23 #3
Blake frowned, taking a step backwards—the dyspathy within him began to wane, replaced with a surge of hot disdain.
“Don’t be so damn sure,” he said under his breath.
Paul ignored him and continued to speak. “But to lose someone twice… to see the light go out of someone’s eyes all over again. To see the joy sucked away as they become a fucking shell . Again.”
Paul went on, his voice wavering as he spoke. Blake couldn’t tell if it was with rage or with tears, but he knew Paul deserved none of the catharsis. He curled his hand into a fist, itching to beat the bastard raw.
“I had to watch her choose to die all over again,” Paul sobbed.
He began to move, abruptly storming deeper into the orchard.
That warning prickle formed again at the back of Blake’s mind, telling him not to go, but once more Marin was following behind Paul, already being sucked deeper into the dark orchard.
Despite himself, Blake continued on. He rounded a large tree and—
And—
Light fell into the small clearing, the dusty beams partially illuminating a single grey-limbed apple tree. It was smaller than the others around it, but despite its place in the shade, its boughs were heavily-laden with green and pink apples.
In the thickest part of the tree, right at eye level, a face was carved into the bark.
It was a horrible thing, mouth wrenched open into a silent scream.
The eyes were twisted up in horror and pain, the bark swollen where tears had lashed down the face.
Upon the trunk Blake could see suggestions of a body, arms pulled upwards into the limbs of the apple tree, gnarls along the trunk showing rises of naked breasts and the jagged curve of a hip.
It was too natural to be an actual carving, but too uncannily human to be a trick of the eye.
Moaning in pain, Paul reached out to caress the face of his wife, knees buckling as he rested his weight on the tree.
Blake’s chest swelled with fevered horror as the tips of white fingers wrapped around the side of the tree, drumming there once.
For a moment, the wind picked up, carrying with it the sound of girlish giggles.
They hung and twisted in the air for a moment, silvery and malicious, before the fingertips disappeared back behind the tree.
“M-mr. Aberley,” Celeste spoke up after an uncharacteristically long silence. “How long… how long was the pygmal—was your wife —?”
“Four days.” Paul interrupted them. “Four days before she went back into the earth in more pain than she could imagine. On the fourth day she came back here, back to the same tree that she had hung herself from. I should never have let her come here. Never have let her make that choice. She said all she wanted was to see Morgan again and then she—she—”
He straightened abruptly, back working almost whip-like as he turned to face Marin, approaching him in several rapid strides. Marin shrunk into himself, limbs trembling as he held his ground, dropping his gaze to the grass with a startled cry.
Blake dove between Paul and Marin, who stood flinching behind him. Paul pressed against Blake, exuding much more strength than Blake would’ve thought his slight frame would have been capable of.
“Back off, man!” Blake shouted, trying to fight against Paul’s considerable power. He reached over Blake’s shoulder, grasping at Marin with claw-like fingers. Blake pushed back, desperate to keep him away from Marin, rage coiling up in his muscles like a snake about to strike.
“How much do you have left then, before you go back to the earth? Before you pay your dues to the devil for trying to take back your life?”
Behind the magnification of his glasses, his eyes were wide and bloodshot, jittering around in the sockets, scanning all over Marin’s body in a perverse sort of fascination.
“Can you hear her? Can you tell me what she says? Maybe you can hear her because you’re one of those things too, aren’t you?
I can tell, the way you look a little too perfect, a little too beautiful—a little too… ”
Before he recognized that he had even moved, Blake’s fist was buried in Paul’s stomach. Mr. Aberley hung on his last word, surging against Blake once more before going limp, pressing out a final word between gritted teeth in a low, eerie hiss: “ Much .”
“Okay bye!” Celeste shouted, sprinting over to where Marin was frozen in fear and seizing his hand. They began to drag him out of the orchard. Marin tripped as he was pulled along, eyes wide and unseeing. “Thanks so much for the cider, sir, but we really super have to go now!”
Blake stepped back from Paul, who wavered in place, blinking as if he weren’t quite sure what had come over him.
“Oh, so soon?” he asked, his voice returning to its previous, dreamy quality. Blake began to back out of the orchard, his eyes locked on Paul’s still form as he drew closer and closer to the car. “Well, thanks for stopping by…”
Blake backed around the large tree that separated the clearing from the rest of the orchard. From there he broke into a dead sprint, following the bright flash of Celeste’s outfit and the ripple of Marin’s hair out of the dark grove and into the golden afternoon sunlight.