There’s give and there’s take. There’s balance in everything. It was the one law none of us could hide from. Even life for life sometimes, but if Shae really did see what she thought she had, I wondered what she hadn’t seen - what life the Woodwalker had deemed forfeit for the deer’s.
As I went about the ugliest business of my life, I thought of the moonshiners from the tale Mrs Tepovich had told Ray as a boy -how they’d burned out a stretch of woodland and fields, and the grotesque fate they’d all met. But Grandma Evvie, as it turned out, had a different take on what had happened, and why the woods and crops rebounded so quickly after the fire.
‘That story about Old Hickory Bones your Aunt Pol told you?’ This was the last thing I said to Ray. ‘It’s basically true, except she was wrong about one thing. Or maybe she wanted to give you the lesson but spare you the worst. But the part about replacing the bones with hickory sticks? That’s not something the Woodwalker does … that’s the gift it expects us to give it.’
Whatever else was true and wasn’t, I knew this much: Grandma Evvie would never have lied about my grandfather taking part in such a grim judgement when he was a very young man, able to swing a cast-iron mallet with ease.
Just as he must’ve done, I cut and sliced, pounded and pushed, hurrying to get it finished before the last of the golden autumn light left the sky, until what I’d made looked something like a crucified scarecrow. It glistened and dripped, and for as terrible a sight as it was, I’d still seen worse in war. When I stood back to take it in, wrapped in the enormous roar of woodland silence, I realised that my grandmother’s faith in me to do such a thing wasn’t entirely a compliment.
Gina hadn’t watched, hadn’t even been able to listen, so she’d spent the time singing to Shae, any song she could think of, as she prepared my sister’s body. She curled her among the roots of a great oak, resting on a bed of leaves and draped with a blanket of creepers and vines. How much was instruction and how much was instinct grew blurred, but it seemed right. She shivered beneath Shae’s real blanket after she was done, and after I’d cleaned myself up inside the trailer I held her awhile as she cried for any of a hundred good reasons. Then I built a fire and we waited.
You let yourself hope but explain things away. No telling why that pile of leaves rustled, why that vine twitched - anything could’ve done it. Flames flickered and shadows danced, while something watched us in the night - something tall enough to tangle clouds in its hair, small enough to hide in an acorn - and the forest ebbed and flowed with the magnitude of its slow, contemplative breath.
A hand first, or maybe it was a foot … something moved, too deliberate, too human, to explain away as anything else. Eight years since I’d heard her voice, but I recognised it instantly in the cough that came from beneath the shadows and vines. Gina and I dug and we pulled and scraped away leaves, and in the tangled heart of it all there was life, and now only one reason to cry. Shae coughed a long time, scrambling in a panic across the forest floor, her limbs too weak to stand, her voice too weak to scream, and I wondered if she was back at that moment eight years gone, reliving what it was like to die.
We held her until, I hoped, she thought it was just another dream.
I cupped her face, her cheeks still cold, but the fire gave them a flush of life. ‘Do you know me?’
Her voice was a dry rasp. ‘You look like my brother … only older.’
She had so painfully much to learn. I wondered if the kindest thing wouldn’t be to keep her at the house until we’d taught each other everything about where we’d been the last eight years, and the one thing I hadn’t considered until now was what if she wasn’t right, in ways we could never fix, in ways beyond wrong, and it seemed like the best thing for everybody would be to send her back again.
For now, though, I had too much to learn myself.
‘Take her back to the house,’ I told Gina. ‘I’ll catch up when I can.’
They both looked at me like I was sending them out among the wolves. But somebody, somewhere, was expecting what had just been cooked up in the trailer.
‘And tell them not to put the place up for sale. I’ll need it myself.’
It was Shae, with the wisdom of the dead, who intuited it first, with a look on her face that asked What did you do, Dylan, what did you do?
I kissed them both on their cold cheeks and turned towards the trailer before I could turn weak and renege on the harshest terms of the trade.
Because there’s give and there’s take. There are balances to be kept. And there’s a time in everyone’s life when we realise we’ve become what we hate the most.
I was the bringer of plague now. There could be no other way.
And though I knew it would be a blessed endeavour, they still couldn’t die fast enough.
BRIAN HODGE lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he also dabbles in music, sound design and photography. He loves everything about organic gardening except the thieving squirrels, and trains in Krav Maga and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, which are of no use at all against the squirrels.
Hodge is the author of ten novels, more than a hundred short stories, novelettes and novellas, and four collections, the first of which, The Convulsion Factory, was listed by critic Stanley Wiater as one of the 113 best books of modern horror. The capstone of his second collection, the novella ‘As Above, So Below’, was selected for inclusion in the massive Century’s Best Horror anthology. His most recent book is his latest collection, Picking the Bones, which received a starred review in Publishers Weekly.
By the time this sees print, he should be done with his next novel, while another recent project has been completing the conversion of his backlist titles into e-books. Also forthcoming is a hardcover edition of his early epic novel, Dark Advent.
‘Even though I had no idea what the story would be, “Roots and All” is something I wanted to write for a long time,’ reveals Hodge. ‘My father, who went on to become a respected and beloved educator and administrator, came from just such a place as in this story.
‘Its seed was planted before my move to Colorado, when, some time after my grandmother’s death, I was on the jury in a trial over a stabbing that had occurred in her community. Upon getting a glimpse of how that area was changing, I felt an unexpectedly strong sorrow. The need was rekindled after a recent visit, when I learned from an uncle that it has since degenerated into a meth haven.’
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*
Tell Me I’ll See You Again
—DENNIS ETCHISON-
S
AY IT HAPPENED like this:
All the lawns were dry and white that day. Cars hunkered in driveways or shimmered like heat mirages at the curb. Last summer the four of them had tried to fry an egg on the sidewalk. This year it might work. As she walked past Mrs Shaede’s rosebush she noticed a cricket perched on the bleached yellow petals. When she stopped for a closer look the insect dropped off and fell at her feet. She studied it, the papery body and thin, ratcheted legs, but it did not move again. So she reached down, picked it up and slipped it carefully into her shirt pocket.
At that moment there was a rumbling in the distance.
She knew the sound. Mr Donohue’s truck had a bad muffler. She glanced up in time to see it pass at the end of the street. A few seconds later a bicycle raced across the intersection, trying to catch the truck. The spokes flashed and the tyres snaked over the hot pavement.
‘David!’ she shouted, and waved, but he pedalled away.
The muffler faded as the pickup headed for the boulevard. Then she heard a faint metallic clatter somewhere on the next block. It could have been a bicycle crashing to the ground.
She hurried for the corner.
Vincent came out of his house, drinking a Dr Pepper. ‘Where you going?’ he said.
‘Did you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’
Now there was only the buzzing of bees, the raspy bark of a dog in a backyard.
‘I think it was
David.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s in trouble,’ she said, and hurried on.
Vincent followed at a casual pace. By the time he caught up she was squinting along the cross-street.
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know!’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ He showed her the can of soda. ‘Want one? I got some more in the basement.’
‘Not now!’
‘Aw, he’s all right.’
‘No, he’s not. Look.’
A couple of hundred feet down, before the turn onto Charter Way, the bicycle lay on its side in the grass, the front wheel pointing at the sky and the spokes still spinning. David was twisted under the frame, the handlebars across his chest.
She ran the rest of the way, stopped and waited for him to move.
‘Not bad.’ Vincent walked around the crash scene. ‘I give him a seven.’
‘This isn’t a game.’ She studied the boy on the ground, the angle of his neck. She watched his eyelids. They remained shut.
‘Sure it is,’ said Vincent. ‘We used to play it last summer. Remember?’
She got down on her knees and pressed her ear to his chest. There was no heartbeat. She unbuttoned his shirt to be sure. Then she moved her head up until her cheek almost touched his lips. No air came out of his nose or mouth. This time he was not breathing at all.
‘Help me,’ she said.
‘I don’t see any blood.’
Vincent was right about that. And the bike seemed to be undamaged, as if it had simply fallen over.
‘David? Can you hear me?’
‘It looks pretty real, though. The way he’s got his tennis shoe in the chain …’
‘Are you going to help or not?’
Vincent raised the bike while she worked the foot free. She slipped her arm under David’s shoulders and tried to sit him up. ‘David,’ she whispered. ‘Tell me you’re all right.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Vincent said, ‘I’ll give him an eight.’
She lowered David back down, dug her fingers into his hair and tapped his head against the ground. Then she did it again, harder. Finally his chest heaved as he began to breathe. His eyelids opened.
‘I knew he was faking,’ Vincent said.
‘You take the bike,’ she told him.
‘Eric used to do it better, though.’
‘Shut up.’
Vincent started to wheel the bike onto the sidewalk. He had to turn the handlebars so he did not run over a small mound on the grass.
‘What the hell is that?’ he said. ‘A dead racoon?’
‘Leave it.’
‘I hate those things.’ Vincent raised his foot, ready to kick it like a football.
‘It’s a possum. I said leave it.’
She got up quickly, walked over, took hold of the animal by the fur and tapped it against the ground. Once was enough. The frightened creature sprang to life, wriggled free and scurried off.
‘Faker!’ said Vincent.
‘Take the bike, I told you. We’ll meet at his house.’
She went back to David and held out her hand.
‘Come on. I’ll walk you home.’
David blinked, trying to focus. ‘Is my dad there?’
*
‘I didn’t know you went out,’ said his grandmother from the porch.
‘Sorry,’ said David.
‘You should always tell someone.’
‘Do you know where my dad went?’
‘To get some kind of tool.’
‘Oh.’
‘Come in the house. You don’t look so good. Would your friends like a cold drink?’
‘Not me,’ said Vincent.
‘No, thank you,’ said the girl.
‘Is he coming back?’
‘Why, of course he is, Davey. Now come in before you get heat stroke.’
‘I have to put my bike away.’
‘Well, don’t be long.’ She opened the screen door and went inside.
‘I gotta go, anyway,’ Vincent said. He started out of the front yard. ‘Wanna come over to my place?’
‘Not right now,’ said David.
‘We can play anything you want.’
David was not listening. His eyes moved nervously from the driveway to the end of the block and back again. The girl moved over and stood next to him.
‘Maybe later,’ she said.
‘Okay. Well, see ya.’
She sat down on the porch as Vincent walked away.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I thought you got hit by a car or something.’
‘Naw.’
‘What do you remember?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You never do. But that’s okay. We’ll figure it out.’
There was the rumbling of the muffler again, at the end of the block. David stood by the driveway until the pickup truck rounded the corner and turned in. His father got out, carrying a bag. ‘Hey, champ,’ he said.
‘Where were you?’
‘At the Home Depot.’
‘Why didn’t you take me?’
‘Did you want to go?’
‘I always do.’
‘Next time, I promise. Hello, there. Charlene, isn’t it?’
‘Sherron. Hi, Mr Donohue.’
‘Of course. You’re David’s friend from school. How have you been?’
‘Fine.’
‘You knew Eric, didn’t you? David’s brother?’
‘Yes,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Dad …’
‘I have an idea. ‘Why don’t you stay for lunch? Would you like that?’
Something moved in her chest, or at least in the pocket of her shirt, trying to get out. The cricket from the rosebush had come back to life. ‘I would. I mean, I do. But I sort of have to get home. My mom’s expecting me. She’s making something special.’
‘Another time, then.’
‘I was wondering,’ she said carefully. ‘Could David come, too? She said it was all right.’
‘Why, I think that’s a fine invitation. Don’t you, son?’
David considered. ‘Are you leaving again?’
‘Not today. I’ve got plenty to do in the garage.’
‘Please?’ she said to David. ‘I need you to help me with something.’
‘Well …’
‘My science project. It’s really cool.’
‘I’ll bet it is,’ said the man. ‘You know, my wife was interested in science. Do you remember David’s mother?’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking at her shoes.
‘Eileen was doing research when I met her, at college. We got married right after graduation …’
‘Dad, please.’
‘She was a very nice lady,’ said the girl.
‘Yes. She was.’ His father took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a second. ‘Anyway, you two have a great time. And don’t be such a stranger, Sherron. You’re always welcome here.’
‘Thanks, Mr Donohue.’
‘Then - I’ll see you later, Dad.’
His father winked. ‘You can count on it.’
*
‘Are you going to tell my dad?’
‘Not if you don’t want me to.’
They walked around the corner to the next street. The pavement smelled like melting asphalt. Somewhere a sprinkler hissed, beating steam into the air. Her house had trees that kept the sun away from the roof and the windows, so when they went inside it was hard to see for a minute. No one was home. She poured two glasses of sweet tea from the refrigerator and led him to her room.
As soon as she closed the door she took the cricket out of her pocket. Before it could hop away she put it in a Mason jar. A grasshopper and a beetle crawled along a leaf at the bottom. As soon as she touched the jar they stopped moving. She screwed the wire lid back on.
‘Your folks let you keep those?’
‘I told them it’s for
school.’
‘What do you need them for?’
‘My project. If I get a fish tank, I can have frogs, too. And one of these.’ She opened a book to a picture of a small snake.
‘Why?’
‘I found it on the Internet.’
‘But why?’
She turned her computer on and showed him a page from a university website. There was an article called Thanatosis: Nature’s Way of Survival, with close-ups of insects, a possum, a leopard shark and a hog-nosed snake. He read the first paragraph. It explained how some creatures protect themselves when afraid by pretending to be dead.
‘You think I’m like them?’
‘I don’t know yet. But I’m going to find out.’
‘Well, you’re wrong.’
She noticed that his eyes were now focused on the bulletin board by the computer, and the headline of the newspaper clipping she had pinned there months ago: LOCAL WOMAN, SON DIE IN FIERY CRASH. She snatched it down and put it in the drawer.
‘Oh, David. I’m really sorry.’
‘I better go.’
‘But I need you to help me.’
‘You think I’m faking it.’
‘No, I don’t. I was there this time.’
‘Then you know I’m a freak,’ he said. ‘Like one of those animals. Like a bug.’
‘You’re not.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘They just - freeze up when they get scared. But you weren’t even breathing. Your heart stopped.’
‘So what am I scared of?’
‘It’s okay to say it. David, I saw you chasing the truck. Every time he leaves - well, you’re afraid he won’t come back either. Aren’t you?’
He made a sound like a laugh. ‘You don’t know anything.’
‘Don’t I?’
The laugh stopped. ‘If he doesn’t, it means I got a second chance and I blew it.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Don’t you get it? She was going to take me, but I was off playing that stupid game. She wasn’t supposed to take Eric. It was supposed to be me.’
Her mouth stayed open while she tried to find words.
‘I have to go now,’ he said.
A Book of Horrors - [Anthology] Page 15
