Woods

by Finkelstein, Steven

  She stopped, looking up at him musingly. Her eyes gleaming slightly in the starlight. “I don’t know,” she said. “How about neither?”

  “What if those are the only two options?”

  She smiled at him, shaking her head slightly as if he were being naïve. “There’s always a third option,” she said.

  Epilogue

  Percival Surrey stood on the front porch of the house, gazing into the nearby trees with something like curiosity. Something was afoot, tonight. Percival, who all his life had been a practical man, was someone for whom being curious was akin to being ill; it was an unnatural state, one to be chased from the body as completely and expediently as possible. He certainly never harbored any curiosity about the natural world or anything that occurred in it which did not affect him directly, though as a farmer it was inevitable that the two of them should meet up sometimes. When it happened, nature was to be cowed, forced into the proper shape and made to yield anything useful it might have to offer. Percival (who never allowed anyone, even his wife, to call him by the overly familiar “Percy”), sometimes felt a bit hemmed in by nature, living more or less out in the woods as he did, and at those moments he would glare with positive dislike at the trees, which he occasionally felt were watching him in a mildly interested way. At such times he would fetch his axe from the barn and walk over to the nearest offenders to glare menacingly at them. If he was really in a huff he might even chop one of the smaller ones down. And why shouldn’t he, after all; it was his land, he owned it, and that included everything living on it. He could shoot or chop down or piss on anything he found walking on or crawling on or flying over his property. It was all his. Bought and paid for.

  He scratched idly at the auburn hair that was cut close along his neckline and turned his gaze back toward the house. His gold-tinged hazel eyes blinked once in annoyance as he heard his wife stirring inside, and he frowned, having thought her asleep. The baby was due in less than two months time, and the birth couldn’t happen soon enough for him. Never a doting husband, the fact that the woman should be negligent in her spousal duties, even if she was “with child,” was something he barely tolerated; it was the same with her as it was with all the denizens of the natural world. They should both do what they were supposed to do, nothing more or less. They did not need to do anything autonomously, and when they showed some sign of it, they needed to either be threatened with word or axe, or chopped down, one way or another, as the situation warranted. That was the way of it- what it was to be a man, master over all your domain.

  The July moon was very bright tonight, the brightest he could ever remember seeing. He stepped off the porch in order to get a better look at it, and in doing so his truck came into view. Seeing that pickup was enough to make him forget everything else, hell, it was enough to give him a bulge in his pants like that woman in the house never could. Brand new it was, and brother, you can believe he’d had to scrape to get the money for the down payment. He couldn’t wait till he owned the thing outright. He sniffed, enjoying the somehow comforting smell of the shit from the hogs as it mingled with that of the horses; he heard one of them give a whinny and another answer faintly. They too were probably enjoying the night, which was thankfully just a bit cooler than the day they’d had. Hellfire, but it had been hot this summer! He’d never felt anything like it, not in this part of the country. Some old man had keeled over in town just that day, and by the time Doc Horowitz had gotten to him he’d been stone dead and already starting to ripen.

  He sure felt funny tonight, almost happy for no real reason at all, in a way he remembered, very faintly, from when he was a boy. He didn’t think about that time of his life much, but every now and then he’d get a flash, when he’d catch a smell of something maybe, and it would bring to mind an image, or a memory of some event, drifting to the surface of his mind before sinking back into its dark confines like a stone thrown into a pond. He was restless is what it was, it happened to every man once in a while, sure, and the best thing to do would be just to go inside and have a drink, and settle in for the night. But he thought of that woman in there, swelled up as fat as a whale, whistling through her nose as she slept, and it just made his fists clench up all on their own. Was it even her that was spitting in his soup just now, or was it his whole stinking life? A walk might do him some good. It was probably years since he’d taken a stroll for anything like recreation; not that there was anywhere to go, but at that moment he’d do anything to keep from going back in there. He slipped his shiny new silver watch on its chain from his pocket and took note of the time, promising himself silently that he would be back soon, then he started down the drive in the direction of the Willow Road. But suddenly, for reasons that escaped him if there was a reason at all, he turned sharply right and walked into the trees.

  It was a strange kind of elation he felt as he walked along. It was almost as though something was pushing him from behind, guiding him along to some destination. He could almost swear he could hear something too, some deep seated vibration at his core that hummed in a pleasing way, and he could feel it also, as a sort of warm tickling sensation that traveled its way busily along his body. He was bemused, although fairly certain he was imagining it. This was Percival’s reaction to anything out of the ordinary. If there was not a rational explanation for it, it was probably some trick of the mind. But trick or not, there was no denying that he was enjoying the new feeling just then, and he did not wish it to stop. Nor did it. As he continued on his way it only intensified, and he looked at the trees he was passing, for the first time in his life, with a kind of delight. He greeted them as friends for the first time. It was impossible not to, when one felt like this.

  He went on for some time, looking around as he did so, for this was a part of his property where he’d never been before. He felt no fear of anything that might be lurking in the woods, for Percival Surrey was a brave man, not timid in the least, and more importantly, he was feeling invincible just now. He knew, knew with all certainty, that nothing would harm him. He was protected. He was safe. He did not think of the lateness of the hour, or of his pregnant wife at home. Those concerns were, for the time being, quite forgotten. When at length he stopped to rest, in a clear spot where the moonlight shone through the branches, he felt a sudden burst of disappointment, though oddly enough, it did not seem like his disappointment, but someone else’s he was feeling. He had to laugh at that for its sheer impossibility. But still, when he began moving forward again, he felt an immediate sense of joy and relief, coupled with the understanding that moving forward, in this direction, was the finest, best thing he had ever done. He had taken leave of his senses. But if this was what it felt like to go mad, he never wanted to be sane again.

  And then, abruptly, he felt something new. It seemed that he had left one section of the woods and entered another. There was no reason for him to think this, no visible sign. But he thought that maybe the colors of the leaves, what he could see of them in the moonlight, were just a bit different here than they had been before. He was traveling west, he was skilled enough in his woodcraft to know that, but even though he was in completely unfamiliar territory, the thought of getting lost never entered his mind. He would have no trouble finding his way home, just as he knew there was nothing out here that could do him harm. Not tonight. He found himself turning due north, and why should he not go that way? It was a good direction, so long as whatever it was still drove him forward.

  He had been walking for a good long while when he began to notice some real differences in the trees, and there was no chance of this being his imagination. He’d gotten away from the scrub oaks and the saplings, and he found himself surrounded by giants, whose trunks, as he craned his neck upward, seemed to rise to impossible heights. He had just a sense of their majestic crowns swaying somewhere high above. The ground felt soft, and as he looked down he could see that the twigs and leaves had been replaced by fine springy moss. He reached down and ran a hand through it, delight
ing in the texture. He felt close, close to something, and he’d begun to actually feel a bit nervous. He felt inexplicably like some diplomat about to meet a famous dignitary. But who could possibly live out here in the middle of nowhere? His imagination. It had to be.

  And then he thought he heard voices, and through the trees he caught a flash of what looked like a brightly lit building in the middle of a vast clearing. He rubbed at his eyes, stepping between two of the mammoth trees, and left, for a time, his rational mind. The clearing was a gash in the trees, reaching back to the north; he had emerged at the southern end of it, and up ahead of him was the biggest house he had ever seen, if house it was. And like a moth to the flame he approached it, because he knew now, there could be no denying, something had called him here. That was just a bit disturbing, but even more so was the thought that in some way he could not understand, this building that he was looking on was alive. It did indeed seem to be breathing gently. As he drew breath, it did also.

  As he moved, somewhat dazedly, in the direction of the heaving beast that towered in his vision, blocking out nearly everything else, he was just dimly aware of other details, like the grass under his feet which was neatly and freshly clipped to a length of about one inch. He could smell it, and he sucked in the scent greedily through his nostrils, staggering slightly, giddy under the broad black shadow of the building that was coming nearer. There were many windows, placed unevenly all about the walls, and they blazed with light; he could see shapes passing before them, but what sort of people were these? Craning his face again up toward the peak, he could see the grandest window of all, a round portal from which a beam of light was shooting up into the heavens, and he could see a pair of porches wrapping around the building and disappearing from sight on either side; people raced back and forth along them, sometimes slipping in and out of the windows. He could hear their laughter and the gabble of their voices. Sometimes he would hear a bellow or a scream. He was frightened, now. But going back was not an option. The house had a hold of him. It was drawing him in.

  And then he’d arrived. He looked onto the porch, and there beheld…her. The one who had brought him there. The door was open, and she stood radiant in the light, nearly blinding him, and she smiled. He was struck dumb. He could not speak. He did not know his own name, or that of his wife, or in what state or country, on what planet he was living. What did any of it matter, if he could be with her? She might have been beautiful, but he could scarcely tell. All he knew was that he wanted her, for he loved her, right then and there, and he would have done anything she asked, without hesitation, if it meant that he could only remain in her presence for a few moments more. And she looked at him in all her radiance and she smiled, and she held out a finger and beckoned to him. And just at that instant, time stood still for Percival Surrey. In all the remaining years that followed, his mind traveled back innumerable occasions to that second, where he wished he could remain forever, for there are moments in each life that reverberate throughout our memories, touchstones to which we will always return. At the time, he remembered thinking that it would never end, and as it was a moment of anticipation, he almost wished it wouldn’t. But it did. He stepped forward, and she closed the door behind him, though there was a part of him that remained there, standing bewildered outside under the stars. And in the time that followed, he sometimes wished that it could be retrieved, and that he could have simply turned away, but that was not the case, for there are some decisions that, once made, can never be unmade again.