Dead Willow (19 page)

The whiskey slipped passed her lips before her mind had completed the notion.

The burn clawed its way down her gullet and settled in her gut, finally, slowly melting its way into the warm marrow of her bones. There was a moment when she entertained the idea that, if there was poison, she didn't care.

“Just let me have this,” she murmured in her head. “Let me have this and I’ll go quietly.”

Doc Crispin threw another glance, this time over Jess’ shoulder. An almost imperceptible nod of the head alerted Jess to the presence behind her, but by then, the tiny needle had stung her neck like an annoying gnat. She swatted at it ineffectually, and found herself grasping a familiar hand, a rough hand. But another hand clamped roughly over her mouth, and she found she was losing the ability to grasp anything. She reached out for the Doctor, who now stood at the end of a long corridor. Jess strained forward, but her legs were mired in mud.

“I didn’t mean it,” she cried out, but the words didn't come. The waves of panic rolled in behind her eyes, leaving her time for one last thought.

“Is what you said the truth?”

Guess she had her answer.

Colonel Davis knelt on the splintery wood floor of the shack out behind Eunice Pembry’s home and watched the worms slither their way across the pale surface of her fresh porcelain skin.

Orange flame glowed from the wood-burning stove at the other end of the cabin, providing just enough warmth to keep the frost from the soil. He leaned his elbows on the thick timbers of the massive bin, one hand down in the soil, clasping hers. Her body undulated involuntarily as the worms attacked the puffy sores left behind by the tree.

The worms had been with the tree from the beginning.

Like tiny vipers they gathered around the reddened eruptions, nibbling bits of root and soil from the wounds. When every scrap was devoured, they wriggled on to the next, leaving only a smooth, pink patch that would soon take on the healthy glow of the flesh around it.

The circular bin was easily ten feet across. The wood timbers were held together by steel straps, much like a giant barrel. Davis remembered thinking that it resembled one of those backyard swimming pools he had seen in the pages of a hardware catalog. At the time, he had thought it odd that people would go to so much trouble to make their own watering hole when they could as easily go down to the creek for a dip.

He wondered what they would think of bringing a pool full of dirt into their homes.

The dimensions of this bin went far beyond the specifications of a typical winter bin, and had it been anyone but Eunice, resentments would have been voiced.

But the requirements of this bin went far beyond a typical winter joining. It had to do much more than rejuvenate … it had to resurrect.

In a few hours, Eunice would have to walk through the streets of Willow Tree as if she had never left. Her leadership was essential for the town’s continuity. The people needed to
see
her to know that all was well.

With his free hand, Davis pulled a gold pocket watch from his vest pocket and frowned at the face of it. He slipped it back into his vest and glared at Eunice’s slumbering form. The worms had nearly completed their work. It was time for her eyes to open.

Questions had been raised when the building had gone up on the Pembry estate. It was not unheard of for the leader of a municipality to have the most ostentatious, the most ornamental home in the town. Meetings needed to be held, council leaders entertained, and Eunice was no different. Her home could be considered opulent when compared to the rustic cabins of the townspeople.

But, the raising of this building had raised more than a few eyebrows since its erection in the early part of the twentieth century. It was built in the center of the thick woods on the Pembry property, and access had been denied to all. This had cultivated rumors in the town that had survived for almost one hundred years.

It was believed by some that Eunice was harboring someone … or
something
in that building in the woods. Smoke had been seen curling from the stovepipe atop the cabin’s roof. Why warm a cabin, unless something lived there, they speculated.

Everyone knew about the missing headstone in the cemetery bearing the name ‘Beauregard’, but no one had ever seen him. It was rumored that the soil had vomited him up, and that he was so terrible to look upon that Eunice had him spirited away to the cabin, to live forever hidden from the eyes of the town.

Others believed that the witches who had given eternal life to the tree and the cemetery were held captive there, bound with chains, lest they turn their gift into a dreadful curse.

The result of the rumors were two-fold; they discouraged prying eyes from prying too closely, and they elevated Eunice to the status of protector.

No one loved the town the way that Eunice did.

In simple truth, the wood-burning stove kept the soil warm in the winter, nothing more. Amazing how far the imagination could run on a few wisps of smoke, thought Davis.

The last of the worms had wriggled its way deep down into the barrel of dirt to pat its full belly. Eunice lay sleeping in the soft soil, all blemishes removed, her complexion … flawless.

Davis did not feel untoward in gazing at her in this vulnerable state. He was her fierce protector, and as such, was familiar with every inch of her.

Of course, Eunice would never permit this level of intimacy, were she aware. Once he helped her into her robe, his eyes upon her bare flesh would become a distant, uncomfortable memory. They would not speak of it, ever.

Davis tenderly traced the line of her delicate jaw with a fingertip, pausing at the small cleft in her chin. He could feel her warm breath on his hand, the tingle of new life in her skin.

When she woke, she would ceased to be his. This was his time with her, the only time he would have.

It was not much, but it would have to do.

His finger brushed her lips and her eyes shot open like a child’s doll. She pulled in a gasp of breath through her parted lips, and Davis drew his hand away.

It could have been more, he thought, just a little more.

Eunice flailed in the soil, her eyes darting around frantically. Davis reached for the robe he kept on the chair near the bin. When he turned back, she was looking at him warily. He could see the confusion in her eyes, and he wished that just once she would recognize him, and want it to
be
him.

“Josiah?” she murmured weakly, her hand grasping the edge of the bin, pulling herself closer.

Davis held up the robe and looked away. He had learned early on that jealousy was an ugly emotion. Perhaps next time.

“No, Madame,” he answered softly. “Colonel Davis. My apologies. It is time.”

Eunice scrambled in the bin, covering herself. He had tried to soothe her with his voice. He did not have that kind of voice.

“Colonel!” she cried. “What is the meaning …”

This is where she would look around and get her bearings, he thought. This is where she would see the bin and the soil and the robe, and she would remember. It had been over one hundred years since he had left the soil and felt the memories flood back in, filling the empty cavities in his mind. He envied her that rush.

“Oh … yes … I see,” she muttered. Then, he felt the robe snatched from his hand and he turned his back. He knew that she would be standing naked behind him. Ever the gentleman.

Davis could hear her mounting the creaking boards of the wooden ladder which took her out of the soil and over the side of the bin. He listened for the sliding of silk against smooth skin. When she was ready, she would step around to his side of the cabin. Until then, he knew not to speak. These were the few moments of awkwardness they would share in this incarnation.

When he caught sight of her from the corner of his eye, he turned to her. She would not look at him directly; this would take a minute or two. Instead, she would say …

“Report, Colonel,” she barked.

Never a word wasted.

“Well, Madame, the festival has concluded. All is quiet on that front.”

“The festival is never the problem, is it?”

Eunice placed a perfect fingernail between here teeth absentmindedly. It was an old habit, and she would soon recall that she had broke herself of it. A more recent memory surfaced.

“I seem to remember a problem developing with … the Doctor?”

Davis provided the missing piece. “There is a new Doctor.”

Eunice seemed to chew on this along with her nail. “And, what of the old Doctor?”

“The tree … withdrew itself from her.”

He knew that Eunice would be imagining the messy particulars, and he waited for the imperceptible shiver to ripple up her spine. When she spoke, he knew the Doctor had been archived in her memory, and they moved on.

“And, her friend, the reporter?”

Davis clasped his hands behind him and studied his feet uncomfortably.

“That, Madame, is an ongoing situation. I had hoped to have it resolved, but …”

That lit a fire in her blue eyes.

“But, you need
me
to resolve it!” She moved on him. “Colonel, how often must I tell you? In my absence, the town looks to
you
to make the difficult decisions! You must act, without hesitation!”

Her eyes burned holes in his. “If the tree had called me home, what would you have done?”

Davis shrank back, shaking his head emphatically. “No, Madame! That would never happen! This town would not exist without you!
I
would not exist without you!”

Her fiery glare slowly died, as if his words had thrown water on them. A sigh escaped her lips and she looked away. When she at last spoke, it was with the tender voice of a mother understanding her child’s mistake better than the child.

“Very well, Colonel. Where is the reporter now?”

“She is at the infirmary, Madame. Two of our people have her subdued.”

“She waved him away. “Some privacy, if you please.”

“Yes, Madame,” replied Davis, bowing respectfully.

He went to the door and stepped out into the brisk night air, while Eunice went to the dresser, and the clothes he had left for her.

Davis looked up to the sparkles of moonlight trying desperately to break through the thick canopy of dying leaves, and he smiled to himself. This was a smile Eunice Pembry would never see, had never seen. But, he allowed himself this one, well-earned indulgence.

Eunice was only Eunice when she was leading; it had taken Davis a few difficult incarnations to learn that fact. When he had first pulled her from the soil, he had thought to alleviate all stress so that the new Eunice could ease herself back into her duties slowly. Every meeting had been rescheduled, every luncheon postponed. When she first walked into her office, there was nothing on her desk but smooth mahogany.

It took weeks to get the reigns back into her hands.

Eunice was a woman of action, and when there was nothing to do, she was a pot simmering on the stove, its metal lid chattering, ready to erupt at the slightest provocation.

Davis soon learned to ground her with an activity. Perhaps it was the action, or perhaps it was being reminded what she meant to this town. Sometimes, he had to make up an urgent crisis that only Eunice Pembry could solve.

And, sometimes, a crisis presented itself.

Once the situation was dealt with, she would be Eunice Pembry again. He would be Colonel Davis at her side, and the world would continue spinning on its axis.

Appreciation was a small price to pay.

Ten toes twinkled in the night sky.

Jess could feel the giggles building in the back of her throat. She didn’t know the meaning of these nonsensical words. It was like a bad lyric from a very bad
Dr. Seuss
song stuck in her head. It would probably stay there, skipping like a scratchy old record, until a new song came to take its place.

But, she could see the toes.

That had to mean something. Two sets of toes, little to big, wiggled in the dark night. There was something familiar about these toes, but one toe looked pretty much like another to Jess.

The toes weren’t attached to a foot.

That seemed significant. Just ten toes, ten little piggies, Ten Little Indians. She was onto something, if she could just grab hold of her focus. But, the Indians … the toes, were running away … running out of her field of vision. Was she supposed to follow them?

Then, they were gone, and Jess was alone.

Panic seized her like a giant steel trap, clamping down on her chest, squeezing the breath from her lungs. She could feel herself falling, but the ground would not come up to meet her. Just a few more feet and she could rest, she thought. She wanted so badly just to lay down and rest.

The twinkling toes were back and the sky was turning brown. Jess smiled. She would follow them this time. Follow them when they -

The rough hand slammed into her cheek like a freight train, snapping her head to the side. It brought with it blinding white pain and her thoughts exploded and scattered like dandelions in the wind.

The train blasted its horn, but Jess couldn’t hear anything through the ringing in her head. Understanding would have to wait while she felt the flesh slide off of her skull like a glacier. Time to sleep.

“Wake up!” the train bellowed.

The hand slammed into her again, snapping her head back around, and this time, she felt knuckles. Warmth spread down her temple, onto her cheek and she was sure there would be blood. There was always warm, sticky blood when you were dying.

The rough hand cupped her chin and lifted her head up, turning it from side to side. A face floated in front of her eyes. It was a pleasant, scruffy face, and it reminded her that she was supposed to know something, but she couldn’t remember what it was. If it had to do with this face, then she would really like to know. This face was better than toes any day.

She saw an open palm moving in the distance, and she knew where it was headed. Jess closed her eyes and waited for the train to reach the station.

“Enough!” boomed a voice like a cannon from the ether, and the palm disappeared into the shadows.

The hand still gripped her chin, and she rested her head into it as the pain began to ebb away. Then, another hand came out of the shadows and thumped her head like a melon.

Jess’ eyes popped open wide.

There were moving shapes in the air in front of her that flickered in the light of a fire. She couldn’t see the fire, but she knew that it was there, throwing off its warmth to the side of her. Jess struggled to turn her head, but the hand held her firmly, and the pleasant face studied her face. She locked eyes with it … and it spoke.

“C’mon, pretty girl,” said the face, as the hand thumped her melon again. “Time to wake up. You’ve got company.”

The flickering fire glided around until it was shining in her face, a tiny sun on the end of a stick. And, the hand that held the stick belonged to a face that she had never seen.

“Leave her be,” boomed the voice from the face, and the hand released her. “No need to enjoy this.”

Her head started to droop, but Jess fought the urge to succumb. The pleasant face was right; there were things going on here, and she needed to be awake for them.

The shapes around her were beginning to coalesce, as was her vocabulary. The fire-stick was a torch and the man holding it wore an odd uniform with shiny gold buttons and those … flap-things on his shoulders. Her vocabulary hadn’t completely recovered, but the outfit looked like an antique, and that set her memories in motion.

She had seen a lot of those costumes from the past recently. There were women in puffy skirts and bonnets, and men dressed to fight a war that had ended ages ago.

It hadn’t been a dream.

Memories were flooding back in faster than she could process them.

Jameson … she worked for him! She flashed on his face and looked among the shadows, but she didn’t see him there. She had left him … gone somewhere … a town … Willow Tree.

A text …
the real deal!

Patrick … a man with a scruffy face and rough hands. This memory hurt with the pain in her face, but she wasn’t sure why.

Then came the pictures … so many pictures.

A library … a woman had showed her pictures … pictures of the past, but not the past …

She had seen pictures of a man who was dead … but he wasn’t dead …

And there had been … a doctor … she had shown Jess pictures …

Jess shuddered violently as the images from her computer assaulted her consciousness … the shooting star … the endless headstones … spinning blades that ground people into ribbons … walking corpses … a town that would live forever …

A life time of skepticism … excised with one flick of a scalpel.

Her eyes were wide open now.

Jess strained against the ropes that bound her hands and feet, ropes that felt thicker than her wrists. She turned her head to find that she wasn’t struggling against rope, but against thick coils of tree root that grew out of the trunk of a tree … an enormous, sheltering tree.

The tree of life … the Willow Tree.

The trunk was so massive that she could still see her hands as she was stretched across its girth. She twisted her wrists in a vain attempt to get free of the roots, and the rough bark scraped flesh from her arms.

Her bare arms.

Jess clenched her eyes closed, not wanting to see what her waking body was already telling her. But, she felt the knot of the tree pressing into the flesh of her back. Her legs were raw and her backside felt violated. The cold autumn wind stiffened her nipples and she could feel the wind rustle the hair between her legs. She opened her eyes and looked down at the roots growing from the soil and encircling her ankles, spreading them apart.

She was on display.

She lifted her head slowly until she was looking into the face of Patrick. A day ago, she would have gladly been naked with him. Funny how time puts things in perspective.

He came closer, staring at her like she was a specimen in a zoo. His bare feet shuffled through the dirt, his toes twinkling. Jess waited until he was close, and then whispered something softly, incoherently. He leaned in closer and when he was next to her ear -

“
Ahhh!” she screeched, then bit down until her mouth was full of the flesh of his neck. She clamped onto him with all of her might and dared him to pull away, blood spurting between her lips and dripping down the side of her cheek. She gnashed her teeth into the wound, as Patrick pounded the side of her head with his fist, bellowing wildly.

“Get off me you fuckin’ bitch!”

He didn’t have the leverage of his previous slaps. Fuck him!

He was starting to pull away and Jess began to imagine a mouth full of him tearing off and lodging in her mouth. Not exactly what she might have imagined a day ago, but it would have to do. Just as her rage began to relish the idea, Patrick drove his fist into her side, expelling the air from her lungs in a retching gasp.

Patrick pulled free, grabbing at his neck, blood running in torrents over his hand and arm. He staggered back. Jess lurched her head forward, and blood sprayed from her mouth as she fought for another breath. When she saw him bleeding out into the cemetery, she spit up a ragged chuckle.

“Now we’re even for the rusty gate,” she snarled.

Patrick lunged at her weakly, but the bearded man with the torch pulled him back with one calloused hand. He looked solemnly at the blood cascading down Patrick’s arm and he sighed.

“She bested you, boy,” he pronounced, which seemed to take the wind out of Patrick’s sails. “Go tend to yourself.”

Patrick glared at Jess one last time, then stumbled off into the shadows toward whatever hope there was left for him. She did not wish him well.

Jess was alone with the old man with the fire-stick. He had sent Patrick away, but she did not feel safer. Granted, he did not ogle her exposed body the way that Patrick had, but the way he paced, shoeless through the dark soil did nothing to ease her anxiety. She could feel something building, and she didn’t want to imagine how her situation could get worse.

The man stopped and turned to her.

“That was nasty business,” he noted evenly. “Did you really think it necessary?”

Jess’ body, racked with pain and stretched out before him, coughed up a mouthful of blood and skin and spat it at the man’s feet. He shuffled back a step and they watched the tissue being devoured by the hungry soil. Seemed the the ground beneath her feet needed to be fed. Jess was beginning to see a worse-case scenario.

“Why don’t you come closer,” she rasped, her mouth sticky with drying blood, “and I’ll tell you what I really think.”

“Miss Granger,” rumbled the man, stroking his dark beard, “I believe we may have gotten off on the wrong foot.” He stepped in front of her and bowed at the waist respectfully. It might have been endearing, if it wasn’t so despicable.

“We have not been formally introduced,” he continued. “I am your host, Colonel William Morgan Davis. A pleasure.”

He beamed at her with a smile that truly touched his eyes. He seemed genuinely pleased to make her acquaintance. Was he delusional? Was he a … a sociopath, incapable of feeling the sheer insanity of this situation? Jess felt like laughing in his face, but that could trigger a worse version of the man. Worse she did not need right now.

“Colonel …” she croaked weakly, the lingering ketamine still fogging her senses, “we did not … get off on the wrong foot. You are not … my host … you are my abductor!”

She spat the last bit of Patrick’s blood onto the ground, and jerked her head, flicking flecks of the stuff from her lips. Then, she nailed Davis with seething eyes.

“I was violated … am being violated … this moment! Do you really think … that I would feel pleasure … meeting you?”

Colonel Davis seemed to consider her words, nodding thoughtfully. He resumed his pacing.

“I suppose we should simply release you, then, eh?” He shot her a glance now and again. “Escort you to the city limits and watch you drive away with our little secret? In a week, or a month, the story would appear on the internet in all its sordid spectacle. Who would visit us then? The National Guard? FBI? Department of Homeland Security? How long before our little town was encased in a bubble? Our people cut off from …!”

Davis was bubbling himself, and Jess did not want to be here when he boiled over. She kept struggling against her bonds, but the tree seemed to tighten with every movement.

“You journalists never consider the consequences of your actions … only the story … and your
glory
.” He spat out the last word like it was blood in his mouth.

Jess blinked, unbelieving. It was like he wanted her, expected her to see things from this town’s perspective. That was a knee-slapper, she thought, fuming. Jess wondered if this was how Stockholm Syndrome began, appealing to a person’s sense of empathy. ‘Well, when you put it like that …’

Fuck him! This town’s perspective wasn’t even a blip on her radar! As far as she was concerned this whole town could grow scabs and ooze pus down into their eyes until they collapsed into a pile of fetid bones and rotted into the ground!

Jess felt her eyes bulging, and she sucked in a deep breath to calm herself. She decided she wouldn’t give Colonel Davis the satisfaction of seeing her rage.
That
she would save for later. But, when later came …

“Colonel,” she gasped, “… I’ve had a little time to consider the consequences … while hanging here,
naked
, on your tree … and I have come to the conclusion that this town
should
be trapped in a bubble … an airtight, inescapable bubble … like a bug under a glass jar! And I think that after your people have baked for a while under the summer sun … they should be taken out … one by one … and pinned to a laboratory table … their guts laid open … their insides cut out and pickled in jars of formaldehyde!”

Jess paused, her ragged breathing making it difficult to continue. Colonel Davis waited while she regained her composure. He had made no move toward her yet. After her breathing had calmed she added …

“Now tell me, Colonel … is there any question in your mind … as to what foot
I
am on?”

Jess used the rest of her strength to hold her head up, matching Davis glare for glare, and listening to the silence of the cemetery. The only sound was the rumbling of his torch. Apparently, they didn’t even allow crickets into
Weeping Gardens
. She felt so privileged.