Harvest Moon

by James A. Moore

  He looked at Melissa, who had no reason whatsoever to know about his fear of walking across the thing. She already had one foot on it and the expression on her pretty face was guileless and expectant. It seemed to say that she knew she could count on him to see this through with her, and it seemed to say that she trusted him.

  “Damn it…” Of course he moved toward her. How could he not go to her and risk everything to see her safely where she was going? He watched her feet—they seemed miniscule in comparison to the flippers he had shoved into his Nikes—and the effortless way she managed to cross over his least favorite nemesis. She made it seem so damned easy.

  He waited until she was all the way across and then stepped out onto the curved surface of the pipe. His heart jittered in his chest and he licked sweat from his lips, feeling the salty sheen of moisture beading across his scalp and face despite the chill in the October air. His knees weren’t shaking all that much, not really. It wasn’t like she could actually see them rattling around in his jeans, and that was what counted here. He had to look cool. The last thing he wanted was Melissa laughing at him, especially if he was going to fall to his death any second now.

  He stepped as carefully as he could, placing one foot meticulously in front of the other and balancing his weight by keeping his arms out. The grit on the pipe, dirt from other kids passing and the droppings from the occasional bird, crunched lightly under his shoes. Melissa looked at him for only a second, and then looked away, her lips moving softly. He wondered if she were praying or wondering why it was taking him so long.

  He stopped caring what was on her mind when his left foot slipped from the pipe and dropped suddenly. Josh heard Melissa let out a little gasp and echoed it himself. An instant later he felt his knee strike the side of the pipe and then his thigh and finally his crotch. He let out a soft grunt and dropped his flashlight, grateful for the little loop at the end that kept it on his wrist. The little loop kept the flashlight secure, even when the light bulb inside it shattered and the glass over the bulb tinkled merrily down into the gulch below. His hands held onto the cold, slick metal and he did his best to squeeze his thighs together around the pipe, despite the fact that his balls felt like they were about to explode. He sat as still as he could, barely breathing, not even answering when Melissa called out to him, until the first few waves of nausea had traveled through his body.

  Trembling from a heady blend of adrenaline, fear, and slowly faltering waves of pain, Josh gripped the pipe and humped himself forward a few inches. He had to force himself to breathe, and though he knew she spoke to him, he couldn’t make out a single word Melissa spoke past the sound of his pulse in his ears. Mostly, he was in pain, but there was also the fear of what he knew lay somewhere beneath him in the darkness. When the experience didn’t kill him, he did it again. Four minutes later Melissa was helping him stand up on the far side of the gulch.

  “Are you okay? You scared the crap out to me!” How she managed to sound worried and angry at the same time was a mystery. Had she not been so cute while she was acting that way, he might have been upset.

  “I don’t want to do that ever again.” His voice was a croak. Josh figured he could be forgiven for sounding a little strange after crushing his family jewels so thoroughly in pursuit of her sister. They spent two more minutes making sure nothing was going to fall out of his body and then they went on.

  Melissa led the way, her flashlight briefly illuminating various trees and patches of dead wisteria. The shadows created by the beam of light seemed almost to move in ways that had nothing to do with their source. Josh felt his skin crawl into bumps and decided the chill he was feeling wasn’t only from the deepening cold.

  “There.” Her voice grew almost shrill with excitement. Before he could even train his own weak light in her direction, Melissa was all but bulldozing through the woods. Her footsteps—usually light and almost silent—rattled through the dead leaves on the ground and swished through the vines that spiderwebbed between the trees and bushes.

  What choice did he have? He went after her, panting hard in an effort to keep up with her as she wound her way down through the thick woods to the Hollow. He only stopped when he ran into her backside; his eyes still intent on the ground, making sure to not trip over his own feet.

  “What?” It bothered him that his voice was squeaking. Puberty was doing that. If he told himself that for long enough, he might even believe it.

  “There’s something down there…in the Hollow.” Her voice was shaking, and he found that oddly comforting. At least he wasn’t the only one scared.

  Josh craned his head around the side of her thick hair and looked over her shoulder. He was painfully aware of how close they were to each other, but felt no sudden, burning desire to move away from her. All he could see was darkness below them, deep and vibrant darkness, between the trees and beyond the dead grass and leaves. He was about to say as much when he heard the noise from below.

  It was a low sound, barely audible, but loud enough that he could feel it in his chest, like a bass note on a stereo that was set at far too high a volume for comfort. The sound carried, rising up from the center of the Witch’s Hollow and the stagnant waters at its heart. “Okay. I don’t like the sound of that.”

  Before he could protest any further, she was moving down into the shallow valley, her comforting presence suddenly gone, and heading for what absolutely had to be trouble. He cursed under his breath and watched her walk for about seven steps before he followed her. His instincts were telling him that this was well beyond stupid, but there was no way he could let her go down there by herself.

  Besides, he thought. If I let her go down alone, I have to go back by myself and she’s got the better flashlight. He tried to smile, to make a joke of it, but part of him was deeply worried about getting lost in the woods. He’d never exactly been into walking through the wilderness around Beldam Woods, and saw no reason to make it a hobby now.

  The beam from her flashlight was like a beacon, and he followed it, even when he couldn’t actually see Melissa anymore. The girl he was walking through the darkness with was swallowed by the woods, hidden by trees and shadows as if she’d been devoured. He tried to catch up and suddenly found himself bouncing down the slope as it deepened.

  He might have made less noise than a flock of panicked geese, but he couldn’t have proved it. Josh let out a squawk and then a grunt as he hit the ground and bounced, rolling out of control, trying desperately to grab hold of something and missing every opportunity. A small part of his mind marveled at the fact that he hadn’t run into any trees on the way down, but most of him was far too busy feeling every rock and twig that tried to pierce his flesh. A branch snapped against the side of his head and he felt a hot flare of pain that left him dazed as he finally rolled to a stop at the bottom of the hill. He clapped his hand to the side of his skull and felt warmth there, wet and thick and stinging.

  Before he could recover enough to do more than sit up a bit, Melissa’s flashlight was in his face and what little vision he had was stolen away by the intense light. “Josh! Are you okay?” Her voice was panicked, and the flashlight jittered crazily in her hand.

  “Ow. No. I think I cut my scalp.”

  He felt her fingers on his face, and then they moved into his hair. He was in pain, yes, but she was a distraction from it; at least until she ran her fingertips over the cut. His breath hissed out between clenched teeth and he pulled back, the sudden flare of pain so unexpected that he almost slapped her hand. “Geez, Melissa! That hurts!”

  “I’m sorry! Oh, God, are you okay?”

  It took him a second, but finally he nodded. “I think I’ll live.” He stood up, the world only threatening to tilt away from him instead of actually doing it. The sound that had caught his attention before abruptly stopped, and with it the few sounds of nature around them ceased as well. The silence was almost total, save for the sounds of the two of them breathing and the soft sigh of the wind.

>   When she spoke again, Melissa’s voice was a nervous whisper. “Where did it go?”

  “The noise?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I dunno. But I don’t like it.” He wasn’t thrilled by the idea of running across whatever had been making the sound, but at least with the deep groaning, he could get an idea of where he didn’t want to go.

  “Me neither.”

  He sighed. “Let’s just look around real quick and get the hell out of here.”

  He could just make out her nodding. Apparently his vision was adjusting again. “But what if we don’t find them? What if we don’t find Heather?”

  “We’ll find her. But maybe she isn’t here. Maybe she went somewhere else.”

  “There’s one other place she said they were gonna go, but I don’t think we could ever find it. Especially not in the dark.”

  “Where?” He looked at her and did his best not to sound as exasperated as he was beginning to feel. Heather was a big girl and could probably take care of herself.

  “Hattie’s house. The place where it was supposed to be before they burned it down.”

  “That’s supposed to be here, in the Hollow, isn’t it?” He frowned, trying to remember the stories Mister Habersham had told them when they were younger.

  “It’s supposed to be near here. But on the hillside, not actually in the Hollow.”

  “Yeah, well, we just came down the hill and I didn’t see a hut or a house or even a teepee.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “So let’s check down in the Hollow and get it done. If we don’t find Heather, we can look around the hill on the other side, too.”

  She nodded her agreement, and even with the darkness of the woods, Josh could feel her disappointment. Apparently she was hoping for a knight in shining armor to find her sister. Josh wanted to be that for her, but there wasn’t really much hope he could manage. He wasn’t quite ready for polishing a breastplate just yet and swords were out of the question. Hell, he wasn’t even shaving yet.

  A moment later they finished their descent into the place of local legend, while Josh pulled a few pieces of dead leaf from his hair and spit out a lump of soil that had managed to worm its way into his mouth.

  All they had to see was the collection of sleeping bags to know that something was wrong. Melissa looked at them and started pacing back and forth, a low moan spilling softly past her trembling lips. He had to try about four times before he could get the nerve up to put his hands on her shoulders.

  She looked at him and blinked her eyes rapidly a dozen times, her face wanting to collapse into a nervous wreck, but she fought against it and eventually won. Melissa had been through some seriously screwed up stuff, what with her dad going nuts and everything. Josh had never been through anything like that, but he guessed if she got through that in one piece, it had to make her pretty tough.

  “You okay?” She nodded and he tried to smile back. “They’re just sleeping bags. They don’t prove anything. It could be hitchhikers.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Her voice sounded as doubtful as he felt about his explanation. It wasn’t likely many wandering travelers would get anywhere near the Hollow. The swampy area was too far away from the beaten path. But any hope was better than none.

  “Let’s look around a bit and see if there’s anything going on.”

  They looked, searching around each of the bags without actually touching them. Josh reached for one and was stopped by Melissa. She shook her head and simply said, “If there’s evidence, we don’t want to disturb it.” That simple statement more than anything else let him know they were coming from two very different worlds. The idea that there might actually be a crime scene, as opposed to an accident or even an animal attack, had never crossed his mind. What they found was damned little of anything, especially in the darkness.

  They poked around at the edges of the water, noticing what few had ever seen clearly before: the faintly glowing fungi on the Victim Trees. They had little trouble seeing the wood mushrooms, because for the first time since the trees had grown in the area, the strange semicircular growths were spreading across the bark. They were hardly bright enough to light the area, but they were damned hard to miss. The mushrooms gave Josh the creeps in a big way. He didn’t know if they were poisonous or not, but figured he’d give them a lot of space anyway.

  After they’d found nothing but the sleeping bags and a few Glad Sandwich Bags and beer bottles, they moved carefully to the far side of the Hollow, where the going was treacherous at best. The ground was marshy, and the heavy vines that covered the pools of stagnant water were practically overrun with thorns big enough to pierce denim if given the chance. Most of the barbs looked about right for nailing two-by-fours together with ease.

  He was about to make a comment to that effect when the flashlight faded into darkness. One second it was doing fine and the next the bulb dimmed and then darkened. There was still a bit of light from the moon above and a faint promise of luminescence from the fungi growing over the Victim Trees, enough for Josh to see the look on Melissa’s face as she shook the flashlight in an effort to get it going again. It wasn’t working.

  “Shit!” Josh had never heard her curse before. It was a little unsettling.

  “You gotta be kidding me. Tell me you’re just playing games.” He’d meant to say something comforting, something to help keep her calm. His mouth and his brain refused to agree on the subject.

  “Yeah, Josh! Just having a good time looking for my sister’s corpse!” Her voice cracked like delicate china and he stumbled closer in the darkness.

  “I’m sorry. I’m just a little freaked out here, okay?” He put his hands on her shoulders again, trying to see her face clearly, but there were clouds moving in, and they did a fine job of hiding the moon and shadowing her features. Melissa nodded, and sighed. “So let’s try to check the other side and then get out of here, okay?”

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen.” He could hear the strain in her voice and thought she sounded like she was about to cry. Naturally, it made him feel like a steaming pile of what the dog left behind.

  “I know. I’m just a little freaked. We’re a couple of days from Halloween and I’m walking through the woods where they killed a witch. Kind of makes me nervous.” He tried to make his voice sound light and carefree, but knew he was failing. The shake in his words tended to ruin the casual approach.

  They moved carefully, placing their feet firmly before shifting forward one step at a time. Still, the going was slow and hazardous. The thorns cut at Josh’s ankles and the vines almost seemed determined to settle in all the right places for twisting their ankles or knocking them both on their asses. Josh fell at least a dozen times, and he heard Melissa cry out a few times as she stumbled, fell, and in one case got a thorn raking up her arm all the way to the elbow for her troubles. It was too dark to see if she was hurt badly, especially against the black of her shirt, but there was wetness when Josh touched her forearm. She didn’t cry out when he pressed, but she took in a harsh hissing breath that spoke volumes.

  Still, she refused to go until they’d checked the side of the Hollow for her sister and Josh couldn’t argue with that. If he had a sibling he guessed he’d want to check, too.

  They were almost all the way to the top edge before they found anything. Melissa stumbled on it, quite literally. The moon was winning its struggle to actually shine through the gathering clouds, giving them a faint edge of light again, when her foot slipped down abruptly and she started to fall. Instinct made Melissa grab for something to retard her descent, and that something was Josh. Her hand caught hold of his shirtsleeve and she almost regained her footing before gravity yanked him toward her. They both fell into the vine-frosted cavernous pit that had long, long ago been the foundation for a cottage in the woods.

  Josh heard his own yelp mingle with Melissa’s as they both fell into the depths of the concealed pit, their descent slowed only by the vines, dried and dead, th
at snapped and parted for them as they dropped, their arms windmilling frantically. Josh fell face first into a thick muck, tasting cold stagnant mud and other more dubious substances as they ran into his mouth and nostrils. He breathed in and immediately began coughing, his mouth almost burning from the rancid tastes and the stench of the filth he found himself half sunk into.

  He hadn’t even had a chance to finish coughing the crap out of his mouth before he felt Melissa pushing her body into his, screaming shrilly in his ear. Her body pressed back against him as she tried to escape whatever sight she was seeing. Josh tried to wipe the muck from his eyes with little success, damn near blinding himself as her weight crammed his palms roughly against the closed lids he was trying to clear.

  “Oww! What? What is it?” Josh blinked rapidly, his eyes tearing and burning from the crap in them, and tried to look around through the pain and the darkness. Melissa didn’t answer, save to scream again, her body weight still pushing against him and now her desperate attempts to be elsewhere were knocking him half into the muck again. He was about ready to start pushing back when her weight suddenly disappeared. Melissa’s scream went, impossible though it seemed, even higher in octave and she was yanked violently away from him.

  He tracked the sounds of her screams, wishing his eyes weren’t so damned messed up. It still felt like someone was pouring hot sand in his eyes and he couldn’t get them to stop tearing. Uncertain of what else he could do, he lunged for the sound of her voice, trying to capture her and pull her back from whatever had her. He felt his fingers graze across her shirt and then slide lower until they’d hooked the edge of her jeans. Warm flesh was pressed against his fingers on one side and tight denim on the other, effectively trapping his hand against her body. He took advantage and pulled with all of his might, his teeth clenched and his body straining.