“It feels light,” Sam said.
“No strength left it in either,” Maul added. Sam handed the piece back after a few moments and Maul looked at it once and then tossed it to the ground. “No use to me now.”
“Like I say, when I get home this afternoon I’ll have a look through my books and see if I can find anything,” Sam said.
“I’d appreciate it,” Maul said. The anger he was feeling was letting go to despair, and he saw his life going away from him.
“How much of your land is affected?” Sam asked just as he was about to leave.
“All of it,” Maul said.
“You thinking you might need to move?” It had been said in innocence but Maul only heard the idea behind the words — the leaving of his land. He lunged forward and grabbed Sam by the shirtfront,
“I’ll never give up that land!” he shouted into the younger man’s stunned face. A wild idea raged in Maul’s mind. “Did someone do this me?” he asked.
“What are you talking about?” Sam asked reeling on the slope and trying to get his footing.
“Did someone give this disease to my trees on purpose?”
“What?”
“Tell me the truth!” Maul roared, and he pushed at Sam and lost grip on his shirt. Sam stumbled backwards a few feet before losing his balance and falling head over heels down the hill ending up about twenty feet below Maul.
“You’re fucking crazy!” Sam shouted back at him as he scrambled to his feet, expecting the wild man to bear down on him. Maul stood there looking down at him an urge to do violence abating since seeing him fall down the incline. “No one is out to get you!” Sam shouted at him before turning his back and walking away.
Maul stood there for a long time, long after he could no longer see Sam. It wasn’t Sam’s fault, he admitted, but the thought lingered that someone might have done this to his land. Hadn’t his father told him from the day he could listen that this town wanted them gone? That was the way of things around here, and he supposed he had no reason to think it had ever changed. No matter what had happened, the trees on his land were almost all dead and soon the rest of the forest would go the same way. His life was changing and there was nothing he could do about it.
Chapter 4
Another week passed and Maul Thorndean was not surprised to find there had been no visit from Sam Brainard with news of the disease afflicting the trees. It was a lost cause now as far as he could see. The only chance was that the disease would run out of steam or the remaining trees might be able to grow some tolerance to it and push back. It was looking doubtful but Maul knew it was not impossible. In the meantime, all he could do was go on living as before and hope.
One morning he went hunting for something to pass the time and take his mind from the problem. He went far from his own land, and even his own usual hunting grounds and ended up close to the old mine entrance. The wooden beams that closed it off looked worn and rotten and he could see that some kind of animal had made a hole in it and was probably living inside. Maul could only imagine how many creatures might use such a thing as this disused mine shaft as a home. If he really wanted to all he would have to do was to wait a little distance off and shoot whatever came out. There was no sport in that, however, and even less to take his mind from his problems.
From where he stood now, he could see down on the town, the few building spread around. It was cold today and there didn’t seem to be anyone around down there. Maul found it hard to see through the trees properly but he felt he could see the back of the tavern. He'd like to go down there and have a drink but knew this wasn’t an option. He never ceased to have trouble in that town and if alcohol was thrown into the mix, he could end up killing one of them idiots down there. A vicious thought came to him just then — what did it matter if he did? There was nothing to hold his hand here now if his land and ability to find food would soon disappear.
The thought of doing harm to the people of Mercy sent a surge of power through him that took him utterly unexpectedly. Before he knew what he was doing, his hands, like acting independently of his brain, lifted the rifle and he aimed down at the street below. Still no one was in sight and he had to wonder if someone had appeared would his body have acted without him and pulled the trigger? His whole body was shaking in anger and he found that he was hoping someone would appear so he could find out. Something rattled in the low brush nearby but he didn’t look to see what it was.
A new feeling came over Maul then, something that felt like slime on his skeleton. It was sickening, and he felt sweat on his brow. It was the feeling of eyes on him, someone watching him, and this was something that Maul didn’t like at all. He scanned below and looked for the person he knew was observing him. His grip on the gun firmed up and his finger touched lightly on the trigger.
“Where are you fucker!” he whispered harshly. His blood was close to boiling now, and he knew he would take the shot if the target presented. His mind was clouding over, what the hell did it matter what he did now! He wanted it to be Mouse Allen or the prick from the general store; that would be worth it. Joe Moorefield would come for him then but that didn’t mean Maul had to make it easy for him. He had enough ammo and dried meat to set himself up at home for a good time yet to come if it came to that. There was no way Maul Thorndean was going out without a fight!
His arms dropped suddenly when he did finally find the eyes of his watcher. They were sardonic and mocking but in a way Maul knew wasn’t meant for him specifically. The woman, what had she said her name was? Sally? Was looking at him through the rear window of the tavern. She smiled when she knew he was looking back and then gave a military style salute. Maul didn’t know how to react and he looked away and then turned and walked back the way he’d come. He was completely unnerved by her and he had no idea why. His anger had been raging, and he was seeking a target; she was the only person in town who could have stayed his hand. She was the only one who had never been anything but nice to him.
Maul didn’t stop moving until he got back to his land. He almost felt like he was being pursued somehow, but he knew that was ridiculous. Still, it didn’t stop him from looking behind himself from time to time just to be sure. He moved fast through the trees and never before had the need to be on his land been so strong in him. It made no sense but he could feel it burning within him that he had to get home and the sooner the better. He was so preoccupied that he wasn’t watching where his going with his usual intensity and he turned once into a thick protruding branch that sliced into his cheek and stopped his dead in his tracks.
“Fuck!” he shouted as his hand went to his face. The branch was still stuck in his skin and he could feel the slick of his blood on his hands as he pulled it out. It had been very close to stabbing directly into his eye. It was painful, and he felt a thin flap of skin folded over as he rubbed at it. His anger rose again, but it directed at himself this time; he was fully aware this had been his own doing. His own stupidity and... what... superstition? Was that what it could be called, this running home and need to be safe there for no good reason he could discern. He tried to roll the skin back to where it belonged but fresh pain sprang up and when he let go it flipped over again. He pressed his hand to it and went on, meaning to see what he could do with the piece of mirror glass that was lying around in one of the rooms there.
By the time he got to his home, the bleeding had eased off, and the pain was like a dull throb but not too pressing. The area around the cut felt numb but stung viciously when he touched it. The grimy glass showed that he would be scarred by this but that didn’t bother him all that much — his whole body was covered with nicks and cuts that had never healed, this was just the first time that one had been on his face.
“You won’t win a wife, now,” he said and smiled but as he spoke a pang of regret came over him for he knew that this was true. Not that he had ever wanted a wife, but he was very aware that he was the last of the Thorndean’s and that the family name would end with him.
And that end was looking more likely than ever before.
Maul forced himself to look back in the mirror. He took some water and washed the cut as best he could with his washing cloth. It hurt, but it was lessening all the time and he was sure it would be fine in a day or two. When he was done, he wiped the surface of the mirror to take off the dusted grime that had accumulated since it was last touched. It sparkled in the light and he knew that he should have done this before he used it to look at his cut. It didn’t matter now, and if it was ever used again, it would probably be covered in the neglect of dust and grime just as before, anyway.
A while later, Maul walked outside to look over trees. In the last few days it had encroached all the way to the trees that surrounded his home. As far as he could see there was white death, and it was a gloomy sight. Grey clouds were gathering in the north and beyond them no sky was visible. The air was chilly and fresh. He walked around the house looking at the ash—grey limbs that reached like fingers from the spruce trees the house had been built from. He slapped a few out of his way as he circled the house and they broke off as expected and shattered to the ground.
To the rear of the house, he found that some of the branches were rubbing against the house and there were scratch marks like waves on the panelled wood there. The light was dimming with the approaching cloudbank but Maul thought he saw some white on the wall of his house and it worried him. He leaned to look better; it could just be the scratching after all; that was most likely. On closer inspection, he saw, with dismay, that he was mistaken. It was the same dead white that had been on all the trees. He wiped at it with his hands hoping it was just dust like it had been on the axe handle a week ago. To his great consternation, nothing changed at all and the wood of his home felt the same levelled smoothness as the infected trees. It made little sense and Maul didn’t have time to try to make sense of it.
He ran to the shed and got a mallet and saw and came straight back to the infected site. Smashing a hole in his wall right on top of the white markings, he then used the saw to cut out a large enough area around this. He was hoping to stop the spread in the only way he knew how. Next, he took hold of one of the branches whose twig ends were burnishing the house and took the saw to it. He quickly saw that he needn’t have bothered as the branch snapped like a thin sliver of ice as soon as force was applied to it. Dropping the saw he moved along the side of the house grabbing any branch or limb that he thought might possibly reach his house and tore and pulled at them until they were nothing more than brittle sheaves of chips on the ground. He did another lap of the house to both be sure no more was touching and also to see that there were no more areas where he might have to put holes in his wall.
Once this was done, Maul spent the next half hour gathering up all the wood he’d splintered with a shovel and brush and tossed them in a bucket by the front door. After this, he lit a fire in the stove and taking the bucket inside began to feed the chips and twigs in a few at a time to get rid of them for good. The brief idea came to him of setting fire to the dead trees in a bid to stop the spread of the disease outside his own land but he quickly dismissed this as ludicrous. He was not dumb enough to think he would be able to control a forest fire once he started it. The whole mountainside would go up if he tried and that would leave him in an even worse situation than now — assuming he even survived the fire.
When bedtime finally came that evening Maul was tired from all his traveling and mental anguishes of the day. He lay in bed in the pitch black and listened to the creaking forest outside. Just before bed, a light snow had started to come down, and he thought there would be a blanket of the stuff in the morning.
The dreams that visited Maul were swirling and confused and even within them he did not feel safe or at ease. Something was coming, something he didn't understand but that he knew meant him great harm and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He moved through the woods from life to white death and something followed, a heavy noise that crashed through bushes and branches and yet that he could not see. An image of the rotten wood at the mine entrance came to him and he wondered if the thing had lived there, had followed him home when it felt his evil intent. Or was it perhaps the people of the town, coming after him with pitchforks like he was some beast from a horrible fairy-tale? They hated him, he knew it and they had always wanted him, and his family before him, to leave and it looked like they meant to do it by death.
Maul sat up in panic, wild eyes staring about the room. The sweat on his body instantly turning to ice water in the cold of the night. It was silent all around and he sighed, his heart still racing. Confusion reigned a few minutes longer as he tried to figure his world out. It had been so long since he dreamed at all, let alone a bad dream, that he felt like something very unusual indeed had happened to him.
His body registered the cold in a chill shudder and he pulled the discarded blanket from the floor where it had fallen in his waking and wrapped it around his shoulders. Out the window, he could see the snow still falling, heavier now and the flakes thick and fluffy. The draft from before came over his cheeks and he looked around for the source. He didn’t recall feeling this before from his bed; he’d spent a long time many years ago making his sleeping area as weather proof as possible. Then he knew where it was coming from. He’d smashed the hole in the wall earlier and had gotten into such a frenzy of lopping off limbs that he forgot to come back and patch the hole.
Maul got up and walked to the door of his room and look into the adjoining one where the hole was. A gaping hole stared back at him and some snow had drifted in and was pooling on the floor. Looking around the room, he saw nothing that would do as a plug for the night. He was still exhausted and didn’t feel like going outside in the weather and getting wood from the shed to cover the gap. He looked to the room once more and lighted on the old kitchen table. It was long and oval at one end — the other end had been hacked off for some other mending job in the distant past. As it was now, he would be able to stand it on the flat end and leave it against the wall to cover the hole. Its weight would hold it in place and he could sort out the problem properly in the morning.
Maul hoisted the table up, the blanket falling from his shoulders as he did and moved it on its end to the wall. He set it down and had a look out through the hole to see how deep the snow was. It was getting deep already but something else caught his eye — around the rim of the hole, thin tendrils of twigs were scraping the wood. This wasn’t possible; Maul had made sure of it before finishing up outside earlier on. The only thing he could think of was that a tree must have toppled over while he slept and was touching the house now. He pushed his head right up to the gap to see out but could see no such thing as a fallen tree. All along on either side though he saw the wavering limbs off the trees, all of them touching the house once more. A sickening feeling went through him and for one moment Maul wondered if he was still dreaming.
A sound like the lash of a whip struck the frosty air and four string like limbs shot in through the gap and grabbed Maul by the underside of the chin and base of his skull. He screamed and pressed both hands against the wall to try push himself out of the grip of whatever held him. The strength in those limbs was far too much for even Maul Thorndean, however, and he felt the pain of the branches cutting into his flesh. He pulled at the limbs, remembering how easily they had broken off when he thrashed at the once outside earlier on, but this time, the only gave a little and all the breaking power he could muster in his hands did nothing to help him. His neck distended and he heard cracking sounds in the upper spine and his neck. The warmth of blood washed over his bare chest and with one last push against the wall Maul knew that his final defeat had come.
Chapter 5
Joe Moorefield had been sheriff of Mercy for a little over five years now. He’d previously been a beat cop from small town in Ohio and had gotten the job here based on the very little experience he could speak of. His application for the job had been on a whim upon seeing a handwritten no
te on the bulletin board at the station. A few months passed by and then he got a call from a guy called Oakes who asked him a few questions about his work history and then offered him the job at the end of the conversation.
“There’s no interview process?” Joe had asked almost laughing at the oddness.
“This was the interview process, you’re the most experienced by a country mile,” Oakes said.
“Where’s the old sheriff going?” Joe asked wondering now was there something more sinister in this tiny town of Mercy.
“I’m retiring, heading down to Florida to get some sun for my last few years.” The conversation had gone on a little longer and Joe found himself accepting the post and by Fall of that year he had upped stakes and moved to the mountains. Not that he was leaving all that much behind. His parents had passed away, and he was unmarried with no other family. The few friends he had were always wary of his being a police officer; they hadn’t ever said anything to him about it but he could feel it all the same, it was like they could never be truly comfortable and themselves around him. He would be no great loss to them and he wasn’t exactly shedding tears himself as he said goodbye at the small bash in Hannigan’s pub they threw for him.
Five years on his number of friends had neither increased nor decreased. He was the sheriff of a town that by all rights didn’t need one. The local law in Emerson should have jurisdiction over Mercy which to his mind was little more than a street, it certainly didn’t deserve the moniker of ‘town’ to his thinking or understanding of the word. The population was about forty people over six square miles in the summer and this dropped to less than twenty during fall, winter and early spring. It baffled him how any of the businesses stayed afloat in such a place but they did.
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