The assignment felt designed to break Matthew. Professor Oslow Andrews was new to the Folklore and Mythology department this year. So even though old Dr. Murphy’s approach was always to send his first-year master’s students off to the library to collect songs from across America that showed “the nation’s great musical texture,” the tone-deaf Andrews had a much more involved approach this year.
Every student in 301: American Hauntings Today and Yesterday had a new mission this fall semester. Go home for two weeks and dig up every possible ghost story, from yesterday all the way back to the start of the nation. Even further if possible.
The way Andrews bounced around at his lectern, Matt thought it would topple over as he beamed at his students, ranting about the importance of human interaction in their work and that scary stories can often reveal the most about people. Matt twisted my dad’s ring about his right middle finger as he went, feeling it start to rub his finger raw.
Andrews’s book, Haunts Across America, covered exactly that, he claimed. It was how he’d achieved moderate stardom as a folklorist, done a fairly successful book tour that ended on GMA, and presumably led to his expected appointment as the department chair, replacing the soon retiring Dr. Murphy.
Everyone loved Angus Murphy. Now they claimed he already had one foot out of his office and the other planted in the fishing boat he planned to take out on one Great Lake after another to find the great American fishing tale. That left the rest of the students stuck with Andrews, or as everyone called him, Mr. Gigawatt Smile.
Matt knocked hard on Dr. Murphy’s office door, perhaps harder than intended. “Enter, Matthew.”
He swung the door open, careful so as to avoid disturbing his professor’s piles of books and papers stacked on all visible flat surfaces.
“How’d you know it was me?”
“Three sharp raps. Your signature. And…” Dr. Murphy held a pen to his forehead for dramatic effect as he closed his eyes. “You have a complaint about Professor Andrews.”
“Well yes, but—”
“I’m not done, young man. You don’t…want to do his ghost stories assignment in his ghost stories class, the one that was on the syllabus from the first week, and that I told you would cause you discomfort.”
Matt slipped a few books from the seat of a deflated old leather chair and slumped down into it. He felt worn out, and it was only October. Between searching for next year’s Summer internship, coursework, and Andrews, he was busy enough without a trip home. “So, I didn’t listen and now I’m stuck. What else is new?”
Dr. Murphy gave him a sympathetic smile.
“You can handle this. How many stories are out there?”
Matt nodded, remembering Murphy’s speech when Matt had come to visit the school in the center of rural Upstate New York. As Matt said it back to him, he glanced out the office’s grimy office window, spotting a deer walking among a thin copse of trees. Extra shadows seemed to fall on its path.
“Endless stories are waiting for discovery, oral traditions that date back further than you’d expect. Humanity was born to tell stories.”
“You can handle going home. You’ve done it before,” Murphy said, eyes flitting back down to the paper he was grading when Matt had entered.
“But what if my family is…”
Matt couldn’t even bear to finish the thought.
Dr. Murphy set the pen down, his folklorist’s sympathetic ear catching the strain in Matt’s throat. He looked up into Matt’s eyes again.
“A town is more than one family, more than one tragedy. Go home, and keep your eyes open. There are endless stories, no matter the size of the town. In fact, I’ve often found that the smaller towns have the richest stories to tell. So don’t worry. If all else fails, look to the haunted houses. As I recall, Hyde Falls has quite the rich history of poltergeist-like spirits. Ask old Pete. He might seem a bit goofy, but he still knows a good story, and a good student, when he sees one.”
He winked at Matt over his bristly mustache.
Matt sighed, nodded, and headed off to pack up his car for a trek he was dreading, heading back towards ghosts of his own.
He drove the two hours that night in relative silence. He’d attempted an audiobook at first, then a few podcasts, but nothing felt right. Other students had to fly home, some traveling as far as five states over. His trip was harrowing in a different fashion.
As he crossed into Fisherman County, driving up the long, winding Route 81, the wind picked up and the downpour began. He inched his way along, buffeted one way then the other. He stayed in the lane by focusing as much on the meandering Skyler River beside him as he did the painted lines.
He passed through the fog banks that always stood as ethereal gatekeepers on the South edge of town. And before long he’d pulled into a parking spot in the center of dead, old Main Street. A block behind him was the town’s only stoplight, flashing red in all directions against the pitch-black night. It blanketed the low storefronts and second story apartments in a pale red glow, as if the buildings lit up in a silent, ever-present nighttime vigil, alive then dead, alive then dead.
He turned the car off (his little red sedan) and let go of the wheel, letting out a deep breath. He tried not to breathe in too deep. The car’s previous owner had smoked. And even after multiple steam cleanings, leaving the windows open for weeks, then a dozen air fresheners, the cigarette smell sometimes reasserted itself. He closed his eyes and leaned back in the seat.
He let out a great sigh that seemed to suck the air out of him, all the way down to his toes.
As he did, the wind died down and the rain stopped, as if Hyde Falls was finding a respite from the noise.
He opened his eyes again, looking down the center of Main Street, the town’s hub that led down at a gentle slope past the remaining storefronts, the few government buildings, the library with the flagpole out front, before reaching the bridge that carried it over the river.
Matt’s eyes took a second to focus, to realize what he was seeing. A figure stepped out from behind the bare flagpole. It stood in the center of the street, tall and proud. And Matt was certain it was looking straight at him. A Neanderthalic chill gripped the center of his spine and slid up and down his body.
“Run,” it screamed.
He was inclined to listen, sitting bolt upright in his seat with his hands tight on the wheel again.
The street was dead, empty, and he didn’t want to be next.
The figure took two steps forward, barely touched by the flashing stoplight. Coming closer. Matt spun his dad’s ring around his finger.
Then the figure turned.
And Matt saw its antlers, its four legs.
It was just a deer.
He let out a deeper sigh, and it became a laugh. It felt good to hear the noise, even if it was his own laughter, to hear life in the utter, sinking blackness. The deer kept turning, then took its time meandering down a side street toward the lake. In a few seconds it was gone.
Matt lugged his suitcase up into the apartment over Tony’s Pizza. Tony, who he’d taken karate classes with as a middle and high schooler, was the father of his friend Hazel. Hazel said he could stay at her family’s house, or her place, since Matt’s parents were gone and the house was too. But he’d asked to rent one of their apartments for the two weeks, saying he didn’t want to impose. Truly, he wanted a space to himself in case the town felt claustrophobic. Somehow, a one-bedroom apartment felt like he could at least pretend it offered an escape, a respite from the rest of town.
Either way, it gave him a good home base and a nice central location to travel around. After the drive and that unexpected visitor in the street, he collapsed into the twin bed around two a.m., stayed awake long enough to send Hazel a brief “made it” text, and fell instantly asleep.
He was walking in the woods on a bright sunny summer morning. He’d come here before, but it also felt unfamiliar. An unknown set of recognizable trees. He passed between them, the trunks growing closer and closer together, until he didn’t think he could slip past them anymore. But then he emerged into an area cleared of all trees. A clearing where two modest rows of buildings formed a small village in the woods.
In front of one low building was a group of people. Women. They all wore white and had light, flowing hair that billowed down toward their waists then seemed to lift back up and float away into nothingness. They were all dancing together. He couldn’t see any of their faces. But he could hear them laughing, gaily bouncing on bare feet. Before he could explore further, vines lashed down from the surrounding trees and grabbed him. One vine wrapped around his limbs, lifting him off the ground as another vine coiled around his neck. He could barely breathe.
In the center of the wooded town was a figure standing facing away. He thought it was a woman. Maybe someone he knew, but he couldn’t see the face. He strained against the vines, needing to know who it was.
Suddenly he was flat on his back in the grass. The vines were gone. Above him was a hanged man, body burning.
A woman lunged at him. Teeth gleaming in the light as she laughed. His mother, hands raised and ready to strike.
“I’ll be good,” Matt mumbled as he stirred.
Matt awoke with a start to his alarm.
He was still in his clothes, with no sense of where he was or what time it was. Only a sinking knot of tension in his stomach.
That dream again.
A quick glance at the windows, between wide open curtains, told him it was a bright, sunny morning.
The shower was freezing, after a split second of lukewarm. It woke him up enough to get dressed and walk downstairs. Tony was just on his way in, opening up for the day. “Hey, kid,” he said with a smirk as he swept around the counter.
He set the broom aside long enough to give Matt a quick man hug and look him over. Then he threw a right upper punch at the side of Matt’s head. Matt blocked it fast with his left, instinct taking over.
“Still got it. Nice. Class hasn’t been the same without you,” he said.
Matt nodded. “I miss it. Maybe after school lets out. Got to see where I have my internship.”
Tony smiled at that.
“Good. And by the way, while you’re here? Don’t let Hazel talk you into any trouble, you hear me? She’s got a good heart, but she tries too hard sometimes. Maybe you can help her relax, huh?”
Matt started heading toward the door.
“I’ll try. But when have I ever been able to talk her out of anything?”
Tony shook his head with a smile, like he’d just heard a story for the millionth time, but one that he always loved to hear, nonetheless. He started his morning chores of sweeping and straightening the tables.
Matt walked a block up to the Hyde Falls Diner. He was headed there to see a friend, to eat, but also to catch up with the town’s resident ghost story historian.
He dropped into a seat at the end of the countertop, within the diminutive twenty-seat diner, and waited. Within seconds, the door opened with the jingle of its bell, and Hazel had arrived. She wore a stylish fall jacket and jeans, with her hair already tied up and ready for the classroom.
They hugged, then slumped into their seats, both facing the mirrored wall behind the counter. It felt comfortably familiar, sipping their coffee like they used to drink hot chocolates.
“I feel like death,” Matt said. “Slept horribly.”
She nodded.
“You look like it. Told you those beds aren’t worth shit. You should have stayed with me,” she said.
“On your couch that’s basically one big lump at this point. Besides, not sure Roger would love me crashing there for a couple of weeks.”
She gave him a bit of a side eye.
“Roger wouldn’t say anything, because he knows how I feel about old friends. About lifelong, endless bonds.”
Now Matt gave her a bit of side eye.
“We go all the way back, don’t we? Practically to where our lives began.”
“Pretty much,” Matt said.
“Insulting the couch though? That’s where I draw the line, bud. Sorry, no couch time for you.”
“Oh no, how will I survive without it,” Matt said. “Seriously though, I appreciate the offer. But I think I need a little space to figure this out, in case I open old wounds or something.”
She patted his shoulder. “I hear you. But you know where to find me if you do need some company.” She downed the rest of her drink and stood, tossing a few dollars on the counter. “It’s good to see you back around here. It’s still your home. After you’ve dug up some ghosts, can we grab dinner tomorrow? Maybe Oscar’s?”
“Not like there are many other options,” Matt said.
Matt stood and hugged her. It was comforting to hear. Even if he wasn’t sure this would ever feel like home again.
“Gotta go show these second graders who’s boss,” she said. “Did I tell you one bit me the other day? They’re wild animals sometimes. Insanity.”
“Don’t forget your rabies shots,” he called after her as she left.
He was halfway through his second mug of coffee and just starting to dig into his strawberry waffles with a side of bacon and overly buttered toast, when the door opened again. Right on cue, Peter Baker strode in wearing a revolutionary era outfit and trailing a gust of cigarette smoke that filled the diner.
He spotted Matt instantly, and took the seat Hazel had recently occupied. He removed his tri-corner hat as he sat. He adjusted his bright blue founding fathers-esque uniform as Dora behind the counter set a ready mug of coffee and a plate of sausage, biscuits, and gravy in front of him.
“Bless you, Dora,” he said, nodding at her. Then to Matt, “Hey kid.”
Matt had noticed in the last few years that more and more adults in town addressed him that way, as if losing his parents meant the town had collectively adopted him. They all wanted to look out for him. He didn’t hate it, but it did give the town a surreal feeling sometimes, like it was a hive mind out of a movie or something. Everyone knew most people here, and most peoples’ dirty laundry. It was kind of what he was counting on for this project. If he had to do it, he’d much rather use someone else’s stories.
“So… the prodigal son returns.”
“Not quite,” Matt said, smiling at the newcomer. “But I do have a question for you, if you’ve got a minute.” Matt pulled out his notepad, resting it and a pen on the counter between them. “Fire away, my boy. I knew you’d come back from training under Mad Dog Murphy with plenty of questions,” he said.
“Mad Dog?”
“Ask him. He’ll curse me, but he’ll tell you the story. But for now, let’s get into it,” Peter said, already digging into his messy plate with an impressive level of dexterity. “Only have an hour before my first tour group.”
“Right, thanks. It’s about the tours, actually. Which ghost stories would you say are the most… historically impactful to the town? Like which ones really stand out to you. It’s for a class assignment and—”
“All of them,” he said through an abnormally large bite of biscuit. “Come on the tour again and we’ll go through them, door to door. Exploring Hyde Falls history first-hand.” Matt lowered his voice a bit, leaning in closer to him.
“I did that last time, right? And I did some digging when I wrote my entrance exam for the program. To be honest, I couldn’t find records of half those stories in the historical society’s archives.”
“That’s because they’re folk tales,” Peter said casually, but still eyeing the one couple of other patrons eating near the entrance, in case they overheard.
“And none of the names you give match up with the people who owned those hou—”
“Here, let me help you,” Peter announced loudly to the diner as he dropped his fork onto his plate. He snatched up Matt’s pen and pad. “I’ll give you the best Hyde Falls has to offer. True folk tales of restless spirits. Just remember to cite me in your bibliography.”
He chuckled a bit too hard. Then he leaned in close, as he jotted down three names and addresses.
“And keep any of that other nonsense to yourself, got it? Trying to entertain the tourists and keep the town alive. So what if I add a bit of flair here and there, right? It’s the lore part of folklore. Or the folk. Either way.”
“Got it,” Matt said, reading his notes.
“These should give you something new. Alright?”
“Thanks. Have a good tour.”
Matt paid the bill and headed out. In the squared off green with a few dilapidated wooden benches known as Sutton Park, he pulled out a Ghost Tours of Hyde Falls brochure and compared it to the list Peter had written for him. None of the addresses matched. All the same, he decided to start by visiting the address furthest from the tour route first.
Gaines Manor, the stately home of Gladys Gaines, was in great shape. Three stories of white on white, stacked into a squared off structure that felt too tall. Almost like a miniature hotel. Perhaps too nice looking to fit Peter’s needs. He liked them imposing like this, but also wanted them shabby, with just enough disrepair to provide an air of the unknown interfering.
Matt parked a few houses down and walked up the uneven sidewalk toward the manor. As he came upon a tree, he saw a figure in the Gaines yard.
It was Matt’s mother.
She stood perfectly still in a straight white dress, hands clasped at her waist, skin a stark reddish brown that shone in the fall sunshine, with red and orange leaves on the tree behind her. Her curly, almost-black hair hung down about her ears, crowned by a flower garland.
She smiled at him with sadness in her heart. And he felt his heart pounding. He passed the tree, reaching for his dad’s ring.
She was gone.
He froze for a moment, there on the quiet sidewalk. The only movement came from a gentle breeze blowing the leaves about the trees.
But his heart still pounded.
Then he shook the feeling out of himself, took a few deep breaths, and continued forward. She wasn’t there. Not the real her. Just as she was never real in his dreams. And yet, it was the closest he could get to her now.
He entered a low wooden gate and started up a paved walk that divided the home’s square front yard, his eyes drawn to the large picture window on the second floor. For a moment he thought he saw a shadow slip past the corner of the house and into the backyard. He couldn’t tell if it had two legs or four. But he was already tired and shaken, so he did his best to let it go.
He knocked with the door’s massive bronze lion-shaped knocker. A middle-aged woman answered almost immediately. Spotting Matt’s notepad, she started to close the door. “Thanks, but we don’t want any.”
“Oh, I’m actually here for a grad school research project,” he said. “I wanted to ask about any ghost stories you might have?”
She rolled her eyes.
“Peter sent me?”
She left the door hanging open, as she yelled back into the house.
“Jerry!”
A few seconds later, a man came bounding down the circular staircase like a Saint Bernard, wearing a sweater vest and a bowtie.
“Jerry?” Matt asked.
Jerry nodded with great vigor, as if he was chained up and Matt was his first playmate in years.
“You might have a deer headed out back by the way, but I came here to ask about ghosts or any unusual stories associated with the house.”
“A cervid, eh?” He beamed at Matt. “Haven’t seen their like on the street in months. But I’d hate to scare it off. Great Aunt Gladys was such a fan. She’d feed them berries from her hand in the backyard, and eventually they’d become good friends. Some might say her only real friends. Let me show you. Come on in.”
He led Matt inside, and under the gaudy front hall chandelier he’d seen through the window. They passed down a narrow hall, and into a room that soon had Matt thinking it was the dead of night in the eighteen hundreds.
Floor to ceiling, it was draped in red velvet curtains that must have blocked enormous windows. It was a library, filled with books that appeared to date back centuries. They rose around the two men in nearly endless shelves. In the center of the room were a pair of wing-backed velvet chairs and a side table. But, of greatest note in the room, was a painting that stood ten feet tall on one wall, a matronly older woman in a black dress, hands clasped before her. “Great Aunt Gladys herself,” Jerry proclaimed. “The first owner of the house.”
“Big reader, was she?”
Jerry chuckled. “Like you wouldn’t believe. And it’s a tight space, I know. I think she preferred it that way. The painting really adds to it. We keep it this way because it’s how she kept it.”
“You keep it that way,” his wife called out again from somewhere deeper in the house. Jerry shrugged at Matt, smiling.
The room was tall, but felt oddly narrow, as if the walls of dusty books might close in around them at any moment and shut out all air.
“Gladys hated going out,” Jerry said. “But, she was told by a traveling fortune teller that to leave her home was to invite horrors unknown unto our whole family. So, she spent the rest of her days inside.”
“Isn’t that a little… silly?” Matt asked.
“Oh, incredibly so,” Jerry said.
“She was a weirdo,” came his wife’s voice from the doorway as she poked her head in. She vanished immediately after.
Jerry ignored that.
“I think she used the fortune teller as an excuse, honestly. She loved reading. Seems like she had little interest in men, the world, or even the company of any other humans. She kept minimal staff and lived in the worlds of her books instead. I believe she was agoraphobic. She much preferred stories. Don’t we all?”
Matt glanced around. Everything seemed comfortable enough, if stifling.
“So does she visit the home now, or…”
Jerry shook his head.
“The only ghost-adjacent event I can tell you happened about four years back. I was sitting right here, reading one of her favorites, Treasure Island, and as I reached an especially intense passage, a book fell from high above and crashed to the floor next to me.” Matt nodded, but Jerry frowned.
“Not wowed, huh? The best part? She had this painting commissioned two weeks before she killed herself in this very room. Right here in this chair, she set aside one of her favorite reads, slit her own throat, and bled out on the floorboards. The book that fell was the last of her diary, which she was supposedly writing in the day she ended it.”
He pointed to a dark stain on the wood.
“We tried for years, but nothing will remove that stain. And any attempt to take down the painting is met with the gentle sliding of furniture in the night.”
He threw his hands into the air, for mock dramatic effect, then looked to Matt with his eyebrows raised.
Matt raised his eyebrows to match his.
“Not piquing your interest, eh?” he asked.
“It’s odd, I’ll give you that. But Peter led me to believe that there was something ongoing and sinister going on here, a story that had lasted through the ages.”
Jerry rolled his eyes.
“Oh, Peter. We both know that tour of his is little more than campfire tales. And we have no more than that. No, if you want a true haunting, you need to visit the village in the trees. But… you really shouldn’t.”
Matt frowned at that.
Matt had grown up in this town. He thought he knew every inch of it (especially considering how few there were), and he’d never heard of a village in the trees. “What is that?”
“I can’t tell you the full story, but I know Peter has a more complete image. Oh! And Great Aunt Gladys can lend a hand as well.”
He rushed over to a shelf and scanned it quickly, standing on tiptoe. He shuffled sideways like that, until he found the title he was seeking. He came back with it, holding a thick black journal that seemed part of a massive set.
“Gladys was an opinionated woman. She wrote down plenty of gossip about her fellow ladies in town and men she suspected of stepping out on their wives. It was all either second hand from visitors, or what she’d seen from her windows. Still, she was never short of words. Gladys’s accounting of the visit of Patience Willoughby, however, was unique in its brevity. This is from an earlier section of her diary.”
Matt stared at him blankly.
“The Private Caller.”
Matt shook his head.
Jerry’s eyes widened. “My goodness. I thought you’d at least know of her. The most infamous, unspoken story of Hyde Falls. They say the site of the incident is horribly haunted to this day.” He gestured Matt toward the chair over the blood stain, and dropped into the other chair as he started flipping aggressively through the journal’s pages, speaking as he went. “Patience Willoughby came to town in the 1850s claiming she was born here years prior. Of course, Gladys had never heard of her. And no one else had either. But plenty of women in town eventually claimed some friendship or kinship with her, when it became socially advantageous.
“She spoke in the homes of the most important women in town of a revelation, that she’d died and a new spirit had entered her body. A spirit energized by a meeting with God. Perhaps looking for some excitement, or for an escape from their philandering husbands, it wasn’t long before Patience had a small but influential following. But that was her old name. This new spirit called itself The Private Caller. A deliverer of God’s message to a select, righteous few.”
He handed Matt the journal, open to a page about three quarters of the way. Matt read the entry aloud.
“That charlatan, Patience, tried to come into my house. But I had Esther throw her out again. Those fools clucking at her heels are going to learn the hard way that there’s no shortcut to heaven. They’ve bought into her con. If they had a brain between them, they’d realize she’s only after money and power.”
“Short, but to the point,” Jerry said. “The second entry regarding Patience is much more important.”
Matt handed him the journal back, and he began flipping pages again. “So she gathers up women in town,” Matt said. “Then what?”
“When she had enough women supporting her, and it was only women in her congregation, she decided it was time for a change. She led those women into the woods, and as far as Gladys and I know, they were never heard from again. They remained there until a tragic end, I believe, in a town of their own making. Hoping their souls would live on forever. Protected by just wood and stone, surrounded by nothing but the trees.”
Matt stared at him. He realized as Jerry spoke that he’d stopped taking notes and started twisting his ring around. Something in the story seemed familiar, uncomfortable, but he couldn’t place it.
“Is there more?”
He passed Matt the journal again and he read.
“The idiot twins Lacey and Jenny agreed first. Big surprise. Wasn’t long before they’d recruited Candice. They’ve all left with her now. The brainless dolts. Patience keeps saying their souls will live on, but what about their bodies? They’re not built for the woods. Mark my words, none of them will survive this mess.”
Matt looked the words over another couple of times, then flipped the page. There, following, was an entry about a man speaking out of turn to a woman right in front of this house. He turned back to Jerry.
“That’s all she said about it?”
“That’s it. But you know who would absolutely know more about this whole mess?”
“Peter. I wonder why he hasn’t mentioned it,” Matt said.
Jerry shrugged.“It’s not exactly a high point in the town’s history. Perhaps it doesn’t fit with his tour aesthetic. Only he can say.”
Matt thanked Jerry, passed Jerry’s scowling wife, and was on his way. No shades greeted him on the street. It was quiet, empty, and seemed devoid of life. If he headed across town now, he could catch Peter at his day job and ask him a few questions.
He talked his way through admissions at the Farming Rural America Museum (with a barely expired pass) and headed past the petting zoo area toward the village itself. Peter was recently promoted from running the general store to carousing in the tavern with his character’s wife. The married pair ran the inn together and would invite families inside for a quick root beer and a cookie as they chatted through tavern traditions of the 1800s.
Matt meandered through the crowded open-air museum village’s Harvest Festival attractions and headed straight toward the Pathway Tavern.
Everyone at the museum was having a great time. Hay-filled wagons gave rides throughout the museum. Staff in costume served hot cider (hard cider for the partaking adults), butter-dipped corn on the cob, and cotton candy. Jugglers and classical fiddle musicians performed on the green. Men, women, and children wore a combination of Harvest Festival masks, Halloween costumes, and flowers. Some wore deer antlers on headbands, though he couldn’t remember the story of how those became part of the Hyde Falls Harvest Fest event.
As he headed closer, Matt spotted a familiar figure in the throng of people. A man, standing half a head taller than all around him. But Matt couldn’t quite make out his face as others moved in front of him.
Then there he was, mere feet from Matt. His dad. Thin as a rail and looking twice as worked over as Matt had ever seen him. Absolutely exhausted, drained by life. Standing stock still in the crowd.
With a noose around his broken neck, bone protruding next to one shoulder. Matt reached for his ring, his breath catching in his throat.
He couldn’t be here.
Matt took a step closer.
Then his dad was gone.
Matt felt tears welling in his eyes, but he rubbed them away and kept moving toward the tavern.
A family was on its way out as he headed in, looking freshly full of root beer suds and sugar.
As Matt entered, he could smell the old dusty wood that creaked underfoot. “Welcome to the tavern of the eighteen hun—oh, hey kid. Didn’t recognize you a second there,” Peter said, lounging at the bar with a bar rag in his hand. His fictional wife, Rita, was collecting bottles from a recently used table. “Been chatting people up for hours already.”
“Peter, I need to know about a different story. You didn’t tell me the right one,” Matt said, his eyes on the floor.
“Speak up, boy. What’s the matter?” He kept scrubbing the bartop, whistling a bit as he went.
“I need another story. I can’t tell my own.”
“I understand. Terrible business, that. You asked for haunted houses. I gave you a piano that plays itself, an agoraphobic gossip who haunts her old library, and rearranging furniture. What’s the problem?”
Matt met his eyes.
“I need to know about Patience Willoughby.”
His whistling dies, as his hand stopped on the bar. “What did you say?”
“Patience Willoughby. I need to know about the Private Caller. Where do I find the town they made?”
“Would you stop saying that name?” he hissed at Matt, coming around the bar to meet him.
He led Matt over to a shaded table in the back corner under the stairs, just as a family was entering the tavern. Rita saw to them as the men sat.
“That’s not a story to tell, son. They… it’s a ghastly business. Horrible things. Atrocities this town moved on from ages ago. To bring it up now… it would upset people.” His eyes darted over Matt’s shoulder to the window at his back.
“Are you worried about people or something else?” Matt asked.
Peter’s eyes fell to the table.
“I can’t tell you that story. Not without dredging up things that should stay lying where they are. I don’t believe in much, but that woman was something else.”
“You say that like you know her personally.”
Peter shook his head, still looking at the table as he scratched it with a fingernail.
“Thankfully, no. But what I’ve read of her. True evil.”
He scratched harder at the table. In the background, Matt could hear the family’s kid ordering a creamsicle soda. The kid couldn’t help but giggle with glee. His parents laughed at something Rita said too. Matt missed those days. Though now he wasn’t sure if he’d ever truly had them.
He placed his hand on Peter’s, stopping the scratching. It was rough, cracked. “Pete. It’s just a story. And what I need right now is something worth exploring. A story that isn’t about how my family fell apart. You know why I don’t come around town that often. Because even coming into the county reminds me of what I had. I carry it with me wherever I go. But here? Here it’s “hey kid” from everybody I know. That sympathy in your voices that won’t go away.
“I’m just the kid of the laughing lady. I’ve heard what they call her. The kid whose mom was going slowly crazy in front of all our eyes, until she snapped one night, drugged my dad, and burned the house down around him. The lady who hanged herself laughing from the tree out front.”
The woman in the family behind Matt kept laughing. Something was wrong. “Do you know what that’s like? I was a kid, Pete. Barely six. Maybe I thought telling other peoples’ stories would help me somehow. I guess I wanted to escape my own. But I’m right back here now, begging you for one more story for this stupid assignment. Anything worth talking about so I won’t have to talk about my own shit for once.”
The mother behind Matt laughed and laughed. He turned to look at her. As she cackled, her smile grew larger on her face. Until her face was mostly teeth and gaping maw. She laughed so loud it filled the tavern. The top half of her head tilted back, as if hinged from the rest of her. It split her head open, until all anyone could see was pulsing mouth and waggling tongue between her extended jaws. The skin on the top half of her head peeled back like a mask. “No!”
Matt cried out, closing his eyes and mashing the heels of his hands against his temples. He rubbed them in small circles, and the episode stopped. He had a headache, but he always did after one of those. That hadn’t happened since the last time he was home years ago, and that one was much less pronounced.
He slowly looked up at Peter again.
And Matt realized the tavern had gone silent. The family at the far table was all staring at them. Rita too. He must have raised his voice.
Peter met his eyes.
Peter glared at the family. And they averted their eyes. Then he gave Matt a sad little smile.
“Do you need to go see—“
“No,” Matt cut him off. “No, sorry. Just a little old trauma rearing its head, that’s all.”
“I get it.”
He didn’t. No one did.
“I’m sorry, kid,” Peter said. “I guess I’m just being superstitious is all. I didn’t want to tell you something awful and make you feel worse. But you’re an adult. If you think you can handle it, I’ll tell you what you want to know. But you have to promise me you’ll be careful. Something about this woman was twisted and wrong. She said she came back, but I’m not rightly sure it was a human soul that came back into her body.”
He stood, eyeing the bar.
“Give me a sec.”
He rushed over, then came back with two root beers and two chilled steins. “Might as well drink something good while we discuss something awful.” He poured the drinks in silence.
Then he told Matt the story.
Patience Willoughby, the Private Caller, was most likely mentally ill. But no one would have labeled her with that at the time. In the middle of the 19th century, she had visions that she believed were from God. He asked her to lead a group of women into the woods to start a new community.
She came into Hyde Falls on a mission. She said her original soul was born here. No one knew of her, but that wasn’t unheard of at the time. Her claim at least was that she’d grown up here until her teens. She said she had died of a wasting disease while living with family in the city. From what her personal papers said, it sounded more like she was assaulted by some boys in town and left to take care of the result.
Still, she claimed an untimely death after she left. That her soul went to Heaven. Before they could bury her, a new soul entered her body with a message from God himself. She was sent back to Earth with a mission to recruit women into her flock, teach them a set of lessons, and thus lead them to Heaven at her side. To do this, she preached throughout town until she’d gathered a great number of the community’s women together. Some say it was a dozen. Others, five dozen. The truth was most likely somewhere in between.
She’d gone house to house to collect them, preaching in the homes of the most influential and gullible. Those who would invite her in for tea and perhaps had a secret she could exploit or one they never hoped to reveal.
Together, they’d gather more and more until she was satisfied.
Then they needed supplies to build their new community. In a real godly way, they used the forests of a prominent member of this new flock, a Mrs. Clarksdale, a widow of great renown around town. Within those woods they learned how to fend for themselves. How to set traps, butcher what they caught, and plant crops. They were truly returning to nature.
They took some tools and supplies with them though. Like simple white gowns, plenty of provisions to get themselves through the growing season, and axes.
They used the last to fell many trees in the Clarksdale woods. And before long they had constructed two rows of homes and other community buildings on stone foundations they’d purchased from a Hyde Falls contractor. Each was a one room structure. And the town shared outhouses.
Finally, she had what she called her Town Among the Trees.
They were happy at first, following the Private Caller, and staying “closer to God” this way.
She believed that through her works the souls of her community members would live on forever, coming back in lifetime after lifetime as protectors or something. But she soon saw faults in her community members and started punishing them in crueler and crueler ways.
It started with starvation and exposure. She called it fasting, but she’d keep a woman outside the banquet hall with nothing to eat or wear for days at a time. There was no need for chains, rope, or stockades, because anyone disobeying their prophet knew that they’d miss out on Heaven.
Those who truly wronged her, in her eyes (perhaps with sexual exploration or sneaking outside food) would feel the lash of her switch. She’d keep them outside, nude with open wounds, in winter months. Until fingers and toes start to turn black and fall off from frostbite. But that was during the good, early days.
When someone really slipped up, she had them hanged for all to see in the center of the town. Under her guidance, the women would sometimes entice men from town to join them and impregnate them at events. They’d wear antlers and flower garlands and post notes throughout Hyde Falls saying, “Those willing to enter the Town Among the Trees will find their reward.”
Some showed up out of sheer curiosity. After the first orgy, however, the men couldn’t resist. Single, married, whatever. They came to town all the same.
It all came to a head one day when the Private Caller had a new vision. God told her to collect as many men from Hyde Falls as she could. That it was time to celebrate the harvest properly.
She had her women entice a large group of men to leave town and come celebrate in the forest. They were told they’d receive food, wine, and all the sex they could desire. They were to feast on the town’s harvest, and share with the men who sat among them. In the midst of this congregation, Patience would have herself coronated with a crown of flowers and deer antlers in a great ceremony.
But those men never returned to town.
The people of Hyde Falls knew something was wrong. More men than usual were missing this time, and some should have returned to their wives and jobs after a few days had passed. The townsfolk came in a great mob upon the wooded town to find their friends and family, with all the weapons they could muster, and no one (not even the town’s mayor) wrote down what they found.
All we know for sure is that the townspeople slaughtered Patience and those who would defend her. Any who seemed neutral or scared were reclaimed by proper society. They hanged Patience and her worshippers in those woods in retaliation for whatever she’d done. No one was prosecuted.
The remaining members of the Clarksdale family blocked off those woods, and have never entered them again.
Some said the Devil put a corrupted soul back in Patience’s body. Or that he inhabited her himself. Others said she was just a woman who saw a chance to take power over some high-class ladies and took it way too far.
As Peter finished talking, Matt leaned back in his chair with a stunned look on his face. “Wow,” he said, not sure of what else to say.
Peter nodded at him, then shook his head hard. As if to rid himself of the memories. “So you can see why the town didn’t exactly want to publish these events for all to see.”
“But there must be some record of this era, right? Some first-hand accounts from the men or surviving women?”
He shook his head. “There was. I burned it,” Peter said.
“What? Why?”
“Because to keep it recorded was to bring shame on the town. Someone would find it eventually and make it public. Besides, it was only in the mayor’s personal journal at the time. And even he didn’t want to write it down. I get the feeling he felt it was the only way to keep himself sane. His handwriting on those pages was so shaky. Every death in town that fall was written up as something else. You’ll notice a huge uptick in scarlet fever deaths in this region about that time.”
“The Clarksdale Woods,” Matt said, glancing out the window toward the hill across the lake.
Peter rapped his knuckles on the table, making Matt jump. He stared Matt down. “You are not to go there.”
“But why? It’s an old story. What could happen?”
Peter shook his head at Matt.
“Some things shouldn’t see the light of day. Who knows what spirits are out there, waiting for someone to stir them up? You want to tell this story, fine. It might hurt the town, might not. I just…”
He looked at Matt, and for a moment Matt thought he saw a tear in Peter’s eye. But then Peter glanced out the window too.
“I can handle myself, Pete. I can handle a little more sadness. Thank you for telling me all this. It’ll make a great paper for my assignment. But you don’t have to worry. That’s all it’ll be. More than likely it’ll stay in my professor’s computer and mine, and no one else will even hear of it.”
He met Matt’s eyes again, but he still looked troubled. After a moment, he nodded. “Look, if it’ll make you feel better,” Matt said, “I won’t go out there. The woods are private property anyway. I can tell my professor it was an oral history, record what I see of the woods from the street and maybe describe the town from what you told me and how I imagine it. Give it a more spoken word, ethereal feel.”
Peter let out a hard breath.
“That would be great. Thank you. I just don’t want to see you hurt by something…” He didn’t know how to finish that sentence, and Matt didn’t want him to. Because no matter what he had seen around town so far, Matt was sure it was all his imagination. But he could see Peter was worried.
They hugged, and the moment was over.
Matt had his story. He was willing to let any further investigating go.
As he walked out of the tavern and back into the museum’s crowded festival, he was still thinking about the story. He couldn’t get the image of that final bacchanal out of my head. The way it seemed to overlap with the dream he had on so many nights. Dancing women laughing in the woods. A surreal tableau that always ends in death.
Matt was distracted thinking about it. He didn’t see the woman approaching until she was almost upon him. She wore a deer skull and antlers over a simple red dress, as she rushed up to him and grabbed his hand. Before he understood what was happening, she was running off again, but with his dad’s ring in her hands.
“Hey!” He called out after her. “Give that back. She stole my ring.”
But everyone was too giddy or distracted to do anything.
He gave chase through the throng of people. Weaving between kids and wary parents. Skirting along the wall of the broom-maker’s shop.
He came to a stop in front of the general store. Then saw her dive into the crowd at the center of the main lawn.
He jogged in after her.
But he bumped one shoulder too many and quickly lost track of her in the busy crowd. She’d stolen the only item he had left of his dad that held any real value for him. He mentioned it to the admissions staff on his way out, and they said they’d let the museum’s security know. They would keep an eye out for anyone wearing a deer skull and antlers, but they didn’t remember selling a ticket to anyone with that description. He walked back towards his car, dejected. He was pulling out his phone to text Hazel and let her know what had happened, wondering what else he could do, when he spotted a note under his windshield wiper.
“You know where you’ll find your reward,” it said.
The young woman had clearly overheard his conversation with Peter. And they must have known who he was. He didn’t want to, but he knew where he had to go next. The winding drive out to the center of Holly’s Grove was more emotionally evocative for Matt than he’d expected. He was heading toward the site of his former home, where his mother had lost her mind and slaughtered his father before killing herself. And yet, he was so caught up in Peter’s story about the past and his missing ring that he could barely focus on the most troubling, impactful moment of his life.
It didn’t help that the route took him deep into sign-less, light-less woods. Trees that had molted early this year crowded the road from both sides, their leafless branches struggling to reach each other over the passing car.
As he drove, he kept picturing those Hyde Falls women surrendering themselves to the woods and the will of Patience Willoughby. They had succumbed to her power and become her puppets. Willing worshippers who were willing to follow her every command, even if it meant killing each other. As long as they followed God’s will (as interpreted and delivered by Patience) they were in the right.
A huge deer came leaping out onto the road. Matt stomped on the brakes, his car slamming to a halt mere inches from the animal’s fuzzy hide.
It turned its antlered head to stare him down. Those yellow eyes reflected his headlights. Its mouth made a chewing motion. Then it casually walked off the road, as if nothing had happened.
Nature didn’t care about roads or towns. Nature lived for life’s sake.
Matt continued on.
The sky turned to a gray dusk as he rounded the last curve, up around the base of Bolton Hill, and to the end of the driveway for the old Shreeve place. Or the home of Laughing Kathy, as it was called by some in Hyde Falls. It seemed like it had more nicknames than Matt could keep track of these days.
But that wasn’t the first thing on his mind at the moment. There was no sign of the ring at the base of the driveway. So, he headed up toward the house. Or, more accurately, the house’s remains. All that stood there now was a blackened foundation. A scarred stone reminder of how his mother’s troubled mind had pushed her too far one night.
She’d wrapped little Matt up in a coat and then his comforter before carrying him out into the snow and telling him to wait at the base of the tree. She struggled to keep the laughter from escaping her mouth. Everyone told the story as if she giggled herself silly that night. That she was so happy to do it, her smile ready to split her face apart.
Only Matt knew that she ricocheted between giddy and deadpan every few moments, as if she were fighting off some outside force. Like she knew what she was doing was wrong, but couldn’t quite stop it.
She told Matt he had to wait because something magical was about to happen. They’d join God soon. All of them.
For a moment she’d grown serious again in front of him. She hunched over, staring deep into his eyes and forcing him to meet hers.
“We’re one before God. We bask in his harvest,” she’d said.
“I promise, mom. I’ll be good,” little Matt had said. “I’ll stay by the tree. Is dad coming?” To show he meant it, he’d grabbed the woven, multicolored rope that held the family swing up in the tree. He clutched to it with one hand as he kept his eye on her, even though it was cold against his small hands in the icy night. His other hand held tight onto his comforter.
“Our souls shall live on again and again,” she said. “And we will remove the blight of man from this world.”
Then her big, beaming smile returned. She’d gone back inside without saying another word and lit fires throughout the first floor. By the time the flames reached the second floor, his father was too doped up with the sleeping pills she’d slipped into his dinner that night to escape. Hopefully he’d slept through it.
Perhaps she’d forgotten about Matt. Or God’s plan didn’t fully include him. Most likely, her psychosis had put her on a specific mission and she had to complete it before she could entertain another thought.
She’d come rushing out of the garage with a length of rope thrown over one arm. Laughing and shivering, teeth chattering in the wintry cold. She ran right past Matt, to the white paper birch tree near the front left corner of the house, scurried up its trunk like an underfed squirrel, tied off her rope next to the swing, and leapt from the tree with a noose around her neck and a smile on her face.
Matt stood there a moment, crying in the snow, waiting like he was told. The house burned behind him.
With no one left to help him, he’d finally decided to move. He shuffled the three point seven miles down to the Simmons house still wrapped in the comforter off his bed. They took him in, saw to his nearly frostbitten toes and nose, and called 911.
He walked over to the charred foundation now. The wreckage of the house was cleared away long ago. Now all that remained was a simple large square of cement surrounded by smoothed stones. There were no signs of the family that had lived here for years and felt such happiness. No emotional markers that could remind him of how loved he’d felt up until that night, even with his mother’s undiagnosed illness. Nothing.
He turned to the base of the tree. He saw a body hanging there, swaying in the wind. He yelped as he fell to the ground. Slamming his eyes shut.
“I’ll be good. I’ll stay by the tree. I’ll be good.”
After a moment he remembered himself and risked opening his eyes.
There was nothing there but the old, fraying swing.
Had it survived the fire? Was it there when he’d driven up moments ago? Matt wasn’t sure.
He got to his knees, then his feet, never tearing his eyes away from the wooden seat of the swing. As he approached it, he saw a glint of gold on the seat.
His dad’s ring.
Somehow it had survived the fire. It was all that had survived. Besides Matt. He slipped it on now, and picked up the slip of torn paper that was under it. “You’ll find your answers in the Town Among the Trees. Your mother left you something there.”
He thought he heard a cruel, giddy laughter riding the wind. But when he looked around, there was nothing. He had no idea who had stolen his ring away and led him here. He was alone on a hill. One that he could never escape. Not fully.
There was only one thing he could do next.
*
He should have waited until the morning at the very least. But he didn’t know if he’d have the courage. Plus, he knew he’d ask Hazel’s advice. And, despite how her dad thought of her, she would definitely talk Matt out of this.
He was driving back through Hyde Falls with a purpose he hadn’t felt since… Actually, he’d never felt this before.
If that note was true, he’d discover everything about his mother, his dad, everything he’d lost. He didn’t know how that was possible, but he clung to it anyway. That hope. That desire that he could never fully abandon.
He went under the Hyde Falls stoplight, passed the apartment over the pizzeria, went around the flagpole, and crossed the river. As he wound deeper into the trees, it felt like they blocked out all sunlight. He was climbing higher into the rolling hills and low mountains that surrounded Hyde Falls. Here, the trees were thicker and grew closer together. The land was rarely claimed out here, east of town.
After ten minutes of driving he reached the spot that felt right. The road was narrower here, with no shoulder. Dusk was here, and so was silence. Matt stepped from the car and felt no signs of life. Only branches swaying in the gentle breeze reminded him that life and movement still existed.
Still, something called him here. He knew this was the place. It was where the Private Caller had led her flock into the woods to start their new lives together.
There was no visible path here into the woods. Only the road and Private Property, Do Not Enter signs gave any indication that humans had passed here before.
Matt had sense enough to grab the flashlight from the trunk of the car. But beyond that he’d come out here without supplies.
Still, he felt compelled to step into the woods and see where this path would take him. For what felt like an hour and also seconds he walked forward into the darkening woods. His light played against the trunks and branches of the fallen and standing trees ahead. But he mainly aimed it at the underbrush, using it to guide his feet over fallen limbs and wet patches of heavily packed leaves.
As he moved, however, he noticed that the woods started to clear a bit in front of him. There were still plenty of trees in his path, but the undergrowth lessened. Until soon, he was sure he was walking an old trodden path of some kind. Perhaps illegal hunters had used it when the Clarksdales abandoned the woods to nature.
Still, Matt wasn’t sure of what they’d hunt. He hadn’t spotted a single deer or heard any birdsong since he’d entered the woods. The woods felt oddly lifeless.
Matt pushed forward.
And as he did, the air around him took on a strange quality. It was filled with light with every step he took. As if the night was being forced away. It moved in sync with the clearing of the path.
He thought he could see a greater opening ahead, with loose stones on the ground in occasional groupings. Like the foundations of many small buildings grouped together, now partially covered by moss and grass.
He turned his flashlight off as he realized that his eyes were adjusting to this new, impossible day. The day kept growing in brightness and warmth. Matt noticed that he felt it on his face and the sun’s heat was gently sizzling his arms.
He glanced high into the sky and took a quick glance at the sun overhead. It was just as blinding as the real sun. Just as warming and bright on his face. But there was no way these were the same woods he’d entered. They felt too calm, peaceful. Younger.
Matt took another few steps forward.
And then it happened.
His footsteps carried him all the way through, from night into day.
He emerged into a clearing that he hadn’t seen here before. His body was struggling with the sudden, but slight, increase in temperature. He heard the town in the second before he saw it. The contented laughter of women at ease.
He walked into the center of a small town in the middle of a celebration. Where he’d seen stones moments before, now there were small structures. Buildings that clearly served as housing for the many women rushing about in the neatly trimmed grass. The houses were wooden, but stood on stone foundations and with wooden doors. Few had windows.
There was a tall pole erected at one end of the street, with three ribbons in red, yellow, and white wrapped around it. And at the other end was a long table covered in a bountiful feast, with many chairs around it. Corn, squash, leafy salads, huge watermelons, a roast turkey in the center surrounded by dozens of golden chalices and a huge jug of some violet punch. Matt’s stomach growled just looking the table over.
Women hurried back and forth in front of him, some adding new dishes to the table as others carried chairs from the community’s larger meeting hall to the table. There were men in this community as well, though they looked the women over as Matt did. But there was a barely hidden hunger to the looks of these men, as if they’d come into the forest for something besides a meal. Before Matt could take stock of where he was, two young, identical women in flowing white lacy slips and flower necklaces rushed over to him in bare feet. They smiled at him, red blonde curls bouncing as they came to a halt in front of him.
“Lacey and Jenny?” Matt asked.
“How’d you know?” They said it together.
“Uh, a friend of mine knew you in town I think.”
They grabbed his arms and pulled him forward into the gathering.
One pushed a golden chalice into his hand and guided him to take a sip. It was sweet, slightly tangy, and puckered his cheeks. Something alcoholic and provocative. He wanted more. But for now, he hesitated. There were so many questions.
“Come on,” the women said gently together. They took no notice of his clothes or flashlight. Instead, they pulled him over toward the base of the pole where the rest of the dozen men sat. For each man there were at least two women in flower necklaces and slips. The men wore work shirts and suspenders, mostly over black pants. Though most had removed their shoes, some still wore thick socks in the grass.
Everyone sat on the grass together, each man flanked by two women. Most looked to be in their twenties and thirties, though a few men and women were older.
Matt sat with them, removing his shoes and socks, the women who had grabbed him again clinging to his arms as they sat too.
Before he could ask them any questions, or further investigate what was happening, another woman walked out of the largest building and stood at the base of the pole.
She was matronly looking, stern in the face, but gave a gentle smile. She also wore a flowing white slip and had no shoes, and wore no flowers. She was older than the rest, perhaps in her early fifties.
A hush fell over the crowd as she took her place in front of them all.
“Good day, one and all,” she said. “And welcome to all of our strong, handsome guests. I am the Private Caller, as many of you might have guessed. And we’ve invited you all here for a special day. Today we join together to celebrate the season’s harvests and give thanks unto God for all he has granted us. But to celebrate fully, we’ll need to feast. Come, everyone, and let us eat until we’ve had our fill. I see we have one more guest. But not to worry. There’s plenty to go around. Julie, if you don’t mind, grab another chair for mister…”
“Matt. Shreeve.”
The woman gave Matt a curious look. But it was soon gone again.
“Welcome, Matthew. Now, please, head to the table. And ladies, don’t forget to serve all of our guests some of that delicious cherry wine.”
All of the women started to clap, and a few of the men joined in too, as if hoping to make a good impression.
The women pulled the men, including Matt, to their feet. But one young blonde woman headed past the leader and into the large community building. As she swung the door open, Matt swore he saw a whimpering face low inside, barely lit by sunlight. It looked strikingly familiar.
The women started to lead the men toward the table. But Matt planted his heels. “Hang on, ladies. Thanks,” he said. “I just have to check on one thing.”
Matt untangled himself from the grips of the women and rushed over to the large, round community building. The blonde popped back out with another chair, and yelped as she almost crashed into him.
Matt held the door and allowed her to pass. Then he rushed inside.
The room was dark and mostly empty. Only a few chairs remained.
Sitting on the floor near the doorway was a young woman with deep brown hair and hazel eyes. She was crying, distressed, breathing too fast.
Matt’s mom.
He stumbled back against the closing door. She screamed as he slammed into it. “Mom? No, this isn’t real,” he said. But she was here in front of him and she was sobbing as she looked him over. “How are you here? What is going on?”
He stepped cautiously forward, then knelt in front of her. He looked her over, seeing how she cowered away from him. Her eyes didn’t know him.
Perhaps worst of all, he finally saw the thick manacle around her neck that kept her chained to the wall. He leaned in closer and could see where it had dug into her flesh and rubbed her raw.
He reached for it. But she cowered away.
“You’ve joined us at a tricky time in the community,” said a voice behind Matt, startling him. He whipped around and saw the Private Caller standing inside the closed door. “She misbehaved, and for it she was punished. But we’ve reached the end of her sentence.” Matt stood.
“So you’ll let her go?” he asked.
“That’s precisely what I’m here to do,” she said, pulling a key from her pocket. Matt’s mother locked onto it. She smiled wide at the key. Then at Matt. She reached her arms out fast at him, wrapping him in a tight hug before he could back away from her.
“Don’t you worry about me,” Matt’s mother said. “I did a bad thing. But now I’ve paid for it. They’ll accept me again. Isn’t that right, Patience?”
She looked to the Private Caller. Then her eyes went wide.
“I’m sorry, the Private Caller. My mind escapes me sometimes. I’m so sorry.” The Private Caller’s hands went up.
“It’s alright, dear,” she said to Matt’s mother. “You’ve paid your price.”
She walked over across the doorway from the others, where she collected a tub of ointment, a roll of bandages, and a scarf.
She brought them back to Matt’s mother, who she unchained. Then she looked at Matt. “Since you’re here, we can dress her wounds together.”
Matt stood up fast.
“How did I get here?” Matt asked. “And what is she doing here? What’s going on? This doesn’t make any sense.”
The woman looked between the two Shreeves, as if trying to understand it herself. “I’d give you an answer if I had one. Such a resemblance. Perhaps a long lost sister or a distant cousin? No matter. If you’ll dine with us, then we can talk. Alright?” She started to apply the ointment to the injured skin on Matt’s mother. Matt gave in, crouching nearby to follow her movements with an unraveling of the bandages to put them on her after the ointment.
“I’m not from this time. Doesn’t make any sense.”
The Private Caller nodded.
“We all come to him in our own ways. I won’t claim I understand, but I stay open to his message. And he’d want us to eat. For you to spend time together. Are you hungry?” Matt nodded. Perhaps it was the cherry wine getting to him. But he was famished. That seemed more important to him now than figuring out all of the answers. They could find time for that later, now that they were together.
They soon finished their task. Then Patience gave Matt’s mother the scarf, which she wrapped around the bandages.
Together, the trio left the building and joined the party already in motion.
Everyone was drinking the cherry wine, and plates were soon loaded with the bountiful feast. As Matt sat across from his mother, who smiled at him, another young woman topped up his drink. He gave her a smile, and she giggled as she took her seat next to him.
He’d landed in a seat near Lacey and Jenny as well. Some friendly faces at least, in this bizarre scenario.
Matt took another sip of the wine, which soon turned into a gulp. He was thankful to see a stacked plate of food before him when he set the cup down.
The conversation was on clothing. How the women didn’t miss what they’d left behind in town, that they lived a simpler life now and felt better for it.
But before everyone started eating, the Private Caller stood before her seat at the far end of the table (to Matt’s left). The women all stopped talking, and the men followed suit. She looked around the table that she lorded over, meeting the eyes of every resident and guest. After a weighty pause, she finally spoke.
“We’re gathered here today to celebrate a wonderful harvest that will feed us well in the trying months. Through feasting, we acknowledge God’s gift delivered unto us and welcome his glory. Eat heartily one and all. To the bounty of the woods.”
“To the bounty of the woods,” the women answered.
They raised their glasses to match Patience. Again, the men followed suit.
The eating began. The conversation soon returned to normal.
“We feel no need for dresses or shoes out here,” said the young blonde woman who had bumped into Matt earlier. She lifted up a small handful of her slip. “These provide everything we need out here.”
A young man to her right coughed.
“But what about decency?” he asked. “Mother always taught that men should respect women and women should respect themselves by covering up.”
Matt was drawn momentarily to this conversation from another time.
A slightly older man across the table from the young gentleman spoke up. “Oh, who cares, Cliff?” He grabbed a healthy handful of thigh belonging to a young brunette woman next to him. She smiled at him as he kept talking. “If the ladies want to wear less, let them wear less.”
Men being men. Matt rolled his eyes, which soon landed on his mother who was laughing at the men. That had Matt smiling. He couldn’t conjure up a memory of her truly happy. At least not one that would last.
His mom gave him a kind smile back.
He took this as an opportunity.
“So, how did you end up here?” he asked her.
She shrugged.
“My family didn’t understand me or my faith. They said I needed to repent my evil ways,” she threw her hands up for effect as she spoke. “As if we were all out here worshipping the devil or something.”
The women near her laughed, then joined in.
“I’m so much happier out here, with my sisters,” Jenny said.
“Same here,” said Lacey. “Now we all help each other and get closer to God at the same time. What’s so bad about that?”
“But your family. Did you have a husband? Any kids?” Matt was feeling desperate for answers.
His mother gave him a curious look.
“Do I know you from somewhere? You speak as if you know me. My parents didn’t send you after me, did they?”
Matt shook his head, hoping to keep things casual and diffuse the situation. “No, I don’t know your parents. I swear. I just… you said something about being accepted earlier. Do you feel that way now?”
His mother let out a little nervous laugh, as if it slipped out of her before she could stop it. “Of course,” she said, looking up at Patience. The matronly woman was casually focused on her, hands clasped over her empty plate. “Everyone here is so kind. I have these little episodes, you see. One caught me by surprise the other day, that’s all. But the girls helped me through it.”
“As we always will,” Patience said.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Matt said. “I’m glad you have such a supportive group here.” He turned back to his food, unsure of what else to say.
But after some more food and drink the table was feeling more relaxed, more comfortable. Matt was too. The dishes were passed quickly. The food vanished onto plates and then into stomachs almost as fast.
Matt was especially enjoying the corn on the cob and the turkey. One tasted sweeter than any he’d ever eaten before, the other much juicier. He was so busy eating that for a moment he forgot to ask his mother any further questions.
But then Matt was fascinated to hear that the women had lived out here for the entire planting season. For a moment he was back in student mode, ready to collect the full story. Even if he felt tipsy from the wine.
“Has the town government given you any trouble? The men?” he asked.
Patience spoke up before any of the women could.
“They’ve come to realize that they can’t force us to live in their version of society. We’re doing right by ourselves out here and taking care of each other.”
“And the police chief is a coward,” muttered a man to Matt’s right.
“We govern ourselves and are rewarded for it with God’s majesty,” Patience said, squinting at the man a moment before smiling around the hushed table.
The women sat dutifully with their heads bowed and hands in their laps. The men looked to each other. Cliff was rubbing at his temples like he had a headache.
Matt felt a bit dizzy all of the sudden as well. He thought maybe the wine was coming on stronger than he’d expected. He looked to the cup, expecting to find it half full, and instead it was empty. His vision started to shimmer at the edges.
He felt like he needed to leave, but he also didn’t trust himself to stand.
The twins stood up from the table and briefly disappeared into a nearby cottage. When they returned they were carrying a headdress and they stood behind the Private Caller with it. It was made from the top half of a deer skull, with antlers and a few flower necklaces draped upon its many points.
As the other women clapped and cheered, they placed it on the Private Caller’s head. Other women came up, including Matt’s mom as he watched, and placed more flower necklaces around her neck.
“Together we are one before God,” the women chanted together. “Our lady in the woods has brought us a bountiful harvest and now we feast.”
Then the Private Caller raised her hand for silence.
“It is now time for the final stage of the evening,” she said. Matt realized that it was approaching dusk again, that the party had gone on longer than he’d realized. “Let us lead our guests over to the harvest pole.”
In pairs again, the women hurried over to their male companions and started to help them to their feet. Matt stumbled a bit and had to clutch to the shoulder of one of the twins. But soon he has his footing again. His head was swimming. He felt like he was walking through a pastel fog.
He joined the rest of the community at the base of the harvest pole. And he fell on his butt like the others. None of the men seemed capable of standing.
But soon they didn’t want to.
The men lay in a contented heap at the base of the pole. The women, however, started to dance in a circle around them and the pole, twirling gently and giggling at first. But the more they circled around, the louder they laughed with great gaiety.
Matt spotted one of the twins, Lacey he thought, as she passed by. They made eye contact, then she winked at him as she slipped her thin dress down from her shoulder. He realized that all of the women were undressing. Soon they seemed to race by, nude and laughing with abandon. The men watched, captivated. Some clapped. Others simply ogled. Matt wondered if this were some forest ritual that would turn into an orgy. He couldn’t remember where, but he was sure he’d read stories like that taking place somewhere.
It barely mattered to him now. The women flew by in a blur of endless nudity and flowing forms.
Then the women stopped, finding their assigned men again. They helped the men out of their clothes, stripping them down to nothing. The twins came to Matt and started pulling his clothes off. He shoved them off and started to crawl away, but someone put a hand on his shoulder. It was gentle, but enough to stop him in place. He tried to push against it, but his body wouldn’t respond.
He looked up and saw his mother.
“We’re one before God. We bask in his harvest.”
She giggled at him.
He could barely speak. He felt like he’d throw up if he opened his mouth. Something was wrong. He looked to the other men. They were all collapsed around the pole. The women danced around them, delirious perhaps from their own drugging.
Patience approached from the dining table carrying a large carving knife.
Matt batted his mom’s hand away. He wanted to crawl off into the woods, to escape. But he couldn’t move.
As the dancing continued, the Private Caller slipped into the center of the circle. She stepped over to Cliff first and opened him up from the top of the sternum to the naval. Then she slipped the knife lower and removed his genitals.
“One before God,” she said. “Our souls shall live on again and again, and we will remove the blight of man from this world.”
She kept moving, body by body, victim by victim. They couldn’t move as she took their lives and their parts. Blood spilled across the grass.
The women came in behind her with a dance in their steps and collected the genitals. They added them to a basket in a gathering of herbs and berries.
“The harvest of man. One before God. The harvest of man,” they said.
Matt needed to keep moving, but his body wouldn’t listen to his brain. He could feel the drug pushing him to sleep as the community stalked closer behind the knife.
As his eyes closed for the last time, the last sound he heard was his mother’s laughter.
“We’re one before God. We bask in his harvest,” she said.
“I’ll be good.”
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Greg Sorin’s work has previously placed him into the final round of consideration for television writing fellowships with NBC and Warner Brothers, and had him in the writer’s room for a Netflix show.
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