She made it about a mile into the woods, following a well-worn footpath through the trees, before she heard a loud rustle ahead. The light was fading quickly now, the sun almost entirely vanished behind the mountains to the west. Shawna froze, unsure whether she should venture any further in the receding twilight and risk being eaten by a wild animal. But then someone giggled in the gloom, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Bears didn’t giggle, as far as she knew.
She pushed on ahead until she came across a little girl standing in the path, dressed in a simple cloth dress, her brown hair pulled back into pigtails. She reminded Shawna of herself when she was that age, a mischievous glint in her hazel eyes.
“Hey there,” Shawna said. She waved at the little girl. “You lost?”
“Maybe,” the girl said with a shrug, her voice high and clear. “Are you?”
“Actually, I think I am,” Shawna admitted. “What’s your name?”
“I’m not supposed to tell,” the girl said, beaming proudly.
“That’s good thinking,” Shawna said. “We won’t worry about names for now. Can I help you back to your cabin? It’s getting pretty dark, and your parents will be worried.”
The girl cocked her head to the side, studying Shawna in the fleeting light. “Maybe,” she declared at last. “Or maybe I can stay with you. If you were my mom, I’d be right where I’m supposed to be.”
“That’s true,” Shawna said. She dropped to her haunches to look eye to eye with the girl. “But I’m not a very good mom, so I better get you home to yours.”
“Who says you’re not?” the girl asked, her eyes wide and innocent.
“The judge,” Shawna said glumly. “Apparently calling your ex a cheating whore in open court doesn’t make a very good impression on people. I might have thrown a shoe at his lawyer too.”
“Why did you throw your shoe?” the girl asked, cocking her head strangely.
“It wasn’t my shoe,” Shawna admitted, embarrassed just thinking about the incident. “But anyway, we should get going.”
“Okay,” the girl said, taking Shawna’s hand. They began to walk along the trail, the sun now completely lost behind the horizons, what little light that remained quickly growing fainter and fainter. “What’s a whore?”
“See?” Shawna said. “There I go again. It’s a word you shouldn’t tell your parents you heard from me. Is that your cabin up ahead?” she asked, spotting a flickering yellow light in the distance.
“Yup,” the girl said, looking back at Shawna and smiling widely. “Won’t you come back with me? I like you, Shawna.”
“That’s sweet,” Shawna said, ruffling the girl’s hair with her hand. “I better not. Come see me tomorrow, if you want, I’m the next cabin down the road. Bring your parents—but don’t go repeating any of the words you learned from me,” she added in a whisper.
The girl giggled, and ran into the darkness, vanishing in the gloom. Shawna stared after her for a long time, until an icy wind blew through the trees, reminding her she was alone in the dark woods.
She woke the next morning feeling better than she had in months. She checked her phone briefly, deleting a few junk emails before setting it back down with 74% power. She made herself a light breakfast and then changed into a pair of spandex leggings, a light sports jacket, and a new pair of running shoes. She left the house just as the sun was peeking up over the mountaintop, and she jogged down the main road, lost in the world around her instead of her thoughts for once.
She ran like that for hours, down the mountain and into town, then back up. When she finally made it back to her cabin, she stopped just in front of her jeep, leaning forward to rest her palms on her knees. Sweat dripped from her forehead. Her plan had been to take a shower, have a quick lunch, then read a book outside the rest of the afternoon. Instead, she found her eyes drifting towards the path she’d taken the night before. The little girl’s cabin had only been a little ways through the woods, and she didn’t feel all that tired right now.
But as she sprinted along the dirt path, she realized the woods didn’t look the same as they had last night. The trees here were diseased and rotting, what few leaves they had black and withered. When she finally reached where the cabin should have been, she found only the charred remains of some ancient structure overlooking a fetid swamp far below. The air stank of death and sulphur, and Shawna gagged.
“Excuse me, miss,” a woman’s voice said. Shawna suddenly noticed two rangers in green uniforms and wide-brimmed hats. One was a Hispanic woman a little shorter than Shawna, the other was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a light stubble across his face. “Ranger Demi Mondaine,” she said, introducing herself. “This here’s my partner Doug McKnight. You’re in a restricted area.”
“What happened here?” Shawna asked. The place seemed at once both ancient and fresh, like whatever had left this foul mark on the earth had done so only recently. She could only think that she had made a wrong turn somewhere along the line. This couldn’t be the little girl’s cabin.
“Folks say it’s haunted,” the male ranger said.
“Haunted?” Shawna asked. Ranger Demi glared at her partner.
“That’s right,” Ranger Doug said, ignoring his partner’s ire. “Local legend has it that three hundred years ago a witch and her family lived here. The witch sold her soul to a demon in exchange for her powers, and one day, it came to collect—but instead of asking for her soul, the demon asked for her daughter. The witch refused, and the demon pulled out her contract and showed her the fine print, and sure enough, the demon was within his rights. The witch was furious, and rather than give up her daughter she cast a spell that destroyed them all and put a taint upon the land. That’s why they call it Devil’s Forge.”
“Ignore him,” Ranger Demi said flatly. “He thinks he saw a chupacabra once. There were coal mines under the mountain, and waste from the mines contaminated this part of the mountain. Nothing to see here, but it’s not safe, haunted or not.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Shawna said, waving politely. She turned and retreated back to her cabin, leaving the stench of decay far behind. She quickly showered and ate her lunch, then spent a few hours lounging on her back-porch swing with a paperback novel and a bottle of wine. When the sun began to sink again, she found herself thinking of the little girl in the woods. She was sure she’d taken the same path today, but it had been dark last night, and it was possible she’d unwittingly wandered down the wrong trail.
She decided to take one last stab at finding the girl’s cabin again, promising herself she’d spend the rest of the evening soaking in the tub if she didn’t find what she was looking for before night fell. She followed the path into the woods, walking slowly this time, doing her best to remember the way she’d gone the night before. The sun had just reached the edge of the horizon when she heard giggling up ahead.
Shawna squealed with delight and sprinted forward. The girl stood alone in the path, as if waiting for her. She flashed Shawna a playful grin and dashed back towards her cabin, and Shawna chased after her. There’d been a time she’d played with her own children like this, chasing the twins across their lawn while they laughed and tripped over each other.
Shawna finally caught up with the little girl, and they tumbled gently to the ground in a tangle of limbs and giggles. “Got you,” Shawna said, laughing uncontrollably while she tickled the girl. She took a deep breath to banish her giddiness. “I tried to find your cabin today,” she explained. “But I must have made a wrong turn because I ended up somewhere really weird.”
“Come home with me, Shawna,” the girl said, and Shawna smiled at her in the darkness.
“Your parents won’t mind?” she asked, hugging the girl tightly.
“They won’t mind,” the girl said, melting into Shawna’s embrace. “They’ve been waiting for someone to visit for a long time, but no one ever does.”
“How long is a long time?” Shawna asked. The girl only shrugged, leading her by
the hand. Together, the two of them skipped happily into the gloom towards her cabin, its porchlights flickering in the distance while the last of the daylight fled altogether.
But once they grew closer, Shawna noticed the cabin seemed much older than the one she was staying in. Its logs were roughly hewn, separated by thick layers of mortar. The lights she had seen were not electric, but flames dancing inside oil lanterns. They reached the front door, and all the lights went out, the oil lamps on the porch dying in an instant, snuffed out by an icy wind that swept across the clearing, carrying with it the same stench of death and brimstone she’d smelled earlier. Shawna wretched, and a strange thought suddenly flashed across her mind.
“How… how did you know my name?” she asked the girl in the utter blackness of the starless night, suddenly realizing the girl had called her Shawna both times they’d met. The girl had reminded her so much of her own daughters that she hadn’t even noticed. Everything had just seemed so perfect, so right.
But now the girl was gone, and in her place was a shadow utterly black and cold, its icy claw clenched around her wrist. The door of the cabin creaked open, and Shawna struggled against the shadow, remembering the awful story the rangers had told her about the witch and the demon. It had seemed silly enough at the time, but now it was all too real for her. She opened her mouth to scream, only to find herself instantly filled by the icy blackness, a thick, putrid smoke that engulfed her, a stench like rotten eggs driving her eyes into the back of her skull. An unseen force gripped her entire body, dragging her into the cabin, and the door slammed shut, leaving her in absolute darkness.
***
Shawna pulled her jeep up to the leasing office, the tires grinding into the gravel of the loosely-paved parking lot. Her lengthy auburn hair was in a tight bun, and she wore an all-black, skintight tracksuit. Heads turned as she glided through the greasy-spoon diner attached to the office, her spandex ensemble leaving very little to the imagination. She casually tossed the keys to her cabin at the check-in desk. Fifty had never looked so good, she was sure.
“Six bacon cheeseburgers to go, honey,” she said, winking to the middle-aged fry-cook behind the counter. He blushed, turning away to fulfill her order.
“You leavin’ early?” Ranger Doug asked, sitting at the counter with his partner, a plate of waffles sitting in front of him, swimming in syrup. “I figured you were in for the long haul.”
“Better lay off the heart-attacks-on-a-bun, lady,” Ranger Demi said, giving her a strange look. “At least if you want to keep rocking the Lance Armstrong look.”
“Hope we didn’t scare you off,” Doug said. The cook handed her a greasy paper bag.
“On the house,” the cook said, chuckling nervously. Shawna gave him another wink.
“Don’t worry, baby. I don’t scare easy,” Shawna said, blowing the ranger a kiss. She headed back towards the door, feeling every eye in the diner on her when she left.
“Huh,” the female ranger said behind her. “Someone sure got real foxy real fast. You don’t think…”
The door to the diner closed behind her, and Shawna slid into her jeep and peeled out, sending gravel flying. She looked into the rearview mirror to see the two rangers staring after her from the parking lot, and she chuckled. She adjusted the mirror to admire herself for a moment—her small, rounded chin, high cheekbones beneath flawless pale skin, her short button nose… and two black, smoke-filled eyes staring sightlessly out into the world.
Devil Take the Hindmost
Connecticut, July 2014
The phone rang, a deep staccato buzz that shook the coffee table where Brooke had left the device. She almost didn’t hear it, her eyes fixed on something far away. By the third ring, she blinked, leaping up from the sofa to grab it before it went to her voicemail.
Her twin sister, Blair, scoffed at her efforts from the couch. Their brother, Colin, took a deep puff from a small ceramic pipe before handing it to Brooke’s non-identical twin. Ignoring her siblings, Brooke tapped the screen and her mom’s face appeared, smiling widely. Brooke always felt like she was looking into a mirror when she saw Mom, because they appeared so eerily similar. Even at fifty, Mom had an ageless face that left people thinking she was simply Brooke’s older sister. Brooke did her best to avoid comments like that by dying her hair new and exciting colors and by experimenting with dramatic makeup. She wore it black now, with a vibrant red lipstick for contrast.
“Hey guys!” Mom said, waving her phone around the cabin she was renting. Back when Brooke’s parents had still been together, they’d gone down to Tennessee almost every summer and stayed at a cabin in the mountains. Dad’s new girlfriend, Stacy, didn’t like the woods, so they’d gone to Miami just last week to see the ocean.
“Hey, Mom,” Brooke replied with a yawn. She glanced back to her siblings, but neither of them seemed interested in talking to Mom.
“I wanted you guys to see the place I’m staying,” Mom said, giving her a virtual tour of the cabin. It was smaller than the ones they’d stayed in as a family, just one open-concept room with a living area and kitchenette. French doors opened to a porch that boasted a swinging bench and a hot tub with a view of the forest valley below. Behind her, Blair coughed, and a thick cloud of smoke drifted up into the air.
“What’s that?” Mom asked. “Brooke, are you guys smoking pot again?”
“Gotta go, Mom,” Brooke said quickly. “Love you.” She hung up before her mom could say anything more. She wasn’t worried about getting into trouble—she was nineteen, and since the divorce Mom didn’t have any legal involvement in their life. Dad even had a restraining order out against her. The divorce had been rough on them all, but it had left Mom broken. She’d spiraled out of control for months, drinking, going out with strange men, violent outbursts—she’d even attacked Dad’s lawyer in court, right in front of the judge.
Mom had been seeing a therapist lately, and she was actually getting a little better, but Brooke was in no mood to be lectured by someone that had done so much worse than smoke a little weed in the basement. Hopefully a week alone in the mountains would do Mom some good, but it wasn’t going to put Brooke’s life back together.
“No fair!” Stacy said, coming down the steps with a bowl of popcorn in one hand and a bottle of bourbon in the other. “You guys started without me!” A leggy blonde that Dad had met on some ad project his firm had worked on, Stacy was only a few years older than Brooke, so she was more like a sister than a potential stepmom. She was great—she took Brooke and Blair shopping, bought them liquor and pot, even set them up with her friends. Family trips with Mom had always been exactly what they sounded like, but trips with Stacy were booze-fueled blurs of partying and hot guys.
“You snooze, you lose,” Blair said, blowing a cloud of smoke in Stacy’s direction. Unlike Brooke, she wore her hair in its natural color. They weren’t identical twins though, and Blair took after Dad, so she didn’t get the same sort of comments that always followed anytime Brooke and Mom were seen together.
“Is that so, huh?” Stacy said, setting the popcorn and booze down on the coffee table in front of the couch while an action movie played on the television. “Then I guess you don’t want any of this?” she asked, holding up a small plastic baggy filled with the white powder that had made their Miami trip so memorable.
“Hey, hold up,” Brooke said, reaching for the bag. “Let me get some of that!”
Brooke couldn’t remember most of the day after she took her first hit—Stacy invited some friends over, and Brooke woke up next to a muscular 25-year-old with amazing abs. Once she got a chance to eat breakfast—if a meal at 3:00 in the afternoon still counted as breakfast—Brooke found herself thinking about Mom again. Yes, she’d had a few regrettable moments—showing up at random to confront Dad in public or calling Brooke or her siblings in the dead of night sobbing uncontrollably. There’d been the profanity-laced tirade at church, and no one was ever going to forget last year’s school board meeting w
hen Mom had shown up drunk and raving.
But there had been good times. Brooke could still remember playing tag with Mom in the back yard and hiking through the woods during the summer. There was very little she wouldn’t do to have things go back the way they’d been, and it gnawed at her with every waking moment. Stacy helped drown it out, but it was always there in the background, just waiting for her mind to go quiet again.
She picked up her phone and dialed Mom’s number, but it rang and rang without an answer, finally going to voicemail. Brooke hung up without saying anything. She went online to look at Mom’s social media account, but it said she hadn’t been active in twenty hours. Apparently Mom was having a good time all on her own.
Stacy threw another party that night—Dad was out of town for the week, which meant Stacy was free to have the kind of fun she couldn’t when he was around. This time, Brooke woke up to a different, but equally attractive, twenty-something, and both of them were so horrendously hungover that they stayed in bed the entire day, falling in and out of sleep.
The doorbell rang a little after dark, startling her awake. She sat there, her stomach growling and gurgling while the unknown boy slumbered next to her. The doorbell rang again, and Brooke clenched her eyes shut, praying that someone else would get the door. For a few minutes there was silence, and she was sure whoever it was had left, but then the door rang again, three times in rapid succession. Brooke rolled out of bed wearing nothing but a wrinkled tank-top and shorts. She stumbled out of her room and down the steps, groaning the entire way. Blair entered from the living room, and Colin and Stacy came up from the basement—Brooke was pretty sure they had a thing, but they kept it secret enough that Dad wouldn’t find out.
“Did someone order pizza or something?” Colin asked, looking as groggy as Brooke felt. He looked out through the peephole and turned back to face the rest of them. “Crap,” he said. “It’s Mom again.”
Demi Mondaine: Volume One Page 14
