Drive
Pierced. Forgotten from his memories.
Visions of a house that still creaks when the dry, October wind hits it wooden walls and frame.
There, in the south of Massachusetts, between forests and fields, a town named Monson sticks to his tongue like an engineered dryness.
With it, a house that feels sharp. Like a tiny piece of glass in the tip of his finger. It pricks. Glass knows that size doesn’t matter when it comes to pain.
His unconscious claws out: I need a sip.
He left Connecticut that moment and began his drive up north.
Two hours.
Through cities.
Then towns.
Fields of corn turned to mazes and barns with chipping paint. October is in session, and spirits couldn’t scream any louder. The roads are empty as the fields.
A tree, an old oak probably, first stole his attention. A sentinel at the top of an overgrown hill. Its contorted limbs and branches reach to the sky like it wants to give the clouds a lashing. It has no leaves and its bark was nearly black. Like it was struck by lightning.
In the center, a crevice the size of an infant stares like a void, an opening like the devils mouth.
He drives past without any attention on the road, staring deep into the void of the crevice, listening for the reasons that drove him from Monson the first time.
The heavy air around that lone tree was intoxicating. Invisibly intoxicating. Like carbon-monoxide during a dream.
Slowing down wasn’t an option. Stopping was.
When the speedometer hit zero, the car was well beyond the tree. Its crevice turned to an angle he hadn’t see before.
The treeline — a colored forest that wouldn’t dare get near that blasted tree — stands watching his next move. Judging.
He gets out of his car and walks to the wooden fence guarding the field. Or protecting the road.
He looks out to the lonely tree. A wind whips his hair and forces his cheeks to squeeze. The branches of the tree do not move or wave in the wind. They stand stiff. Dead. Like a statuette.
But the crevice gapes, gapes like it inhaled the wind, or like it just blew out the breeze. He is certain he saw it. Its the only movement beside the tall, waving, yellow grass.
The wind falters and dies. He stares into the crevice, not breaking contact for a moment. A light humming enters his ears. The crevice doesn’t move. The humming turns a buzzing, a buzzing, buzzing into his brain. It wont get out. The crevice doesn’t speak. Where is the buzz?
Down the empty road that leads through the final stretch into Monson, his eyes catch a lonely grey pickup truck. An old ford. It’s engine is the loudest thing since he got off the highway. He watches as it rumbles up the road and gets closer.
The nearer it got, the heavier he became. The louder became the buzzing.
He paid a quick glance to the tree, almost like he were suspicious. Checking if it was still there.
The buzzing truck blew a breeze past him just as he turned back. Came all the way up the hill in that moment he used to turn his head. He barley caught a glimpse of the driver. From the back: a slim figure with long, straight black hair.
He watched the pickup truck drive down the road and disappear behind the forest’s protective shield. It was time to do the same.
The tree will not need a goodbye, but in that final look he gave it, the quick check before turning to his car, he felt a pull into its heavy air.
A heavy air that sunk into his skin.
A feeling he could only describe as guilt.
Long Road
He steps into his idling car and continues to where he was going. Wherever that was.
The forest opens and swallows the road. Colored leaves drop as if to say, welcome — or goodbye.
He speeds a little more than usual. As if escaping something that he wasn’t certain was chasing him. But he speeds anyway.
Through the empty forest, past the whips of wind that rip colored leaves from their branches. New England is beautiful in October, he thinks.
On the empty road, he takes any moment he can to stare into the belly of the forest. Through the trees and leaves. He’s searching for something. Whether it’s there or not, he cannot remember, but he searches for the sign that’ll tell him, this is it.
The road winds and his engine rumbles. No birds in the forest. No squirrels on the trees. He’s in the in-between of emptiness and loneliness.
He drives without the radio because, even if the signal reached, it would only distract him. Make him forget even more.
Between the trees and fauna of the forest, he thinks he sees what he’s looking for. Brown wood stripped of its bark. Cut down into panels and turned to the walls of a house. So familiar.
He sees it through the forest, but he doesn’t know how to get there.
Continuing down the long road, he spies on the house. Waiting for it to form into something real.
Like a daydream turning to reality, he hopes the forest might break into a driveway. But the house does not become anything more than slits of brown wood between birch trees and colored leaves that he flies past in his drive.
He does not slow down.
Eventually the road turns in the direction of the house. Straight into its direction. Yet the house does not manifest. It remains like the surface of water in the sun, a set of moving reflections that do not sit still.
Straight ahead of him, nothing but more paved road cutting through the stomach of forest between the farms of countryside and the lonely town of Monson.
He eyes between the trees. Searching for the brown paneling and dusty windows.
All he sees is dead leaves and drying bark.
The house he thought he saw is not in front of him. Which is where it should be. But he looks the forest through his passenger side window and sees again that moving reflection.
Iridescent paneling; brown from the wood, blackening from the years. Oh how its been a many years.
BUMP, the car jumps, smacking something on the road.
His heart beats and he checks the rear-view.
A tangled black mess twitching on the road. Twitching like it wants the twitching to stop. He hit something living.
He pulls over quickly and runs out. Car idling. Checking on the dying creature.
When he steps out, the twitching black mass slides slowly across the road leaving a trail of dark, slime like trail in its absence.
An unholy movement.
A sliding like a snake from a creature with its limbs twitching and twisting in the air; sliding on its back like its being carried by ants, moving smoother than any creature on this earth, smoother than a snake, in a straight line, with an iridescent shine in the trail it left on the road behind.
It disappears into the ditch before he could make sense of it.
He wants to step closer, but cannot. Not out of fear, but disbelief.
He rubs his eyes and stares into that ditch.
The black trail slowly fades to an oil black in his peripheral, then fades back into road when he looks to it. As if nothing was really there.
Above the ditch and beyond the trees, he sees again that moving reflection: brown paneling infested with moss; dusty windows darker than night; tiles on the roof covered in dead leaves.
Nothing but dead leaves leading up to it.
That house is it.
He debates running straight through the woods to get there.
He turns to the sound of his rumbling car, engine in idle, then looks back to the house.
Nothing but dying bark and dead leaves.
Monson
The brown paneling of that reflective house sits in his mind.
He gets off the road and back into his car, putting it in drive and speeding down the long road.
Fast enough to make his tires hold onto the asphalt for dear life.
Colored leaves fall into his path. Falling like teeth from a rotten mouth. Nothing moves in his mind apart from the moving reflection of that rotting house.
Entering Monson, MA Est 1715 Population: 8,150
The road continues until the forest scatters.
Civilization enters.
Long driveways break through the trees. Grass greener than a dollar reminding him that life exists below dead leaves. As long as someones can rake it up.
He drives until he hits the downtown. Cars start appearing on the road and he recognizes a familiar white church resting on a hill.
Familiar, why? He cannot say.
Though it stands as the tallest structure, commanding an air of respect and stability.
His road splits into two ways: up, past the church; down through the center.
He doesn’t know where to go.
Nor, did he have any idea of where to go to begin with.
Part of him wants to turn back onto that long road, back into the forest and walk into depths where nobody will find him.
Or over the fence of that field and into the crevice of that tree.
He would, if he could. Though he chooses the road past the church.
Cars pass him by and their headlights stare like shining eyes.
He slows past the church and stops in front of it. He takes a look into its tall wooden doors. Beyond the doors, closed as they are, he sees through them and to the wooden pews facing an altar stained in blood, or wine. Its white cloth drapes over the wood.
He squeezes his eyes hard and opens them again.
Tall wooden doors. Heavy. A loud HONK shouts from behind.
He checks the rear-view. Silver pickup truck, a woman with long black hair hiding behind a tinted windshield. So familiar.
He waves his hand out the window and urges her to pass. She blows past him with a humming engine and continues past the church. In the bed of her truck, a collection of dead wood. Brown, shabby paneling.
Firewood.
He pulls out behind and follows for a reason he does not yet know.
A man without a mind. No senses.
After minutes of being followed, the truck catches on and acts accordingly.
It speeds up. It makes a few strange turns that he decides to follow. The truck speeds up even more.
The car follows the truck to the outskirts of town, where it then cuts onto a road leading back to the forest.
He follows.
The truck drives and drives and he keeps staring into the bed. Into the dead wood bumping around. Brown, and eaten up by moss. Moist. Dark.
It can’t be firewood.
He flips his high-beams on and off, on and off, and signals to pull over or slow down.
The truck does not slow down. He picks up speed and tries his high-beams again. The wood in the bed bumps around and the truck does not slow down.
It speeds up.
It continues down the road into the forest growing denser. Signs appear along the road, all reading in the same lettering, same font, same warning:
DO NOT ENTER.
OH YEAHHH THIS IS GOOD!!! Who's this long black haired mystery lady- I'm so intrigued :D You've got such rich and vivid description, well done well done!!!!
Oooo I enjoyed the description of that "black mess", it was very gross in the best way possible!! Also the haunted house vibes are strong in this one. Thank you so much for joining in on the monthly theme!! :)