Devil Tree

by Vernon, Steve

  She felt the darkness slipping about her like cool heavy wave despite the hook of the moon, curling blindly overhead. She counted her breaths, the rise and fall, one-two-three, losing track every time.

  She sensed Duvall out there or rather what was left of Duvall. He was out there in that heavy darkness, haunting the cold night breeze.

  In time she slipped away.

  She dreamed of lying in a field, listening to the evil bleat of the goat. The goat’s fur was blackened with mud. Its eyes were alive with evil intelligence. Its horns curled into eternal question marks.

  Between its crooked legs sprouted a massive serpent, all red and wet and quivering, and above the hiss of the snake and the bleat of the goat and the bark of the hound and the mad beating of bird’s wings, she heard an all-too-familiar laugh, and the faraway sound of a single shot.

  She awoke. The dream vanished like a startled fish but her sigh of relief caught midway, for her dress had a fresh tear in it and her feet were clotted with dirt and dead pine needles and her palms were blackened with pine resin, and inside she was sticky and damp as morning dewfall.

  Outside it began to snow heavily, great white flakes, heavy and pregnant, drifting with sinister intent, settling down the too-small chimney, choking out the dying fire, clumping softly like the distant footsteps of an approaching beast.

  And underneath the snow something began to grow.

  WINTER

  “Give me your bride, your bonnie bride

  That left her nest with you to flee!

  Oh she hath flown to be my own

  For I’m alone on the gallows-tree!”

  Fitz-James O’Brien 1828 - 1862

  ”The tree of deepest root is found

  Least willing still to quit the ground.”

  Hester Lynch 1739 - 1821

  ”Now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees:

  Therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit

  Is hewn down and cast into the fire.”

  Matthew 3:10

  Chapter Nineteen

  When morning came, Tamsen was already heavy with child. She felt it more than knowing it. She felt it rooted inside the torn debris of her womb, taking shape within her, creeping and growing like a cancer.

  The crab’s got you now, white woman.

  Tamsen looked up, startled to hear the voice of old Delta after so much silence. She looked toward the fireplace where the bucket once stood but she’d burnt the bucket, hadn’t she?

  Ain’t in no bucket.

  Fear caught in Tamsen’s throat. It was just her imagination, she told herself. She’d burnt the bucket and kept no water in the house. The witch was banished.

  Ain’t in no house.

  Tamsen looked at the door.

  Now you’re getting warmer. Come to the door. Look outside.

  Tamsen cracked the door open, just a slice. She took a breath in slowly and tightened the blanket about her neck. Then all at once she gathered her courage and threw the door wide.

  Here I be!

  Snow.

  The snow was everywhere. It had fallen overnight, swaddling the cabin, and all around with a heavy damp shroud.

  Where’s your man got to now, white woman?

  Tamsen saw a trail of irregular footsteps, one whole and one pegged, leading down into the valley.

  Gone hunting, maybe. Gonna go get his self a deer, oh he’s gonna get such a deer.

  Tamsen looked about the cabin.

  There was no sign of the musket.

  The crab has bit him real bad, oh it’s got you both now, got you for sure, got you all, and ain’t I glad?

  Tamsen closed the door and closed her ears to the mocking laughter that danced on the wind. She closed her eyes and wept bitter, wet tears.

  2

  It was Lucas’s final deer hunt. He was going to get a deer for sure. He couldn’t say how or why he seemed so certain of the thing. It was just something he knew.

  There was a deer out here and Lucas would hunt him down and kill him.

  He had to work hard to find the tracks. It should have been easy in this snow.

  Thank God the snow wasn’t deep.

  He stared back behind at his lopsided trail. Half-a-man, that’s all he was. Even the tracks showed that; the bird-toe stub of the right peg following the full sized left, like the track of a small boy following in the wake of an older man.

  At least he had only the one foot to chill.

  He laughed.

  Mind your step, he told himself. He needed to keep on his toes, all five of them and watch for the deer. It was down there in the valley waiting for him to come and kill it.

  He knew where he’d find it without needing to ask.

  His footsteps crunched and crackled the crusted snow, laying bare the somber earth that lurked beneath its pristine surface. His teeth gritted in brittle assonance to the crisping of his step, the steady desecration of the snow’s crystalline splendor. His breath misted past him, clouds of memory slipping away into the network of branches overhead, but he did not turn to watch it go.

  It was down there, waiting.

  He felt as if he were at sea, felt the deep water’s restless movements in the still of the snowbound landscape. He heard the creaking of icebound masts, as the heavy frozen limbs squealed and screeched together like hellish fiddlers sawing away on tuneless instruments.

  I’m all at sea, he thought to himself.

  And then Lucas saw the tree and the great black deer standing by the tree, watching Lucas’s limping approach. The deer watched and waited for him. Lucas froze, fearful that the thing had seen him.

  He stepped slowly from the shelter of the surrounding trees.

  Had it seen him?

  Lucas stood as stiff as a carving of wood. The only sign of life was his slow silent misted breath.

  The buck turned its great shaggy head to face Lucas. It was a beauty, the same one he’d seen so many times before. He’d never seen the like, with its neck and shoulders and face laced with black like a chimney sweep and its antlers sprouting like trees uprooted and planted upon its brow, fearsomely whole, at a time when most deer would have shed their rack for the long winter.

  Little spackles of pinkish blood frothed upon its muzzle with each snorted breath. Its great chest was slit open, flapping in the wind like the mouth of an open cave. The wound was a smiling snarl, opening to swallow Lucas whole.

  Despite the cavity he could see no lungs, no heart beating, and no telltale mist of breath haloed the beast. With the one exception of the muzzle, not a trace of blood issued from any wound. He noticed the absence of tracks surrounding the beast. He blinked his eyes and shook his head, hoping to clear his bewildered vision. Shake and blink as he might, he swore its hooves weren’t touching the crust of the snow.

  The musket felt heavy in his hands.

  He raised the gun slowly to his shoulder.

  Could such a beast be killed, he wondered. Dare he even try? Still, the wood and the tree had provided. The offering must be accepted. He stared down the barrel which seemed to grow three times its length.

  He trembled as he aimed.

  The deer stared at him.

  You cannot kill me, it seemed to be saying.

  In the end Lucas pulled the trigger to make a liar out of the undead beast.

  3

  The deer was dark and empty like the hollow of a dead tree that had forgotten how to fall. There was no heart, no lungs and no entrails. There was no lifeblood surging through the beast’s hollow veins.

  What kept the animal going? Lucas wondered. What made it stand?

  He knelt beside the empty husk and pondered its mysteries. He couldn’t even find the wound his musket ball had made as hard as he tried.

  He shrugged and rose, catching hold of the buck’s head in an attempt to drag the thing back to the cabin. Even without the vitals there was plenty of good meat. The carcass moved easily as if the bones weighed less than a shadow.

>   The trip back to the cabin took less time than the journey to the tree despite his burden. He wasn’t surprised to notice he no longer limped, that his wooden leg seemed more cooperative, that his mangled knee seemed to bend as one might expect a whole man’s knee to give and bend, and this cheered him.

  He whistled a hollow tune, as a man who walks through burial grounds by night might whistle, and pretended that all was well.

  4

  Jezebel’s spirit grew silent although the fire continued to growl and crackle, chanting in its bed of coals.

  Tamsen heard the shot. She started as if she’d been dozing. She went to the door to watch.

  It wasn’t long before Lucas came over the hill with a carcass slung over his shoulder. She stoked the fire into new life. There was meat to cook. Lucas would be cold. It was not long before he reached the door and brought his burden into the cabin.

  “We’ll hang it by the fire,” he said. “Tomorrow we can cut it and dry its meat for the long winter ahead. Tonight, we’ll feast.”

  He dropped the meat on the floor and rigged a hoist by the fire.

  This was not the man who had limped from the cabin. This was a new man, made whole.

  “Surely you didn’t carry that deer all the way?”

  “It was light enough, once I removed its vitals,” he said.

  It was a lie. She knew that, although she couldn’t imagine the truth. She hefted the deer as she helped him arrange the hoist. The beast seemed heavy enough to her.

  “Lay some green wood on the fire,” he said, once the rope was secured about the buck’s hind legs. “Some smoke will do the flavor good.”

  He bent over the task. His shoulders seemed to grow and move in silent strength, as he hoisted the dead beast. For a moment she was reminded of Duvall’s natural power, and the feeling frightened her, but she went outside to do as he commanded.

  5

  Tamsen blinked twice as she emerged from the cabin, nearly blinded by the harsh glare of sun upon snow that almost drove her back into the sheltering darkness. She blinked a third time as her eyes grew accustomed to the glittering diamond-dust dancing before her.

  She saw Lucas’s tracks going out across the snow, into the valley and towards the tree.

  The air revitalized her. She walked to the clearing’s rim and entered the forest, using the axe to cut several pine boughs, the only green to be easily had at this time of year. She took several half-hearted swipes at a young oak sapling, but gave it up as a lost cause.

  She scooped up a bit of snow from an overhanging limb and touched it to her lips. The taste was bitter, as if some sort of poisonous residue had leaked from the tree’s bough into the clean white snow.

  She spat it out.

  Her mouth was dry as cotton. She’d get Lucas to bring a bucketful of clean water from the river, or else she’d fetch it herself. If the witch was in the snow then she had nothing to fear from the river water.

  She turned back to the cabin. The night’s wind had blown a coating of snow and hoarfrost across the front of it, whitening the wood to a crystal-gray sheen. A thicker coating hid the roof of the structure. The door hung half open.

  She could almost imagine it as the head of a giant, his great body buried beneath the snow and the earth, what was it Lucas had told her once? That there were giants in the earth, once, until God and man plowed them under and grew deeper things.

  It was then she realized what was bothering her.

  Where were Lucas’s returning tracks? She saw them going into the valley but there were no tracks leading back out. How did he carry the deer without leaving tracks?

  When she returned, the deer was hung, and worse yet, the deer had changed.

  6

  “Come inside,” Lucas said.

  He had his back turned to her, carving the meat.

  “Did you get the wood?” he asked.

  “It’s here,” she said.

  “Just lay it on the fire, would you?”

  She went to the fire. As she did she saw what Lucas was hacking at.

  “Nothing like a good plateful of venison,” he said.

  It was a man hanging there, not a deer.

  It was Duvall. Hung and eviscerated.

  “Go ahead,” Lucas said cheerfully. “Just lay the wood on the fire. A bit of smoke won’t bother me.”

  She dropped the pine boughs. The snow hissed and the smoke rose and tore at her eyes as the flame gnawed at the green sticky wood. She blinked her eyes as if she might be going blind or mad or both.

  When she looked again it was still Duvall. He was grinning at her. She saw his manhood, as large and vigorous as a good sized branch, and she bit at her knuckle-meat to keep from crying out.

  “Go outside if the smoke bothers you,” Lucas said. “I won’t be a minute.”

  She shook her head and Duvall nodded as the knife continued its herky-jerky sawing motion, pulling the body back and forth.

  “Do you have an appetite?” he asked, still hacking away. “I’m as hungry as a bear.”

  Couldn’t he see it was Duvall?

  But the thing had been a deer when he’d carried it into the cabin.

  No tracks. Good God there had been no tracks.

  She felt as if she were losing her grip upon reality, as if she were back in the river. Only now it was her and not Lucas clawing for the shore.

  “Do you want some?” Lucas asked, holding something towards her, impaled upon his knife.

  Her eyes rolled backwards and the room went black but not before she saw Duvall’s severed manhood, firmly speared upon the sharpened tip of Lucas’s clasp knife and she felt the earth give way but not until she had seen him deliberately stuff the tip of the member into his mouth like a link of suety black pudding, gnawing upon the glans with a zestful enthusiasm, the cold juices running down his chin.

  7

  He came to her in a vision. They stood within a field of freshly-plowed earth and above the field, as large as the sky itself, hung the tree and the whisper of its branches engorged her mind. She stood as naked as a newborn babe and he stood before her, his manhood jutting like a fierce rigid branch between the fork of his legs.

  “We are flames, you and I, and we will burn together. The woman is important to the tree. The women are always important,” he said. “Come to me, cold woman, and I will warm you up.”

  She looked into his eyes. They were Lucas’s eyes, all trapped and fearful, rabbit’s eyes, deer eyes - but the body was Duvall’s, his gullet slit, twin flaps drifting open in the night, inviting a dark embrace.

  “Come to me,” he said again, and she came, and came, and oh god she came and as she lay with him in the field, with the tree overhead and the earth all around closing about her like the sea, its rich, thick, goat-shit odor whispering silent, fertile promises and when she awoke it was a dream, but a dream, for he still hung by the fire, and the rope seemed secure, but inside, oh inside, she was sticky and full, like a cup to the brim, and it wasn’t all Lucas’s, she was sticky and full and filled with Duvall’s dark seed.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Take it to the lean-to,” Tamsen said, “and dry it there.” When Lucas asked her why, she hadn’t said a word of sense.

  “Just take it,” she’d repeated. “Just take it away from here.”

  Lucas couldn’t understand her sudden reticence. It was perfectly good venison.

  Perhaps the smoke bothered her.

  He shrugged and began dragging the beast’s stiffened carcass. It seemed heavier. It should have been lighter, given the generous portion he’d devoured the night before. Perhaps it was the stiffness of the remains or perhaps his own stiffened joints. His back creaked like a frozen mast. He balled his right fist into his spine and worked the grievance out of his muscles.

  She hadn’t touched a bite of the meat. The smoke, he decided, it was the smoke of the fire catching in her throat and tearing at her eyes that had taken away her appetite.

  He reached the ridge a
nd was pleased to see the lean-to. As far as he could tell no animal had dared to scavenge through its emptiness. The smell of fire and man were too strong for such a desecration.

  “Good,” he said.

  The spine of the structure was the cabin’s main roof beam charred black from the fire. The walls were pine bough. Most of the boughs were brown with age, dead and dying. He’d have to lay some fresh boughs before he left. The cold of winter would preserve them until spring awakened.

  Through the thinnish layer of fresh fallen snow, smothered about the circumference of the shelter, Lucas could easily trace the darkened memory of the cabin. The lean-to stank within and when Lucas dragged the carcass inside he swore he could smell the remembered reek of Duvall’s filthy flesh.

  He wrinkled his nose in distaste and thought of dragging his labor outside but the deer was heavy and the lean-to gave him a little warmth. He took out his clasp knife and cut the meat of the deer into strips.

  After several hours he was finished. He hung the strips about the remnants of his fire. Hopefully the smoke would compensate for the juicy aroma of the drying meat. He gathered up the bones and put them into a sack to bring home for soup.

  Surely she couldn’t object to a little soup.

  He hung the strips of meat about the lean-to and lit a very small fire and soon began to sweat.

  2

  Tamsen picked up the axe and stared into the fire.

  The fire spoke.

  Use it.

  Tamsen caressed the axe’s smooth blade, spellbound by the glamour of the glinting flame reflected upon the thin horizon of its keen edge.

  Use it on your wrists.

  The axe felt cool, a painless promise like a leech’s kiss. She stroked the edge lightly across her wrist.

  Use it and find peace. Use it and be not damned.

  Not damned. What an interesting thought. This valley wanted her, needed her for something. She did not know what.

  You know.

  She did know. She knew she was lying to herself. She knew what the valley and the tree wanted.

  You know.

  She pushed the blade against her wrist. She felt her flesh, ready to give way to the urgent entrance of the steel.

  The flames spoke again.