A Stranger at the Door

My body strained as I ran mad-dash down a twilit path, imagining hounds on my heels. The darkness of the forest transported me to a primal time.  Trees whispered ragged like ghosts in the wind.  Muscles honed from years of training propelled me onwards as crisp autumn air filled my lungs, spiced with woodsmoke and loam.  Instincts awoke and the desperate need to escape propelled me onwards, into the bosom of the woods, away from the impending threat- though it was only a waking dream.

“How do you run so damn fast, Callie!” coach had asked once in disbelief after I'd finished a 5K in 16:30.

“Rabid dogs,” I'd replied,

He'd raised his brow a mile high and plastered me with a pitiful stare.  It was no use explaining my unconventional techniques to the unimaginative, just like it was impossible to convey the sweetness of danger to the tamed.  That beautiful feeling:  heart pounding, adrenaline coursing through my veins.  There was nothing but me and the darkness.  Me and the night.

In the midnight hour, when the flocks of suburbia slept, I'd slip outside, onto the roof and down to the dead end of Halcyon Street. Tonight was no different- I had scrapes up and down my legs from the worn shingles.  Thorns from the rosebush  were lodged in my palms.  Come morning, mom would float about in her dreamy state and dad would be off to work- only Mo would notice the purple stains under my eyes and grin wryly, thinking I'd snuck out to party or rendezvous with the boy next door.

I smiled deviously, imagining my family's shock at my midnight escapades. Straitlaced Callie, the aspiring naturalist, surely not a nighttime wanderer.  It never occurred to them to ask where my ever-growing collection of artifacts, feathers, and unusual stones came from. Parents could be oblivious, but mine were incredibly so.  I guess that’s what I got for being the offspring of a workaholic lawyer and flaky artist, along with a disaster-zone house and gross amounts of freedom.

A crow cawed, knifing me back to the present. Golden twilight receded and I flicked on my spelunker-worthy headlamp, bathing the root-strewn path in yellow light. It laughed, flying from the path on tattered wings and soaring over my head. I reached into my jeans pocket and tossed a handful of dried Craisins its way. My offerings set it into a series of cackles as it swooped down and pecked at the food. Crouching down, I admired it, imagining sketching its dark form in charcoal on blue paper, adding it to the notebooks that documented my nocturnal explorations.

Those were my secrets: maps of the uncharted woods that had no name, wilderness survival skills clipped from books and magazines. Pressed leaves and flowers dried amidst documents of ruins and sketches of wildlife, even a pathetic poem or two.

I could name the constellations.  I knew the hidden hollows; I'd visited the forgotten lake and the ghost towns consumed by the woods.  I could navigate this forest by heart.  It was my heart, in a way.

“Keep out of the forests at night,” goes conventional wisdom.  Especially if you're a girl.  They think us defenseless, prey to rapists and murderers.  Instead of teaching us to fight, they give us warnings, forbidding us from the tempting beauty of the world.

They never speak of the fox's eerie cries, of lightning-bugs like will-o'-the-wisps and the smell of sweet, damp earth.  Of what it is to navigate by stars and see yourself reflected in a moonlit pool, like some lunar goddess of long ago.

I’d learned how impermanent things really were here- how bluebells wilt moments after being plucked, how a settlement could vanish in the blink of time's eye. There were rusted belongings of Civil War soldiers, forgotten graves bordering an ancient basketball court. Even a small, secluded pond with a rotting chestnut skiff, made of wood now extinct on the Eastern coast.  It was beautiful, and a bit sad, how easily things were lost to time.

The crow cocked its head and I cupped a few Craisins, daring it to draw closer. Bold, it hopped over, defiantly plucking the food from my hand. I reached out and stroked its blue-black wing.  It jolted back, hopped into the air and flew away through the darkness.

I felt the thrill of coming so close to a wild thing. Maybe that was why I sought the woods, for the rushes only it could provide. I’d seen strange things here, things all the science and reasoning in the world couldn’t explain away. Tunes fluted in the dead of night, whispered voices that followed me down the winding paths.  Ghostly eyes stared out from the darkness and strange silhouettes sliced through the moonlit sky.  There were fires that eternally receded, phantom cries like sound trapped in a vortex of time, and strange scents that tainted the wind.

Tonight was peaceful.  The woods slept.  I shed my worries like a snakeskin, casting away thoughts of calculus tests and prison- or, as the polite called it, high school.  I began to run again, taking a right at a burnt oak down a deer trail. 

I remembered the stormy night when lightning had struck the tree.  Thunder snapped like the jaws of a lion as it burst into a pillar of flame.  I'd watched it sizzle, mystified as the fire struggled against the downpour. 

The trail had perhaps been a road long ago, leading to the village church- now rotting wood and a crumbling stone foundation.  The dead had outlasted the living; they greeted me with silent salutes, their worn gravestones piercing the air with aged humility.  I paused for a moment, eyes lingering on the worn inscriptions. 

The vegetation that usually covered them was gone.  The marble shone under my light.  Knitting my brows in confusion, I knelt down to inspect a cracked stone angel.  Her kudzu veil had been snipped away by phantom hands.  Clippings littered the ground.  In fact, the entire graveyard had been tended to; I could even see the remnants of a wrought-iron fence, once obscured by ivy. 

I shivered:  No one knew this place but me.

Shaking the fear that pricked my neck, I kicked the clippings onto the leaves and continued.  I followed the rusted iron fence, tracing its spikes and whorls.  The church's ruins twined with trees at the fence's end, its mossy walls reaching a story into the sky.  The stone was slick with evening dew.  Veins of quartz gleamed under my headlamp as I clambered in through a glassless window. 

The interior was small, strewn with wildflowers, debris and silty dirt.  A single stained glass window remained, masking the moon in the milky blues of a harping angel.  A great granite slab rested at its center in the shade of a poplar tree.  I scaled the rock and lay on my back to gaze up at the stars.

I closed my eyes, soaking in the tranquility of night.  I could almost see the rotted pews filled as the priest's ghost delivered sermons to the darkness...

My mind drifted like an old Victorian daguerreotype.  I imagined I heard a carriage carrying old-blooded Virginians to church on Sunday.  The clopping of hooves intensified and I tried to erase them from my mind. But the vision of a black carriage remained, and the horse's hoof beats seemed at the church's door.

Had I finally lost it? Just peachy: Callie, the terminally insane.  Maybe that's why I wandered around the woods when any sane person would be asleep. Next thing you know, I'd be calling myself the King George and knighting bushes...

I heard the horse bray, pawing the ground beyond the church's walls.

“Stop it, brain,” I whispered, not wanting to open my eyes.

The phantom horse whinnied.  A harsh wind picked up, buffeting the trees.  Frightened, I sprang off the rock, eyes shooting open.  Through the stained glass I saw a black shadow.  The wind clawed at my face.  Nausea knotted my stomach as I drew closer to the panes.

Obscured by shadows stood a carriage with spindly wheels, a sleigh-like body and a tasseled brocade.  Black curtains obscured its interior.  With creeping-crawling realization I understood what it was- a hearse. 

Hooked to it was a steed.  A monstrous blue roan pawed the dirt, his pupil-less eyes rolling madly.  Trembling, I followed its reins to the hands that held them, but my vision grew dim when I tried to see what sat atop the saddle.  Like prey caught in a lion's gaze, I couldn't look away, staring at the distorted space where the rider sat. 

I blinked, but the phantom remained.  Though I couldn't see his eyes, his gaze combed through my brains.  I ran from the window, stumbling through the ruins.  I felt his eyes burn my back, sweeping up and down as the rider studied me.  I scampered over the boulder and ducked, peeping out over the top.  Two red pinpricks stared back at me through the chipped glass as the stallion's silhouette bucked.  Its whinnies pierced the night.

“Damn- it saw me!” I moaned, rifling through my coat pocket.   Craisins, a Swiss Army Knife, a lighter... there was absolutely nothing to defend myself with.  Trembling, I clutched the lighter and flicked it on with one hand, flipping open my knife with the other. 

“This is impossible!” I whispered in frustration, glaring at the moon as my breath grew strained with panic.  “I mean, c'mon. This is beyond all reason.  I could deal with a bear, but ghosts?  You're expecting too much of me.”

The specter’s eyes honed in on my on my headlamp like laser beams: the bulb sizzled and broke, leaving me in near-darkness.

“Well thanks for nothing, universe,” I sighed, beginning to hyperventilate as the rider drew closer to the window. 

Hot damn, what could I do?  Introduce myself to Mr. Friendly Ghost?  Run for the (nonexistent) hills?  Pretend I'm a tree and hope his night vision sucked?  Because I highly doubted that a blade could wound an apparition- if that's what the thing even was. 

Low peals of laughter echoed through the woods as I brandished my Swiss Army knife, at a loss for how to use it.  “Crap, no.  The handle goes this way- oh my god it's coming closer!  Nice- nice Mr. Ghost.  Want a... Craisin?”

The blade trembled with my shaking arm.  If I were to run, the rider would surely catch me.  He'd have much more difficulty navigating the ruins to reach the church's interior. 

The stallion trotted closers.  Every logical impulse told me to run, but the rider's gaze rooted me to my spot. I felt his cold stare on my flickering lighter.  He gave a husky laugh- the flame sputtered and died.  I whimpered.

The stallion nudged the glass pane: the angel shattered like ice.  I jumped back as the jeweled shards fell.  The horse stepped over the ledge, silver-shod hooves clacking on the grassy stone floor.  I choked as the scents of smoke and damp earth washed over me, scampering backwards as I stared in horror at the horse. 

Up close it was monstrously tall, its hide translucent with bones gleaming beneath its skin.  It sniffed the air and whinnied, the back of its throat glowing like embers amongst coals. 

I screamed, brandishing my knife as I rose to a defensive stance.  The horse snorted, mouth curling into a condescending smile that revealed sharp teeth.  The rider pulled the reins to steady it and chuckled coldly, patting its flank with a shadowed hand.

I stood there for minutes, pinned by those burning eyes whose owner seemed no more than shifting darkness.  My thoughts were obliterated- I couldn't think, couldn't speak, I could barely even breathe.  The shadow-cloaked rider dismounted, stroked the horse and threw its reins to the broken window.  They snaked through cracks in the stone and knotted themselves together as the horse calmed, master murmuring in its ears.  Slowly, its ghost-white eyes closed, and the beast bowed its head in slumber.

He drew closer, gazing down at me with cold curiosity.  Tendrils of darkness snaked towards me from his shadowy robe, out to brush my throat and face.  I trembled at their touch.

Stunned speechless, all I could do was watch.  One tendril wrapped around my knife and pried it gently from my hand, bringing it to the rider's outstretched palm.  He examined it, tracing the blade, then closed it lightly.  Stashing it in some unseen pocket, his gaze returned to me.  A smirk flickered across his hidden face.

That hint of human emotion broke his hold on me and I reeled backwards, screaming.

“What the hell do you want! What are you?” I cried, hands curling into fists. 

He laughed, closing the distance between us.  His eyes were a mockery of a human's, pinprick pupils amidst pools of crimson.  With painstaking slowness he lifted his hands, drawing his hood of shadows back.

My face drained. 

“Sweet Jesus,” I whispered.

A bleached white skull grinned back at me. 

“Hello, love.”  It smirked.

I buckled over, into black.