Scott Nicholson - Forever never ends

"Locked, huh? And I reckon you got the keys, Mister Big Britches?" Chester let his few teeth catch the moon in what he hoped was a crazed grimace. He pointed the shotgun at Emerland to complete the lunatic image. He was pleased to see Emerland gulp frantically.

"You can't do this. Why, this is… it's against the law."

Chester cackled. He’d discovered that pretending to be insane wasn't much of a character stretch. "There's a new law in town, stranger. And it ain't wrote by the likes of us. Now, get on to the house."

He let the barrel of the gun flash under the moonlight for emphasis. DeWalt held his arm out like a doorman, indicating that Emerland should go first.

"Lead on, MacDuff," DeWalt said.

"Who the hell?" Chester asked.

"I'll tell you about it someday, after this is all over.”

But as they walked under the seemingly endless night sky, Chester wondered if it would ever be over.

Driving yourself crazy.

What else could you call it when your car almost seemed to steer itself, when the road beneath the wheels was predetermined, when God’s skyhook towed you toward an unknown destination?

No. Tamara wasn’t heading toward craziness. She was either already there or miles from it, saner now than she had ever been. The green light on the ridge above her grew stronger as she approached, and though the curving dirt road often took the glow out of her sight, the electric throb in her head was constant, more intense with each heartbeat.

She’d slammed some breezy, take-it-easy Jackson Browne into the tape deck, as if mindless melancholy were the proper soundtrack for this unwanted mission. As she ascended, and the road grew more rough and rutted, the forest had taken on a dark look, the canopy hiding quick shadows. The houses had grown sparser along the way, here and there tucked in little glens, gray outbuildings warped with age amid pastures worn low by diseased-looking cattle.

Tamara downshifted and cut around a particularly steep curve, and for a moment the world fell away at the shoulder of the road, and she could see Windshake below, brick and wood blocks with some sunset lights already on, the uneven highway leading away from town like a black river. Jackson sang something about not being confronted with his failures, as if the mirror didn’t do that to every human being on earth. Then she was between the trees again, and the creeping insistent voice tickled the top of her spine.

Shu-shaaa tah-mah-raaa.

The Gloomies were around, floating, seeping, flowing. If she couldn't come to them, they would come to her, or perhaps they would collide with each other. She hadn’t dreamed this part. Or maybe this was a waking dream, one where her own life was the centerpiece, not her father’s or her children’s. This was the forest of night, the oaks surreal and the pines undulating their branches, the tint of the leaves slightly off-kilter, as if viewed through a smudged kaleidoscope.

She took another curve, skidding on the moist stones where a ditch leaked spring water across the sodden road. The tires spun and caught, but as she straightened the wheel to head deeper up the cut of the mountain, the bank on the far side gave way and a gnarled giant oak fell toward the Toyota.

She swerved, but the thick branches batted the side of the car in falling, cracking the windshield. The weight of the tree nudged the Toyota into the ditch, bottoming out the car and leaving the left front wheel hanging suspended. She shifted into four-wheel drive, but the mud, the tangled grip of the tree branches, and the grounded oil pan kept the Toyota from doing anything more than quivering in place.

After a minute of revving the engine, Tamara tried to open her door. It was pinned by a splintered branch as thick as her arm, its new leaves pressed against the glass in greasy smears. Up close, the leaves looked as if they had turgid blue veins, like the varicose veins of an old person.

She crawled across the seat to the passenger door, opened it, and wriggled out. She stood and looked at the oak, with its gray bark and dark knotholes that seemed to be watchful eyes. The exposed roots, thrust up from the soil, undulated like white worms.

No. The tree isn’t alive, not in THAT sense of the word.

She looked past the fallen oak to the forest beyond, which was pocked here and there with granite outcroppings. Other trees lay fallen or bent, almost in a line up the slope. The destruction led in the direction of the glow, and she could see a faint shimmering between the stick figures of the trees.

Tamara sensed a change in the atmosphere, as if a storm was approaching, but the clouds of sunset were thin and red. The thing, the source, the shu-shaaa, had brought her here, and now she was alone. Now the tide had turned, giving the advantage to whatever strange force haunted the ridge top. The air was electric with it, and the March wind carried its taint.

She should have gone home. Robert would be sitting at the kitchen table with milk and cookies for himself and the kids, frowning as he watched the hands spin on their wooden owl clock. Then his face would become a rictus of anger as the Six O’clock News came and went on the television. Then he'd put on a mask of studied calm while at the same time trying to reassure the kids by telling them their mother was probably out picking up pizzas. Even though it wasn't like her to just take off without leaving a message and refusing to carry her cell phone.

She looked around at the forest shadows that grew long like sharp arms. Small animals chittered in the tangled boughs and tree limbs creaked in brittle agony. Red buds and bright green sprigs fought toward the sinking sun in painful birth. Trees screamed into the sky as if burning alive. Even the loamy soil cried from the harsh clutch of roots.

The MOUNTAIN is not talking to ME.

Tamara clasped her hands over her ears as if to block out the unwelcome call of the wild. But the sound was already inside, circling the globe of her brain, spinning its fibrous web in her psyche. She leaned against the Toyota, bright sparks streaking behind her closed eyes. The Gloomies had joined in harmony with the forest’s raging chorus.

She fell to her knees on the weedy roadside. Among the clatter of bonelike wood and harping briar and babbling brook and frenzied fern, she didn't hear the footsteps kicking leaves as they neared. But she didn't need to hear, because she felt.

She looked up to see a teenager standing over her. He had dark hair and a Bulls jacket and a wide jaw, a typical teenager who happened to walk out of nowhere-normal, everyday, out-of-the-ordinary-his flesh swollen and moist. Menace flashed in his eyes, which glittered deep and green and empty. Tenderness flashed in his blissful smile, showing petrified teeth. And now he groped her with mental hands.

Because he was one of the Gloomies, part of whatever had been niggling at her mind like a loose jumper-wire. And she was inside his mind now, only his mind was pulp and mush, a fruity tree made paper. A name, yes, " shu-shaaa " was his name, and it was also "Wade." But that made no sense. Then again, nothing did at the moment. No sense, only a sensing.

And she was pounded with the impression that she'd better fall beyond his reach, because he wanted to make an offer. An offering. Of her.

Then his hand was on her shoulder, pulling at the fabric of her blouse, loosening her bra strap and exposing her shoulder to the fading sunlight. He pulled her close, his breath like a dead mist rising over the wooden corpses of a windfall. And in his touch, she felt the parent behind him and inside him. She felt its hunger, its instinct, its will to possess.

She saw the vision it carried in its hot seed of a heart: the great shu-shaaa reunited, the bright pinwheel of galaxies folding back upon itself, the nebulous clouds of space being summoned home, matter consumed and excreted as dark matter, the universe swallowing its own tail.