Penn's Woodland

by David Connor

  Georgia rushed toward the gazebo, shrieking. “No, Pennsylvania! No!” Or was it Virginia? If such a twist was possible, that she had taken Georgia’s place, why would she care if I died? If, though, that fantastical development was true, then anything she’d said for days could possibly be false—including what she claimed had become of Ewan.

  “Brother!”

  As Georgia grappled with the lock, I tried to recall if my sisters had similar voices. It had been years since I had spoken to one, which made it difficult. The other with her, with my sister, was a man. I definitely saw that now, as my mind, thoughts, and sight became clearer. He did not speak. Who was he? Who could be Georgia’s or Virginia’s accomplice? Could it be Virginia’s offspring from many years ago? A son?

  “Please do not hurt yourself, Pennsylvania.”

  I threw the razor down with a slight feeling of optimism simmering inside of me. You promised me truth, Ewan, and I believe you. You brought answers, so many, that cleared me of the heinous crimes for which I’d been metaphorically hung in the town square via gossip. If I did not bring harm to Judah, I trust that also means I did not bring harm to you.

  “Hand me the razor,” Georgia or Auntie Virginia requested.

  Sadly, there was still a chance that she had. Whoever she was, her actions were not one of a person holding tightly onto sanity.

  “Set…me free,” I demanded as whatever strength I had propelled me to my feet. “What…have you done…to Ewan?” I pounded at the door to the gazebo. My sister and the man, they both cowered. For once, I am pleased to have someone be frightened of me.

  “Mr. Parish is gone,” my sister reiterated. “But you can come home. I will keep you safe from prosecution. No one will ever know what a demon you are.”

  I allowed the beast within all of us to show. “Never! You…are evil. Not I…sister…but obviously…you.”

  She took the razor through the bars with a stick. She handed it to this young man—around my age, give or take. “I shall leave you here to stew,” she said. “Perhaps, if you get cold or hungry, maybe then you will realize why I have done what I have, and why it is best. The family so will enjoy this walkway. I did not just make it for you. Father, sister, brother…all of us can enjoy it together now.”

  “‘Now’? What…has changed?”

  “Such is of no concern to you. Though I cherish hearing your voice once again, I detest hearing it used so cruelly. If Ewan Parish brought it back to me, bless him for that. All he did otherwise was cause upheaval and harm.”

  “No.”

  “I must go. If you are not ready to, I shall return to you afterward. I pray the lesson has been learned.”

  “Is that…what all…of this has been? Things…you allowed…that could not…sensibly…have gone unobserved…were left to happen as…a lesson? You…let me have Ewan…then took him…away…to teach me? To make…me abandon…any notion…of a life…outside our home?”

  “I sometimes wish you were as dumb as we originally thought you would be.”

  “I…hate you.”

  My words seemed to cut her as deeply as might the blade just surrendered. She turned and stood stiffly. I thought she would answer, but instead she reached for the hand of the other, and together they walked off, leaving me in my cell.

  I wished now she was Auntie Virginia, as that would levy no remorse upon me for hurting her feelings. Additionally, I knew, even as nasty she could be, that Auntie Virginia was always far too squeamish to go at a fly with the swatter. There was no way she could have slashed at Ewan with a blade. I only wished I was as certain concerning Georgia. Suddenly, I was frightened as to what extremes she may have been capable.

  I sat back down. I dropped my head to my hands. I am so sorry you were ever dragged into such madness, Ewan. The only hope there was for Ewan was the subterfuge. If my thoughts were correct, that Georgia had orchestrated some elaborate plot of late to make me think false was true, then the threat of his demise could simply be another machination to make me return to her hold. But how could I know for sure? Only Ewan’s words would be reliable now, not hers, nor my thoughts.

  I will look for you. I shall attempt your rescue. But my capture was secure. My only way out was Georgia, who had possibly been drugging me to bring on the spells—a notion that came to light an instant before I expressed it to myself. I may even have remembered a jab with a needle. If Judah was gone, if he left a son, if Ewan had spoken with Celia Mobley, the needle itself was actual as well, as was the fact that Judah’s father was the one who’d harmed him nearly eight springs ago. Ewan had promised me I’d had nothing to do with it and all of this suddenly felt true.

  My heart was more fractured than even before, however. If my love was not there to share in my freedom, my confinement may as well be permanent.

  If it is true, as you declared when speaking of my scrollwork drawings, I said to my love in my mind, that a heart once broken shall never be wholly strong, then losing you shall make mine cease to beat entirely, the letting of blood unnecessary.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  Those words.

  My fractured heart.

  ‘It will always break again, more easily than before,’ you’d said. ‘You put this into your pencil image. I put this into my work.’ Therein lay my freedom I hoped.

  I pushed at the scrollwork. It seemed too strong to budge. I kicked it, where the largest halves of two hearts connected back to back, not at all like they should. The panel split. I kicked it again. It gave way. I suddenly felt encouraged. The doings were noisy, though. I feared I may have been heard. I quickly made my escape nonetheless, the space just large enough to fit through. Where do I go? I was afraid. I was afraid of my sister—whichever one she may have been—of the strange man, of the woods themselves, how much they had changed in the passing years. The thought of traipsing them without Ewan’s hand to support me was daunting. I was afraid of myself still, as well. A modicum of self-doubt rendered me paralyzed several moments. Then I recalled Ewan’s mention of a shack. A hunting cabin. Yes. Where my father might be.

  This man with my sister, was he my brother, the one lost in the woods? That hypothesis did not seem plausible, the main hitch thus: he is not lost. I allowed this thought to block all others, namely those of trepidation. By doing that, and placing one foot in front of the other, I soon came upon the obvious path the others had taken.

  The sounds of the woods—the rather offensive, overwhelming cackling of birds who spoke all at once in the morning—helped keep my noisy feet undiscovered as I quickly caught up to Georgia’s slow strides. Sure enough, I’d been led to a structure fitting the idea of a shack implanted in my mind. It was rundown and rickety, and as I got closer to it, my heart in my throat, I clearly saw there was movement inside. I saw my sister. Actually, I believed I saw both. One was standing. One sat. The door stood wide open. The one who claimed to be Georgia, but then said she was Virginia, all the while showing signs of Georgia’s possessive obsessions, was moving about.

  If I am caught, what will happen? Georgia wants me alive. Does Virginia want me dead?

  I knew it would not be a messy death, but there were bed pillows in the cabin one would figure, and Virginia always had a penchant for wishing suffocation upon anything with male genitalia and breath. There was a part of me that always feared this fate for her infant, the one she’d allegedly carried when I was quite young. Perhaps the bones in the woods were all there was to him now. Or could they be my brother’s…my father’s junior?

  Someone came to the door and my thoughts back around to the present, which screeched at me to hide. I crawled beneath the porch in front that looked like it might collapse upon me at any moment. The floorboards were not as closely spaced as I’d first thought. If I was not pummeled by rotted lumber, I was certain to be seen, as someone—the shoes appeared to be female—pushed a wheelchair out, stopping right above me.

  “We can finally go back home, father,” Georgia…Nay, Virginia sai
d.

  Is my father in that chair? I tried to stretch to look, and then was caught, it seemed, as my sister looked down, nearly directly at me.

  “Brother!”

  All the air was startled from me. I prepared to spring forth, to bolt like a rabbit when startled. But it wasn’t me she’d called to. She was speaking to the other male, as she went back inside.

  “Brother!”

  Her voice was shrill as she called for him again.

  “Bring sister,” she hollered from somewhere in the cabin. “Won’t Pennsylvania be surprised to find us all reunited?”

  I certainly was. Only hours ago, I’d found out I even had an older brother—any brother. Within minutes, I had reconciled myself to the fact that he was most likely dead. Now, it appeared he was not. And Auntie Virginia here as well, and my father, whom I could not even recall as a vision from a photograph. Yes. Surprise was fitting verbiage. Though dumbfounded might be far more accurate.

  “Little Del, hurry,” whichever sister said in an exasperated tone.

  She came back out onto the porch and it groaned with all her weight. “I know I cannot bring you into town, father, or to church, but I do hope we can find someone else to finish the walkway quickly. That Ewan Parish was a ghastly man. So very rude. I do not feel the least bit sorry for him. No, I do not. If he isn’t already dead, he shall be very soon.”

  I silently gasped—at least I hoped it had been quiet—there beneath the decaying porch. Ewan can still be saved.

  The twin sister in charge huffed with grand gesture. Kidnapping, duplicity, the family reunion, it was all obviously beginning to wear on her weaknesses. “Good gracious, Little Del! What’s keeping you?”

  As she went back in again, I was tempted to shift for a better view of my father, but such was out of my hands. I was immobile with fear after thinking I’d been discovered, even as I lay there narrating in my head, because old habits died hard or because I was insane, even if not always or to a murderous degree. I had never met my sire. I was told by Virginia he’d fled when I was born, the inference being that I was unwanted. New light shone upon that now as well, thanks to Ewan. Father’s stealing himself away may have been for other reasons.

  “Come, boy!” my sister said, as if calling a dog. “I know the woods frighten you. You were lost in them such a very long time. But I promise you are safe now.”

  Another wheelchair was brought out, by the male this time, judging by his pant legs and shoes. He shuffled. Georgia would not like that. Auntie Virginia might actually strike him. Hate and condemnation, and threatening to smother infants, those were all allowed in the Dupree household. Shuffling one’s feet, however, had always been forbidden as a severe breach of etiquette. “Little Del’s” seemed a lazy shuffle, perhaps defiant, rather than one caused by age. Or maybe there was something wrong with him, a physical shortcoming, a mental one, maybe, another off relative Georgia had ended up as caretaker to. As I did the math in my head as to how old our brother would be—Crack!

  I jumped, quite concerned. The timber above me made another strained and unpleasant sound as the group simply shifted. Did they not notice? Were they unaware that the entire structure they stood upon could crumble beneath them in seconds? Their combined weight—one, two, three, four of them—plus that of the wheelchairs was no doubt quite considerable. Georgia and Virginia were ample women. And this male, who I assume had been in charge of dragging me about, probably Ewan as well, was neither small nor insubstantial himself.

  The porch miraculously held as he took one wheelchair down the steps with ease, carrying it as if almost weightless. The moment it came into view I saw why. I retched. I gagged and nearly vomited. A scream formed I fought to keep in, the horror of the situation so intense. Even if I dared, however, I was certain the sound would be too traumatized to venture out and form. What was left of a person—my father, I presumed, from what had been said—slumped in the chair. It was not in the visage of a man old, gaunt, and frail. It was not a being at all, merely a skeleton. Actual bones held together by…I was surely uncertain by what, perhaps the Sunday church pants and cardigan.

  The tall, dark-haired accomplice walked off as if all was normal. He was either in some state of shock, drugged, or dumb, as in mentally incapable of seeing the madness playing out before him. No other explanations were even remotely possible.

  “Help me now with Sister.”

  Whoever the male was, he climbed the steps to the decking once more. The wood failed. His foot came right through, stopping a mere sixteenth of an inch from my face. There was a larger gap now. Surely he could see me. I’d no doubt been caught, my recapture imminent, and swift, severe punishment as well.

  “Oh, Del!” my sister exclaimed. She grabbed for him, but he recoiled and twisted away. This caused him to fall, until we were parallel, just the decaying lumber of the sagging porch between us, except where missing chunks or decomposed completely away. It was in one such spot where we met face to face.

  His eyes were dark, like mine. Did I see the devil in them? No. Actually, I saw just the opposite—innocence and fear. It was that of a much younger boy, though beyond the expression he looked to be my age, at least. Were he my brother, as Georgia’s address to him suggested, he would have to be more than a dozen years older. The anxiety of the situation, coupled with the lack of a good look, had once skewed my thinking toward that possibility. Now, however, it did not seem right at all. He opened his mouth, this relative of whom I’d had no prior knowledge, as if about to call out. My heart stopped beating. My breath ceased. I was about to be given up, tattled on to my deranged sister, whichever one she be.

  “Run,” I said. More precisely, I’d mouthed it, offering the directive without sound, a desperate act to save or distract him, without the slightest notion as to why he would consider obeying me. His unblinking eyes still fixated on mine. They narrowed, and I thought he was considering the idea, or else maybe he saw how we looked alike, too.

  “Go,” I ordered once again, and I did it with a stern expression and the slightest head nod, one barely allowed by the space I was in. The fellow’s eyes got wider while his chin dropped further toward the floorboards. He blinked twice, and I took it as code—but one saying what?

  “Why are you dilly-dallying?” Georgia asked, as “Little Del” crawled slowly backward and managed to get to his feet, after freeing the one stuck like a bear’s in a trap. I did not wonder for long what he’d do. Within an instant, he leapt off the side of the porch and took off at great speed.

  “Del!”

  Georgia…or Virginia, I still did not know, took off after him, and I used the opportunity to crawl out from beneath the rotting entrance to the shack. I brushed the muck from my bare belly and chest, where my shirt had ridden up, and stared at my feet, as I did not wish to look at the second wheelchair just beside me. There was a rank smell about. If it was not the stench of death, I cannot imagine one much worse. My eye, on its own however, seemed to want to know what truth it would discover. That which it did was more horrific than my mind could even conjure. I saw another corpse, this one recently deceased, one of the twins, with no way to be certain which except maybe getting up close to it. The macabre happenings left no doubt. Whichever sister still walked and breathed, she had gone completely insane.

  Is this our new family? Two dead bodies, one mad sister, and two mentally-incapable males delayed beyond their physical years? I asked myself. Trying my damndest to avoid the sight of putrefied relatives, I entered the shack. “Ewan!” I called. “Ewan! Are you…here?” I received no response.

  Perhaps you are back at the house. I will check there. I will find you. If I spoke to him, I figured, even in just this way, he might sense me and hold on.

  I decided I would check in the cellar back home, the home I’d wondered recently if I’d ever see again or if I even wanted to. That seemed the most likely hiding spot in my head at that moment. Do not ask me why. It just did. The shack did not have many hiding spots for on
e thing. It seemed to be one large room, with a curtain for a closet door Ewan was not behind when I tugged it.

  “Ewan!” I called out once more to be sure. When no sound came back that offered me hope, I decided to rush back to the place he and I had first met.

  This time I ran. My desperation to free Ewan and feel him overtaking everything else. Down the jagged rocks and tricky roots twisting above ground like bloated, motionless snakes, I tripped often, falling to my hands and knees several times, scarping them red and cutting one finger. I got up, however, and soon I was back at the tall, metal posts and the shorter ones with lethal points. I continued on at a full run, until—Oomph! A sound from two beings, as I collided with a person unexpectedly.

  “Ouch!” I exclaimed when my arm was tugged harshly as an iron grip seized my elbow. I whirred around. “Abel Mobley?” I muttered. How could this be?

  His grasp was strong and painful. I was certain he wished me harm. Though I recalled a huge, but gentle, man, Ewan had sworn Abel Mobley had hurt Judah, nearly killed him, because of family secrets, and also over what Judah and I were, what we’d meant to one another, and what we had done express it. I feared for my life once again.

  But Abel should have had nothing against you. If I do not let him know that you mean to me now what Judah always had, perhaps, even if my life must end at his hands, he will set you free. I did my best to ask aloud, not easy with my current state of fear and exhaustion. “Mr. Mobley…Mr. Parish…has been…held captive by…my sister. We need…to help…him.”