If Absence Took a Spiral Shape
by John D. Gorman
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
conclusion
The trees grew so close together that only specks of sunlight shone through the mesh of pine needles. Despite no one’s ever having spent time in the woods, it seemed as if there were natural paths leading into the forest’s heart. He took this as a sign that maybe someone had lived in the forest, and that it wasn’t as hostile as he was inclined to believe. The closeness of the trunks made him feel more boxed in than when he walked through the city. The air was so cool it cut his lungs and throat. He thought he saw his breath fog up in front of him, and he realized that a fine layer of mist clung to the roots.
The flat ground began to shift under their feet. It sloped downwards into a dell, where the mist rose up, obscuring his vision. It was treacherous to descend in a hurry, so he stopped and rested at the base of a tree, gazing down into the small valley. It would have been beautiful if there had been more light, but in the shadow and mist, there was naught but gloom.
He descended the dell’s slopes. More than once, he thought he saw her on the other side. It made him uncomfortable. It reminded him of that night. She held his hand in both of hers and confessed her fears to him. She wasn’t good enough to have a child. She was going to die at childbirth. She would become like her own mother after the baby was born. She would work too much and not be home to raise it. The child would grow up to resent the pair of them.
It was little more than drunken babble to him, though she had been completely sober. He had not. The ugliness that had reared up in him and lifted its scaly head. He had worked hard to keep those memories tucked away in the back of his mind, stuffed in the corner, and holed up with bricks and mortar. All it took was water freezing in the gaps to make his shoddy job crumble.
Then all at once, it was there. The anger. The night he drove. The mists lifted and before him lay a cabin, half-submerged in sludgy black mud illuminated by a sun beam streaming through a gap in the pines. He did not gaze into the puddles at his feet, afraid that he would see his own reflection. He could not bring himself to take a picture either.
“It’s beautiful,” said a voice by his shoulder. “Take it.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“But it is, dear. Watch.”
She tugged the camera from his hands and took a picture of the cabin. “See? Now you can come home.”
“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t come home. You’re not there, and it’s all too much now. You have to come back with me.”
“I’m back now, dear. See?” She kissed him. He closed his eyes. Her lips were warm. He opened his eyes. She was pulled away like Eurydice, slipping into the pond.
“You...” he said. “You can’t—”
“Rage all you want,” she said quietly. “It will not change the way the trees push their roots into the soil.”
She stepped back into the pond, which rose to her waist. She walked backwards to the half-sunken house, carrying his camera. She opened the front door, stepped inside, and shut the door. Then, from behind the house rose a monster.
Illuminated by the sunlight, he saw the deer horns curled above its head and the long, grotesque limbs sprouting off of a barrel-shaped body. It slipped onto the ground and lumbered towards him. He bent double and retched, staining his pants and shoes with vomit. He wiped the snot and tears from his face, spat, and looked up into the face of the creature that had emerged from the bog.
It stood twelve feet tall with limbs as long as he was tall. Each appendage ended with long, curled nails. Festering rot wafted off of the motley of skins it wore as a cloak. It wore a deer’s skull like a helmet, but he could not make out its real face. Only two shining orbs for eyes stared through the space where the deer’s eyes would have been.
“Rage all you want,” it said in her voice.
The monster leaned onto all fours and lumbered towards him. He backed away, nearly stumbling over himself in the marsh. It stopped. He regained his footing. The monster bellowed at him. Flecks of saliva struck his face. He stared at the monster’s wild eyes, tinted red and set into a deer’s head. The claws left deep gouges in the marsh as it advanced. He backed away yet was unable to run. He refused to break the monster’s stare.
There was something struggling to break free in those red eyes. He stopped backing away, clenching his fists at his sides. The monster stopped advancing. The two stared at each other, each breathing as if they’d run a marathon. Sweat dripped down his back, but he could feel only the cold breath of shadows in the marsh.
The monster opened its mouth, tensed, and let out a roar that sent tremors through the earth and startled the birds. The sun itself seemed as if it wanted to set as to never to have to be forced to shine upon such a hideous design.
“I know what you did,” it hissed. “I know what feeds the shadows of the spirit and warps your vision of the world.”
He stood firm against it, fighting his instinct to turn and run. He gritted his teeth and clenched his fists to stifle the terror welling up in him like a poisonous tide. The growl began at the base of his throat, and it grew to a scream.
“I know what I did. I know where I missed my mark. But hiding from it will not make it so that it never happened. Living as if you were dead ruins the memories that remain.” He shouted down the monster, advancing towards it one step, then two. The monster stood its ground, rising up onto its front two legs. He charged forwards again.
“I name you for the world to know. Monster, you are nothing but a coward.”
The monster turned and fled, lumbering through the marsh, and disappearing into the trees encircling the house. He stood there, breathless and tense, the muscles in his forearms pleaded to be relaxed. It took a bit of effort to unclench his fists.
He turned away from the spot where the monster fled into the forest and walked towards the half-sunken house. He observed the house for a moment, stricken by its familiarity. It was the house on the hill, he realized. At least, an exact replica, for the real farmhouse would be at the top of the hill overlooking the fields. He stepped carefully into the water and waded towards the front door. He opened it and climbed into the sideways house.
The interior matched the interior of the farmhouse, save for the fact that all displaceable items were either submerged underwater or floating above its surface. By a small miracle, his camera dangled by its strap on the coat rack bolted into the wall. He took it, put it around his neck, and waded back through the water.
Once on land, he saw her standing there. She was dressed as she was the first day they had met at a party. She looked at him, as if expecting him to follow her again. He swallowed hard and clicked through the photos on his camera, looking for one in particular. When he found it, he let the camera dangle, and he covered his face with his hands. He did not want her to see him weep. It was as if a knot had unraveled inside of him, painfully, letting all the anger and sorrow flow through and out of him. He looked at the picture of the two of them on the night he proposed to her. He was dumbfounded she’d said yes. She looked like she wouldn’t have given any other answer.
If given the chance, he would do it all over again. It was then he came to terms that his falling asleep at the wheel was just the same as tree roots pushing into the soil.
When he looked up from the camera, she was standing at the edge of the woods. She beckoned him, and he followed. Despite the high afternoon sun, they walked in near darkness. The pines were dense, and their branches interwove with each other to create a pine-needle sky.
It was not so much walking as it was a game of hide-and-seek. He would spot her in the woods and walk up to her, only to have her disappear as he got close. It was her way, he thought, of getting him out of the woods, even if the monster was still in the shadows somewhere.
As the wood’s edge came into view, a sound ripped the silence. It was as if someone was crumpling the world’s largest aluminum can. He felt something rush by him and flee deep into the woods. It looked like a deer if a deer stood on two legs. He pushed through the brush, stumbling out onto a scene of destruction.
The monster had mangled all the machines in its wake, rendering them unusable. Without much thought, he walked around the fields and took the pictures. He sent them to his editor, describing what he had seen. The story would be huge, front page in some papers. They would be first, but their pictures would spread further than their words.
For a moment, he considered asking to stay until the story had run its course but realized there would be very little to gain by doing so. In all actuality, nothing would become of it. No one would want to go into the woods, for no one came out. Anyone who said they did was a liar.
He was instructed to come back at once. They found him a flight and even called him a taxi. A brief span of time, no more than a couple of days, passed with the accusations that he somehow managed to cripple the machines, but the rumors did not last. He had taken plenty of photos, and they had reached the corners of the internet as this new story swept through the 1s and 0s for a week. It was enough for him to negotiate a new contract with higher pay in a new location.
They did not understand why he’d chosen to go halfway across the country to the Heartland. He didn’t feel like explaining it to them, either. The chains that bound him to the city were an anchor grounding him. Yet to remain fixed in place, to remain in the hospital bed with wounded soul and healed body, was suffering. He had tried to live on in her memory by holding onto it, wishing for more of it, and trying to swim back in time’s ocean.
He would take pictures in a smaller, younger city, commuting twenty minutes each day from a suburb. He would do this five times a week. He would sleep in on Saturdays and go to the grocery. He would thank the bagger, and then the barista for his coffee. If he was hungry, he would go to a restaurant and compliment the server before ordering. He would get up early on Sundays to walk through rain, shine, sleet, or snow, to a church tucked away in the trees. Its stone walls and stained glass made him at ease.
Around the back of the church is a wrought iron gate, the posts on either side of it topped with little, chubby angels. Through the gate is a cemetery. Some who come to pay their respects notice that one gravestone is never without flowers. Through rain, shine, sleet, or snow, he comes every Sunday to see her. He sees her there, sometimes, dressed in various outfits that matched the ones in his camera. They share their smiles as the holes in their hearts filled. The waters of grief receded with each passing day, and he no longer felt like he was drowning.
One day, the day after an autumn storm, he walked to the cemetery to see her. She was there, dressed in her wedding dress. As he replaced the bouquet, she gave him a sad smile. She touched his cheek and, withdrawing her hand, faded into the day.
By the fish pool outside of the church, rainwater drips from a spider web constructed between a pair of stone angel wings. It tumbles through space until it lands on the surface, creating a ripple. The ripple swells like a wave, then dies before it can reach the edge of the pool. It is the note plucked on a violin in an empty cathedral. It is a gunshot on the plains. It is the unclenching of a fist and the breath of air in the lungs. It is the holding and the absence that follows.
Copyright © 2022 by John D. Gorman
