Forbidden Mountain

by Aimee Bishop

  Now he was crying too.

  Both of them, hypocrites, I thought. How dare they?

  I took a deep breath and began walking back to the house with Harry close beside me. He was all I needed. He was the only one I could trust.

  “You’ve got half an hour to pack your things. I want you gone,” I said to Sandy as I passed her.

  “Jerry, no!”

  “I mean it. Just go.”

  “Go where?”

  “You can shack up with Robert,” I said. “Since you wanted him more than me anyway.”

  I left them both out there, crying in the snow, knowing that they’d torn the family apart. Meanwhile, I headed inside and poured myself a scotch. Maybe tonight was the perfect night to drink.

  CHAPTER 3 – ABIGAIL

  Mom was crying. Dad was shouting. I was sitting in front of them at the kitchen table, feeling like I was five years old.

  “What the hell were you thinking!”

  Dad was walking back and forth in front of the fridge, wearing out the carpet.

  “You could have died.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “Thankfully you didn’t,” he said. “But only by the grace of God did you survive and it’s a miracle that the girls weren’t hurt either. I just… I just can’t believe you would do something as stupid as drink and drive. I thought we taught you better.”

  Mom wasn’t saying anything, and it was terrifying me. I’d never seen her so quiet before. She just sniffed and dabbed her eyes, looking down at the table.

  “Mom?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I slid my hand across the table and tried to reach out to her, but she pulled away.

  “Don’t, Abi.”

  Now I was crying too. Somehow, the worst thing about the crash wasn’t that I’d wrecked the car or made dad angry as hell. It wasn’t that I’d been thrown out of college because I hadn’t handed in my paper and it was the fourth one this semester I’d missed. It wasn’t that I’d turned my life upside down and failed myself. It was that I’d made mom cry. I felt like an utterly rotten person.

  “I’m just so disappointed in you,” she said at last. “I don’t know what I would have done if you… if you… died!”

  She began wailing and it was all too much. I had to get out of the room, had to get some air. I stood up and breathed air into my lungs.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” asked dad.

  “For a walk.”

  “Like hell you are. You’re staying here.”

  “Sorry, I just need to get out and get some air.”

  “I said you’re staying here!!!”

  His voice was so loud it rattled the kitchen cabinets and hurt my ears. Terrified, I fell back down in my seat, rooted to the spot. I’d never heard him shout so loudly.

  “You’re not going anywhere until we sort this out,” he said.

  “Sort what out?”

  He shared a worried look with mom.

  “Sort out what to do with you.”

  That didn’t sound good.

  “What to do with me?”

  The way he said it made me think he was going to send me away to a convent or ground me for all eternity. I knew what I did was wrong. I knew I’d screwed my life up, but for some stupid reason, I never thought that mom and dad would do something. In all my life, they never so much as raised their voice at me and now they were acting as though they were about to dole out some severe punishment.

  “Well, tell me then,” I cried. “Don’t just keep me hanging.”

  The worried look passed between them again. Dad sat down beside mom and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. She leaned into him and sniffed into her tissue.

  “You know we love you, don’t you?” he began.

  “Yes…. Of course. I love you guys too.”

  That set mom off again, and she was blubbering into his shoulder.

  “Shhh… Caitlyn, it’s okay,” dad said as he tried to soothe her. “You know it’s for the best, right?”

  Mom nodded, although I could see she was already regretting whatever decision they had made about me. I was starting to think they had been plotting behind my back and now my worry turned to anger.

  “Your mother and I have been talking.” Dad sighed and patted my arm.

  It felt false, like he was trying to put me at ease before he dropped a bombshell.

  “Talking,” I said. “About what?”

  “About…”

  He paused for a second and looked into his coffee cup as though if he stared long enough, he’d find the answer to all his problems.

  “About sending you away.”

  “What? You’re sending me away? You can’t do that!”

  “We’re your parents,” mom said. “We have to do what’s best for you.”

  I couldn’t believe this! They wanted to send me away as though I was getting exiled, like I was a naughty child being sent away to boarding school.

  “I’m freakin’ twenty-one! I’m an adult. You can’t send me anywhere.”

  Mom sighed and gave me a despondent look.

  “It’s time you start acting like an adult,” she said. “And stop all this nonsense.”

  “You can’t do this. You can’t make me!”

  Dad stood back up, infuriated, and grabbed his hair.

  “Cut the crap, Abi! You sound like a teenage brat. You’re going to live with your grandparents for the next few months. It’s time you learn how much we’ve spoiled you, how easy you’ve had it.”

  He shook his head and leaned against the sink. He gazed out the window at my old swing set, his bottom lip quivered then he pulled himself together and took a deep breath.

  “Maybe we’re guilty of loving you too much,” he said. “We were always too soft on you, never liked to discipline you and I think…”

  His bottom lip was off again, wobbling like jelly.

  “And I think it was the wrong way to go about things. Maybe if we’d been a little tougher on you, you would have grown up more… more…”

  “More what? More boring? More like you?”

  He flinched as though I’d just punched him in the chest.

  “More appreciative,” he said at last. “You don’t care about a single thing the two of us have done for you. Your mother and I worked fifty hours a week to save for your college fund, and now you’ve wasted it. Thrown it away! Do you know how that makes us feel?”

  I’d never thought about it like that before, and now I felt guilty to the core. I was the worst daughter in the world and I never even realized it.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not going to live with my grandparents! Martha and Bernard are nuts! They think television is the work of the Devil. They think sugar is a drug!” My family called my mom’s parents by their first names. They weren’t the warm and fuzzy grannie and grandpa types, so it fit somehow.

  “Don’t forget alcohol,” added mom.

  “Also the work of the Devil,” nodded dad. “It’ll do you good to stay with them, and they’d absolutely love to have you on the farm helping out.”

  Farm? Helping out? No alcohol? No sugar or television? I thought I was about to pass out.

  “I’m not helping out on a farm, getting covered in pig shit every day. Seriously, please, don’t make me go! I’ll do anything! I’ll get a job and pay for the damages to the car. I’ll enroll in college again; I’ll never go out partying ever, but please don’t make me live on that farm!”

  Mom slapped her hand on the table and I grabbed hold of it, squeezing her tight as I sobbed.

  “Believe me; I won’t survive a week out there! It’s in the mountains. I’ll lose my fingers to frostbite. I’ll get eaten by a bear. I’ll die out there!”

  “You’re going,” mom said, and shook me off. “And that’s final. Now pack your things. Your flights already booked.”

  “What!”

  I jumped up and ran toward the front door.

  “You can’t make me go!”

/>   Mom caught up with me in the garden and grabbed me by the back of my dress.

  “You can’t run away from your problems forever,” she said.

  Then she did something unexpected. She pulled me into a hug and held me tight.

  “Please,” she said. “Just go. Just try to make it work.”

  I couldn’t bear seeing her so upset, so I nodded and kissed the top of her head.

  “For you,” I said. “But I swear to God the first time I have to shovel shit I’m leaving.”

  CHAPTER 4 – JEREMIAH

  Harry was lying by the fire giving me his signature sad look. It usually meant he wanted some of my steak, but I knew right now it was because he missed Sandy. I leaned down and patted his head.

  “Sorry, son. Momma’s not coming home.”

  I could have sworn he understood what I said because he lowered his head down on his paws and closed his eyes.

  But no matter how sad he was, I was far more miserable. It had been a week since Sandy left, and it wasn’t getting any easier. If anything, the more I had time to think about it, the more it hurt. My own brother and my wife… I couldn’t imagine a greater betrayal.

  A bottle of whiskey sat at my feet. I thought about topping up my glass but couldn’t make up my mind whether I should drink some more or take a walk. After a few moments of staring at the bottle, scratching the label off with my fingers, I decided to take the bottle and walk.

  The darkness and the forest would calm me down and make me feel like I was small. As I stepped outside and looked up at the stars, I felt as though I was even too small to have a place in the universe. The space up there was so vast, the world around me so big and here I was, deep down amongst the trees tiny and insignificant. There was something strangely comforting about this, like my heartache didn’t matter if I didn’t either.

  I walked on, meandering down the mountainside with Harry at my heels. As the trees grew sparser, I started to see the lights of the nearby houses in Bambridge. It was late, and out here there wasn’t much nightlife. People were no doubt fast asleep as they’d have to be up at the crack of dawn, either to work on their farms or to head over to the nearby pipe works where every young man got his first job. Well, every young man but me. I had the family business, had bigger things to deal with.

  In the distance, headlights burst through the fog, rounding the bend on the edge of town. I could hear the sound of the rickety engine before I saw the rusted doors and the flaky paint. I knew who it was right away, Bernard. He was the nicest guy in this whole damn town.

  He was crazy as a bag of hungry monkeys, though, and had some peculiarly puritan views, even for a small town like this that thrived on being dull and unhappy. So what the hell was he doing out at this time of night? He and Martha were the kind to go straight to sleep at eight on the dot, in single beds obviously.

  I looked down at my phone and saw it was almost one in the morning. Too early for him to be getting up to work on the farm, but too damn late for him to be doing anything. The affairs of the villagers usually meant nothing to me, but maybe the effects of being alone were getting to me. I found myself traipsing down the mountainside wanting to get a closer look.

  A thought popped into my mind. What if he’s some kind of killer? What if he’s out there driving around with a body in his truck? The thought left as quickly as it came and I burst out laughing. Bernard couldn’t even say a curse word without falling to his knees and praying for forgiveness, let alone take someone’s life.

  Moving a little closer, I now saw him pull into the beginning of his driveway, his truck snaking its way around the icy bends. It was then that I noticed he wasn’t alone. There was a girl in the passenger seat. A young girl. A pretty girl. She couldn’t have been older than twenty.

  “Bernard, you dog,” I said and shook my head.

  The old man had a girl on the side. That’s what he was doing out this late. Now I was more curious than ever. I took a few steps closer, hiding behind a tree as I sipped on my scotch.

  The girl climbed down from the truck, looked around horrified, then shivered. If I wasn’t mistaken, I thought she was crying. The air was so still that her words traveled fast in the chilled air.

  “It’s so cold,” she wailed, and jumped up and down on the spot.

  “Get yourself inside. Martha will have some bread and water ready for you.”

  Martha? Was this girl his granddaughter? I’d never seen her before. Although I wished I had. She looked like one of those girls you see in magazines who goes around enjoying their city lives with a fancy coffee in one hand while taking selfies with the other. She looked like she didn’t belong here.

  She ran inside, leaving Bernard to pull her suitcases out the back of the truck. Judging by how many there were, it looked as though she was staying for a while.

  “Hmm….”

  I knew it was none of my business, but something about the whole affair piqued my interest, but right now there was nothing else to see. She was long gone inside the house with Bernard loaded up with luggage like a carthorse. Before long, he disappeared into the house too, and it was just Harry and me.

  As I gripped the bottle of scotch, I realized I couldn’t feel the tips of my fingers. It was time to go home. It was time to mind my own goddamn business.

  CHAPTER 5 – ABIGAIL

  I hadn’t slept a wink. The whole house was freezing, and to my horror, I discovered there was no central heating. Apparently, they didn’t believe in any modern appliances whatsoever, although I couldn’t help but think they changed their minds when it was convenient. After all, Bernard had driven to the airport to get me, and the last time I checked, planes and automobiles weren’t around at the time of Jesus.

  “Urgh…”

  I pulled the covers around me tighter. It was still dark out and I hadn’t heard a single sound since I arrived. Not even a passing car, a siren, a kid blasting music as they raced to a party. It was eerie, and it made me nervous. It wasn’t healthy to just lie around in silence. I needed the background noise of the city, needed to know that there were other people around.

  Unable to sleep, I decided to head back downstairs with my blanket wrapped around me to create a human burrito. I was starving and hadn’t eaten since the flight. Of course, Martha had prepared a meal for me arriving– bread as solid as granite and some watery soup made of beets. Apparently, she had to stay up late to make it and I tried to look grateful. I forced some of it down, then made the excuse that I was tired and needed to sleep.

  Now my stomach was rumbling. I needed some chocolate, a pop tart, some hummus and crackers– anything! I made my way downstairs and hoped that somewhere in those ancient cupboards was something I could snack on.

  But I froze halfway down the stairs. There were voices. At first, I thought someone had broken in, but then I realized the voices were Martha and Bernard.

  What the hell are they doing down here in the middle of the night?

  “Good morning!” sang Martha.

  Morning?

  I reached the bottom of the stairs and found her fully dressed in the kitchen whipping up a pot of oatmeal. Martha’s gray hair was pulled back so tight a vein was on the cusp of popping through her forehead. She smiled and blinked through her thick glasses and handed me a glass of milk. I took it from her, still confused, still thinking I was dreaming.

  Beside her, Bernard was lacing up his boots with his pipe clenched between his teeth. His hair looked like an exploded toilet brush, his skin crimson red and ruddy from years of outdoor labor. He leaned back and slapped his swollen belly.

  “Hurry up, Martha. I’m fading away here.”

  She ladled out some oatmeal, no sugar, no fruit, just oats boiled in water. It smelled like warmed up sawdust.

  I sipped my milk and looked up at the clock on the wall. It read five o’clock.

  “It’s nice to see you up on time,” said Martha as she gestured for me to take a seat.

  She handed me my bowl of oatme
al, and I just stared at it.

  “Wh… Wh…”

  I glanced back up at the clock. I was starting to think I was in the Twilight Zone.

  Breakfast at five o’clock in the evening? I thought. Had I slept that long?

  I peered out through the curtains and saw the sky couldn’t have been blacker.

  “We always start work at precisely half past five every morning,” said Bernard. “So as a guest in this house, we expect you to do the same.”

  I dropped my spoon along with my jaw.

  “It’s half five in the morning?”

  The two of them glanced at each other as though I was crazy.

  “Well, what time did you think it was, silly?” laughed Martha. “I mean, good grief, I know your mom and dad said you need a good teachin’ but really, Abigail.”

  I blinked at her. This was nuts.

  “What exactly do I have to get up this early for?” I asked, still in shock.

  Bernard pointed his thumb behind him out the window.

  “You’ll be in that barn milking the cows until nine, and then after that, you’ll be mucking out the pigs.”

  “No,” I found myself saying. “No way.”

  Martha, enraged at my rudeness, slammed the pot down on the table.

  “Language!” she yelled. “You’ll not be speaking to us like that while you’re here.”

  Flecks of oatmeal littered the table top. I wiped some from my cheek and felt that my face was red hot.

  Language? I thought. All I said was no…

  “Now eat your breakfast,” said Martha. “You’ll need the energy.”

  She walked away, shaking her head as she soaked the pot in the sink.

  “Your parents raised a devil child,” she muttered under her breath. “May the Lord forgive you.”

  I watched her for a moment, stunned. Then she turned around.

  “Before you start work, there’s something you must know. That mountain up there?”

  She pointed out the window.

  “I see it.”

  “Good. Now take note. You must never go up there. Ever.”