Pieces of Ivy

by Dean Covin

  As they rounded in close to the structure, Vicki marveled at the char, like black dragon-skin, enveloping the surprisingly sturdy church. The eerie rustle of creatures in the belly of the building sent shivers through her spine as they stepped around the back.

  She saw the sharp edge in the forest where life met death. Like weathered steel fingers, a promised warning to be icy-cold to the touch, the trees were twisted, knotted with black rust, threatening to pierce her soul even if she remained too far for them to scrape her tender flesh. It was the stuff of nightmares.

  Beyond the first line of dead trees, too far for comfort, stood the gnarled and cracking gravestone teeth of the Deadwood Skull protruding from the neglected grounds. They crossed among the stones. A dark, unnatural feeling of intense vulnerability grew as she pictured herself traversing the toothy maw of the hungry skull. Logic slipped away. Please don’t eat me. Please don’t eat me.

  As they stepped from the mouth, she released the breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Hank stopped for her, offering a hand. She batted away the gesture with a scoff and passed him, taking the lead.

  The dead trees of the dark forest looked ancient compared to their girth. There was a hint of vibration rather than noise between them. Yet their old, dry wood squeaked in the stagnant air as if still growing, painfully, slowly, against the ancient dry fibers of their past as they anchored themselves with deep claws into the earth. Dry, in this case, didn’t mean brittle. There was an ominous, terrible strength in these limbs.

  In a fight for her life, fleeing—were the trees to come alive—they would be devastatingly formidable. They were without life, yet, even in death, these bone-blanched trees offered nothing for moss, or even rot, to feed upon. She knew these dead things were watching them—watching her. Vicki’s flesh tingled as she passed among the wicked brethren. An uneasy stirring gripped her as the vibration pushed into her bones, drying them the same, sucking the last drops of courage from her marrow.

  The dry snaps of dead sticks—like tiny brittle bones—were snuffed underfoot somewhat into the dulling munch of the decaying earth as they moved through the forest, unable to speak another word.

  The heavy air collected around them, refusing to flow across their flesh, even with their movement—it was too still. Rather than grow accustomed to the sound of the snapping twigs, Vicki found that every step released an effervescent torrent of tingles up her spine. Unreasonable fear imposed itself on the two grown adults—well trained and sane adults. Yet, as unreasonable as it was, the effect was no less tangible.

  She scanned the jagged depths of the ever-changing tree line around them as they pressed forward. The spiny gray fingers of lifeless trees hid too much from view for comfort—those invisible eyes that she felt, forever lurking in the dark cracks and spaces of unfamiliar places. Goddamn it, why did they always show up? Where did they come from?

  In truth, she knew it would never matter how familiar she became with it—this place would never grow on her. Instead, she feared it wanted to grow into her. She had no intentions of coming back here again. This would be her last visit to this forest, she promised herself. Meet this self-professed witch and get the hell out of here.

  She could feel a similar tension coming from behind her. She prayed it was Hank, but refused to betray her unsubstantiated fear by turning around to check. Vicki took great conscious strides to maximize the distance between her and any passing tree so that the wasted stretching of their gnarled branches couldn’t reach her. This didn’t stop the dead fingernails from making scraping noises; the sensation of their desire for Vicki caused gooseflesh to streak her skin.

  The suffocating air remained thick, with an unnerving neutral ambiance; and yet her every exhalation felt cold and blocked in her throat. She followed Hank’s outstretched finger, indicating a path through the inhospitable trees. She didn’t want to take it but led the way regardless.

  This ground felt worse. A sickening threat grew in Vicki’s belly.

  “What was that?”

  They both turned at the moan carried on the breath of the dead wind.

  “I don’t know.”

  Another low drone, just on the edge of perception, crawled through the air and along their skin.

  “What the fuck is that, Hank?”

  He stood still. He looked around them, scanning the trees and large jagged boulders painted with the black of dead fungi. There was a whiff of old smoke wafting from the spongy ground. He glanced at his phone. “Do you have a signal?”

  “No—you?”

  He shook his head, checking behind them. He felt the same shudders that were taking over Vicki. He snapped around at the dry, muffled crack behind him.

  Vicki stared down at her foot, terrified. “Hank?”

  He hurried over to see the thin broken stone—a gravestone, unlike the teeth decaying in the skull’s mouth.

  “These are the sacred burial grounds Rose mentioned.” A distant haunt rushed back to Hank’s memory, which he quickly fought back.

  “Oh, shit, and I just broke one.”

  He couldn’t shake the bad feeling about this. He turned to her. “I’m sure you’re fine,” he lied, and then he added as a precaution, “Just say you’re sorry.”

  Without question, she nodded and looked down, barely able to make a whispered, “Sorry,” and then quickly moved to his side, noticing the dark, soft ground for the first time. White floated toward their feet, expanding outward among the trees. She wanted to leap onto his back but remained still.

  Another groan sent her to his arm—she would curse her girlish fright later. For now, she was just happy to cling to something that wasn’t dead. He didn’t move, but he nodded his head, remembering.

  “They claim it’s the relaxing of the old tight wood of these trees as they warm and cool throughout the day that makes the haunting sounds. But a lot of people don’t buy it.”

  “What about the fog?” Her legs tingled as the milky essence snaked its way around their ankles.

  “My childhood buddy’s father claimed it was due to a shallow water table and a warmed geological vein that causes this ground to be especially warm, even during the rare times when it snows. If it does snow, it never settles here.”

  She felt the ground, warm and moist.

  “Probably why the natives chose it as a burial site to begin with.” His breath grew tight and uncomfortable as the rest of the story came to him. “Funny thing is, according to Tom Kefir—the old historian when I was a kid—there was always ice in winter and never fog nor whining trees out here until they buried the burned bodies centuries ago.”

  She squeezed his arm.

  “They were brought here to the West Coast from out East, to be chopped up and burned further, down to black pieces, and then buried and scattered here—a massacre of witches.”

  She was cutting off the circulation in his arm as she scanned the ghostly fog around their feet.

  He laughed at her widening eyes.

  She hit him. “You’re shitting me.”

  “Maybe not.” He winked. He did hear the story as a kid—everyone did. But freaky as the stories were, he was a grown man now. So why couldn’t he shake the fear of a terrified child?

  She stomped off in their previous direction, easing her steps slightly as she remembered she was still on the sacred ground. She wanted to be mad at him for scaring her like that, but, in a way, it shocked her into realizing how silly her fears were—nothing but ghost stories and an old creepy-looking forest.

  With more confidence in her step, she still felt uneasy beneath the clawing fingers of the trees and atop the dead calm of the earth. The only life beyond themselves didn’t help. A murder of crows eyed them from their high perch in the trees. Of course it had to be crows. She wanted to laugh at the growing cliché surrounding them, but not even a small smil
e was willing to bud inside her. There was a flit at the nape of her neck. Oh, nice.

  “Not funny,” she snapped.

  “What?”

  “Just grow up.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t touch my hair.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Bullshit.”

  He waved a hand at her. “Now you’re just trying to fuck with me.”

  “Not in your wildest dreams, bud.”

  He shook his head. “Let’s just keep moving.”

  With each twisting step around a particularly challenging bed of roots, Vicki saw a stout dark structure in the distance, moving in and out of view between the trees as she walked. “I think I see the bridge over there.”

  Hank figured that meant that they had passed through the sacred grounds. “Later, skinnies.” His quip at the bones resting beneath the earth came out less bravely than he had hoped and not without a hard swallow first.

  Twenty-nine

  Through the empty wedge of two wrestling, twisted tree trunks, Vicki caught sight of what they were looking for—it was just up ahead. The sheriff had promised, You’ll know it when you see it. She wanted to punch Roscoe in the face.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Hank said as they approached.

  She had seen them too. Blanched human skulls adorning the bridge.

  “The townsfolk aren’t crazy,” he added. “This lady’s certifiable.”

  “Oh, so you’re a qualified shrink now?”

  “You disagree?”

  She looked at the skulls and shook her head.

  Cool fingers, insidious spiders and all manner of pin-clawed creatures continued to invade every sensation of her body as the agents approached the dead bridge. The crossing arched over a dying finger of the broader Cherrybrook Creek, but Vicki would never want to traverse its thinner, drying sibling without using the hideous bridge.

  She knew full well that it was her ego keeping her from seeking any measure of reassurance from Hank—be it confidence from his eyes, a smile from his lips or the tight, fatherly embrace from his arms. She had to fight the fear that she was now so unaccustomed to. In fact she hadn’t known this level of fear since she was ten.

  Beyond the thick, unforgiving mud of the thirsty creek bed that the skull-adorned bridge fell upon, Vicki tried to focus on the deep blades of sunlight that sliced between the dark branches on the far side. Even a thin slice would be her salvation, if only she could make it across that bridge.

  She could feel an icy-cold tremor step beside her, and she knew it was Hank. She chanced a glance up at him—ego be damned—but found no comfort in his eyes. He was afraid of the bridge too. They were professionals. Logic demanded that they shed this childish fear; but they couldn’t.

  Often in life people have to push forward, regardless of the fear—drive through the terrors that would hold one paralyzed. But, today, Vicki didn’t want to.

  † † †

  Though sharing Vicki’s hesitation, eons of chivalrous perceptions persevered, striking adrenaline-laced needles into Hank’s leg muscles. He was the man, and so he took the impossible steps toward the dead arch. He would never, ever share with anyone the unimaginable relief he felt as she quickly joined him at his side. They moved forward together.

  He just wanted to go home.

  Although he faced his spine-chilling destination, and was unable to remove the haunting bridge from his periphery, he forced his focus toward the distraction of the heavy black muck of the expiring creek.

  Seeing the mud, he knew with absolute certainty that it wanted to eat him, chew him, suck the flesh from his bones—consume them both. A part of him wanted to give himself to the muddy maw and have it be done with. But Vicki made no moves to do the same. Her unwavering stride toward their doom tethered him on this dreaded path—what a selfish bitch.

  He whipped his glance at her as quickly as possible but was unable to avoid the flashing image of the bridge as it streaked across his fleeing vision. He pressed his hand against his weapon, fighting not to draw it. He suddenly got the sense that both the chamber and clip were empty—fearing it might shoot bubbles rather than bullets.

  He saw the same full measure of his fear had whitened Vicki’s face; it was completely drained of blood. Heavy dark cups of black fear hung cradled beneath her eyes; she was as terrified as he was. Would he have been surprised to see her hair grow white with fright?

  The wasting moments he had spent fearing for his life had torn away the blessed long strides between him and that frightful bridge. He froze instantly before its mouth. Only now, as the two agents stood at the stone threshold of the death-saddled bridge, did the skeletal curtain of gray deadwoods beyond reveal the structure they had aptly conspired to hide, simply by the position of their growth, from birth to death.

  Two hundred yards past the bridge sat the gray agony of a menacing large house with its sharp charcoal chimney piercing its stone through the blackened thatch roof, as other hard-cut stones enveloped the disturbing fortress. In rings of tarnished halos, ashen smoke hung impossibly still around the lifeless foreboding of the witch’s residence.

  Vicki didn’t believe in witches. But she trusted the growing possibility forming in her gut—this was an evil place. A dead thunk punched her heart into panic before she realized it was the heavy surrendered footfall of Hank’s right boot against the first solid bridge plank. Forcing self-evidence of bravery upon herself, she took three egoic strides past him and immediately wished she hadn’t. There was no air here.

  She realized that it wasn’t the fear that had locked her chest and had prevented it from breathing. The only volume that hung in the open space over the bridge was death—and in death there was no breath.

  Her lungs burned in sacrifice as she scrambled forward, shedding all pretense and pride, until her unrestrained panic flung her off the blackened passage, collapsing onto the cold, dead ground beyond the bridge. She pulled a heavy breath deep into her starving lungs. Breathing was laced with the rich, weighty taste of rotting earth and fallen leaves—the best air of her life.

  As if it were her first true breath, it came with a profound sense of life and gratitude—better than any drawn before. The blissful breath of life. She barely registered Hank’s body falling over her, crashing three feet beyond as she drew in her next rich, leafy breath.

  The earthen air was not as foul as she had preconceived. Instead, it was a wealth of thick, clean oxygen, and she inhaled its nutrients, as if she were gulping in pure life-giving energy. She felt strength draw into her muscles, and she pulled herself up with a newly realized power. Hank did the same. He looked taller, stronger.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  She wasn’t sure if he was asking her or himself. “I’m fine,” she said, giving absolutely no justice to how she actually felt. She didn’t know if she did truly feel that much better than before, or if it was in such stark contrast to how she was feeling while approaching and crossing the bridge that, only in comparison, could she feel powerful enough to tear down a mountain stone by stone. “You?”

  “Yeah, I’m good.” He brushed himself off and then helped her do the same.

  Neither was at all interested in sharing their feelings before the bridge. Fueled with a new confidence, she turned to the imposing structure behind them and studied the dark wooden bridge. The dangling sun-blanched skulls remained as grim looking as before, the difference being how she perceived them. From this side, she couldn’t help but appreciate the fear they invoked because of how extra sweet that terror made this side of the crossing feel. Still, a toothy grin challenged her.

  “What are you doing?”

  She questioned that herself, but she had to know. She reached for one of the creamy-gray craniums and turned it, feeling ick trickle through her fingers as she held it. Th
ere it was, the stamp she was looking for. The skulls were legal. Skulls were skulls, but at least these were not forcibly taken.

  Her jittery fingers let go, and the skull swung back on its frayed rope to sound a hollow clunk against the heavy timber of the bridge archway.

  “Shall we?” Hank asked with a newfound confidence.

  Up ahead, swaths of sunlight revealed a quiet, but not unsettling, mystery around the property—washing away its haunting facade from the shadows. As they walked side by side toward the house, they passed by warm pockets of sunbathed ground, each home to a bountiful fruit tree of varying fruits, sheltering burgeoning berry bushes.

  The abundance of life teeming from these thriving trees and bushes made even more certain the stark contrast of the death surrounding them. Life among so much death—a jarring contradiction. Still, the dead that lingered all around them didn’t appear unwelcome. Instead, it simply seemed … inevitable. Not surprising and definitely not frightening.

  As she moved into the clearing before the house, Vicki imagined the eye of the Deadwood Skull, realizing she was stepping into its sallow depths.

  Vicki heard the happy trickle of Cherrybrook Creek on the far side of the house. Roscoe delighted in insisting that the name Cherrybrook was given because of the dark crimson color it changed to under the moonlight at times when doom was nigh. Or, Hank had interjected, it was because of the uncanny abundance of wild cherry trees found feeding along its banks by early settlers.

  Following the creek that cut across the eye and two hundred feet west into the trees, she saw it meet a sharp hook in the distant shore that sliced toward the witch’s house where her creek fed the lake.

  Next to the creek, just behind the corner of the house, there was a towering tripod mimicking an uncovered tepee with a large iron cauldron hanging in the center, steaming over a heavy-laden fire. How appropriate.

  She might expect to see the bobbing of floating human heads cooking in a broth of bat wings and rat tails were it not for the lines of linens and long flowing garments joining faded blue jeans and dripping T-shirts hanging in the drying breeze between the adjacent tall wooden poles.