Then came the “holistic” methods. “Em, honey, what is that crap?”
She was so engrossed in what she was doing, muttering under her breath as she ground some more herbs and things to toss into the mixture, that she didn’t hear him or even notice he was there, not until she glanced up and startled.
“Shit! Are you trying to scare me to death?”
“No, but that stuff just might,” he said it with a laugh and a smile so that she got he was horsing around.
She looked at him, perplexed for a minute, and then she got it. “What? Oh, geez, haven’t you seen herbs and things before?”
“Define ‘things’.”
She gave him a very serious look, one meant to scold, but she couldn’t keep it going for long. She wore one of her shy smiles as she worked at the mixture again. “Just a little of this and that. What does it matter if it does the job?”
“Yeah, I guess, so long as it isn’t poisonous.”
“No, nothing like that.” And just like that she was right back at it, working away with a frown as she went on muttering and grinding. He didn’t question it, didn’t really see any harm in letting her give it all a go if it helped her feel better. He did notice that she hadn’t exactly told him what any of it was though, and that her eyes had gone far away for a moment, adrift in thought.
A couple of weeks came and went, her weird little concoctions giving her something to focus on as she worked away at being the natural mother she was regardless of whether or not she was able to keep up with all of the things the other ‘natural mothers’ were sure were the only right way. Even if he didn’t get it, he was happy that she was happy, and better than that, genuinely secure.
Except…
She’d starting doing more than just mix up homemade solutions for the low production, things she popped into capsules and smoothies before ingesting. She was also going on long walks, sometimes with Caroline along and sometimes alone, always in a hurry and with a bag of strange smelling things bundled close to her body as she darted out the door. He was no stranger to pagan practices, Wicca, eclectic, green, even shamanistic stuff had all been of interest to the pair of them over the years as they refined the information and gleaned what made the most sense to them from all of it in their twenties. This all sort of reminded him of that, the days when they observed a bit more of the ritualistic aspects of it all more than they had since they’d settled down and got used to the day to day, but there was something about it all that wasn’t really the same at all. Something he couldn’t put a finger on that felt out of true.
He found himself watching her more, not that there were that many things he really noted in those first few months, not outside of the walks and the concoctions themselves at least, though once or twice he could swear that he heard her hiss as she worked on those, and he wondered if there was something more to the potions than herbs and ‘things’. He certainly couldn’t argue with the results, their little girl was a solid little thing at six months and change, her chunky little legs kicking and cheeks alight with joy every time her mother came to get her for feedings. The pair of them were happy as she nursed away at breasts that had filled out rather nicely in conjunction with the supply Em had going now. It was all pretty as a picture, but he couldn’t stop looking at it and noticing it was just slightly askew.
He promised himself he’d sneak a look at her book, the happy little find from the bookstore, but work snuck up and buried him in a stack of long days, many of them double shifts, and he couldn’t really afford to say no, not with the baby. For a while it was just nice to have them safe and secure at home, everything calm and peaceful for him by the time he got there and it was all he could do to eat before he crashed out until the next shift. He’d started to write his concerns off after a while, thinking maybe he was just thrown by the effectiveness of these new habits of hers, new dad jitters and a healthy modern distrust for the holistic maybe.
Then came the night he woke up to an empty house at three AM, the wind whipping around outside and crashing the limbs of the trees around the back of the house against the walls so that he went from a dead sleep to a quick snap of wakeful confusion. He’d gone out into the dark to see if maybe she was just out on the porch watching it wave around, Em loved the wind and the trees more than anything, but he found himself on an empty porch instead. He scanned over the empty lot across from their place to see if she was circling that with Caroline, but he didn’t see her there either.
Frantic to find her, he darted around the right side of the house and into the backyard. Darting his head into the basement laundry room at the corner and finding it empty, the washer and dryer silent in the dark, he completed the circuit and looked down over the yard, mostly a steep drop off of a hill that led down toward the woods. He found that empty too. The wind was sharper back here, the force of it roaring down from the side yard and straight down the hill, which started not more than a few feet from the back of the house, screaming down into the space there before the trees. The moon was out, so there was a little light to see by when the wind clouds weren’t blotting it out, but he couldn’t make much of anything out in the woods, not much more than the swinging limbs and branches anyway.
Just as his hand had dropped from over his eyes and he was ready to head back up the steep hill to his house, he thought he’d started to see something else. What was that? He tried to look at it harder, but between the waving trees, the dark, and his tired mind he didn’t think he could really trust he had a good bead on anything. Is that? There was some sort of glowing deeper in the woods, a certain sway to the branches there that was not entirely organic, not like that of the maple or oak it had to be in those woods. It looked like a dance, the sway of hips beneath long twigs and branches which were not entirely in line with the elements that cast the other trees’ limbs to and fro. The glowing, bright yellow gold in the night, seemed to lock on him, to peer at him as he looked back at it. He froze, considering it as it seemed to consider him, and then he could swear he heard Em’s voice calling him back to the front.
It was easier, safer to listen to that voice, and so he followed.
He jerked awake with a gasp, taking in the dimly lit grass lot across the way and overhang of the roof over the porch as he opened his eyes. He’d been tired so he guessed it wasn’t so strange he passed out on the porch. It wasn’t the first time he woke up with a cigarette burned out in his fingers, though this one must have burned out not long after it was lit, of course that was in line with his exhaustion and the extreme winds too. Thank god for that, I don’t know what I’d do if I caused a house fire.
He sat up a bit in the chair, feeling the chill in his bones after what must have been the rest of the night passed out on the porch in that wind without much on to block out the air. He’d come out in nothing but pants, wanting to be prepared for the basic decencies, but no shirt or shoes to keep the cold from digging its way into him. As he stood up to go in, he thought back to the glow of last night, that swaying something that wasn’t just trees. He thought he also remembered something like singing, though nothing like anything he’d really call music. He’d thought about having a cigarette now that he was awake to actually appreciate it, but he was shaking pretty badly, and he found himself inordinately happy to see the sun was coming up in the distance, so he slipped inside instead.
When he went into the bedroom to grab some clothes for a hot shower he found both Em and the baby fast asleep in the bed. If he hadn’t woken up on the porch he might have written it all off as some sort of weird dream, but he clearly had the memories of the night before, the strangeness of it all was too clear to be anything but real. So where had she been? Where had she taken Caroline? He shook his head with a sigh, got his things, and rushed off to get that shower.
The edge of the night still lingered in his skin even after he turned the knob to a full blast of burning water and stood under it a good while. The echo of the wind and the whispered singing continued drifting in and out
of his thoughts even as he got into bed next to his wife and daughter, huddling into their warmth. It’s nothing, he thought as he drifted off smelling them on the pillows next to him, their soft rhythmic breathing lulling him despite the strangeness of last night. It was cold and it was weird, I could have seen anything, heard anything last night and come up with a hell of a story.
He opened his eyes to a room full of sunlight. Reaching out toward the stand, he grabbed his phone to check the time and breathed a sigh of relief as he sat up to face the dresser against the wall on his side. It was mid-afternoon, a little after three. He must have slept for a while, and he was glad to realize he’d done it on a day that he was off, though he’d startled awake feeling as if he’d missed something and attributed it to work.
He could hear Em working as she did her little humming sway at the counter in the kitchen, the boards creaking here and there as she shifted from one bare foot to the other. It was such a normal sound, comforting because he could picture it all by the sounds even as he tried to make last night align with the simple habitual quiet of today. Caroline was cooing in her playpen not far away while Em worked, the rattle of her toys telling him that, though the playpen was always there, so it was something he trusted to be the case. See? Nothing’s changed; nothing happened to them, it’s just another quiet little afternoon just like all the others.
He sniffed a little, trying to clear his head as he shook away the last of his sleep. “Em?” He didn’t like the uncertain sound of his voice, the not so subtle note of fear in it, but that was better than not saying anything at all.
“Yeah, babe?” She was calm, still self-assured and invitingly earth mother like she always was, which allowed him to relax and take a breath.
“Did you go somewhere last night? I woke up, and you weren’t here, neither was Caroline. I got worried, even checked out the woods out back.”
“Why would I be back there, Hon? I took her for a walk was all. It was rough out but she was fussy, thought maybe the air might do her good. This is town, even way up here where it peters out into woods on either side. Plenty of sidewalks after I get off of the hill.”
Of course. “I was just nervous when I woke up like that, and you were gone. Why didn’t you wake me to come with you?”
“It might be town, but it isn’t so bad I can’t walk alone for a bit, besides, I figured you needed the rest after the longer shifts. It blew and wailed, but if anything that seemed to soothe her more, like mommy that way, I guess.” She went back to humming; the sound of a knife on the cutting board telling him that she was probably cooking or making up some more of her concoctions. I guess that settled that then.
He started to stand up, his bladder was full and telling him about it, but stopped when his eyes caught her little stack of things on the stand on her side. Mixed in with her stack of gothics, most of which she’d read in the last few months since their little daytrip around town, there was another book. This one was bound in leather, the title inscribed in ink, and the uneven paper edges old and crumbling. Her book, that book.
Acting on impulse, he let himself fall back onto the bed and reached across it, taking the book and slipping it into the middle drawer of the dresser as quietly as he could.
“I don’t know why you were so worried, babe, don’t you trust me?” Her voice was natural, the same calm and soothing tone she’d used before, but it struck him funny, the timing.
Considering it for a moment, he wondered if he did, if he really believed it was just that she was out walking Caroline on her own when she’d always been so reticent to walk on her own at night. Things still weren’t always matching up, like a drawer that’s technically on the slides but slipping off the track just enough for it to sit funny in the slot.
“Yeah, Em, of course I do.”
The rest of the afternoon passed in peace, nothing more pressing than a few spats of Caroline crying for her second nap to really interrupt the flow of things, not that that was unusual either. They made love as she slept in the crib, his wife’s full breasts heavy in his hands and so very sensitive to his touch as they clung together, minds and bodies lost to the act for a few moments before they slipped off to sleep themselves, sweaty and fulfilled.
Of course he woke up not much later, needing little more than a light doze after earlier. He was wrapped tightly around her; her back spooned up against his front in a comfortable tangle of limbs. He stayed there for a moment, his eyes half lidded as he took in her scent, enjoying her warmth under the sheets. Then his thoughts drifted to her book, and he got up to slip it out of the dresser drawer, taking it with him as he went outside for a smoke.
He lit the cigarette first, drawing in the first drag and letting it settle in his lungs a minute before breathing it out. He hoped the nicotine would help settle his nerves before he opened it up. He and Em had always trusted each other, never had a reason not to up until now, and it was still hard to break from his habit of staying out of anything he saw as her private space. Studying the cover, he supposed it didn’t really seem very threatening. In fact, there was very little that seemed very threatening about Em or her behavior since getting it. Still, that weird feeling was there and it pushed on last’s night’s weird memories like a thumb pressed to a wound, drawing out that anxiety and reminding him that he really didn’t have a memory of getting to the porch.
Why? What’s so different now that I can’t let it go? Other than some vague bullshit from last night and a book that’s mostly creepy for looking old? Because she’s my Em, but she’s my Em with something else mixed in. She’s never really here with me now, as present as she is physically, she seems all sorts of far away mentally. I love her, but I can’t seem to really touch her, to know her like I did before. I hate feeling that, like she’s a lock for which the key has changed.
It was old enough that the title was illegible on the outside cover, the leather some soft yellow brown edging to a darker shade from age and accumulated dirt older than either he or Em. He took another drag on the cigarette and sat down in the chair, flicking away ash before he gently opened the front cover. He was looking at an illustration, catching just the edges of something that looked like a tree and what looked like a name, Shub-Niggurath, written in an old script before he heard the creek of the front door opening to the side of him.
“I thought you trusted me.” He startled, looking over to the doorway where Em stood, Caroline in her sling against her body. She was upset, tears in her eyes, but she was also angry.
“I do, I-” What more could he say?
“Then why did you take the book, Stephen? Why did you question my decision to use it?” There was fire in her eyes, tears burning away to anger and outrage.
“I—didn’t challenge it, I—just kept finding myself not feeling right about it. I don’t know why, to be honest. Something just feels…off, strange. Something doesn’t feel right, and it’s been bothering me.”
“Off? Isn’t she growing? Isn’t it working? Stephen, I am finally enough, don’t you understand that? I needed it, and I have it because I was dedicated enough. Will you feel better if I show you? Will you finally trust in me if I do that?”
He looked at her, feeling weak. “Em, baby, is it bad? Is it going to be bad? Because I can’t accept it if it’s bad. I can’t trust if it’s bad.
She looked at him for a long time, her hand on Caroline in her sling, holding her close and looking every inch of the mother she was. There was a confidence to her as she stood there, a strength that made her grow in some way. She reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling him off of the porch and down through the side yard.
It was just getting dark as they started off into the woods.
He felt it as they stepped into the trees, a rising of power and strangeness that made the hairs on his body prickle and snap with static electricity. He’d felt something like it when they were working on spells in the past, but nothing so concrete, that had been more ephemeral, easily written off as a trick of the ima
gination. This, this was legitimate and undeniable power crawling all over him like ants. It felt good but it was also alien, somehow outside of everything.
She was still pulling him along, holding his hand in hers while she kept her other on Caroline at her side. There was tall grass all around them, all of it thick with dead leaves and fallen pine needles from the last fall, a crunchy carpet that sent up fragrant growing smells as they darted through the darkening trees. The power felt stronger as they went on, heavy inside his flesh, and thrumming through his veins like a secondary heartbeat. He felt the woods now, the organic crawl and suck of it, sprawling and entwined inside of him as it was in the earth.
Em’s hand was alive in new ways. Energy, the life of the woods and the life inside of them, seemed to writhe and comingle in the simple touch of her hand. The flesh inside of her was alight with the pulse of the organic life of the woods, thick and growing like the roots, long and seeking like the branches. He wasn’t prepared, struggled to make it all fit into the world and the sense of being that had always been for him all of his life up until now, but it wouldn’t change and shift, it wouldn’t stop invading his senses, growing and pulsing tighter as they neared whatever it was that Em sought out.
Sweating and listless, he was grateful when they stopped, he on his knees and she standing with her hands up in supplication. “This is what I found, this is how I became enough. It was here all along, waiting for me to finally see my full potential.”
He looked up, fighting to see through the sweat in his eyes and the strange buzzing in his head. What had been vague before was now all too clear, the buzzing, seeking energy that came from the woods now singing in that alien tongue. It was a great tree that rose up into the night, its limbs thrown high and the glowing orbs that were its eyes bright and piercing against the wood that was its flesh. It wasn’t just a tree but some form of hybrid that existed between flesh and nature, old and forgotten for who knew how long. Forgotten until his wife had found some link to seek it out with, the book and whatever it held between the covers.
Within Stranger Aeons Page 21
