Screamscapes: Tales of Terror (13 page)

III. The Serpent

E
veryone felt joyful as the sun rose on their third day. Now fully rested and restored from their stretch of hunger and the travail of their journey, the full extent of the blessing that had been bestowed upon them finally sank in.

Even Lemuel, who had shown some restraint, despite the occasional vociferous proclamation of faith in God’s protection, began to let his guard down. He came striding down from his turn at watch atop the ridge with a jaunty gait, to announce that he felt that maintaining constant guard was no longer a necessity and that he intended to have a feast of celebration that very evening.

“Our wives are in the kitchen of my new home even now, preparing a feast of celebration,” Lemuel told Sam as they sat in the rockers on the front porch. He was still firmly gripping his rifle, but no longer kept his finger on the trigger. “It is my pleasure to invite you and your family to dinner this evening. Tomorrow we will plan for the sowing, for the fall harvest, my friend.”

Within the hour, fires were lit in the kitchen, the stoves crackling from the perfectly dried kindling the previous tenants had been gracious enough to leave stacked neatly on the porch. Dozens of full-grown chickens had been found, running wild, out back behind the house. One soon destined for the table, plucked clean and boiling in the syrupy-sweet yellow water drawn from the pond at the base of the trees.

As the women prepared the evening meal, Jacob pestered Micah relentlessly to show him the bodies of the dead Indians he had buried. Eventually Micah relented, despite his better judgment. First making sure that no one was watching, he grabbed a shovel from the tool shed and led Jacob out to where they were buried. The outlines of the freshly dug graves were clearly visible, four dark brown rectangles of upturned soil that contrasted sharply with the green grass.

Micah quickly scooped loose earth from the head of the first grave, where he knew the body of a tall, fierce-looking warrior lay, his intention only to uncover the face long enough to allow Jacob to have a quick look.

He dug gently, so as not to inadvertently damage the corpse’s face. After he had dug only a foot or so into the ground his shovel struck something solid, causing the metal blade to ring. It surprised Micah so much that he jumped back alarmed.

“What is it?” Jacob asked, eyes widening.

“There’s something hard, but there shouldn’t be,” Micah said.

“It’s only the lid of the casket, right?” the young boy asked.

Micah shook his head.

“Ain’t one. Put ‘em straight in the dirt.”

After a moment he picked up the shovel and began gently clearing the dirt from along the top of the grave to expose whatever it was he had struck.

The body was gone, replaced by a thick tree root the width and length of the hole he had dug the day before.

His mind reeled at the discovery. He hadn’t encountered a single obstruction when digging, but now this massive tendril of wood ran straight through the freshly dug grave as though it had been growing there, undisturbed, for centuries.

He brushed the loose dirt from atop the root to get a better look. The shape of it almost made it look as though a human figure was bound tightly inside it, like a snake recently gorged, its belly pregnant with food and molded to the shape of whatever poor animal it had swallowed whole.

“Get on back up to the house, boy, get,” he snapped at Jacob, as an unsettling feeling gripped him. “Don’t tell anyone I showed you this, or else I’ll give you a beating my damn self, you hear me? I knew I shouldn’t have shown you. Now I gotta go tell Pa.”

Jacob readily agreed, eager to keep the trust of his hero and happy to have a secret shared between them. He ran off to the house as Micah trudged up the barn to tell his father and Lemuel of his discovery. Micah stood outside the barn a bit before entering. He listened to the men as they talked inside, trying to think of what he would tell them.

How could he possibly explain what he had found? He knew his father would listen and try to understand, and would hopefully believe him – but Lemuel? Never.

Micah put his hands on the barn door to push it open, but then hesitated.

He should go back to the graves for one last look before sharing his discovery with anyone, he decided. Perhaps he had been mistaken.

He walked back down to the smokehouse and stood by the half-covered grave.

It was empty.

No root. No dead body. Only an empty hole filled with loose dirt.

Micah grabbed the shovel and began to dig furiously into the other freshly-filled graves, frantically spooning the soil away.

All were empty. The bodies were gone, as though they had never been there at all.

A cold chill ran down Micah’s spine as he pondered what to do next. Tell Lemuel? He was confused about what had happened. Had Indians come and carried their dead away? It seemed unlikely. The graves had been completely undisturbed. Why would they have taken the time to refill the holes so they would appear unmolested?

A vision flashed into Micah’s mind - a giant wooden python, wrapped around a man, devouring him whole. He tried to shake it off, but still the haunting image lingered. He knew he couldn’t tell anyone what he had seen. They would think he was crazy.

Shaken and no longer wanting to be alone, he quickly refilled the now-empty graves and ran back to join the others, eager to find comfort in the company of the others.

IV. The Sin

L
ater that evening, several hours before sundown, the two families joined together for a celebration and feast at Lemuel’s house. During dinner, the adults talked about their hopes and dreams for the future, about whether they should stay here permanently or press their luck by continuing the journey west.

Lemuel had become convinced that God had led them to the site of the original Garden of Eden, that it had been revealed to them at this precise time as a reward for successfully enduring the hardships that the Lord had tested them with. Lemuel said it was a sign that God had chosen him as his prophet on Earth, to lead the chosen people into the new age of Eden, a golden millennium of plenty that would last a thousand years.

Lemuel had become obsessed with the notion of starting his own “true” religion; it was all he ever talked about anymore. Micah remembered that the nonsense had first started after Lemuel had a chance encounter with a man named Hyrum Smith over a bottle of whiskey, in a Missouri saloon a few months earlier. Hyrum’s tales of how he and his brother Joseph had crafted a modern religious mythology, making them wealthy and respected men as a result, had entranced Lemuel and set the wheels of his mind in motion like nothing before.

Shaking a half-eaten drumstick in one hand and a mostly empty glass of whiskey in the other, Lemuel described in glorious detail his future vision for this fertile valley in the middle of nowhere. It would become the New Jerusalem for a new Christian religion. He would be the prophet and Sam his high priest. “Bigger than the Mormons, and richer than sin,” as he so eloquently put it. They would establish, right here, a new trading post for weary souls, “heavy with sin and cash, and in dire need of being unburdened of both”.

“The way I see it, and please do tell if I’m missing something,” Lemuel began, as the mouthful of boiled potatoes he had chewed but not swallowed bubbled out of the corners of his mouth and dripped into his ill-kept beard. “God done provided. Our bellies were empty and now our cup runneth over. Fourteen trees grow even now, laden with bushels and bushels of fruit, between the homes he has so graciously given. This place is the “
locust amoeba”
which we have sought after our entire lives,” he declared in a sing-song preacher voice.

“
Locus amoenus
,” Samuel gently corrected him.

“What?” Lemuel said. “Right,
locust amoeba
, that’s what I said, Sam, listen up! These are momentous days we are living in. Mankind has waited millennia to be allowed to return to the garden, and today… well, here we are.” He shoveled an oversized spoonful of pickled turnips into his mouth, as if to emphasize his point.

Sam finally felt himself being touched by the spirit as well, whether it was by the Holy Spirit or the liquid variety he wasn’t sure, and he decided that it was his moment to wax philosophical while his chatty friend was momentarily rendered speechless. Sam smiled kindly upon his wife and his children, seated around the table, each of them looking clean and refreshed and enjoying their first real meal in months. The whiskey was doing a nice job of clearing up any previous doubts he’d had about the whole endeavor.

“You’re right, Brother Lemuel, you speak the truth,” Sam said. “We have done the will of God, we have been fruitful and multiplied as the Lord hath commanded, and have even set our hand upon the unclean heathen so as to reclaim this land for the Lord and his righteous. He has seen fit to reward us, to provide us with plenty, so that we may do his will. I believe wholly, as do you, that our good fortune is a sign that God intends for us to do his work right here. Surely that is why he saw fit to lead us away from the others with whom we traveled, through trials and tribulations straight into this glorious bounty.”

Micah sighed to himself. This conversation was just gearing up, he knew, and would no doubt continue deep into the night. He had heard it all before, so after listening politely for a bit, he excused himself from the table and went outside to watch the smaller kids play.

In the yard, Nathan and Jacob were throwing rocks up into the trees trying to knock loose the scarlet fruit that tantalized them from the branches high overhead - most likely apples, but so far up it was impossible to be sure. Micah was certain, at any rate, that he had never seen apple trees so large.

He joined the other boys in their efforts to knock down some dessert, but despite several direct hits, the tree stubbornly refused to yield its fruit.

He grew frustrated with the futility of his effort. He gave up, turning to go back inside.

He bumped hard into Anna, who had snuck up quietly behind him.

“Where are you off to so fast?” she asked. Her voice sounded different to him - softer, silky even.

“Back inside, I guess,” he said. “Can’t even knock an apple down for the kids, anyhow. It’s stuck so fast to the branches that not even a strong blow with a rock may loosen it from the tree.”

“But why hurry?” she asked. “It’s so nice out here, and Father’s just getting started, you know. He said that he thinks that hill behind us might be the very place the Bible says Jesus will return. Are you sure you want to listen to that? You know how he is when he’s drinking. Please stay here with me a bit longer. Please?”

Micah had never seen her act this way. Throughout their childhood he had simply been a person for her to boss around, and more recently, someone she tried to avoid.

He stopped walking, though. Standing beside her, he turned back towards the trees, unsure what to say.

“I was watching you throwing,” Anna continued. “You’ve gotten a lot stronger this year, haven’t you? And taller,” she said, as though very impressed with him.

He was surprised at how her eyes glistened so brightly in the last dying rays of the sunset. He had always thought she was pretty, but now she was beyond pretty – she was
beautiful
, he realized for the first time.

She glanced nervously back at her new house, and he looked, too. Her father had his back to the window, and was raising his freshly refilled whiskey glass as he lectured the other adults.

Anna glanced at the other children to see if they were watching. They weren’t.

Satisfied no one would see, she grabbed Micah quickly by the hand.

“Follow me,” she whispered. Then she gathered her long skirt up in one hand and dragged him along behind her with the other as she ran across the yard, raven hair flowing behind her, stopping only when they were well hidden from sight behind a thick trunk of one of the gigantic trees.

She pushed him hard up against the tree. The soft bark was smooth against his back, almost like saddle leather. He felt warmth growing in his groin, and he gasped as Anna took his hands and pressed them against her breasts.

“What are you doing?” he stammered, flustered.

She didn’t answer; instead, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him, drawing his lips into her mouth, biting gently for a moment before releasing him.

He stared at her in amazement. She was panting for breath, looking as though she was a bit drunk, even though he was quite sure her father hadn’t left the whiskey unattended for one moment the entire evening.

“You remember last summer, when you found me in the smokehouse?” she asked.

He blushed. It was the first time she had ever spoken of it aloud.

“Yes.”

“Do you know what I was doing that day?” she asked, voice quivering with excitement.

He wasn’t entirely sure how to answer the question, even though he felt he had a pretty good idea of what it was she had been doing.

“No,” he said in a dry whisper.

She put her lips to his ear, so close that they brushed lightly against his flesh as she spoke.

“I was thinking of you.”

He didn’t know how to respond, but Anna saw a bulge rising in the front of his trousers and smiled approvingly.

“Tonight,” she whispered. “Let’s make it real. Meet me in the smokehouse after father passes out and everyone else is asleep. Meet me there and I’ll show you where
you
should be - you know…instead of my fingers.”

Micah nodded meekly in agreement. He would be there.

She slipped a small rolled-up paper into his hand and kissed him again, lightly on the cheek this time, then ran back to her house before anyone could notice she was missing.

He unrolled the paper she had given him, to see what was written there. It wasn’t a note as he had suspected, but a picture. He had seen it before, a pencil sketch made by a friend of hers when she was a bit younger. It was a pretty drawing of her, he thought. The artist had done an exceptional job of capturing the fire that burned in the back of her eyes.

He rolled it back up and slipped it into his pocket, waiting behind the tree as he struggled to quash his arousal. After a while, he felt almost normal again, and went back to throwing rocks at the fruit with the children. He had noticed empty bushel baskets were stacked on the porch next to the kindling, so he assumed the fruit must ripen and fall eventually. Why else would there be baskets for collecting fruit?