Woods

by Finkelstein, Steven

  You have probably guessed by now what happened. Surrounded by her friends, and her admirers, and her son, Madeline Crawley was murdered by her husband, her neck wrung like a Christmas goose. We looked on, enjoying the spectacle, while I, the mediator, the moderator, was as clueless as the others. At first, anyway. What tipped me off was not the violence of the act, for it did seem to me by Remy’s movements that he was intent on an especially vigorous performance that night. No, what made me realize what was happening, though I acted too late, was that at the critical moment, at the time when Remy’s hands were locked in a vice, the knuckles red as they clutched the white flesh, was that I followed his line of sight. He was intent, not on his victim as he’d always been before, (for part of the success of the piece was that the audience must never be acknowledged) but rather on the seven year old boy seated cross legged in the shadows, out of the path of light that streamed in through the Eye to shed light on the scene and leave it painted, blazing, forever in my memory. He had eyes only for his son, and I realized that the night’s performance was for James alone. And when I looked into the shadows and I saw the smile that never left the mouth of that pale faced, bug-eyed child, I realized that James had known what was coming. Of all of us, he was the only one who’d truly known what to expect from the night’s performance.

  I only dimly remember what happened next; I relied mainly on discussion with witnesses afterward to piece it together. As Remy stood, panting from his exertions, I rushed forward and scooped up my friend, the woman I loved, and held her in my arms. I checked for a pulse. There was none. I laid her gently down on the floor again, and then I turned toward Remy, who had stepped away from me and was looking at me expectantly. As his eyes met mine, he smiled and extended his arms out to either side of him, palms facing upward, a serene and tranquil expression on his face. And then my vision narrowed and darkened and I was propelled at blinding speed down a crimson tunnel that constricted around me as I hurtled along, and there was a crackling like a forest fire in my ears. And when I came out of it I was pinned to the ground in the moonlight by many bodies, and voices shouted and blows rained down on me, but no one could make me release my grip on Remy’s throat. He had suffered the same fate as his late wife, you see, by my hands, though his had been a lot quicker and there had been a lot less in the way of theatrics. And as the din rose, from out of the press of bodies I could see that the boy, James, still had not moved, and that he remained seated, and watched, and smiled with the same aura of inner piece and contentment that I’d last seen only moments before on the face of his father.

  The Insanity of James Crawley

  Stitch took a deep breath. I’ve told you how influential Remy had been in the group. The hero worship that he received…he had reached the level of a demigod in the eyes of many of my contemporaries. They no doubt would have stopped me in time if they’d realized my intentions. But they thought, as did all of the brain-dead guests that had witnessed the double murder, that it was all part of the act. Either that or it had all been some sort of illusion, and both corpses would spring up again and the three of us would take a bow. I half believed it myself, at least in Remy’s case. All that I had heard and seen, I almost expected he would be as difficult to kill as Rasputin. But as they dragged me away from the bodies, not sure what to do with me, still lamenting at the top of their voices the death of their king and queen, I looked back toward the pool of light and saw that Remy did not stir, and both he and poor Madeline remained as still as stone, and so did forgotten James, who still had not shown a flicker of emotion.

  Nothing more took place that night, other than that they locked me in one of the side chambers around The Eye while they tried to decide on the best course of action. I could have resisted, but I suppose I was still in shock, and at the time there was no more violence in me. I lay on a mattress, turned toward the wall, and sobbed for what might have been minutes or hours before passing into a deep and troubled state, neither sleep nor wakefulness, during which time I thought I was a child again and had been turned out once more into the street to scrounge and live in doorways. I had dreams of this sort sometimes, but in every instance when I awoke I could go and see Madeline, my friend, who even when she’d become a married woman who I could never have the relationship with that I truly wanted, was still able to dispel the fear and the panic and bring me back to reality with a smile and a caress. But this time, for the first time in many years, there would be no Madeline, and I felt completely and entirely alone.

  When they opened the door it was daylight. The guests had been sent home, and what remained was a forlorn and disorderly group of supplicants, sycophants without a master to kowtow toward, directionless and fearful. Within the course of a single night, an entire lifestyle had been swept away, and with it, a sense of identity and stability and purpose. No one knew what to do. They needed my help, even though I had been the one who had murdered their beloved Remy, because without him, and without Madeline who had made us what we were before he’d come along, there simply wasn’t anybody left to take the reins. It wasn’t like they were going to turn me in to the police. We lived outside the law, handling things in the family, enforcing our own discipline. We always had. If anyone in the group did something that the others didn’t approve of, we talked it out, and if the differences proved to be irreconcilable, they were sent away. It had happened in the past. In this case, I’m sure the threat of retaliatory violence had been thought of and discussed, an eye for an eye. But who among them would have lifted a hand against me without Remy or Madeline to order it?

  We all sat and stood about under The Eye, where the light beaming down from the great window was now not moonlight but sunlight, and all of us weighed in. While I had been locked away in the early hours of the morning, Madeline’s body had been taken and placed reverently under a clean white sheet on a bed of cushions off to one side. But when they had tried to do the same to Remy, what remained of his material form had reverted to dust, instantaneously, even as they tried to lift him, and had blown apart in a sudden gust of wind. A few particles had scattered into the air, and hung glittering like festive confetti as the first morning birdsong swelled in the woods outside, but as his followers held their hands up in wonder, these too vanished, and there was no more earthly sign of our former leader, Madeline’s husband and killer. I heard this told without comment, being unsurprised by it and unmoved. It wasn’t as though I’d thought out my actions beforehand, but I didn’t regret what I’d done, and would have done the same again. I was glad the man was dead, though I knew it wouldn’t bring my Madeline back.

  Some did speak out against me, in anger, seemingly, but I thought that it was more their grief that decried me, so I let them give me a tongue lashing and did not raise my voice, but rather spoke calmly and reasonably in return. Though it would have explained much of what had happened, I didn’t tell them of Remy’s thwarted plan, and what had passed between him and Madeline. You may have already ascertained my reason for this. I had come to understand something, the knowledge of which I’d decided to keep to myself. It had never been Remy’s intention to sacrifice the group, myself included, to “cleave the void.” He had revealed this to Madeline because he’d known that she would go to me, her friend, and he’d known how my ire would be raised when I heard of his plans. He’d known that she would come back to him and try to talk him out of it. He had feigned reluctance, but then he’d acted as though he was giving in to her. Then the rest of his plan had proceeded flawlessly, with all of us, myself included, playing the parts in which we’d been scripted. He killed Madeline, the only pawn of the group he’d needed to sacrifice, and then waited, open armed and smiling, for me to administer the same fate to him. He’d wanted it. I had been his instrument, and against all of my better judgment, I had taken part in one of his sickening ceremonies without realizing it, giving him what he most wanted. He’d attained his “ascension,” all right, and I had been the one who allowed him to do it.

  So why,
you might ask, did Remy want me to kill him? It seems illogical, but it makes a certain kind of sense. I’ve told you how much the man had studied the release of energy, particularly energy released through the more passionate acts, such as sex and violence, and how he’d learned to harness it. I don’t know exactly what power I granted him when I rang his filthy neck, or even if what he was intending worked at all. But I think what happened to his body is an indication that it did, and although Remy is no longer living, I think sometimes that his influence in this world has not completely ended, especially here, in this place, his own hand picked seat of power. In my mind, there is no doubt that he never loved Madeline, or cared about any of the rest of us. He had his own agenda from the beginning, and he got everything he wanted from us. For what he did to destroy our lives, I wish sometimes that he was still alive, just so I could kill him more slowly and painfully this time. He had us all wrapped around his finger like a piece of string from the very beginning, and myself most of all. My hatred of that man will never die.

  But getting back to that fateful morning. Some spoke out against me, others for me, but it became clear that none of them was going to lift a hand in violence. They were too distraught. So I stood up, and went into the center of the circle, and I spoke long and bitterly concerning what was in my heart. I told them how disappointed I had grown in them, and how we had gotten away from the caring and the support that had once endeared them to me. And I said that I had grown tired and old, and there was nothing more that I felt I could accomplish by staying with them, not without Madeline, and there was nothing more we could accomplish together. And although they were dismayed, by the end of that day we were all in agreement. Our sideshow had run its course; the wheels had ground to a halt. The band was breaking up.

  In the next weeks, various arrangements were made. People decided on what they were doing and where they were going. I had very little interest in the process. My heart was heavy, not only with the loss, but also with a bitterness toward Remy that his death had not even come close to alleviating. I didn’t want to deal with anything. I withdrew into myself, and ignored the emotion of the goodbyes from people I’d known for years, who now meant nothing to me. And that was how it was that I ended up remaining here, in this house on the site where Remy had chosen, paid for with Madeline’s money. And the only other resident to remain behind was their son, he of the pale face and the blank stare. No one volunteered to take care of him. He was largely forgotten in the shuffle, and so, as a kind of afterthought, I looked after him as part of my new daily routine, dutifully, as I’d done in the past. Although, it must be said that I interacted with him no longer as a babysitter would with their charge, but rather as I might a dog who I’d been put in charge of by a friend who had gone on vacation, then never come back. I didn’t speak to him or interact with him, or play with him as one might a normal child during the formulative years. He was just a set piece, an insignificant detail in a house with many others.

  Months passed. James had not spoken a word since seeing his parents killed. We’d had hardly a visitor from the old crew. As for me, a time came when I was finally able to begin living again as more than a shell. It was the spring after it had happened, and when the flowers bloomed outside and the new growth swept in and pressed up against the sides of the place, I felt feelings in me stir of a kind that I was unfamiliar with. A voice spoke to me, and it said to me that I was not the one who was dead, and that I must go on living now. And when I asked it, truculently, what it was I had to live for, the answer came back, myself. I had myself to live for, and it was the first time, I think, in my entire life that the notion had even occurred to me at all. Yes, Madeline was dead, the woman whose very light and life had made of me what I was, but I knew, deep down, that she would be ashamed of me if I let her passing on control me till the end of my days. I would keep a special chamber within myself at all times, a place where a limitless supply of sadness would remain, that I could visit sometimes when I needed to. But I would be able to dwell outside it again, because even though her life was over, I was surprised and even delighted to discover that mine was not.

  It was true, I had to find new things to live for now, but it turned out there were more on the list than I might have once suspected. The biggest of them was the house itself, because, as I’ve said, there is no place in the world exactly like it. The energy that resides and lingers here is completely unique; that’s why Remy picked it. To live with it and explore what it was capable of doing was a source of pleasure for me, for I knew how to interact with it through my watching Remy and taking part in his rituals that I’d not found too deplorable or reprehensible. Though the man was gone, his teachings remained, and even if the feelings of hatred for him would not go away any more than those of my love for Madeline, I owed a debt of thanks to him for what he’d taught me about utilizing energy and the power that nature holds and that which can be harnessed. But you notice, I say harnessed, and not manipulated. I held true, always, to what was the most important lesson in my mind, one that Remy had never taught me, because he’d never learned it- that being to respect the source from which the power flows, and to use it sparingly, and not to try and force it to unintended uses for the purpose of domination over others. That wasn’t me, and that was what had separated me from Remy in the first place.

  There were other ways that I found to occupy my time as well. I continued to expand the place, taking advantage of my carpentry and masonry skills. I became a more than proficient cook, and when the weather was nice I explored the countryside, especially to the north and west of town, where the woods are thicker and wilder, and there was little chance of me running into anyone from Feral or the neighboring towns. I spent hours upon hours reading, all the contemporary classics in fiction that I’d heard praised, as well as poetry, and books on philosophy, psychology, and sociology. And at night I built fires in the banquet hall to commemorate my greatest loves, Madeline and the family I’d lost, and toasted them with home brewed beer, and listened to the ghostly laughter coming from the upper floors.

  Eventually I began to receive visitors again too. Although the group had dispersed, it seemed that I could not so easily dismiss the relationships with former members who still thought of me fondly, and wished to see if James and I were doing well. Also, once someone has visited this place, they are always compelled by a curious desire to return here, although maybe the reason for it isn’t as curious as all that, actually. Once a person has tasted Essence, you see, they are always haunted by a thirst for more, and will continually migrate back here from time to time. And I found that such a time had passed that I was more willing to forgive them for the way they had acted under Remy’s reign, and could accept them back into my good graces again. I’d grown older, and with my age I’d learned to forgive. Life is too short to harbor the negative feelings forever.

  All the while this had been going on, James had been living here with me. He was an afterthought most of the time, because Madeline and Remy’s deaths seemed to have left him in a state of permanent shell shock. He had not spoken a word since that day. There was no need for me to look after him too closely, young as he was, because all he did was sit all day in The Eye, in the same spot he’d been on that fateful night, and stare blankly off into space. He ate when I fed him and when I read to him or spoke to him sometimes he seemed to be attentive. But he never responded. He didn’t laugh, or smile. I couldn’t tell what was going on behind those eyes. Maybe nothing. He was a stone, sitting immobile in a wilderness. As months turned to years, I began to believe he would remain that way forever.

  But he didn’t. It was approaching seven years since the deaths of Madeline and Remy, and the seventh day of July, the seventh month of that year, was coming on. Now, as you are already aware, the house, on its timed cycle, always “wakes up” at the same interval. The reason for this is that the source of the Essence, the pillar that flows for one seemingly endless night in the cavern beneath the house once every seven
years, is not always accessible to the majority of those who wish to consume it. In fact, it is bone dry most of the time. That was the reason that Remy’s brainchild, Decadence, could only take place every seventh year. As for why the Essence is only available so infrequently, I honestly can’t tell you. Remy must have known, but then, he was an expert in the ways of all things natural, and Essence especially, the reason he had hunted down this spot all those years before. Knowing what was to come, (for I’d drunk the stuff before, and I could feel its imminent return) I sent out word to all interested parties that there would be a second Decadence event. It would commemorate the first, act as a memoriam to those gone, and be a family reunion for whatever family there was left. I had no idea if anyone would even show up. I anticipated a dinner party with half a dozen old friends.