Brian W. Cooke
Copyright © 2003
Rural New England ~
The crisp bite of January air fills my lungs as I stand outside in the early morning hours; at the threshold of dawn looming over the rolling hills afar. The woods around me are silent --seem stripped of even a single blue-bird's sunrise chirp. But it's pretty dark, still, save for the dull amber glow in the distance. It hurts my eyes, my heart to look at it, but I feel a blooming undertone of solace as I think about how nice it'll be to get back to southern Nevada. Especially this time of year.
I’m glad that Loraine will finally be moving back there with me. My wife and I don’t have a lot of money, so we’ll be driving back in our modest car. Our clothing, extra blankets and pillows will occupy most of the space. These, and of course, the collection of pink stuffed animals belonging to my seven year old daughter, Katherine. Their puffy little faces pressing against the rear and side windows as we barrel down the highway. I’ll have be cautious when deciding where to put the more delicate things: the ‘breakables’. But there’ll be room for all three of us in there just the same, despite the lack of space --I’m quite sure. And I don’t even mind if I have to wrestle with the car a bit before managing all the doors good and shut; a small chore, when compared to the terror I went through last night.
Thank goodness that’s all over --for good this time.
They'd returned in the pitch hours of the night, invading my home as I slept uneasily beside the waning fire. With Loraine cuddled beside me, I’d beseeched her attention. But she --ensconced in blankets much the same way her mind was within a state of lazy, semi-slumber-- only turned away from me. Uninterested, she was, when I’d told her that the beasts had come back again; she’d heard it so many times before. But this time I was sure!! Nonetheless, with an ashen puff of her breath, came an indifferent moan to escape the lips. My oblivious darling, slipping back into her nightly dreams of things for which I knew she foolishly afforded greater precedence.
But I knew better.
I could hear them --see them-- clustered together and hiding amidst the darkness. Their pitch, jagged outlines contrasted against the palid lambency of moonlight that spilt through the window, soaking it ugly with their visage, with the dour reminder of the steel bars that pressed against the filthy glass. Steel that accentuated my sense of captivity the same way that the silhouettes of those Hell-sent creatures embodied my stark fear.
I could still hear the rough, ear-piercing screeches that they made, as I ran down the stairs and out the door. Running about the expansive rural property in maddening circles, and through clusters and clusters of those horrible, God-damned trees sent straight from Lucifer’s garden of the grotesque! My freezing body then cold with coward’s sweat; my heaving chest drowning in the thickly brisk outdoor air.
Finally, my hysterics waned, and I found myself within a narrow clearing; beneath the luminescence of clear, moonlit New England sky. My view, bordered by leaf-stripped, naked clusters of sharp oak and maple tree branches reaching upward to the chasmal nothingness of the star-speckled heavens. I felt relatively safe then, in my sweat-drenched daze. And so I conjured the wherewithal to make my way back to the main yard.
I found it in me the braveness to stare at the barn from behind the house. But even then, I did so with a cue of weariness and fear amidst my deeply-rooted loathing --not much more than a sliver of my cheek, forehead, and one eye occasionally peeking out from around the corner of my home. And as I looked straight up at its angled, gambrel roof, at the smoke-stack, I began to see the heavy descent of snow tumbling athwart in drifts so very silent; a thickened storm-cloud’s chilly dusting. It was only the whisper of a steady winter’s breeze, and an occasional sharp snap or crackle that touched my ears, then. Branches breaking free from tree trunks under the weight of the burdening snow, I eagerly came to understood, as I nodded and glanced out at the expanse of undeveloped woods surrounding the property.
A good, brutal smothering of guilt, then. For, what’s done is done.
Little Katherine was there, a stone’s throw away and equally captivated by the sight of the old barn --probably wakened by my stumbling about the house while trying to find my way out in the dark, I’d thought. I felt bad for not taking her with me, but she seemed to find her own way out of there just fine. Besides, the beasts had no qualms with her or Loraine: just me. I couldn’t help but realize that Katherine really shouldn’t have been outside, though. It was just too cold for my delicate little girl. But she seemed comfortable enough, with her tiny body clad in pajama pants, a thick winter-coat and a pair of my heavy, wool sportsman’s socks sheathing her little feet. There she sat, atop the commixture of firewood; birch, maple and small cedar logs sliced into fiercely jagged wedges. A silent, brutal testament to the devastating efficiency of the nearby axe that almost seemed to grow the blood-colored rust upon it’s blade. Like sanguine mold upon the bark of a most angry tree; standing tall and still, with many years to brood. Quiet rage.
A curtain of clingy snowflakes draped themselves over Katherine's black, wavy hair, clinging and dangling with sharp contrast like bleached, Spanish moss. Her salted tufts of hair framed her face as it trailed down and meshed below her chin, spilling over her small hands as she clutched her coat tightly around her little neck. We've never known exactly where she got that ravenesque hair --both my wife and I being of dirty-blonde stock. No matter, though.
For, I thought the coating of snowflakes seemed to give it a well-needed change of hue.
That very moment, a tingly-cold gust of wind brushed against my face, and with it came the redolence of churning flames, of wood-fire. I looked above me and saw smoke ascending from a tin chimney stack protruding from the roof. A part of me wanted to take Katherine back inside the house to join her mother. I embraced the idea of us all sharing in a warm meal and some hot chocolate by the fire. Old fashioned, yes, but cozily alluring to me: bittersweet. Howbeit, I found myself deserting the thought, given the grim circumstances that part of my otherwise splintered mind was slowly, painfully becoming aware of. Then Katherine trained her beautiful, little hazel eyes on the big window of the barn. And so I asked...
“Honey, darling, what are you looking at?”
“Look,” Katherine answered me in an unnervingly calm and tranquil tone. “They’re dying daddy. They’re dying, and it hurts. Listen...You can even hear them scream.” And her grin of facial expression posed a somehow less than human sort of distance as she stared on. By then, the cold outside was waking me and my thoughts grew a bit more lucid; the recollection of my actions was growing disquietingly more and more obvious. And for a moment, I couldn’t help but to hate little Katherine for so cruelly reminding me --as though I’d forgotten already, as though I didn’t care, as if I’d had a choice in what I did. But had I? Well, by then, with the plummeting flakes growing ever so thick, accumulating like grey sawdust on the ground, on my clothes and hair, it really didn’t matter.
What’s done is done.
Coming to terms, I felt helpless, shameful frustration churn inside me like a raging fire. And it wasn’t until blood trickled down my fingers that I became cognizant of the painful fingernail marks in the palms of my hands. I waited and waited for Katherine to turn and look at me, maybe even give me a hug. But that window remained her only obsession: her eyes widening, her gaze growing more intense. One that mirrored a seedling of dementia blooming in her stoic stare, and in those hazel eyes. Eyes that she’d inherited from her daddy. I turned away, neither able to watch her, nor the beasts I could still see trapped behind the barn's big window.
I closed my eyes tightly, hoping the nightmare would just go away once I opened them again. But when I did, I saw Loraine. She stood near Katherine, wearing her long winter-coat over her nightgown; a pair of freezing feet in the snow. It was only now that I was afforded attention by Katherine, as both she and Loraine looked at me in unison, displaying the same glassy gaze, slowly morphing into twin expressions of despair.
“Why daddy? Katherine asked me, “Why did you have to make us come outside…Like this??” And when I saw the sorrow bleed through my little girl’s eyes I almost broke down.
;
“Oh, Jacob.” Loraine said, feeding the already melancholy swell of emotions I was feeling. Her piteous tone, a perfect match for the disappointment that I saw in Katherine’s eyes. My true feelings of grief did well to hide my slight shift in sentiment once I heard Loraine's tone, lacking the sincerity of Katherine. Emotions, always a tool to the woman; one that she wielded well while in her throes of 'harmless', womanly persuasion. But my little girl was more important than dawning on such less than pleasing things. Or, so I'd told myself. Sometimes, though, bad thoughts do get the better of us.
“It’ll be over soon honey...soon.” I told my little Katherine. I tried to sound reassuring; speaking to her in a soft-hearted tone. Commensurate with Katherine’s memories of times when I burst into her bedroom to save her from a nightmare, or when I had to cure a scraped knee. Because daddy’s words --spoken just the right way-- can fix just about anything. But I knew that all the words in the world wouldn’t help to make things better, not this time. We were all far beyond that.
And I was finally far beyond the reach of those abominable beasts that faded with the abrupt death of yesteryear.
New England, December - 1980
I didn’t know much about this wretched place they call “New England.” Not that there was anything ‘new’ about it. Unlike back home in Nevada, many of the buildings and houses here looked pathetically old and often overgrown with pesky vegetation. A breeding ground for allergy, certainly --not to mention much more! And this is to say nothing of the roads. Not much more than ancient horse and carriage paths left over from colonial days, now paved and grown into clumsy, curvy rural byways over the passing of time. Nothing straight, flat or expansive; nothing to afford me a view of the open sky. Quite the contrary, in fact.
I remember the sobering jolt that woke me from my nap as I lay in the back of my parent’s old Ford station wagon; a series of bumps in the country road on which we drove. Yet another curvy slab of cracked pavement. This one, painted with remnants of dirty snow and treacherous black-ice beneath the cover of night. It ripped me away from my cozy dreams of home, of our small ranch in southern Nevada just outside the city’s annexed boundary. So beautiful it was, surrounded by that wonderful, open expanse of high-plains desert. But as my eyes opened to greet the window, these pleasant dreams were replaced with sharp slivers of moonlight that pierced through a shadowy weave of twisting canopy above; an ugly marriage of grotesquely twisted elm and maple trees hanging over the narrow road. With a most disturbing, almost wicked sound of creaking, their dry, dead-looking limbs did arc and bend to the will of the wind, leaving their nefarious shadows to come alive upon the ground below, like a gang of spider’s legs.
Even as young as I was, I knew well enough to covet aversion for the seemingly endless offspring of shadows whenever I'd glance up into those trees. All of them, silently, starkly proclaiming their nefarious presence. Staving off the urge to let my mind develop the most disturbing of twisted thoughts would be important, I'd realized. Especially in a maddeningly solitary place such as this, and what with an army of stark tree trunks as my only food for thought. But then, I’d known from the start that I wasn’t alone. And I was right in thinking so. For, despite the loneliness, I always had a chorus of disturbing cries for my cozy comfort. Hell's lollibie to lull me to sleep, tearing out at me from the darkness. I could always see their beady, chasmal eyes staring at me --if I looked hard enough.
Despite my own malcontent for the area from the start, rural New England’s somewhat macabre ambience during the darker hours seemed to suit my father’s twisted appreciation for the ghoulish rather well. He took almost fervent pleasure in every minutia of morbidity that lent this rural region its disquieting nighttime ambience. And what a horribly avid lover of beasts he'd become.
I do recall standing next to the small, cast-iron stove in the barn: its grimy tin smokestack rising upward to punch a hole through the roof, the crackling of wood ensconced by flames. And that's where I’d often find him; tooling away on little projects, or just going through the endless weekend-ritual of fixing the station wagon. And he liked it there in the wintertime most of all. The only thing worse than busting your knuckles while wrestling with a wrench, was doing it when your hands were turning into a pair of popsicles. But you didn't need knuckles to appreciate the stove; blankets of warm air rising towards the crisscross of thick, wooden beams overhead.
Those beasts watched me --tormented me-- from up there, much the same way they did everywhere else. It was hard to see the cluster of staring shadows amidst the scantly-lit, naked beams and spine of the barn's ceiling. But I knew of their presence. The broken window of the loft, and my father's cruel procrastination in deciding exactly when he would get around to fixing it, served as quite the vulgar invitation for those most harrowing of Devil's spawn to crawl right in; perch themselves upon the beams like vultures. There'd be their disturbing call to betray their pose of muteness --not possibly belonging to any other creature but them. It would viciously attack the blessed silence, affording my father’s depraved sense of amusement a sort of blasphemous pleasure upon hearing their disturbing call. They were countless times, I do recall, when his gaze of amusement would rest on my terrified eyes. Good old dad's ill-humored smile.
My mother was no better; she saw the beasts too, yet did nothing to shelter me from them. In fact, she only seemed to welcome their company. I’d hear her faint, but none the less frighteningly real utterances on those nights when she needed to get outside for some air. Her words of venting frustration, most often after she had a fight with dad and he took off in the car. I’d see her staring up at the stars through those horribly twisted tree-limbs, turned stark-black like their trunks against the moonlit sky. Trees as pitch as the cold death that their leafless, brittle branches seemed to embody so ominously. I’d watch her from the security of her bedroom window that faced the back yard. Then I'd rush back to my own room; down a hallway plastered over with the wallpaper that my mother had picked out for her new home. A disgusting, puke-beige it was, speckled with images of tree branches, berries and a collage of tiny blackbirds; a tasteless attribute to the house that I hated almost as much as the menacing beasts themselves.
It’s a small wonder why I ran away at fourteen, retreating to the safety of home. Or, at least close to it. North Las Vegas was a far cry from where I’d grown up. It was a rough place, especially for a homeless boy. But it was still better than living with the back east, despite the necessity to do my share of those despicable things that many young, tender-skinned boys must sometimes do to stay alive on the streets. Besides, I managed to make a decent life for myself, a modest home in a safe area, a wonderful wife and a beautiful baby girl. The best life I could afford myself with the community college education I’d felt lucky enough to get. A better life than I’d ever expected to have. That was, until the bills got out of control, and we had the bankruptcy.
Despite the separation from my parents for so long, word eventually got back to me about the car accident in Boston that took their lives. My parents, apparently still gallivanting about New England after all this time. That wasn’t all I’d heard either, but some things I just didn’t want to know or accept.
I'd done my best to contact realtors and keep our dealings as discrete as possible. But the New England house-market was a terribly slow compared to the Las Vegas metro; bursting at the seems with tourists and newcomers. And so, with proceedings dragging on, Loraine came to find out about this awful house, left to me by my mother and father in their will. The perils of having a mother and father who have in their twisted minds the aforethought to make certain their only son is well taken care of, should he ever return. Loraine's lips grew into angry ones, spewing stingy words of divorce and threats to take Katherine away; find another man who wouldn't make her live in the seedy, $20.00 dollar a night motel. Our new 'home sweet home'. Our only view from the motel-room window: the methadone clinic across the street, the neighborhood kids flipping gang-signs at us as we drove by.
Even still, I begged of her for us to stay in Nevada. But my words only fell on deaf ears. And so our trip ensued here: to Hell. A place I blissfully believed I’d never be unfortunate enough to see again. And who wouldn’t feel the same way about this place? Especially now with the absence of heat. A consequence of our moving here with virtually nothing, much less any extra money to supply the oil-furnace in the basement with fuel to leave us warm at night. Keeping the frigid air just above the freezing mark to stop the water pipes from growing solid with what little oil we had in the bottom of the supply tank outside was the best we could muster; not nearly enough to afford us comfortable sleep without the aid of winter-coats and heavy, wool socks as we huddled betwixt our bundles of blankets close by the living room fireplace. And even keeping the fire good and hot was a struggle. Often, only a thread's worth of fire-smoke could be seen twisting through the thick, stone chimney from outside. Of course, unbeknownst to my wife, I knew the barn was warmer, what with its sizeable wood stove and the much smaller area it had to warm. But I also knew what malefic creatures took refuge inside! And so, I vowed to have no part of sleeping there; my cold lips stayed tight.
None the less, in the middle of the night, confused and terrified, I’d once again found myself back within the horribly familiar confines of that barn for the first time since my childhood.
I barely had the time to question how I'd come to be inside the barn, when those beasts manifested all over again --just as I knew they would! And of course, that's when I saw their wicked silhouettes, contrasted by the moon shone through that barred windowpane. Their harrowing cries ascended from the same pitch nothingness of lightness corners, and echoed against the walls to rape my deepest senses all over again; driving me mad!! So mad, that I can barely recall frantically stumbling about the insides of the...barn, in semi-slumber, and searching for a can of gasoline. Nor do I recall that well beyond a fuzy recollection how I doused the walls before throwing a flaming stick from the fire upon that disgusting, puke-beige wallpaper veneer --sweaty with glistening, liquid-burn. How quick my hands were to nail shut every possible escape.
I’d stood there for a fleeting moment, staring, watching the walls burn --and almost believing that I might reap the splintered pleasure of hearing the beast’s paper impostors cry out in firey pain, as the wallpaper curled and the flames engulfed them!! But I hastily absconded for safer ground; outside, where I could hear and watch the real things flutter their ugly black wings and smack against the insides of the tightly shut windows: yearning to escape the painful fire, the thick smoke poisoning their little lungs and purging them of life. Their scratchy, ear-piercing cries carrying through the empty woods like sweet music.
I was bestowed no such satisfaction though. None the less, I was tranquilly confident of their death and consequent descent back into hell, what with the tightly shut windows retaining the thick smoke that could so easily poison the lungs of any living creature; purge their gasping bodies of all life, leaving nothing but their ashes.
And so it did.
Yes, I think there’ll be enough room for all three of us to fit in the car on the way back to Nevada. I’ll just put these two jars right here, next to my wife's purse and my daughter’s pink stuffed animals. I always smile a bit whenever I see them; so fluffy and innocent. Birds...All of them --though, to my relief, non resemble that of the nefarious ravens that are known to fly about and perch themselves upon these dead, twisty tree-limbs. And to think that Loraine --always annoyingly pushy in her womanly endeavors to persuade me-- went ahead and bought Katherine that silly, little, empty bird-cage. Despite the fact that I told Katherine she'd have to wait a little longer; mature a little bit more before she could be trusted in the care of a real bird inside that cage, instead of a stuffed animal. Hopefully, a lot longer...Like after she went to college and moved out!
But they'll be no need for birds, now. No need to fear the pressure of persuasion.
END
