The Children of Old Leech: A Tribute to the Carnivorous Cosmos of Laird Barron (20 page)

Without, the countless boughs were garlanded in fine shadows, ones that linked oak to ash to sycamore to yew as though it was some kind of dark ligament. Mosquitoes formed a buzzing fogbank and the temperature seemed to have jumped from humid to chilly with no temperate phase between.

He moved a respectable distance away and relieved himself on some spiky foliage. He experienced a sense of being not just isolated, but marooned.

Something skittered out from one thicket and was almost immediately subsumed by another. The cracking of twigs and the hushing spasms of leaves turned threatening.

He turned and ran back to the cabin, catching himself just before he came thundering through the front door. After regaining his composure, he crossed the threshold with artificial nonchalance.

She was cross-legged on the cots, her torso now covered in one of his loose t-shirts.

—You sick?

She shook her head.

—You look pale.

He uncapped a bottle of water and handed it to her. She took it but did not drink.

He nudged her sardonically.

—What’s going on? I step out for a moment and when I come back inside it’s like you’re a million miles away.

—I’m sorry.

She entwined her fingers with his and kissed the back of his hand, then said:

—I guess this place has more memories than I realized.

—Bad ones? (Wisely, he was treading lightly.)

—I think seeing the night beginning to fall outside reminded me of this stupid game my older sister invented called
Something Scary
.

—Um… okay…

They both laughed a little bit.

—It sounds so stupid now, I know, but at the time that game really got to me.

—What’s the goal of
Something Scary
?

—To scare the piss out of whomever else you’re playing with, what else? I said it was stupid.

—No, don’t say that. Given that you were both kids at the time and stuck out in the boonies, I can see how a game like that would have worked.

—Oh it did, believe me. But…
Something Scary
wasn’t what got me upset just now. It was remembering something my grandmother introduced us to, another game.

—Oh?

—See,
Something Scary
was just a typical kids’ game. My sister and I would sit in the dark here and whisper little ghost stories to one another. Mine were never that good at all because I spooked really easily so I always played it timid. My sister, she was good at it though. I mean
really
good. The funny thing is, later on I learned that most of her stories were just retellings of
Tales from the Darkside
episodes that she used to watch after my parents had gone to bed. Sometimes they were just old urban legends. Still, she knew how to tell a story.

—That seems to run in your family.

She rolled her eyes.

—No, really! I’ve told you that your life sounds so much more interesting than mine. You’ve got storyteller’s instincts.

—Regardless, I remember one game of
Something Scary
where my sister said there was a decrepit hermit who lived in these woods. According to her story, the man’s wife had gone out to fetch water one night many years ago but she never came back again. So every night the man still went out searching for his lost love. But of course after so many years the man had lost his mind, so if he saw any woman in the woods he would
make her
his wife. He’d just drag her away into the trees and she’d never be seen again. Any female had to fear being in these woods after sunset. And I had to try and
sleep
with that in my head! God, I
hated
that story.

—That is pretty creepy. But what about the game your grandmother taught you?

She bit her lip.

—Almost every summer night we played
Something Scary
. My sister insisted on it. Until the summer I turned eleven.

—What happened that year? Did you outgrow being afraid?

—You can’t outgrow that. At least I know I can’t… but not because of 
Something Scary
; because of
The Old Pageant.

—
The Old Pageant
?

—That was the so-called game my grandmother introduced to my sister and me. We’d been playing 
Something Scary
, whispering quietly, or what we believed was quietly, to ourselves. There was a rustling of cotton that terrified us, but it was only our grandmother rising out of her and grandfather’s bed at the other end of this room. She shuffled over to us. I remember how her white cotton nightgown and her long white hair both seemed to gleam in the dark. Without so much as a word she carefully unbolted the cabin door, pulled it open, then waved for my sister and me to come with her. We went out with her and I admit I was pretty excited at first. You know, being out at night, it was like an adventure. But the more we walked the more it soured. I asked my grandmother how far we were going to walk. I remember that none of us were wearing shoes and that my feet were freezing from all the dew we’d traipsed through. I kept asking my sister if she knew where we were going but she wouldn’t answer me. Finally my grandmother stopped us.

He’d forgotten to breathe for so long his lungs actually started to ache. After gasping he asked where they’d been led.

—It was a really thick part of the woods, well off any of the marked trails. My grandma gestured for us to be very quiet. I could hear crickets and bullfrogs. My grandma pointed above her head and told my sister and me to listen closely.

—What did you hear?

—Creaking, a very low creaking. At first I thought it was the thicker boughs of the trees being rubbed together by the wind. You hear that kind of noise all the time out here. But this was actually my grandmother. She was making this low creaking sound in her throat, but it was
perfect
. You’d swear it was the sound of wood grinding in the wind. My sister laughed, I remember that because it was the only time I ever saw my grandma get angry. She grabbed my sister’s face and told her to be very careful because the three of us were tempting fate being out there in the dead of night. She said that if we weren’t careful there would be things from the woods that would take our place in the world. When we came to learn
The Old Pageant
we had to treat it with respect. By then I couldn’t get that awful creaking sound out of my head. I put my hands against my ears. I probably started to cry. My grandma put her arm around my shoulder and took my sister and me back to the cabin.

He could feel his brow knitting in confusion, and quite possibly in anger.

—Why on earth would your grandmother have done that to you two?

She lifted her hand.

—I know, I know. But what amazes me is that I truly hadn’t even
thought
about that night until we got up here. But that night wasn’t what scared me earlier tonight. It was something that happened the next night, or a few nights later. Hell, I might have only dreamt it.

He gripped her hand and kissed the back of it, giving the engagement ring a playful twist to remind her that this was a happy occasion.

—We don’t have to talk about this anymore. I didn’t mean to upset you, he told her.

—No, I need to get this out. That other night… my grandma woke only me. When we got outside the cabin she told me that my sister didn’t understand.
Only you felt it, my Donna
, was how she put it. We went walking, the two of us, even further into the woods.

—And did you hear the creaking?

—I didn’t hear anything; no crickets, no wind, nothing. It was perfectly still. My grandma took my hand and led me down to this old tree. And she told me to watch while she imitated this tree. She started that horrible creaking sound again, only this time she began to twist her arms and her fingers until her shadow was exactly like that of the tree. And I mean
exactly.
She seemed to be getting taller too. I know that sounds insane, believe me, but I felt dwarfed by her…

—Shadow-play, he assured her.

—Sure, but….

—But what?

—Then a sound came from the tree beside my grandmother: it was a newborn baby crying.

He felt his skin constrict and go cold against his spine. His eyes were watering.

—A what?

—A newborn baby. I swear to Christ. It was coming from the tree and then when I turned around to face it, the tree’s bark was all swollen and pink. And then my grandmother stopped that creaking noise and all I could hear was that awful, shrill crying. It echoed through the trees. My grandmother whispered to me not to be afraid, that this was just the tree taking part in
The Old Pageant.
We mimic them, they mimic us. She went over to the tree and actually started singing to it… a lullaby… Oh fuck, why did I have to remember this tonight of all nights? After all these years…

—You were a
kid!
You were dreaming or sick. And I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but it sounds as though your grandmother might have been a little touched in the head.

He hated himself for prodding further but he needed to know what happened next, for he felt oddly cheated.

—Nothing, she told him. I don’t even remember our walk back to the cabin. The next day was just like any other as far as I can recall; swimming at the lake, colouring books, Go Fish, the usual. That autumn my grandfather got sick. My sister and I never came back to the cabin.

—Until now?

—Right.

They drank the rest of the wine and did everything they could to pretend Donna’s memory hadn’t driven a spike through the heart of their holiday. He wondered about being amorous again but it somehow felt improper.

She drifted off.

Though exhausted, sleep evaded him.

A grave moon illumed her old footboard. Its inscription, coupled with the way it was propped against the basin, made the slab of polished cedar look more like a headstone than a footboard.

Here lies Donna Hammill

He looked over at her. She was breathing shallowly. Not wishing to disturb her, he slipped out onto the porch.

The night was still but, mercifully, not as silent as the one she’d described to him. He could hear the crickets and bullfrogs.

He also heard the groan of wind-bullied wood.

Something stark flitted in his peripheral vision. Something scary.

He craned his head to the left, and for a beat all was right with the world again, for he was assured that what he’d glimpsed was merely the white sheets trembling upon the limbs of the birch tree with its equally spectral-looking bark.

But then he realized that the rest of the forest was motionless.

It was not wind that stirred the trunk, or the sheet that billowed like a crown of crone’s hair, like a bridal train.

He backed up until he hit the cabin wall. He turned to call Donna’s name, but the figure that he viewed through a pane sullied with moonlight and grime was not one that would have recognized him.

Fabric licked the side of his face. It was now near enough to touch him.

One of its limbs was brightened by a distinct and concentrated glint. Was it wearing the engagement ring to mock or punish him?

His eyes squinted shut instinctively. He raised his boneless arms and held them in mimicry of ancient boughs. He prayed his novice pageantry would fool it.

Notes for “The Barn in the Wild”

Paul Tremblay

A
brief note from the editors:

In transcribing the following handwritten notebook pages, notes written in the margins and between the lines are represented as footnotes. Italics represents a clear change in handwriting. Everything else has been transcribed as written, including crossouts, grammar, and underlines.

If found please return to Nick Brach, ___________ Nederland, CO, 46926, email: [email protected]

Can I be frank with you, Ms/Mr. Finders Keepers? If this notebook is lost, it means I’m lost. I am not overstating this. Please save me.
1

BLUE notebook. Notes for (working title) The Barn in the Wild.

Here’s hoping that BLUE brings better luck than the RED notebook did on Everest
2
.

Twenty-five-year-old Thomas “Tommy” Hovsepian was a gifted mathematics student. He left his graduate program at the University of Vermont March 5th, 2013: two weeks before he was to take his oral exams. He told no one of his plans
3
including his friends and family. His parents (and the university) thought that Tommy was going to continue on to the PhD program. Tommy was not your stereotypical mathematics PhD candidate. From a small town (Ryder, PA, population 8,450), he was an undersized but tenacious star on the high school basketball team. As an undergrad, he tried walking on the team at the University of Vermont but didn’t make the cut. He grew his dirty blond hair long, was a serious Dead Head, worked as a bartender at the popular bar/music club called the Metronome, and grew small marijuana plants in his apartment in downtown Burlington. Tommy was gregarious, outgoing, charismatic. His roommate (Rob Poodiack) told me Tommy could’ve run for mayor of Burlington and won
4
. Instead of thumbing across the continental United States (which is what most twenty-something, self-ascribed free spirits do, right? I did it when I was his age—Christ, I sound like my father), Tommy traveled north into Canada. Why Canada? And ultimately, why end up in freaking Labrador of all places? What paperback romantic hitches out his thumb and says, “Alright, screw the sunny shores of California and the wild-wild-northwest of Jack London’s Alaska, the tundra of Labrador it is.” Tommy took some odd jobs, living out of cheap hotels as he made his way up north through the Quebec province. On May 4th he landed in Happy Valley-Goose Bay.