Кристиан Новак - Dark Mother Earth

“Did they stab her?” I asked so softly that probably nobody heard.

“She had a stroke. A palsy come over her. It’s like a stab to the head. We’ll all go visit her tomorrow, after the plows clear away the snow that falls tonight. There’ll be more than three feet by morning if this keeps up.”

Through the window I could see Bacawk and Chickichee perched on the fence like huge birds, waiting for nightfall. I was sure I’d go that night to the forest to find Dad, even if I never returned. If I didn’t, by next Sunday, or maybe even the next day, they’d all be dead.

When snow falls, I knew even at the age of five, everything gets quieter. Sound doesn’t travel well through the flakes, and those take their time, preferring to breathe in the silence, wondering whether it’ll be cold enough for them to survive another few days before the afternoon sun finally nudges them down into the darkness of the earth. Still, through the quiet, I could hear myself being summoned to the forest.

Mom had put a large flowerpot on my windowsill, and there was no way I’d be able to lift it. That night I waited for my mom and sister to get ready for bed, and then went to the bathroom even though I didn’t need to. I had to get my boots from the front hall. Mom was sitting on her bed, reading an old issue of Neue Post , which reported on what the members of the European royal families were doing and where they went skiing.

“Not asleep yet? It’s late, you’ll have trouble getting up tomorrow,” she remarked when she saw my shadow in the hallway. I went in to her. If only I could tell her what was really the matter with Granny! And that I might never come home again.

“Had to pee. Mom, I’ve got to tell you something.”

She put down the magazine and lifted the covers, and I crawled under.

“I know I’m strange. I figure this won’t make a whole lotta sense, but I’ve seen some things.”

“Well, well, my boy sure is talking like a grown-up,” she said to herself. “You’re right, I can’t know what you’ve seen. I just want you to be healthy and happy. I can see you’re scared of something and you don’t dare tell me what.”

I wanted to say I’d already told her several times what was wrong, but she hadn’t liked what I’d said. I had half a mind to ask her if she wanted them to take me away. I was angry she didn’t answer my real question, though I hadn’t actually asked it.

“You don’t hate me? You don’t think I’m a… monster? I know I ain’t like the other kids—”

“Look,” she interrupted me, “you’re all I care about, not the other kids. You be just as you are, but as healthy and happy as you can be. Promise me that.”

I wriggled out from under the covers and told her, from the doorway, doing my level best to keep my voice steady: “Don’t worry now, everything will be fine.”

I faked peeing, flushed, and called out, “G’night” once more from the hallway. After that I went calmly to the front door and unlocked it, and took my jacket and boots back to my room. My corduroys and warm shirt with long sleeves were, luckily, on the floor. I wrapped an undershirt around my ears. I’d seen Bedouins on TV do that.

After Mom’s light went out, in total darkness I took off my pajamas, slow and quiet, got dressed, pulled my boots on, and retied the shirt around my head to cover that top part of my ears that always felt the cold worst. After each step in the dark, I stopped and froze like a statue. I heard Mom breathing deeply and synchronized my steps to her breathing, opened the front door, and walked outside.

There was no moonlight like there’d been that night at the river. I stood for a time on the steps by the front door, and when I could see beyond the tip of my nose and the falling snowflakes, I set out. I needed to cross the street to the intersection where the chapel stood, and then go straight past the graveyard along the bumpy old road through the fields toward the hills. My sister and I had walked along this path a few times on our way to gather chestnuts. It had seemed to take us forever to reach the forest, and I remember my feet hurt. Now my feet were light, and I knew no pain would stop me. Before I passed the chapel and crossed the intersection, I heard a car coming down the main road, so I crouched by a neighbor’s fence. Past the graveyard I could see farther than before, but still no more than a few feet ahead. The perfect silence was interrupted: “My, my, where’re you off to?”

Chickichee. I turned and strode toward the voice. I couldn’t see them, but they seemed to be standing by the graveyard entrance. I could still picture what they’d done to Natz, and my breathing quickened, but it never occurred to me to run away. They’d catch me before I reached the nearest house. That’s why I said, “If’n you mean to do like you done today to Natz, do it now. I’m on my way to the forest.”

The two shadows didn’t move, nor did they make a sound.

“I am off to fetch my dad from the will-o’-the-wisp folk, and when we come back, better that you two are gone. He’ll beat you straight into the dark mother earth.”

Having said that, I turned my back to them and set off. I braced for something to hit me on the head, and then everything would go black and I’d sleep forever. They’d find me in the morning lying in the middle of a big dark splat in the snow near the graveyard, with no face, all my flesh ripped off to the bone. But all I could hear was the squelching of their steps behind mine.

I knew I was headed generally in the right direction because my right foot sank deeper into the snow than my left foot, which meant I was walking on the very edge of the road. Once in a while I’d look back at the village and see lights on in a few houses, a good bit away. The streetlights, I remember, went out in winter while I was still up, around ten.

Cold has a smell, a particular one, like something burning. I wondered how I’d be able to keep going, because I could see almost nothing by then. Soon enough came the answer. From afar I began hearing shrieks, long, painful shrieks, the kind people make when they’re falling from a very high place. I soon saw the first lights flicker on the edge of the forest. For the next while I no longer heard Bacawk and Chickichee behind me. By that point the thought of returning home had vanished from my mind. I was less frightened of what I’d see in the forest, where they were surely awaiting me, than of going back.

My uncle once told me that if I was afraid of something, it was a good idea to count it out or measure it. Like counting out the seconds between a lightning flash and the clap of thunder. The only thing I could count now were my steps and breaths. The rest belonged to the dark. The moisture in my nose and lungs was thick, my feet squeaked and wobbled, I no longer felt anything below the knee. I began feeling very tired, my eyes teared up with the cold, my tears stuck to my lashes like colorful soap bubbles. After a long blink I could no longer see flickering lights, only the dark shadows of the trees. Among them there was nothing but a foreboding sense that somebody was waiting for me in there. I reached the first tree and stopped for a spell, glanced behind me once, and pressed on. I continued over the uneven ground, guessing at the angle of the slope, which meant I was going uphill. I stopped and looked up. There were fewer flakes now, but the wind was picking up. My head felt heavy because my shoulders were in knots, and my legs felt like glass, about to shatter any minute now under my weight. The sky was only slightly lighter than the bare treetops. Those weren’t branches, they were cracks in the sky.

I yelled, called to him so many times, but nothing. No echo, no answer. Then, finally, something inside me shifted. I looked up at the sky, into the abyss, actually, maybe darker even than the ground. Once you’ve gazed into the abyss, you carry it inside you for the rest of your life. I peered back into the forest, where the lights of the will-o’-the-wisp folk I was sure I’d seen earlier had now vanished, and that glimpse of darkness and nothingness, so much worse than anything else they could have shown me, took root deep inside, nestled into the back of my mind like a rat. I turned, trying to see where I’d come from, but from the first nest skittered out a few smaller rats who made new nests of their own, one in my heart, one in my belly, one in each of my knees. There was no way to fend them off. These ratlike things live inside me to this day.