GARDENS OF NIGHT

by Greg F. Gifune

  As Marc hurries through the cold woods, he remembers one morning when the meds had been handed out. Archie had studied the pills in his little paper cup like he always did, and then just before popping them smiled hopelessly at Marc and threw them back. “Chemical Apocalypse,” he whispered. “That’s all it is, see? All those pills and powders and shots and liquids on every TV channel, every magazine page, every billboard, in every medicine chest in every home, lining the cabinets of every hospital, that’s how they’re doing it. No tanks rolling down the streets, no martial law or prison camps, no alien invasions in metal ships. Just a chemical apocalypse, my friend, that’s what it is. It’s already started, see? They’re going to take it all from us while we’re medicated, fat, lazy, smug and ignorant. And you know why they’ll get away with it? Because we’ll give it to them, see? We think we’re smart, above it all, too informed and clever to worry about such nonsense. Think again. The world’s going to sleep. And that’s when they get inside our heads and steal it all before we even know it’s gone. Just like in here, who knows what they do to us while we’re asleep? We’re the fallen, see? It’s all a test, an experiment gone wrong.”

  Even now – perhaps especially now – Marc can’t help but wonder if the crazy bastard was right. After all, here he is lost in the woods and already the whispering has begun, the hushed voices reminding him that if he’d just get back to the chalet and take a pill or two, everything would be so much better. He’d be calm and relaxed, and while all that confusion might not completely go away, at least he’d no longer be quite so concerned about it. Don’t you want to be at peace? Don’t you want your mind to quiet down and stop fighting you so?

  “Our minds are often tempests,” Doctor Berry once told him. “And liars.”

  Focus, he tells himself. Focus on the here and now, on what’s right in front of you. But the harder Marc concentrates on his surroundings the more the forest looks the same. It becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish where he is and where he’s been, or hasn’t been. The maze of trees seems endless. But for the sounds of his labored breath, it is so quiet here, empty and stark. He stops and looks up through the whirlwind of snowflakes.

  There is something undeniably beautiful about the ominous.

  Black jagged treetops stab the slate sky, and as he pans slowly along the horizon, an unnatural intrusion to the skyline perhaps fifty or sixty yards in the distance catches his attention. An old battered rooftop cross, sticking up above the trees. “A church,” he whispers.

  Unsure of why he feels so drawn to it, Marc hurries through the forest with newfound purpose nonetheless, keeping the cross in sight as he negotiates the uneven terrain. After a few moments he realizes it’s a greater distance away than he’d originally suspected. Undaunted, he continues on until he reaches a clearing. Sweating profusely despite the plummeting temperature, he stumbles into the open, out of breath.

  An old and obviously long-abandoned church stands before him. The white paint has faded and chipped, and the structure, neglected and left to the ravages of time and the elements, is rotting and decrepit to the point where it looks as if a good sound wind might collapse the entire structure. In front of the church is what looks to have been a small parking area at one point, but the forest has slowly reclaimed it, leaving only a suggestion of what had once been. To the left of the church, the remains of a narrow winding road disappear into the cover of trees. It was once (and apparently still is) the only way in and out of here by car. More importantly, it provides him with an escape route, as eventually it must lead to something more closely resembling civilization.

  As if controlled by unseen forces, the wind picks up, moving with apparent purpose through the clearing, across the church and into the forest beyond. Obedient branches sway and bounce at its command, and Marc feels his cheeks grow cold and tight. Squinting through the snow, he approaches the church cautiously. There are other sounds beneath the wind, within the wind, he’s sure of it. Distant growl-like whispers call to him, and a faint rasp of wheezing breath gurgles, barely audible but real as the wind concealing it.

  The gusts die slowly, and the forest returns to silence.

  Through the blown-out front doorway of the church, Marc can almost hear the ghosts of parishioners singing hymns, a beautiful choir of heavenly voices drifting and echoing through the forest. Just a Closer Walk with Thee, he thinks.

  He approaches what remains of the front steps and tries to remember the lyrics. Just a closer walk with Thee…

  The wheezing becomes louder, accompanied by a low groaning sound.

  Grant it, Jesus, is my plea…

  Marc climbs the wide steps. Overgrown weeds traverse the landing and continue on inside, thousands of snakes tangled one about the next to form a living blanket that crunches beneath his feet.

  Daily walking close to Thee… Let it be, dear Lord, let it be…

  Another groan, louder this time, seeps from the church. Gurgling and baritone, it is the lung and chest rattle of someone close to death.

  I am weak but Thou art strong… Jesus, keep me from all wrong…

  And yet, even as Marc moves through the ravaged doorway and into the dark and musty church, he knows there is a decidedly feminine quality to it.

  I’ll be satisfied as long as I walk… let me walk close to Thee…

  Inside, old wooden pews line either side of an aisle that leads to the remains of an altar, and an enormous stained-glass window occupying nearly the entire back wall behind it.

  Through this world of toil and snares, if I falter Lord, who cares?

  Intricate spider webs hang from the ceiling corners, and he knows then he’s being watched by their creators. But for the unseen, this place is long forgotten. No one has stepped foot inside this building in quite some time, he thinks, at least no one human.

  Who with me my burden shares?

  Partially rotted floorboards creak under Marc’s weight as he ventures further inside. The light changes, shifts to darker shades amidst swathes of light stabbing through the holes and tears in the building. And at the rear, through the remnants of the stained-glass window, light filters through the various panes of colored glass, draping the altar and surrounding area in ethereal blue and red hues that seem just slightly beyond the realm of anything he’s seen before.

  None but Thee dear Lord… none but Thee…

  He stops, feels his knees quake and his palms begin to sweat. There, in the far corner, to the left of the altar, a form sits draped in a dark hooded shroud.

  When my feeble life is over, time for me will be no more…

  The wheezing grows stronger, and the figure stirs, as if only then cognizant of Marc’s presence.

  Guide me gently, safely over to Thy kingdom shore…

  Marc shivers from cold and fear both, watches the figure as its head moves upward, causing the hood to shift and partially fall away to reveal the craggy face of an impossibly old woman. Tufts of white hair protrude from the sides of the hood, and she gathers the shroud tighter around her with arthritic, liver-spotted hands, the fingers gnarled and twisted as if broken, nails pale and bloodless.

  … To Thy shore…

  But it is the hag’s eyes he cannot escape. Covered with a film of thick milky cataracts, they appear entirely white, as if everything else has been scraped away.

  Thin chapped lips part to reveal a toothless mouth full of black rotten gums. Her head turns suddenly in Marc’s direction, and she sniffs the air with a sagging hooked nose. In a gurgling voice, she says, “I can smell you.”

  He notices a large wooden cross that had once been affixed to the wall is now on the floor not far from her. It is stained with what looks like very dark blood. “Who are you?” Marc asks.

  “Urd.” A deep groan escapes her. Slowly, it becomes laughter. The evil, pitiless laughter of a butcher. A butcher not of flesh, but of souls. “The farther you think you’ve gotten from us, the closer you get.”

  Everything in his being tells him
to turn and run, but he remains where he is, mesmerized. “What do you want with me?”

  “So unholy,” she says, licking her lips with a sickly gray tongue.

  Things whisper to him from the shadows. The tiny web-spinners, they’re trying to help him. But their messages remain just beyond reach. Marc wants to close his eyes but knows if he does the blood will be waiting. “Am I dreaming?”

  “Of course,” she gurgles. “Come closer, and I’ll show you.”

  Marc takes a step back.

  “Can you taste it? It’s in the blood.” The woman slowly raises her arms up and out to the side as if to summon a higher power. “Can you taste your destiny?”

  Something vile and foul leaks from beneath the woman, spreads in a slowly growing brown puddle of filth across the floor. Pleased, she smiles, and a large shelled bug crawls from her mouth, scurries over her chin and drops free.

  It hits the floor with a click as Marc’s stomach turns and the acidic taste of partially digested tea and biscuits bubbles up into the back of his throat. The bug scuttles away, past the altar and a bevy of frayed and bloodstained voodoo dolls scattered at its base. Haphazardly sewn together and tossed into the center of a chalk circle of indecipherable symbols, they remain littered with pins and draped in the feathers and severed claws of slaughtered chickens. Nearby overturned bottles lay empty and broken, the mysterious potions they’d once housed as forgotten as the prayers of those who had worshiped within these walls so long ago, and those who have since come to desecrate, or perhaps cleanse it.

  “Yggdrasil,” the hag cackles. “It’s dying. It needs you, Victim Soul.”

  Blocking his nostrils with his forearm, Marc moves back toward the door as the woman stares up at the tattered ceiling with blind eyes, lips moving as if in prayer. The nauseating wheezing and gurgling returns, worse than before, and she raises her arms again, reaching higher and forcing open her dark robe. Horrible things glide beneath her pale, mottled flesh, eel-like things that slither about rapidly before coiling and tightening along her ribcage with a sickening moist sound.

  And as screams shatter his mind, Marc finds himself back in the forest, back in the snow, drifting through clouds of his own breath. Lying at the base of a large tree, he is suddenly aware of his surroundings, as if violently shaken from deep sleep.

  He scrambles to his feet.

  It is still snowing, but there’s been virtually no accumulation.

  He wipes his clothes off and looks around. Nothing seems familiar. He searches the forest.

  Something moves through the trees in the distance. Barely visible, it darts through the forest at an alarming pace. Running… it’s someone running parallel to his position… but at such a distance Marc cannot tell if it’s male or female, only that whoever it may be is running from something and looking back every few seconds as if fearful that something is gaining on them.

  The rumbling sound of an automobile erupts from somewhere behind him. Marc spins and realizes he can see a paved road through the section of forest in that direction, and an old pickup disappearing around a bend. He looks back to the deeper forest.

  The runner is gone.

  * * * *

  As he walks along the side of the road, unsure of exactly where he’s headed, Marc remembers the hospital walls and the hallways that, much like this lonely road, seemed to run on forever, so many hallways and corridors leading nowhere and everywhere, winding and disappearing around corners and into oceans of shadows. And the muted cries of those trapped within that terrible place, he remembers them too, doomed souls who, apart from hopeless flights of madness, will never know escape. He’d lived his entire life until that point never even considering the possibility of ending up in such a place. Yet, there he was.

  And Doctor Berry, in her skirt suit, boots and frilly blouse, hair pulled back from her face and held in place with a shiny silver clip, she haunts his memory as well. She wields no tape recorders or pads of paper, and takes no notes in front of him – as if capable of committing to memory everything they discuss – just a warm smile and endearing eyes keenly watching him as she asks questions in soft, soothing tones.

  What’s the last thing you remember?

  Night had come.

  Tell me about that.

  It was dark, and I couldn’t tell where I was anymore.

  Were you conscious?

  I don’t know.

  Do you remember experiencing other stimuli? Sound, smell, etc.?

  I only remember falling.

  Falling?

  It felt like I was falling. But I wasn’t afraid. The fear was gone by then.

  What did you feel, Marc?

  Like something was there…down there, below me…something in the dark, just… waiting... watching me fall closer and closer to it…

  Do you know what it was?

  The end.

  The end of what?

  The end of me.

  Marc follows a bend in the road, and for the first time since that morning, begins to feel the effects of the cold. The snow is changing, becoming wetter and gradually turning back to icy rain. Just ahead, a small shack of a house sits back in the woods not far from the road. The yard is littered with debris and trash and a few rusted automobile parts. Dilapidated and sporting a small, partially rotted out front porch, Marc would have assumed the house abandoned were it not for the two people watching him. They are so still at first they look like posed mannequins, but the closer he gets the clearer into focus they become. On the porch, a woman of perhaps sixty sits in an old rocking chair, a young boy – her grandson? – standing next to her. The woman is heavyset, her dark hair streaked with gray and pulled up into a bun, her face heavily lined and tired, the skin pockmarked. She wears a long dress and cumbersome shoes which seem wildly dated and better suited to a frontier woman of the past than a person assigned to the 21st Century. The little boy next to her is no more than ten, with piercing ice-blue eyes and a shock of curly blond hair. In short pants and a matching blouse, he looks like a backwoods version of Little Lord Fauntleroy.

  Marc stops, watches them. Through the falling snow they seem almost magical, a vision from some other reality mistakenly slipping into view. They stare at him as if entranced, eyes boring straight through him. Damned, he thinks. They have the eyes of the damned.

  Cold… bloodless… dead…

  Slowly, the little boy raises an arm, extends his finger and points at Marc. The woman rocks slowly in her chair. Old wood creaks.

  It is then that Marc realizes their breath produces no clouds in the air.

  Dizzy, he staggers back, brings his hands to either side of his head and looks for a place to fall. It feels as if his knees will buckle at any moment, but he somehow manages to remain upright as he spins away and stumbles back up the road.

  The shriek of tires on wet pavement snaps him back from the precipice as a car suddenly appears before him. Slamming its brakes, it comes to a screeching halt just feet from where he’s standing.

  He looks back at the forest and the shack.

  The woman and child remain, staring.

  “Marc!”

  Brooke’s voice.

  She and Spaulding are already out of the car, looking like frightened parents who have been frantically searching for their lost child. Brooke gets to him first, grabs him by the shoulders and inspects him. “Jesus, are you all right? Where the hell did you go? Why would you do this, I – didn’t we discuss this? You promised you wouldn’t leave the chalet! We’ve been looking for you for more than an hour! You scared us to death! ”

  “I’m fine,” he tells her.

  “You’re not fine, you –”

  “I went for a walk.” He reaches out and tenderly cups the side of her face. “I’m OK, I just got lost.”

  Spaulding stands a few feet away, looking around awkwardly.

  “You’re all dirty, did you fall? Are you hurt?”

  “Let’s just go.” Marc takes her hand and glances back at the shack
.

  Spaulding sees the woman and little boy too. “Inbred Central,” he mutters, “party of two, your table is ready.”

  Ignoring him, Brooke slides an arm around Marc and starts him back toward the car. “Come on, we’re getting soaked.”

  “Oh, you’re no fun at all,” Spaulding says, hands on his hips. “I bet once Skeeter and Coon get home there’s gonna be a ho-down. I’m pretty sure we’re talking square-dancing here, people.”

  Brooke shoots him a look.

  Spaulding responds with his best shit-eating grin. “What, you don’t want to party with Belle Starr and Damien from the fucking Omen? Seriously?”

  After helping Marc into the backseat, Brooke closes the door, sealing him inside. He watches the sky through the window, barely cognizant of the voices outside. The snow is gone.

  There is only rain.

  Eight

  There are moments, between the pain and flashes of violence, where Marc captures glimpses of the past with startling clarity. The colors are vivid, the details so crisp that they can only stem from a place just shy of reality. In those moments, he wonders about the greater power that sits watching, and why it does so with such passivity. Why can’t it deliver and save him? Does it choose not to? Or is it simpler than that? Are such matters his charge, not God’s?

  Yggdrasil, it’s dying. It needs you, Victim Soul.

  He remembers it was summer, though he can’t be certain which one. Last summer? Two summers ago? He’d watched from the kitchen window as Brooke pulled into the same paved driveway where later it would all begin. Back from an outing at the beach with some girlfriends, an afternoon drinking Coronas and sitting in the hot sun, she’d returned looking sated, relaxed, unencumbered. Her skin had tanned nicely that summer and was already a light bronze. Her hair was up and held in place with a clip, but it was disheveled, indicating she’d put it up either hastily or without paying particular care. Her sunglasses sat atop her head, and she was dressed in a white bikini top and a pair of khaki shorts that covered the bottoms. Barefoot, she climbed from the car, a beach bag over her shoulder. He’d sensed then there was something off about her, but before he could give it much thought Brooke came to an abrupt stop, as if she’d suddenly remembered something. She stood motionless a while then continued on toward the house. Due to the sun’s glare he knew she couldn’t see him in the window, so he watched quietly, the sounds of his wife’s movements drifting through the screen like whispered secrets.