Betty used to love cloudy Sundays more than anything. The natives of Port Shaw were no strangers to misty mornings and bleeding grey skies. Once you hit mid-June, however, the grey cleared up overnight, and until September dawned, the town truly came to life.
The summer was lit with lustrous emerald fields of green grass that never ended, cheerful blue skies that ignited the ocean all along the coast. Birds and butterflies would serenade her in the garden where her mother would devote herself. Bulbous peppers, the reddest tomatoes you’d ever seen, rich cabbages like fluffed pillows and a vibrant ensemble choir of flowers harmonized the plot.
She loved the garden. Every morning she’d look down through her bedroom window, which was the only one in the upstairs that faced the coast, proud to see it anticipating her greeting. On this particular misty Sunday morning, as she looked out of her window and down where the garden once awaited her, all she saw was the mud.
The summer had long passed, and the pinch of the coming winter hung in the air. Her hand even started to go numb as she pressed her palm against the glass.
Through the overcast sky, she could tell that the sun still needed time to rise, as did she. Unfortunately, she found that time had no surplus this year.
Surveying the coastline, she spied a snowflake spitting out where the concrete waters met the tombstone horizon. The sail on her Uncle’s boat glistened like the only sharp pearly tooth left in the center of an elder’s rotting mouth.
“He’s here!” Betty called out.
“Took him long enough!” Her older brother Sean stomped up the steps, the floorboards quivering as he entered. At six and a half feet and three hundred pounds, the slightest motion he made always rocked the house to its foundation. He peeked out the window for himself. He tensed, and she could feel his excitement and his fear, beaming.
He sighed, looking Betty in her clover eyes.
He held his sister’s shoulder in his bear-trap of a hand. Sean felt a tear swell, smashing his eyelids shut to keep the inmate detained. He swiveled, focusing on his Uncle’s sailboat, battling its way through the rusted nickel waves.
“Go and tell Avery. I’ll grab Luke.”
Betty tossed her teal backpack over her shoulder. Sean smirked at the image of the PowerPuff Girl, who he was sure her name was Buttercup, dancing on the backpack as Betty skipped down the stairs.
#
At the other end of the hall, a slim stairwell led to the attic. Sean always hated going up to the attic because his shoulders were far broader than the stairwell. Forcing him to preemptively shrug to ascend it. Reaching the attic door was followed by its own unique sense of dread, as the attic was a foot shorter than the rest of the rooms in the house. The door, for some reason, which Sean was certain had to be in his sight, was a whole foot shorter than that.
The attic had one window at the front of the house. It was there, the oldest and shortest brother, Luke, sat against the wall with his father’s hunting rifle. He dutifully smoked a cigarette out of the corner of his mouth, puffing the smoke out the other corner through the open window. He wore a beaten maroon cap, his fuzzy knees poked out of his ripped jeans like groundhogs peeking out their holes.
#
Across the room, the door burst open, and Sean thudded into the room. Luke braced himself, fearing the floor might give out beneath them, dropping his cigarette. Embers hopped from the smoldering bud like pirates plundering an enemy ship. He cursed, sprawling to put them out.
“What happened to quitting?” Sean nagged.
Luke scoffed at him, shifting to a grimey chuckle at the sight of his boarish baby brother stuffed into the packed doorway.
“You look like Winnie the bloody Pooh,” Luke heckled.
Sean’s buzzed bald head turned red like one of their mother’s famed tomatoes. His face tightened around his mustache as he picked himself up.
“Betty spotted Uncle Todd off the coast,” Sean announced through gritted teeth, cradling his throbbing knee, resisting the urge to pounce on Luke. “It’s time.”
Luke’s heart switched places with his stomach, and a taunting sneer faded from his expression. He nodded statically.
#
Avery stood in the kitchen, his grandpa’s service revolver chilling his hand. Grandpa had gifted the boys with the piece one Christmas when the family had visited him in the city. Or rather, he had given it to Avery and told him it was for him and his brothers to share, but he had never bothered to relay that information to anyone else.
Nobody had even found out about it until months later, when their father discovered him by the bay picking off ravens circling above. He hadn’t touched it since, until just a few weeks ago, the last time any of them saw their father.
The cascading of what could only be Atlas’ grip slipping on the Earth itself signaled Sean’s descent of the stairs. Luke bounded over the steps all at once after him. Avery wasn’t sure if he was showing off like usual, or if he was afraid the steps might be too weak to support him following Sean.
“Are you two done mucking about?” Avery scolded. “Why must you insist on keeping Betty waiting?”
“I wouldn’t mind waiting a little longer,” Betty stated, with a heavy heart, fixated on the elaborate design of Avery’s boots. Her brothers exchanged guilty glances.
Sean picked up a woodcutting axe leaning by the fridge.
“We’ve waited long enough.” He went to the opposite wall and unhooked a holstered hatchet off of a nail in the wall. He bent down, handing it to Betty. “Happy birthday, Bombshell.”
Betty reluctantly nestled what she likened to be a thick leather shark fin against her chest.
“My birthday isn’t for another month.”
“I know.” Sean sighed. His attention switched to the back door.
Sean cocked his head at Luke and they approached the dining table and bookshelf, which once characterized the den, barricading their exit. They cleared the blockage, and Avery grasped the doorknob. The latch clicked back, and his tongue retreated into his chest with a gulp.
“Remember, Betty.” He kept his eyes on the outside. “You listen to what we tell you, and no matter what, you keep moving, get to the bay, okay?”
Betty nodded, clenching the handle of the hatchet till her knuckles were like peppermint Altoids fixed upon her kiwi-sized fists.
“If I tell you to run, you don’t look back. You just go, and then you swim if you have to, you get on that boat.”
Betty nodded.
“And no matter what.” Avery locked his watery eyes with the garden in hers. He hung his head with a heavy sigh, his voice starting to become hoarse. “We will be right behind you.”
Avery yanked the door open, letting it slap against the wall. He stepped out onto the back porch, the deck creaking as he made his way down the steps to the gate across from where the garden used to be. He kept the revolver stiff out in front of him, both hands firm around the grip.
Luke stood guard on the deck, where he had a clear line of sight over their picket fence, rifle securely perched on his shoulder, itchy finger on the trigger.
Sean shadowed Betty as they reached the gate. Avery kept his eye down the iron sights, aimed at the gate, as Sean unlatched it. He turned back, pausing for Avery. His shaggy hair bobbed around his forehead as he nodded. Sean let the gate swing out with its own weight, and Avery took the lead. Betty kept up behind him, and Sean took a second for Luke, who had already zipped over to them.
#
The path to the bay was a straight shot down the steep hill on which their beloved home stood. The trees of the forest consumed every other direction like a mob of hoarding fans and press at a red carpet event. Only there wasn’t a whisper to be heard among them.
They hurried down the path, giving each step careful consideration, as if the gravel at their feet were a thin sheet of ice.
Avery called attention to the bleached sailboat, which was approaching steadfastly.
Then the ground started to buzz and quake, Sean couldn’t help wondering if this was how his family had felt every time he’d barged up the stairs.
An arm made of frayed hair, as thick and as wide as the stalky trees that surrounded them, tore itself from the earth. A heavy cloud of dry dirt shrouded them as muddy debris rained down. The beast’s hulking shoulders drenched the rest of its body in shadow, as if it were made entirely from the night itself. Only its glossy ruby eyes could be seen glaring back at them.
Roots, worms, and leaves were the beast’s only attire. The smell of musty wet earth hung around it. It reminded Betty of when her mother would plant something new in the garden on golden afternoons.
Avery fired a shot from his revolver into the demonic elephant, shouting at them to run. Betty protested, but Sean held her back. Against all that the brothers held true, they proceeded as at his command, speeding down the path. The soggy brute’s meaty paw wrapped itself around his torso, lightning erupted in his chest as it shattered his ribcage. He howled, firing his remaining shots at its darting ruby eyes. As the echo of the shots faded, his misery beckoned throughout the forest.
Betty looked back and no longer saw Avery or the beast, just the bloody opening to the burrow that had just been dug up.
Luke snapped at her, and she turned back to them. Sean could no longer hold his escaping tears at bay. Not at the echo of Avery’s sacrifice playing over in his head, but at Betty’s choppy sobs interrupting the smack of their boots in the gravel.
They converged upon the bay, Todd’s boat closing in.
Luke started to bark at them, but was drowned out by the beach quaking. They all dropped at the shift of the sand under them. Luke was the first to collect himself getting to his knees.
His fears became reality as the ground was torn from under him. A tractor tire covered in lion’s mane lifted him from the mud into the air. A crimson stare flashed at him. He wildly emptied his rifle at it, swearing to high heaven.
Luke shrieked as he felt its grip tighten. Sean wailed so loud Betty could swear she almost went deaf. Burying the axe into the beefy log, trapping his brother, the breath returned to Luke’s lungs. He landed on his back in the sand with an exasperated gasp, losing his wind again in an instant.
Sean took another swing with the axe, sending the beast’s dusty limb splashing into the marsh. He pulled back for another volley, but the muddy mammoth’s other uprooted stump of a hand caught him. Raising Sean to the sky, he desperately hacked at the crusty trunk, clutching him.
He shouted at Luke, who was recovering swiftly, adrenaline pulsing in his ears. He called to Betty, regaining his footing on the trembling shore.
Wide-eyed, in total shock, Betty staggered to her brother, hatchet still pearl-knuckled in her grasp like a baseball bat.
“Sorry for this, Buttercup.” Luke snatched his sister by her hips and twisted his bony constitution around to spike her like a football. Into the arms of their uncle, Todd, aboard his sailboat, grazing the shore as it swung portside, back towards the open sea.
Betty whimpered and begged Todd to go back, but he told her that everything went according to plan and as long as she was safe, living happily ever after, the family would all live on with her.
She spun around to say goodbye to her brothers, but they were gone. Already lost in the muck.
THE END
ABOUT
Roy T. Berreth is a writer and illustrator based out of NYC. He works traditionally with pen and ink, then takes his drawings digital for coloring. He is working his way up the ranks of the indie comic world with his story, Born A Storm. (@bornastormcomic on Instagram). You can commission Roy for work by reaching out to him on Instagram (@https://www.instagram.com/b0red0mprevails/) or support his efforts through his Redbubble page. https://www.redbubble.com/people/b0red0mprevails/shop?asc=u
Leave a comment