Screamscapes: Tales of Terror (15 page)

“I don’t know…she disappeared. She bent down to pick up an apple, screamed - and then she was
gone
, like that,” he said, his words coming in short bursts, “like she was sucked straight down into the ground.”

Micah felt as though the world was swimming around him, and he placed a hand on Nathan’s shoulder to steady himself. The other children, still lost in their joy of collecting apples, hadn’t even noticed the commotion. In his peripheral vision, Micah saw lights flicker to life in Lemuel’s house.

He had to help his little sister. He had to find Chastity. He knew he needed to gather his wits about him and quick. Everything happening around him suddenly seemed surreal. The other children floated through the darkness around him, collecting fruit like ghosts at a Halloween harvest.

Piety, the older of Anna’s two sisters, blissfully strolled up, as Micah searched desperately for the missing girl. She sat her basket of fruit down on the ground beside him as she reached for an enormous apple. He absently stepped back to give her room, wondering if perhaps Chastity was playing tricks on him in the darkness. He wasn’t in the mood for hide and seek.

Micah watched as Piety wrapped her tiny fingers around the enormous piece of fruit she had found for him. She struggled to pick it up from the ground, but it was too heavy for her. She tried using two hands, pulling with all her might, but still it resisted.

Piety resembled Anna. She was almost a miniature version, had the same long black hair and china-pale skin, but for some reason Micah thought her nowhere nearly as beautiful. She was missing something, the thing that made Anna so irresistible to him, that fire in her eyes, the fighting spirit, that inner strength that made Anna carry herself as though she were the only perfect creature in an otherwise tragically flawed world.

The girl refused to give up her prize and dug her fingernails into the skin of the fruit. Finally, she managed to lift it. She hadn’t moved it more than an inch or two off the ground when the apple split open with a harsh clicking noise. Sharp wooden appendages shot out from it, stabbing deep into the young girl’s delicate palms. The skin on the back of her hands ripped open, the protrusions making a wet slurp as they pierced upwards through her flesh and bone, finally clamping themselves tightly about her wrists like long claws.

Piety looked up at Micah, stunned, her wide eyes filled to the brim with confusion. The sight of her tiny mangled hands, blood throbbing from her wrists in silky crimson ribbons, caused Micah’s mind to recoil in his skull. Hot vomit pushed hard at the back of his throat as he tried to process what was happening.

In the blink of an eye, before Piety could manage a single whimper of pain or fear, the apple, the
thing
that had sewn itself into her flesh, yanked her wounded hands violently downward, and pulled both of her arms completely underneath the ground up to her shoulders. Her china-doll face hit the soft dirt with so much force that her head snapped back ---
too
far back. The rear of her skull struck her spine hard, Micah heard a shrill, cracking sound, like a walnut being shattered in a vice.

Piety’s head and shoulders were stuck for a moment as she was being pulled under, chin now planted in the dirt, head canted back at a ninety-degree angle, her glassy unblinking eyes staring upwards towards the night sky. Before Micah could take a step forward to help, she was yanked down again, and again, and then she was gone – vanished, head-first, like a shoelace pulled deftly through an eyelet. A small puff of dust and two empty shoes were the only remaining evidence that she had even existed.

Micah and Nathan stumbled backwards away from the small hole Piety had left in the earth, stunned. Anna’s youngest sister, Lydia, joined them, unaware of what had just happened to her sister and curious to see what the commotion was about. Micah hastily scooped the girl up in his arms and began to back away from the trees, careful not to step on any of the apples.

In the distance, from inside one of the houses, he heard a man shouting urgently. Lemuel was awake, he realized through his panic, probably stumbling around in the darkness looking for a lantern and his gun. This thought brought Micah back to his senses and out of this upside-down world for a moment. For a single split second, he felt a brief sense of clarity about what was happening and about what he must do.

Before that impending clarity could develop completely, chaos erupted around him, exploding on every side, and the understanding that had nearly been within his grasp exploded along with it. He spun about, bewildered.

Everywhere around him, children were screaming. Some were desperately trying to pull their hands away from the ground. Others tried to run but were unable to move, as though their feet were staked to the ground.

“Get away from the trees!” Micah screamed. “Get to the house! Make haste!” he commanded, but it was too late.

In the darkness around him, children began to vanish, one after the other, their fragile bodies ripping and contorting. Shrill screams were choked silent with a mouthful of dirt and a gurgle of blood, as tiny guts squeezed up and out of their mouths, their bodies dragged underground. Overhead, the prodigious branches rattled and shook as though buffeted by a fierce storm. But the sky was clear and the wind was still.

Micah continued his retreat out of the orchard, carrying Lydia high up off the ground as he went. But Nathan stood frozen on the spot, paralyzed with fear. A ring of bright red apples popped out of the earth around Nathan, circling him.

“Don’t move! Don’t touch them,” Micah instructed, but the boy panicked. Nathan took a step forward, as if to run, and in the process stepped directly atop one of the apples. A brilliant crimson stain splattered up the leg of his beige canvas pants, as the top of his leather shoe burst open. He tried to pull his foot back, but it was stuck firmly in place. He looked to Micah, desperate for help as thick rivulets of blood began to pulse out of his shoe. The expression on his face told Micah it was already too late.

Nathan’s body jerked downward into the ground up to his kneecaps, the bone and muscle of his legs yielding skin, like fresh bark stripped from a tree.

Micah set Lydia down and ran to where Nathan struggled to pry himself from the ground. Micah grabbed hold of the boy’s wrists, latching onto him with all his might, determined to win this game of tug-of-war that was quickly devouring his young friend.

But his efforts were futile. The force that pulled the boy downward was stronger than he could withstand. He felt the bones of Nathan’s fingers slipping out of their skin like a hand being pulled from a glove. Yet he held on, clinging to the husk of the boy’s body until the last bits of juicy insides were sucked away with a soggy, slurping gasp.

Micah continued clutching the limp, empty shell of skin for a moment. It was heavy, like a wet blanket. He finally let the formless, squishy-soft fingers slip from his hands.

The blanket of skin, still dressed in the clothes Nathan had been wearing, fell to the ground, folding over on top of itself like a peeled banana. It settled into a bloody and quivering heap, the empty eye sockets of the mask-like face filling with red mush above the toothless and gaping mouth hole. A messy shock of hair crowned the vile display.

Micah snatched Lydia back up into his arms, away from the hostile earth. He ran, his legs shoving the traitorous ground away with all the force he could muster. He nimbly dodged every assassin apple that littered the ground, each now squirming, as though filled to bursting with a million busy maggots, feasting on the rotten flesh of the demon fruit.

He finally made it to the outskirts of the orchard, to the steps of his home, stopping to catch his breath and gather his sanity. It was only then that he realized that the screams had grown silent, the voice of every child, his brothers and sisters, had been extinguished underneath the fetid earth. The sudden stillness of the night pierced his heart as he realized what it meant, and he began to weep.

The solitude of his mourning was shattered as Lemuel burst forth from his house, like a general striding into battle. The drunken, self-ordained prophet staggered brazenly into the orchard, gun in hand and wife Sarah in tow, shouting as he walked, bobbing the small light through the darkness as he went.

Anna ran along behind Lemuel, almost lost in the shadows as she tried to keep pace with her father.

“Don’t come any closer!” Micah shouted desperately. “Stay out of the orchard! It’s not safe.” He clutched Lydia tightly to him, as though he was the last line of defense between her life and hell.

Lemuel ignored him, and closed the gap between them in what seemed like an impossibly short time. To Micah’s surprise, the group traversed the orchard without incident. He was sure that at any moment the ground would come to life and devour them whole. Yet the night remained still, the air breathless.

“What in the devil is going on, Micah? Where are the children? What kind of game are you playing?” Lemuel rattled off the litany of accusatory questions at Micah like verbal buckshot. It then occurred to him that Micah was clutching his youngest daughter in his arms, the two of them alone in the night. Lemuel lowered the barrel of his rifle until he was almost, but not quite, aiming at the boy.

“I sense the devil at work here. Unhand my daughter, swine,” he growled at Micah through a clenched mouthful of half-rotten teeth.

Micah nodded wordlessly in agreement, and gently set Lydia down. The little girl ran to her mother, clutching Sarah’s long skirt as she sobbed against her leg.

“Is it the Rapture?” Lemuel’s wife screeched. She was an anxious woman, easily alarmed, and the thought of being left behind in a world of the wicked etched her face with horror in the dim light.

Lemuel appeared as though he would strike her for her insolence in suggesting that the good Lord would pay the Earth a visit and leave him, of all people, behind. But before he could act on the impulse, he was distracted by the door on the porch of Micah’s house slamming open.

Sleepy and disheveled, Samuel and Rachel emerged from the shadows, rushing past Micah to meet Lemuel on the lawn. After a moment of heated discussion and exchanged accusations, they fell silent and everyone turned to face Micah, faces full of bewilderment, unsure whether to feel sorrow, anger, or fear.

Micah’s eyes darted from person to person. He was uncertain of what to say, not knowing himself what was happening, or what to do about it. On each parent’s face he saw a mirror image of the same confusion he himself was experiencing. When he looked into Anna’s worried eyes, he wanted nothing more than to bury himself in her arms, to bathe her in his tears.

The twilight engulfed them like a swaddled tomb, a silence so profound it was almost tangible; it could be felt, cool to the touch, like glass on skin. Micah took a deep breath to speak, doubtful he could even manage to find the words to say. He had seen his sisters die, and Anna’s siblings as well. Except for Lydia, all of them had been destroyed right before his very eyes – but
how
it had happened, he could not say. How could he explain what he had seen? How would they believe what they had not seen for themselves, when he -who
had
seen it - could not believe it? His body grew cold at the thought, a numbness rising up from his feet and his fingers, clawing its way into his core.

Before his lips parted to say the first word, a disturbance in the treetops broke the stillness, drawing attention away from Micah and his attempted explanation. The group turned to confront the orchard, all faces turned skyward, to see what was happening in the branches overhead.

XIII. The Tree of Death

I
t began as a rustling of branches at first, here and there among the treetops, the source of the commotion hidden behind a dark veil of shadows. A few leaves had been shaken loose, and the bewildered settlers watched as the green teardrops gently fluttered to the ground.

The earth began to tremble beneath their feet, softly at first, like a train approaching. But the vibration grew stronger. Before long, the massive trunks began to shake as though quivering with cold, deep wooden fibers cracking, audibly groaning as the ancient canopy convulsed, like a an old hound dog shaking itself awake from a nap by the fireside.

Without warning, a deep guttural roar bellowed into the night across the valley, a rolling tidal wave of sound that stripped the stillness from every nook and cranny as it screamed past, drowning everything and everyone in a painful flood of noise. The force of it drove all thoughts of missing children, the devil and the rapture from their minds as Micah, Lemuel and the rest clamped hands to their ears in a futile attempt to defend themselves from the unrelenting assault on their senses.

As the thunderous roar subsided, a torrential outpour of objects was ejaculated out of the treetop, a glistening white arc in the bright moonlight, like snowflakes carved from white stone. The objects rained down upon them.

As the plummeting debris pelted the group, Lemuel grabbed Sarah, Lydia and Anna, pulling them under him to shield them like a mother hen protecting its chicks during a hailstorm. Samuel tried to huddle over Sarah and Micah in a like manner, but the discharge of objects still struck Micah painfully on his head and along his back.

The trees convulsed three more times, each contraction following immediately after the other, each occurrence accompanied by the deafening roar and a streaming emission of objects.

Then, at last, tranquility descended once more upon the orchard.

The group crouched together, heads covered, for a few moments longer, unsure if the barrage from the treetops would commence again, fearful to believe that the abrupt disturbance had truly ended. Micah glanced around the moonlit orchard. The ground glittered with the reflection of the fallen objects that lay scattered on the grass, an odd assortment of irregularly shaped sticks and stones, all painted white.

Micah picked one of the stones that had landed nearby. He rolled it in the palm of his hand, feeling the weight of it, and the texture. It reminded him of the piece of coral that his grandfather had shown him as a young boy, supposedly brought back from an expedition to Florida. He held the white stone up to the moonlight to better examine its shape. Light shone straight through the middle of the stone, as though a hole had been drilled through its center.

Lemuel also began to examine one of the strange objects, selecting a longer, stick-shaped piece of debris from the hundreds on the ground. He ran his fingers along the length of it, feeling the slickness, the smoothness of it, a slight look of recognition dawning in his eyes. Then he stuck the end of it into his mouth and tasted it. A sudden awareness lit up his face.

“It’s a bone, a rib bone,” Lemuel said, his voice hollow and strangely devoid of his typical macho bluster and fury.

Micah looked down at the small white stone in his own hand.

A tiny vertebra
. From a child, maybe his own kin.

He tossed it away from him as though diseased. His mother Rachel began to weep uncontrollably as she began to understand the meaning of this discovery, falling so hard on Samuel that she nearly took him to the ground with her.