Ashes and Entropy

by Laird Barron

  Keira held up one hand. "Okay, you're right, I haven't been here." A trace of an apology tainted her words and she pressed her lips into a thin line. "But she's an adult, Ava. She's allowed to leave."

  Ava's mouth opened and closed, and then she forged ahead, smacking bushes and tree branches out of the way. Keira waited to follow until she was almost out of sight.

  Half an hour later, Ava stopped and waved her forward. "Do you see that?"

  About ten feet off the path, a scrap of something pale blue and shimmery flashed between the leaves of a greenbrier bush.

  "Keira?" Ava's voice was a moth wing.

  "I know. I see it."

  Ava whispered, "Please, please, please," while Keira used her pocketknife to strip the thorns from several branches, allowing her to work the scarf free. There were a few pulls and thorn punctures in the fabric, but the whole was neither faded nor dirty, nothing to indicate it had been here long.

  "This is hers," Ava said, clutching it between her breasts. "I know it."

  Keira blinked away the sudden sting of tears. "Don't you remember? I sent it to her for her birthday last year."

  Ava shrieked Amanda's name into the trees once, twice, a dozen times and turned to Keira, her cheeks panic-bright. "She'll come back, won't she? She'll come home?"

  Every possible answer felt like a lie.

  ~

  In the middle of the night, she woke again to the crying fox. And it had to be a fox; it couldn't be anything but. She paced in her room, every breath tight and labored, as though there wasn't enough air in the world. There was no reason for her to be here anymore. Amanda was gone. She'd come back or she wouldn't, and if she didn't, Ava would have to learn to live on her own.

  With an airy grunt more breath than noise, she yanked her clothes from the dresser, piling them on the foot of the bed. She'd leave Ava a note and would call in a few days, long enough for her anger to wear off.

  The fox shrieked again as she unzipped her suitcase, one last peal before quiet fell. She perched on the edge of the bed, toeing the hem of a shirt that had fallen to the floor.

  ~

  "We should walk to the stream," Ava said.

  Keira leaned her weight against her walking stick. She'd known this moment would come, had known it since she pulled into the driveway, maybe even before.

  "I'm not saying we should cross it—I'm not that dumb—but we can look across at least."

  Keira swallowed against a lump in her throat. "There aren't even any paths. We'll end up twisting an ankle or worse."

  "Yes, but we should still do it," Ava said, lifting her chin. "What if Amanda twisted her ankle and that's why she hasn't come back?"

  "But if she's on the other side—"

  "No! Don't say it, don't even think it!"

  Keira bit the inside of her cheek and nodded, and they trudged toward the stream in silence. As they drew near, the air filled with the soft rushing of water and the smell of damp earth. Sweat ran down her back; the bitter taste of bile flooded her mouth. No matter the season or weather, the air always smelled of rotting vegetation, minerals, and a storm about to break. Appropriate. Horribly so.

  Here, the stream was only a few feet wide and large rocks tempted an easy path. At first glance, the woods weren't much different, but there were more vines, more exposed roots twisting in coils, waiting to snag your ankle and twist your step if you dared try, more thorns, more shadows. The trees were closer together, their branches drooped lower, the leaves grew thicker. The air felt different, too. Heavier. Malevolent. As if there were a voice on the verge of speaking and hands waiting to grab.

  She couldn't be here. There were too many secrets lurking in the shadows, too many things she couldn't face yet again, not even for her sister. She scraped her boot heel in the dirt, guilt flowing through her.

  "If Nana were here, we could cross," Ava said. "She knew how."

  A small sound caught in the back of her throat. Ava spoke true, but how could she know? Nana had said she'd never teach anyone the words that permitted safe entry and safe return.

  While Ava walked the edge of the stream, Keira stayed put, trying to ignore the way the woods distorted the sound of her sister's steps, turning them from a giant's to a dwarf's and back again. Trying not to think of places where the world was wrong.

  "Keira, quick, come here!" Ava shouted, pointing to a small clearing across the water.

  Scattered dirt and freshly dug holes littered the clearing, a dozen of them, some the size of a teacup, others two clenched fists, and one the size of a dinner plate.

  "She was here," Ava said. "She did this."

  Keira swallowed several times. "You don't know that."

  "Of course I do. No one else knows what we did when we were kids."

  "This wouldn't have anything to do with that. We never put anything on that side of the water. We couldn't." The lie burned on her lips, but her words were even and sure.

  Ava stomped through a cluster of bushes, shrieking Amanda's name in every direction. From the corner of her eye, Keira saw movement—a flash of pale, contrasting against the darker trunks, a length of hair. She spun in that direction, hand reaching for her knife as she scanned the foliage. Top to bottom, side to side. Nothing.

  Ava crept to her side, close enough to breathe her question against Keira's neck.

  "What is it?"

  "I… I think I saw something."

  "What? Where?"

  "I'm not sure. It was over there, behind those trees."

  "I don't see anything. Was it a something or a someone?"

  "A someone, I think. I don't know, it happened so fast. Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe it wasn't anything at all."

  Ava stood staff-straight, shrieking Amanda's name again and again until she dissolved into tears. "If it was her, why won't she answer? Why won't she come back?"

  ~

  "Are you sure it was a person?" Ava said. "Are you absolutely sure?"

  They were sitting on the back porch, drinking iced tea, their dirty boots lined beside the door. It had taken Keira several hours to convince Ava to leave the woods, and even then, she'd stopped every few feet, swearing she'd seen something.

  "I don't know, Ava. I told you that. I think I saw dark hair and pale skin, but I'm really not sure."

  "But it couldn't be her. She wouldn't go in the old woods on her own, and they didn't want her. I know they didn't."

  "Maybe she didn't want to tell you."

  "What do you think she was looking for in all those holes?"

  "We don't even know that she's the one who dug them. It could've been an animal, most likely a squirrel."

  "Do you think she found it?" Ava said, tossing the question as you would a pinch of salt.

  Keira's fingernails cut half-moon indentations in her palms. There was nothing to find. Not there, anyway. Ava patted her cheek, as a mother to a child, and went inside. She watched her go, unease and suspicion coiling in her belly. The twins didn't know about that night. They didn't see what she took into the woods. They'd been asleep. She'd checked. Nana had checked.

  They didn't know the truth, and they weren't ever supposed to know.

  ~

  Ava turned in early, but Keira wandered the house, memories seeping in with every step. On the sofa in the formal living room, Nana had sat beside a four-year-old Keira and explained her mother was gone and wasn't coming back. Hidden behind a heavy curtain panel in the dining room, the scratch of her initials in the wallpaper, penned when she was six. Behind another panel, her sisters' initials, the As linked together.

  Resting her forehead against the glass, she stared into the darkness. Thought of a night nine years ago when she'd crouched in the shadows of the old trees, dirt beneath her nails, tears coursing down her cheeks, apologies falling from her tongue like pine needles.

  "The woods will take care of everything," Nana had said, her voice the only comfort in the darkness. "They always do. No one else needs ever know, sweet girl. She wa
s already lost. Give her to the woods and leave her there, leave her behind you."

  "But don't you hate me?"

  "I could never hate you, no matter what. It was an accident, that's all. Just a mistake."

  Of all the lies Keira had ever told, that one hurt most of all. And that Nana had believed it—had died believing it—was something she'd carry forever. Nana had never known about the tiny limb moving beneath the scatter of dirt that Keira'd pretended not to see.

  Nana had been standing too far away, keeping watch. Though she'd spoken the words to make it safe for them to cross the stream, she'd said she didn't trust the woods not to change their mind.

  If the woods had Amanda now, she was lost. Even if she came back, she was lost.

  Keira exhaled a cloud on the window; as it cleared, a woman stepped out from the trees, all dirty legs and leaf-tangled hair. Keira clamped a hand over her mouth to hold in a shout, her heart a Greyhound. Her shoulders relaxed when she saw it was Amanda, because of course it couldn't be anyone else. She was watching the house, watching her sister, and then she slipped back into the trees, her movements so fluid and quick she might've been an apparition.

  ~

  Morning dawned grey and clouded, the rain beginning even before they finished breakfast. The air was clotted with tension, and Keira's English muffin tasted like sawdust. She wanted to tell Ava she'd seen Amanda last night, but the words wouldn't come. Maybe something had happened between the sisters. Maybe there was a reason Amanda was staying away.

  Ava's shoulders slumped lower and lower. "Maybe she'll come back because of the rain."

  "Maybe she will."

  "Unless…"

  "Unless what?"

  "Unless whatever she found won't let her come home."

  "Ava, there's nothing out there."

  "There are secrets out there. We buried hundreds of them. You remember, I know you do."

  "We were kids. It was only a stupid game."

  "Not always."

  "What are you talking about?" she said.

  "I don't know, Keira. What am I talking about? What else is in the woods?" Ava smiled, baring her teeth. A predatory grin.

  "Whatever you think you know, you're wrong. The only things buried in the woods belong there."

  The legs of her chair scraped across the floor as she pushed away from the table. Ava said nothing, simply kept smiling.

  Keira took the stairs two at a time, her mouth a desert. She should never have come back. Hadn't she learned from every book and movie cautioning against it? And what did she expect? A secret that big couldn't stay secret forever, not even with all the woods in the world to hide it. Why Ava insisted on cryptic statements instead of asking for the truth outright, she didn't know and didn't care. She wasn't playing her sister's game anymore.

  She changed into jeans, a sweatshirt, and her boots. Shoved her knife in her pocket and packed her suitcase, not bothering to fold anything or separate the dirty from the clean.

  Downstairs, only silence greeted her, but she said, "Ava, I'm leaving. I'll call the sheriff and convince him to come and help. I have to get back home."

  Dragging her suitcase by one hand, she used her other to pat her pockets. No keys. They weren't in her purse either. "Fuck," she muttered, fumbling through the suitcase contents. Nothing. Her car doors were locked, the keys nowhere in sight. She pinched the bridge of her nose. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  "Ava!"

  Leaving her suitcase on the front porch, she stomped through the house to the back door and beyond, coming to a stop ten feet from the woods, ignoring the rain plastering her clothes to her skin and her hair to her cheeks.

  Before she could call her sister's name, a cry knifed the air. Not a fox, but a baby's cry. She couldn't fool herself this time.

  But there was no baby. It was dead. It had been dead for a long time. Unless there was a baby she didn't know about. Was that why Amanda ran away?

  Another wail emerged from the trees, and she started back for the house.

  From deep within the woods, Ava called out, "Keira, please, I need your help! Hurry!"

  Keira paused, one foot on the first porch step, rain pattering off the roof onto her shoulders. This was not her problem to solve. Hadn't she done enough already? But she turned around, splashing through mud and crushing leaves, twigs, and insects alike. Ten feet inside the trees, the air turned chill. Twenty feet in, her teeth began to chatter.

  The baby cried again, louder. And almost hidden by the sound, someone sang a lullaby. Ava and Amanda stepped from behind a tree, Amanda with a small, blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. Its cries tapered down to soft, kitten-like mewls.

  "We knew you wouldn't come if we told you," Ava said.

  "Why didn't you tell us, Keira?" Amanda said. "Why? He started crying at night. He started crying every night, so I went out and I found him."

  "We took care of him while we waited for you," Ava said.

  Amanda stepped forward. Beneath the blanket, something moved. "Don't you want to hold him? Don't you want to see him, to see how the woods kept him safe for you all this time?"

  Keira's legs turned to rubber, and she reached for a nearby branch for support. It couldn't be. It wasn't possible.

  "Now you have to stay home," Ava said. "But we'll help you take care of him. We both will."

  They both smiled, and their eyes were too bright. Like Stepford girls. Like something other. Something wrong. "Please. I can't."

  Amanda cocked her head. "But he needs you."

  They didn't understand. He wasn't her child. He never was.

  She closed her eyes and in that darkness, saw her mother's body in a shallow grave, saw a tiny hand pushing against the distended abdomen, saw herself dropping in another shovelful of dirt.

  What else could she have done? Cut open her belly and take the baby? She was only sixteen. And Nana was too old.

  She told Nana she thought her mother was an intruder. She woke in the middle of the night to a noise downstairs, and only after she'd wielded the vase did she realize who she struck.

  She didn't tell Nana what her mother said. That the woods had given her a son, a special son. That she was taking her girls back with her because the woods wanted them all to be together. Wanted them to be a family again.

  She didn't tell Nana how her mother's eyes shone with a terrible light, how her breath reeked of rotted leaves, how her skin burned hot as a summer sun. Some secrets you kept forever, no matter what.

  She did what she did to protect her sisters. To protect herself.

  "Please," Ava said. "We need you."

  "He needs you," Amanda said. "Don't you want to see how beautiful he is? Don't you want to see your baby?"

  He wasn't hers, but Keira couldn't make herself speak the words aloud, so she held out her arms. His weight was that of a bundle of twigs, his smell loam and standing water. Tucking him in the crook of her arm, she slowly folded back the edge of the blanket, her fingers cold, her heart numb.

  And the knife in her pocket was heavy and sharp.

  WE ALL SPEAK BLACK

  by Lynne Jamneck

  My parents loved me until they discovered I was different.

  I blamed myself. We all did. What else do you do without answers when they’re the one thing you desperately need? Shit like that haunts you, and slowly eats you inside out

  Thirty years ago, Cape Town was the beautiful city in travel magazines and BBC documentaries about Nelson Mandela. Seafood, wine, the Garden Route and Lion King sunsets. But you ask Dorothy and she’ll tell you it’s a completely different story behind the curtain.

  At the time, conservationists implored the government to better consider issues of risk management, about TEPCO ignoring the dangers of Koeberg’s outdated safety systems. But as a nation we still couldn’t dissolve ourselves of party politics for long enough to smell the coffee, and in the weeks leading up to the cataclysmic events of a bright October day, the amalgamated ANC and DA parties had been so neck-deep i
n political shit-slinging that they’d had little time to “waste listening to a bunch of crackpot conspiracists yammering about nothing”.

  The reactor needs to be replaced.

  Check.

  Stress cracks render the engines vulnerable to seawater corrosion.

  Check.

  Inspections are woefully behind schedule.

  Check.

  Koeberg sits straight across a geological fault line.

  Fuck.

  But what in the end rocket-blasted the lives of millions into chaotic oblivion wasn’t a failing nuclear reactor – at least, not directly. People have a terrible track record when it comes to change. But eventually, as we have all seen so many times, there comes a point where finally the foot comes down. And with that resolution comes a sense of desperation to support such finality, to make it succeed at all costs. And because they were too involved in brownnosing and corruption, the partisan fat cats failed to notice that their constituents, angry and hopeless beyond reason at the lack of change, had begun bowing to altogether darker forces than those at work in parliament.

  17 October 2035.

  Aerial footage from the day is permanently burnt into my brain. Shot at speed from inside a helicopter by the shaky hands of an expletive-lancing cameraman, the copter’s rotors chop-cop-chopping in the background, while the camera lens zooms in on the ground sink-holing into hell beneath Cape Town Stadium, its leviathan maw pulling half of surrounding Greenpoint into the bowels of the earth. It’s an event that is only ever overshadowed by what subsequently crawled out of that hellhole.

  How do you describe something indescribable? Well, it wasn’t. Not really. It was just entirely fucking twisted. So many cameras, fast-focusing in on that jagged, cone-shaped cranium as it loomed ever higher into the cloud-streaked sky like some Gaudi-nightmare tower. High def. Hard to forget. Thanks for nothing.

  The Cape Town cults summoned an outer thing they had no hope of ever understanding into a world that the thing itself didn’t understand either. Regardless, their vile bastardization of foreign spells had weaved for it an accessible narrative into our reality, one it was able to traverse like a spider’s web into whatever direction it pleased. The cults never really considered what would happen after. Consequences were always the last thing on anyone’s mind. They were no different from the goddamn politicians.