The Witch of the Wood

by Michael Aronovitz

  “Come with me,” she said. “Unless you want to kill a thousand more witches.”

  Rudy’s mouth opened a bit and hung there for a moment.

  “What?”

  She came down to his position at the base of the rise.

  “It’s now or never, Rudy. You’ve got to trust me and ask questions later. Kill any more and you’ll gain the wrong followers.”

  “Me? Kill more?”

  “No one can look in the face of God and live, Rudy.”

  “I’m not—”

  “To them, you are.” She took his elbow and looked off to the west. “I’ve got to get you out of sight, and if you don’t cooperate I’m going to have to kill you.” The corny, outdated phrase was offered as almost an afterthought, a ghost of what seemed her “pre-disaster” offbeat humor, but when she turned toward him she was only smiling a little.

  “O.K.,” he said quietly.

  There was a new round of wet bursts to the right, and it sent them running off to a hoarse and breathless escape, leapfrogging and hurdling together through the Gregorios’ yard, then the Goldbergs’ and the Denardos’, all cluttered with a cross-hatch of wooden debris and fallen construction, and in the distance was a wide, opened panorama, now exposed all the way down to the Schuylkill Expressway. It was a mass of halted traffic, scattered fires, downed trees, and crawling human forms, the calico and then the pale white following close like a virus.

  Bald, he thought. The world has gone bald, and the second wave of exploding craniums in the forest was overshadowed by the ones coming on right behind them, marching numbly across the bodies of their fallen sisters, and calling Rudy’s name with voices of dirt.

  Brian Duffey was trying to do that cool fucking trick Nickie Walters had shown him in bio class, where you snapped your index finger to the middle one making a “whapping” noise, when the kitchen roof caved in. Ma was at the stove cooking scrambled eggs and cheddar on the long griddle pan, and Pop was coming through the archway. Brian had turned to give him his usual grunt of acknowledgment, and the man didn’t respond, heel of his hand pressed to his forehead. Duffey turned back to his finger trick. Pop was too hung-over to work again and was saying, “Both of you can just shut the fuck up,” when the rumbling started.

  The house shook as if it were made of balsa, and the first thing Brian thought was,

  Aqua’s working on the water main this early? followed quickly by, Yeah, it would take an earthquake for that Wolfie motherfucker to get out of a fight, just my luck.

  Then came the great crash from above. Duffey had his eyes on his mother, looking around in disbelief, pink terrycloth bathrobe, long wisp of hair hanging in her face. The ceiling split open like the end of the world and the maple from the front yard smashed through, crushing her against the oven, splintered floorboards and insulation showering around her. Duffey pushed up out of his chair and turned to the shattered doorway behind him. The massive trunk was on Pop’s back, severed branch running him straight through between the shoulder blades, coming out through his chest like a throwing spear. The point was embedded in the floor, and the man slid down, re-slickening the peeled and splintered shaft, arms and hands quivering and going still the second he hit the linoleum.

  There was muffled screaming from next door now, and Ma was screaming in here, good arm waving out like a spastic trying for a cab. She was sizzling, face pressed to the hot plate, tree on top of her like a rapist. Brian leapt across and saw that her head had ruptured, sending brain matter into the eggs, curling like maggots. He moved calmly to the pot rack and went for a frying pan. Then he changed his mind and got the heavy black skillet, turning, bunching his muscles for it. Her one good eye may have focused on him, he couldn’t be sure. He smelled burning hair.

  Brian Duffey brought down the skillet with all his strength.

  Caroline Schultz didn’t have a finished basement, to say the least. It was dark, though the new shadowless phenomenon exposed details that were rather startling, like the serial number on the Westinghouse washing machine’s label plate over in the far corner by the dehumidifier, and the cluster of flies caught up in an intricate spiderweb fastened between rafters. It was cold down here, concrete floor with a layer of sediment that made that gritty non-echo beneath your shoes, water boiler with rust stains leopard-spotted up the wall side, exposed piping, rickety stairway. There was an old couch sitting in the middle of the space under the glare of a bare light bulb, and Rudy didn’t ask why. Didn’t matter. In the back of his mind he wondered if it was infested with mites or something, but he didn’t complain. Caroline had drawn over an old barstool with one leg slightly shorter than the other and was in the process of dressing his wounds. The sports adhesive tape didn’t stick all too well, and he didn’t complain about that either. It was kind of nice. And he had questions. A ton, to say the least.

  “So how do you know about the witches?” he said finally. She sucked at her bottom lip and put a Band-Aid on a cut across his elbow.

  “Right to it, huh?”

  “Is there a more appropriate time?”

  “Guess not.” She stood and stretched her back, then took a place next to him on the sofa. She sat there, hands on her knees, thinking. He was about to say something, and she shushed him, putting up the stop-sign hand and closing her eyes, organizing it. After a moment she gave a short laugh.

  “I’ve had a strange life, Rudy.” She glanced over, measuring his reaction. It was stone, and she sighed.

  “O.K., here goes, clumsy and all at once, but you asked for it.” She’d crossed her eyes, but he wasn’t laughing. She started off slowly then, building up steam as she went.

  “It started with the read-alouds,” she said. “You know, like when I was a baby. There was ‘Curious George’ and all that, but for as long as I can remember there was another book, a special one that my grandmother passed down to my mother filled with graphic arts stories and riddles about witches and trees. As I grew older, I believed it came through so many generations that the tale originated before print was invented, though I had no real basis for that idea; I just knew, you know what I mean?” Rudy gave a slight nod, and she continued. “Gosh, I loved that book, as a baby, a toddler, all through elementary school. It was my bedtime book, the old teddy bear you never threw away, coloring my world sort of thing.” She paused. “But then were the weird activities, the eccentricities shared by my mother and me that I could never tell my friends about, things she and I did together that didn’t make sense.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like keeping a lifelong tally of the trees in the world, by name and number in a log with a leather cover. Like being compelled to spend seven years digging the tunnel that goes from the trapdoor under this couch, five hundred yards down to the high bank at the edge of the river.” She leaned back, drawing her knees up and hugging them. “I missed middle school and high school for all intents and purposes, but I know how to brace underground walls, track erosion patterns, and dig, Rudy. I know how to spend years building a fake, collapsible second floor that masqueraded as the walls of the living room, den, and kitchen above us for so many years, and I knew when I heard the great rumbling that it was time to pull the tripwire as soon as I secured you down here. I did it while you were making your way down the stairs just now. Pretty smooth, huh?”

  Rudy didn’t answer. She shrugged.

  “Well, no one will find us here. There’s no entrance from upstairs anymore.” She took off her hat and started braiding her hair into a long warrior’s lock. “Now all the puzzles make sense. With ‘The Great Fall of Timber’ I become ‘The Provider,’ here to help the new messiah gather his flock. There will be massive power outages, chaos, looting, murder.”

  “That’s one hell of a children’s book, Caroline.”

  “Yeah, right.” She shrugged. “But it’s typical, isn’t it? Messages in nursery rhymes are often dark as all hell, and there are more dirty jokes in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons than we ever care to acknowledge. And wh
at about the story of Lot’s wife, or Noah’s ark, or Jonah and the whale? One horrific context to the next, intensive storyline presented in childlike verse and animation then brought to some sort of ethical epiphany, it’s the Anglo way. And believe it, Rudy, all we have known is gone, like your apartment, like the rooms above us. They will be ravaged like all the convenience stores, the supermarkets, the toolhouses, everything. Cars will be useless for awhile and many of the weak will die of starvation. The governmental structure will temporarily falter, and there will be a brief period where hunters, gatherers, and those who work the saw will be the only ones to truly master the landscape. It will take more than seven years to clear all the downed trees, and until new ones are planted and grown, there will be a global effort to construct a generation’s worth of oxygen-filled domes.”

  She paused and looked at Rudy, who was looking back at her closely.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said softly. It was information overload difficult to fathom, and his mind had drifted, back when she had started analyzing the structure and intent of children’s literature. Caroline had been an acquaintance of Patricia’s he’d inherited at the periphery and written off as the “artsy” type, more a pain in the ass than anything else . . . someone who would rope you into an argument about feminism when you thought you’d been talking about tax shelters. Her wide-set eyes also made her look kind of ditzy, and her nose was a tad too big. But the impression was a bold-faced lie. She was intelligent, strong vocabulary. Plus, her pants were tight and she had good legs, nice and sturdy, powder-blue eye shadow that went nicely with her blond hair, all totally beside the point, but he was more aware now than ever of the never-ending manner by which men studied women, an act almost shamelessly woven into the fabric of every conversation, every gesture. Wolfie had proven his point.

  Wolfie . . .

  Rudy’s throat caught, suddenly, unexpectedly, and his shoulder’s hitched. He glanced down at his shoes.

  “What?” Caroline repeated, this time concerned.

  “My son. His body. It’s out there and I want to bury him.”

  “You can’t.” Rudy looked up, eyes reddened.

  “Why the hell not?”

  Caroline took the braid she’d been working, knotted it off, and tossed it back over her shoulder.

  “Because he’s surrounded by witches, and you shouldn’t kill any more, Rudy, if not for humanitarian reasons, then for those of dangerous publicity. There is a lot unexplained out there, and many of the living will think you’re a cold-blooded murderer. Others will view Wolfie’s death as a beautiful religious sacrifice, but your casual explanation of it all, leaning on your shovel, with the heads of naked witches bursting all around, isn’t going to help your cause in either scenario. You’ve got to measure and limit your appearances. And I’d wear a mask when you do surface, unless you want to paint the town red with the blood of your followers. Or your own for that matter. Wolfie and the necessary propaganda aside, I’d be willing to bet there are three million dead under tree trunks and timber in the United States alone, civilians, mothers, grandparents . . .”

  Rudy put his head in his hands.

  “What a mess.”

  “It’s going to get messier, Rudy, and there’s no witch alive who would blame you. There is collateral damage on both sides, and they’ve been ready to die for their freedom for thousands of years. It’s time to lead them. Fresh out of the hole, they’re trancelike, looking for a man to transform for. Thousands will be throttled and stabbed, beaten and shot for fear that they are some sort of outworlder or plague carrier. The number of the ‘first dead’ will be staggering actually, but the second and third sweeps will adapt. They are fast learners. All they need is a chance to shower, steal a set of clothes, and transform, and some of them will actually cheat and cross over.”

  Rudy’s breath came hard through his nose.

  “Cross over, as in they become men. Women with the greatest gift ever bestowed upon the human race and it’s wasted.”

  Caroline raised her chin.

  “I didn’t say all. I said some.” She stood, did a little dance straightening down her pants from the sides and then folding her arms. “And I love my mother-race, but their daughters still have something to offer.”

  Rudy smiled, but only a trace.

  “You sound like the enemy now.”

  “I’m just saying, Rudy. All might not be quite equal in the end, but when feelings are involved, it’s not like just picking flavors, you know?”

  He didn’t. He didn’t at all. Was there a signal here? Was she contradicting a learned belief for one from the gut? Was this philosophical or personal? He put the points of his elbows on his knees and folded his hands, index fingers pointing straight up. He rested his lips against the affair and closed his eyes, knowing that she’d know he was changing the subject rather bluntly, and also knowing that she’d immediately forgive the poor transitioning for the sake of expediency.

  “All right,” he said. “Rules and facts. How many trees are there in the world?”

  “Four hundred billion, two hundred forty six million, three hundred thousand, two hundred and one. Give or take a few.”

  “But they all couldn’t have come down. Even with what my son referred to as ‘shadow-transfers,’ new trees were planted since the original imprisonment, right?”

  “Check. Around thirty million witches went under. But all the trees came down. Part of the revenge quotient. With the uprooting, no prison stalk nor lookalike would remain sealed and seated.”

  “So some places just have downed trees? No escaping prisoners?”

  “It’ll still appear pretty even. Blame the jailers. Thirty percent of the land mass is populated by trees, but they’re spaced to ‘cover,’ as painters would say, to give the illusion of completeness. And the burials inside that thirty percent were spread just as aesthetically. For all intents and purposes, the earth has been ravaged, and the coming-out party will appear to be a complete infestation. Or liberation, depending how you look at it.”

  “And it’s that ‘depending’ that makes my presence a continuing requirement,” Rudy muttered.

  “Exactly. Unless you want the haters to win without a fight.”

  “And they are who exactly?”

  She sat down next to him, hands between her knees.

  “Hard to say. There will be factions. It won’t be black or white all the time.”

  “It will if a gun is in my face, Caroline.”

  She smiled.

  “Measured and cautious appearances, right?”

  “Right.” He rubbed his nose. “So how do we start?”

  “You start by knowing which enemies drift between vague loyalties and undefined ethics, and those who are a clear and present danger.”

  “Like who?”

  “Like Patricia.”

  “Oh God,” he said, face going pale.

  “No, not God. That’s you, to some. But she was pre-chosen to defy you as I was destined to lend you support. She’s not dead, and she’s five times as dangerous as she was before Wolfie’s passing.”

  “How?”

  “My book says the Dark Guardian is awarded a gift if things have advanced to this particular level.”

  “What gift?”

  “The ability to shape-shift. At will. No receding epidermis either. Instantaneous transformation.”

  Rudy looked at her critically, and she gave a short nod.

  “That’s right. She could be anybody, even Caroline Schultz, and your biggest ongoing struggle will be whether or not you can trust me. So decide, Rudy Barnes. Me and my tunnels, or the teeming labyrinth out there?”

  Rudy stared, and she didn’t falter.

  “Here,” he said. “I’ll stay here, at least for awhile.”

  “Good. Then help me move this couch. I’ve got food in dry stock I’ve been hoarding down there at the base of this tunnel for years, and we should take fresh inventory of the expiration dates. Then
we need to get out your cell, pray you have service, and look at Wolfie’s crucifixion so we can splice it to your first public address on YouTube before all the laptop batteries go dry.”

  Rudy’s eyebrows went up.

  “Pardon the old-timer’s ignorance, Caroline, but, uh . . . the power must be trashed out there. You’re saying I can still use the Internet?”

  “Like the world’s newest cockroach; you can’t kill it. Power isn’t out everywhere, just most everywhere. And there’s always a way to tether functionality . . . a personal hotspot feature on the settings menu here enabling wifi on an iPad there . . . browsing on the unit using an iPhone as a 3G transceiver, you know.”

  “Sure.”

  “Anyway, the news will be back up and running sooner than you think, but that doesn’t mean we can’t beat it to the punch. You have some explaining to do, and believe me, there are a lot of people who will want to hear it. There are also those who will throw their own hats into the virtual ring, using your logic as tinder for the view that will oppose you, so pre-planning some sort of counter-response wouldn’t be such a bad thing either.”

  They were standing on each side of the couch, preparing to push it across the floor.

  “And who might these ‘opposers’ be exactly?” Rudy said.

  “Conservatives to start. Those who might not feel quite right about new religions and shape-shifting witches entering the bloodline.” She made a sign to push, and they started to move the sofa across the floor, more of an effort than it had seemed it would be. Rudy suddenly felt older than dirt.

  “Conservatives, huh?” he said when they’d uncovered the trapdoor completely. “They sound like a pleasant squad.”

  She grinned ruefully.

  “They’re not your main problem, Rudy. Old bluebloods preaching family values in the Bible Belt won’t matter as much as the ones who would prefer living in the wild, feeding on the chaos, and finding they have new purpose in a world that had shunned them.”

  “Yeah . . . the scary warlord rising from the ashes, huh?”