In the Forest of Light and Dark

by Kasniak, Mark

  From behind us a staccato of meows begun to ascend, and I turned to see what was making the sudden cacophony.

  They were everywhere, hundreds of them, a whole myriad of strays dotting the graves and trees. Cats, everywhere I looked! They were all over the headstones and grounds. They were in the weeds and nettles, and even up in the two enormous weeping willows that the gravel trail snaked its way through. Cats of all sizes and colors. If you could picture a cat in your mind, any cat, odds are there would have been one that looked just like it standing, sitting, or lying before us at that very moment.

  The cats started hitching and meowing in unison, like they were one giant entity. The sound of them steadily grew louder-and-louder encompassing the total area to the point where you wouldn’t have been able to hear the person right next to you shouting.

  I felt myself begin to smile, and I thought to myself, this is amazing!

  Again, at the time, I don’t know why, but wasn’t scared of what I saw. I just knew that we were safe—that they weren’t going to harm us.

  My Step Daddy Cade apparently had other thoughts going through his empty head because he started to scream and yell like a maniac at them as he waved his arms up over his head like he’d caught fire.

  “GET OUT OF HERE, YOU BASTARDS!” he shouted at the cats, and then he went on to pick up and old tree branch that had lain in the weeds close to Emma’s grave. “I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU!” he yelled as he ran at the closest of them swinging the branch like a cudgel.

  “No, don’t!” my mama called to him. “Leave them be, Cade. They haven’t done anything to us.”

  My step daddy then stopped and looked back at her with an, Are you fucking kidding me? contortion of his face, but then he lowered his club.

  “We’ll be just fine.” My mama, then said lowering her voice.

  My step daddy reluctantly gave in to her wishes and we slowly headed for the gravel trail so that we could make our ascent back up the steep hillside that would lead us back to the main part of the cemetery. I had remained taciturn the entire way. I guess I was still in awe of what I was seeing.

  As we approached the cats, they split apart like the Red Sea giving us room to walk, my Step Daddy Cade remained clutching his tree branch as we neared.

  By the time we’d gotten to the top of the hill, the cats that had been ahead of us, had slipped over the crest as we approached, but then just seemed to have disappeared when we’d reached the summit. When I had stopped at the top to look back down at the bottom where the Barrett family gravesite lay, all the cats that had been down there had, by now, also vanished.

  “C’mon, let’s get the hell out of here. I’ve had enough of cemeteries and cats for one day.” My Step Daddy Cade said sounding gruff and irritated.

  When we had gotten back to the house he went straight to work on firing up our charcoal grill so he could make dinner. (Grilling was something I had noticed he’d like to do to help take his mind off things.) Soon after, it wasn’t long before he seemed back to his old self, even joking about grilling up a couple of those cats from the cemetery and feeding them to the local dogs. I just ignored his lame attempt at being funny, electing to go to my room to retrieve my cell phone off its charger, and to my surprise, it had a voice message on it from Tucker, Owen, and Lettie.

  When I called them back I had gotten the tall-and-skinny on what had gone on in Saraland since I’d left. Lettie told me that Eron Durfee had broken his leg when he laid down his crotch rocket in the middle of the roadway while trying to do a pop-a-wheelie to impress some girls. She said he was going to be laid-up for at least eight weeks in a cast. She also told me that she, Marzie, and Gerralyn had all found temporary work with B.P. helping to clean up the Gulf, and that Owen’s summer school class in English had finished up with him receiving a passing grade. So, it looked as if he’ll be going into our senior year and graduating on time with the rest of us after all. Well... With the rest of them anyway.

  But, it was Tucker that I found myself happiest to hear from even though he went on-and-on about how things weren’t the same in Saraland anymore now that I wasn’t there. He also kept asking me when he could come up to New York to see me. I had told him that I didn’t know. That things were still really hectic right now, and that my parents and I still needed time to just get settled in.

  I didn’t tell him about Caroline Hemstock, the crazy woman from the diner, or what was spray painted on one of my family members gravestone, or of the cats. I didn’t want him thinking I’d moved to the twilight zone.

  He did sound to me as if a little disappointed after I’d told him to hold off on a visit. But then I told him for the time being my Step Daddy Cade was going to get to work on getting us a computer and high-speed internet. So then at least we could Skype whenever we wanted to see each other. The news of that seemed to pick his spirits up a little. Eventually, we had ended our conversation with him playing that annoying game of not wanting to hang up first. Ugh! I fucking hate that, so I had no problem hanging up on him first.

  Exploring the Forest

  It was the second week of August and my mama still hadn’t gotten around to taking me for a hike into the forest like she said she would. So, one afternoon I had finally had enough of waiting for her to do so and decided I would go check out the forest with or without her. I had been so bored out of my mind with just sitting around the house watching television that I really didn’t care about what she had said about how, the woods are really big, and how you could get turned around in them fast… blah blah blah.

  Puh-lease I remembered thinking of the thought of getting lost. Who was she kidding? Like this Southern girl couldn’t handle herself in the woods. Hell, I practically grew up in the woods with all the camping, hunting, and fishing trips Step Daddy Cade used to take me on. So, I grabbed a bottle of water, put a generous amount of bug repellent on and took off to check out the forest for myself.

  At first, I followed the edge of our property line until I came to a little trail in the weeds that looked like it been made by a deer or another good-sized animal. It descended gently down the escarpment at first, but then I had to quicken my step as it became a little steeper, eventually taking me right down to the Genesee River.

  The river itself wasn’t as wide and as deep as I thought it would have been, and in spots, it looked like you could cross it without needing the aid of a bridge, the water perhaps coming up as high as my waist. But that was most likely because it was August and the heat wave we’d been experiencing had the area gripped in a drought.

  I had followed the river’s rocky shoreline for a little ways while listening to the sound of the rushing water flowing over rocks and deadfall. As I moved along, every so often I would see the occasional trout splashing up from one of the deeper pools, and as I hiked even further down the shoreline I began looking for a good place to cross over to the Mt. Harrison side of the river.

  Eventually, as I made my way past a bend in the river, I noticed that about three or four look-sees down the bank there was a walking bridge that I could use to gain access to the other side. But instead of using it, I had elected to climb up on an old, fallen down oak tree that spanned across one of the shallower sections of the river, and I used it to cross instead.

  When I had reached the other side, the terrain began to ascend up the northern escarpment ultimately giving way to the pine barrens that I had seen from our balconies.

  Brittle, parched brown and yellow pine needles crunched under my sneakers as I made my way through the trees and the air pleasantly smelled of Pine-Sol when the breeze picked up. In the distance I could hear a woodpecker assaulting one of the nearby trees, but I had failed to find it.

  I had stopped briefly to gather my bearings before, ascending up one of Mt. Harrison’s slopes. (The last thing I needed was to get lost in the forest after my mama had told me not to go in there without her. I would never have lived that down.) Then, I kept going determined to reach the top.

  Further
up I came across about a dozen or so little, gray rabbits that darted and zigzagged about as I approached them, each having either dove into a hole or seeking the protection of the low-lying ferns where I could no longer see them.

  After what had felt like about a mile of hiking, maybe a little more, the pines gradually started giving way to oaks, maples, ash, black cherry, beech, and even a few Elms. At times the sun would break through the canopy of these trees and would cast yellow and orange glares of light down on the fallen branches and dead leaves that littered the forest floor.

  A little further up the slope I came across a garter snake that slipped past me to my right, and I have to admit, it had scared the crap out of me for a moment. Only given the fact that I am from Alabama and when we see a snake, there’s a strong chance that it could be a Cottonmouth, Copperhead, or even a rattler.

  As I continued on, moving through the maples and oaks, I had found a nice little walking stick that I then used to help me climb over rocks and downed trees.

  Stopping briefly, I checked my cell phone because I had a GPS app on it that I had used to take a mark when I’d first reached the river back near my house. The GPS now said that I was just over three miles north of the mark when I came to a clearing in the forest.

  At the clearing, the sun was looming directly over my head and I heard the sound of a crow caw a couple of times before I actually saw it fly across the sky before me.

  On the other side of the clearing the forest became even denser with thick, old-growth trees. They were much taller than anything we had back in Alabama and many of them at their bases were as wide as a car.

  After having leveled out, the forest floor began ascending up another hill and the small plants and ferns that had been, up to that point, pricking my bare legs with their sharp, little needles dissipated then disappeared altogether.

  At this point I had figured I would head up to the top of the hill to see if I could get a view of the village from up there. As I made my way, I stuck to the few open areas where the sun broke through the forest canopy. Halfway up, I had stopped to look up at the top of the hill, and I could see that the trees were beginning to transition from mostly maples and oaks to almost entirely that of birches with their peeling-white papery bark.

  The top of the hill gradually leveled out again, and I found myself now in a forest of Christmassy white poles having been surrounded by the birch trees. I thought of them as being enchanting and yet creepy at the same time, and I suddenly started feeling a malaise and wanting to go back down the hill to the relative safety of the maples and oaks.

  When I had turned around to start heading back down, out of my peripheral, lying at the base of a large birch I noticed a bulky, black stone. There had been a clearing in the canopy which allowed the sun to shine down upon it, and the light reflected off the rock’s shiny glass-like surface as if it was a mirror.

  I thought the rock seemed out-of-place where it lay because there were no other ones like it anywhere around, just the one. It was obsidian like, and it split the sun’s light that had reached it into a spectrum. I approached it slowly and as I did, I could see that there was something engraved on it, or possibly burnt into it, but I couldn’t tell just what it was. It was a symbol of some kind though. I didn’t recognize it or know what it might have meant, but it had reminded me of the weird symbols that I had seen in the pentagram painted on the floor our basement. Whatever it was, I figured I might have been able to look up at the village library so I took a picture of it with my phone. But sadly my phone was lost before I wrote this memoir so I’ve done my best to recreate it from memory. Here it is.

  After I had snapped this symbol with my phone and had checked my GPS again, I was all set to start heading back down the mountain when unexpectedly, I heard a voice call out, “Hey.” from somewhere behind me. I quickly turned around having been somewhat startled and saw that there was a girl now standing there nestled amongst the birches. She then called out to me, “Hey, what are you doing here?” I was again taken a little aback by her, but then when I saw her crack a small smile I felt my heart begin to slow. She then walked towards me weaving between the birches, almost strolling.

  “Hi.” I said to her somewhat nervously—having still been a little freaked out by her having suddenly appeared. Not to mention, by her being among those creepy birches, which didn’t help matters any. It was a very disquieting place.

  “You from around here?” she asked.

  “Just moved up here from Alabama. You from around here?” I asked her.

  “Been here my whole life. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere else.” she said somewhat flippantly while looking up at the sky.

  She was a little pale, but it worked well with her long, jet-black hair and dark eyes. She had on a light blue dress, the kind Heidi would’ve worn, along with a white undershirt. There was a small-town prettiness to her much like the waitress at Maybelle’s Diner had and I almost at once felt a kinship to her.

  “I’m Cera… Cera Singer.” I said, trying to sound as warm and as friendly as I could make it. “What’s your name?”

  “My name is Savannah.” she said, answering me with a slight smile curling up from around her pursed lips.

  “Do you go to the high school?” I then asked her.

  “No, I’m what you would call homeschooled.” She said to me as she began swinging herself on an outstretched arm around the trunk of a large birch, and I could hear its fragile bark crinkling under her palm. “When I was younger, I never really got along with any of the other kids around here, so my parents pulled me from the school a long time ago.”

  A bad ass, I thought. Cool, maybe she knows where I can score some weed from?

  “So where do you live?” I beseeched.

  “Oh, not far from here, just on the other side of these hills, near where the state park begins.” She told me as she gathered up her long hair that a sudden light breeze had blown into her eyes, then tucking it back behind her ears.

  “You remind me of someone.” She then said to me with her eyes squinted and locked on me as if she were studying me. “It’s like you remind me of someone I used to know.”

  “Well, you probably recognize me from the cover of Seventeen Magazine.” I said jokingly while striking a stereotypical model pose, but then I wanted to kick my own as for being a dork. “But seriously, I don’t know who you might be thinking I look like. I’ve only been here for a couple of weeks. Just moved up here from Saraland, that’s in Alabama, and the only place I’ve been to so far other than a couple of trips into the village has been the cemetery.”

  “Why did you move all the way up here from Alabama, Sarah from Sarahland? (I believed that Savannah had probably assumed I spelled my name Sarah, or Serah, not Cera. Most people assume that.) Mount Harrison doesn’t seem like the kind of place that people just pick up and move halfway across the country to come to.”

  “Well…” I said, but then thought more deeply about the question. “My parents accepted an offer for a house up here over on Collings Avenue when my grandmother had died, and they decided to take it.”

  Savannah looked at me quizzically for a moment, and then said, “Collings Avenue, huh. I used to know a few people who had lived on that street—maybe you know them, the Barretts?”

  “Yes, that’s us.” I told her surely sounding surprised that she knew people from my family. “Lyanna Barrett was my grandmother.”

  “What?” Savannah said looking stoical and confused. “I thought you said your last name was Singer?”

  “It is,” I said, and then pausing to think about how I was going to explain. “You see, my Step Daddy Cade’s last name is Singer, but my mama’s is actually Barrett. She was originally from around here, but then she moved down south when she was eighteen.”

  Savannah looked at me with vacuous eyes and I thought I saw her mouth my mama’s name, Janine Barrett. She then shook her head from side to side snapping herself out of her daze before looking
at me as if studying me yet again.

  “So you’re a Barrett then… I didn’t think there were any of you left, at least any left here in Mt. Harrison that is.” She said this as she walked around me in a large circle weaving through the birch trees as she went—all while a small, elfin-like grin came over her face.

  “You know you should be careful in these woods? They say they’re haunted by a witch.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard the story about Abellona Abbott already, that poor girl.” I said trying to stay as indifferent as possible.

  “They say that she sold her soul to the Devil, and that before the villagers had killed her, she cursed them, saying that she would come for their children.” Savannah mentioned this while speaking to me in a melancholy tone all while managing to hold on to that smile. Then, she bent down and picked up a handful of stones from the ground.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t really believe in that sort of thing, curses and witches that is.” I said. “But if I was her… I mean… If, I was in her shoes, I would’ve cursed the village too. Those people were sick for what they did to her.”

  “Oh, is that what you think, huh?” Savannah then said, but not really asking me a question, and then she threw one of the stones she held at a birch tree striking it with a thump. “Me too!” she then boldly stated before turning to face me. “I mean, I believe that the people of Mt. Harrison are sick and need to repent for what they did. Not that Abellona wasn’t a witch.”

  “What?” I said almost laughing at her. “You don’t actually believe Abellona Abbott was a witch. How could you believe in such nonsense? Sure, people might’ve believed in witchcraft back in the seventeen hundreds, but not anymore. Witchcraft ain’t nothin’ but a bunch of horseshit.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that it’s horseshit.” Savannah said back to me as she picked up more stones. “How would you explain all the horrible things that have befallen on the children of Mt. Harrison over the past three centuries, then?”