his flesh. The sheriff felt the deputy’s warm blood spilling over his fingertips as the cried for mercy became more torturous and constant.
“Help me—it’s killing me!”
The sheriff jumped to his feet and quickly took hold of Briggs’s upper body. By now the deputy shivered convulsively and could no longer stand erect. It was as if he was ensnared in the grinding gears of a piece of machinery.
“Make it stop, Sheriff! Please make it stop!”
“Hold on, Briggs! I’m gonna get you out of here!” The sheriff may have tried to sound confident, but the doubt in his tone intensified as he sensed the deputy’s body being slowly yet methodically consumed by the earth.
Briggs no longer possessed the energy to express the agony tearing through his limbs. With each second, the deputy’s body sank deeper into the soil. Ackerman felt him slipping between his grasp and heard the bones cracking under the escalating pressure. Briggs was no longer conscious as gobs of blood percolated from his mouth and nostrils. Finally, when Ackerman could no longer hold the deputy in his grasp, he released his grip and watched Briggs crumble into the mist as if literally melting in a pit of acid.
The sheriff couldn’t utter a word to articulate his level of confusion, for he wasn’t entirely certain of what had just occurred. The blood smothering his clothing, however, reaffirmed the fact that Briggs had suffered a miserable death. Ackerman now stood alone to confront the terror at large. But where was this terror? Was it spawned from the colored mist? Did it meander invisibly through the trees?
Ackerman shifted from his current position and scrambled in the opposite direction from where Briggs met his fate. But he was no longer sure where to step. The fog now encompassed the entire peach grove. He drew his rifle up against his body with his finger latched onto the trigger. Instinct and nothing else compelled the sheriff to lumber forward.
After running for several minutes, Ackerman realized that he was actually wandering in circles. How was this possible? The peach grove wasn’t more than a hundred yards in width or length, yet there seemed to be no conceivable end to the maze of trees. The sheriff presumed that the mist had altered his sense of perception, making it nearly impossible to navigate the terrain.
Rather than squander what remained of his strength, Ackerman opted to halt his progress and encounter the unseen foe on his own terms. Before this moment, only the indefinable mist blanketed the grove, but a new shape emerged behind the splintered branches of one peach tree. The image ascended from the ground just as suddenly as Briggs had disappeared beneath it. Like the fog itself, the shape was surrounded by an aura of emerald light.
The sheriff rubbed at his eyes as if he was blinded by the entity. Whatever had formed in the mist was real. A vague outline of a female child now hovered before Ackerman. The skin covering the child’s flesh was pale as moonlight, and her eyes glowed like candle flames in the dark.
“What the hell are you?” Ackerman screeched. He then pointed the rifle directly at the image. At first the unknown presence made no advance toward the sheriff. Ackerman peered at it until he discerned the features of a little girl. He shivered with the weapon in hand, trying to prevent himself from squeezing the rifle’s trigger. But his anxiety had already dictated his cause for action. Without further consideration, he fired two shots from the rifle’s double barrel in the hovering image’s direction.
When the smoke cleared from his rifle, the sheriff’s eyes circled with sheer dread. The shots appeared to connect with the target, but the result produced no visible damage. The image maintained its form among the mist-shrouded peach trees.
Two more shots from the sheriff’s rifle fractured the silence—Bang—Bang, but the outcome was the same as before.
“Why won’t you die?” Ackerman bellowed. He pulled the trigger a third time, but the chamber clicked empty. In a fit, he threw down his weapon and surveyed the scene for an escape. He decided to retreat,
but he soon discovered that both of his legs were entangled beneath the mist.
“Whatever you are,” Ackerman snorted with defiance, “come and get me. I’m ready for you.”
The image offered no direct reply to the sheriff’s challenge. But Ackerman soon heard a melody surging within his brain. He couldn’t determine from where the first sounds of the song emerged, but the voice was undeniably that of a child. Though he tried to block the song from his mind, the words became too impossible to ignore.
“Have you heard my whispers within the grove?
Look beneath the peach tree where nothing grows
To find a child who died in pain,
While a mother’s tears fell in vain.”
These same words repeated several times in the harmony of a child’s voice. Soon the song faded and the sweet whispery chant was replaced by the agonizing screams of a man being crushed and swallowed by the earth. After Ackerman was gone, the mist evaporated as if it had never been a part of this night. With the fog now dissipated and the soil satiated by its offerings, the child’s image gradually faded and all grew calm again. No mortal remnant of either man would ever be found.
Ben Murden sat silently on a cot inside his home. From his vantage point, he watched the crescent moon shining upon the woods. A thin line of silver clouds shrouded the moonlight. Murden listened to the crickets that only moments before had been quieted by the evening’s unrest. Despite the old man’s ailing health, he breathed easier at this hour. A feeling close to tranquility overwhelmed his senses. Now was the time to sleep, for he hadn’t experienced such a degree of serenity in more years than he could recall.
Sleep would bring him some comfort and perhaps give him enough strength to endure another day. Undoubtedly, each sunrise brought him closer to his end, but strangely, the conclusion of his days marked the beginning of another rebirth, and this he welcomed like no other gift known to the natural world.
Chapter 17
Songs of a Peach Tree Page 17