Somewhere in the Virginia Colony . . .

Fall of 1706

JAGGED CHUNKS OF COLD MUD followed the boy down the slanted hill where he had just mistepped. He had flipped, rolled, and bit his tongue several times all the while being clobbered by blocks of mashed earth, pebbles, half-frozen earthworms, and dying grass. When he reached the bottom of the hill, his violent fall was tempered by a thick yet mushy carpet of red and yellow leaves layered across the forest floor. No matter, he landed nose first.

Just before his tumble, Leviticus Hicks had been distracted, filled with a forked feeling of excitement and dread. Why had he come to the Red Forest? He didn’t even have a good answer. There was a swirling storm of reasons swimming around his now-floaty head, white specks of stars flashing in and out of the corners of his vision. But none of those reasons mattered now. He was in too much pain.

Before the rising sun crested over the trees and began to wake the birds, Levi had been stirred awake on his thin straw mat next to the fireplace, draped in an old bear pelt that covered all but his cold, pale feet. An aching urge to leave home had bloomed into his head while he lifted from the murky depths of autumn-night sleep. His home suddenly faded into a shadowy wooden trap of stuffy air and pungent, unpleasant odors. He smelled his father’s hot, meat stew-tinged breath as he snored at the swinging dreamcatcher above his mattressed bed. With every sharp wheeze, the cabin seemed shrink toward the mud brick fireplace.

When the eerie sensation stopped, Levi poked his head up from the pelt and saw a streak of soft morning light in the new gap that had formed along the back of the cabin following the last ice storm. Day was breaking. And this was his chance to leave. He avoided the squeaky outer steps with a leap from the small porch and headed off the west end of town. The muddy streets were free of footsteps and wheel trails that had softened during the night. He made sure to tread in the grass patches, as he did not want to face the wrath of a constable, a mustached man in a blue officer’s uniform wielding a musket and ready to scorn any and all children for disobeying curfew. After a few minutes of hopping across safe patches and avoiding one of the rosy-cheeked midwives hanging washed linen outside her window, Levi made it to the blackrotted log pikes that served as his secret exit out of town. All it took was a bit of crouching, avoiding a thistle bush growing into the gated wall, and he had escaped from home.

A while later, the boy squeezed through a densely packed wall of pale brown skinny trees that marked the territory of the Red Forest—with only a minor thistle scratch as payment. He had been walking along logs with his arms winged out, skipping across the hardened clay scattered in dried creeks, and darting past trees at full speed. That was until he heard the sparrow. The invisible song sparrow chirped in the distance and he attempted to follow its pithy, pretty cries. The bird refused to show but seemed to call out to him. He begin to sing at the bird with a whistle, stared up at the trees instead of the ground below, the edge of a steep hill appeared, and down he went.

As Levi looked up at the crooked branches that intertwined into other trees, he heard the echoes of father’s stern voice beckoning him back to their town on the small hill. These oh-so-cursed woods had been the biggest of his father’s concerns and made up the bulk of their foreboding talks by firelight. But he was not the only one. Some older people in town claimed that the forest simply appeared one night, drank a river dry and devoured an entire camp of Indians, sealing them beneath the ground. The crackling of countless twigs and branches shot up into the night sky, as the people in town could only wait quietly in the darkness, the Indians’ screams keeping them all awake.

One of Levi’s tormentors, an older freckled-face boy named Cassius tried to spread the rumor that an angel planted some bad seeds in the forest, hoping for an apple orchard but accidentally forging a twisted, immense grove hungry for man, woman, and child flesh. But Cassius had two missing fingers after getting his hand stuck in a bear trap, so what did an idiot know?

Aunt Vilda, the elderly one-eyed basket weaver who picked at her chin with hardened knitter’s nails had a much simpler but scarier explanation—she always told Levi that the Red Forest was an animal itself.

***

THAT WAS WHAT VILDA had told him a year ago, a week before his father was hurt in a carriage accident—an accident that nearly cost him his legs. But thanks to the good fortune of Mother Marshall, the town’s very own doctor of sorts, and her combined remedy of honey, a bitter tea traded from the nearest village, and herbs grown in her private garden, his leg bones mended and his shattered knee ‘tied itself back together’. The two of them had sat down for a late supper after chopping wood for Vilda and her temporary housemates, Ellis Abernathy and his two year old son John. The small Abernathy family had lost its mother and wife two months earlier from fever—followed shortly by a fire that destroyed their two room house just a field over from Levi’s. Nestled in a crocheted blanket adorned with sharp squiggly-line interpretations of the various stars in the night sky, Levi quietly sipped a dandelion colored stew without meat—at least it was warm and hearty. He watched her calmly hum to herself, holding her blind left eye shut while she finished stringing together a small blanket for the neighbor who was about to have her first child.

“An animal? But the forest is too big!” Levi had retorted, already feeling a sense of dread creeping into the back of his mind.

The crackle of the fire in Vilda’s home in front of them made him jump and he almost dropped the cookbook in his hand. He placed it on the dining table in front of the fireplace before scooping up his bowl and stirring the savory stew with a heavy, well-used spoon. It was full of pockmarks and scratches. Much like the old woman’s face and hands. But she was smarter than anyone in town. And at least a hundred years older. The joke made Levi smile.

“Ah! The forest is too large to be an animal, you say?” Vilda shook her head and shrugged. The old ruffles on the wide collar of her dark blue gown bunched up, her hands raised in a playful surrender. She had finished poking holes in the latest newborn blanket for Levi’s neighbors, her silver needle leashed with the finest black thread she could trade for. She snipped off the string with a pair of worn garden shears and brushed off a flake of rust from her plain grey apron before returning attention to her nightly dinner companion.

“Well, of course! Because you’ve seen all of the Lord’s creatures in your seven years on Earth! How could I forget?”

Levi’s brow furrowed. He took another look into his bowl of turmeric yellow stew, bits of corn, and bright green shallots. After another spoonful and a gulp, he pondered. She was right—but that did not change the fact that animals could never grow as big as a forest. He was older now. The monsters that trudged through his deepest nightmares did not exist. There was real danger in the world. Disease. Raging fires. Indians. Things that Levi could see with his own eyes. That was the real world.

Vilda broke the silence and seemed to read his thoughts. “Well… you are right about the forest. I don’t mean it is a dragon waiting to eat you up. You are older now, practically a man. I know you don’t believe in monsters or witches anymore. But all of those towering trees hold little critters that nest inside. They are alive and keep the woods of the world fed and taken care of. And so do the deer and the rabbits and the birds and the…” she trailed on, winding her hand around as she got Levi involved in the conversation.

“And the wolves.” Levi answered with a shudder.

Vilda grinned, her crow’s feet hardening. “And the wolves, of course. So you are never alone outside the homestead. But especially in the Red Forest.”

“Do you know why we tell children stories about monsters and witches and vengeful spirits?”            

Levi looked up from the stew, his mind racing. Vilda had clutched her needle again, seeming to thread the air as the bony hand guided her words. “It all comes back to trust, my boy.”

He was puzzled.

“We want you to be ever watchful of the world and all its people, no matter how wonderful most of them are. Hold your trust as close as your heart.”

Levi’s eyes shined in the firelight, wide as the unused plates on the table.

“Now, trust? It is a hard thing to earn. If children your age are raised as I was, you learn to never take a stranger for granted. In that moment you and a stranger meet, you have opened yourself to a new adventure. But adventures can be frightful. And costly. Not everyone wants the best for you. And it’s hard to see what they want since you didn’t live life through their eyes. It’s our job to keep you safe. Not anyone else. Especially not anything living in those woods.”

She pointed the needle toward her cracked front window and into early night, but Levi kept his head in his stew. Vilda set the sewing set on the table and adjusted herself in her chair, smiling at him. She might as well have been a second mother to him. Nobody made him feel safer.

“You learn as you grow. But while you are young, it’s time to look around and observe everyone around you. Listen to stories. Listen to history. Listen to what the church says. But…trust always comes at a cost. It doesn’t matter where you are or the people you meet. It is more valuable than gold. Sometimes, trust can be more precious than bread.”

“It’s very important.” Levi concluded.

Vilda nodded in satisfaction. “The monsters may not be real, but the meaning is still true. If little boys go out into the woods alone, there are many things that will try to stop them from coming home. The cold. The hungry wolves. The dark of night.” Vilda said, reaching across the table and taking Levi’s shaking hands.

With her one good eye dashed with grey speckles that matched the left’s milky cover, Vilda comforted Levi with a deep sigh. She gently brushed the top of his hand with her thumb before she shook it gently and looked at his half-finished stew. “We just want you to be safe, dear.”  

“Now finish supper and help your father to bed. I have to make sure poor Ellis and his son have gotten their bellies full too.” Vilda said before scooting the rickety chair from the table and neatly placing her needle and tiny spool of glistening black thread into a dark red handkerchief.

He went to bed that night, hunger satisfied but the urge to explore the living Red Forest starved beyond belief.

***

LEVI LOOKED AROUND THE vast wilderness, a trickle of hot blood dripping from his nose onto chapped lips. He smiled. The forest was beautiful. Much more beautiful than the gruesome, haunting picture his father had painted for him on many fire-lit nights.

The brisk morning air blew through the hollow leafy floor, pushing up bundles of red and yellow, the leaves twirling together in towering spirals. It was only when a descending bundle hit Levi’s face that he emerged from the shock of his accident and began to feel the throbbing pain in his limbs. He couldn’t even muster a word through the aches, simply sitting up and dusting off the debris. He traced a hand down his side and ran over the sore welt developing on his butt. He sucked in the thick forest-flavored air, his teeth chattering from the dampness surrounding him. In his ten years of life, he guessed that he fallen on his butt no less than a hundred times.

Ever since he could run unguided around the town and climb over fences or to the tops of sturdy oaks and syrupy pines, he was scolded by the adults that the Red Forest to the west of town was not a place for children. Even the elders didn’t venture out beyond the golden fields that marked their village border. Past the swaying waist-high tails of yellow weeds His father had even froze like his blood turned to ice when a herd of deer were spooked and ran off into the dense trees during a midday hunt last summer. He later claimed that no bounty of meat was worth losing your soul. Levi was six years old then. And he was six years old when he discovered what death truly meant.

He enjoyed his work for the people in town—delivering cutlets from the butcher to many homes was probably his favorite as he got to walk the entire several times in a day. He enjoyed the tilling until his back cramped up, sang hymns happily on Sunday, and liked his duties except for the call of duty to scrub deeply soiled linens with an abrasive mix of stinging lemon juice and burning salt.

He had seen dogs, chickens, goats, and plenty of deer fall to the Lord’s grace. But the world grew darker the death of the Marshall Sisters, twins about a year younger than Levi. On a bitterly cold day that made him damp in his bones, two small coffins were buried by three strong men, including his father. As wet snowflakes fell on the men’s wide black hats and dusted the coffins in white, Levi watched Mother Marshall murmur under her breath and weep as clumps of thrown dirt sealed them away. She returned from her lonely home a month later, sickly looking but recommitted to helping the church and the townspeople. Levi could not understand her sudden change—the sobbing no longer mother turned into a confident and very passionate woman pastor of the town. Death scared him. It changed people in ways no person, young or old, could explain.

When I die one day… you will have to be strong for yourself and the Lord. his father had said that November night, puffing his pipe as sour smoke lurched toward the flames. Death comes for us all, but the ones who are left behind for a little longer, it is their duty to stay firm and keep our memories alive. That is what Mother Marshall is showing us. She is showing us the only way to live in peace.

And what happens when I die? Levi asked with hesitance.

He hoped for an easy answer. Or perhaps no answer at all. He already knew the truth. But maybe, there was more than one answer.

But his father had been drinking heavily earlier in the evening. When you die, son…, you go to Heaven. To be with your mother. But your body stays here. Your arms, your legs, your eyes… everything remains. And you don’t come back.

Come back…

Come back…

YOU!

HELP ME!

Levi snapped out of his painful wince when he felt a booming, unfamiliar voice from within the forest. He turned around to face the voice, only seeing the endless land of towering trees and hearing the chittering of the song sparrow growing louder and louder. He searched the tree line, finding the familiar sound of the bird near his right ear. With a whoosh!, the blur of a sparrow flew by his head and he ducked, his knees buckling and slamming into the mud.

“Damn bird…” he cursed quietly, watching the small brown-and-white speckled sparrow glide through the upper level of the tree canopy. The sparrow vanished through the leaf ceiling, a puff of leaves exploding behind it.

My body stays here…

Help me…

Levi panicked upon feeling the sensation of the throbbing voice again. He grabbed his head at the temples and grimaced, beginning to hear a faint, raspy whistle. It almost sounded like a hymn the church leaders would lead on Sundays with the chorus of mothers and daughters behind them. He dug himself further into the mud, seeing the sparrow return from the forest top. He watched as it gently landed on a small bush near him.

Who was speaking to him? He knew he was in the Red Forest alone. At least, that was what he told himself. But how could he know? The forest was massive. The world was massive, based on the small collection of maps and books he saw pass through their village sometimes, although most of them ended up as tinder before he had a chance to look at them. Almost without thinking about it, his mind conjured the image of a demon, some hairy bear-man beast hiding amongst the darkest patches of the woods, clawed fingers gently rapping against the back, scraping off bits while grinning a fanged smile that stretched up to its beady yellow eyes. But strangely enough, the strange voice was that of a woman-- What kind of woman would wander the forest alone?

The sparrow pecked at the thick thistles and shook its head. It quickly nibbled on an emerging pod full of bright yellow seeds. He stared at the feathered creature, watching its beading eyes dart around and muster up a fluttery tone from within its expanding belly. A small but stringy puff of white vapor came from its mouth as it sang and he smiled. He blew a hot gust of breath into the autumn in response and the sparrow twisted its head in curiosity. His eyes followed as the sparrow hop along the bush thistles, inching closer toward the boy.

“This is your fault.” he grumbled, suddenly remembering the reason why he was bloody and dirty now, rubbing the hot, growing welt on his behind once again.

The sparrow deflated a bit, turning its head and letting him see the oak-colored beak shining in the thin slice of sunlight that broke through the trees. It tweeted softly and hopped another step forward, with Levi smiling again. He wiped his nose of blood and scrubbed the excess on the sides of his thin trousers, making a clicking noise at the sparrow by popping his tongue on the roof of his mouth. It continued to tweet at him, eventually turning into more of a cooing sound.

He slowly pulled his hand up from his waist and reached out toward the bird. The bird recoiled into itself and unfurled its short wings, prompting him to take a moment of hesitation. He once again smiled and began cooing with the sparrow. Beak met fingertip and he was happy. The bird softly caressed its smooth mouth across the bottom of his fingers and he turned his hand over to hopefully catch the bird in his palm. Just as he felt the slick feathers brush against the drying mud on his hands, the sparrow squawked loudly. He flinched and the bird nipped at the nearest finger, its beak digging under the nail and forcing a cry to come from his mouth.

He took a large step back, looking at the reddened indent in his skin and the cracked nail billowing with blood. A small bit started dripping onto the bright yellow leaves and as he watched the sinister sparrow creep across the edge of the thistle bush, a sudden whoosh! of air enveloped him in a storm of leaves. He smacked them away viciously, welcoming a growing desire to squish the troublesome bird between his hands the next time it decided to nibble. He whipped his head forward through the rush of leaves to scold the bloodthirsty beast of a bird but was taken aback by the towering house that loomed in front of him.

The house made his heart beat through his chest and a thick growl began in the pit of his stomach. The mysterious building appeared to be a tall, faded-white home with several windows, a dark blue door, and countless dark gray shingles laid upon the roof. It was not a wooden cabin like his home and most buildings in town besides the church and library, but there was an absence of stone—the walls were paneled with something that looked like shingled wood until the sun’s glare gave away an alien shine. Nothing about the house was particularly damning, only the fact that it had not been there before the wind and gust of leaves. In fact, none of the trees or small hills in front of him resembled the forest of before. The entire place smelled of soured, slightly rotten fruits. Or a wine, maybe. The delicious fruits-- mainly apples or small bitter berries-- that sprouted from a row of majestic trees near town had been long gone after the short summer. But then again, this was the Red Forest. Anything could happen.

Where am I? Did I walk further in?

Levi began walking forward while deep in thought, not even noticing his legs silently ushering him closer and closer.

Why does the house look so old?

He looked up into the tallest windows, fixed above a small steepled roof over the main doorway. Most of the glass panes were broken or cracked, covered in a green gray smudge that seemed moldy and uninviting. All were violated except for the strange circular window in the center of the house, tucked away in the top where the two sides of the roof came to a sharp point like the doorway. The window was clear as a cold stream and his heart skipped upon seeing a waving yellow hand bounce against the glass. He shuddered and his eyes widened, the panic softening after seeing the edges of the yellow hand clearly, it was nothing more than an old piece of paper, perhaps torn from a book. He watched the parchment flutter in the dusty and spider webbed glass on the inside, stuck between the window sill and the frame. He could almost taste the musty aroma of an old leather bound book opening, revealing flowing treatises or classical stories scratched into its pages from a fine white feather as the paper danced in the breeze and glided along the glass.

He realized that the wide, sharply angled house seemed to pulse with a red-hot desire to intimidate. A whisper crawled in the roof of his mouth but he swallowed it down. I do not belong here. There was no farming land visible, everything covered with territorial piles of leaves in a certain way that let one know they had been settled for several years. There was no friendly lantern light with a welcoming golden glow, no animals or barn established, and not a sign of life at all besides him and the sparrow.

But there was something else with them. Levi could feel the leering presence gnawing at the back of his head like a baby suckling the midwife’s nipple. When the unwelcome thought entered his head, he banished it with a quick head shake.

Who lives here? The woman?

Levi’s mind raced while he stood still and watched the sparrow reemerge from the tree canopy, cheery as ever. The sparrow whizzed by a maple tree and circled before diving at him, tweeting past his head and flying toward the house’s roof.

I need your help… the woman’s voice said softly, this time not in his head.

“In the wooden box.”

“In the wooden box…”

Nobody had set foot on the eerie site in years. Yet, the voice persisted. And Levi felt himself compelled to find the back of the house.

His feet shifted forward, crushing the dried leaves as his shoes skirted across the suddenly rocky ground. Countless small angled stones dashed along the bluish-gray pathway and with every crunch of the path and tweet of the everlasting sparrow, an image began to form in his head like a fine paintbrush trailing lines across a blank canvas. The lines twisted together, bleeding into familiar colors and forming the shape of a tall outhouse, covered in vines and one side caved in with a rotting roof of dark acidic green wood. Some deep lines and a faded, misshapen circle were carved into the door, splitting apart near the middle from age.

And before the image could become even clearer, he found himself in a different part of the Red Forest. And there it was. The outhouse. The colors were even deeper in real life. Those vines he saw were different too, now moving like snakes, crawling around the sides and slipping into the hole in the roof. The outhouse sat on a significant pile of palm-sized stones with a shiny yet dull surface, becoming odder the longer he stared at them. He tried to inch his head forward but his body ached at the attempt, suddenly noticing that the door was creaking, almost breathing as it expanded around the middle.

The outhouse stood center view, a stark image of musty white stones encased in faded brown wood against the backdrop of hundreds of ever-moving autumn trees. Just in front of the outhouse and its pile were two towering oak trees on opposite sides, about ten paces apart, like wooden copies of pillars placed around an ancient Greek or Roman building. Everything behind the pillar trees seemed to inch away from him while the outhouse crept closer—his vision hazed and began to blot out the impossibly tall oak and maple trees with branches that appeared woven into each other—branches coiled together so tightly that only the smallest slivers of pale yellow afternoon light could break through.

Afternoon? He thought to himself. It was only morning a few minutes ago…

The gurgling churn in his stomach he first felt upon seeing the odd house brewed again, wrenching his insides as he felt his eyes widen to a point of white-hot pain. He knew in his heart that he was somewhere forbidden, the rotten kind of place sung in frightful songs or tall tales about cursed, unholy places that disobedient children never returned from. Half of the day had apparently passed him by, as if the unseen beast of the forest had reached up with a bony finger and thumb and dragged the sun from its position until it was beaming directly above him. But he felt like a rabbit sitting in a tall grassy field, heart beating fast, nose twitching toward the downwinds, and having the strange supernatural sense that it was being stalked by a high-flying hawk before a quick swoop and lethal swipe. He was being hunted. And a dark part of his mind knew that this was worse than being lured into a trap by an animal. Or some silly make-believe beast of the forest.

It was the forest itself.

And now, he couldn’t move.

The outhouse’s door was a different type of wood than the rest, deeper brown in color but very wet as clear droplets formed in between the heavy splintering at every corner—fraying the edges into odd upturned curls. He wanted to scream for some reason and to his surprise, nothing came out. Without knowing why, he felt the urge to run away as fast as he could and sit by a fire. It didn’t matter whose. Even the off-putting Mother Marshall who had lost her daughters last winter and had turned into a living skeleton fueled by grief alone. Her sunken, pale face riddled with deep suture lines of sadness and despair, her poor fragile-looking bald head layered with blue veins that sometimes pulsed around her temples before a crying tantrum commenced.

But at this moment, he prayed to the Lord in Heaven to escape the dreary homestead in the Red Forest, leave it forever, and run to the Marshall home. He would sit right next to the woman under a thick blanket with a plate of hot food, watching her black, sunken eyes shine in the firelight like coal, her remaining teeth jutting from her mouth as she ate a plump yet crispy chicken leg with him. At least he would be warm, fed, and had someone to talk to besides the mean bird.

If only I could turn my head and run straight home-- but his feet were stuck to the ground, his knees beginning to buckle before steadying himself. What is happening? Why can’t I move?

“Because I am now in your heart and soul, Leviticus.” the woman’s voice beamed from within the outhouse, soft yet reserved.

His mouth became dry when she uttered his name.

“And I need you to free me from this wooden prison.”

The narrow door creaked open slowly, exposing the confounding sight of a space filled with the same stones as the base, stacked in an orderly design to the ceiling. The door banged into the outer corner, emitting a repetitive squeaking sound as it shook back and forth, like a maniacal cackle or a lonely loon calling out in the night for a mate. He shuddered when the door popped off its rusted metal hinges, the weakened wood splitting apart in chunks. The familiar rush of lukewarm air seemed to blow up from under Levi’s feet as the rotting door finally settled, a battered and curled plank descending into the mush.

“Hello?” Levi asked, nearly choking on the word.

Silence followed for a few pained moments. He still couldn’t move. Except for his eyes. They traced the frame of the outhouse wildly, trying to make sense of the situation. A person couldn’t be inside there. It was full to the top with those strange stones. And if she was in there, who had placed her inside this… prison? The entire disquieting scene made no sense. The house as well. The house that he could no longer see. Had this magical woman been hiding out there? Peeking through the windows with a yellow smile and black cloak covering her eyes-- the kind of eyes that he knew had to be shiny red and blistering like fire.

“I am not in the house…” the woman muttered in a tired tone.

He shrieked, the pounding weight in his head growing. Gooseflesh prickled from the small of his back to the neck. His nose started running. But he could not tell if it was snot or blood. He watched one of the stones in the center start to wiggle gently, the entire stack above beginning to rattle like the rusty door hinges. The center stone clattered against the wall of uneven yet smooth rock and as he thought about it, the stones almost looked like rows of scales on a carp.

And then Levi jumped at the plop! of the loose stone colliding with the rocky base, the crackle of meeting stones echoing into the forest. He hadn’t even seen it drop. But his stomach did upon seeing the silent flash of a vaguely human appendage. He was not even sure if he had truly seen it. But he knew his eyes were not failing him. It was an unnatural green finger with a hooked, yellowed fingernail—impossibly long and rigid, slipping back into the darkness of the miniature cave that appeared within the stone wall.  

“Come close…” the suddenly clear voice of the woman whispered, dragging the second word out until all breath seemed to leave her throat.

Levi felt himself take a breath and his right foot became tingly, as opposed to previously feeling nothing in the limb but the creaks of cold muscles buckling. He watched as his foot dragged across the leafy floor, scraping up thawing mud, small twigs, and hosts of sloshing, decayed plant matter from beneath the autumn surface. His foot no longer seemed to be part of his battered, muddy body. He felt a pang of nonsensical betrayal at the foot, encouraging its mirroring foot to move in tandem ever closer to the cursed wooden box with a green-skinned she-monster hiding in the shadows.

“Come close, Leviticus.” the woman droned, his head throbbing with pressure as she continued to speak in long whispers interspersed with grunts and small moans of something close to pleasure or pain. “All you need to do is approach my prison, come close to the hole, and breathe upon me. Just one… vaporous… hot breath shall do.”

He began to feel hot streams of sweat trail down the back of his shirt and the twin lakes forming in his armpits. A hot breath? What kind of a request was that? Then, at once, he realized what she was. A witch. A hag who followed the call of darkness and ate scared children out of spite. Even though he knew it in his heart and wished to not say a word, he felt a sudden release and opened his drying mouth.  

“Who are you?” he managed, choking on the final word and tasting blood.

“I mean you no harm. Just a breath…” the witch replied, her voice suddenly echoing from inside the outhouse. The whispers bounced on the white stones and dulled the sound, as if muffling her true intentions.

He craned his neck to the opposite direction of the witch’s prison, shocked to see the odd house in the distance, half-covered by an impenetrable wall of thickets and red-berried brush that was not there when he first inspected the haunted site. Nothing about this place made sense. And it was time he left.

He hesitated in his mind, manifested as a gurgling ball of nervousness that grew in his throat. And there was a bit of guilt there as well. It did sound like she might be in great pain. Who would lock a woman out in the woods? Beat her until she bruised purple and green?

But, Levi thought, I’ve felt pain in my stomach when I’m hungry. The little aches start. But if I don’t think about them, they go away. But… the moment I see a piece of fresh bread or the hottest bowl of deer stew, my belly growls and starts squishing my insides. Maybe she is just hungry. And I’m a perfect bowl of boy stew to her.

“I will not lie to you…” the witch continued, reminding him of her powerful ability to peer into his thoughts. Her voice had become harsh like pebbles scraping under a walking boot, crumbling into Levi’s ears with heavy thumps. “I am a witch. But my clan does not harm any person. Especially a young child. Now, please… I need your breath to give me strength. I was placed here some time ago and I have just awoke. I am too weak to break free.”

“Wh- who put you in there?” Levi questioned, still frozen in place but finding himself stretching his neck up to see inside the hole. There was nothing but blackness.

“A very, very bad witch. I was trying to find her after she… hurt some of my people. The people I love. Like you love your father.” the witch revealed. That gravelly voice had become smoother, with a hiss at the end until she began to resemble a normal person. It was a nice voice. A comforting one. But she had made one thing clear. Witches were real. And so were the bad ones.

Levi swallowed loudly—a bad witch? Is there such a thing as a good witch? A good hag? A good child-eater?

“The bad witch has a false name and pretends to be a healer.” the witch continued. “She poisons the land and people while pretending to cure sickness by using the earth. She can appear very friendly, with a bright smile and shining green eyes. But she can change into any man, woman, or beast that suits her needs. She pretends to worship your gods… but she obeys the commandments of a much darker, older presence that feeds on the blood of the innocent. She is the servant of an abomination that feasts on all—mothers, fathers, and, yes… children. Children like you.”

Levi’s eye twitched. Feeds off the innocent…

The witch continued. “She lives in the town of Shepherd’s Hill. Do you know of it? It is not far from this place.”

Levi did know of Shepherd’s Hill. It was the namesake of his town. The description of the bad witch was a match for Mother Marshall before her children has passed. She had been the head nurse since Levi could remember—bandaging villagers injured in hunting or farming accidents, handing out teas from special herbs grown on the opposite end of town, all while being the most devout member of Levi’s church. Of course, her reputation had been praised before the winter came. And the town did what needed to be done. At least, that was what his father had told him.

Within days of the fever that would claim fifteen people, daughters’ sickness sent them both into a deeper sleep, still breathing but seemingly never to awake. Five days after the first snowfall and the daughters’ long sleep, Mother Marshall had a private meeting with the adults of Shepherd’s Hill at the church, a meeting that left all the parents solemn and suddenly tired. Later that night, he was told to stay in bed by his father, who smelled thick with ale and went outside with his scythe in hand. Levi sat by the frosting window all night, swearing that he heard a distant scream or two followed by a man crying out. Levi covered his eyes as the glow of mass torchlight broke over the large hill along the path into town and sometime later, while under blankets and a growing sense of fear, his father returned, smelling of blood and sniffling. What had happened that night? And why didn’t he remember until now?  

“She has to be brought back to my clan to save my people.” the witch said sharply, giving Levi a shudder.

“Please,” she hissed, “Before she hurts your village, if she hasn’t already, you have to free me. Once you have given me what I require, you will leave this place with me. I will make sure you are protected! You are in great danger! Now, please. Come… here!”

“No!” he shrilled, his eyes as wide as plates.

While thinking hard about the last time he glanced at his home, his town, his everything, Levi hardly noticed that the seared image of his home pushed out the intruding voice and the head pains that followed. He slammed his eyes shut, despite the scenery fading from afternoon into something darker, a strong wind in the distance bellowed its arrival with a low whistle that shot up through the thin layer of vegetation beneath his feet.

I need to get home. I have to get home! Home. Home. Home! he said to himself, almost as a prayer to ward off a demonic force. He pictured his home—a fortressed community nestled in a plentiful valley that grew corn and wheat like nowhere else, no matter the time of year. But there it went. Home faded from view as the very real forest enveloped his vision, soaked through the glossy flashbacks in his mind.

What is home, Levi? Twenty-some houses and a gigantic worship temple in its center, the chimneys always billowing with that dark blue smoke. He could see the ritual chalice used during mass sessions by moonlight, torch, and the harmonic symphony of the odd, bald women appointed by Mother Marshall following Minister Hughes’ death at the start of spring.

When his eyes opened, Levi was horrified to see a spindly green arm covered by a sleeve of black spider webs whip wildly across the stones, the witch growling and pushing the bottom part of her face through the hole and shaking her head violently against the stones. Her lips were cracked and swollen, sickly pink and discolored against the green skin. Her yellow teeth broke from viscous droops of saliva, joined by crusted-over foam resting at the corners of her mouth. The air had filled with the stench of sulfur and taste of rancid, waterlogged meat.

In the foul air hung deep ghostly growls and vengeful dog barks that made his eyes twitch. Her deep snarls and insults were not in English. But they were words. Spats of hateful venom. Filthy, blasphemous, desperate words of harsh vowels and abrupt throaty skips. And somehow, through all of their chaotic spew, he knew the gut-churning wish behind her strange words. She had placed a curse upon him—damning him to some dark fate worse than death.

The witch’s long yellow fingernails snapped across the cold air and grazed his second layer sweater, snipping the threads in a straight slash. Levi broke free of his paralysis, feeling past the traitorous foot’s hold after what felt like hours and threw himself to the ground. He rested for a moment, digging his hands into the slush of mud before staring at the small gap in the stone wall, the arm gone. He tasted blood in the back of his throat followed by several sharp wheezes while turned on his side. He listened close to the heavy breathing of the witch, a jolting mix of wheezes and snorts, half laughing while she tapped the stones with her nails.

Levi took a breath himself and rose to his feet, welcoming the cold mud after the heat of his blood rushed through his veins like a river after rainfall. He eyed the dislodged stone near his foot at the base and snatched it without hesitation, all while staring at the long nails now resting still against the wall. The lone stone was cool and smooth on its bottom while the top was grainy and filled with pockmarks. What was he going to do? Throw it at her? Bash those ghastly fingers?

His plan was disrupted from a rustling in the outhouse. Then a mocking whistle of the flirting type, followed by a laugh of malice.

“Pahhhhh. Work.” the witch said softly, the work coming out in a desperate huff of air.

“What?” Levi rasped, lurching his body forward while rubbing the stone’s bottom with his thumb. It was odd. Despite all that had happened, he found himself transfixed by the strange texture on the stone. What was that feeling? He felt his heartbeat thumping through his fingertips. Or was the thumping coming from the stone?

“Paaaaaaaahhhhhh. cha. Worrrrrrkkkkk.” the witch grunted, the harshness and gravel in her voice returning, followed by a deep rumble not unlike Levi’s hungry stomach.

“Stop it!” Levi shouted as tears swelled at the corners of his eyes while her voice rose. He gripped the rock hard, his knuckles turning white as the witch’s words became distinct and filled with a pressing weight that made him queasy.

“PATCH. Work.” the witch proclaimed, her voice vibrating from within the outhouse as the second word came out in a loud whisper.

He crushed the rock.

“PATCH. WORK.”

It was like a snail shell being crushed, an activity that Levi reveled in when he was younger and still held a great deal of shame over all of the slimy creatures he had ground into a collection of brittle shell and snot-like muck. Horrified, he looked down and watched a dark purple ooze leak from within his closed fist, the rock’s outer shell blowing away in the breeze into powder. The shell became hundreds of tiny splinters wedged into his palm and blood dripped down his raised arm.

He dropped the leaking mass onto the ground and fell on his side in shock. He began to crawl backwards, taking turns staring at the solemn yet teasing outhouse and the unknown unshelled monstrosity that began to wiggle. He backed up the left pillar tree, clonking his head and biting his tongue while the witch began to cackle both inside his head and into the forest. He let his flailing, bloody hands guide him to the absolute back of the surprisingly warm tree that felt like it had been sitting in the sun, but he could see above that it was already setting over the horizon.

Wait… Levi thought through a blizzard of fear and muddled questions, it’s almost night?

He placed a hand on the pillar tree, covered in the entrails of the now-moving purplish-red organ pile that began crawling toward him, a stringy tendon brushing the bottom of his shoe. He pushed himself against the tree to stand, only to have his entire arm collapse into the tree’s body, a brief head turn revealing fleshy but stark white layers of what looked like muscle and black veins trailing off in every direction just beneath a transparent film. As if he had cracked open an egg and instead of yolk, a nightmare spilled out.

Before he could fully process the tree or tree-like creature, he experienced the greatest shock of his life as the opposite pillar tree in front of him erupted at its barky base in a plume of white and yellow powder. The form of a green-skinned woman with splintered bark for fingernails and an enlarged head of soaking wet moss emerged. Her eyes were hidden behind the heavy hair but her crooked smile let him know she did not need eyes to see him.

The Patch-work Witch cackled loudly and in a teeth-chattering squeal of delight, ran at Levi. Her face was shadowed by dusk, but splotches of fiery reds and pale yellows shot through the cursed canopy of trees to reveal an ever-shifting texture of flittering flesh-rotting sparkles rolling across the unnatural green.

He ducked, folded into a praying position, and banged his knee into his right cheekbone which sent another shower of stars into his eyes. He felt the wet and heavy slap of her cloak’s bottom edge against the top of his head and swatted in its direction with his eyes slammed shut. His fingers grazed a cold arm that was raised with scabs freshly healed over and prickles of shaved hair. Once the arm had swung past him, he heard a noise akin to an animal’s guts being removed before skinning—the sloshing of intestines snaking their way past a pool of blood. He opened his eyes to see the witch’s cloak vanish inside the blown-out tree where she emerged, the cloth sinking into a space between two pieces of chipped bark. The sludging sound was muffled before it finished with a liquid pop! that made him flinch.

A deeply inhuman roar came from beneath his feet, shaking the trees violently as branches fell straight down all around him. Powerful snaps and cracks echoed about, sending a bounty of baby twigs, baby leaves, and half decomposed baby bird skeletons to rain down on him. Several finger-like branches hit the roof of the outhouse and bounced off, becoming wooden daggers that seemed to fling themselves at Levi. The stones inside the outhouse rattled and clattered together while brittle flakes of old white paint vibrated off the sides. He look up and stared in blood-curdling awe at the flesh-colored canopy of trees as branches of the tallest members overlapped one another and began to bend down toward him. The pillar trees began to creak and moan, bending toward the outhouse, like a respectful bow to a king or queen. Or witch. It was like being trapped in a large blanket, folded upwards as a large invisible knitting needle punctured through the living trees and sewed him and the witch’s throne inside, tightening the fibers of forest cloth until they threatened to burst at the seams.

The growl came again, much closer this time, and Levi’s broken nose, filled with drying blood and crunched cartilage, inhaled the sickening aroma of rotted meat and molding fruit. He could smell deer, rabbit, bird, and something all too familiar. The hot blasts of digestive fumes brought him to his knees, the leaves swirling around him and cutting his face with their biting stems. They whispered to him in hushed tones—this is where you die, boy!—this forest will eat you whole!—you had your chance to leave!—all while the Red Forest laughed in his face and the Patch-work Witch hovered above him, her ragged silhouette with outstretched green arms bent backwards, black as night against the closing canopy, eating the deceiving light of sunset.

The witch kept rising and her bare, discolored feet dangled limply as flecks of dirt fell into Levi’s face, his eye drifting to a lone yellow leaf stuck to the sole of her right foot from the moisture of the ground.

“COME CLOSE!!!” her guttural, desperate command clamored throughout the forest.

But Levi was already gone. The leaves kicked up during his escape now billowed in front of the outhouse, suddenly a serene yet ominous site once again. The door rested on the ground. The sparrow had presumably bed down for the night not far from the strange house. The white rocks remained in their place. Except for the one that had crawled away.

As the sun went down, vanquished over the horizon of the forest in a subtle fade of pastel reds, yellows and blues, the Patch-work Witch and the Red Forest fell silent.

***

HOT TEARS WERE STINGING his cheeks and chapped, crooked and swollen nose. Blood and bruises festered about in several places. He needed home. He needed a warm bath. A warm meal. He just needed to be warm. Away from the coldness of the living, breathing Red Forest, the witch, and the night that had swiftly surrounded him during his grueling dash. He had tripped and fallen several times in the darkness, using the few twinkling stars of shivering night seen in a clearing to guide his way.  

The latest fall over a felled tree and crash into a bundle of thorns was very painful, shattering the little bones in the pinky on his left hand, but his recovery had been greeted with the familiar sight of the row of apple trees that marked the edge of Shepherd’s Hill. And there it was. No more witches. No more eater-of-children forest. No more sparrows. No more voices. It was only him and the distant, but comforting sounds of a fire crackling.

Levi smiled with relief.

He pulled himself up from the mud, the gritty, cold sediment digging under his nails and was shocked for a moment, having thought he witnessed the sunrise. Only, the fiery bloom of light and faint heat was not from the sun, but a raging fire swallowing his entire village. Flames stretched up to unimaginable proportions, their edges licked at the horizon of dark, blended clouds and the sliver of moon that casted a dim pink glow around itself. Smoke swirled higher than the flames and caught the waves of heat and soared ever higher, unleashing a sickening stench of charred death as far as the wind could take it.

The enormous gate that surrounded the entire town and warded off intruders of opposing beliefs had been blasted apart by something disastrous and hot, the singed wood that remained glowing orange. The person-sized wooden pikes that made up the barrier of the side entrance had somehow been nailed to the top of the fortified entrance—coated with dark red and impaled through all dozen of them was a connected rope monstrosity of smashed organs, limbs, and bloody entrails that were too big to belong to a deer or any animal his people hunted. Levi had the sickening revelation that those livers and intestines and glistening chunks of meat and big and tiny arms and legs belonged to the people of Shepherd’s Hill.

He looked up at the statue hoisted on top of the triangular twin-door gate with heavy ropes. It was the oversized wooden head, torso, and crooked, raised arms of his Lord, the Vozreth of Light. The three-horned godman with an unhinged jaw of fangs and fur covering his body who descended from the Heavens with his Son, the Beast of the Moon and gave life to the chosen people. The statue, once varnished to a light brown was now drenched in crimson and the dead-eyed heads of familiar male and female church members rested on each short horn reared up along Vozreth’s forehead like the curled edges on the door of the outhouse.

Levi shook in awesome horror, looking up at the horns and seeing the whites of Minister Barton’s eyes match the scream in his loose face and jaw. The others were almost too battered to identify, with only their long-flowing Mother hoods letting him know they were of the church’s highest order. But Mother Marshall was not there.

Was the witch right? Levi thought to himself before realizing that in his shock, he had drowned out the screams and cries of his neighbors. His fractured mind recalled his mission. Where is my house? Where is Father?

He ran inside the gate, avoiding the sizzling embers flaking out from the glowing hot wood. His sight was overcome with thick, black smoke that clouded the burning houses and people in a haze. Every step he took was met with some kind of obstacle, a burning plank here or twisted body half-buried in mud there. Chickens and pigs clucked and squealed in panic, some of them on fire and leaving trails of burning grease. All the while he tried to force the screams and sorrow from his mind, he watched as shadows of people, their bodies blackened into genderless, shapeless forms while engulfed in flames, writhed in pain or stood helplessly in shock. He held out his hands to provide some level of balance as the ground seemed to roll like ripples on a lake after skipping rocks. He needed to be steady. Or he would die. He knew that now.

He crashed to his knees in a serene patch of grass near the center of town and took in several gulps of cindered but fresher air while wiping tears from his burning eyes. He rested briefly, already accepting that his father was most likely dead and among the corpses he had stomped or tripped across. But he still needed to make it home.

The flicker of creamy orange light from within the swirling storm of choking smoke eventually guided him to a less torched area of the town. He avoided the pile of open-eyed, blue skinned bodies of all ages next to one of the watering holes, all who died seemingly trying to climb into the raised stone well to get fresh air. The moss lurching out from the cracks of stone resembled the witch’s damp hair when she emerged from the exploding tree, sending him back to the Red Forest with the witch who laughed at his screams. He shook the memory from his head and continued through the center of town, knowing that his house was a hundred-so paces away once he got past the steep pathway by Aunt Vilda’s.  

The howling of dying men, women, and children had lost most of its luster during his small recuperation near the home of Vilda—and Levi could not find her. He assumed the same fate for her as the others. There was no one to save. Not even the stupid bully Cassius. The ones crying for help were missing limbs, burned to a blistering white, or not even aware they were dead yet.

After a moment of shuddering grief, he ran from the heavy footsteps of a bleeding man holding what remained of a mangled and smashed right arm. He hid in wait under an overturned wagon of fresh greens just fifty paces from his corner of town. The hurt man limped quickly across the smoky street, calling out to anyone. Levi couldn’t move. He watched in horror as a robed shadow shrouded by smoke stabbed the man in the back with a hatchet before retreating into the fog of screams and booming fires.

Soon after, as the crackles and pops of flaming houses falling apart dulled into steady roars, Levi noticed the smoke clearing up, slowly uncovering the Marshall household next to his, with the sad mother in a tightly wound blanket, sitting on the smoking ground in silence.

He gave a sigh of relief. Until recalling the Patch-work Witch’s claims.

She masquerades as a healer.

…please, before she hurts your village.

Free me from this wooden prison…

He watched Mother Marshall, the head church member and supposed witch stand up straight and shove off the blanket, revealing a naked, pale body without nipples, a belly button, or female organ.

Levi froze in terror, watching Mother Marshall take a long, yellowed thumbnail and drag it up the tip of her crooked nose, tiny streams of blood trailing down her face, catching inside the wrinkles of her nose and forehead. Slobber fell from the corner of her foaming mouth in stringy, discolored globs like wax running down the side of a quickly burning candle. Her hand shuddered and while her lips and jaw winced with intense pain, her eyes told a different story. They were filled with a gleeful rage—a look Levi had never seen before.

The thumb continued slicing up her forehead and the wound became jagged due to the shaking of her hand, finishing the grisly firelit mutilation by slashing through her scalp and ending the journey where her head and stretched neck met. She covered her head with her hands and slowly pulled them down her face, smearing it in red. When her wide eyes emerged from within the converging river of blood, they looked out into the small clearing across from her, the whites shone like a lantern’s light, white as the stones at the prison of the Patch-work Witch.

She was staring at Levi.

***

EVERYTHING AFTER WAS A hazy mix of utter horror and confusion. He knew Mother Marshall had given chase to him, crawling on both her arms and legs like a dog and running like one too. He could vividly recall the roaring swarm of a feathery black monster without form rising from the ground and crushing the worship temple before diving back beneath the burning village. But Levi couldn’t remember if he had truly seen the dead body of his decapitated father, with his bloody and bent scythe in stiff hand while resting in an odd manner against their front door, one leg twisted all the way around while his body just looked wrong against the wood. But despite all of the horrific moments during his short return to Shepherd’s Hill, he knew one thing.

The Patch-work Witch had been right.

How many towns had Mother Marshall, the bad witch, sent to the grave? In all of the bloodshed he had witnessed, Levi began to imagine the true story of that night his father left, reeking of ale and scythe in hand, the night after the Marshall girls had been put to a permanent sleep. Whose screams were those in the distance? What did the bad witch make them do? He figured he would never know. He would be dead soon like the rest. Unless he could make it to the forest.

He wondered how much time had passed since he had rolled into one of the many farming ditches, just before the apple trees. He held his ears closed with bloody, soot-covered palms. His hair was now greasy and he couldn’t smell anything besides the smoke. And something told him it was not smart to lie in the ditch any longer.

It had been at least an hour based on the amount of debris that had dried on Levi’s sliced sweater and pants. The Red Forest, oddly, was the only thing that made him feel protected now. That, and daytime. Maybe the Patch-work Witch could help him. Maybe she could kill Mother Marshall and send her to Hell. Bring his father back from the dead. Bring Aunt Vilda back from the dead. All he needed to do was give her a hot breath-- of which he still had a few.

As the morning sun truly began to shower down on the Virginian wilderness once again, Levi sighed at seeing the very tops of the apple trees while slowly coming to his feet a few minutes after abandoning the ditch. But his sigh was quickly replaced with a wheezing holler as the bleeding, helpless boy widened his eyes and prayed to see the massive Red Forest laid out before him. But there was nothing but the largest patch of dirt he had ever seen.

The Red Forest was gone. In its place was a flat plateau of fresh mud stretching far into the distance, an irregular oval of nothingness. No hill to trip over or tree to be seen. No sparrows singing. No outhouse or Patch-work Witch in sight.

And although it would become unusually warm that autumn morning, Levi had never felt so cold.

THE END