Etched Deep & Other Dark Impressions

by David Niall Wilson

  Except that she wasn't.

  Mindy stood so still for so long that Janice Wilkins walked over and waved a hand in front of the girl's eyes. Janice smiled, but the expression faded through perplexity to a frown as Mindy ignored her and continued to stare. Janice shook Mindy's shoulder and got no response. She leaned in quickly, glanced around the room to be certain no one was staring at the two of them, and whispered.

  "Mindy," she said. "Earth to Mindy."

  Mindy's receiver was broken, and she did not respond. She stared at the window. Janice stared at Mindy.

  In a dark clearing surrounded on all sides by trees and broken by the entrances to four paths that led off into shadow, Mindy flew.

  The clouds above were silver with moonlight, and below her the trees fell away to a single dark shadow as she soared. Mindy arched her back and banked into a dive. She saw the trees more clearly again, growing larger and closer. Wind whistled past her ears and dragged her hair behind her like the tail of a kite. Her heart raced.

  Then she was through the upper branches and sliced cleanly between trunks and limbs, diving so close to the earth that she saw the shadowy, grey-shade flowers and shrubs that lined the clearing. She shot across, then back up again in a spiraling loop. She was afraid to stop moving–afraid because she didn't know what she was doing to keep moving–afraid because she was so high above such a dark, unfamiliar place–afraid because someone whispered in her ear, breaking through the wind, and it was the wind, after all, that held her aloft and kept her safe.

  "Earth to Mindy," the voice whispered.

  Mindy fainted.

  They brought her ice water and a damp cloth. They told her to elevate her feet, and wrapped her in a warm blanket. They stood in a circle around her, wrung their hands nervously and watched the clock. In an hour it would be 3:30 and Mindy's mother would take her home.

  They were gathered in the gymnasium. Brilliantly colored streamers burst from the center of the high ceiling and drooped in curling loops to the walls. A ball of silver mirror chips spun in the center. Afternoon sunlight shone through the windows and sent sparkles of light dancing over the walls and floor.

  Mindy sat on the bleachers with her feet elevated as directed, wrapped in the blanket with a glass of ice water at her side and watched the lights. She didn't speak to anyone around her–she was too embarrassed. They said she'd been standing in the middle of the room, staring off into space, but she remembered none of it.

  Whispered voices roamed through the back of her thoughts, plucking them one by one so she could concentrate on none. She thought of trees, slicing up into the sky and of birds. The breeze from an open door caught the hairs at the base of her neck and lifted them gently; they settled as the door closed. More voices echoed, external this time, and Mindy turned her head.

  Her mother huddled close to Coach Reshard, who had an arm protectively around her shoulder. He whispered in her ear and she nodded in time. The two matched steps as though the moment were choreographed. Someone whispered in Mindy's ear that the two were talking about her, but when she turned there was no one there. Only the reflected glimmers from the disco ball in the center of the gym ceiling dancing on the wall met her gaze, and they said nothing.

  "Are you okay, dear?" Her mother asked solicitously.

  Mindy noted that Coach Reshard's arm was still about her mother's shoulder, and that her mother did not object. She didn't scan the gymnasium to see if others had noticed. Of course they had; teenagers miss nothing. They understand little, they hate everything, but they miss nothing.

  "I'm okay," Mindy replied. Her words were so soft she could not hear herself speak. Her mother heard, or read her lips, or didn't care, and it was all the same.

  Mindy rose and Coach Reshard reluctantly stepped aside as Mindy's mother took her arm.

  "Coach Reshard?" a soft, lilting voice spoke timidly.

  The three of them turned. It was Sandy Preston, a tiny wisp of a girl who wore sundresses and braided her hair. Her slender ankles were wrapped in the delicate straps of Greek style sandals. Her eyes were wide.

  "What is it, Sandy?" Coach Reshard's voice was stern. He leaned toward Mindy's mother, as if to offer more support.

  "It's Todd," the girl replied. "Have you seen him?"

  Todd was Sandy's older brother. He was Mindy's age, tall and nearly as slender as his sister. He had a hooked nose like a buzzard and thick-framed glasses that added to his bird-like qualities. His eyes glittered behind too-thick lenses, and they burned. He often watched Mindy's legs until she felt sunlight focus through the glass and burn her flesh. Sometimes she watched him burn holes in others.

  "No," Coach Reshard replied. "I haven't seen him in about half an hour."

  Mindy's mother led her toward the door and away. Coach Reshard leaned in their direction, as if some physical connection had stretched, and then broken. He snapped back to Sandy; Mindy and her mother snapped toward the door. A few heads turned. Mindy was glad that Todd the buzzard would not be watching her legs as she left. She wondered if he would have watched her–or her mother. She knew which of them Coach Reshard watched.

  The drive home was silent. Mindy climbed out without a word to her mother, grabbed her things, and ran to her room. Her mother ran to the kitchen, then to the television, and the phone. Mindy's dad wouldn't be home for another two days, but Coach Reshard…

  Mindy threw her book and gym bags onto her bed and sat at her desk. Her window faced the back yard. She stared out past her old swing set, the chains rusted now and the plastic seat half-cracked in two. Beyond their yard and across a churchyard there was a band of trees that lined a golf course. It reminded Mindy of the forest.

  The phone rang. Footsteps approached and Mindy heard her mother's voice in the hall. The words were soft, but Mindy heard.

  "Oh my God, John."

  Coach Reshard's name was John.

  "When…are you sure? Oh my God…"

  As her mother prayed, Mindy drifted. The chair fell away behind her. She dangled her arms and used them to balance on the breeze. Subtle shifts lent altitude and angle to her flight. The sunlight shimmered and died as she soared above the trees and circled.

  Far below her mother's voice echoed.

  "Oh my God."

  Mindy dove. The trees spiraled inward, starting as a thick wall and thinning as they wound toward some unseen core. She followed the spiral and wondered who had planted it. She dove lower and skimmed the upper branches, dipped and flashed between trunks, slid sinuously over branches and back up again. She flew like dolphins swim, and always she wound inward. Tighter. Like the spring of a clock, her passing drew the trees behind her and held them taut. As she neared the center of the coil, the tension eased. The line of trees flowed behind her, swayed upright and then whipped back in a line, never touching one another as they snapped first one way, then the other, and finally came to rest.

  In the center she turned up and flew toward the sky through a tunnel of green leaves and dark limbs. Just as she turned, she caught a flash of color, and it stuck with her as she rose, reached a peak, and flipped, dropping into a graceful swan dive toward the center of the clearing. None of it was powered by her thoughts. She moved. If she stopped moving, she would fall. She knew this, but did not know how she kept moving. She didn't know how not to fall.

  In the center of the clearing a new sapling had sprung from the earth. Colored streamers hung from its tip. They flowed up and out and fluttered in a breeze that Mindy couldn't feel. She was moving too fast, making her own breeze. She wondered how the streamers had gotten here, so far from the gym, and where was the disco ball? She cut to her left, broke into a sweeping curve that brought her very close to the ring of trees, but not touching. She spun down at dizzying speed.

  The sapling took form and thickened, sprouted dark hair. She pulled out of the dive to flash inches above the ground and turned directly toward the intruding growth.

  She pulled up from the earth and launched skyward once again
, turned short of the sapling and slipped up its length. She passed the center where a root wound round and round and protruded at an obscene angle, hard and dripping with sap. She gasped and in that instant passed face-to-face with Todd the Buzzard. He glared at her through too-thick lenses and ran his fat, wet tongue over his lips.

  Mindy cried out and arched, hurtling toward the trees. She closed her eyes, and…

  "I have to go out for a while, dear."

  Mindy's mother's voice cracked and ran in myriad directions at once. It dripped concern. It was flushed with excitement. It hid secrets, but held no real concern for Mindy.

  Mindy nodded.

  "There are frozen dinners," her mother continued. "I shouldn't be too late. They still haven't found that boy–you know the one, Todd…"

  "Preston." Mindy finished, hoping the finality would paste itself to her mother's departure and drive her away.

  "The Buzzard," Mindy added. Her voice was very soft, not really meant to be heard.

  "Excuse me?" her mother asked.

  Mindy said nothing. She turned to the math textbook on her desk and put on a character-actor performance. She portrayed a student. Her mother clucked her tongue, spun on heels too tall for searching for lost boys and too short to scream impropriety. Moments later the door shut with a loud Click!

  Alone, Mindy closed the math book, shoved it aside, and walked to her bed. She wasn't hungry, and she loathed the microwave dinners her mother kept piled in the freezer. When her father was home, the freezer held ice cream and neatly stacked packets of frozen vegetables. Some mothers were talented at bringing complex five course meals to the table, all warm and fresh and ready to serve. Mindy's mother could plan the freezer space to allow for three tightly packed rows of microwave meals the same day her father left on business.

  Mindy wondered if Coach Reshard ate microwave meals. She wondered if his freezer was the antithesis of theirs, full of vegetable packets and ice cream only when Mindy's father was out of town.

  Mindy lay back on her bed. The soft feather pillow her father had given her for Christmas formed itself to the shape of her head and slid up to cover her ears. The down muffled all sound but a roaring in her ears. Mindy closed her eyes.

  The feathers in the pillow were restless. They remembered the sky, wind whistling through and beneath them, ruffling them and driving them aloft. Mindy felt them buoy her up, head and shoulders first, until she floated over the bed. Then the bed and the room dropped away. The pillow tore and the feathers floated out around her. They tickled her arms and legs and teased over the back of her neck. Two large, grey and white feathers drifted across her eyes and dimmed her vision.

  The room dissolved into fluffy white clouds. The feathers coated her skin, slick and smooth. They rustled in the breeze. Mindy turned and knifed through the clouds. Moments later she broke through into a gray sky and soared above the trees. Lights winked at her in the distance.

  From her vantage point the forest was a great whirling Nautilus shell of greenery, winding inward to a hollow center. Mindy remembered flying that spiral, and she smiled. This time she cut to the quick. Darting straight down, she drove toward the center of the woods. She was an arrow, pillow feathers flocked the shaft of her body. The clearing rose through the branches, a tall cylindrical column with branches and leaves for walls and at its root?

  She dove, oblivious to the ground below or the sky above. In the center of the clearing the sapling had grown taller. It had grown more disgusting. The root jutted from the center of the young tree's trunk nearly back to the ground. Sap dripped obscenely from its tip in a string that bridged the short distance to the tips of the blades of dark grass. Mindy ignored it and dove. She stopped so close to the Earth that grass tickled her, even through the coating of new feathers. Knees dropping first, she pressed into the earth at the foot of the sapling and trailed her gaze up its length. She was careful not to get too close to the dripping root.

  When her eyes locked onto twin knotholes above a beak-shaped broken branch, she saw that they met her gaze with hunger. Black dots of intensity floated in their depths, and trailed down her body. A worm, unaware of her presence, stuck its head from a crack in the bark, just beneath the broken branch beak. It lolled to one side, then the other, as though dampening bark lips. As though hungry.

  She dropped her gaze and watched the root ooze new sap.

  She rose to her feet and felt her feathers ruffle. The black dot eyes followed her motion. She reached out with thumb and index finger and plucked the worm from its crevasse. The sapling shivered. Moisture leaked from the twin knotholes, but she didn't care.

  Mindy raised her eyes to the sky. She gave a great cry, mournful as an owl and predatory as any falcon. She raised her foot, kicked it down, and snapped the root off at its base. She felt the slick, viscous fluid on the ball of her foot and wiped it in the grass. She kicked off and caught the breeze. She rose in a spiral, gathering speed until she burst free of the trees and banked off toward the distant twinkle of city lights.

  Mindy woke to the sound of crunching gravel. She sat up when she heard the kitchen door open, and then close stealthily. She clutched her pillow tightly, and found the seams intact. One sharp shaft pricked her arm, and she gripped it, drawing it out through layers of cloth and pillowcase to rest in her palm.

  She heard steps in the hall and saw shadows shift, and then her mother stood in the doorway to her room, looking in.

  "You're awake," her mother said.

  Mindy said nothing. She tried not to imagine the scent of leaves, and of sap. She tried not to feel the weight of wood and root cracking against the ball of her foot. Her skin tingled.

  "They found that boy," her mother said. The tone of the words indicated compassion, but it felt forced.

  "He was in the woods. Alone. He…"

  Mindy turned away.

  "He'd been through a lot." Her mother concluded. "He's alive, but his mind…"

  "Snapped off at the root," Mindy whispered.

  "What?" Her mother's voice was sharp and brittle. The concern in it snapped like glass and was gone.

  "How is Coach Reshard?" Mindy asked.

  Her mother's shadowed form grew rigid. Mindy heard long, pampered nails dig into the wooden frame of the door. Her mother's indrawn breath was a sudden hiss.

  "He found the boy," her mother said at last. "He brought him back."

  Mindy nodded. "You too, mother? Did you bring him back?"

  A soft, impatient stamp of her foot, and Mindy's mother shifted the subject. "The boy was found with feathers. Can you imagine? Buzzard feathers. He had them in his…clothes. He…"

  "Do you ever dream of flying, mother?"

  Silence.

  "Do you think Coach Reshard dreams of flying?"

  "Honestly," her mother said softly, spinning on her heel and escaping. "I don't know why I talk to you."

  Silence fell again, and Mindy lay back on her bed. She placed the single loose feather against her cheek, pressed it into her pillow, and she slept.

  In the dark, with a colored spotlight trained on the spinning, mirror-shard-coated disco ball, the gymnasium was a fairyland of whirling lights and dancing couples. Long tables with cookies and punch bowls lined one wall near the door, far away from the dance floor. Mindy stood at one end of the table.

  She stared up and out a high window. The window was a flat pane of darkness. Mindy didn't see it, and nobody saw Mindy. She stood alone with her cup of punch and the crowd milled around her, lost in a myriad of tiny, two and three person worlds of which she was no part.

  Mindy's mother had volunteered to chaperone. She stood in the doorway, staring out over the parking lot. Then she turned and came to stand beside her daughter.

  "What are you staring at?" her mother asked.

  Mindy said nothing. She gave no indication she'd heard the question.

  "Why don't you dance?"

  Mindy's mother stepped in front of her daughter and stared deep into the girl's p
lacid, far-away eyes. Her stomach shifted and she thought of the downside swing of a Ferris wheel. She heard something. A screech of feedback from the DJ? The cry of a bird.

  "Have you seen Coach Reshard," her mother asked softly. "He was here, and then…"

  Mindy stared out the window into the dark night sky.

  Her mother turned away, moving back toward the door. In turning, she missed the flutter of white, glittering feathers dropping from the mirror-light splendor of the gymnasium sky.

  Mindy soared.

  CLAMDIGGER

  A Three Word Challenge Poem

  Clamdigger / Slope / Centrifugal

  He'd fallen on hard times.

  The restaurant up the beach kept him

  In hooch if he produced.

  He worked in the evenings,

  Or very early mornings,

  Before the kids started in,

  Roaring up and down the boardwalk,

  Rushing screaming into the waves,

  Surfboards in hand,

  Cruel smiles on their lips.

  They threw things at him.

  They called him Ol' Clamdigger

  And spilled his bottle when they could.

  He followed the gentle slope of dunes

  Down to the crashing waves.

  He took his spade and plunged it deep,

  Felt the wet suck of sand on the blade.

  Water poured into the hole like a whirlpool,

  Centrifugal force fought his efforts.

  He found them on the third stroke of the spade,

  Turned them up and started down the beach,

  Tossing them into his basket and dreaming

  Of a time before his one love was named Rose,

  Wild and Irish, before his sneakers shared his

  Lack of soul. Before he was nothing,