Black Horse and Other Strange Stories

by Wyckoff, Jason A.

  He pulled the lighter out from his coat pocket and held it in front of him. He pulled and released the trigger a few times absentmindedly before becoming bored watching the pert and perfect flame salute and disappear. He looked up at the fuzzy moon backlighting high cirrus wisps; he shrugged in meek admiration of the tapestry of country stars and fathomless dark hidden behind. He began to feel the embarrassment he anticipated and knew his ‘adventure’ had stalled. Geordie looked back towards his parents’ house and was surprised that he’d gone further out than he thought. In fact . . . he turned to look where the dinghy was drifting. He was right: one of the small islands that dotted the lake was only a few oar-strokes away.

  The island closest to his parents’ house was the largest in the lake. Geordie’s father had dubbed it the ‘Isle of Russomdom’ on first observation. Though their father had forgotten the pronouncement soon after, Geordie and Denise had found the name sufficiently trite for their entertainment and referred to the island as ‘Russom-dumb’ ever since. The island was slightly larger than a football field. The surface was dense with trees all along the shoreline, but there were several narrow paths that led to two small clearings in the interior. Geordie was familiar with the paths and the clearings, as was nearly anyone who spent an idle summer in their teen years on the lake. Geordie himself had despoiled the natural beauty with several beer cans and cigarette butts only a few seasons ago. He thought it unlikely that anyone was there now, on a November night. And even if there were anyone partying on the island, Geordie thought it unlikely that the revellers would be anyone he knew—it would be a younger group now, new delinquents gathering in ‘their’ spot, feeling wily and proud of their trespass.

  Geordie expected there was no point investigating the interior and no welcome awaiting him there. Nevertheless, he rowed to a familiar tree that curved out over the water. He pulled the oars in and tied the boat to a thin stump. He stretched an arm out and his hand felt the worn smoothness on the top side of the protruding tree-trunk where many hands had grabbed and pulled to elevate their owners up onto the island. In a second, Geordie was on the ground.

  The immediate concern was obvious: The moonlight didn’t penetrate the balding canopy overhead. Geordie brought the safety lighter to life and held it towards the side of his face. As he expected, Geordie saw that the path was still there, recently used, vaguely familiar. The island felt strange to him, though. Geordie blamed it on the small flame; he hadn’t planned on coming to the island, or he would have brought a flashlight with him. As it was, the shifting shadows encroached more closely than he remembered, and Geordie could not deny the element of menace they presented. He didn’t feel the comfort of ownership here he once had. You’re not in Russom-dumb anymore.

  Geordie began to creep down the trail. The crackle of leaves and twigs under his feet seemed inordinately loud to him. You’re not used to the quiet, he reassured himself. Shadows swivelled as Geordie edged forward. His eyes darted back and forth, shooting quick glances into the gloom, watching for imagined threats. He’d never before been nervous like this on the island. You’ve only got a lighter. It’s different. And you’re alone. Geordie wondered if he had too easily dismissed his experience at the beach; perhaps the effects of that brief fright lingered in his subconscious.

  It was a beaver! The epiphany broke over him and flushed away his anxiety. The answer was immediately more satisfying to him than his earlier guess about bags of trash. Geordie didn’t know why the misidentification had continued to trouble him, but he was glad to have corrected the error. Geordie knew that beavers could grow to be quite large, and that they seemed especially big when they were flat against the ground with their bulk spread out. It would have been easy for him to misjudge the creature’s size in the dark, and doubtless he would have estimated it to be larger due to his excitement. Beavers had been a nuisance to the lake in the distant past. The park service had long ago relocated all the natives, but it might be expected that a refugee could wander back into the area on occasion. Geordie wondered if the creature was sick—its breathing had not sounded healthy.

  Geordie saw a light through the trees. So someone is here. He continued his approach, and with a few more steps, he confirmed his suspicion: Someone had built a fire in one of the fire-pits dug out by unknown hands long before Geordie had used them. Geordie released the trigger on the lighter and waved the barrel in the air to cool it down before shoving it back into his pocket. He heard conversation, a woman’s voice, followed by light laughter. The trees thinned out. Geordie saw three figures sitting around the fire. He stepped into the clearing.

  Three young women turned their heads to look at Geordie. They seemed unafraid of him, even unsurprised at his presence. Two of them sat next to each other on a crude bench; the third sat on an orange plastic crate a short distance away. The one on the crate smiled pleasantly at Geordie; the other two smiled, but shared their cunning mirth between themselves. They were all quite attractive and each had her long hair tied back in a loose pile. Geordie guessed the women were all a year or two younger than him. He found the woman on the crate especially beguiling; four freckles on her right cheek and chin formed a constellation on the fair skin rubbed orange by firelight. She seemed familiar to him.

  ‘Are you Todd Younger’s little sister?’ he ventured.

  She exchanged a quick look with the other two. She hesitated a second before assenting, ‘Yes,’ though it seemed clear to Geordie she lied.

  He directed his next question at the others: ‘Do you mind if I join you?’

  ‘Yes!’ they replied in unison. They each waved an open palm for him to sit at the other rough bench opposite, indicating their answer, though contrary, was meant as an invitation.

  As Geordie sat on the damp bench, one of the logs on the fire popped loudly. Someone shrieked delightedly. Geordie said, ‘Sorry,’ though he didn’t know why he was apologising.

  Geordie noted the odd outfits all three women wore: each had on a simple, white dress accented with white lace, a sort of intermediary between a confirmation frock and a wedding gown, beneath a dark-coloured parka emblazoned with the emblem of a sportswear manufacturer. Each wore mid-calf boots with no visible socks or stockings. One of the women on the bench followed Geordie’s gaze and playfully covered the exposed flesh between hem and boot with mock modesty.

  Geordie cleared his throat. ‘I’m Geordie.’

  The two on the bench reached out and grabbed the other’s hands so that all four clasped together between their knees. One whispered in the other’s ear.

  The blonde leaned gawkily towards Geordie, opened her eyes wide, stuck out her chin, and affected a dreadful cockney accent, ‘Colm to sly the draaa-gon, ’ave yer?’

  The others laughed half-disapprovingly. ‘You’re such a spaz,’ one said.

  ‘Theatre geek,’ observed the other.

  ‘Pot!’ accused the blonde.

  ‘Kettle!’ roared the benchmates.

  ‘Shut up,’ the blonde responded as she stood up and took off her parka. She kicked off her boots to reveal bare feet. She grabbed two handfuls of her dress around her hips, and then paused to look at Geordie. ‘Do you want to see me naked?’

  God yes, he thought, but said instead, ‘Won’t you get cold?’

  She tipped her head sideways at the fire, crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue slightly. Geordie felt reprimanded and foolish. She pulled the dress up over her head and let it drop on the ground. She hadn’t anything on underneath.

  Geordie was stunned by her beauty, but embarrassed. He looked at the other two on the bench. He said, ‘I used to come here with her brother.’

  The two on the bench laughed and blurted out together, ‘Why are you looking at us?’

  Geordie considered he might be being rude, reasoning that if a woman strips naked in front of you and dances—she had begun to sway and roll her shoulders—then perhaps you should give her your undivided attention. He admired her lithe form as she rocked back and f
orth and swivelled her torso. His eyes traced from one freckle to another across her skin. She raised her arms up and let her wrists settle behind her neck. Geordie stared at the stretched ovals of her small breasts and wondered how they would feel beneath his hand.

  ‘What do you think of her voice?’ one of the women on the bench nearly shouted.

  Geordie realised he had become so enamoured with the beauty of the nude that he’d failed to notice she was, in fact, singing—mixing velvet humming with honeyed nonsense syllables in a drifting melody. Now he was enamoured by her mouth and her eyelids.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered absently, ‘I must not have heard over the crackling of the fire.’

  The other on the bench over-enunciated the key word in her proclamation, ‘It’s an aboriginal fire!’

  This was extremely funny to the two women, who exploded into laughter. Their outburst seemed to cause the blonde to become suddenly embarrassed; she covered her breasts with one arm as she crouched to retrieve her dress. Geordie thought he could see the blush rise up on her skin even through the aureole patina cast by the fire. He felt despondent watching his nymph disappear beneath the white cloth. By the time she put on her parka he felt certain he would never see her that way again. His arms felt weak and he let them fall to his sides. His jaw ached strangely and he worked it back and forth. He felt immersed in regret, as if he’d failed to do something he was supposed to do, and helpless with the surety that he would have to leave this place far behind before he would realise what hint he’d missed.

  The laughter from the two on the bench trailed off. They looked at Geordie expectantly. He turned to the blonde, seated once again on the crate, and said the only thing he could think to say, ‘Thank you.’

  All three groaned and rolled their eyes.

  ‘Conceited much?’ said the blonde.

  ‘He needs a crown,’ one on the bench observed.

  ‘He most certainly does not,’ argued the other.

  The blonde smiled slyly. ‘Oh, no, I think she’s right.’ She edged forward on the crate and leaned towards the fire, casting a glance towards the others.

  ‘Ah.’ They understood, and mimicked her movements.

  Geordie didn’t understand what they were doing, but he sensed that he’d been judged and found wanting. ‘I’m—I’m very sorry if I said something wrong.’

  ‘Too late!’ The blonde reached forward suddenly and stuck both hands into the rim of the fire. She squealed as she grabbed orange embers covered in grey ash and threw them at Geordie. Sparks erupted and scattered from her hands; chunks of smoking wood bounced off Geordie’s chest and shoulder.

  ‘Hey!’ he protested as he jumped back, but the other two similarly assailed him, squealing with pain and laughter.

  ‘He’s the Cinder King!’ one shouted before jumping up from the fire and running off into the woods opposite Geordie. Her benchmate and the blonde followed, laughing and calling to each other.

  Geordie patted furiously at the ashes dribbling down his coat, growling formless curses.

  The blonde appeared again at the border of the clearing. She asked playfully, ‘Aren’t you coming?’ before rushing back into the woods.

  Geordie went after her. He was embarrassed and confused, but he felt he must not leave the women with a poor impression of him. He heard them tramping through the brush and heard their voices, but he couldn’t see them. He thought he knew where they were going as he’d been on the path to the island’s second clearing many times. Geordie was surprised they could find their way so ably in the dark. Even after he paused to ignite his lighter, he felt compelled to proceed cautiously. The slow pace was agonising to him and he upbraided himself for his hesitancy even as he maintained it. The shuffling of leaves under his feet, the zip of sliding branches against his coat, and his own laboured breathing obscured the sounds of the women’s movements. Geordie stopped and held his breath to try to locate them, but he couldn’t hear them anymore.

  You know where they’re going, he reassured himself. He wondered why it seemed so important to him to catch up with the women. But he continued on the path to the clearing even as his conviction faltered, weakened by the knowledge that he had no idea what he would do when he got there. The blonde’s final encouragement replayed in his mind and he moved on with the shaky belief that he’d know what to do if he could just talk to her again.

  Geordie tripped and fell. The lighter bounced out of his hand when he hit the ground and the flame went out. Geordie panicked in the dark. He stretched out his hand and grabbed at the ground, searching for the smooth plastic of the lighter’s handle. He touched something round and cool and he grasped it excitedly. His fingers informed him he had not found the lighter, but rather the neck of a bottle. Geordie flipped onto his back and looked up. He saw stars between thin cloud rails surrounded by the reaching black fingers of the tree-tops—he was in the second clearing. The sight of the stars relieved some of his anxiety about being in the dark. The shine from the flame had compromised his night vision; he had only to give his eyes a moment to adjust before he expected the scattered moonlight to provide him with sufficient visibility. He sat up and looked straight ahead, waiting for the shape of the lighter to come into view. Already he began to see the detritus of young adult delinquency littering the clearing, and the black, empty fire pit.

  It occurred to Geordie that the women might be waiting for him just outside the circle, to continue their mirthful torment. His voice quavered as he called, ‘Hello?’

  No response came. The air was still, the silence broken only by the sound of Geordie’s breathing. Even the murmur of the lake was lost to him. A shape emerged from the gloom on the far side of the clearing, the size of a seated person on a bench. A chill started to move through Geordie before recognition stilled it: The familiar object was a large stone, inexplicable and unique on the island. It was about four feet high and had a tapered conical shape. Two-thirds of the way up the stone and facing in towards the clearing was a small, natural shelf. Geordie remembered that people would put all sorts of things there, sometimes arbitrarily, sometimes meaningfully. He had never had occasion to put anything on the shelf, but he had scratched his name on the stone with a pocket-knife, as had many others from year to year. Geordie looked down and could make out the silhouette of the lighter against the dark ash in the pit. He picked it up and pulled the trigger. The flame showed Geordie that something was on the rock shelf, and he ambled across the circle to see what it was.

  Geordie couldn’t identify the object. He picked it up and examined it closely before he abruptly dropped the perverse sculpture: It was a foam ball, about the size of a tennis ball, with a corporate logo scratched out—probably a ‘stress ball’ used as a marketing promotion—into which had been stuck the beak (point first) and a single wing from what Geordie guessed had been a crow. Hobbled by its accessories, the ball bounced awkwardly back towards Geordie and came to rest on his foot. He instinctively kicked it away, out into the woods.

  He sighed and released the trigger on the lighter. He felt sure that the women were gone from the island. He considered his situation and felt foolish and disheartened, partly from chasing after three strangers who were clearly enjoying themselves at his expense, even more so from having lost them. But there was a wonder and resonance to Geordie’s sadness that thrilled him: there, in the deep dark, in the cool air, alone in a clearing in the woods on an island in a lake, Geordie felt an incredible yearning, a resolute longing that connected him more to his life than he’d felt in some time. A portentous assessment seemed necessary; Geordie settled on the vaguely satisfactory, I have become part of an endless solitude.

  After several minutes more of drinking in his loneliness, Geordie sighed again and started back along the path. His eyes were now better adjusted to the dark, and he decided to forego the lighter’s guidance. He soon saw the glow from the fire in the first clearing. It seemed greatly diminished, as if he had been gone far longer than he thought. Maybe t
hey went back to put it out? he wondered as he emerged from the trees.

  A noxious stench invaded Geordie’s nostrils and he recoiled. The smell had the spoiled, stale reek of rotting fruit and dead fish but with a sharpness that caused Geordie’s eyes to water. Geordie looked at the fire and saw that the wood had not been covered with dirt or doused with liquid, but rather that the fuel was smeared across the clearing. It looked like something had moved across the fire, smothering half and spreading the embers with its passing. The track, between two and three feet wide with small furrows on the exterior lines, continued out the clearing towards where Geordie had docked the rowboat. Despite the smell, Geordie was riveted to the spot, looking at the track: It was too similar to the track on the rocky beach for him to dismiss as coincidence.

  Geordie circled the remnants of the fire, his nose still buried in the crook of his elbow to guard against the stench. He hurried down the path, thinking, if it wasn’t trash, if it wasn’t a beaver—beavers don’t crawl through fire, for God’s sake—then what was it?!

  Geordie was alarmed by the sound of a splash ahead of him. He was worried one of the women had fallen in the lake. After October’s harsh, enduring cold snap, the water would induce hypothermia if someone stayed in too long. And anyone caught in the water wearing a dress like those the women had worn would have terrible difficulty getting out. He wanted to believe it was one of the women. He wanted to save someone. But no frantic cries followed the splash, and he had to face the alternative immediately—it was that other thing that had disturbed the water. He became afraid but didn’t slow his pace.

  Suddenly the ground dropped away. Geordie’s arms shot overhead and he caught the overhanging branch he had used to lift himself onto the island. He held the branch tightly, dangling over the water. He looked down to see his boat undisturbed. Reassured, Geordie carefully lowered himself.