The Ragged

by Brett Schumacher

  A woman stood in the center of the backyard, her white dress glowing softly in the dim moonlight. A pair of antlers protruded from her head at unnatural angles just a few inches above her ears, with trails of dried-up blood seemingly flowing from them. Her hair was wild, and she was covered in so much grime that Celeste couldn’t tell where the blood met the dirt.

  The horned girl stood still for a moment before slowly lifting her head to look at Celeste, who could only stare back. Celeste could hear the quiet rattling of the attic door resume somewhere miles away but found herself unable to focus on anything other than the woman in the yard. She watched in a daze as the woman’s mouth silently opened wide and her head started trembling.

  Then, all at once, Celeste was pulled back to her body. The attic door above her was shaking so hard that she feared it might break the padlock, and she swore she could hear something pounding on it from above. The horned woman’s anguished scream finally reached her ears, and Celeste found herself screaming in return.

  She turned and ran from the window, dashing underneath the attic door and taking off down the hall. Then, she dove into bed and hid under the covers, pulling herself as close to Andrew as possible. The screaming and rattling persisted as Celeste squeezed her eyes shut and prayed for it all to end.

  ***

  Celeste woke up the next morning in that same position. She was curled up underneath the blanket with her face buried in Andrew’s back. Hearing nothing but a bird singing outside, she poked her head above the covers and squinted in the morning light.

  Andrew was still sound asleep, not even stirring as Celeste got up and walked out to use the bathroom. It was unusual for her to be up before him, but she figured that his exhaustion and her nightmare were equally good reasons for that to be the case that morning.

  After all, it was a nightmare, right?

  Celeste replayed the events of the night over and over in her head as she brushed her teeth and got dressed, stopping in the hallway just long enough to cast a glance down the hall toward the window. Thinking back through it all, she decided that it simply had to have been a nightmare and that there was no way any of it could’ve been real.

  Just to make sure though, Celeste walked down to the end of the hall and examined the padlock. There was no sign of any strain or damage on it or the attic door, which absolutely would have been there if something were shaking it like that. Next, she stepped over and looked out the window, satisfied with the complete and utter lack of any deer women.

  Now completely confident in her assertion that it was all just a bad dream, Celeste resolved to put it behind herself and go make breakfast.

  Andrew groggily came down the stairs as she was finishing up cooking the bacon, giving her a quick kiss as he passed by her on his way to the coffee maker.

  “How do you feel this morning?” She asked, watching him clumsily try to make his morning coffee with his left hand.

  “I slept like the dead,” he replied. “I don’t think anything could’ve woken me up last night.”

  Celeste’s hand tightened on the fork she was using to turn the strips of bacon on the stove. That had to be a coincidence, right? Either way, she had decided she would put it behind her, and that was the end of the story. Andrew had enough on his plate as it was, and she was determined not to add to it with her silly dreams.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she said after only the slightest pause, moving the last piece of bacon onto a plate and turning off the stove.

  The two of them sat down to eat, both seeming preoccupied. Celeste wondered what was going through his head. She hated how much had happened to him in such a short time. Losing his grandfather and wrecking his right arm in less than two weeks must have been awful. She wracked her brain trying to think of a way to brighten his morning.

  After a few minutes of eating in silence, it hit her.

  “How about I bust open that attic door after breakfast?” She asked.

  A small smile appeared on Andrew’s face and he replied, “I think that would be excellent. I’ve been wondering what was up there for years.”

  After they finished their meal, Celeste picked up the bolt cutters and led Andrew back up the stairs and down the hall. She grabbed the same stool that he had used the day before and pulled it over underneath the door. She hesitated for a moment before climbing up, images flashing through her mind of the door violently shaking in the night.

  She silently reassured herself that it was all just a dream before stepping up onto the stool and lifting the bolt cutters to the padlock. Celeste’s lack of brute strength made the job difficult for her to accomplish, so she had to resort to using small, continuous motions to saw the lock.

  After several minutes of pinching and prying, loosening, and tightening, the padlock finally fell to the floor below with a satisfying clang. Celeste did a small little dance, losing her balance in the process. Andrew had to grab her with his good arm to help stabilize her.

  “Careful there, babe,” he said.

  “Sorry,” she grinned sheepishly. “I’m just really proud of myself.”

  “You’re allowed to be proud, but we can’t both break an arm.”

  Celeste handed Andrew the bolt cutters, their once-smooth blades now covered in chips and burs and felt a small pang of guilt for ruining their new tool.

  Andrew, seemingly reading her mind, said, “Don’t worry, we only needed them for this.”

  “Good, because I doubt they’ll be good for much after what I just put them through.”

  Bolstered by her success, Celeste turned her focus back to the attic door. She reached up and took hold of the latch before taking a deep breath and pulling. She flinched slightly as the panel shifted and the stairs started lowering, a little bit surprised that nothing flew out and attacked her. She stepped down off the stool and let the stairs completely unfold.

  “After you,” she said to Andrew, secretly too scared to lead the way.

  “You’re too kind,” he replied as he grabbed hold of the flimsy old railing and started up the stairs.

  Celeste watched him go, silently chastising herself for letting a nightmare make her so jumpy. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that nothing up there could be as scary as whatever her imagination could cook up.

  “Uh, babe,” Andrew called down from the top of the stairs, ruining her theory. “You’re not gonna like what’s up here.”

  “Andrew Wilson, if this is a prank-” she began as she followed him up the steps, but stopped as soon as she caught her first glimpse of the attic.

  He stood next to her, stoically taking in the scene. “Not a prank. Definitely not a prank.”

  Paintings of various sizes took up most of the space, leaning and hanging on every trunk and chest in sight. They were all in slightly different styles and done with slightly different colors, but they all showed the same grotesque scene.

  A dark and gaunt figure covered in blood stood tall and menacing in each, wrapped head to toe in tattered clothes, and with a tangle of dark rope-like hair covering its face. And accompanying the figure in each painting was a woman in a white dress. Sometimes she was screaming, other times she was dead and covered in blood. The only consistent details about her were the white dress and a strange set of antlers protruding from her head.

  Celeste’s stomach turned as she took in the dozens and dozens of pictures, each one unnerving in it’s unique way. Something inside her snapped as she looked at them.

  “I can’t do this,” she said, miles away.

  “What?” He asked.

  “I just can’t,” she turned and went down the rickety stairs as quickly as possible.

  “Celeste wait!” Andrew called out as she hit the hallway floor, having descended halfway down the stairs. “Are you okay?”

  “Absolutely not!” She suddenly rounded on him, her shock is replaced with fury. “This house gets creepier by the minute, and I’m not about to spend another second of my time in the attic surrounded by tho
se disgusting paintings. I’ll be downstairs if you need me.”

  And with that, Celeste stormed off down the hall, presumably leaving Andrew stunned by her sudden outburst. She knew she would regret speaking to him like that later, but at that moment she didn’t care. She just needed out of that attic.

  As she rounded the corner to go down the stairs, Celeste delivered her ultimatum.

  “I want out of this house by the end of the week.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Andrew watched in stunned silence as Celeste rounded the corner and went down the stairs. After an embarrassingly long moment of staring blankly at the wall at the end of the hallway, he shook out of it and went back into the attic. It wasn’t like Celeste to explode on him like that, but he also knew that it was better to give her space to cool off than to follow her and press the subject.

  He didn’t blame her for being so upset. As he slowly walked across the room, examining each painting, he became more and more unsettled. No two paintings were exactly alike. The brushwork was often frenetic, zigzagging and swiping in strange directions as it formed the dark shape of its subject. Overall, the paintings were sloppily made, which made them even creepier and even more likely to have been made by Corvus himself.

  There was another figure depicted in most of the portraits as well; what seemed to be a young woman in a white dress. Her hair color would change from picture to picture, but she was always in that dress, and she always had some strange kind of crown on her head. It almost looked to Andrew like a set of antlers.

  He finished looking at the paintings and turned his attention to the rest of the attic. It was long and narrow, spanning the entire length of the farmhouse. Sunbeams streamed in through a small window facing the backyard, reflecting off of thousands of dust particles in the air. Old chests and cardboard boxes were stacked floor to ceiling along the sides, leaving only a narrow walkway, which was of course lined with paintings of Corvus’s grotesque muse.

  Andrew moved a few of the portraits out of the way and opened one of the boxes, shaking off dust and cobwebs as he did. Inside the box was a series of drab nightgowns and dresses that must have belonged to his grandmother. Corvus had never seemed like the sentimental type to Andrew, but he was also standing in the middle of an attic he had never been allowed to enter and looking at a collection of incredibly disturbing paintings, so he was willing to concede that he might not have known his grandfather very well at all.

  “Seems like Corvus never got rid of anything,” he said to himself as he cracked open another box and found more of Eileen’s things. As he tallied it, his grandfather had kept a wraparound porch of furniture and farming equipment, a bedroom of porcelain dolls, a barn loft of deer heads, and an attic of paintings and boxes.

  Whoever he thought his grandfather was, it was becoming increasingly clear to Andrew that he didn’t know him at all. And Celeste’s declaration that they were leaving by the end of the week left him with only a few more days to see what he could learn about the man. He decided that it was time to read more of the journal. Maybe that would give him some insight into Corvus.

  As Andrew walked back across the attic toward the stairs, a glimpse of white among the browns and grays caught his attention. It was back behind a few stacks of heavy boxes, but Andrew managed to push them out of the way with just his good arm and his hips. The last tower slid away with relative ease, revealing an old dress form with a moth-eaten wedding veil sitting atop the figure.

  Confused, Andrew scanned the floor for any sign of where the dress itself may have fallen, but he couldn’t find anything. Of all the junk in the house that might have been worth keeping, of course, it was his grandmother’s vintage wedding dress that was nowhere to be seen. He sighed and picked up the form, pulling it out and carrying it with him as he went to the stairs. At the very least, he could let what was left of the veil be on display. He had never met his grandmother, but he figured she would’ve appreciated the thought.

  He set the dress form down next to the window near the stairs, but out of sight from the hallway below. The last thing he wanted was for Celeste to get up in the middle of the night and see a white figure in the attic. Their marriage might never recover if that happened.

  Andrew made his way downstairs and did a quick scan to see where Celeste was. Seeing her through the kitchen window on the back porch, he went to the door and poked his head out.

  “Hey you,” he said. “I get it if you still need some space, so I’m just here to let you know that I’m fine with leaving at the end of the week.”

  Celeste had been deep in thought and seemed caught off guard by both his presence and his statement. Despite her apparent surprise, her eyes softened when she saw him.

  “Are you sure?” She asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  She put down the indiscernible piece of junk she was holding, walked over, and threw her arms around him.

  “I’m sorry for yelling at you earlier,” she said with her face buried in his chest. “We can stay longer if you need to.”

  “Are you kidding me?” He pulled back and grinned down at her. “This place is mega creepy, and I want out of here as soon as possible.”

  She smiled back up at him before giving him a quick kiss.

  “I’m gonna go inside and read Corvus’s journal for a bit,” he said. “Let me know if you need any help?”

  “Will do,” she said with a small salute.

  Andrew made his way back through the kitchen and into the living room, stealing a small glance at his wife through the window as he did. Sitting down on the couch, he picked up the leather-bound book and opened it up.

  The first thing Andrew learned as he started reading through the journal again was that most of his grandfather’s thoughts were not very exciting. A majority of the entries simply described the weather and what he had eaten that day. There were a handful of passages about how the crops weren’t doing well and more than a few about how Eileen was such a cow.

  From the way the journal read, Andrew’s grandparents seemed to be stuck in a rather loveless marriage. And while that explained why her dress was gone and her stuff was boxed up and out of sight, it also had the unfortunate side effect of making it seem like Corvus might have been responsible for Eileen’s disappearance all those years ago. There wasn’t any evidence of him doing anything wrong yet, but she had gone missing in the fall of ‘92, and the entries were still in the summer, so there was plenty of time for something to go wrong.

  As much as Andrew hoped that he wouldn’t find a confession of murder written somewhere in those pages, he was bored enough by most of the entries that he might have welcomed the change.

  While most of the pages were full of idle ramblings about crop yields and soup for dinner, Andrew occasionally stumbled upon a passage with something a little more exciting. He dog-eared the interesting pages as he read. Corvus described further sightings of the thing in the woods with the skill and attention to detail of a lifelong hunter.

  It walked like a man, but moved through the forest like an animal, hiding as often as possible and moving through clearings with surprising speed. He saw it now and then for a few months, sometimes out in the woods, but usually at the edge of the backyard as it stared up through the window at him. And every time it visited the house in the night, it would put a hand on its stomach like it was hungry.

  Corvus took to calling it the Ragged on account of its filthy and tattered appearance. After a couple of months of visits from ‘Ragged,’ Andrew’s grandfather had decided to reach out.

  CHAPTER TEN

  August 21st, 1992

  I left a bowl of milk out for Ragged last night, and Eileen called me an old fool.

  After all the times he’s visited me, I figured there was something he wanted, so I gave him an offering. It’s something my momma taught me about the fair folk. If you leave them an offering of milk or fresh butter, they’ll leave you be and keep you safe.

  Maybe he’ll help my crop
s get better next year.

  Maybe he caused this year’s drought.

  ***

  August 22nd, 1992

  He didn’t like it.

  When I went out to check on the offering this morning, I found the bowl shattered on the ground. Eileen is furious with me for breaking her bowl. She won’t listen to me when I tell her that I didn’t do it.

  Ragged must not be like the old world fae. Maybe he wants something different. I’m going to leave him some meat tonight. I don’t know anybody who can turn down a good cut of beef.

  ***

  August 23rd, 1992

  Well, that did the trick! I went out this morning to check on the offering, and wouldn’t you know it? It was all gone! And to top it all of, I can prove it was him that ate it.

  He left me a sign that he liked it. When I went out to the spot where I left the meat, in its place I found a group of sticks and rocks arranged in a smiley face.

  Of course, Eileen wouldn’t listen when I tried to tell her about it. She thinks I’m going crazy. What an ungrateful cow. She might just ruin this for the both of us if Ragged hears her talking that way about him.

  ***

  Celeste’s mind wandered as she slowly sifted through the piles of junk on the back porch, looking for anything that might be worth keeping. So far, she hadn’t found a single thing worth holding onto out there, not that it surprised her. The more she thought about it, she realized that she and Andrew both knew that there was nothing of value on the property, yet they decided to keep looking anyway.

  She understood why, though. Corvus was Andrew’s last living relative and was the closest thing he had had to a father figure for most of his life. His deadbeat dad never taught him anything worthwhile, and Corvus at least taught him the value of hard work. Andrew needed this time to sort through his memories and emotions.