At Woods Edge

by E. M. Fitch

  The building was a mess of hands, teeth, and white flashes of eyes. Fingers prodded at her skin and snaked up her arms. Her back was sodden with the mud she thrashed atop. She twisted and ripped away, her feet feeling like they were being sucked into the softening earth. Aidan laughed, she recognized his tone, unconcerned and amused. Corey grunted beside him. He was not laughing, neither were the rest, but all were relentless. Their hands felt everywhere and in the darkness, Cassie felt herself getting lifted.

  “No!” she screamed, writhing against them. One dropped her legs and she surged forward, ripping her arms free and knocking someone out of her path. The door was ahead, Gibbons would be coming soon. She ran for the exit, wanting out, away from the press of bodies, hands, and the stifling scent of rotten leaves, soft bark, and bitter iron.

  A dark shadow materialized in front of her. Cassie burst forward and pushed with all her might. Her hands landed on a solid chest and the creature flew back with a grunt. There was a pop and a thud. The door swung open into the stormy night just as lightning flashed beyond.

  Corey hung from the swaying door, the blood-coated prong of the pitchfork protruding from his chest.

  A cry pierced the night air behind her, louder than the thunder and the screams of the trees, an agony like she had never heard before. Everyone stilled, even Cassie, but only for a moment. Headlights swept the fairgrounds, and Cassie tore her eyes from the corpse that now hung from the trembling door long enough to sprint past and into the rain.

  She didn’t hear any footsteps following her. Though she wasn’t sure she would have been able to anyway, not over the tortured sounds of her former best friend behind her.

  “Are you okay?” Office Gibbons asked, watching Cassie as she slammed the squad car door shut behind her. Gibbons cut the lights that had been flashing.

  “Drive, please,” she rasped. She was soaking wet from the short run, her hair laid in muddy tangles across her face. Her chest heaved with each painful drag of air through numb lips.

  She had killed him.

  It was so obvious, so plain. Not only from the sight of the black iron, dripping red, that burst through his chest, but also from the painful shrieks of his lover. Laney was destroyed. Cassie had never heard such pain.

  Or have I? she wondered as Gibbons led the car out of the fairgrounds and onto the road. The wipers swished in an agitated rhythm, clearing the fogging glass in broad swipes. She thought about Jessica’s parents, the mournful tears. She thought about Jon, sobbing in the hospital waiting room, the searchers who looked for Laney’s lost body for weeks, her own self as she kicked items around her bedroom. She thought about the Blakes, who mourned, not loudly like their daughter, but alone and in silence, like they had already stepped into their own tombs.

  She had heard such mourning and devastation. Ever since they came.

  “Well, Miss Harris?” Officer Gibbons asked, glancing at Cassie quickly before turning his eyes back to the road. She settled back into her seat, the blast of hot air from the vents warming her freezing skin and saturating her wet clothing with heat.

  “Thank you,” she said, closing her eyes as she leaned back against the headrest. “I was out for a run, got caught in the storm. I didn’t know who else to call.”

  “What about that boyfriend of yours? Or your parents?”

  “We broke up. And my parents are working,” Cassie answered, turning her face toward the window. Rain lashed at the glass, running down in rivulets. She wasn’t actually sure where her parents were. In that moment of terror and fear, fear that still licked at her insides, she thought only to call the one person who would get to her as fast as possible, red and blue lights blazing.

  “Oh,” he grunted, shifting in his seat. “I guess I’m supposed to say I’m sorry about Mr. Buckner.”

  “Only if you want to,” Cassie murmured. “I’m sorry I had to bother you though.”

  He grunted again and for a moment, drove in silence. Cassie was grateful for it. Her head spun, and she felt sick. When she closed her eyes she could see it, the pitchfork, the prong that stuck through Corey’s chest, and the slow drip, drip, drip of viscous blood from the dull tip.

  The thoughts in her head wouldn’t settle, they were wordless screams, pinging across her skull.

  He didn’t speak again until he pulled onto her street. Cassie tensed up, searching out her house, looking for lights. She looked to the dashboard of the police cruiser, trying to find the time glowing amongst all the lit dials and knobs of the police scanner. She had no idea if her parents would be home.

  Or, honestly, if it would matter. Would the mere presence of her parents keep the monsters at bay now?

  Gibbons pulled the car to the side of the road and twisted the key in the ignition. The dashboard and scanner stayed lit, but the engine cut to silence. She wondered if he’d ask her about tonight, wondered what else she could possibly say to explain her muddy clothes and urgent plea for help. He spared her that.

  “Are you ready to tell me yet?” he asked instead, soft and serious. He caught her eye and held it, staring at her in the warm confines of the police cruiser. She swallowed slowly.

  “You’d never believe me,” Cassie said in a low voice. He didn’t stop her as she reached for the door handle. She whispered her thanks as she stepped out into the night. The rain lashed at her clothing and whipped her hair about her face. Through the storm, she could see bodies moving in her living room and knew her parents would be there inside, waiting. She ran across the street, rainwater splashing up her legs and running down her face.

  Gibbons didn’t pull away until Cassie closed the house door behind her.

  Cassie didn’t go to school the next day. She faked sick, though really she wasn’t sure she was faking.

  Her body had not stopped shaking since Officer Gibbons dropped her off at home. It started as internal trembling. Her chest vibrated with each heartbeat, fast panicky jitters that caused her breath to heave and speed up. She wasn’t sure, at first, if anyone could see. She had stood at the entrance to the living room, dripping water and mud on the carpet, waiting for her parents to notice the changes in her.

  Because they must be obvious. She had changed. She was tainted, wrong.

  She was a murderer.

  Her parents didn’t notice, not the shaking anyway, which led Cassie to believe that her body wasn’t actually shaking in violent displays, just something inside of her was. Her very soul had come undone and was in the process of ripping itself to shreds, the pieces landing in a tangled mess in the pit of her stomach.

  “Wow, really raining out there, isn’t it?” her father had asked, shooting a perfunctory glance at his daughter. Cassie stared in abject horror as he crumpled up newspapers for the fireplace. “I’m going to start a fire, no matter what your mother says.”

  “It’s too warm for a fire, Patrick,” her mother grumbled, not looking up from her novel. “Cassie, go change. The floor’s getting all messy.”

  Cassie headed up the stairs without a word, running into the bathroom.

  She had been immediately sick in the toilet, retching until there was nothing left in her stomach. She stood in the shower, letting the hot water rain down over her, her mind a windstorm of fear and remorse. She couldn’t get Laney’s scream out of her head. She hadn’t seen her face, and maybe it was better that way. All she could imagine was her features twisting and shifting in despair, grief etching permanent lines on her friend’s immortal face.

  Would there be a body?

  Would it be like before, when they manufactured one for Laney’s funeral? Or would it really be Corey? Would someone find him, cold and stiff, still hanging from the swinging door with a prize antique protruding from his rib cage?

  What about fingerprints? Boot prints? Would this come back to Cassie? If it did, how would she explain why she didn’t tell the police officer she had called that there was someone who needed help, someone she had possibly killed?

/>   No, not possibly. She had killed him.

  Laney. Oh, Laney. And her baby, what of it now? Cassie had just ended all possibility of Laney’s child ever knowing their father.

  She had fallen to her knees in the bathtub, the steam swirling up and away from her bruised skin, the water flowing, no longer rusty from blood and mud, in circular swirls down the drain. Round and round and round. Like her thoughts, mad circles that disappeared into a pit of darkness.

  Murderer.

  Her father didn’t question that she was sick. By morning, she looked truly ill. She hadn’t slept. She wished she had held onto the fire poker. It was hard enough to try to explain why she had taken it from the house, even harder to explain why she left it out in the woods. But her numb lips had made up some excuse and moments later her mother had suggested she go to bed.

  Cassie went to her room and proceeded to stare out the window, searching through the rain that lashed the glass for the dark eyes that would be watching her. Watching and waiting for their next opportunity.

  “I can stay home with you,” her mother said, her hand darting out to Cassie’s forehead. Cassie allowed it, leaning into the touch. She shook her head against her mother’s palm. She frowned. “Well, I’ll leave the car. In case you need something.”

  As soon as her father’s car was out of sight, both of her parents chatting in the front seats, Cassie jumped into the car left in the driveway. Her hands shook as she twisted the key in the ignition and she backed out into the street, not even checking for oncoming cars.

  She had to move. It was all she could think to do. She had no idea where to go, no relative living in a distant city, no out of town retreat. She couldn’t duck school forever. She couldn’t tell anyone what she had done, why creatures of the forest would be after her looking for vengeance.

  So she drove instead. She headed out of town, took the highway. She got a message from Rebecca around the time she was supposed to be in second period.

  Rebecca: Where are you? We have a game today!

  The game. She had forgotten. It didn’t matter anyway, she didn’t even bother texting back. Coach Kelly would have to pull up another J.V. player to replace her for the day. Cassie wasn’t even sure who played her position on the J.V. team. It seemed odd, suddenly. Isn’t that something she should know?

  She couldn’t help but think though, flying down the road ten miles per hour over the speed limit, did it even really matter anyway?

  Towns blurred by, green exit signs with reflective numbers read off a countdown. Cassie didn’t pay any attention to the numbers, the names of the streets she passed, or towns she entered. She didn’t get off the highway until the buildings outnumbered the trees. She had never been in the area she found herself in before. Her corner of the world couldn’t claim home to many cities, and the ones that sprang up every once in a while could barely get away with that description. Though the buildings that lined the street on either side of Cassie today were all more than three stories tall, and she couldn’t see any trees beyond them. She drove down the side streets, passing delis with signs all in Spanish, gas stations with people loitering in the parking lot, a library that looked like it could have been a museum, and then an actual museum. Large marquee letters spelled OMG in lightbulbs above the entrance, posters of the art one would find inside were plastered to the front wall.

  She pulled the car onto the main street and slid into a parking spot. On either side, brick-faced buildings with large glass windows lined the road. It was a beautiful day, clear and warm. People milled about up and down the road. It was nearing lunchtime and there were several nearby restaurants filling up. A coffee shop down the street already had a line queuing to the front door. Cassie knew she should be hungry, she hadn’t eaten yet, but she just couldn’t muster an appetite. She contemplated sitting at one of the tables anyway, maybe ordering something to drink. She knew, logically, she needed sustenance.

  There was a sandwich shop just before the coffee place. It didn’t look as clean, and there was no line filing to the door. Still, a single table was open by the window.

  Cassie moved toward it but stopped short at the window display in the storefront next to Sal’s Sandwich Nook. In the bay window sat a collection of junk, typewriters and mannequins wearing old hats, a set of beat up, ancient leather suitcases, a stack of tattered books. But hanging right in the center was an old pitchfork, the tongs black, rough, and painfully familiar.

  A weight dropped in Cassie’s stomach and she stood still, staring through the window. She waited for the whispers to start, an almost familiar pressure inside her skull.

  They didn’t come. She could hear the general murmur of humanity, the footsteps of strangers walking past her on the paved sidewalk. There was the distant rumble of car engines, the slamming of doors, and the beeps of automatic locks triggered from key fobs. People laughed, talked, sneezed, coughed; but nothing taunted, nothing floated through the air to hiss through her thoughts.

  They hadn’t followed her, they weren’t here. Maybe it was the concrete, and the glass, and the steel that surrounded her. Maybe that kept them all at bay. Or maybe they were just mourning. It didn’t matter why; it only mattered that the creatures weren’t here. Cassie’s sense of paranoia was just residual terror taking up space in her chest. That and the memory of last night, the dripping prong.

  It was sick, she knew, but she was drawn inside.

  A bell tinkled overhead and an older gentleman looked up, blinking from behind thick glasses.

  “Good morning,” he chirped, coming out from behind his desk. “Can I help you find something?”

  Cassie froze, her eyes darting from the older man to the window display. She wasn’t sure how to phrase it.

  “Or did you already see something you like, honey?” the man, his name tag said Karl, asked.

  “I like the stuff in the window,” Cassie mumbled, turning from him, her gaze drifting back to the hanging pitchfork. She had no intention taking it any further than that, but Karl hurried toward her, smiling.

  “The books? Or no, I know, the hats! You have a good eye, young lady.” He strode to the window, a slight shuffle in his gait. “This is a Tam hat from the 1940s, very chic. You know, the true classics never really go out of style.”

  “Actually, I was, ah … ” Cassie paused and cleared her throat, finding a smile tugging at her lips despite how awful she felt. “I was looking at the pitchfork.”

  “Oh!” Karl’s eyebrows shot up. His didn’t let his momentary surprise slow him down though. “Well, if it’s antique tools you’re interested in, follow me this way.”

  He shuffled to the back corner of the store, past a retro gas pump and behind a wall rack full of tin posters and signs, mostly featuring Coca-Cola ads in red, white, and blue, to a long wooden table loaded with rusty tools.

  Cassie wasn’t sure quite what to say, most of it looked dirty. The blades were black and brown with rust. There were several large hooks, which were used for who knew what. There was a hand crank beater that looked as though it would never turn again. Cassie imagined these things on decorative, frilly shelves, a deliberate juxtaposition that would delight someone’s grandma. Though, looking at the price tags, she couldn’t understand anyone actually paying for useless hunks of disintegrating metal.

  “Are you a collector, my dear? Or maybe your parents are?”

  “Hmm? Oh, no,” Cassie answered, distracted. She ran her fingers over the nearest tool, a small knife, the handle a dull, grainy wood. “Just kinda cool, I guess.”

  “I would say so!” Karl exclaimed, excited by her apparent interest. Cassie eyed the tools quietly as he spoke, reliving history through the explanations of two-hundred-year-old sheep shears and chaff cutters.

  “What are they made of?” she asked, interrupting him. His frowned at her and then looked over his collection in consideration.

  “Well, materials were few and hard to work with,” he started. Cassie cou
ld sense another history lesson brewing.

  “Sorry, I meant the metal,” she interrupted again, her fingers running over the dull blade of the knife. The edge was gritty under her skin.

  “Iron,” Karl answered. “Well, I suppose it depends on how old the item really was. You see, beginning in the late 1700s … ”

  Cassie half-listened as Karl dove into history, backpedaling to the Iron Age and then bringing Cassie up to speed with the introduction of steel over three hundred years ago. She couldn’t focus on the words though. The feel of the iron under her fingers, she hadn’t raised her hand from the blade yet, was distracting.

  The fire poker was iron. She was sure it was. It was heavy and dense and her mother used to joke about “that ugly, old iron set” that her grandparents had given them as an anniversary present one year. Maybe Aidan wasn’t simply playing cat and mouse with her that night in her backyard. Maybe there was a legitimate reason, a fear that kept him back and sent him running to the safety of his woods.

  The pitchfork, the antique pitchfork that had pierced through Corey’s chest though it wasn’t that sharp, had looked just like the rest of all these antique tools, had the same rough look to the surface of the metal. According to Karl, it would have been iron. Could that be the answer? Was it as simple as that?

  The creatures of the forest were immortal to everything. Or so Cassie thought. But something had surely killed Corey.

  Could the answer be iron?

  “How much is this?” Cassie asked. Karl’s head weaved back and forth, considering, looking from the small knife that Cassie indicated to her face. He made an offer. She accepted immediately, digging the cash out of her pocket.

  It wasn’t until she left the shop that she realized she could have perhaps haggled. Not that it mattered, the feeling of security, of power that came from the small, dull knife that rested easily in the palm of her hand was worth every penny she had.