20. A Spate of Death
CHAPTER TWENTY
A SPATE OF DEATH
My feet are swept out from under me in an instant. Water fills my nose and mouth as I gasp for air. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear Henry shouting my name. It is distant and muddled, but it is Henry’s voice, not Fallow’s, not the sound he manipulates through fire, leaves, or woodland creatures. Henry calls out for me in a blind panic.
“Odell! No!”
The fear in Henry’s voice speaks of love, as do his pleas as he shouts them over the cacophony, loud enough to be heard over the roaring waves each time I break the surface of the water. He vows to save me, to seek help from Roil or others. I only catch enough to know this is his fault, this danger is one he created, which means I will soon be with The Keeper. He would not make such a deal with a monster or river unless it would return him to his family—to me.
He could seek out Roil or the help of monsters, but it matters little. Soon, he will forget. Henry is lost and has remained so despite being right in front of me all this time. Close enough to reach out and touch.
And he has dug my grave.
The river rips my mind free from thoughts of Henrywith a violent twist. Lungs burning, I make every attempt to reach the surface and take a breath only for frigid fingers made of icy mud to wrap around my ankles and haul me deep into the currents, always into the most churning path.I am yanked to and fro, dragged to the silty bottom of the roaring river until I am certain I will drown. When I pry my eyes open there is nothing to see as the muddy water stings them. Clenching them shut again, I thrash with all my might against what seeks to drag me to a watery grave. Whatever has a hold of me releases my leg. Like a fish on a line, I am being played with. This monster, Skelt, will allow meto catch my breath before he yanks on me again.
Swimming with the current, I break the surface of the water and gasp for air. All around, both above the surface of Skelt and beneath it, debris knocks into me, setting my heart racing even faster than before. Every stick that slides against my calf feels like claws, every clump of moss swept up in the torrent, like hair .
With my lungs and throat on fire, I tread water the best I can, inching my way diagonally across the rushing river toward shore. Each time I get close, I am ripped back to the center of the river, to water too deep to touch the ground in, but I cannot quit. If this river means to carry me to The Keeper, or to some other manner of monster, I will not go easy.
The muscles in my arms and legs burn in defiance of the strain as I fight for my life, but I keep swimming toward the shore, pushing myself beyond the point of exhaustion. My feet remain ungrounded, the water too deep for my toes to skirt the earth. Each time I try to find the bottom of the river, my legs are washed out from under me, not strong enough to withstand the mighty current.
Hope relights in my chest as my fingers find purchase on the roots of a tree. Hand over hand, I pull myself closer to the banks of the river as every throbbing muscle above my waist screams that it can’t hold on much longer.
Heaving myself closer to the tree, I manage to twist my ankle around one of the roots and use it to lift free of the river. Desperate to be loosed from the torrent that has washed me deeper into The Thicket, I clamber onto the exposed roots. Just before I lift my other foot from the water, those icy fingers return, brushing across my skin but unable to get a good grip on me.
Horror, pure and animalistic, changes me into a desperate beast. Kicking with my free foot at the fingers made of dripping, oozing mud, my screams carry over the water as my fingertips dig into a damp branch. With a thrash so mighty my grip almost gives way, my foot slips free from the sloshing grasp of Skelt and the muddy hands form fists the size of my head and slam into the river, creating a wall of water. Waves lap against my perch before vanishing beneath the surface of Skelt.
Relief sucks the stamina from my body, leaving me cold and weak. My limbs shake beyond my control. Fear that if I move an inch, I’ll slip right back into the water holds my lungs in an iron cage making it near impossible to get enough air. I reach out for a low hanging branch to help climb across the exposed roots to shore, but as my hand closes on the first one within my grasp, the wood turns soft and slithers. A snake, as black on top as The Beneath and a creamy white on its scaled belly turns to face me, mouth open to reveal furious fangs dripping with venom. It had not been a snake when I reached for it. I know that beyond a shadow of a doubt, and a scream rips from my raw throat as I stagger back only to nearly fall into the water once more.
With my hand still grasping the snake, I can almost hear Henry’s voice in my ear reminding me that I am larger and mightier than any snake in these woods.
Refusing to allow such trickery to be my end, I channel bravery I lack around snakes and throw it to the roiling waters below before trying again with a new branch. I grip the next tree branch in reach and take care to keep my skirt out of my path before leaping to the shore. Mid-flight the river rises and, though there is less than an inch of water on the earth where I land, it is enough to undo my work.
There is not even time to lift my foot to take a step before I’m dragged back into the river. The terrible hands of the monstrosity find me again, if they ever lost me at all. Down, down, down I am dragged far deeper than any river outside such a place as The Thicket could boast. Water rushes by my ears as I am pulled by slimy mitts faster than a horse could drag me.
The creature in the water, Skelt, no doubt, allows me to kick free. I can almost imagine the river laughing at me as, despite how fast and deep it seemed I was pulled, I swim for only a few strokes before I breach the surface of the water and take a great gulp of air. Unlike in the past when Fallow’s absence—Henry’s absence—felt like a promise that all would be well, this time his absence might have more to do with inability. There is little doubt in my mind that he led me here, not knowing how he shot his goals from the sky in doing so.
Fallow or Henry, the name does not matter, needs to hurry up and find me.
Blinking my vision clear of river water, I search all around myself. The water smells unclean, almost like rancid oil, and the woods are silent and dead around me. No birds, frightened by the sudden inundation of water,squawk from their perches. There are no running deer or startled rabbits. Beyond the river that pounds in my ears, there is no sign of life in The Thicket. The only proof I have of this being The Thicket at all is how everything blurs at the edges in my peripheral vision, the trees changing, shifting, and moving only to be back in their rightful places when I turn.
The woods mean little to me. I have been lost since arriving here. I search for Fallow in the form of anything, but I do not feel any of the telltale signs that he is near. Roil is nowhere to be seen, either. I would take any familiar face, even the tiny shrew woman would be better than being all alone.
This feels personal, too. Unlike all the other misadventures I have been met with, this one feels like it was designed for me. It is not something I have stumbled into by accident. This is a trap that was set.
Slimy fingers wrap around my calves and yank me back down beneath the raging river before I can even think to take a final breath. This time, whatever has a hold of me grumbles in the depths like a growling bear and when my body is slammed against the silt and algae at the river’s bottom at last, I slip straight through it.
Reality shifts from one of being pressed by the weight of water to falling through thin air so fast that some of the caked-on mud flies free of my skin. My eyes are glued shut. Thick clay gets in my mouth when I gasp for breath.Reaching up, I swipe the caked mud out of my mouth, spitting to clear my tongue of the taste as best I can.
Air whips my sopping hair behind me. I wipe my eyes free of mud. Blinking them open reveals the stone walls I am dropping between. An ear-splitting crack bounces from the cavernous walls all around me.
A roar far below shakes my bones. It is not angry or threatening. It is dire. Frightened. Almost forlorn.
The stone floor rapidly approaches. Splayed and scattered across it is a beast that appears to have been made from human bones and silt. It throws itself against the walls of the cavern over and over. More bones than a single body contains scatter and fly off of it in all directions as it thrashes itself to death.
I am going to land there with what remains of it.
Panic cleaves my chest wide open.
This is it. My story will end in a silent cave. Henry will remain lost forever. The ever present something, someone who needs me to succeed will be lost, too.
I clench my eyes and wait with only air whistling by my ears for company. The inevitable crunch of my bones before the world goes dark forever never comes. I fall and fall but never land. Air rushes by me and whips at my clothing until I am nearly dry.
For the first time, this feels like freedom. Like the air has pushed the fear from my chest. Untethered. Weightless. Guilt pokes holes in my battered heart for enjoying it. There are worse ways to go in The Thicket. I have seen so many, and I am so tired of being lost.
Comfort in the thought of my end reminds me of the shrew woman and what her terrible captor had said of her giving up.
I will not give up.
Mustering my courage, I crack open a single eye. I am as far from the bones on the limestone floor as I was when I last looked.
The air grows still around me as I am halted midair and a presence, not something I see but a weight I feel, enters the cavern with me. It is the same feeling as when I was last in the presence of Skelt and knew something dark trailed behind me. No longer is the thought of being smashed flat against the eerily lit stone my chief concern. Far worse could still be coming.
Several yards below me, the stone room is mostly dark, lit by a glow that seems to emit from nowhere. It might only be because the walls all around are white limestone and they collect what little light exists this far under the earth. So slow as to be almost unnoticeable by me, I drift closer to the floor as if I’m suspended on ropes like a character in an opera.
“Well, look at this. My monster did its job well.” Like so many of the voices in this place, I cannot pin down the source. It floats on the still air and comes from no body I can see. It flows like water, a trickle from a pump or spring that flows from a wall of stone. I recognize it. It laughed at me once when I refused to drink from a stream in a dream.
I struggle to find my voice. The things that dwell in The Thicket often wish for me to speak. It would be a poor start to begin by disappointing whatever beast I am about to meet. “Your monster? Was that not Skelt itself?”
The words pound home the reality that the thing that dragged me down here was sent by something even more powerful.
“Odell.” The disembodied voice carries presence enough to shake my bones in my meat. No longer a trickle but a tidal wave, it crashes over me. “No wonder The Keeper wants your soul badly enough to flood The Beneath. So badly He bartered with diggers. It is powerful. I can see it pulsing in your chest alongside your terrified heart, little mother. It is all wrapped tidily within the cage of your twiggy bones. Your soul is painted with the names of many. It is a mother’s soul worthy of envy.”
A snap cracks through the air, reverberating off the walls like a tree splitting and falling to the earth in a storm. I am clean and dry once more like the terrifying ordeal I just survived never happened. Gently, I drift upright and my feet are placed on the stone floor beside the creature that dragged me down here. Its bones, broken and scattered, are human, just as I thought from above. It has no flesh. Its bulk is made of the same mud and water as the river, and the smell of wet earth and dead fish assaults my senses.
It is a true testament to what I have been through since that I have not wanted to pull tight into a ball and remain silent forever. There is still one who needs me. The voice just said I have a mother’s soul with names written all over it. Whoever those names belong to, I must keep going for them.
“They call me Skelt. I think you know that.” I do, but it is disheartening to hear aloud. I fear The Keeper above all others. He represents the ending to my story and my ability to accomplish what I entered this terrible realm to do. Skelt is a terror I’ve met already, though, and I know him to be a horror beyond my ability to guess at.
Glancing up from where I landed, I am underground all over again. I do not know if this is The Beneath, as there seems to be a difference between The Beneath as a place and beneath The Thicket as a location. Either way, the river flows overhead, suspended just as it was where I was meant to cross from the arms of Blight to the arms of Fallow… All a trick. The river is much farther above me now than it had been. It is a tiny silver strip from here. I must be a mile beneath it, easy.
“You are the river?” My voice bounces off the stone walls that tower on all sides of us.“In a manner of speaking. I like to think the river is an extension of me.” The voice shifts and echoes in so many ways that I cannot even imagine what being would possess it. It is like someone speaking to me from inside a water well, too distorted to place.
Feigning hope or ignorance, for I know full well that this creature has no intention of releasing the prize he was willing to sic a monster on, I ask, “Do you know how I can get back to the surface? I had something I was about to do.”
I am growing as lost as Henry. He has surely already forgotten me all over again.
The disembodied voice hums in thought and the sound is powerful, resounding in my chest like stones being split with a hammer. It shakes the earth beneath my feet. “There is only one way to the surface from here.” The voice pauses like I would know what he means and should feel the magnitude of his words. They mean nothing to me aside from how Skelt wastes my time with more nonanswers. “You are not ready yet. You are not so lost as The Keeper would have it.”
It seems like a bad idea to correct Skelt, be it river or beast. “I see. If the river is a part of you, can you feel my friend in it? I worry for him.” Speaking the names Henry or Fallow aloud could only be a poor move when in the presence of a devil such as Skelt.
The monster’s chuckle grumbles like a rockslide. “You have no friends, little mother.” My heart stops to hear that Henry may be dead. “The one who walked with you lives downstream but be precise with your words. You are in The Thicket. There are no friends here.”
Relief extinguishes the fire that had been building beneath my skin. Henry is fine. There is still hope of the plan that will see us both home together, to a place I cannot remember with a prize I do not know the name of, but it begs a feeling of great importance.
Fallow—since Henry would never have acted against my wellbeing had he possessed any knowledge of who I am—knew that he was leading me here. That is not so surprising. So far as Fallow knew, he had to work toward me reaching The Keeper at some point. Roil, though, she must have known, too, and she sent me to The Beneath anyway. The other diggers, they said nothing.
Skelt is right. There are no friends in The Thicket.
“Can I see you?” Uncertainty if it is something I should want or not gnaws at my insides making me feel sick to my stomach. I’m sure if I vomited, it would only be bile and mud. It would be nice to have a place to look, a face to pin this voice on, but there is no telling what the voice may look like.
“Not right now. That should be obvious to you.”
It takes my dampened mind a few moments to catch up to the realization that he has answered me like a teacher in a schoolhouse. “ May I see you?”
“Would you ask to see your god, little mother?”His voice has grown dangerous, no longer laughing at me.
Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I seek to keep him talking. When he stops, I fear what may happen next. “I would if he nearly drowned me and dragged me through the earth to this place.”
“Your god has done worse than that.” The room shimmers like air above a lake on a hot day and the limestone turns to trees and blue skies. In front of me stands a walnut tree with a little girl in the branches. Beneath her is a woman who looks just like me. They are smiling at one another and the little girl is dropping walnuts atop the other.
“Mama, catch!” The little girl drops another nut.
The woman leaps into the air and catches the walnut for her basket. “I got it! ”
“Tonight, we will make honey cornbread, right, Mama?”
The woman’s smile is a little strained. Behind her eyes I can see the list of things it takes to put such a dish as cornbread together. Corn meal, flour, salt, butter, a pinch of sugar. Does she have it all in her stores to make her child’s wish come true? She shakes the list away and her joy reaches her eyes, making them crease at the corners.
“Yes, darling. Should we sprinkle the nuts throughout? Or put them on the bottom of the loaf?”
It is me that I watch and, from here, I can see how beautiful she is in her element. Motherhood, I’m certain, but I cannot recall the child at all. How strange to know I should love someone with all my heart and feel nothing.
“If we put them on the bottom, we could make a pattern!”The little girl drops another nut and I catch it, the other woman now replaced by me. We are one again, and at once I know the girl inside and out. She took her first steps across the garden to where Henry held our old barn cat as encouragement. I recall her hands and feet kicking me from inside my belly until we could see her little hands and feet pushing my skin taut. She only likes strawberries if they come with sugar, and she dislikes pepper on her eggs. She cries when bird eggs meant to hatch remain still and lifeless in a nest, but the tears can be stopped with the reminder that the birds will try again next spring. Her first word was ‘baby,’ because that is what her daddy and I called her all the time. Our one and only baby.
Anne.
When I blink, I am back in the hall with limestone walls on all sides and a cry built of torment and horror rips from my throat, so loud that the sound cracks down my center and grows silent.
The room booms with the voice of Skelt. “A cruel god, indeed, to separate a mother from her child. At least she is paused in a pleasant dream. Not all of them have been. So many children trapped.”
“Put me back!” My mind, unable to comprehend having Anne within my grasp and losing her again, has me searching the room in every direction like a rat caught in a cage. I kick bones and they skitter across the stones. My foot slips in the mud from the river’s bottom in my frenzy. There must be a way out. I will tunnel through the earth itself to get back to Anne. “Put me back in my body! Take me to her and let me leave!”
Already, the memories of Anne slip through my fingers. All the details I know of her, every perfect thing about her voice, her skin, her laugh… they are sands in a wicked quick hourglass. They slip away and there is nothing I can do to stop them. The girl I built from scratch, prayed for and over every day of her life, becomes only a feeling in my gut that bellows about how I must escape this place and return to… someone. The face, name, and details are all gone in an instant. I only know that my soul scratches at the inside of my body, desperate to return to them.
This might be how Roil feels all the time. It is no wonder she has become so closed off that she must steal the emotions of others to feel anything at all.
Torn between the desire to fall to my knees and weep for the rest of time, and the equally strong pull to throw myself at the whitewashed walls of this cavern until one of us breaks, I stand still and feel like I am going to rip free of my skin. My grief and rage are too much. If I move, I may split at the seams.
Clutching my chest like if I let go I will tear into so many pieces no one will be able to find them all to put me back together, I screech again. It is a wordless cry.
“Little mother, I am not the villain in your story.”
The room shifts again, and I find myself standing just off the road to town. The woods are all around me. They are the woods I know, not The Thicket. Beside me, Henry watches the road. He is just as he was when the river took me. Every inch of him exactly the same as the day he left the house all those months ago before spring warmed the world.
“That’s her.” He says it to himself, not to me. I do not think he can tell I am here. I am not in this moment, just a voyeur. I follow his gaze to where a woman and a girl ride a brown mare with a black mane. The little girl is braiding the hair of the mare when she turns and stares right at me.
The girl points and, though we are too far off the trail to hear her, I know what she says. The memory becomes clear now that I am watching it.
Mama, do you see those lights?
The me who rides behind Anne scans the woods and does not see what her daughter does. “What lights?” I speak the mother’s words aloud without meaning to. I think I have dreamed of this moment every night since it happened. I might not always remember it upon waking, but it is so familiar that I could recreate it out of thin air if given the power. The way the moss smells, the crisp autumn air nipping just a little at my skin, not enough to need a coat but close.
This was the start of something evil .
The girl forms circles with her hands. “Like that of light. They are blue and yellow.” The girl now speaks loud enough for us to hear as she wags her finger in our direction. Henry turns to look beside himself, expecting someone to be there. He does not see me, but here I am. Anne can see me, though. I am one of the lights.
Anne, my Anne, faces forward with her mother’s stern instruction and they ride off. I am left with Henry. He reaches out and his hand goes through me. His brows crease close together and I want to hold his face between my palms, make him see me. He is alive. He is right in front of me. For an instant so brief it feels imagined, we met and knew one another before I was washed away. We stood here together the day before this all began and did not even know it. The unfairness of this place and the upside-down reality of it infuriates me. My rage is a massive emotion with nowhere to go and it rings in my ears.
Perhaps that is good. Maybe I won’t forget it.
“Whoever you are, you cannot have that mother’s soul.” Tears brim in his eyes, and he turns to watch me and Anne ride away at a fast trot. One slips down his cheek. “I need it to get home.”
I reach out to wipe away his tears and Henry vanishes before my fingers can touch him. Like fingerprints left in the frost that gathers on chilled glass, the woods melt away and return to stone.This time, as the world returns to what I think is its actual state, I am no longer certain. My head spins and, clutching my temples, I drop to my haunches. “What is it that you mean to show me with these theatrics?”
“Theatrics? Oh, no. All of this is happening. We are not actors on a stage.” Skelt tuts, again reminding me of a tutor tasked with educating me. “I will show you your world as I see it until you give up. Do you give up, little mother?”
To give up is to lose Anne forever. “Not that. Never.”
The world changes around me so fast, I can hardly keep up with what he is showing me. I am on the side of the creekbank on our property washing my swollen feet, heavy with child, while Henry brushes down our mare, Dolly. Then I am washing a pot at my sink in a pail of water I just drew up from the river.
“Never is a long time, and time is a funny thing.”
The voice resounds in my head as the world spins around me. I am a little girl in Manhattan watching the boats go by on the Hudson. I am a mother watching her daughter’s baptism. I am Henry’s mother watching his.
“It collides.”