by Anthology
But the tree never had fruited. It grew strong, even grafted all right, but not a single blossom drew the bees and other pollinators. They couldn't figure out just what sort of magic the tinpots bound up in the tree. Yuna found herself wondering now: if this tree weren't calling bees, if it was off-kilter from their meddling, could it be calling something else?
Yuna shook her head. Chick was an idiot. She wasn't about to take science advice from a man who didn't have the sense to keep his face out of a briar patch. She felt a touch sorry for Ruthie, stuck on a longer ride with him, but knew soon enough she'd be home to Abe.
Yuna smiled and shook her head. There was a time Ruthie had been a bit unsure about Abe; then again, Abe felt the same about Ruthie. But given they were both sweet on Yuna—and Yuna just wasn't built to give either of them what they wanted in that regard, though she loved them both dearly—it seemed the best plan for everyone as far as Yuna was concerned. And the wedding bells had proved her right, now, hadn’t they?
Yuna set a kettle to boil. Then she went to light some lanterns as red turned purple turned moonlight gray outside.
***
With the jackalope chase abandoned at the interruption, for a moment Yuna hadn't seen the widow Wacéda at the edge of the grove. She had the same strong, wide stance she always did. The blues and reds of her leggings were bright as usual, like the vermillion she used in the part of her long, black hair. Then Yuna saw the sag in her shoulders. Stray hairs clung in the mourning clay caked over her face. Clay that was dry and cracked, except for the streaks in it that spread out from under Wacéda's eyes.
"Jackalopes love whiskey," Wacéda said after all three women had been standing around staring at each other for much too long.
"Wacéda," Yuna said, like it was a race to get the next word out. "I…oh, darling, come inside and get off your feet," she said. Ruthie was already running for the door.
"I'll put on some tea," Ruthie called back.
"Pie," Wacéda said as the screen banged closed. Then it was just the two of them.
"Whiskey pie?" Yuna asked.
Wacéda smiled. It was thin, and ran away from the light as soon as it showed, but Yuna caught it. She walked over to the widow, took her shoulders in her hands, and squeezed just a little. Yuna wanted to hug her, but there surely was a pie in the woman's hands.
"Rhubarb," Wacéda corrected. She held the pie out. "Henry made it, but it'll go bad before I can eat again, and…" she bit her lip as she jabbed her chin toward the front door. "Ruthie shouldn't make tea on my account. I can't drink it anyhow."
Yuna nodded. She remembered how she had to calm Henry when Wacéda got news her brother passed. Four days fasting never hurt anybody, she assured him. He'd been about to argue when she tapped his belly and told him he could probably do with a day or two, himself. He'd stomped off like a schoolboy told he couldn't go fishing on a Saturday morning.
"Ruthie makes tea every time the wind changes," Yuna said, slipping an arm into the crook of her visitor's. "Lets her check my larder. Abe's always eating the sweets out from under her, so she pays me back for introducing her and Abe by sneaking some of mine. If she wasn't the one who cultivated the tea in the first place, I'd have to scold her for how much of it we pour out every day."
Wacéda looked down. It wasn't a smile this time, but Yuna thought she felt her arm relax just a titch.
"Drink or no, it makes the place smell good, and good smells can be good for a body, so what say you and the pie come inside, and Ruthie and I'll have tea while you tell us about jackalopes and whiskey?"
The tension came back when Yuna mentioned talking, but Wacéda shrugged.
"You're the doctor," she muttered.
"So I am," Yuna said. She urged Wacéda toward the door. Though the widow dragged her feet a bit, she came along.
***
Yuna didn't realize just how tense she'd gotten sifting through the past until the kettle whistled and she nearly smacked her head on the ceiling by jumping. She pulled the kettle off the stove and added leaves. This batch actually was from a graft with the Seeder tree. Didn't work the kind of miracles Seeder fruit could, but as Yuna breathed in the scent a moment while it steeped, she felt some of her tension melt. Sometimes Ruthie's tea-for-everything notions weren't all wrong.
That didn't stop Yuna from jumping again at the pounding on the door.
"Yuna?"
Yuna frowned and hurried to the door.
"Ruthie," she chided as she opened it. "You're like to have scared me out of my—"
Yuna's throat closed up as she caught sight of Ruthie. Candlelight flickered across her eyes, empty and haggard. She swayed a bit, holding herself, rubbing the dark, red stains on her hands into the calico of her blouse.
"Abe's dead, Yuna," Ruthie said before Yuna could find her voice. She walked past Yuna. By the time Yuna had the sense to scramble after her, Ruthie was staring out the big back window, into the dark of the grove. Yuna stopped just inside the room when Ruthie spoke.
"I used to tease you," Ruthie said, looking out into the grove, "didn't make sense to me how your door couldn't swing either way, especially with a couple of catches like Abe and me around. But now…I think you know better than the rest of us. Can't lose anybody, the way you are."
Yuna shook off the sting of the old talk. It didn't matter right now. "Ruthie, are you all…is the sheriff with you?" she asked softly.
Ruthie laughed, but there was no mirth in it. It was a loud, braying thing that smacked against the walls, then fell to nothing as quick as it came.
"Dead, too," Ruthie said, her tone flat like she was just declaring the grass green.
"Lord, Ruthie," Yuna whispered. She started across the room, her stomach falling out inside her. "Hidebehind got both—?"
"I killed him," Ruthie said. Yuna's legs locked up on her. "Stabbed him right in the eye, good and proper."
Yuna's stomach came back with a knotted cramp. Her throat closed up again.
Seem like a strange coincidence to you that the two trees that drew a hidebehind came from your grove?
No.
Toxin of one stripe or another.
It wasn't…no.
Gave him some of the new rhubarb…
She knew Ruthie. Knew her better than anyone.
Abe's dead, Yuna.
Anyone still alive.
"Ruthie, I want you to remember how long you and me have been friends," Yuna croaked out. Words. That was good. Now if she could just make them sound like she wasn't a body dried up in the desert.
"Seven years," Ruthie said, cocking her head as she watched the darkness outside. "About how long some folks say a hidebehind can go before it needs to feed each time. A body wonders: what's a critter like that do in the meantime? Suppose it sleeps all that while, or does it just go docile? Turn friendly once it's filled itself up?
"Hidebehind," Ruthie gave a soft chuckle when she said it this time. "Hell of a thing, isn't it? So fast it can't be seen, except by those poor folks it eats the insides out of."
"That's how I understand it," Yuna said, rubbing her hands along her arms.
"Seems like scientists ought to have better logic than that," Ruthie said, shifting her weight. The moonlight quivered where it fell in the window, mixing with the shadows at play in the tight curls on the back of Ruthie's head.
Yuna opened her mouth to answer, but all that came out was a squeak. She cleared her throat, swallowed, felt the lab table pressing into the small of her back as she realized she was leaning further away.
"You see the big flaw in that narrative, right?" Ruthie said, glancing back to Yuna for just a titch before staring back out into the grove.
Yuna just nodded, one hand sliding behind her, searching blindly on the surface of the table. She caught a glint of metal from something Ruthie was holding in front of her, at just the wrong angle to make out what contraption it might be.
Knife. You know it's a knife.
"If the only people who ever see
a hidebehind are its victims," Ruthie said. "How would anyone know what it looks like at all, let alone that it was a critter?"
Yuna saw the blade as Ruthie turned to face her. Ruthie's eyes seemed drawn to it, to the silver marred by what must have been red, but in the moonlight just looked black as oil. The quiver of moonlight and shadow played on Ruthie's face. Yuna's hand closed around…to be honest, she didn't know what, and didn't trust herself to look away and find out.
"A jackalope can sound just like folk, so it's not like nature doesn't know how to make a good mimic. What if," Ruthie kept on, turning the blade loosely in her hand as she meandered across the room to Yuna, "the reason no one's ever laid eyes on a critter that could be a hidebehind, is because they look just like folk?"
Yuna's eyes felt hot. She itched on the crown of her head and behind the knees.
"Ruthie, please," Yuna whispered as Ruthie's frown deepened. Ruthie stopped moving, her gaze slowly drifting up to meet Yuna's. Everything looked empty behind her eyes.
Yuna didn't wait for the flashing metal to move. She lashed out with what she'd grabbed. Pestle, it turned out as Yuna smacked Ruthie across the skull with it.
She ran as soon as she heard the crack of it, didn't wait to see if Ruthie crumpled or changed. A hidebehind was faster than anything, but Yuna ran anyway.
The closest door outside was the one to the orchard. Yuna slammed it open and barreled into the moonlit night. She swerved between a row of ash trees, stumbled but didn't fall when she snagged a sleeve on a mulberry branch. Then she caught sight of Chick, and nearly ran right into the shovel planted in the soft earth. She dodged just in time, then gaped at the sheriff.
Ruthie hadn't lied: Yuna could see, in the slashes of moonlight falling through the leaves from the Seeder tree, the bloody hole where the sheriff's left eye ought to be. But there the man stood, otherwise looking right as anything. He even smiled.
"Charlie…Ruthie, she's…lord are you all right?"
"I'm tougher than you gals give me credit for," Chick said, swaggering up to Yuna. He jabbed his sharp nose back toward the house. "Ruthie's back up there, then?"
Yuna nodded. "I must have knocked her out, or else she'd already be on me. God, Charlie, how are you even upright?"
Chick laughed and shook his head. Yuna's cheeks throbbed with her pulse.
"Listen to me, Charlie," Yuna insisted, grabbing him by the shoulders. "I think you're in shock, or maybe Ruthie slipped you something, like Henry Johannes' rhubarb or whatever paralytic she used on Nat. Ruthie'd know the right plants. But this won't last. We need to treat this before you bleed out or…ow!"
Yuna yanked her hands off the sheriff's shoulders as something sharp dug into her palms.
The sheriff cocked his head and smiled. Yuna felt a chill as she saw the tiny cuts on her hands, looked back to see something spiky on his shoulders. Another something started wiggling behind the wound in his eye.
"That Ruthie, she's a quick thinker," Chick said. "Year or so ago, when there was still enough left inside this one, it might have killed him, that stab to the brain. Hell, you ever really took a look at his bellyache, that might have stopped me even sooner."
Yuna felt her own belly knot as a vine started snaking out of the bloody wound where Chick's eye used to be. Thorns along its length opened the wound wider.
"Now? Not much of anything can hurt me."
"Charlie, don't do this," Yuna said, taking a few steps back.
"Don't do this," Yuna's voice called again, somewhere behind the sheriff. He turned to look to the other voice long enough for Yuna to get her hands around the shovel. She smacked him across the face with it as he turned back.
Chick stumbled. Yuna hit him again. And again. She tried not to listen to the wet, heavy thunk as she smashed the shovel into his head, sent him reeling back. He reached out to steady himself. Though he'd made nearly no noise before, the sheriff screamed as his hand grabbed the bark of the Seeder tree for support. The tree, for its part, seemed to shudder at the touch.
Chick tried to pull away, but his hand might as well have been stuck with hot tar. He yanked and shrieked, the thorny vine twisting in the air where it peeked out from his eye. The briar vine ripped back inside Chick, and the sheriff's whole body seemed to ripple.
He stopped screaming. Stopped making any noise a body who talked ought to make. There were just more wet, tearing noises. Yuna dropped the shovel, numb as she watched the ends of Charlie Lightle start to fall in on themselves. His hands and feet went flat as a child's balloon once it's popped. His face—what was left of it—shriveled. Legs and arms and knees and elbows were nothing but a wrinkled sack of skin collapsing.
His middle, though, swelled and writhed as whatever it was inside him pulled itself tight and close. Then it ripped through, about where the bottom half of Chick's belly used to be. The vine wriggled its way out of the opening it made with its wicked thorns. Grew its way out of the skin sack. It coiled on the ground, a wild, nasty heap of bramble that pulsed in the play of moonlight through leaves.
When Yuna's knees gave out, she realized it wasn't shock numbing her. She looked down, to the punctures on her hands, and remembered the same shape to the ones on Nat.
The thorn vine started to rise up, taller than Chick stood, the top end swaying, then bending toward Yuna. A stupid little piece of briar, hiding behind the sheriff's face. Now it wanted Yuna's, and she could barely keep herself upright.
"Jonni grow!" called Ruthie's voice, but Yuna knew the jackalope wouldn't distract the thing a second time, whether it called out Seeder blessings or some other nonsense.
"I said jonni grow you overgrown weed!" Ruthie yelled, grabbing the base of the bramble with her gardening gloves and shoving it against the trunk of the Seeder tree.
The vine shot forward. Yuna couldn't even bring her arms up, though thorns that cut giant flesh would have shredded her own easy enough, anyway.
But the vine stopped short of her, whipped itself straight up, then slammed into the ground. And again. Thrashed about, full of all the strength that must have taken Henry, Natalie, Chick…Charlie. Back and forth, whipping and writhing, but there wasn't a body to leave behind this time. Thorns stuck in the bark of the Seeder tree well and good, and as Ruthie ran into Yuna's fuzzy view to drag her backward, the tree wasn't letting go.
Ruthie poured something warm in Yuna's mouth. It burned on the way down, but worked quickly. The edges of Yuna's vision came back.
"Saw what happened when he touched the tree," Ruthie said. "Figured had to hurt even more without skin between it and—"
The feeling now back in her arms, Yuna hugged Ruthie close. Ruthie hugged her back, and Yuna felt the catch in her throat open up again.
They sat there, propping each other up, until the hidebehind stopped convulsing. They held on as it withered and shrank to a tiny string of nothing. Neither one of them could breathe properly until the hidebehind crumbled into dust and blew away.
***
"And it won't…Henry won't…?" Wacéda asked. It was the day after the hidebehind met the tree. Wacéda's mourning mud was washed away, though Ruthie was in her own black, now. She wouldn't talk about Abe, wanted to focus on cleaning up the mess and the trouble. Yuna thought it better she faced what was gone. But then, Yuna wasn't nearly as convinced she had the best ideas any more.
There was tea, because Ruthie figured no widow should hear this story if she couldn't have tea to calm her nerves. Yuna's contribution was the whiskey mixed in each cup.
Yuna shook her head. "When it took the sheriff, it left him alive," she said. "Far's we can tell, when it went after Henry, it wasn't after a new skin—"
"—host," Ruthie offered the softer word. Yuna nodded.
Wacéda knelt by the small mound of fresh earth, though she didn't touch it. They'd buried what was left of Charlie near the tree. Just in case. Ruthie squeezed Yuna's elbow. Yuna placed her hand over Ruthie's.
Wacéda stood, glancing up at the branches. Then s
he frowned. "That's new, isn't it?"
"What?" Yuna and Ruthie asked in unison. They didn't need to look to each other to feel a joint panic that the hidebehind might not have all shriveled. One of the teacups tipped over, but neither lady bothered with it until they could see.
"There," Wacéda said, pointing to one of the lower branches. Yuna shaded her eyes and caught sight of it just as she heard Ruthie's gasp.
"Blossom buds," Ruthie said.
"Well, I never," Yuna added.
"Never!" called another Yuna voice close behind them. All three women whipped around, where a four point jackalope cocked its head at them a moment, then went back to lapping up the tea mixed with whiskey where it had spilled.
Paul B. Kohler
http://www.paulkohler.net
Rememorations(Short story)
by Paul B. Kohler
Future Chronicles
The sign on the door read THE LAZARUS CENTER FOR EXTENDED LIVING in brushed silver letters. Although it looked somewhat familiar, Nathan couldn’t be entirely sure he was in the right place. He hesitated briefly before grasping the antique brass handle and walking into a richly decorated anteroom. Besides the newer snow-white carpet, the room looked like it hadn’t been updated in centuries. The warm sensation of being surrounded by aged wood panel walls and antiquated leather-bound furniture was comforting, and he felt the twinkling of déjà vu course through him.
The sound of the door latching behind him made him jump. When he turned toward the sound, he found a woman sitting behind a desk, staring back at him. She smiled and nodded her head in greeting.
“It’s good to see you again, Mr. Duncan,” she said.
Nathan nodded, frantically sprinting through his memory for her name. He knew he’d met her before, when he’d first visited the center. Has to be close to 70 years since I first walked into this place, he thought.
“Yes. Good to see you…again.” He paused. “I’m sorry, but for the life of me, I can’t remember your name,” Nathan said.
“That’s quite alright, Mr. Duncan. I’m Nancy. I remember you from your initial enrollment back in 2065. I have your records right here,” Nancy said. A holo-screen appeared in mid-air over her right shoulder, showing Nathan’s profile and scrolling statistics.