Screamscapes: Tales of Terror (14 page)

But that whole evening, not a single red apple fell.

VI. The Tree of Life

L
ater that night - long after the feast had been cleared away, the fires put out, and the children tucked up in bed - Micah lay in his room, blinking up into the darkness. It had seemed like an eternity before everyone finally settled down and went to sleep. Being the only boy - and a near-grown one at that - in a family with four sisters meant he had his own room, and he was happy for it, too. But now all he wanted was to leave it, to wrap his arms around Anna, to feel her soft lips on his once more.

Earlier, before everyone went to sleep, he had quietly prepared for his escape by prying open his bedroom window. His room overlooked the front porch, so he was confident that he could easily slip out when the time came. Getting back into the house would be a whole different challenge, but he decided to deal with that when the time came.

After waiting what seemed like years, he climbed out of bed and tiptoed to the window, where he sat and stared out across the lawn. He watched as the lanterns in Anna’s house were extinguished one room after another. It had been the hardest week of his entire life. He was still exhausted, not only from the long journey and near starvation, but from the incessant gnawing of desperation, the grinding stress of not knowing if each new day on the prairie would be his last. Fatigued or not, the desire that burned inside him for Anna’s touch urged him forward, prodding him awake.

As the final light in her house grew dark, he hoped that she was still awake and eager for him, too.

For a little longer, the muffled voices of his parents bled through the thin wall from the room beside his. Then, finally, the house fell silent.

Everyone was fast asleep, but not Micah. He carefully stuck his head out his bedroom window and inhaled the cool night air deeply, feeling more exquisitely alive than he ever had before. The air was sweet with the fragrance of fruit in the trees, and it charged his senses.

Looking at Anna’s house, he imagined that he saw her looking back at him from her own bedroom window across the clearing, her visage pale and beautiful in the bright moonlight. He wanted to run to her, to hold her, to take her for his own at that exact moment, but he resisted that reckless urge and waited silent and still by the window.

They would meet at the smokehouse as planned, in due time.

After a bit he heard the clock in the living room softly chiming downstairs. The moment had arrived. He quietly crawled out of the window and over the sill, planting his feet carefully on the roof of the porch so as to maintain absolute silence. The last thing he needed was for his father - or even worse, a drunken Lemuel - to mistake him for an Indian seeking revenge and pump him full of lead without a second thought. Although he was sure that Lemuel would be plenty happy to kill him intentionally, if he caught wind of the intentions Micah had for his eldest daughter tonight.

He successfully made his way to the edge of the roof, and was just about to drop down on the soft grass below when he heard something, a sound that made him stop: a soft
thump
that came from somewhere out in the yard - from where exactly, he couldn’t ascertain.

Was it Anna he had heard, perhaps, leaping onto the grass?

His eyes strained in the dim moonlight to see movement around her house, but he saw nothing. All appeared to be still.

Then he heard it again, a soft
thump
somewhere in the darkness. This time the sound had been preceded by a rustling of leaves.

Thump.
He heard it again.

Thump. Thump.

Indians, seeking vengeance?
He wondered.

The noise continued, slowly at first, from scattered locations around the yard. Then he spied the first sign of movement in the gloom. A solitary apple rolled out from under the trees, along the ground towards him, its shiny peel glimmering blood red in the moonlight. It came to a rest on the walkway to the house, not more than a few feet from the steps that led to the porch.

At that moment, it finally occurred to him what was making the sound. He laughed quietly to himself because suddenly it seemed so obvious: the fruit was falling.

What had started out as a gentle patter quickly erupted into a downpour of fresh produce. A hailstorm of fruit poured upon the ground, thousands of apples, he guessed, if not more. The sound was like the footsteps of a hundred horses in a faraway stampede, soft and hushed, like a gentle rain, as the apples fell upon the silken grass.

The treetops shook like a wet dog drying its fur, as falling fruit struck branches, loosening leaves that fluttered down like a million moonlit moths through the night.

It ended as suddenly as it had begun, and silence once again descended upon the valley.

Micah held his breath, listening to see if the disturbance, although gentle, had been loud enough to rouse the family and ruin his chances for a rendezvous with Anna.

He waited, full of nervous anticipation, crouched atop the front porch. But all remained dark and quiet, both at his house and Anna’s. After waiting what seemed like an eternity, he felt satisfied that no one had been disturbed, so he slid down to the edge of the roof and dropped down easily onto the grass below.

Micah walked to the rim of the orchard. The thin clouds had cleared and the moon shone brightly. The apple-covered earth created a bright red reflection that shone up into the foliage. For a moment, it appeared to him as though a river of fresh blood now flowed beneath the massive trees and through the valley, dividing the houses. The thought sent a chill down his spine.

He looked towards the smokehouse; it was just visible in the moonlight. He took a few steps in that direction before pausing. He found his desire for the forbidden fruit waiting for him in the smokehouse briefly overwhelmed by his desire for the real fruit, fallen at his feet. The air was fragrant with the sweetness of it. His mouth began to water.

He plucked an apple from the ground and inspected it. It was cool, smooth to the touch. Polishing it quickly on the leg of his trousers, he brought it to his mouth, lips quivering with anticipation.

Unable to resist the intense allure of the fruit for a single second longer, he bit down hungrily. A bolt of exquisite flavor exploded into his mouth as his teeth pierced the skin. A wave of lightheadedness washed over him as he chewed the delicate, creamy flesh, sticky juice dripping from his chin.

It was delicious.

For a moment, he completely forgot about Anna and his planned meeting with her, finding himself filled instead with a powerful urge to run amongst the trees and gather as many apples as he could, to devour the heavenly fruit until his belly filled to bursting. His tongue had never tasted anything in his life as transcendentally wonderful as the rapidly diminishing apple he held in his hand. In that moment, he wanted nothing other than to keep eating them until he could eat no more.

As he nibbled the last bit of fruit down to the core, even nearly devouring the seeds, Micah noticed a pale figure standing in the clearing on the other side of the trees, skirt billowing gently in the soft breeze, watching him intently.

It was Anna, looking decadently voluptuous in the moonlight.

She turned away from him, making rapid strides towards the smokehouse, silken hair flowing across her shoulders as she went.

He let the now-slender core on which he had been gnawing fall to the ground and began to run, his desire for her once again ignited inside him. He sprinted towards the anticipated intersection of their paths near the rear of the valley, running along the edge of the tree line to avoid twisting an ankle on the fruit as he ran.

Micah caught up with her near the rear of the smokehouse, nearly tackling her to the ground as he took her in his arms, pulling her to him, pressing his lips, still sticky-sweet from the fruit, hungrily against hers.

Anna pushed him away roughly, tasting the sweetness he had left on her lips with her tongue as she did.

“What are you doing, kissing me in full view of God and man?” she protested. “I told you to meet me
inside
the smokehouse! What if Father catches us fornicating? He’ll shoot you and me dead, both here on this spot.”

She nervously looked towards her house to see if anyone had followed them.

Seeing her glancing back, pale skin and white dress illuminated in the dead light of the moon, caused him to think of the story of Lot’s wife in the Bible - how she must have appeared as she turned into a pillar of salt after looking back towards Sodom.

“I’m sorry,” he said meekly. “Let’s go inside.”

She ignored him.

“I think somebody saw us,” she fretted. “There’s somebody in the yard in front of the house. There, look - under the trees.”

“Nobody saw us,” he said gently, “you’re imagining things.” He took her hand. She pulled away from him, her agitation growing.

“We’ve been found out,” she sobbed as she stared in horror towards the trees. “He’s going to shoot our heads off our shoulders, just like he did to those Indians.”

“There’s nobody there,” Micah insisted, and turned to point at the empty yard spread out under the trees, eager to soothe her anxiety and get her into the smokehouse. But there
was
someone there, a few hundred yards or so away - someone moving rapidly across the yard from Anna’s house and heading towards his.

Alarmed by this discovery, he grabbed Anna and quickly forced her down onto her knees in the tall grass so they wouldn’t be spotted.

Crouched low, they watched as the silhouetted figure disappeared onto the porch of Micah’s house. Across the valley, the windows of Lemuel’s house remained dark, as did the windows in Micah’s house.

“Look!’ Anna said, pointing.

In the middle of the cluster of trees other people were moving about – two, no, three of them - small people walking and stopping, ducking down and standing back up. Some were toting something along in front of them, something big and wide, nearly as large as the little people themselves. Hidden in the shadows of the trees as they were, it was impossible to say what it was they were carrying.

Micah and Anna began to creep through the grass towards them to get a better look, doing their best to stay hidden behind the massive tree trunks as they moved quietly forward. As they approached the strange creatures, they began to hear the sound of whispers and soft laughter, stifled squeals of delight.

At the top of the steps to Micah’s house, which thankfully remained dark and quiet, the figure that had disappeared there moments before returned to the top of the steps, motioning to someone hidden in the dark shadows of the porch. Facing the moon, Micah and Anna were able to see, finally, who -
or what
- the creature was.

It was Anna’s younger brother, Nathan, smiling from ear to ear as he gestured enthusiastically for someone to come into the yard. They both let out a sigh of relief.

As Nathan marched back down the steps and into the orchard, other small figures emerged from the shadows. Following behind him, Micah’s three sisters, each carrying an empty bushel basket with them. They joined Nathan and the other small folk, whom Micah had by now identified as Anna’s other brother and her two younger sisters. Once together, the children began to work in earnest to fill the baskets with as much freshly fallen fruit as they could manage, chattering softly amongst themselves as they plucked the apples from the ground.

The two would-be lovers regretfully separated, Micah approaching the children to distract them, while Anna crept unnoticed through the deep shadows back to her house.

VII. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

“W
hat do you think you’re doing?” Micah asked in a deep voice, startling the children as he stepped from the darkness.

Nathan was the first to answer, confident that he had the best shot at winning Micah over to their plan.

“The fruit fell, Micah,” he said, gesturing excitedly at the ground around him as though the carpet of apples wasn’t already obvious to anyone with a working eyeball. “We thought it would be a great surprise for our parents, a very nice surprise indeed, to have these bushel baskets full and waiting for them in the morning. Don’t you think so, too?” he asked, his face bright and expectant of praise.

Micah glanced towards Anna’s house and thought once again of her warm lips, of her silken inner thighs, of her full breasts that he was unlikely to see this evening, not now, with kids loose and prowling in the dark.

He let out a long sigh of despair at the thought. Nathan, assuming it was a sign of disapproval, looked crushed.

Micah’s youngest sister, Chastity, strolled happily through the shadows to where he and Nathan faced each other, each boy frowning for his own reasons. The little girl was oblivious to anything other than the magical wonder of a fragrant summer night. The full moon was bright on her innocent face, full of joy. She hugged Micah hard, looking up at him with love.

“Eat an apple, big brother,” she said with concern, her four-year-old voice as adorably high-pitched and squeaky as a little mouse. “It’ll make you feel better,” she insisted. “Let me find you a good one.”

She scanned the ground, searching for an apple for her big brother, the best she could find. There were so many to choose from, almost all perfect specimens. Finally she spotted the perfect one to cheer her brother up, about fifteen yards away near the trunk, and she scampered off into the darkness to fetch it.

Micah turned wistfully back towards Anna’s house, scanning for any sign that she might still be waiting for him in the darkness. Perhaps if he got the kids settled down and back in bed - maybe, just maybe -they could salvage their plans for each other this evening. But the darkness held no trace of her, no promise of her desire for him waiting to be fulfilled.

At that moment a piercing cry shattered the night - a howl of fear melting into agony. It cut off mid-shriek, as though a hand had been clamped over the screaming mouth to silence it.

Chastity
, Micah thought, and his heart seized with panic. He knew his baby sister’s voice anywhere. It had always sickened him to hear her cry. He bolted towards the place he had last seen her, frantically scouring the gloom as he ran beneath the trees. She had gone for an apple. She hadn’t gone far, but now she was nowhere to be found. The scent of fresh soil hung thick in the air, nearly choking him with its dank, peaty fragrance.

“Chastity!” he yelled, desperately spinning about on the spot where she had been only moments before.

“Chastity, where are you?” His words cracked under the weight of the panic they carried. He turned back to Nathan with questioning eyes.

Nathan stood frozen, his mouth agape and arm outstretched as he pointed a single shaking finger towards where Chastity had last been. His lower jaw was moving up and down slightly, as though trying to say something but unable to get his lips to cooperate long enough to form a single word.

Micah grabbed him by the shoulders, shaking him, shouting.

“Where’d she go? Where is she? What happened?”

Nathan found his voice after a few seconds and began to stammer, as though decades had passed since he last uttered a word.