Colin Winnette - Haints Stay

The trees grew dense until the stars were gone and there was nothing around him except the sounds of the cart and of his being dragged.

They were headed downhill; the boy could feel the pull of gravity, their slight increase in speed, and the ache in his gut as his weight pressed down upon it.

“We’re home,” said the face, and a stone was slid open to reveal a kind of darkness that has never seen light. It was textured, thick, and pulsing. The boy lifted his arms to swing out at any approaching sounds, but nothing came. He attempted to curl up again but the pain was more than he could bear. He curled his hands into fists and imagined two stones. He pictured a rock breaking into the face, and then the face and its body collapsing there and still forever. He pictured his own body rising up and carrying itself back out into the night.

It was days before they found a town. Uneventful days, filled with bitterness and loaded silence between them. The town was standard. Sugar and Brooke found a bar and found it empty of patrons.

“We’re not heavy drinkers,” explained the bartender.

“What do you do?” asked Sugar.

“We’re religious,” said the bartender, “mostly. And we like games. Or most of us do. Every town has a few folks who keep to themselves.”

“What’s that mean, you like games?”

“It’s just something most of us can agree on.”

“What kind of games?”

“Can we have two house wines?” said Brooke.

The glasses were set before them and filled. Then the bartender explained, “Stick and ball games, some. Cards. We’re active.” He held out his forearm to display his vascular build, as well as the scarring that ran from elbow to wrist. “I’m a slider,” he said. “I know it’s not good for me, but I get excited. I can’t help myself.” He drew a stool from behind the bar and set his foot upon it. He cuffed his trousers to mid-calf and displayed the swollen ankle of his right leg. It was purple and white, like a drowned man’s.

“That was a misstep that I fell into,” he explained. “Hard.”

“A committed player,” said Brooke. He raised his glass, first to the bartender and then to his brother. Sugar did not raise his glass, but turned back to the bartender and asked the name of the particular game that had cost him his ankle.

“I’ll be back in fighting shape soon enough,” said the bartender.

Brooke drank, elbowed his brother, but Sugar kept his eyes on the bartender.

“Do you rent rooms?”

The bartender shook his head and pointed across the road.

“That’s there,” he said.

A building opposite the bar held roughly the same shape, though the porch sagged slightly and the windows were dirty beyond being able to see into.

“How’s a place like yours stay open if no one in your town drinks?” said Brooke.

“Travelers, mainly,” he said. “And it’s not no one, but most.”

Brooke finished his drink and Sugar slid his full glass toward the opposite edge of the bar.

“Won’t be needing it,” said Sugar.

“You’re sure?” said the bartender.

Sugar nodded. “Consider us one of yours,” he said. “We’ll be here a bit and I’d like to try on the life of an insider.”

The bartender chuffed, took up the wine glass, and tilted its edge toward Brooke. Brooke waved his hand and rose from the stool beneath him.

“Excuse him,” he said, patting Sugar on the shoulder. “Without a proper bed, he gets strange and over-serious. Why don’t you hold onto that drink. We’ll head across the way and secure a room, then settle up once we’ve finished our first round.”

“Of course,” said the bartender.

In the street, Brooke stopped Sugar with a slug to the gut. Bent over, Sugar looked plaintively to his brother and shocked Brooke with the sudden desperation in his eye. He collapsed to his knees, then onto his side in the dirt. Brooke hovered over him.

“What’s got into you?” said Brooke. “And where’s my brother?”

Sugar watched the townsfolk leave their porches and enter their homes. They could smell a fight, and the two strangers were more than likely armed.

“What aren’t you telling me?” said Brooke. He loosed a kick into the middle of Sugar’s back, which was curved and exposed from his position. Sugar bent backward and set one hand to protect his spine while the other stayed at his gut, holding it dearly.

“We can keep going on like this,” said Brooke, “in front of the clouds and everyone. I can pound you all day and you know it. You’ve never set against me in two lifetimes and come out on top and that’s just the facts of the situation. Either you tell me what’s gotten into you or I break you open a bit and see if it doesn’t come sliding out.”

“I’m carrying something,” said Sugar.

“Go on.” Brooke tapped his heel in the dirt to loose a clump of wet grass, the last bit of the woods still clinging to them.

“I was told I’ve got something inside me,” said Sugar.

Brooke nodded.

“We can get it out,” he said.

“I was told not to get it out,” said Sugar. “I was told explicitly not to.” He was not looking at his brother. He was staring down the lane to where the rowed storefronts and home fronts angled toward one another and vanished into the light. “It felt like a warning.”

“We’ll get it out,” said Brooke. “Everything will be as it always has been. Now get up.”

Slowly, Sugar lifted himself, his eyes still locked on the horizon.

Brooke bent to help Sugar and Sugar leaned into the hands that found purchase at the moist pits of each arm.

“You’ll be okay,” said Brooke. “I’ve got you.”

Bird woke when his wing broke. It had been a steady fall, a straight for the canyons dive, and only some faint part of him knew that it wasn’t real, that he would wake and be free of the panic that was riding him, rushing his breath and heartbeat and making him sweat. But then the pain in his wing shot through him and he was in complete darkness again. The daylight and the vast horizons and the deep canyons carved by a steady stream of blue water and all the lush trees, it all vanished and he could see nothing. Only darkness. He could only hear the soft sound of something tearing, and could feel on some basic level that it was the skin of his right forearm. Something sharp was drawing a shallow cut and working the skin loose, and he was tied and broken and without recourse.

He screamed. Nothing about the situation changed. He pleaded into the darkness and the same held true. He swung his left arm and struggled with his right, which seemed pinned or fastened in place and would not budge. His flailing left arm found no company.

What was happening to him continued to happen until he was out of tears and collapsing back into a dream of sawdust and pine needles and wolves gathering at the trunks of each and every tree.

The keeper of the inn was an old maid of the tobacco chewing kind. She spit what she could into a brass pot near the ledger, and the rest hung at her chin between a stray hair and a scar, thick and marbled like lard.

“I’m Brooke,” said Brooke, “and this is Sugar.”

“Twice the fee for two,” she said.

“Same as two rooms?” said Brooke.

“Same,” she said.

“That doesn’t seem exactly fair,” said Brooke.

“Maybe it isn’t,” she said. She was even in pitch and unmoving, perched on a stool behind the counter and shifting only to bring the brass pot a few inches from her lip and let loose what was filling the basin of her mouth.

“I’ll be straight with you,” said Brooke, “and tell you that we were hoping we might be able to owe you some work or a favor of some kind, in exchange for a room. We’ve been in the woods for weeks now.”