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The old lumber road on the back acre of the property was muddy underfoot, sinking away without anyone to repair it with gravel or fill dirt, and Cane grimaced at his boots with disgust. Around him, the slim, bare lines of Douglas firs—lower branches long since knocked down by wind and time—towered over him like a collection of jurors as he surveyed his handiwork in the gathering twilight.
He had cleared this spot the year before. Back then, it was absolutely overrun with alder saplings, taking advantage of the place’s marshy history to reclaim the crumbling hard pack of the dirt road, turn it back into forest the way alders like to do.
Opportunists. Might as well be weeds.
He remembered the old man leaning against the truck, mumbling around a toothpick.
“If you’re gonna cut ‘em down, make damn sure you get all of ‘em.”
And Cane had smiled without teeth as he unpacked the chainsaw and the hedge trimmer and said, “Yeah, I’ll do that.”
But the old man had been adamant. “You ain’t listening. Get all of ‘em. Something in the water around here, and those trees suck it up like straws. Old story, no one remembers it anymore. But when something dies in the water, the trees take it up. Feel that?”
Tall tales aside, Cane had done a thorough enough job, he thought, slicing through each sapling as low to the ground as he could, taking them one at a time as they shuddered and fell. They had peeled up and cured real nice, the thin ones making a heap of good walking sticks that he sold at the farmer’s market that year, the thicker ones perfect for kindling.
He was still annoyed that he let the old man get into his head with it, though, plagued by strange dreams and the reverberation of the chainsaw for a whole year after. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to come out here, since then, and the old man’s death a few months later hadn’t helped. The place felt haunted, even cursed, with or without the old man’s ghost stories.
But now, Cane felt it was time to face it. A whole acre back here, sitting useless, but it didn’t have to be. He could make something of it.
Besides, what was he afraid of?
Cane stuck his hands in his thick coat pockets and kept on, making a list of tasks in his head, calculating how much the fill dirt would cost to finally turn this road back into a usable surface. Once he could get a vehicle back here, the sky was the limit. A new woodshop, maybe? An extra garage? A paddock for goats or something?
He paused. Ahead of him, on his left, was an alder sapling—a survivor from the previous year’s cull—and something about its shape tickled his memory.
He had been cutting in his thorough way, trying to reach a larger alder in a difficult spot, when a branch from a slim sapling next to it whipped back into his face. It was February and the trees were bare; there were no leaves to cushion the blow. Sharp pain like a slap along his left cheek, and Cane reeled back, cursing. It was the first time he lost his cool as he struck the offending sapling with the chainsaw, cutting it in the middle, the top half falling parallel to the earth, barely clinging to its thin trunk.
Now, Cane found himself staring at the same sapling a year older. Instead of dying, the wound had hardened and grown over, and the sapling was still growing—healthy and strong—with its top half parallel to the ground. A sinister marvel.
The overall impression was like a broken neck.
Disturbed, Cane pursed his lips at it, clicked his tongue. “You little sumbitch,” he muttered. “Just wait til I get back here with the saw.”
If you’re gonna cut ‘em, make damn sure you get all of ‘em.
He grunted the old man’s voice and visage away as he pushed further in, nearing the edge of the property where it butted up against county-owned land, a dark expanse in the dusk, crowded with the skeletons of summer scotch broom. As he drew near the property line he was shocked to see standing water, pulling the road into itself without the living alder roots to hold anything in place. What might have been puddles were now whole ponds, lined with tule-weed and tiny seedlings of water horehound just starting to sprout in the late winter chill. Cane cursed under his breath. This whole area was going to have to be filled in if he had any hope of turning it into usable property, and that was going to get expensive.
Ahead in the empty county-owned land, Cane heard the wail of a single coyote as the sun slipped away, distantly. The light was failing, and the unseen spring frogs started creaking in the stillness, tentative.
Cane turned to leave, still doing the fill-dirt calculations in his head. He hadn’t gotten far, boots squelching in the mud, when he heard a sound behind him. A croaking sound that a person might make if they were choking, and an exhale of breath.
A death rattle.
When he looked back over his shoulder, Cane’s heart froze and his hands went weak.
There was a shape behind him, standing in the road at the edge of the pond where he was certain it had not been before, pale like a birch and silhouetted starkly against the dark smudge of the scotch broom. It looked like a tall, spindly woman with a broken neck, head parallel to the ground, crown pointing west, eyes wide and lips parted, long hair reaching down and down and down.
Cane stared at it. Thought, maybe, it was just a trick of the light.
Until the shape breathed a rattling breath.
Cane ran. Bolted like a foal through the mud, sloppy-footed and clawing at the air with his hands as if it would pull the truck to himself faster, making the tiniest sounds in his constricted throat, too terrified to shout.
When something dies in the water, here…
The old man’s voice echoed in his mind, the dark turning every shadow sinister, the stumps of the chopped alder trees seeming to reach for his ankles, to trip him up, to bring him to the ground. The very earth seemed to quiver with vengeance.
He ran on, as fast as he could, but behind him he heard the approach of soft but urgent footsteps, long-limbed strides, the croaking rattle of the woman’s breath as she gained on him easily, the thick mud meaning nothing to her, the alder stumps parting to let her pass.
The trees suck it up like straws!
The truck was ahead in the gloom, the way was clear, and Cane pushed himself harder than he ever had before, a flare of hope igniting as he fumbled his keys out of his pocket, watching his feet to make sure he did not fall.
But then, when he looked back up it was a moment too late. He slammed hard into something that had not been there before, reeling back, wind knocked out of him.
It was the trunk of the brokeneck alder-sapling, growing parallel to the earth.
Impossible, impossible!
Cane had no time at all to wonder how the alder sapling had swiveled itself on its axis to exact its revenge before he was taken up into the grasping arms of the one who pursued him, leaving only the smell of swamp-soil behind and his bootprints—temporary, already filling with puddles—in the leaf-littered mud.
END
And then they got married and lived happily ever after. Right? RIGHT??????
For some reason, I read this story out loud. And boy, did it flow nice that way. It’s got a great natural rhythm to it. Excellent work!