Story Time! “Roots”

Have you ever wondered to yourself, “Why hasn’t anyone ever written a story about a murderous stand of aspen trees using blood magic to exact revenge on a serial killer?” I mean, if *I* had a nickel for every time I’d had that very thought, I’d have five whole cents.

So hey, this story was rejected from two anthologies I submitted it to, which means I can share it with you for free! Eventually, it will be included in the short story anthology I’m compiling. Warning: this is a weird one (blame Kris; he came up with the basic idea). c. 5000 words.

“Roots” by Reina Callier

           

Kindred, he has returned.

The message shoots through our root system like a lightning bolt and stirs us from our indifference. The alert has come from the saplings at the edge of the clearing, who are close enough to the house to perceive its happenings with ease and curious enough about the world to keep paying attention.  

He’s here he’s here he’s here, we whisper with our quaking foliage. It is an unexpected gift, this return. Human lives are so fickle, after all. They are not rooted to the earth like we are, they do not weather the ages like we do. They are like leaves. They come and go and die “in the blink of an eye,” as we have heard them say. Well, our eyes do not blink. And our lives do not end in the way theirs do. As we propagate, we become more without losing what we were. Our self stretches along the forest floor, down into the blind depths of the soil, ever-connected to our original parent. We remember all that has occurred since the first of us took hold in this forest.

We remember him. We remember that he must pay for what he did.

Our mind begins to seethe, to swell. We send impulses down into the earth. Help us make him pay, we urge.  

                        *                      *                      *                      *                      *

Someone has turned my house into a goddamn Air BnB.

Billy told me when I first got out, but seeing it for myself is another thing entirely.

Whoever the new owner is, he’s turned it into something unrecognizable. It was once a wooden A-frame house with a leaky roof and more dust than Sara and I could ever keep up with. Now it looks like some kind of fancy architectural experiment. Big windows face the woods and the mountains beyond. Shining metal glints in the late afternoon sun. There’s a hot tub on the balcony that now extends from the second-floor bedroom.

I guess a lot can happen in twenty years.

I hate it.

My hands ball into fists, fingertips pressing into my palms. The hatred boils in my belly, bubbling up into my throat. I pull the tin of antacids from my back pocket, pop one into my mouth, and swallow it down. It doesn’t help.

There’s only one guest, as far as I can see. A young woman. Alone. Pretty. She reminds me of Sara. Petite. Blonde hair. She’s cut it short, though. A man’s haircut. I wrinkle my nose in disgust. She comes outside to get some groceries from her electric car, her phone pressed to her ear. The man she’s talking to – Brad, she keeps saying – is supposed to be here too, but he’s running late. She’s irritated. She doesn’t want to be here by herself, she says.

I can’t help but grin. If she could see me lurking in the shadows of the ponderosa pine in the driveway, she’d know she’s not by herself.  

She goes back inside. It’s quiet now except for the rustling of trees in the wind and the chirping of birds. On the west side of the property, the golden leaves of the sprawling aspen stand shake violently. The stand has grown since I left. Young aspens have popped up along the edge of the clearing. The closer they are to the house, the smaller they get, like thin white fingers emerging from the dark soil, crowned with shivering yellow.

I told the parole board that my urges were gone, and Dr. Grandy assured them it was true. But it’s easy to lack the urge when there are no temptations to stir it. Now I’m back here, back where it all started, and there’s yet another girl who looks like Sara. And she’s alone.

The urges are a-stirring.

They seize me at the base of my spine and send shocks of excitement through me. It’s almost sexual, this need. My heart pounds and my blood rushes in my ears. My hands itch to close around her neck. I need to do it soon, before the man she was talking to shows up. My feet begin to move me out of the shadow, toward the house.

A shooting pain on the skin of my ankle stops me. I grunt in surprise, then gasp at several more sharp stinging sensations on both lower legs. I bend down to swat away whatever bugs have crawled underneath my pants. What I see sends me reeling backward in shock, a scream stuck in my throat. A swarming, writhing mass of red ants is crawling up my legs, up my torso. They’ve already reached the neckline of my shirt. I slap frantically at them as they bite the skin around my throat. They sting my hands. I curse loudly, and my ass hits the ground hard. I scramble backward on the ground as if that will get me away from them. Again and again they sting my exposed flesh, hundreds of bites merging into a searing pain with no beginning and no end. I push myself to my feet and run toward the pond, pulling off my shirt as I go.

                        *                      *                      *                      *                      *

He is gone, one sapling sends.

For now, an elder sends back.

We laugh, our leaves shaking in the still air.

The woman has exited the house and is approaching us now. She’s wearing sturdy boots, a warm cap, and gloves to ward off the biting chill. The sun is beginning to sink behind the mountains. A sunset walk. Lovely. She’s apparently oblivious not only to the predator she’s leaving behind but to the predators in whose direction she’s heading. Owls are awakening in and around us. A bobcat mother and her kittens are emerging from their den, a hollow fallen pine near our parent tree. They’re far from the woman yet, but every step she takes brings her closer.  

Her boots crunch loudly in the duff. She’s holding what humans call a “cell phone” in one hand. Through its speaker, she converses with someone else (another woman, to judge by the timbre of the voice). She’s angry about someone named Brad. The other person answers in ways that seem to encourage and enhance her anger.

A twig snaps under the woman’s foot. She stops. “And now I’m out here by myself, walking around the woods like an idiot.”

We nod, our heads bowing as if the wind has us in its grip. At least she knows.

“No one said you had to go for a walk by yourself, Amanda,” the person on the phone blares. “I mean, there’s a hot tub, right?”

Amanda looks around to get her bearings. Catching sight of the worn trail that leads in the direction of the snow-dusted mountain tops, she jogs to meet it. “I’m not going far,” she assures her interlocutor. “I just need some fresh air. I can’t book a mountain getaway and then spend the whole time in the hot tub. There’s a hot tub at the rec center, for god’s sake.”

            The two of them continue chatting as Amanda makes her way up the trail. We stand and watch her pass, a silent audience. The sun has dropped behind the mountains now, and it’s getting dark quickly. The bobcat and her kittens are getting closer to the trail. Just over the ridge, a black bear snuffles in the dense leaves.

She should turn back now.

Are you concerned for her, young ones?

Perhaps we are.

People do not extend the same courtesy to us. Besides, they are short-lived anyway.  

Amanda stops and looks around in the dim light. Her brow furrows as her gaze roams over our bodies, our pale bark. Her eyes catch our eyes, and she shivers.

“Hello? Amanda?”

“Sorry. These trees are really creepy.”

“What trees?”

“The aspen trees. In the dark their eyes kinda look like real eyes.”

“Well, that’s disturbing. You ready for the hot tub now?”

“Yeah, I guess I am.” She turns and heads back down the trail.

Kindred, he has returned.

We shift our perception to the house. The man’s shadow is slipping through the pines beside the road, heading toward the driveway. His skin is mottled with raised red bumps. His fingers are swollen. His lips are pressed tightly together with anger and frustration. He crosses the driveway and peers in through the windows, confirming that no one is within. He makes his way to the back door, which the woman has left unlocked, and slips inside.   

Our leaves rustle with indignation. The ants did not punish him enough.     

We commune for a moment, and the decision is made. We send an impulse upward into our branches. Into the sky. Help us make him pay, we urge.

                        *                      *                      *                      *                      *

Amanda. That’s her name. I put her driver’s license back in her wallet and return her purse to the shelf by the front door. I walk around my old house. It’s completely unrecognizable now. Shiny new hardwood floors. Big windows. Bright white paint and modern fixtures. I scowl. It feels like a hotel instead of a house. I peek into the bedroom and see Amanda’s suitcase open on the bed, clothes spilling out of it. A lacy pink bra hangs over the side. I want to touch it, to feel the curve of the fabric in my hand, but then I notice through the window that the woman herself is heading this way. The mountains loom behind her in the darkening sky. The shadows of the trees seem to reach for her feet as she makes her way across the yard.

I head silently for the kitchen. I want to be able to see her. I’ve always loved the watching part. As the back door slides open, I slip behind the kitchen door, peering through the narrow gap above the top hinge. She doesn’t see me. She closes the glass pane and turns the lock, her gaze fixed on the dark woods outside, which are barely visible in the last lingering bits of daylight. She’s breathing hard. Her chest rises and falls with exertion and…is that fear? She turns and takes off her hat and gloves, throwing them on the couch. Her eyes are wide.

Now she really looks like Sara.

I feel the tug at the base of my spine again, the itch in my fingers. My breath quickens, and I struggle to keep quiet.

She walks into the kitchen. I press myself tightly into the corner, into the shadows. She fills the kettle with water and puts it on the stove. It takes her a moment to figure out how to light the burner.

All she has to do is look to her right and she’ll see me, and then I’ll have no choice but to do it. My face tingles with excitement.

But she doesn’t look. What an idiot.

She turns her back to me and rummages through a paper bag on the counter, pulling out boxes of crackers and tea. She checks her phone, mutters something about the battery, and plugs it into a charger on the counter. She moves to the other side of the kitchen island and searches through the cupboards for something. Do it now, my urge commands. But she’s right next to a knife block. I learned that lesson the hard way, with Silvia. That one mistake landed me in prison for twenty years. Though at least I didn’t end up dead. Silvia can’t say the same.

The thrill of remembering Silvia’s death runs through me like a shot of whiskey.

I’ve learned from my mistakes. Don’t try to kill a woman who is standing next to a knife block. Don’t try to kill a woman in a crowded neighborhood. Kill them where no one can hear them scream and bury them where no one will find the body.

And now here I am, back in the place where I made my very first kill. A kill that no one knows about. A kill where I didn’t make any mistakes. And I’m about to do it again. Perhaps I can even bury this one beside the first, at the roots of the huge, gnarled aspen tree that stands so high and so wide among the others.

The kettle whistles, and Amanda retrieves it from the burner. She pours the hot water into a mug, sets the kettle back on the stove, grabs her mug and her plate of crackers, and moves into the living room.

Through the gap, I watch her sit on the couch and turn on the TV. She eats some crackers and drinks her tea. Then she lays her head back on the cushions, closing her eyes with a sigh.

My blood is galloping through my veins. It’s time. My ears start ringing. I move out from behind the door and rush in her direction, hands outstretched.

Something thunks against the floor-to-ceiling back window. Amanda jumps up and whirls toward the sound. I freeze behind her, just as startled as she is. There’s another thunk, then another. Birds. The light from the house illuminates their dark bodies just before they smash into the glass and plummet to the ground.

“What the hell?” Amanda shouts. She cries out as another bird hits, then another, then a dozen more in rapid succession, like bullets from a machine gun, shaking the glass. She backs away from the onslaught. The darkness outside is swirling. I squint my eyes, trying to make out what’s happening. No, that can’t be right. It looks like there’s a fucking tornado made of birds just beyond the yellow house lights.

Amanda sees me in the reflection.

Usually when they see me, they scream and freeze in terror, wasting precious time and allowing me to close the gap between us. Amanda doesn’t scream. She doesn’t even turn to face me. She sprints to the back door, tears it open, and launches herself outside, raising her arms to shield herself from the birds as she hurtles into the darkness.

Maybe she’s not such an idiot after all.

I can’t let her get away.

But now that the door is open, the black tornado outside funnels in. Dozens of crows make a beeline for me like I’m their fucking target or something. Their cawing rips through the room. Their wings beat so fast and hard that the air hits me before they do. I throw my arms in front of my face to try to stop them, but the force of them barreling into me knocks me backward. Their talons grasp at my skin, cutting me open like hundreds of tiny knives. Their beaks are hard and sharp. They peck at me wildly, and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes covered as they beat a drumbeat into my skull. Their incessant caws scrape against my eardrums.

I drop to the floor and scramble away from the onslaught, trying to find some sort of weapon I can use. But all I can see is a whirling black mass of feathers.

I manage to remember that there’s a fireplace under the TV. I crawl for it as the birds peck and tear at my back. Each impact, each gash in my flesh makes me cry out like some kind of wounded animal, and it takes everything in me to reach the iron tool stand beside the fireplace. I flail at the tools, knocking the stand over. The clatter adds to the cacophony of sound coming from me and the birds. I grab the handle of the poker and swing it furiously around me. There’s a satisfying thwack thwack thwack as I hit several of the flying freaks. They shriek in pain and tumble to the floor. Some of them don’t get up again. The other crows come at me even harder, but I keep swinging the damn thing, clearing enough space around me to stand up.

I cover my battered face with one hand and wield the poker with the other as I run for the door, dodging volley after volley of shrieking, angry crows. The iron hits their bodies, sending feathers flying. In any other situation I would be enjoying this, but at this point I’m too scared that I’m not going to make it out. How are there so many of them?

And then I’m out in the cool night air and sprinting for the woods, still ducking and waving my poker. I scream with rage and hit several more of them in rapid succession.

Suddenly it all stops.

The cawing. The battering wings. The scraping talons. They just…let up. As if some unspoken communication has passed between them, the crows fly silently up and away, soaring into the treetops to the west.  

I stop running for a moment and watch them go. The sliver of moon in the sky is as sharp as a knife’s edge above me. I try to catch my breath, try to slow my pounding heart. What the hell just happened? It doesn’t make any sense. My clothes are ripped to shreds. My throbbing flesh isn’t much better. There’s a flap of skin hanging over one of my eyes. Dark, shiny blood drips from hundreds of burning scratches on my arms.

Everything hurts.

Where is Amanda? Now that the birds are gone, it’s eerily quiet out here. I stand up straighter and look around.

She’s at her car, yanking frantically on the door handle. But of course, she doesn’t have the key. Even if she had had time to run inside and get her purse, the key isn’t there. It’s in my pocket. She sees me staring at her and chokes on a sob. A helpless, hopeless sound. Music to my ears. I push my pain away and start to run in her direction. She shrieks and flees toward the road. But it’s dark outside the reach of the houselights. Halfway down the driveway, she stumbles in the gravel and goes down hard.

Over the sound of my own strained breathing, I hear her cry out. Then she groans, rolling over and clutching one knee. My feet are rasping in the gravel now. She tries to get up, but she’s too late.

I toss the poker aside, dive to my knees, and close my hands around her throat.  

                        *                      *                      *                      *                      *

One by one, the crows alight in our branches.

I am sorry, their leader says. I could not in good conscience ask them to continue; too many of us were lost.

We lower our topmost branches in gratitude. It is we who must apologize. We should not have involved you in our petty revenge.

The leader cocks his head, his dark eye searching. What will you do now?

We don’t have an answer. Not yet. Our eyes turn to where the man is strangling Amanda in front of the house. The crows swivel their heads in unison, following our gaze. The woman isn’t giving up without a fight; her body thrashes and her feet kick. Struggling for leverage, the man swings a leg over her body.

The fool. She brings one of her knees up – hard – into his groin. He cries out, lets go of her throat, and crumples to the ground. Our leaves shake with laughter.  

In an instant, she’s up and running away from him. Heading for us.

Her face is contorted with panic, her breath fast and loud. The prey response is pumping strength into her legs, and she makes it to the edge of the clearing and slips into the shadows between us.  

“Help!” she screams. Her voice rips through the cold night air. “Someone help me!”

It’s a shame she won’t find anyone to help her. She should have run toward the road.

Perhaps she can hide.     

But he is faster than she is. His boots pound over the ground with a sure familiarity, the distance between them shrinking with every second. She trips over a root, sprawling to the ground with a cry of pain.

He uses the poker this time.

A few of the crows caw with disappointment, but we watch with indifference. The metal thuds against her skull like a rock hitting damp earth. He keeps swinging long after the spark has left her body. Finally, he stops, leaning against one of us to catch his breath. He tosses the poker into the duff, leaves her mangled body where it lies, and heads back toward the house.

A cold wind slices down from the mountains, rustling our foliage into a whisper. Far from the house, an owl screeches. Amanda’s corpse lies silent, an occasional dead leaf skittering over her face.  

What a shame, the crow leader sends. He calls to the other crows and they launch themselves into the air. They move through the night in a raucous swarm, heading for a refuge closer to the mountains.

But it’s not a shame. The man has given us exactly what we need to punish him. Amanda’s lifeblood is seeping into the ground, into the roots of the aspen beside her. And blood has a primal, primordial power, a power that is now rushing like a swollen river through our system, spreading like wildfire and sparking the ancient magic within us. The earth trembles as we wake fully. Energy pulses through our fibers as if propelled by an immense, beating heart.

He’s back now, shovel in hand. He starts dragging Amanda’s body toward our center. If he’s as much a creature of habit as we think he is, everything is about to fall into place. He’ll return to where he brought Sara so many years ago. He’ll dig a pit at the foot of our parent tree, as he did so many years ago. He might even commit the same unforgivable trespass he did so many years ago, letting the blade of his shovel damage our parent tree’s roots in his carelessness.

But this time he’s not going to do it with impunity.

Our perception thrums downward, running along the network toward its source. We send tendrils through the earth, questing in the dark for Sara’s bones. We find them.

Our roots snake beneath the ragged scraps of clothing still clinging to her skeleton, around her legs, between her ribs, down her arms. We fill the cavity of her skull with our straining fibers. We surround and enclose her in our grip until her neck straightens and her disconnected jaw snaps closed. We send bark downward, clothing the naked bone in papery white. We leave bare the protruding teeth and gaping nasal pit. Above them, we cover her empty ocular sockets with dark, puckered eyes like our own. We send the blood magic into her, imbuing her with movement and energy and the will to destroy the man who once hurt us so many years ago. We pull the earth open like a curtain and send her – send ourselves – upward from our silent grave, pushing forth like a sapling extruding itself from the clammy spring soil. We squeeze the tendrils wrapped around our new hands and flex our bony fingers.  

We watch him make his way to the parent tree. He’s moving slowly, burdened by Amanda’s limp form slung over one shoulder. He holds a shovel in the other hand. The headlamp he’s wearing casts dim light before his feet.

Behind him, we weave ourselves together, making the path impassable.

*                      *                      *                      *                      *

It’s getting cold fast. I didn’t bring a coat, and I need to finish this before the ground freezes. But I’m sweating from the effort. My crunching boots and ragged breaths fill my ears. I keep trying to quiet myself, because I am painfully aware of the hidden dangers in these shadows. Every once in a while I hear something – a squeak or a chitter or the pop of a dry twig – that makes me stop in my tracks and hold my breath, but all I can make out in the thin light of my headlamp are the ghostly white aspen trees, the black gaps between them, and the intermittent fog of my breath in the air.    

Finally, I arrive.

I heave Sara – no, Amanda – onto the ground in front of the big aspen tree. Her body thuds against the forest floor. The wet mess of her fractured skull squelches in the fallen leaves. I feel a low rumbling below my feet, as if the weight of her skinny limbs has caused an earthquake. Everything around me seems to be…buzzing? The air is loud, heavy, insistent. It hurts my fucking ears.

The glare from the headlamp suddenly hurts, too. I take it off and put it on the ground. It shoots light upward into the shaking yellow leaves of the aspens. In the eerie light, their movement reminds me of the shimmering motion of the crows’ wings. I shiver in the cold and look up at the big tree, and my skin starts crawling because I’m pretty sure the black eyes peppering its trunk are watching me.

“Long time no see,” I say nervously. Like it can hear me.

I test the heft of the shovel in my hand. My whole body is aching from the run-ins with the ants and the birds, but my muscles still feel strong. The last time I was here, I was scrawny and weak. It took me forever to dig my sister’s grave at the foot of the tree. By the end of it, my arms were so tired that I kept hitting the tree’s roots by accident, which only made things worse because the impact hurt my joints. I’ve spent years doing pushups in a cell. It’ll be different this time.     

The light from the headlamp isn’t quite hitting the stretch of earth where I buried Sara. I lift the shovel, draw closer, and peer into the shadow. A shock runs through me as I realize it’s not the headlamp’s fault I can’t see anything.

There’s a big fucking hole where my sister used to be.

I stagger backward and glance around. Someone must have found her. Someone must know about her. About me. My mind races and my heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my teeth. And that goddamn buzzing noise won’t stop. I drop the shovel and cover my ears with my hands, but I can still feel the sound rumbling under my feet.

It stops. I feel the release of it, like it’s letting me go from a chokehold. I can breathe again. I uncover my ears.

A twig snaps near the big tree. My heart leaps into my throat. I scan the darkness around the pale trunk, searching for someone lurking there. I catch a small movement in my periphery, not next to the tree, but in front of it. With a start, I realize that two of the aspen’s eyes are different from the others. Closer to me. And the pale bark around them is mottled and shadowed, not smooth…

The space in front of the tree shifts, and the two eyes loom toward me. I stumble backward into the headlamp’s swath of light, my stomach roiling with fear. The eyes draw closer. Something human-shaped moves below them. When it reaches the light, I scream.

The dark, puckered eyes are set in a human skull. A neck wrapped in thin but densely-crowded tendrils —tree roots?— bobs above a bony ribcage writhing with more tendrils. The undulating shafts stretch out from between the ribs, twisting around the creature’s limbs and moving the joints of arms and legs. Moving them steadily toward me. The roots pull open the lower jaw, and the sound of dry twigs breaking spills from the yawning pit of the mouth.    

It’s wearing Sara’s dress. The pink dress she was wearing the day I killed her. The old blood stains are black now. The creature tilts its head in a way that’s vaguely familiar. Oh God, it is Sara.

I scream again and try to run, but I am rooted to the ground, my feet leaden with fear. I stumble backward. Hot urine soaks my underwear.

The creature keeps moving toward me. I can see now that the roots winding around her body are stretching up from underneath the tree. They’re propping her up and moving her like a puppet. But there’s something in her movement, something in the horrible cracking sound that’s falling from between her protruding teeth that makes me certain that it is her, that she knows who I am and what I’ve done.

I scramble to my feet and turn to run, but the aspen trees around me are closer to each other somehow. Oh my God. They’ve woven themselves together. My path is blocked in every direction but the one facing the Sara creature. Panic sends bile into my mouth. I hack and spit against the sour taste as I search desperately for a way out.

The rumbling beneath my feet starts up again. The leaves of the aspen trees shake furiously in the cold air.

The creature leans down to pick up the shovel. The bones of her fingers clack against the wood. I finally find a gap between two trees big enough for me to squeeze through, and I hurl myself into it. But the trees move as I’m trying to pass through, clamping me between them. They crush my lungs and drive the oxygen from my body. Black spots swim in front of my eyes. I gasp for breath. I kick and thrash, trying to free myself.

Only a few feet away from me now, the Sara creature stops and watches me struggle. There’s no expression on her face. How could there be? She’s all bark and bone and soulless black eyes. But I can feel her anger.

The roots writhe around her, twisting her body and arm and sending the shovel sharply upward.

I’m going to die. Terror shoots through my limbs like lightning. I fight harder against the vise grip of the trees. “Sara! No! Please don’t!” My oxygen-deprived lungs can manage no more than a whisper.

She doesn’t listen. I shut my eyes as the shovel slices downward.    

                        *                      *                      *                      *                      *

Satisfaction spreads through us like rainwater, dousing the excitement that had set our roots rumbling and our leaves quaking. We become still. We release ourselves and return to our former positions, letting the man’s bloody form slump to the ground. We convey Sara’s bones back to her grave and unwind ourselves from her. We leave her uncovered, so they can find her when they find the others. It won’t take long for a search party to arrive. Amanda, at least, has people who care for her.

In the meantime, we send a signal to the nearby creatures of earth and air. They will be thankful for the feast we have set for them. It doesn’t matter if the bodies are damaged when the search party comes. They were doomed to deteriorate anyway, long before we do. In the meantime, we stand and keep our ceaseless watch.      

We sigh together, the joy of our success thrumming from our leaves to our roots.

Kindred, it is done.  

THE END

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