Pete looked down. His work boots stood across long slender roots that twisted themselves in and out of the earth like so many dark, gnarled fingers.
He understood now. He wondered why it had taken him so long; why he hadn’t seen sooner.
Tessa had been the key.
Had they listened to her, all this might have been avoided. Had Pete used a little imagination, many people might be alive today. But Pete was slow. He hadn’t gotten the full picture until Tessa had told him about Marvin’s death. As she had talked, Pete had understood - the warning lights had flashed; the alarm had sounded.
With Neal’s help, he’d learned how the monster was formed. And thanks to history, he now understood why the monster killed. Now, almost two hundred years later, it was clear what, exactly, the monster was.
Standing in the silent cold, Pete knew how to stop the deaths - he also knew the attempt could cost him his own life. But Pete Jacobs didn’t have a choice. He was the law in Bayside, and even if it killed him, he had to try and protect those people who remained.
Pete clicked on his two-way. “You guys stand ready,” he said. “But don’t do anything until you hear from me. Got it?”
“Yes sir,” said a distant voice covered in static. “Ready when you are.”
Pete Jacobs smiled.
He wiped the sweat from his face, then reached down and picked up a large, razor-sharp axe. The axe head, forged by an artisan blacksmith from the local monastery, was made of silver and fitted with a polished mahogany haft.
Pete took a small bottle of holy water and poured it over the axe head. He ran his fingers across the flawless silver, then touched the image of Saint Peter, etched into the side.
It was a work of art, he thought.
Silently, he made the sign of the cross. Then he raised the axe over his head, turned, and, with every ounce of strength he had, slammed the silver blade into the trunk of the tall, strange tree.
The tree screamed.
There on the road, the sky echoed with huge, anguished cries.
With Pete’s first cut, the tree unleashed the hideous sound of loathing and fear and fury which had grown inside its trunk for years.
The scream grew louder. Blood, centuries old, poured from the large, jagged wound and spilled onto the road. Pete swung again and again. Pieces of bloody, dark bark filled the sky as the first of the strange trees died.
The trees had stood for two centuries. They had absorbed the evil, the hatred and the pain spilled on the ground so long ago. They stood and waited, called as demonic sentinels and charged with killing the descendants of those who had first spilled blood along The Old North Road.
Finally, the scream forced Pete to his knees. He dropped his axe and covered his ears, trying to shield himself from the pain.
He shouldn’t have.
In that moment the tree attacked. Branches twisted and turned and bit and slashed. The ground beneath Pete trembled and shook.
A huge black root forced its way out of the dark, moist earth and twisted around the axe. Pete yanked the axe away and rose to swing again; more raw, bloody pieces of wood fell away as gallon upon gallon of dark, red blood filled the ditch along the road.
And still the tree fought.
Black roots slithered out of the ground and wrapped themselves around Pete like so many snakes.
Pete ripped pieces of root off his belt. “You’re not dragging me to your Hell hole,” he screamed. He swung the axe again and again.
But the plant continued to grasp and twist and slash. The branches, thin and sharp, slashed Pete’s face like thousands of razors.
Bloody and hurt, Pete turned, chopping his way through a bowl of twisted roots that pushed their way out of the ground. He had to fight his way back to the pavement and his Jeep.
The roots slithered toward him, winding around his legs like thousands of tiny wires, ripping through his uniform and gouging at his skin.
Pete fell to his knees and crawled across the bloody ground. Tessa was right, he thought. The roots twist and slither. They can…
A huge taproot forced its way around Pete’s gut. It squeezed like a python. Pete felt the air being forced out of his lungs. He gulped air, trying to breathe, but the root’s hold was unbreakable.
Pete flexed his right arm. Several of the small, wiry twigs snapped, freeing his hand just long enough to click the button on his two-way.
“Okay guys,” he coughed. “Come get ‘em. They’re all yours.”
Pete gulped again. He tried to force air back into his body, but the root twisted tighter, suffocating him. He felt another root twist around his neck, toward the back of his skull.
Pete fell to the ground. The silver axe fell from his hand. As he slid into blackness, just down the road, just beyond the reach of trees, the roar of chainsaws filled the air.
He heard music. Loud, loud piano music - rock ‘n’ roll, he was sure. Death wasn’t so bad, he thought. At least it had a soundtrack.
Pete opened his eyes.
“Thought we’d lost you there, chief,” Deputy Jones said. “How do ya feel?”
Pete rubbed his face. He was alive. Alive, but in serious pain. His sides ached and his back felt like someone - or something - had twisted him in half then put him back together.
“I’ve been better,” he said. He looked around. “Where am I?”
“Hospital,” the deputy replied. “Rusville Memorial. We got ya here as fast as we could… Thought you’d like the tunes.”
Pete pushed himself up. “And… The Old North Road?”
The deputy smiled. The first genuine smile Pete had seen in a long, long time.
“We took out ever’ damn tree,” he said. “They fought us like hell, too. But between the chainsaws and the flame-throwers - well, sheriff, there’s nothin’ there but a bunch of stumps and about a million gallons of dried black shit that I’d swear was blood.”
Pete nodded. He rubbed the back of his head. “Damnedest thing I ever saw, Jonesy. Trees that scream and bleed and kill. Hell, maybe those people at the church were right. Maybe it is the end of the world.”
Jones laughed. “Naw… just some real strange shit.” He reached down. “But you might want to keep this handy, just in case.” He laid the blood-stained axe across the bed.
Over the years, folks slowly returned to Bayside. The new ones, well, they don’t know, and most of the ones who stayed won’t talk. The few that do, well, they usually refer to the “official account.”
That story, complete with police files, photographs and written testimonials, tells of a deranged stranger who, hoping to bring about the end of the world, attacked and killed several people with a knife carved out of wood.
That’s the public story.
But for the curious, there’s a small safe in Neal O’Bannon’s newspaper office. Inside it are several hundred photographs.
Those photographs never appeared in the Bayside Reporter. Neal put them away. They were never printed because they showed the dozens and dozens of bodies - some burned, some ancient and withered and some bloody and newly rotting - that were found twisted among the roots of the tree stumps.
Neal keeps the photos hidden because they prove the bodies were slowly being eaten by the trees who guarded The Old North Road.
Filed with the photos is a list of names. Names like Currier and Withers and Boyd - descendants of the original group of the Seven and Four. But the names of the Spiritus Sancti were lost forever. Neither the Sancti, nor their ancestors, were known ever to have returned to Bayside.
Also in the safe are several letters from Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
The letters, found in an old desk at Bayside’s Our Lady of Sorrows Church, were written by a Catholic priest. The priest wrote of a woman he met who had been condemned to death. He said the woman - who was burned at the stake in 1813 - told him she was given a thousand dollars in silver and two cows to try and bring dark spirits from Hell to earth. The woman said she was asked to perform this tas
k for three men seeking to avenge the deaths of their families.
The priest’s letters said the men were from Bayside Township. And while the letters don’t name the woman, they note that right before her death, she confessed she had tried to call forth demons.
The letter does not say whether the woman had been successful.
Pete won’t talk about the letters or the photographs. He had wanted Neal to burn them, but Neal refused and they remain, today, locked in his safe.
Pete stayed silent. He won’t show people Race Holder’s autopsy reports; reports that tell how each victim’s skull had been penetrated by a razor sharp tree root, which separated the skull at its base from the spine.
And neither Pete nor the medical examiner will discuss how slivers of wood were found in each wound on each victim - proof that they had been ripped apart by the tree roots themselves.
Pete doesn’t like to talk about the day he killed the trees, either.
All he will say - for the record - is that on a cold November day, he and several dozen men worked non-stop until every tree lining The Old North Road had been cut down, chopped into logs, and fed into an industrial wood chipper.
However, at the Harrison Brothers’ Sawmill, a work order confirms that during November, the mill received four and one-half tons of bloody wood chips, which were burned to ash, then mixed with 25,000 gallons of holy water. The gray slush was sealed in plastic drums which carried the Papal seal.
Attached to that work order is a handwritten manifest that accounts for 271 sealed plastic barrels. Those barrels were shipped to the middle of Penobscot Bay and dumped in the ocean.
Folks don’t talk about the Bayside Incident anymore. Many years have passed. Tessa stills sells homemade jam at her fruit stand, and Elijah still smokes his pipe.
Pete has retired now. These days he just sits in the sun at the big white house and watches the boats out on the bay.
But behind him, near the back fence where he first found old man Withers, a small tree has started to grow - a small tree that looks like an oak, but has wispy willow branches.
Illustration by Vincent Sammy
‘Herman’s Bad Seed’
FORGE OF THE SOUL
by Jason Kahn
Mary Warren gathered her shawl around her shoulders as she walked her great grandnephew to the new schoolhouse. It was Mary’s first morning visiting her relatives in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and there was a chill in the early spring air.
Despite her normally gruff nature, Mary doted on her grandnephew. “You must be excited,” she said, giving Thomas' hand a squeeze.
Thomas was seven. He smiled, unable to hide his eagerness. “Yes, ma’am.”
The schoolhouse had been built just a few weeks ago, after the arrival of the town’s first schoolteacher, and the children studied their lessons with great enthusiasm.
Mary and Thomas shared the hard-packed road through the center of town with dozens of other boys and girls, similarly escorted. Mary couldn’t help but notice the strange glances that passed between the adults as they walked: suspicious, almost accusing, creating a tension in the air to which the children were oblivious. She frowned, wondering what was amiss.
“There’s Miss Jamison,” Thomas said.
Mary saw the schoolmistress, her head bowed, face covered by a wide bonnet as she greeted the students at the door. Her voice, a low murmur, stirred a distant echo, causing an involuntary shudder to run through Mary’s body.
“Good morning, Thomas.” The teacher raised her head, facing Mary. “And you must be his great aunt.”
Mary’s eyes widened and for a moment she was struck dumb. That hair, that face. Forty years flew by on ravens’ wings and she was back in Salem. Mary heard the slow creak of wood and rope as men and women hung by the neck, swaying with morbid grace. The sour stink of sweat and urine from the hundreds locked in their cells awaiting trial assaulted her nose. And in her mind’s eye, Mary saw her, the beautiful, haughty girl who had ensorcelled them all, including herself. The chief accuser, Abigail Williams.
Mary came back to herself with a start. Sweat beaded on her forehead and she felt a spreading tightness in her chest. With great effort, she got her labored breathing under control and returned to the present.
“I’m Thomas’ schoolteacher, Miss Emily Jamison,” the young lady said, proffering her hand.
Mary took it automatically as speech came to her. “Mary… Mary Warren,” she replied. There was a flicker in the schoolteacher’s eyes. Was that recognition or just her imagination? “Pleased to meet you, Miss Jamison,” Mary said. “I trust Thomas has been attentive at his studies?”
“Indeed he has, Miss Warren,” she answered, with that dazzling, familiar smile. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
She turned to the next child, allowing Mary to take her leave. It was all she could do to keep a steady gait as she turned and walked away. She kept walking until her feet led her into the saloon in the town inn. Mary sat down at the bar and ordered a shot of whiskey.
The bartender gave her a dubious look, not sure what to make of an elderly woman drinking so early in the morning. Mary fixed him with a stern gaze and placed a few coins on the bar. “Make it a double.”
Mary sipped her whiskey, letting its warmth soothe her frayed nerves and unclench the knot in her chest. It had been a long time since she had thought about Salem, about what she and the other girls had done. She had spent years - decades - burying that part of her life. Her family had moved away because of the shame she had brought on them. But that was nothing compared with the terrible emptiness, the bitterness she had endured every day since.
And after mother and father had passed into the Lord’s Kingdom, being on her own had been difficult, as the memories continued to plague her. That was why she traveled, visiting her nieces and nephews throughout the colonies, though some groaned inwardly when Mary showed up on their doorstep. Still, the dreams haunted her less and less, and Mary had finally known a measure of peace.
Until today.
Mary took another sip, grimacing. That schoolteacher was the spitting image of Abigail Williams: her voice, manner, everything. But that was impossible. She would be in her early sixties by now, the same as Mary. Yet she looked just the same as the last day Mary had seen her, before Abby disappeared from Salem aboard a ship, never to be seen again. Mary downed the last of her whiskey. It couldn’t be her, just someone who looked like her. Had to be.
Mary put the glass down with a solid thunk, reassuring herself that it was just coincidence. She wandered outside, glancing warily at passersby as she walked through town on her way to her grandniece’s home. The cool of early morning had given way to sun-warmed day. Shops were open for business as farmers inspected equipment for sale and men in waistcoats and bright-buckled shoes displayed their wares.
Once again, Mary noticed a strange tension amongst the townspeople. Tempers flared over imagined insults. People almost came to blows at the slightest provocation. The town was a-simmer.
Mary passed a church, hearing raised voices inside. She had shunned the Church most of her adult life, having seen first-hand the terrible acts it could countenance in God’s name. Nevertheless, driven by a feeling that perhaps she might learn the nature of what now afflicted the town, Mary eased the door open and slipped inside.
She raised her fan as she entered the back of the congregation, swirling the hot, thick air inside the long, high-ceilinged structure. Even with her spectacles, she couldn’t make out the figure at the other end, shouting from the pulpit. Mary moved against a side wall and edged her way forward, listening.
“…‘Tis a perilous time we live in, good people, as we are beset on all sides by the agents of darkness,” boomed the orator in deep, sonorous tones. Despite the stifling air, an icy chill prickled up Mary’s spine. This voice was familiar too, though its owner’s identity eluded her. She moved closer, attempting to see.
“Just a fortnight ago in Chester County, a h
omestead of God-fearin’ Christians all under one roof slept sound in their beds, when a tribe of godless red savages swooped down in the black of night. The men folk were slaughtered where they lay, and the women and children were taken, no doubt to sate the savages’ evil appetites.”
Something Wicked Anthology, Vol. One Page 15
