The Fiends in the Furrows

by David Neal

  * * *

  He had nearly tasted the air before the train doors had opened and now, with the windows down as he pulled away from the car rental, it was nearly overwhelming. Damp leaves, cut grass, and the millions of pieces of ripe fruit in the surrounding farms enveloped him in a cocoon of luxury. He lit a cigarette and let his hand hover in the wind outside his window. The glimmering, steam-wafting fields seemed to wipe away everywhere that wasn’t there from his mind, and peeking out from atop the trees, he could see his first destination.

  His tires rumbled over the loose boards of the bridge, with Wading River, all copper-colored and foaming at the edges, gurgling below. In the distance, he could see a spot, just through a dense patch of trees, that seemed almost colorless. All greys that banished even the dullest tan or beige. The road of loose sugar-sand up to Cranberry Hill twisted and passed from patches of brilliant light to canopied twilight. “The middle of nowhere couldn’t even tell you how to get here,” he thought while an old bus, full of dripping passengers and pulling rows of canoes, passed before he pulled down the single lane drive and into the parking lot.

  The view from atop was startling. To be so high, and to see so far, without anything near to impeding his view, made him sit back a moment and stare at the floor. There was just an unbelievable carpet of green, the tops of tall trees, far below, and through binoculars, the sea at one far edge and the little blot of Philadelphia at the opposite. As his stomach settled, he dared another glance outward, though not quite so distant. Puffs of smoke, like white flags, trailed out from the green in little clusters. From a small, treeless tract, bordered on two sides by tendril rivers that converged on a pear-shaped lake, jutted out spokes of dirt roads or paths whose wavering lines he followed outward. The occasional twist around rock or river occurred, but nowhere could be seen an intersecting road from the outside world. A quick glimmer brought his eye back to the central point. There was nothing to it, just a pair of quick flashes, but something about the color seemed unnatural and, as he sat, it came again. He wondered if there was a town there that he could spend a day at.

  “Of course,” Joe said as he looked at his phone. “I can’t even get a signal on the subway, how in the hell would I get one out here?”

  There was a low rumble, like distant thunder, and he descended the long stretches of metal steps.

  Joe turned up the radio and checked the map, the road, and then the map. How was anyone supposed to follow a map when none of the streets were marked? His binoculars bounced around the dashboard as he ran over the rocks strewn across the dirt road, the wind whistled through the window, map fluttering in his hand. He put a cigarette from the pack between his lips, wrestled with the map, and reached across the seat for his lighter when there was a pop and everything stopped.

  He pulled his head back from the wheel. There was a dull, dead throb above his eye that beat with his heart, and where the seatbelt rested, the bone ached deep. The sun glimmered off of the spider-crack on the windshield where his bag had struck, and it took a moment before he registered the trickling sound where the whiskey ran from his bag, across the dashboard, and dripped onto the carpet below.

  “Fuck.”

  The front tire of the car was sunk into sand up to the wheel well and an ugly wrinkle wormed its way up to the hood. A stuttering thump came from somewhere in the engine, but there was no way for him to discern where it was coming from. He wasn’t going to fool himself.

  * * *

  His feet slipped from side to side in the soft sand, a trail of drips left in his stead, and some great bird circled overhead. He didn’t know exactly where he was, but he guessed that it couldn’t be far. It looked like the town had to be somewhere on that road and he had been going down it for a while, so all it would take was a bit of a hike. He lit a crooked cigarette, spat onto the sand, wiped his brow, and continued with only the foreign chatter of the woods as his company. In the distance, a light plume of smoke rose from the treetops and he aimed himself for that.

  A few cigarettes later, and his mouth awfully dry, Joe came to a path that seemed to lead in just the direction that he needed. The bird still followed, but seemed to trail a bit farther behind. A drink and a seat, that was all that he wanted.

  He cut down the winding path, the towering cedars and oaks dropping a cool shadow across his way. A drink and a seat. He leaned against a tree and took a break. A chipmunk darted nervously across the path, dodging between the holes that lined its sides. The sun broke through a passing cloud and something rustled the leaf blanket behind him. He smelled the heavy scent of roses and something sweet, but he couldn’t place it. It was too hot, too damned hot. The lines of smoke were close though, so there wouldn’t be long to go.

  Above, wood carvings of birds of prey sat as sentries on the lower branches of the trees at his side, their grained eyes staring down at him like medieval gargoyles. He got the strange feeling that they waited for him, perched for that one moment when they would be granted life, granted the chance to take flight and rend the flesh from his bones. He brought his eyes down from the vicious watchers and saw someone in the distance, a young woman with her arm down one of the holes that lined the path.

  “Hey!” he shouted.

  She jerked her arm with a start, auburn hair flying in the wind, and bolted down the path and out of sight.

  “Fucking weirdos,” he said and continued toward the smoke.

  The wooden hawks, owls, and eagles sat perched on their branches, watching the whole scene with predator eyes that would never blink, and continued on after he had passed.

  * * *

  His first step from the thin patch of woods between the path and town was like being transported through time, or at least to a place where the world had ended and a rebirth had begun. Small children ran past with clothes that seemed to have come from the 1920s and a woman pushed corks into dozens of milk bottles that sat in the bed of a pickup truck that rested, without wheels, on its frame. It was a bustling thoroughfare of dirt, all raw wood walls, buzzing conversation that he couldn’t quite make out, and the uneven color of hand-dyed fabric. It swarmed, somewhere different than he had ever been, and churned somewhere deep in his brain. It was all so surreal, that cut from any reality that he had ever known.

  “How are you doin’?” the man behind the bar asked as Joe stepped into the dim light of the inn. There was something foreign slid into his accent, just a light whisper of Europe.

  “Alright. I was, umm, wondering if there were any rooms.”

  “Not a problem. We’ve got plenty left.”

  “Oh, that’s great.”

  The old bottles of low-level booze sat over the bartender’s shoulder, their vaporous depths calling to him.

  “Can I get a shot of whiskey as well?”

  “Double or single?”

  “Double.”

  His room was unpainted wood from floor to ceiling, a large, four-poster bed sat in the far corner by a window. A small desk, barely more than the old desks from school, was placed by the other window. A large structure of brick and wood loomed from a few streets beyond, clearly visible over the short buildings that stood between it and his third-floor room, with loads of lumber being hauled toward it. Below him, the strange menagerie of archaic life strolled by.

  “My car broke down a bit down the road, do you have a phone that I can use?” Joe asked.

  “Sorry, we don’t have one.”

  “I mean, I don’t have to be the one that uses it, if it’s for employees only.”

  “No, it’s not that. We just don’t have a telephone. No one in town does.”

  Joe turned toward him. They must take the whole historically authentic thing seriously, to an annoying extent.

  “Well, I can’t just leave it there...”

  “‘Course not. Some produire folks are going into town to sell off extra crops, I’ll have them stop off and have it fixed.”

  “Thanks.” He touched the lump on his forehead, pulling the hand d
own a drizzle of deep, dried red was noticed on the sleeve. “I guess there isn’t a washing machine here, either?”

  “Can’t say there is. Can have some of the women do some wash for you, but it’ll take a day or so.”

  “That’s fine. Anywhere that I can buy a shirt until it’s ready, then?”

  * * *

  The visitor’s center looked like any other visitor’s center in a historic place that he had ever been to, in that it looked like the rest of town. Old, wooden, dusty. The only things that stood out as modern were the glass cases which held maps of the area, collected local birds’ nests, and ancient proclamations in French on yellow, cracked paper. Stuffed hawks and eagles stood on shellacked talons along the top of the wall, beaks dug into preserved snakes and rabbits. Past a little stand of Jew’s harps and wooden fifes, cup and ball games and child-sized archery sets, he found a rack of shirts. With no marking of size and all in a similar shade of beige, he found the one that seemed most likely to fit, and brought it to the counter.

  “Is there anything else that I can help you with?” the cashier asked after giving Joe his change.

  “Yeah, do you know if there’s a town around here?” He pointed to a point on the map, his best guess as to where the glimmer he had seen from the observation tower had come from. The path spokes were clear on the map.

  “There’s nothing there.” The voice was colder now, authoritarian, the same European accent pushing through powerfully.

  “I could have sworn that I had seen some shining, like glass, around there.”

  “It’s just the ruins of a damned old glass factory and quarry. You’ll find nothing good there. It’s just a dangerous place.” There was a pause and a softer touch returned. “There is plenty to enjoy here, anyway. We’re just finishing preparations for la Fête Faucon.”

  “Yeah, that was on a flyer that I saw. What’s that all about?”

  “It is a festival of the great…falcon. It is the, merde, patron animal, I guess you could say, of our town.”

  “And that starts tomorrow, right?”

  “Yes. Tonight is a short celebration, of sorts, at the Great Hall but it is only for members of the community, unfortunately. Although, I’m sure that you will find the fête tomorrow unforgettable.”

  Out on the street, he lit a cigarette with the new shirt tucked under his arm, and across from him, he could see a group of women scrubbing laundry by hand with his bag sitting in the dust at their feet. Suddenly, as he watched them scrub, the thin stream of walking traffic parted and looked away. A quiet murmur rose, and a lone woman came quietly down the center of the street. She stood out like a flash, if only that her clothes were more vibrant, slightly more modern. Even with her head bowed, he could tell that she was also young, or at least young for her years, delicate-looking without the hard-worked wrinkles and strong hands of women he had seen thus far in town. He took a step into the street as she approached, and a barrel of wash-water was tipped into the street at her feet. The grimy liquid splashed over her shoes and left a line of mud up her shins.

  “Fuck sakes,” he said and walked over. “Are you alright?”

  She tilted her head up to him and smiled, shining white teeth and the same brilliant emerald with crimson eyes as the girl from the coffee shop. He would have thought them one and the same, if it hadn’t been for her much longer hair, all in big curls at the shoulders. Before he could think of anything to say, there was a shout from somewhere in the crowd and she hurried off, down through that patch of woods where he had entered town, and along the lonely dirt path.

  * * *

  A group of men, seated in the far corner of the inn’s dining room, nodded as he passed through. The new shirt itched and, it was only once he had put it on that he noticed a similar golden V also embroidered on the shirts of the men that he passed. Though theirs tended to be noticeably weathered and vaguely faded. He rolled the sleeves halfway up his forearms beneath the licking sun, and left in a new direction through town.

  It was far from a massive place, just a few square blocks made of trade shops and storefronts with the sounds and smells of living spaces cascading from open windows above. Crudely painted falcons, gripping lines of orange and black, stood in vibrant new coats of paint on posts and capped the sides of signage. The people that he passed were polite enough, but a strange formal distance was made well clear, and unending eye contact made him feel some sort of beast on viewing. He wished that he had a drink. It was so damned hot.

  Upon turning the corner, he nearly fell back, a breath caught in his chest. His heart skipped a step and his cigarette fell to the mud at his feet. There, level with his eyes, was a grotesque winding and weaving of dried vines and wicker, into some vague form of a massive beak and face. Hunks of melted down, black glass made dead glimmering eyes, clumps of molted feathers were stitched into splotches on the bird’s cheeks and were plastered into stretching wings and body behind.

  He sidestepped the monstrosity, and came upon the great hall. A series of close, dark windows towered up along its length, with thin pillars of brick between, and from the branches of an old tree that stretched across the high roof some unrecognizable objects dangled from string. A group of children was clustered around a table in front of the windows, their shorts pulled tight at the bottom and hair outdated and long.

  “Hey, mister!” one of them called. “We have Grand Faucons for sale.”

  “Yeah, you can’t celebrate Fête Faucon without one!” Another sharp voice shouted from the group.

  He crossed to the far side of the street and they rushed upon him, little hands pushing and pulling and demanding his attention for themselves alone.

  “How much are they?” Joe asked, and from the swell of faces, he heard a dollar.

  Well, that wasn’t a bad price at all. He pulled out a bill, which was quickly pulled away, something brittle and tickling was shoved into his hand and they hurried back to their table. Glancing down, he some a miniature, even more crude version of the wicker and feather bird that waited across the street. Soiled down was adhered to twigs and sticks with thick globs of hardened sap, eyes were little bits of stone wound into a skeletal head, and from a strangely gaping beak dangled a little, dried worm.

  * * *

  He made himself a sandwich of gamy cured meat and cheese as he sat at the little desk in his room. The whole affair was beginning to become uncomfortably surreal. There had been some hope that beyond the facade, he would have found something comforting that still held some aspect of normal life. Some tether to the real world that would show that, while he was far from the stressors of his everyday, it still existed, was still known here. Though here he sat under a dark cloud, sipping from a bottle of whiskey by the candle that would serve as his only light come nightfall, and hearkened on the way that the wash women had stopped talking when the saw his approach on the walk back, their furrowed brows. He stood by his response to their ridiculous ways of treating that woman, but still felt a bit of a stigma from it.

  At dusk he saw a string of people file down the street, and the occupants of the inn joining from the door below. He watched as they all moved slowly and single-mindedly toward the great hall, its front a darkening plane, only illuminated by a pair of points of light rising from the center. Other spots of light moved about toward the hall when the sun finally fell behind the wall of trees in the west, and Joe lit his candle there, in the now dark room.

  The windows, which during the day gave no noticeable impact, flickered briefly and burst into brilliant, back-lit life, in the form of a forty-foot-wide hawk, its eyes a dull, grey cloud that gave the slight impression of swirling, churning unlife. Soon, there came a deep and distant rumble that flooded through the window and filled the room—a squealing shriek in response, too high and undulating to have come from human throats. The timber walls rumbled, the branches above the hall swayed, and a hum formed between the shaking floorboards. The rumble grew louder and still the shrieking gained, a bursting steam wh
istle of sound. He covered his ears, his eyes watering. Tree branches were dragged back toward their trunks as a mountain of wind careened past. There was the sharp grind of a glass pane cracking somewhere nearby, he thought even the moonlight wavered at its source, and, just as the strength began to bleed from his knees, it all suddenly ended. A silent hush, even the more quiet through the hum in his ears, fell over the town, and the tree branches fell into a cadaverous stillness.

  Light hymnal music found him, as clear and crisp as if he had been right there. Though even with that clarity, it was in no language that he had ever heard, or anything resembling one. There was a strange bifurcation to the tone and the thump—like that of a helicopter—came in the background, and the light behind the winds flickered, giving the impression that those great glass wings themselves flapped.

  The hymn died down, and a faint sermon could be heard. Lost was the clarity that he had heard, just the normal sound of some lengthy, distant rhetoric. Eventually, even that was silenced, and lights could be seen after a short time, dancing in all directions down the streets. A door opened and light glowed between the floorboard slats at his feet. Hush conversations came from below and were constantly checked when their volume neared the point when it could have been understood, and darkened, diminutive eyes stared at him from the bedside table, lit from below with a lace of smoke crashing into its twig and vine beak.

  * * *

  He knocked the empty bottle from his nightstand. His skin felt baked from the light that shone through the window and across his face, and a thick paste of old whiskey and smoke coated the inside of his mouth. He rolled over and pressed his face into the pillow. It didn’t matter what time it was—it was too early.