by Ira Robinson
She hopped over the ditch, avoiding the sedentary water still undrained and unabsorbed from the last time it rained. The fence was easily bypassed, the torn out stakes laying across the ground along with the chain link metal. It had been without repair so long the grasses had overtaken it all, leaving most of it hidden away from view. Her hard soles scraped one of the links, though, and she had to be careful to avoid tripping in it.
The woods before her were not as thick as what she had to deal with at the outskirts of the orchard. The wider spread of the trees did not protect the underbrush as much, and the changing season affected them dramatically. Whereas the thicket in the orchard was still reasonably untouched by the cooler weather and oncoming winter, the brush here was fading quickly. Most of the green had faded away, leaving brown scraps behind. The blowing breeze wafted what was left around.
A few birds scattered at her approach. Their bolting away, wings loudly flapping with angry calls, made her jump and her eyes widened looking for anything else that might come from the scrub, but her roving orbs found none.
Still, she tread cautiously, marking each step through the tall browning grass as best she could. More birds called out, but they were more distant, and may have only been talking among themselves, not rousted from their nests by her traipsing through their domain.
Sam pulled the small compass from her pocket. It was one she bought for herself years ago, when she had daydreams of being a good Girl Scout. She checked her direction, gratified to see it still worked as well as it had. She aimed her feet due south, the same way Lucy told her to go when she described how to reach her destination.
She hoped the woman knew what she was talking about.
Ten minutes later, she was glad to spot a small clearing before her. In the center rested a dilapidated building, much older than she expected, waiting for her.
She was dirty, burrs covering everything from the knees down, but the sight of the place made her hopeful despite herself. This was where her father's remains were found, but it was also a where she might be able to find some relief from the aftermath of his demise.
If she could figure out how to use it.
She stepped further into the clearing, swiping her face to rid herself of the web she accidentally walked into. She kept her eyes open, not knowing if, in her visit, she was somehow putting out a call to her father. Was he tied to this place still? Was her walking these steps closer to the building before her going to make him appear?
The cabin was made of wood and looked like it had not seen a trace of human hands for many years. Maybe the clearing it sat in once held the trees that created it, hewn roughly into shape one log at a time.
There was once, in the distant past, a window in the middle of the wall she was facing, but, as she got closer, she realized the pane had fallen away. Shards of it reflected on the ground beneath it. Maybe a summer storm broke it, or, more likely, a product of the age and disrepair of the place simply made it slip out.
Two small steps, cut from the same wood as the rest of the cabin, led up to a modest porch, where an ancient rocking chair sat. It, too, was rough carved, and Sam thought, if she were to try to sit in it, the bones of it would snap beneath her.
The scent of rot was everywhere; the old wood was mouldering as it sat without anyone to care for it, each season bringing the whole thing closer to sinking away. The ground would greedily take it all within itself, eventually leaving no clue there had once been something of human touch there.
Sam mounted the first stair, careful to not put her full weight upon it until she was sure it would hold her. It creaked as the nails keeping it in place groaned loosely, but it did not crack. The second step, as well, held together as she strode.
She scanned around, taking in the clearing behind her, her eyes seeking any sign of movement. But, other than a few bugs floating between spears of grass, there was nothing that she could see.
Half expecting her father to attack the moment she touched the door, she pushed it hard, swinging it wide away from her. It, too, groaned as it moved, revealing the darkened interior.
She did not step immediately inside. Her eyes traced every detail the gloom revealed. There was no movement other than her own and that of the door, and, as the minutes passed, she adjusted to the new light within, streaming weakly through the broken window.
Finally, she took a deep breath to stave off the subtle dread she did not even realize had been building up, and stepped inside.
Though the ceiling above was falling into the interior in some places, for the most part, it surprised her to see the whole thing as intact as it was. Whoever built it had done well, crafting it as a master might. To have the it still standing after so many years of neglect was a testament to the one who did.
While the inside of the place had once obviously been rough but comfortable, it was now home to insects and other small creatures. A few old nests were scattered around and mice had made their quarters more than once. Sam wondered if there was anything waiting for her, but her ears picked up nothing more than the sound of wind drifting across the open window sill.
She was saddened at the state of repair the cabin was in. Someone had spent a lot of energy making sure this was a nice place to be, an escape, perhaps, from the bigger world away from these woods.
Was it her father who built it? For all she knew, his hands were the ones that chopped the trees to make it what it was. And how many hours had he passed here, whiling it with one of the many books she saw in the two racks along the back wall?
There was a fireplace in a corner, a pot-bellied type made of cast iron. It had been a long time since she had seen similar, but it was perfect in this little space. The chimney for it ran out through the ceiling above, but the old wood in that spot had splintered. Some of it still dangled over the stove.
There was a small bed along the other wall; the mattress looked to be somewhat intact, but she had the sense if she sat on it, she might be in for a tetanus shot.
Shelves were some distance from the stove, filled with whatever had been left behind. Most of the cardboard boxes had melted into unrecognizable shapes, and the items they once contained long ago vanished. There were, however, jars of things she could not identify still awaiting exploration, but she was not tempted to open any of them.
Two wood chairs were around a narrow table near the stove, but, other than dust and detritus from whatever had once sat on it, there was nothing there to interest her.
She crossed the room to the bookshelves, looking through the titles not completely covered in filth or unreadable. Most of them seemed to be fiction and, as she pulled away a few to glance through, she was surprised to find they still held together, despite the passage of years and weathering from exposure to the elements
Had her father leafed through these before he died? Had he spent time here reading the little books while a fire flickered in the stove? Which of these pages she flipped were his favorites?
She would never know, but she wondered if she could find a modicum of connection with him by being in this place, this space he might have considered safe.
She unconsciously shrugged her shoulder. In the end, she supposed it did not matter, but she would still have given much to be able to learn.
That version of her father was not what she had to deal with. The one that sat among these tomes, sleeping in the modest bed while a fire burned to keep himself warm in the cold night, was not the father she knew. Instead, she was left with the dregs, the vilest part of himself that she had to not only endure but survive.
It was all so unfair.
She put the books back, avoiding the many that had been chewed into by mice or some other animals in the past and stepped away, her eyes roving across the room.
Why were so many things still there?
If her father died in this place, if his body had been recovered by the Society, as was claimed, then why had they left his belongings in this cabin? Why leave it in the same way it had b
een?
It was, indeed, a shame the building had fallen into disrepair as much as it had, but that was not all there was to it. All of his things, the little pieces that made up his time here, they were all here, maybe even exactly as they were when his body was found.
Wouldn't they have cleaned it out?
Sam pursed her lips as she sunk into one of the chairs in the cramped kitchen, careful to avoid any splintering it might do under her weight. It held fast, relieving the aching in her legs from the long walk and the tension being in there gave her.
Perhaps the Society had removed anything useful from here. There seemed to be nothing that she could really use in her battle against him in the stillness of the space between these four walls.
For all the hope she had when she came to the cabin, she was left with the same problems she had.
She damned her ignorance, frustrated with the lack of knowledge she kept suffering, not knowing where she could turn from here to move forward.
She rested her chin on her hands, her eyes going from corner to corner while the soft whistle of the wind from outside washed over the destroyed window. Small motes of dust shifted slightly with the change in pressure each time the breeze changed, but, beyond that, there was no movement, no indication of what she could do or where to go from here.
So much hope, so much she wanted to have happen, and it all led to this dissolving nothingness.
She closed her eyes for a moment, one of her hands coming to her chest. The ache was still there, though subtle once more.
Sitting there would do her no good, she knew, but the end had come; there was no Lucy here to tell her where to go next. No markers showed her the path she would need to take from here.
It could all have been an elaborate and cruel joke from her father, one ultimate nudge into despair to send her over the edge. A singular kiss goodnight before she would close her eyes for the last time.
Still, perhaps there was something that could come out of all of this. If this was the place he finally gave himself over to the other side, maybe that final gasp of his own breath was left here, somehow, and could be used as the totem in the binding spell. If it, too, failed in this space, then at least she would be able to say she tried.
She could step into her own unknown with that in her mind.
Sam stood, the chair creaking as it sprung back from her weight, and crossed the room to the bed. She touched it, her hand resting on the faded and thin fabric on the mattress. Many years of decay and animals left little remaining undisturbed, but she felt compelled to touch it, regardless. How many times had her father rested his own bones upon this spot? Did he dream of finer places and better days while here?
She wondered if there would ever be a time she could get back to that, herself.
When she turned to walk away, her foot scraped against a spot on the floor where the wood was loose and tripped a bit. Her hands waved uncontrollably for a second as she fought to keep balance, her heart leaping as she did.
Sam stayed on her feet, grateful she did not fall; an image of herself smashing face-first into the wood beneath her flashed in her mind.
She looked down, catching her breath. One of the boards had pried away from the others, with the nails in it removed.
She squinted, bending a little to get a closer look, but, other than the lack of nail to pin it down to the floor, there seemed to be no difference between that board and next. Her curiosity was piqued and she reached down to pull it from the rest.
It came easily, helped, perhaps, by the slight warping the center had taken on and, by the time she was done, it revealed a space beneath it.
She looked at the bottom of the board. Though there was a spot where a nail had once been driven, there was, indeed, no sign of it any longer. It had not been left behind in the floor, either. Wherever it might have gone, it was intentionally removed.
She could see nothing below, however; there was not enough light coming from the room to illuminate whatever was in the space.
She slung the pack from her back and opened it, pulling out the flashlight she kept inside. She set the pack beside her and flipped it on.
A spider skittered off when she pointed it down into the hole and she saw a mass of webs and grime, but there was also something else, small and slightly reflective in contrast to the rest of the space.
She gingerly reached in, willing the bugs to stay away as she did, and pulled the object out. She tossed it to the floor beside her pack and wiped her hand against her jeans, working as much of the old detritus sticking to her off as she could. She kept her eyes on it though, stunned to see it was a leather-bound book.
It had been wrapped in plastic, carefully inserted into the baggie by whoever had put it into the space beneath the floor as a way to protect it. When she picked it up, she tried to pry the plastic apart, but had trouble with the tape used; she finally got it to separate by using her pocket knife, careful to avoid cutting the jacket.
She returned to the chair and sat, putting the book on the table in front of her. The black leather binding it was still supple, kept safe within the confines of the plastic. She guessed it held at least one hundred leafs of paper, but was about half the size of a regular notebook. It looked like something that would be easily carried in a bag or purse without taking up space.
She opened it to the first page and saw handwriting on it, with either black ink or blue that had blackened with age. They were in a language she could not understand.
She turned the page and encountered much the same, and, as she leafed through more of them, she was able to only pick out some recognizable words. The rest reminded her of Latin, though she could not be sure.
Hand-drawn images scattered throughout the book, diagrams and other things that might have been people. Some were of creatures, none of which she could recognize.
Were these entries about his investigations? Were the words on the pages his own thoughts about the encounters he had? The drawings could have been beasts he faced, maps of places she had never been to and could only guess at.
Old paper dust wafted into her nose each time she turned a page, but none crumbled in her fingers as she worked through the book. When she finally neared the end, she began to see more she could recognize, but the way it was written, too, became different.
Instead of the even blocky letters, the handwriting turned more scrawled and out of control. Lazy, perhaps, careless of taking up space.
These, however, she could understand.
Sam read her father's words about being irrational. He felt something inside of himself growing harsher, a cruel streak he could not command, and, more, how he knew it was trying to break free. He had to keep it contained, but he did not know what he could do.
He became more despairing and desperate as the passages went on. How he wrote, too, turned more unstable, making it so she had to read more slowly to catch the meanings.
He was worried, scared for his wife and his child, as well as the infant on the way. Sam's stomach twisted, knowing he meant her. It grew deeper as she continued and, when she saw his words of love for his unborn child, she let go a few tears of her own.
The last entry, the one he wrote before he put the book into the small space for a final time, was about a ritual he discovered in the archives and how desperately he wanted it to succeed, not only for his own sake, but that of his wife and his children.
They don't deserve this. They don't deserve what I have become.
She leafed through it once more, turning the pages more quickly, trying to glean anything else she could from it before she ultimately closed it and let her hands rest on top of the leather cover.
His own ritual failed, leaving him bereft of any sense of the humanity he had when he wrote. The cruel end of his own life became the horrific scenes of hers, and she had to find some way to get out of it.
But if a guy such as him, the great agent of the Black Rose Society, a man who could touch other worlds and come away from
it laughing...
If a man like that could fail so badly and become the nightmare, what chance did she stand?
How could she dream of clawing her own way out of the dark pit of fate she had been cast into?
Chapter 31
Sam turned on the narrow dirt road leading into the orchard, not caring if anyone was around to see her do it.
Dust kicked up in her wake, a rooster tail of debris that blocked any indication it was her, anyway. It would only be a couple of hours before the sun was down, and there were things to be done before the day was through.
She decided - after a short but intense debate with herself - that the next step she needed to take was to once again confront the Black Rose Society. She knew now where the ritual should be; the spot of her father's last gasps in his life had to be potent enough. If she understood the way the magic worked, and that was a big if, the cabin held a much deeper connection to him than Odessa's farm, making the binding to hold his revenant in place stronger. It must work.