The Innocence of Youth

When I was young, I never wanted to kill anything. I didn’t want to be responsible for snuffing out a fiercely burning torch of possibilities. I believed in ghosts. In a continuation of the ethereal spirit that inhabited everything, and might haunt me after it’s unnatural death. Now, I no longer care.
The tall wild grass is a crisply waving sea of ocher, the beady kernels mingling with floating motes of dust in an upward ascent driven by the cool fall wind. I glance skywards. Long, shredded trains of cumulonimbus clouds stretch across the pale blue sky. Serene. Placid. Utterly deserted. This is where I found the body.
It didn’t even really look human. A gangly mess of bleached bones. The long, narrow skull harbored large, curved teeth. Kind of like a cross between a neanderthal and a feral dog. They were half buried under mangled strings of white roots, the cloistered mass hidden within a writhing mire of waist high wild-grass.
I was only ten, and the magical and surreal seemed so much closer then. My mouth fell open in awe. The small hairs on my spine stood up, and my skin grew cold and clammy. The faintly burnt smell of the woods in autumn grew suddenly stagnant, decay tainting the air. My ears strained, trying desperately to hear any noise. Stark terror washed over me in waves, and I remembered every horror movie I had ever watched though a blindfold of parted fingers. Something ancient and evil was here. I felt so small, so insignificant. I swiveled my head slowly, fully expecting some horror. Nothing. Sweat trickled down my forehead, my armpits felt moist, and I darted. My lungs burned, my chest constricted, and my legs felt like they were moving in slow motion. I bounded over swarming nests of roots, hurdled a rotting trunk, stumbled through a fallow trench, and broke out of the burning sunlight into the cool shade of the melancholy forest. Pausing for a moment, I swiveled my head madly about. Dusky pine trees dotted the sheltered woodland in pillars of muted brown. Marauding vines descended from the upper reaches in tangled masses, blotting out large avenues of escape. I pushed forward into the depths, skipping over rocks and underbrush. My feet tripped through the dried out carcass of a giant mushroom, the stagnant powder exploding all around me as I narrowly avoided a fall. Gasping for air, I tore at my face, desperately wiping away the blinding yellowish powder. The trunks multiplied, the forest darkened, and I descended into the blackened heart.

Buried in the Forest

I didn’t know where I was. The flow of oak leaves and pine needles spread out in a never ending carpet, breaking open into small leafy bushes and moss covered rocks as it undulated through a labyrinth of similar looking trees. Leaves whistled in their spiraling descent, small animals rustled in the underbrush, and all sign of civilization was far at hand. No automobiles, no machinery, no laughs and genteel conversation, nothing. I kept running.
An hour later, and I stumbled out into an overgrown pasture. A distant farmhouse rose out of the sea of softly waving grass. The red sides faded into disrepair, dark splotches of wood showing through patches of peeling paint. I slowed as I approached, my eyes fixed on the ancient white door, it’s veneer broken a single, small window..

The grass parted into a small dirt path as I drew near the porch. I crossed it, and ascended a rickety staircase of rotting wood up onto a half buckled front terrace. The smell of damp timber assaulted my nostrils. With each creak I’d pause, the sound resounding like a train whistle in my ears. I’d stare at the door, but nothing emerged. As I drew in, I pressed my ear up against it. Nothing. I glanced around. The outstretched lawn flowed through a weed choked meadow into a darkened treeline. Nothing moved. The shadows were growing longer. Something ancient and unearthly seemed to emanate from their depths. Dark purple clouds were rolling in, turning the afternoon into an early night. The house terrified me, but not as much as returning to the woods. I tried the door. Unlocked. Pushing it open, I entered.

Past the portal

Dark and musty, the faint daylight broke through rotted velvet curtains to reveal badly tended hardwood planks. The dim living room harbored a couch, the antique cherry wood curling up in elegant spirals. Plush crimson suede adorned it, floral shapes barely evident in the low light. A low glass coffee table stretched out before it, the remnants of yellowing paper splayed across the top. A half full glass of amber liquid straddled the paper. The air smelled of fermented spices and slow decay. My feet squished through something organic, and I froze. Peering down, I tried to examine it, but the lighting was too poor. I could only see that it was bubbly and dark, a thick, moist substance staining the circular area rug surrounding it. A faint scent of iron and dirt assailed my lungs. Then I heard a low groan.
I wanted to run, but I was paralyzed, my ears stretched out like a bats, straining for anything further. The skin on my face tightened, and I stood as still as I could manage. Another groan, a leathery creak, and a body rolled off the coach, hitting the floor with a heavy wallop. The collision resounded thunderously in the dead silence, and I could swear I hear a sickening crunch as the last note. Curiosity was biting at me ferociously, only held back by stark terror.
“Mister?”
My voice sounded thin and tinny, choked back by the lump in my throat.
“Ugh…fucking snot nosed kid…you’re trespassing…”
Sweat trickled down my face. I wanted to turn and run, but morbid curiosity got the better of me. I inched forward, clearing the edge of the couch.
A grizzled man of sixty glared at me from his perch on the floor, a thin stream of drool dribbling down his lips. Salt and pepper stubble carpeted his weathered face, the brim of a filthy John Deer cap jutting over the forehead. A dark red flannel shirt was open a few buttons, revealing a swarming mass of white chest hair. A soiled finger pointed accusingly at me. I glanced down, and noticed he was missing half of his right leg. Right below the knee, his navy blue jeans ended in a sloppily wrapped bloody stump, the loose edges of white gauze venturing out across the floor. The smell of iron and a wave of nausea hit me simultaneously.
“what happened to you…”
“Fucking punk kid, I told you to get out of here!”
There was now an edge of panic in his voice. Whatever did this, it was probably out there in those woods, and there was no way I was going back out there in the dark.
“I can’t…I’ll…something…bad…”
He coughed ferociously, spittle flying out in a death plunge towards the floor.
“You have no idea…no idea”
He hacked out a cough again, and rolled sideways, his deep, raspy breathing beating out a decrepit cadence.
I didn’t move for a long time. The room grew steadily dimmer, the fusillade of storm clouds rolling in as if on cue. Lightening crackled, and it began to rain. Big, pattering drops at first, then developing into a torrential downpour. The heavy breathing had stopped, replaced by a thin,lowly wheeze. I slowly circled around the coffee table, delicately placing my footfalls to avoid awakening the slumbering beast. Just beyond lay a rickety old staircase, the soiled wooden planks ascending upwards into darkness. I glanced around the abode. An open doorway to the left led into a filthy kitchen, the odor of mold and dross wafting languidly out. The greenish tips of unwashed pots and pans glistened in the pale light, their edges jutting up from a grimy sink. The blackened maw of the upstairs held an intimidating unknown, but higher ground seemed safer than remaining down here.
The stairs were much steeper than they appeared, twisting and winding towards an impossible apex. All descended into darkness. Only the constant padding of my feet on the wooden planks assured me I was on solid footing. Time and space seemed to disorient, melding together in a hazy, dreamlike state. I felt a weird, electric tickle, like the air was growing charged. It cloistered in, ripening into an uncomfortable moist thickness. The uncomfortable taste of metal besieged my tongue.
I spiraled around one last curve and a whitish blue line appeared, stretching across my path. I paused. It was apparently the under-lighting from a closed door. I thought about slinking back down the steps, but that creepy old man below was more daunting than whatever was beyond that door. I hoped.

The Room

The door was unlocked, the corroded L shaped lever wearily clicking back the shaft as it turned. I pushed the door slowly open, and was bathed in a pale blue light. A thick fog roiled around me in shifting layers, each plane superseding the previous one in a churning tumult. I ventured in, the mist closing in around, cutting off all sense of direction. I could hear a slippery coiling, and a low hissing. Panic suddenly shot through me. I was going to die here! I was a skinny ten year old lost in a world of apparent giants and monsters! An inhuman humming kicked in, the frequency raising to a painful pitch. My sight started to warp. Blurry strings of white shot into the corners of my vision, their tails squirming like writhing insects. My bearings shifted, and my internal gyroscope failed me. I started to fall. The ambient noise buffeted me in waves, surging and receding like water. I could feel a cold, alien presence. Goosebumps swelled up on my arms, and the sweat on my face grew cold. A draft of smoke cleared, and I could dimly make out a pair of eyes. Cold, reptilian, studying me with a malevolent intelligence. Long teeth glistened under a layer of slime. Reality failed me.

Somewhere far from home

I started awake, uncurling into a bright, sunlit vista. It was cold, a sharp wind cutting through my blue jeans, and making a mockery of my olive hoodie. I coiled my arms together, and slowly rose. I was standing on a small, sandy white patch, the tips of buried rocks evident all around me. A few feet in front, the ground fell away, dropping down a sheer cliff . I rose and circled around slowly. I was atop a summit, surrounded by the peaks of mountains. Streams of gray clouds rolled by overhead, obscuring a sun that illuminated the terrain in a dull sheen. Behind me, a thin trail of sand led through the rocks, disappearing around some bend as it descended. I saw no other avenue, and started towards it.
Down and down it went, an endless trench of white sand between impossibly high walls of pure granite. The small breaks in the rock harbored fragile, long dead tufts of moss and lichen. The wind whistled fiercely above the walls, but didn’t descend to my level. Dark streaks marred the gray walls, the polished surfaces marked by the occasional presence of ancient, aquatic looking fossils.
The walkway finally widened, giving up its claustrophobic quarters as it spread out into a broad, flat plateau of wispy bushes and bleached sand. The wind was stronger here, whipping around the mountainside, raising trailing spurts of sand in it’s wake. I stumbled forward, fighting the gale. The short flattop abruptly ended in a stubby wall of rock, and I glanced over the edge.
Long, narrow valleys curved through the mist below, their contours fading in and out of view amidst the veil of slowly drifting smog. I scanned the hillsides, steep slopes of sand and rock. Small humps marred the surfaces in meandering clusters. On closer observation, they looked unnatural…as if they were crudely built huts. Something hit me as a sharp pain in my chest. I knew these huts! Not them personally, but what they represented. Older than I could imagine, the complete antithesis of man. I don’t even know how I knew…some buried racial memory that screamed “Flee!” Reality warped again. I saw what must have been a waking dream. Prehistoric man, naked and filthy, chained to a post like some beast of burden. Tears streaming down his soiled face…A child, probably his, screaming bloody murder as it’s limbs were hacked off.

One step forward, two steps back

I awoke in the cabin, the cold light of dawn cutting through a cobweb glossed attic window. I gathered myself up from a sleeping sprawl on the dusty floorboards. I looked around. Silent and empty, stacks of old magazines fighting for space among weathered cardboard boxes, the shambling masses cloistered in the darkened corners. The middle of the floor harbored a trapdoor with a rusty metal loop as the apparent handle. I scrambled to my feet, my bones cracking like an old man. Shuffling over, I pulled on the loop, throwing my back into it as I strained. The portal slowly opened, revealing a sparse staircase of raw wood, trundling down through a steep shaft into a black abyss. I glanced around. Every minute I postponed my inevitable descent, the more I grew terrified of what awaited me. It took about ten minutes, but I put on a stiff upper lip, held my breath, and started to climb down.
The light dropped away as I descended. The wood creaked way too loudly under my feet, but each pause brought no response. After what seemed an eternity, the stairs ended, and I disembarked to a closed door. Slivers of light gleamed around the edges. I pushed. Nothing. I ran my hands up and down, feeling for some break, some handle. Nothing. I pounded on it. Still nothing. I dropped to my knees, curled my fingers under the door frame, and pulled. There was a groan, and the door started to pull in. The space narrowed, almost crushing my fingers, and I jerked up, shaking my hands in pain. A slight wedge had opened along the side. I slipped my fingers in and pulled. The door gave way, swinging inwards with a sudden urgency as it banged into the wall. I froze again and stared ahead. Dusk motes descended silently, cutting a diagonal pass through the muted light of the hallway stretching out before me. Planks of cherry wood, their smooth contours buckled with age, adorned the walkway, making up everything from the walls, to the floorboards, to the trim around the one small window, highly situated on the left side. Shafts of light poured through breaks in the filthy glass.
I ventured out slowly. A tense crossing, and it ended in a giant, oak door. I turned the handle, into a vision of the living room I had first encountered. The old man was missing. The couch lay barren, it’s crimson surface stained with dark splotches. The bright light of early morning poured through the veiled window, cutting a shaft of brilliance across the rug and up over the coffee table. A yellowing newspaper, dated 1908, rested atop.
“Still here, huh?”
I swiveled my head. The crusty old man was still very much alive, genteelly sipping some amber liquor out of a glass flask.
“What…”
Flustered, I glanced down at his stump of a leg, now neatly bandaged, a new set of pants rolled up just above.
“Heh…You don’t want to know…”
His words were slightly slurred. He was half drunk, but wit, and a biting knowledge of something far deeper, gleamed in his beady eyes.
“there are things that far pre-date man…things no so much dead as…displaced…heh”
He seemed to amuse himself with that description, and took another swig.
“I’ve lived…”
A hacking cough cut him off.
“Way too long. There is no good to come of it. They only take. You think you have the upper hand…but they only take…”
I glanced down at his leg again.
“This?”
He jestered at his missing appendage.
“This I deserved. Asked for, really. I was tempting fate. It’s just a small token, all things considered.”
He broke into another fit, a cross between coughing, and muffled laughter. I glanced at the front door, slightly ajar, and darted for it. Bursting out into the sunlight, I broke into a mad dash.
Tall weeds whipped at my chest, I sucked in air like it was the most precious thing in the world, and even in my mad stumble, tripping through the ravines and underbrush, I never quite fell. The thick, moist smell of soil and grass closed in all around me. My nose ran, my heart beat like a racehorse, but I made it back up into the woods.
I ran a good mile, navigating through towering pillars of bark. The dried remnants of fallen leaves and twigs violently snapped beneath my feet. Small groves of underbrush suffered my full on assault as I plunged madly through them.
Finally, I stumbled out into the meadow I had found much earlier. I stopped for a minute, my head throbbing, blood rushing to my face as I rested my hands on my knees. Sweat poured down my face, tasting salty as it hit my lips. I heard a rustling in the wild grass, and I took off again.
I couldn’t even feel my legs, didn’t realize how incredibly tired I was, until I stumbled out into the sun dappled backyard of my house. The forest behind me was now a place of terror. Getting to my home entailed scaling the steep hill that comprised half of my yard, but that elevation provided me with some relief, some barrier from the woods.

Curiosity killed the cat

I’m stupid, I know. I couldn’t avoid going back. I waited months, and then spent half my Saturday exploring the woods, telling myself I wasn’t really headed to that old house.
It looked even more decrepit in the bright light of afternoon, yet terrifying nonetheless. As I approached, navigating my way steadily through weeds that almost topped my head, I noticed the old man was out front. He was reclining in a rocker, shaded under the sagging awning of the porch. Rails of old timber ensconced him in a murky habit of shadows, the dusty shade spliced up by shafts of sunlight. He looked even older in the light of day. I glanced at his leg. Buried under dark corduroy, it ended in white socks and a worn, black leather shoe. I quickly looked over at the other leg. Same thing. Had I imagined it?
“Oh no boy, it’s all quite real. Heh.”
I started, he had looked asleep!
“I…I don’t know…I mean…”
I could swear he tried to laugh, but broke out into a hacking cough instead.
“It let you live. And if it let you live, that must mean it somehow favors you”
“But I…what let me live?”
He just smiled, the corners of his ancient face curling up into a slight grin. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.
“Come with me, I want to show you something.”
He rose to his feet. A slow, strenuous affair that was accomplished by no small amount of effort. He shuffled towards the door, waving for me to follow. I paused a moment, staring up at him from the bottom of the front stairs. I felt very naked and naive, not unlike a lamb being led to the slaughter. I knew my whole world was about to change. And it did.
The bitterness of age

We don’t all die slowly. Some of us don’t die at all, we just wish we did. The wind tugs at the open collar of my brown leather jacket, and I bury my hands in my pockets. Almost nightfall. The sky is still bright, a glowing ocher decorated at it’s lower echelons by streams of orange and purple. I draw in a deep breath, and am assailed with the smell of burning hickory, the ever present scent of fall. A curled leaf, it’s limbs twisted and mangled with a brown death, crashes into my arm. It’s wind-borne glide cut short, it flutters slowly to it’s ignominious death below. I haven’t been here in twenty years, but it feels like coming home.
I miss my wife. We were meant to grow old together. We shared so much. So much life circumstance. I matured from a boy to a man. She would still be alive, if it wasn’t for small minds, and stupid people. Stupid, evil people. But they have no idea. No idea what they have done.
The man is still there, both him and his house, looking not a day older than when I had first encountered them over twenty five years ago.
He’s in a chair on the porch again, sipping at a cup of something hot, the steam rising slowly in thin, pirouetting streams. Long shadows almost obscure his form. But I can see. Can see the relaxed pose that holds a barely suppressed tension. The nonchalant face that hides a deathly secret.
“So, you’ve come back?”
“Yes.”
“ You want something, I can tell.”
“Yes. My wife. She’s dead, of unnatural causes…”
“I know this.”
“You do? But-”
“You never leave. You had your chance. I told you as much years ago.”
“Yes, you did.”
“What is it you have come back for?”
“I want someone dead.”
The creases around his eyes tighten. His face shows no other emotion, but I could swear he’s laughing at me.
“You know what this means?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Once this is done. Once this is unleashed, there is no going back.”
Silence. He stares at me with a steady gaze, and I return it.
“You must hate this person very much.”
“People. And yes, I do.”
“Revenge doesn’t bring her back.”
“I know this. You’re wasting my time. Are you going to help me or not?”
He chuckles. A deep, throaty laugh that is clearly at my expense.
“Still a snot nosed little brat I see?”
His look changes, grows more solemn, and he slowly rises out of his chair.
“Follow me then.”

The bittersweet taste of it

A man, sequestered in a small efficiency in Brooklyn, springs out of his sleep, sweat soaking the white sheets that entangle him. Greasy rivulets run down his olive face, splintering into tiny beads of fear as they break over char black stubble. Squat and muscular, he tosses the sheets aside, rising naked in the darkness, ready to deal with whatever is tormenting him. He hears a chatter, a liquid coiling,and reaches for the 9mm in his bedside drawer. That’s when he loses his hand. Blood spurting like a fountain, he screams like a little girl. A vision of long, slender teeth, the needle sharp edges streaming long tendrils of slime, is almost the last thing he sees. Almost, but it gets worse.
His cries wake the neighbors. In a borough skeptical of the police, they kick in the door. Floor to ceiling, blood coats the room. Clusters of gore lie strewn about in unidentifiable mounds of glistening white and red.
That is only the beginning. He has a family. Girlfriends. Accomplices. Not everyone is guilty, at least not of the crime at hand, but it makes no difference. No difference at all.