Dead Leaves, Dark Corners

by Nicki Huntsman Smith

  This time Andy did glance into the backseat. Jimmy and Gordon were nodding, like those ridiculous bobble head cows that rednecks stick on their dashboards.

  Andy sighed.

  Darryl continued, “Listen, Staci was a cheating whore. She deserved what happened to her. She never liked you, Andy. Did you know that? She told me she thought you had the hots for both of us, and then she laughed that you thought you might have a chance with either of us.”

  Andy snorted in contempt. “Hardly. I don’t go for trashy bleached-blond bimbos who can’t string two sentences together.”

  Darryl chuckled. “Exactly. Now you get it. You just need time to wrap your head around the situation. Everything will be fine. We’ll get this business done, then you can go home to Candace and put it all behind you. I’ll owe you, Andy. I mean that.” He slid a manicured hand over the console and squeezed Andy’s upper thigh. Andy hated that despite everything, he was aroused by the touch.

  ***

  “Girls, we’re going to play a new game,” Candace said to the other two females sitting across from her on the sofa.

  “Let’s not start something new without Staci,” one of them said, gesturing to an empty cushion and almost spilling the topped-off glass of chardonnay.

  Candace’s eyes narrowed. She had been taking bird sips of her wine tonight while the other two had slammed more than a bottle each. She ignored the objection.

  “It’s super easy and fun. You’ll love it. It’s called What Would It Take?”

  Toil and Trouble

  The woman loved this time of day. She thought of it as ‘the enchanted interval,’ that all too brief period just before the sun dipped below the tree line. The light would turn golden, and if there were a few wispy clouds in the sky, it would watercolor the white cotton with lavender and tangerine. Sunrise was also lovely, but there was something special about those moments right before dusk; perhaps it was because they were a precursor to the night, when her power was at its strongest.

  “I should gather some feverfew,” she mumbled to herself, but she wasn’t inclined to stir just yet from the ancient rocking chair. Her night vision was exceptional, so she would be able to spot the daisy-like leaves just fine later, even though the moon would be merely a waning crescent. She closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the delicious aroma escaping the Dutch oven bubbling over her fire pit.

  These moments were a daily gift she gave herself. The rest of her time was spent on the business of maintaining her tiny cabin, tending her vegetable and herb garden, and inspecting the perimeter just beyond the clearing in the forest where she lived. They were her friends, those stately oaks and towering pines which encircled the glade. She had even named the ones closest to her home. Of those, Imelda, Morewenna, and Caspia were her favorites. They spoke to her. Not with human words, of course, but their branches, leaves, and needles were the vocal chords with which the wind summoned their voices.

  And in other ways too, she could know their thoughts. They had warned her of danger on many occasions. She knew that would seem farfetched to non-forest dwellers, but it was true. Over the years, there had been at least a dozen attempts to enter her home. She could only assume the interlopers’ intentions had been malevolent because that was the nature of most people. It was one of the reasons for sequestering herself within the confines of the immense woodland all those years ago. Had she regretted that decision a few times? Certainly. In the beginning, the isolation was almost tangible; had felt like its own entity...a being she would talk to as a child might address the monster in the closet. No, I won’t leave my home. Yes, I’m lonely and I miss people, but I’m safer here. I’m happier by myself. It’s for the best. Eventually, those feelings of loneliness subsided, and her days developed a comforting sameness that she grew to enjoy. Her personality demanded a productive routine, and her proclivity had always been to avoid people and their inherent, inevitable vileness.

  She didn’t need people anyway. She had her trees.

  She pushed herself up, her knees making snap-crackle-pop sounds as she stood. She took a moment to caress the carved wooden arm of her chair, as a child might kiss its mother’s cheek. It was one of the items she had brought with her all those years ago, and it hadn’t been easy getting it through the brush and undergrowth. The trek from the parking lot to her clearing had been arduous. She wondered, as she had dozens or hundreds of times, if the old Jeep Cherokee were still there, abandoned and miserable, like a dog left chained to a fencepost.

  It was a silly anthropomorphism. Cars had never been alive, unlike anything made of wood. (And besides, the vehicle must have been towed away years ago.) When she touched the arm of her beloved rocking chair, she could still sense its former life almost as easily as she could feel the extant vitality of the trees within her glade. That talent, as well as others, had been one of the motivations behind her decision to isolate herself. She gave people the creeps...was told as much many times. She was considered a freak, a weirdo, a nutcase when she had lived among people.

  Here in her forest, she simply was.

  “Morewenna, how are you feeling today?” she murmured to the biggest of the Ponderosa pines as she stroked the cracked bark. “The gusts were brutal this morning. Did you suffer much?”

  Noooooo...goooood...

  “Excellent. Imelda, what about you? You’ve released quite a few of your beautiful feathery fronds, but I know the wind doesn’t bother you like it does the others,” she said to the enormous bald cypress.

  Goooood...

  “And you, Caspia?” She spoke to the magnificent oak, with its gnarled limbs and foliage resplendent with fall color. Any adventurous child would love to climb this beauty if given the chance. Meeker children might be intimidated by the arboreal leviathan, with its massive, crooked branches that sometimes seemed to reach down to her, clutching and grasping for her attention. “You’re looking gorgeous today. You know those are my favorite colors. Autumn is the most wonderful time of year, don’t you agree?”

  Yessss...

  Abruptly, the lighthearted tone of the communication stopped. She felt a subtle vibration through the rough bark where her fingers were still placed on the trunk.

  Someone cominnnggg...!

  Her body reacted by producing a surge of adrenaline. Her heart began to race in response. It had been years since anyone had ventured into her forest – perhaps almost a decade, now that she thought about it.

  “How far?” she asked the oak.

  Not far...

  “How many?”

  A pause. Trees didn’t understand numbers in the way that humans did.

  Not many...

  Well, that wasn’t helpful. ‘Not many’ could mean one or a hundred in tree-speak.

  “As many as last time?”

  There had been only one human the last time an attempt was made to get past her security. She could handle one. Now well into her seventies, she doubted her ability to fight off two or three, but her telekinetic power was more robust than ever. As physical talents diminished, mental had increased. It was a kind of trade-off, she supposed, Mother Nature taking care of one of her own while still operating within the realm of the natural laws.

  Yessss...

  Good. One would be no problem. The intruder should be weakened now by the brambles and thorny locust trees she had been cultivating along the perimeter since her arrival. Over the years they had grown into a dynamic, formidable palisade twenty yards thick. It would be a determined individual who could get through it. The thought made her a bit anxious, but her confidence was unshaken. She would gather her energy, summon her reserve strength, and wait for the person to appear.

  “Caspia, you and the others don’t worry. Send them the message that I’ll be fine.” Through their root system and perhaps in other ways she didn’t understand, all the forest’s living flora could interface. However, she could only ‘talk’ with the oldest of her precious trees; it was an indication of advanced development when they reache
d the point of communicating with humans. Sadly, humans’ capacity to respond in kind had been lost in their own evolution.

  At least for most.

  She returned to her chair and closed her eyes. It was full dark now, and even though her night vision was excellent, she could see even better with her mind’s eye. She sent out a mental sonar-like probe throughout the circumference of her clearing, searching for the human who dared venture this close to her home. Once she was located, (yes, it was a ‘she’), the old woman targeted her, flinging psychic arrows intended to disrupt the victim’s determination and trajectory. This was the first line of defense: to telepathically dissuade her adversary from coming closer. It had saved bloodshed on more than one occasion.

  Once she gained access to the intruder’s mind, everything changed, though. It was usually a one-sided exercise to project disruptive suggestions into their consciousness, making them question their own actions and deterring them from proceeding further. She was normally a psychic sender, not a receiver.

  This time was different.

  The intensity of the intruder’s thoughts were what forced her to hear them. What she witnessed in the female’s mind was so horrifying that the images and emotions crashed through her defenses. Like blood flowing backward through a heart valve, this reverse telepathy was unnatural and unwelcome – and it changed everything.

  ***

  “Just a little farther. You can do this!” the young woman muttered to herself. She had constructed a mental barrier against the agony; banished it to a place where it couldn’t affect her forward progress. She must make it to the clearing. There was nowhere else to go.

  It was at that moment that her world tilted. Suddenly her thoughts were foggy and unfocused. Pain crashed through. She felt every scrape, every bruise, every stab of the thorns she had just trampled through...on her way to where? She wasn’t sure. Just moments ago she had felt so determined to get someplace, and now she didn’t know why she was subjecting herself to this torture. She reached out a slender, bloody hand to lean against the trunk of an enormous tree.

  Her world tilted again.

  Keeeep goooiiinnng!

  “What? Who said that?” she whispered to the night, removing her hand as she did so.

  Her mind was clearer now. The discomfort was intense, but manageable. With renewed determination, she charged through the thorny brush. There was not much starlight, but her eyes had adjusted well enough to see where she was going. Ten yards ahead was the golden glow of a light source. She was almost there.

  What awaited her when she stumbled through the last vestiges of forest caught her utterly by surprise.

  She took in the sight of the crone; that was the word her mind supplied to describe the woman sitting in a rocking chair in front of a tiny cabin. A few feet away from the old woman, flames licked the bottom of a round black pot suspended over a fire pit. In storybooks, it would have been called a cauldron.

  A manic giggle escaped her. To survive the violent end of the world merely to become dinner for a witch would be a damn shame.

  “Where’s your broomstick?” The girl’s voice was hoarse after weeks of disuse, and it sounded manic even to her own ears.

  The crone’s brows came together over eyes that looked like glowing lumps of charcoal.

  The girl felt an invisible fist push against her chest. She fell backward onto the ground.

  “Impertinent child!” the old woman said. Her voice was like the screech of the wind during a hurricane.

  “I’m sorry! Please, help me. I’ve come such a long way, and I’ve been through so much.”

  She could see the effect her apologetic tone had, as the furrowed brow smoothed, and the thin, downturned lips leveled into something that wasn’t a smile, but also wasn’t a frown.

  “We’ll see about that,” the old woman replied. “What happened? Out there?” The crooked fingers gestured to the world beyond the forest.

  “The end of the world. That’s what happened. Can I come closer? I won’t hurt you.”

  The crone snorted. “As if you could,” she said. The quieter voice now was like a rusty gate swinging in a midnight breeze. “You may approach. Just know that I have many resources at my disposal to deal with anyone who wishes me harm. I may look like feeble, but I assure you I’m not.”

  The young woman nodded and walked the remaining distance to stand by the simmering pot. Whatever was in there smelled delicious. Her stomach rumbled. How long had it been since she had eaten hot food? All she could remember was months of just enough ramen noodles and Ranch-style beans to stave off the worst of the hunger pains. Her gaze slid to the vegetable garden next to the house, then back to the cauldron. Oh my god! Was she smelling fresh carrots and potatoes? Onions? Her salivary glands gave an involuntary squirt. If she tried to talk now, she would drool like a bulldog eyeballing a pork chop.

  The glowing embers watched, then narrowed. “Sit there.” Arthritic fingers indicated a weathered stump a few feet on the other side of the fire pit.

  Without a word, the young woman obeyed.

  The crone stood slowly, then she shuffled through the open door of the cabin. After a few seconds she returned carrying a large spoon, a smaller spoon, and a wooden bowl. She lifted the lid of the pot with her bare hand and ladled some of the soup into the bowl. She handed it to her along with the small spoon.

  “Eat. Then I want to hear everything.”

  The soup was hot and it burned her tongue, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t just delicious, it was the most exquisitely flavored food she had ever eaten; the subtle herbs and the tender-crisp texture of the vegetables melded delectably with the rich broth. Perhaps the crone had used a magic spell when she cooked it.

  “My god,” she said between mouthfuls, “This is the best soup I’ve ever had in my life.”

  “That’s because it’s not processed, packaged-in-plastic garbage filled with preservatives and fillers. It is real food, made with ingredients provided by the forest, and combined by someone who appreciates the bounty of the Mother, without whom, you and I would not be having this conversation.”

  “You mean Mother Nature?”

  There was a clucking sound of disapproval. “Of course, that’s who I mean. You youngsters with your obsession with technology and your disregard for everything that truly matters. Now let’s hear it. I want to know everything that happened.”

  The female nodded, setting the empty bowl on the ground. Maybe if she played her cards right, she would get a second helping.

  “It began about six months ago...” Her voice trailed off as the memories of that dreadful time flowed into her, like a storm surge from a poisoned sea.

  The crone snapped her crooked fingers, bringing her back to the Halloween scene before her.

  “It was a pandemic,” she continued, stronger now. “They said it wasn’t viral or bacterial, but what else could it be? It doesn’t make any sense.”

  The crone’s left bushy gray eyebrow arched. “It makes sense if it was the Mother’s plan to rid herself of the scourge of humanity.”

  The young woman nodded. “You mean genetic, right?”

  The other gray eyebrow arched now in surprise. “Yes. Please continue.”

  “Once people started dying, everything went to hell very fast. Then more people died. The supply chains collapsed and within weeks there wasn’t any more food. I lived in the city, and I think it was worse there. I knew I had to get out. The stench of the rotting corpses was bad enough, but the survivors – there were a few others like me who didn’t get sick – started banding together in gangs. If you didn’t belong to one, you were screwed. I barely made it out of the city.”

  “Your family?”

  She felt the corners of her mouth pull down of their own accord. She couldn’t talk.

  “Never mind. Perhaps we’ll get to that later. What happened next?”

  She took a shuddering breath and said, “I walked at night. It seemed safest. There were cars full of d
ead people clogging all the roads. And the people who were still alive were...” she struggled to find the correct adjective, “off-putting.” That wasn’t quite right, but it was certainly true.

  “What do you mean by that? How so?”

  “Some of them were like the smart nerds in school. Others just felt...wrong, somehow. Creepy, crazy-eyed. I’m sorry if that doesn’t make sense. I didn’t hang around with people much after my parents were killed. I just got out of there as quickly as I could.”

  The crone nodded. “What then? Why did you travel this direction? There’s nothing but unpopulated national forest for hundreds of miles. No possibility of finding easy food or manmade shelter.”

  She felt hard-pressed to explain the impulse to venture into the woods. She supposed it had come from her subconscious, yet it had been counter-intuitive in many ways. She would have been smarter to find an abandoned farmhouse somewhere off the beaten path, with everything already in place that she would need for survival. But for reasons she didn’t understand, she was drawn here.

  “I wish I knew the answer. It was like I got caught in a tractor beam. That’s the only way I can explain it. I felt that I should come here...that my life depended on it. I know that sounds weird.”

  The crone didn’t reply, but only watched her with those disconcerting eyes. Seconds ticked by, and she began to feel uncomfortable under the intense scrutiny. She couldn’t maintain eye contact, and so allowed her focus to shift to the clearing, that place she had been so profoundly compelled to find. She realized she could see quite well despite the lack of moonlight; that celestial body was merely a waning crescent at the moment. The thought surprised her. She hadn’t realized she knew the names for the phases of the moon.

  The open, grassy ground was level beneath her feet, like a manicured lawn in the suburbs. The topography was so smooth it was hard to imagine there had ever been any brush or trees to remove...like the woods had grown up around this lovely circle of land. The vegetable garden to the right of the cabin was immaculate. Tidy furrows sprouted all kinds of greenery, which she could see perfectly even through the gloom of night. Her gaze traveled to the other side where a small structure stood. It was circular with walls made of river rocks and a sloped roof built to cover it. A bucket dangled from the roof.