The Ghosts of Cloudy’s Forest

Index:

Chapter I

 

The honest clarity of the open country sky served to magnify my decay. Every hedge, field, and copse watched me like uneasy, smiling relatives waiting to see how their dear Thomas had grown from country brat into a young man of higher learning. Although the sunny sky which had witnessed my childhood years now watched me, away from the soot and din of Chicago, I couldn’t help but feel it watched me with a grimace, like it would some ruined machine. It had been a year since we had broken our engagement, and after a dreary winter away at college, I felt I was a twisted hulk, tethered like scrap to the seat of the railroad compartment where I sat.

Though it was only mid April, I thought it would be good for me to visit the family’s summer estate. I was not always given to nostalgia, but in recent months I’d adopted an acute melancholy which demanded reflection on my past. My reasoning was it would be better to reflect on my distant past than to allow my mind to linger on my more recent losses. 

Gazing out the window, forgetting completely the book half-open in my hand, a blur of forest trees obscured the undulating field I’d been watching. It gave way almost immediately and I could see, at a far distance, the long chimneys and pointed gables of my family’s century-old estate lifting over the ancient oaks; and that one distinguishing beech. Although I remembered visiting the old estate in August of the previous year, no characterizing memory outlived my thirteenth year there. 

I recall the weight of misgiving which pressed down my heart when I surveyed the little ponds, hills, and forests which festooned my boyhood. It had been such a precious place, a little realm for a little prince, once big as the world to me. I refused to allow my reason to tarnish it with one ounce of contemptible comparison to other woods and ponds, though I could not escape the immediate impression of how common it all looked now. It had been easier to imagine then, easier to feel contentment, satisfied in the glens and brooks, enjoying, if not partaking in, their ceaseless joy. 

My eyes strayed from the window to the adjacent door of my compartment in time to inadvertently meet the eyes of a young lady who was passing by the corridor. The color of her hair, the manner of her look, the green of her dress, all summoned to mind, like the jerking of a chain around my neck, two summers past when I was a young man in love. There was an infinitesimal moment of exchange exchange, in which I she cracked an embarrassed smile while I must have starred with a foolish, stone expression. The girl quickly looked away and I quickly dropped my eyes back to my book, as if one word of it had engaged my mind in the past hour.       

Leaving the station, I carried my suitcase alone and on foot. I had made sure no one would be waiting to shuttle me to the estate, allowing me time to enjoy the sensory feast of the New England woods in privacy. I had anticipated this short walk would serve to clear my brain of the city’s effects, dispelling the gloom with the sunny contrast of a country spring. It only occured to me now how much the gloom which polluted my psych was generated from within myself, and not a product of buildings, billboards, and busses. Budding leaves, floating butterflies, singing birds, the chit and chatter of growing life made me feel bent, pale, and old. With the perminancy of something true, I could not dispel the impression of myself, walking amid living springtime beauties, a pitiable and clattering machine on two legs. I looked forward to a chair and a hot supper to distract the constant and unpleasant self analysis of my mind. My wildest fantasies, even from childhood, couldn’t have predicted what would actually happen once I arrived. 

The old, gothic iron-rod gate rose between two brick pillars wrapped in young ivy, and capped with copper angels, green with age. I knew it was the custom of my family to leave the gate unlocked, so I went to let myself in. My uneasiness intensified when I found the gate padlocked. I set down my suitcase and idly rattled the old ironwork construction. Vexed, I had a fleeting thought of returning to the station. It had been a foolish mistake to come anyway, I could be spending this time with friends, making merry as I’m sure they were. Then, my sunken investment took hold of my thoughts, and I instinctively began scanning the gate and surrounding walls for an alternative entrance.

My eye had settled on a place I could feasibly climb, when a sound drew my attention. I looked and saw a man approaching from across the wild, leaf-strewn lawn; it had never been my family’s habit to landscape, preferring instead some degree of wildness. The man shuffled toward me, sorting through a ring of keys and keeping his grey head down. I knew immediately it was Albert, the senior of the house’s manservants.

“Albert!” I cried with some genuine cheer. “It’s a delight to see you well!” 

“My dear Mr. Thomas, what a pleasure to have you back.” Albert said, unlocking the gate as he did. His voice was clearer and deeper than a stranger would expect upon seeing the hunched, frail old man. From boyhood, I’d always seen him as an inseparable member of the family. If the estate had been a ship, he would be it’s brave and faithful helmsman. 

As Albert opened the gate and ushered me inside, taking my suitcase before I could object, he said, “I must apologize for keeping the gate locked. Your uncle Claudius arrived last night from Princeton. He insists we keep the estate locked up; although, as you know of course, I am always partial to your father’s principles of keeping the gate open.” 

“Is father here?” I asked with a flutter of eagerness. 

“I’m afraid not. You’ll remember how busy he is at present.”

“Of course. It will be good to see Claudius again.” I said with as much kindhearted enthusiasm as I could conjure. In sincerity, hearing that my uncle was staying at the same time I was sapped whatever hope of peace I had from my visit. The fact was, I didn’t know my uncle well, but knew my father always admired him as a very ‘clever, endeavouring, and accomplished man’. I’d met plenty of ‘accomplished’ me in Chicago, and always found their company bitter in austerity. ‘With any luck,’ I thought to myself, ‘he’ll keep to his books and allow me to keep to mine’. I hardly considered the injustice I had already inflicted upon this scarecrow I had constructed, countering his aloofness with my own. Again, I could not have predicted how wrong my presumptions could be.  

Albert pushed open the huge, old oaken doors of the estate house, releasing a myriad aroma of wood-ash, fresh bread, tobacco, books, and a rustic hound-dog smell. Before my eyes could even adjust to the dim hall, a thousand vibrant memories overwhelmed my thoughts, like children reaching, clutching, and toppling over one another when father comes home. I stepped into the hall, thrusting my hands into my pockets which some measure of placid satisfaction, letting my eyes wander over the cherry-wood walls, the heirloom tapestries hanging, the landscape paintings in gilded frames, the richly carved banister, and the old iron-wrought chandelier modified to accommodate electric bulbs. 

“If you’d like to relax in the library, supper will be prepared shortly. I will take your things up to your room.” Albert said, shutting the door behind me. I snapped out of my dreamy state enough to say,

“Yes, I’d like that very much. Thank you, Albert.”

He gave a bow, as he had always been accustomed to do, and took my suitcase upstairs. I remained standing in the hall for a moment, becoming conscious of the still silence, the gentle heartbeat of a clock, and the warmth of sunlight coming through the window over the door and resting on my neck. I mused over this for a moment, then began toward the library. 

Coming to the embellished dark-wood door of the library, I remember the flutter of solitudinous pleasure that would come over me. The Arabian proverb, “a book is like a magic garden carried in your pocket” was oft repeated to me by my father during my boyhood, and I had inherited his love for privacy, quiet, and printed words. 

Opening the door, however, my anticipation of quiet and solitude was dashed as I found myself looking across the room at my uncle, who appeared to have stopped mid-step, carrying a book from a shelf back to where he had been sitting. Immediately it was evident my uncle was not the kind of man who would not allow himself to be distracted from his reading. He put the book down on a table near him at once and then spread his arms open as if for an embrace, his ruddy cheeks like mounds of copper over the silver of his beard, and his eyes like two bright sapphires.

“Thomas!” He cried, with a boisterous familiarity which sincerely shocked me. As he came toward me to further greek me, I resolved to set aside my disgruntlement long enough to make a formal acquaintance with my uncle. 

I offered my hand with, what I presumed was, an inviting smile. The man looked a little chastened, though in a kind of humorous way, taking my hand and shaking with a gusto which would have sufficed for a full embrace. 

“It’s a pleasure to see you, uncle.” I said, formally, ending the handshake quickly.

“And an absolute pleasure to see you again; so tall and in the prime of manhood. Last I saw you you were rooting for earthworms behind the woodshed on this very estate!” His tone of voice had a complicated nature which made it hard for me to decide if he were actually teasing me or if he was stating something he found profound. The musing twinkle in his eyes and the moment of silence which followed his statement made me wonder if my uncle had been drinking. 

He snapped back to himself suddenly, taking up his book again as he said, 

“Come come, let’s sit and talk.”

The solidity of his voice made it impossible to object, so I sat down in a tall, richly upholstered chair adjacent his. I prepared myself for the glib question and answer regarding my standing at university, how my studies were going, how I was finding life in the city, etcetera. Or more likely, he would want to talk about himself, about his latest research on an obscure topic to be published in a more obscure journal to be read by an esoteric grouping of four or five other professors. However, although my predictions were half correct, it was the manner in which my uncle began which surprised me. 

He leaned in close, his elbow on the book which rested on his knee, and squinted intently at me. I said nothing and tried not to betray the awkwardness I felt at my uncle’s absurdity. Then he spoke in a very sober voice, 

“You’re a very frustrated young man.”

I could almost tangibly feel my mind distance itself from the sudden switch in the conversation. The immediate sense of violation I felt overrode the fact that what he said was true. He continued, leaning back now and templing his fingers, as if examining me, 

“But not just a frustrated young man…a sperned romantic. Are you familiar with the proverb, ‘hope deferred makes the heart sick’?”

It was apparent he wanted an answer, as if this mode of conversation was normal and not at all rude. I nodded coldly, folding my arms as my uncle continued. 

“It’s absolutely true. Think about what sickness is. It corrupts organs made for health, energy, and strength, turning them into unendurable, rotten weights. Imagine a tree, all rotten and decaying, unable to grow leaves or do what it was made to; only a shell of itself.”

It was very evident he discerned the mistrust on my face, as he continued, 

“I know you must think I’m crazy, but bear with me. I too was once a young man away at college, the great poets under my arm, my senses still full of the rosey air of the country, and a beautiful girl imprinted on my mind.” 

I must have been blushing with a mixture of outrage and embarrassment, but something held me still to keep listening, as he continued,

“I too was once a prince of good intentions, full of dreams waiting to become realities. But the world was waiting for me, like a reef under the surface of an otherwise untroubled sea. It wasn’t long before I was hurt, hardened, heart-sick and alone; full of the wrecks of mutilated hopes—hopes deferred a thousand different ways.” Here my uncle smiled like a sunrise, making me realize how grave his expression had been before, “So I came here, just like you, unsure what I was looking for. Do you know the rest of that proverb?” He asked, so suddenly I couldn’t think. I knew I’d learned it once, but felt stupid for forgetting. My uncle finished it for me,

“It says, ‘But a longing fulfilled is a tree of life’. Now, I charge you to ask yourself as I did, is the thing you hoped in the thing which would have fulfilled your longing? Or can you even say what it is you long for?” Here his face grew distant again, with that same sunny expression as before. I had nothing to say; my mind was still an inseparable tangle of convictions and injured pride. Suddenly, my uncle came back to himself again, saying, 

“Food for thought! Now, tell me about college. What are you studying? Your father only tells me so much.”     

It took me a moment to climb out of the pit my uncle had dug for my thoughts. But when I finally had I quickly slid back into the comfortable groove of formal and objective conversation. He listened with great interest, though I thought in my self-consciousness, with farcical indulgence. Only when he asked me questions did I find he was genuinely interested in my studies; always with an emphasis on how much I was ‘enjoying’ the study, I noted.

While I was engaged in this more lax conversation with my uncle, my eye drifted to a portrait which hung over the library’s mantle, which I could just survey over the back of my uncles chair across from me. I remembered it from when I was a boy, a pricling wave of electric nostalgia came over me. I remember how bashfully I would look at the portrait, feel as if it were a real face, pleasantly gazing on me the little stranger in its chamber. It was portrait of a lady, a very lovely young lady dressed all in white silk which nearly matched the whiteness of her skin, save for the almost imperceptible hue of pink on her cheeks. It was done in a very rich, Edwardian style, appearing so realistic to my young eyes as a boy I thought she may just be looking in through a window. The psychoanalytic thought that maybe the imprint of this woman’s beautiful face on my boyhood mind may contribute now to some idyllic notion of a perfect woman. A fictitious Eve in the unenterable garden of my desires.

Just then a noise came clicking at a window off to my left. At once our conversation, which had been growing dull and dry of fresh topics, ceased and we both looked up. There, on the windowsill, was perched a bluejay, with belly so white and feathers of such a pale blue, I was at first unsure what to make of the bird. After a moment of us both gazing at the bird, we looked at eachother again, as if to comment on the bird or to resume our conversation. Instead, to my bafflement, my uncle grinned and abruptly planted his hands on the arms of his chair as he got up, saying,

“Well, it’s been a pleasure catching up, nephew. Afraid I must attend to some work. It’s a delight to have you back at the estate.”

“The pleasure’s mine.” I said, standing, “Perhaps tomorrow we could discuss more about your work lately.” Upon reflection, I didn’t really mean what I said but, being caught off guard by his sudden haste, they were the first courteous words to spring to mind. My uncle, his hand already on the door of the library, looked shrewdly back at me, saying,

“Only if you’re not too busy, my boy.” Without another word he left the library and shut the door behind him. I stood alone in the stillness of the library in the evening light, the tapping of the Blue jay still at the window, and the lady in white watching me from the mantle.

   

 

Chapter II

I sat alone at the far end of the family banquet table, elaborate dinnerware set in front of me. The eyes of dozens of prized boar and elk heads watched me under the light of the buzzing electric lights now fixed in the ancient chandeliers above the table. 

The orange light of a bright sunset divided the dark wood of the dinner table in stark relief, flooding in from a tall westerly window. Opposite me, across the full length of the table and the full length of the banquet hall, was a second window facing north, looking over a hedge and into a neighboring field, which rose to a hill which hid the forest I knew was on the other side. I could see the waves of green grass move like a sea under the wind, reaching up to the breezy top of the hill, where the remains of an ancient, stone chimney rose; the last trace of some extinct homestead from an era before the estate. I recalled looking up to that chimney, silhouetted against the bright sky, imagining it were a lord’s castle on a high hill.

I heard Albert enter through the double doors behind me, the sound of the push-trolly clicking and clacking with plates. Coming alongside my chair, Albert shakily began moving the dishes of steaming food from the trolly onto the table in front of me, saying,

“Here you are, Mr. Thomas. I had the cook fix your favorite dish.”

“My compliments, it looks delicious.” I said, hardly paying attention to the food or the pleasing aroma. “I say, Albert, what do you know about that chimney on the hill?” 

Albert stopped what he was doing and stood up, rubbing his hands on his apron and looking up to the chimney out the north window. 

“That was the home of one of your forefathers, I believe. I’m told it burned down before your father was born. It’s over a century old, that’s all I know. No one truly knows who built it.”

I narrowed my eyes in curiosity, wondering quietly to myself who was the first family to warm themselves by that primeval hearth.  

“If that will be all, Mr. Thomas, I’ll leave you to your meal. Ring if you require anything else.” Albert said, with a little bow. 

“Will Claudious be joining me for supper?” I asked. 

“I’m afraid your uncle is very busy with his work obligations and won’t be able to join you tonight. He told me to convey his apologies.”

“Ah, very well.” I said contentedly, unfolding my napkin and spreading it over my lap. 

“He also told me to tell you,” Albert continued with a half-humorous tone, “That this evening will make for a lovely walk, if you feel so inclined.” 

I glanced back at Albert with some puzzlement on my face, then nodded my acknowledgment. He bowed again and took the trolly back to the kitchen, leaving me with my dinner and my thoughts. 

Midway through my meal, my mind had settled into an uneasy rhythm, thinking with little reason about the empty and quiet halls of the house and the sleepy, twilight depths of the forest beyond hill. Looking up again to the chimney on the hill, my mind froze and my appetite vanished. There was someone standing on the hill.

It was a woman dressed in white. Her uncovered head cascaded in flaxen waves, flowing in a wind so gentle, it appeared underwater. Though the hilltop was very far off, somehow I could tell she was looking at me, and had been for some time. A numinous feeling, half dread and half dream, crept over me. Suddenly, with a longing which would pale the passions of the romantics, I wanted to be on that hill top.

A moment later I was under the fading brightness of the blue sky, trudging through the thick grass of the hill, without either coat or hat in the chilly evening air. In the time it had taken me to leave the table, put on my boots, and reach the foot of the hill the lady had vanished, and the sun had ceased to shed it’s dying glory on the chimney. I was in the starless death throes of daylight, the weight of sunlight lifted and dread of night not yet settled. The blue haze of the world mirrored the dreamy haze which had stolen over my thoughts; the weight of reality lifted and the dread of disappointment not yet settled. Somehow, in the twilight, the hill appeared a very different place than when I had watched it from the dining hall window. 

When I arrived at the top, which terminated in a little platou, I glanced about me in vain. Down the opposite side of the hill was the old forest, such a surly gathering of unkempt, wild Red Oak, Elm, and Beech. I scanned the treeline for a moment but could discern no shape or movement indicating the lady had ran into the woods. 

Suddenly, and without warning, the very Blue jay I had seen swooped past my ear, the way swallows do before a storm. I started but quickly composed myself in case the rascal came back for another swipe. I watched him bank in the sky over the trees, then come directly back at me. Having no hat or coat, I made to wave him off, with no desire to harm the little creature. However, I had been mistaken that the bird was flying directly at me, and in fact flew with such speed into the open mouth of the hearth I could only imagine it had become a little pile of feathers dashed against the stone back of the fireplace. But, to my astonishment, I heard no thud of its little body. I wondered if it could possibly have the agility to fly up the chimney at such speed. 

I walked around the side of the hearth to look inside, and was astonished to see, leaning against the back of the hearth where chopped wood once burned, the very portrait of the lady in white I had just seen in the library. I stood baffled, my brain spinning to make sense of it. Was a trick being played on me? It was without a doubt, the very same portrait of the young lady in white, as vibrant and lifelike as she had been above the mantle in the library. 

Then, even as I gazed into her snow-rose complexion, I saw the Blue jay land on her shoulder. Then, as if she had been trying hard to stay still but couldn’t help laughing at my dumbfounded expression, she wrinkled her nose in the most tender laugh. Then, as if embarrassed for my watching her, she turned and ran into the background of the painting, which I realized now was the hill descending into the woods. I turned foolishly around, as if to see the scene in the painting unfolding behind me on the real hill, but it was as empty as before. I returned my eyes to the portrait. It was now a landscape painting only, the girl in white having disappeared again. Only, now I could see the grass moving in the painting and the trees gently shifting in a twilight breeze, same as those behind me. In fact, it appeared to my adjusting eyes that the brushstrokes I discerned over the face of the canvas were in fact a film or membrane over the surface of the painting. 

With overwhelming curiosity, I got on hands and knees and lifted my arm to touch the canvas. I found my fingertips met with a cool and very slight resistance, like the tension over the surface of water. Pressing very gently, I found my hand passed into the portrait. With the thought of the beautiful girl’s face in my head, and little else, I crawled through the picture frame and onto the soft grass on the other side. 

Standing up I turned, expecting to see the sheer, stone surface of the rear side of the hearth, but instead saw only green grass, as if the hearth had never been there. With a spike of panic, I glanced to where I had come from, down the hill to the estate, but it was gone. In its place lay flowering pastures and little copses of beech trees. It was as if the house had never been built, as if no other human foot had pressed the abundant sod before me. 

Resisting, though without any success, the imminent wave of terror which began to seize me, I turned to look down the hill into the wilderness of ancient oaks which lay on the other side. There I saw her, though only a glimmer of white gown before it vanished into the green folds of the forest. I froze the image of her floating gown and burned it onto my brain to keep me sane. 

Taking one step down the hill, I stopped, stunned like a hound catching a scent; only I knew I was not the predator. The pointed, kinetic aroma of rain caught my attention with such pungency I scanned the sky for clouds. Turning north I saw the landscape that way swallowed in a vaporous atmosphere, caught blue under the bowel of a malevolent stormfront. A long, unforking bolt of lightning split the looming terror like the flash of a blade, promising a devastating peal of thunder. The sound of it quaked my bones and sent a shock of pure fear through me. I cannot describe adequately how I felt at the sight of that storm. I had seen many dramatic thunderstorms before, and enjoyed them all, but this one I felt watched me. The dread it filled me with was primeval, like some bird of prey had risen from the woods and had spread its mile-wide wings over me.  

A sudden wind, which rolled over the treetops like a wave, struck me off balance and sent me tumbling backward down the hill. As I rolled and flailed my limbs to regain balance, I perceived another ear splitting peal of thunder explode over me. Finally digging my fingers into the turf and stopping my descent near the bottom of the hill, I felt the chilling rain strike my back in heavy drops. The storm was over me now, hounding me. I turned back to the treeline and rushed for it as the rain began to bombard the earth. 

I dashed into the open space I had seen the girl in white go, and immediately found myself in another world; that of dripping eaves, oaken colonnades, and dim, leafy corridors. Though in all the forest murk her white gown should have shown like the moon, I could not see her, but there was no doubt in my mind which way she went. In a creeping ribbon, a single rose plant grew, budding and blooming along the forest floor, indicating what path to follow. Dismissing every other thought, I held the image of her floating gown before my mind and ventured into the forest. 

 

             

Chapter III

   Although I walked protected by a thick canopy of spring leaves, I could not dismiss the feeling I was being followed. The unease of the idea came over me with such strong conviction I found myself turning completely around and staring into what distance could be perceived in the thickening wood. The angry roll of the thunder over the treetops gave my mind little rest, and began to cause the image of the white gown to slip from the front of my thoughts. 

In its place, a dark, amorphous phantasm made itself present to my conscious mind. I dismissed it more than once as a mentally-constructed personification of my irrational fear of the storm. But still, the dark character weighed on my mind, as if the storm itself were walking close behind me. It was a threatening presence, but worse still not threatening only to me only, but to the girl in white. It’s hand was reaching out to her— to crush her, and I knew it, and with that knowledge I knew I had to protect her. This thought settled pungently in my stomach like a gulp of brandy, fueling a mental noise loud enough and admirable enough to my own mind to drown out the loud voice of the storm. I was unaware of what great danger I was in.

I carried on this way, consciously pleased with my conjured courage in aloofness that time passed quickly. Gradually I perceived the wrath of the storm had gone completely, though I knew I could not have ignored it into oblivion because even when I listened for it I could hear nothing, not even the rustle of leaves above my head. I stomped my feet to check if my hearing had gone; it was so suddenly quiet. 

It occured to me that the quiet and persistent dimness were indications of coming night. The thought of the girl in white, lost in a strange wood at night filled my chest anew with dutiful compassion. Looking down again to see in which way the roses trailed, my heart nearly ceased, as they vanished. I looked around me in vain, turning circles in the undergrowth, squinting in the dimness, and feeling horribly alone. Fear of the phantom crept back into my unguarded thoughts. 

In the dusky blue haze which was gathering in thickness around me, my heart gave a leap at the sight of some red several yards away. ‘I must have just strayed a little off the path and was making a lot of trouble over nothing!’ I thought to myself, walking toward the contrasting color with a comfortably settling relief. My ease was shot awake by a sudden, unsettling impression I received upon drawing nearer to the red. It was no trail of roses, but a cluster, a mound of roses it appeared, and along its periphery I could detect white roses grew as well. 

Drawing nearer the rose mound with joyless steps, I would have continued to survey my surroundings for the path if it were not for the mound’s alluring strangeness. A dreadful impression grew on me, as though I were a pilgrim treading on the grounds of some great event, good or evil I could not tell. Then my eyes landed on an object which made the world cease to turn. A bloodied arm lay outstretched from under the mound of rose-vines, the thorny tendrils coiling around its torn skin and interlacing the fingers.

Though no sound stirred the twilit wood, my head was a nightmarish cacophony of discordant horns and cries. I may have starred for minutes, or it could have been hours before I found the strength to step back. I only looked away when I heard a voice calling; a full-throated and exceedingly human voice. 

“Hello! Hello, Thomas!” 

It was the mention of my name which stole my attention from the grisly spectacle. I looked and saw two people approaching me, such people that what lingering horror remained in my blood was immediately replaced with something else. A man and a woman, tastefully dressed, and in the bloom of youth. Their expressions conveyed such a wealth of subtle wit and inoffensive self-assuredness, it gave me the impression they were letting me in on a very funny secret. Their clothes suggested, not an adherence to the style of the time, but rather seemed designed best to suit their own individual characters; heady, dark, subtle. With all the luster of conscious youth, they were wine to the eyes. 

“Did you get lost?” The young woman’s voice lilted with a half-humorous tone of pity, letting the low light play on the glossy whites of her deep, brown eyes. I opened my mouth but found I had no breath to reply; I instinctively returned my eyes to the bloody horror at my feet. 

“Hey, hey…” The young man spoke now, with enough sincere concern in his voice he stole back my attention. He was holding out his hand, his charming smile now replaced with an equally winsome, serious expression. “Come away from all that, we need to get out of this storm.” 

The woman looked down at the rose-bed of a corpse with a look of distaste more than disgust, saying to no one in particular, 

“Such a morbid thing, isn’t it.” 

A deafening clap of thunder, like the slamming shut of some cosmic door, shook me too my senses and sent me staggering toward the two. They took me by either forearm, seeming to hold me up as my strength had suddenly evaporated. It was only then I realized how big the two of them were, like two giants standing nine-feet-tall, looking down on me with concern, like two kind strangers who had come across a lost and helpless child. 

“Dear, he does look pale.” The woman said, putting her ivory fingers to her rose-petal lips. 

“And so small! You didn’t say you were so small!” The man said, with kind-hearted amusement. 

“I…I didn’t realize I was this small until you touched me, I suppose.” I said, matter-of-factly, though nonetheless with bewilderment. 

“Here,” The woman began, reaching into a carpet-bag she carried at her side. “this ought to fix you up. There’s hardly any flesh on you!” 

I looked down and saw she was offering me a little, dark, round-bottomed bottle. I gladly took it, the glass of it feeling pleasantly warm to my cold fingers. Unscrewing the little, tin cap, I took a draught without even smelling it first. I half anticipated something ghastly and bitter, but would have drank any strong drink after witnessing something so dreadful. To my surprise, the liquid was smooth and sweet, and nonetheless strong for its sweetness. Indeed, I doubted I’d ever tasted anything so potent as that draft.  

“There!” The woman exclaimed with satisfaction, looking me over as though I had been a block of marble, and had become her sculpted creation, “You look half a man now.”

I had half a mind to look back down again at the wretch behind me, not out of horror or reverence now, but just to see if it were still there, so removed were my thoughts now from the dread I had just felt. Another crash of thunder split over our heads, bringing the two into renewed earnestness. 

“C’mon now! The storm will be back soon.” The man said, tugging my arm gently but earnestly. 

“Where is it you’re so eager to take me?” I asked, feeling the obligation, and now the courage, to ask aloud. 

“Why, the only place that matters! The only place you can fill out!” The man cried with jovial cheer. 

“The garden of the young! Where ‘wants’ become complete men and women!” The woman laughed with a theatrical flourish of her arms and a toss of her lovely head. I thought she must be the most ignorantly beautiful woman or the most expertly alluring woman on the earth. 

They had taken me arm-in-arm and were walking with such vivacity it had all the potential for a dance. 

“What are you talking about?” I laughed at the sheer absurdity and delight of their talk. 

“The only place we can fix what she did to you!” The woman replied, playfully jabbing me in the chest. It was only then I looked down and realized there was a gaping wound in my chest. The open wound was not of flesh but, as if my muscule and sinew had been replaced with coal, it was black and stoney. My shirt was torn open and my gaping chest laid bare, as if a cannon-ball had ripped through the center of me, and dislodged a chunk of rock the size of an apple. 

I looked back up at the woman’s grinning face, with absolute horror on my own. As if she did not register my expression, she threw her arms into the air again, in a kind of mock-dance, crying out with delight, 

“To the carnival!” 

            

 

Chapter IV

I could not remember how the wound had got there, and the more I looked down on it, the more gastly were its implications. I would have lost my mind due to my new awareness of the wound, if it hadn’t been for the man and the woman’s apparent amusement over the whole ordeal. Indeed, they could not help but laugh at my distress, in good humor, as if I had contracted an illness for which the cure had long been discovered and available. 

As we walked, the man clasped me firmly and the shoulder, pushing down his bouts of laughter long enough to say, 

“It’s nothing, man! It happens to all of us.” The woman pushed the little, black bottle back into my hands and I gladly took a second draft to calm my nerves. As I did, the man unbuttoned the first three buttons of his shirt, in order to expose his brawny, tanned chest. There, over his sternum, lay a blackened scar, less like the white, sinewy tissue of an ordinary scar, but as though someone had patched a hole with black putty. 

“See, here. The very same was done to me. I was half a man from first she laid eyes on me.” A sanguine depth had entered his eyes as he spoke. I could only assume he was speaking about the woman walking at my side, but as I glanced at her, she appeared to anticipate my look and replied, 

“Not me, of course. The queen of the dance, he means.” I glanced back at the man, who’s eyes had only grown more enraptured by a remembered vision. 

“The very same white lady you followed into the woods. Every man sees her, and every man who sees her has the gem stolen from his chest. It’s the game she lives to play, and it’s the only thing worth living for.” His bewitched words mingled with his reverent tone rang in my mind with the timbre of perfect romance. Oddly, now that I think of it, jealousy did not flash into my mind at this man’s words, only a stirred duty to love this revered woman took its place. Terror at my wound had turned into a kind of intoxication of flattery, that she saw me fit to play her beautiful game. 

It was then my senses became aware of a change in the air. A warm, savory and sweet aroma filled my nostrils, along with a heavy percussion pulsing faintly under my feet. At the first sign of, what I could only assume was the carnival, the woman became so overjoyed she could not help but dance ahead of us, breaking arms with me after tugging me, trying to invite me into her revelry. I and the man followed behind the woman as she danced ahead of us, singing to herself between breaths.

“I don’t think I’ve seen anyone quite so lovely.” I said, half to myself and half to the man. The impropriety of my words only struck me after the fact, but the man took it with another of his jovial laughs. 

“The white lady may have returned my gem, but only this rose could fill the hole she left.” The man turned to face me with a wizened and fatherly eye, though he couldn’t be more than a year my senior, “My man, everyone is born a ghost of himself, waiting for the day he will become human. It’s the great mystery of life, and its sole purpose, to become an actualized human being. That woman you see dancing, she has my heart and soul, and I wouldn’t have it another way. She rescued me from a life of ghost-hood, and gave me life. Forgive me if I’m sounding too melo-dramatic.” The man apologized.

“Not at all!” I excused, with understanding in my voice, “You’re a man in love; it covers a multitude of sins.” My impulsive use of scripture gave greater license and magnanimity to the subject of romance without my hardly meaning it, and the man could have blushed with contentment.

With every stride more evidence of the carnival presented itself. The homely aromas increased in volume and clarity, and the droning drumbeat began to uncover little under-songs of flutes, fiddles, and every sort of folk instrument. The land around me seemed possessed of one thought, one focus, as if it had been awakened and was more intrigued than disturbed by the din of the woodland carnival. 

Then, through the murk of mental imaginings, the light of the carnival dawned on my open eyes, and I was entranced. Through a split in the trees ahead of us, I could see the lights and the tents of the festal gathering. With transfixed eyes, my feet carried me hurriedly ahead, forgetting my companions and eager for a more sure look at the great thing.

Coming to the edge of a huge, fallen tree, I leaned over it and found my senses awash in the throbbing joy of the festival, standing on the shore of a churning sea of life, color, and noise. Before me, hundreds, perhaps thousands of beautiful men and women moved and danced, dressed with very little but all adorned with flowers so as to punctuate the bareness of their flesh with every color of spring. Tall, beautiful tents rose over the festal crowds like tall copses of flowering trees over untended april fields, and from many of these fumed the delectable aromas. 

The emptiness of the charcoal hole in my chest burned like the stomach of a starving man standing over a banquet table. Every young woman was a fruit clinging by the thinnest stem, waiting to drop into the first hand which enwrapped it. But I knew none of these held the remaining ruin of my heart, none could fill the hollow left in place of my chest but the lady in white.

“Do you see her?” A voice stirred my ear from over my shoulder. “Can you find the woman you need?” I did not turn to look, but I knew it was the woman who had been walking with me. I strained my eyes, looking through the gaily colored crowd. 

“I don’t see her. Do you know where I can find her?” I asked, my tone expressing more desperation than I intended. The woman laughed, amused by my distress, a quality I did not take time to resent. The woman took me by the chin with gentle fingers and directed my head in the direction of a tent, not fifty yards from the fallen tree where we stood. There, like a streak of white lightning, stood my white lady. She stood still, pensive amid the lively throng of young life, her expression seeming to imply she was eagerly waiting for something, as if she were waiting for me. 

“There she is! What are you waiting for?”   

Indeed, I was waiting for nothing, I was basking. I stood simply enjoying, and enjoying the fact that I enjoyed, the visage of that lady in white, the beautiful creature who had taken captive the gem of my heart, making a game of something so sacred. I took my first step, not irreverently, onto the fairground and found myself an inharmonious cord among the revelry of unbridled joy of the carnival. But with another step, I could feel that warm drink begin to stir with my blood, and at once I was a prince of the earth caught up to the sphere of jove, awaiting some celestial Aphrodite to descend her stair to me. Amid the throng of young passions, my mind had, in a moment, detected the reality that I was a key player in the drama that had begun to unfold. I, a ruler of the earth, and she my translunary queen. 

Amid the riotous dance, the pressure of bare-skinned bodies pressing around me, mingled with the aroma of flowers and the musk of heady perfumes, I kept my eyes fixed on the white lady, wading through the festival like a sea. 

I stepped above the heads of the crowds, upon a boulder situated only several yards away from where the lady stood, ever patient in her waiting and watching. Standing above the colourful procession of virile life, I felt myself very much some great product of the earth, a titan knee-deep in the depths of an ocean, gazing with a mortally unfathomable longing for the full glory of the moon. I thought, perhaps by the tail of her lovely eye, she may have seen me. 

At once, she turned and disappeared into an unseen fold in the tent behind her. With dogged determination I pursued, my goal already accomplished in my head and now remained for my body to do it. I pressed through the remaining crowd and burst through the fold of the tent, a bold and brave Mark Antony for his Cleopatra. 

The interior of the tent was a form of cushioned eastern chamber, with a thin vail between me and the white lady, her back to me and her shoulders unclad. I felt my physical heart was on a spit over an open fire, my thoughts raw and trembling with anticipation for at least a touch of that silvery skin. 

I reached out to push the vail the aside. She turned her head slightly toward me, revealing the beginning of her lovely profile, like the first phase of the moon. I hesitated, standing under the vail, her musing eye glinting back at me. Finally, I conjured my voice.

“Won’t you speak to me? I’ve come so far to see you.” 

She turned fully now, and I could see the fullness of her face.  She would not concede, she would sooner slay me with her beauty. I fancied I could speak, but failed in trying once her eye was on me. She lifted an ivory hand, which had been hidden from beneath her gown. At once avarice stole my mind, as I knew the thing contained in her hand was the gem of my heart. 

I took a hasty step forward, but she snatched her hand to her breast, curling a playful grin. But my eyes did not see the lady anymore. All her allures, gestures, and glances were but symbols on a page, explaining in glib proes that she held what would make me whole. I opened the tatters of my shirt around my chest, revealing the stony, black pit where the gem had once been fixed. I noticed the stone had spread and it was making breathing difficult. 

“Please, I need it back or I’ll die.”

With a glint of white teeth and a flash in her lovely eye, she opened her hands enough to reveal the emerald sheen of a large gemstone, alive with light seemingly of its own. All my reason evaporated at the sight of it and I rushed madly forward. The white lady let out a squeal of delight and tried to dart through another set of curtains and out of the tent. But before she could I caught her wrist, and what happened next brought me to threshold of my sanity.

At first, my mind remarked on the rigidity of her wrist, then how cold it was. Then, drawing her from the curtains and toward myself, I witnessed her true form. As if it had all been an illusion her substance had utterly vanished, leaving her a skeleton. I looked at her hands, thinking to find the gem, but all she held was a stone. I looked on in horror as the living death before me gazed up at me through empty sockets. I released her wrist at once, but she cast aside the rock and made to throw her clattering arms lovingly around my neck. In absolute despair I tore myself from the skeleton and rushed back out the way I had come. I felt I could not breathe; I craved desperately to have sky over my head and fresh air in my lungs. 

Flying from the tent what I had only begun to subconsciously fear was manifested before my eyes. The riotous procession of youth which had danced over the fairground was replaced with a heaving sea of bones, moving to the beat of a steady drum. The torchlight glistened on their polished, white bones throwing macabre shadows on the tents of the carnival. In numb horror I stood without a rational thought of my own to comfort me. Only one thought pulsed through my head, a wordless, crushing impression which dominated my mind with unstoppable force. It was the revelation of death’s true nature imposing itself on a young mind, and like the thing itself, once it is before you you cannot look away. 

I dared not look down at myself, lest I found myself a skeleton as well. Instead I ran from the place.

 

Chapter V

 I cannot remember running from the carnival, but I must have because the next thing I remember I was running through the black wood. Dark shapes of twisted trees flashed past me, brambles tore at my clothes and skin, and roots rose to trip me. But for all my terror and insensibility I did not fall. Eventually my terror could no longer overcome my fatigue, and my pace slowed to a walk. 

Looking up through the thin canopy of remnant leaves above me, I could see the stars and the moon was shedding its glow full on the forest to light my way. But under the dread of my new hopelessness, I felt even a sunlit day could not dispel the darkness which I saw lying heavy over the earth. My eyes were darkened with a despair which no light could penetrate. Before, the world had seemed like a wild beast outside my home, something monstrous and cruel but endurable from the safety of my home. With this hope stripped away the beast was within my walls and it was only a matter of time until I was devoured. I resigned myself to wandering without a direction, alone in a deepening sea of discontent. 

As I walked, I began to think I heard sounds around me. Before long I was convinced there were others walking alongside me. Looking around me I could see no sign of life, only the intermittent sounds of sticks snapping and leaves crunching underfoot. Then, finally, after almost an hour, I saw the shape of a person under the moonlight walking the same direction I was several yards to my left. He walked sullenly with drooping head and dragging feet as though there were some immense burden on his back. I looked to my right and saw also a woman walking farther off, but also in the same direction, and with the same complexion. Though I could not see them, I knew there were more though, all like me, refugees of the carnival of death without a home or a purpose—with naught but their discontent for company. 

I made no effort to call out to them, and they did not acknowledge me. I knew to a degree what kind of blackness filled their minds and how futile words would be. My own voice, I was sure, was now buried so deep within me it might never return. This carried on for some time without change, leading me to wonder if anything would ever change. But change did come, though not in any hopeful form. The wood was darkened again, being denied the glow of the moon by a cloud creeping over the sky from behind me. Turning my face to the cloud I saw with little surprise but a fresh wave of terror, the storm. 

A flash of sudden, white lightning burned on my eye the outline of a human form and immediately I knew the phantom presence had returned. I did not turn to face the storm again, only setting my eyes ahead I picked up my pace. No thunder came, only the empty silence of the nocturnal forest, interrupted by the whisper of wind through the tree boughs. I could no longer see my walking companions around me, but they did not concern me. The flashing of the storm only increased in frequency as I walked, and with each flash the impression of the phantom shape grew on my mind until it was active terror once again. 

Though I had thought my strength was spent, I found myself again sprinting through the forest at full speed like a deer, maddened with fright. I could feel the presence of the storm tingling on the back of my neck, begging to have my life. A snarl of thunder crackled overhead. I felt like I was living in a twilight state of being, neither dead nor alive.

I had heard the phrase, “cheating death” before, but I had never before felt more guilty for cheating anything. Something in me, no alien voice by I knew it to be my own, told me I ought to have died by now, or at least abandoned myself to the storm to see what it would do. After all, how much worse could a life of agonized wandering be to surrendering myself to the storm? But it wasn’t the pain, physical unmaking, and fleshly oblivion that scared me so much as the mystery surrounding such an uncanny death. There seemed no doubt in my mind that to stop running was to surrender my spirit, but still the question raised itself to my consciousness, ‘What would he do to me if I did stop?’. 

Just then, a mound of something appeared suddenly in my path and next thing I knew I had stumbled over it and flung myself headlong into the earth. I felt a sharp pain in my head and then there was darkness. In my unconscious state I dreamt I was suspended in the middle of the storm which crackled and flashed around me with wrath and a cacophony of deafening noise. The thick dark cloud roared at me angrily, its wind tugging and whipping me as if to tear me apart. Suddenly, a brighter light flashed and I awoke suddenly to find myself being carried up a staircase on a straw mattress, with a lantern dangling over my face. 

“I think he’s waking up!” I heard a small voice whisper to another.

“Shhh! He’s just having a bad dream.” Whispered another. 

“We’ll put him up in the bird room. That’ll make him happy when he wakes up.” 

I felt my head go light as I tried to angle myself to see one of the speakers, and suddenly the darkness was back over me. The next time I saw light it was the light of morning. 

Awaking from my pained and uneasy sleep, my first conscious thought was that I was in some form of aviary. All around me were the chirps and tweets of dainty songbirds. Opening my eyes I thought I must have been strung up in a tree, as treetop foliage almost completely engulfed me. Morning sunlight streamed in through cracks and spaces in the leaves, and with it dozens of little colorful birds played around where I lay. 

Making an effort to move I found I had been put up in a hammock, and looking down I saw very little making up the floor of, what I had heard them calling the, “bird room”. I flung my legs over the side of the hammock and immediately a pang of ice-cold pain split my head. I caught my breath and slowly reached up to touch my forehead, which I found was bandaged with cloth. I also remembered my chest, and quickly looked down to examine it and found I had been dressed in a fresh linen shirt. Unbuttoning its top, I peered inside to see if the stony growth had all been a nightmare. But I was disheartened to find the stone had grown almost up to my neck, and would soon inhibit my shoulders from functioning properly. Also, to my puzzlement I saw whoever my hosts were had put the heads of roses in the black cavity of my heart. It turned my stomach to excavate the little red flowers from the hollow within my chest. 

Away below me I could hear what sounded like hushed chatter and a soft reed flute being played in an aimless fashion. I lingered in my hammock for a minute or two, but then felt obliged to get up and thank my hosts—whoever they were. Standing up on the haphazard wood boards which made up the floor of the “bird room”, I turned and saw they had installed a little wood-frame window between an opening in the foliage, looking out over the treetops. Evidently the storm had passed over in the night, as it was a cloudless expanse I saw out the window. 

I stepped over to where there was a little latter affixed to the trunk of the tree and began climbing down. As soon as I came beneath the foliage I heard the hushed chattering cease conspicuously. Finishing the climb and setting foot on the leafy turf of the forest floor, I looked around me. Certainly I was in a little complex of tree houses, and this area below was their common ground, but where were my hosts? Laying strewn along the ground I saw little tools and clever little devices, like toys, seemingly left and discarded. 

A fountain of water lay at one end of the little clearing between trees, like a well but with a little plinth of rock rising up from one end of it and bubbling out a stream of fresh, cool water. I felt my throat choke at the sight of water and I realized just how thirsty I was. Ambling over to the fountain I wasted no time in leaning over the little rock wall and splashing my face in the cold, clear, delectable water. As I scooped out handfuls of the water and drank them down greedily, a little sound caught my ear from the tree boughs above me. Gazing first into the water to discern a reflection of what was above me, I gagged on my water at the sight of half a dozen children perched up in the tree above me! 

The moment they knew I had seen them they fell from their hiding place, falling on my shoulders and hugging my legs, though all being careful not to touch my head. One of their members missed his mark and fell with a splash into the fountain, which was met by cheers and uproarious laughter from the others. More and more of the little ones came rushing out of the woods around me to meet me, all cheering and laughing with the sunniest expressions.

In my bewilderment I couldn’t quite understand most of what they were saying, but one repeated phrase remained coherent in my ear: “It’s the baby! The baby is awake!”. I immediately took this to be sheer ridicule, but soon found that an unkind jest was nearly impossible among these little ones. 

Their cheering and climbing on me seemed an inexhaustible game to them, and this lasted for a longer time than I would have wanted. Once or twice I tried to get a word in but the little ones seemed to not understand what I was trying to say, and a moment later they forgot that I had been speaking at all. Finally I collapsed against the wall of the fountain as they scrambled all around me. Finally, after it became clear that I did not have the strength or will to participate in their excitement, they quieted down, but only by a sheer act of suppression, as it was evident on their faces not an ounce of energy had been lost. 

A little round-faced, brown-eyed boy who had found his way under my arm looked up with exaggerated concern at my face, saying, “You shouldn’t go run in the storm like that. You’re not ready to play that hard!” 

For all the terror I endured the night before, I could hardly make it real to mind while looking into the little boy’s sweet face, nestling himself under my arm as though I were a beloved uncle. Then, with a sobering impact, I remembered the white lady and the carnival, and my lingering despair. More than that, shame that I, being so corrupted and tainted with the horrors of the night before, should be so trusted among such pure creatures. They all seemed to be waiting for my response, although I could not be sure what to say. I tried to conjure a sweet tone to match the sweetness of the child’s face, but my voice had more of sand than sugar in it’s sound,

“How is it that you were out playing in the storm? Don’t you have mothers and fathers to tell you that’s dangerous?” 

The other children looked at each other with a blend of confusion and concern, but the little boy under my arm immediately replied, 

“We have Cloudy!”

The matter-of-fact delight of his sweet, small voice seemed to imply I had asked a very dull question. My splitting head swam through all the possible meanings of the name, “Cloudy”, and my confusion must have been apparent on my face because a handful of the girls giggled at my foolish face. 

“Who’s Cloudy?” I asked reluctantly. A fresh wave of lively energy swept through the throng of children as they laughed, not at me I gathered, but as if the mention of this name was to them pure joy. Then a most ridiculous thought crossed my mind, but in my ridiculous state I was not beyond any seemingly foolish thing—and in the company of such pure-hearted rascals I felt little fear in ridicule. 

“Cloudy…do you, by chance, mean Claudius?” My question put a short pause on their celebration, which then resumed with greater laughter. From the delightful tumult one of the little voices jested out, “Yes, Claudius is our father! And Dunny is our mother!” From the wriggling and laughter of the boy under my arm, I gathered he must have been Dunny. It took them a moment to recover from their laughter, in which time I marveled at their ability to laugh. More true to my thoughts, I wondered at what kind of soul lay underneath that could be so possessed by joy that laughter was as effortless as breath. How could a congregation of such small and vulnerable creatures live with such freedom from fear and peace of conscience? Were they too dull to know their true danger? I began to realize I was in the presence of a form of life which I could not account for, nor conceive from within my own sphere of internal experiences—something between childhood naivety and the wise simplicity of old age. I could not perceive any taint of the world-weary and discontent adult about them, nor the rotten avarice of adolescence. I now believe it was to my credit that I did not assume they were merely children. My heart could not decide whether I was in the presence of children or my elders.

“So…you know my uncle Claudius?” I asked when they had finished laughing. I noticed the older of the children did not speak first, and out of all the children the oldest appeared the most wild and uncouth—though uncouth feels too strong a word for such sweet creatures. A very young girl with cropped, boyish hair and dressed in a patchy skirt spoke to me with such clear articulation I would have expected her to be grown. 

“Your uncle, sir? You could be his grandfather! Claudius was the youngest and sunniest of us all.” 

I gazed at her stupidly, unsure how to reply. Among my mother’s brothers, Claudius was the oldest, how could she say he is younger than even her? The young girl continued,

“You know Cloudy…you saw him already. He was with us last night when you were fighting.” 

“I was running last night.” I replied, finally finding my voice in the bewilderment of my mind, “I don’t remember meeting anyone last night…or doing any fighting. I just ran from the storm.” 

“It’s the same thing, really. Anyway, this is Cloudy’s forest. He’s very good to those who live here. He’s the one who protected you from the storm…like Dunny said, you’re not ready to play that hard. You’d end up like the rock-walkers.” 

“What do you mean by ‘rock walkers’?” I asked, the mention of this term intriguing me. Some of the children began to leave the group to seek more engaging activity while some of the others sat and began playing in the dirt. Dunny had almost fallen asleep on my lap, and I hadn’t the heart to move him. The little girl continued with the closest thing to a grave expression these little ones could put on. 

“You saw them last night too. Shuffling people covered in rock, very sad to watch them go. Like statues, all somber and mopy-looking. Not sunny at all.” The children shook their heads in agreement. Through my aching skull I could recall there being others with me before the storm the night before. Others like me, leaving the carnival of death in a state of neither life nor death. “They’re like you, only their sickness is older.” She walked forward and poked me on the chest with her tiny supple finger. I could not feel her touch, it was as if she were touching a chimney wall. 

“You mean…they were made of stone? How’s that possible?”

The little girl didn’t seem too troubled by this otherworldly prospect, but made a face as if she were thinking hard about a riddle, pursing her lips and gazing toward the tree boughs with her hands on her hips in an almost womanly fashion. She grunted then said with a smile, 

“That’s too hard for me to think. Claudius would know. He’s the youngest you know.”

“Right, of course.” I said, mentally shaking myself out of whatever stupor I had fallen into. Why was I carrying on this exposition with a child when my uncle might be somehow present to explain what was going on? “It was silly of me to ask. Could you show me to him? My uncle I mean.” I asked cordially. 

The children still present got a fresh excitement out of my new blunder, and cupped their hands over their mouths and glanced at each other with shining eyes and sheer delight. The little girl did not suppress her laughter, but let it come bubbling out like the clearest stream of pure joy. How could I call them children? The darlings were angelic. 

“If you want to talk to Claudius you have to talk to Cloudy first.” She scolded me, both fists on her hips and her little face coming very near my own. I puffed my exasperation and glanced around at the beaming faces all around me, none of which seeming to sympathize with my vexation. 

“Well…he is here isn’t he? Is he well?” I grumbled, beginning to feel a little cheated. 

“Why, yes, yes! He’s very, very well! He’s sunny, I told you.” The little girl laughed, appearing to be losing interest in the conversation as she plopped down in the leaves and began playing with a doll that had been laying on the ground. I was becoming desperate to understand. I look back on my behavior with some shame now—like most men of my age I was liable to sudden flares and fits of panic when too long deprived of clear and concise understanding. There were fewer meditative or musing bones in my body than I had thought, which I now understand to be a root cause to my adolescent unhappiness. God forgive me for what I said next, I was young. 

“Why do you keep speaking like that? What do you mean by sunny. I’m sorry, you are very kind, but it would be far kinder for you to speak to me clearly about what’s going on.”

She stopped playing with her doll long enough to look up at me with something like a serious, even rebuking face, as she said curtly. 

“Cloudy makes people sunny. You’re moony because you need to talk to Cloudy.” The children suddenly leapt up all around them, dancing, laughing, and leaping singing a childish song about the ‘moony man’. This time I felt my face turn red, though I could not bring myself to feel angry.

“Hey Dunny.” The little girl came sliding across the leaves on her knees and gave the little boy on my lap a nudge. Dunny sat up with a contented smile on his lips, rubbing his eyes with his little fists. “Can you go and get Claudius’ boat?” Dunny’s face brightened and he scurried off, allowing me to finally move from where I had uncomfortably been sitting. I stood up and brushed off my pant-legs, looking at the dancing and singing children beneath me, feeling very impatient to speak with an adult. The little girl smiled up at me, cradling her doll as she said, 

“Claudius said you would be moony like this. That’s why he left you his boat, so you’d get your head all untangled and go talk to Cloudy. Then you can be sunny!” I nodded politely, thrusting my hands in my pockets and glancing around the forest grove. I had an impression of the day getting late, though I was without my watch and the sun was still low in the east. A moment passed and the children dispersed, going about little tasks and amusing themselves in the trees over my head like so many chattering monkeys. I was aware of my growing indifference to them, which when consciously observed seemed odd to me to feel so coldly about such lovely creatures. I touched the stone around the cavity in my chest. It was cold as ice, and I felt a shudder run through me. As if a voice whispered it in my ear, I knew that if something were not done, it would be impossible to love or feel warmly about anything or anyone, even my own self. 

Dunny came bounding back and slipped on the slick leaves in the clearing just before reaching the two of us. He came sliding on his back almost between us, appearing very amused with his fall, his cheeks ruddy from his run. In his hands he held a cleverly fashioned paper boat which looked to be made of multiple pages from a book. The girl took the boat and presented it to me with a pleasant, unassuming smile before going back to her doll. I received it with a nod, and found that I was as unacknowledged as if I were just another tree in their little grove. I shuffled off to a more secluded tree trunk nearby and sat.

I surveyed the dainty little boat in my hands and found I recognized the handwriting on the papers as certainly belonging to my uncle. I unfolded the papers to find it was a kind of letter, with a header which read, “For My Nephew to be Presented Upon His Arrival to the New-Born Grove”. The words which followed held me spellbound until I had finished the last sentence. They began with “By the time you read this, dear nephew, you will know that you are dead.”             

      

 

Chapter VI

My hands trembled uncontrollably as I held those dreadful pages. I could only read the first pages—I had not the stomach to finish them. They were written in the hand of my own uncle, but I could not believe what they said. Had he gone mad during his sojourn with the little children? A more terrible and probable thought sank its talons into my brain. Or had the phantom I had seen the night before reached Claudius and twisted his mind beyond rational thought? I looked up from the pages into the sunlit grove, the silence of the place peaceful and pleasant, like a watching parental presence as the children gambled and played in the trees above and around the trunks below. Surely my uncle had lost his mind, but not on behalf of these little ones. Even within the coldness of my stoney chest, I could not fain anything but love for the forest children. 

I looked back down at the notes, still shaking in my hands. My eyes floated back to the paragraph which had sent the very sinews of my body to vibrating. Here were his words,

It is a wonder and a terror to imagine what death is like for a creature who cannot cease to exist, by one’s own nature. If I’ve learned anything from my fruitless escapade in the wood before I died, it was that our rational rendering of that black curtain called death is nothing but a toy—a small, silly imitation. I was wrong in nearly every way. There are two deaths in Cloudy’s forest, or so the blessed little ones call him. I must imagine you have already discovered the first death. I am sad to say the forest is rank with it. It fills the skeletons of the dead carnival, and the rock-walkers of the wood. I confess to you, my dear nephew, I was nearly one or both of these animated dead before I met the forest children and, of course, the one they know as “Cloudy”.

While these words troubled me, the following words were what reverberated like a scream in my head. The whole pleasant and sunny din of the grove around me seemed to sink out of reality as my eyes scanned the words in front of me. 

Thomas, I was so blind! Even in the carnival, and among the walking statues of the wood, I could not see my own death. I suppose that is the curse of the first death, to always imagine oneself to be the only living thing—or, equally wrong, the only dead thing and all one’s comrades to be filled with unending life. I’d never known such a black ocean of discontent as when I saw that I’d never seen any life whatsoever. And I’d never known such soul-rendering fear as when I saw the phantom hoving over those black waters. I died in my discontent, Thomas. It was no quiet death, like so many simple and sinful old men crave. I died a wretch in muddy squallor, my heart a warped and mangled pit of ice. I gave myself up to the wild storm and to the phantom that hounded me.   

I coughed and looked away from the pages, my eyes going dim and dark as if I would faint. I tried to regulate my breathing, but my heart was beating too wildly. My limbs felt weak and my brain seemed to burn with the friction of my racing thoughts. After a moment of bewilderment, my eyes cleared enough to recognize the little girl was standing in front of me, the sun causing her frizzy auburn hair to glow like a halo. She was beaming with smiles, as were the throng of children gathered behind her. 

“Did you read the boat?” She said eagerly, crouching in front of me and drumming on my knee excitedly. I heaved a shaky breath, trying to compose myself so as not to frighten the children with my own deep fright. I put on a smile, as I had learned to do over the years, and replied, 

“Yes…I did. Now, would it be possible to see Claudius?” 

She shook her head and replied. 

“No, no. Cloudy first!” The children behind her began to laugh again and sing a song about Cloudy, which twisted my stomach. The name “Cloudy” and the phantom I had seen had finally connected, and I realized these children had no idea the kind of darkness they had gotten themselves into. I looked from one of their sweet faces to the other, wracked with a sense of sinister irony. I could not help but blurt out the warning which blared in my mind out of the love I felt for the little ones. 

“No, you don’t understand. Cloudy will kill me if he finds me!” I bit my lip after I released this cry, filled with shame if I were to cause any one of these children distress. Their response left me convinced they were as out of touch with reality as my uncle. Some of their little faces contorted, as though they were repressing an explosion of laughter, while others smiled sweetly and shook their heads as though I had said something hopelessly ignorant. The little girl placed her warm little hand on mine and said, in a soothing tone as if speaking to an infant, 

“No, no, Cloudy will not kill you. You’re already dead! You have to die-die to come back. We all did it, now we’re Cloudy’s children.”

For the first time I felt terror in the presence of the little ones. It was like a nightmare that begins benign and even lovely, but then warps and sharpens into something unimaginably dreadful. I glanced around me for a way to escape. 

“We’ll show you were to do it. It’s the prettiest place to die.” The little girl said, her eyes looking up into the trees dreamily, “Don’t be scared, we’ll show you how. Just like Claudius.” 

I clumsily leapt to my feet and sprinted blindly into the woods. My vision blackened and I saw sparks, and though my legs were weak, I did not stop. I ran over roots and between trees like a frightened buck, miraculously without every stumbling or collapsing. Even as I ran, I noted how curious it was to have a head so vacuously empty of any real thoughts except the electrifying impulse of fear. Fear spurred my legs like a charging horse, filled with animal thoughts and little one could call reason.

Whether minutes or hours passed before I came back to myself I could not tell. I stood still and listened. I could hear nothing but the aching trees and the wind in the leaves. The children had not followed me. It was only then that my senses began to return gradually, like slow-falling rain. I slumped to the ground and wept. If the lady in white had broken my heart when I discovered her to be a skeleton, then the little one’s had shattered it when I discovered them to be deranged. I had loved the little children in a way I knew I could seldom love anything else with the condition of the blackened stone pit which had become my heart. 

I leaned myself against a tree trunk again, realizing how exhausted I had become. My weeping had quickly ceased, though my heart continued to break in a fashion which seemed to have no end. My faculties for crying had become so impeded over the years, I internally commended myself for having enough heart left to weep as I had. Glancing down, I noticed I was clutching something in my hand. In my flight, I had clutched my uncles papers in my fist like a vice. Even as I began to try and open my hand, I found it to be like opening some mechanical trap, stiff and cumbersome. Then the terrible thought occurred to me. I gripped my shirt in my other hand and ripped the buttons open. As I had feared, the stone had spread like black crystal over my whole chest and was beginning down my arms, causing my joints to begin to freeze. Soon I would be a sculpture, a black obelisk among the tall and living trees of the forest. I felt the tears of self-pity make an attempt at forming in my eyes, but my heart could not warm enough to allow them to flow. I just sat there, under the swaying boughs, in abject misery.

As the moments passed in the quiet of the wood, my thoughts returned to my uncle’s writings. I desired some sort of company, another mind to give weight and significance to my own. Laboriously, I opened my uncle’s letter again and read on. 

I gave myself up to the wild storm and to the phantom that hounded me. That is when I learned of the second death. I wish there were a more apt word for it than “death”, but death it is. The trouble with the word is it implies the end of something, and in a way I suppose it is the end of me, but what a miserable wretched self to put an end to—an end I could never have anticipated. I was born when I died the second death. 

My mind was diverted from the words as a single raindrop fell on the page in front of me. I looked up with a jolt of fear and saw that the sunny sky had become a sheet of darkening clouds. My fear ebbed back into a cold wave of self-pity. The storm was coming, and I knew that meant the phantom would soon be with me. I would die, I would slip into that infinite abyss of unconsciousness. More dreadful still, this prospect did not frighten me so much as it had before. After all, I thought to myself, what would be dying? A man running from nothing with a heart full of stone. I knew myself to be infinitely alone, without a single ray of love to split my infinite night. That’s when my uncle’s words became suddenly real to me. I was dead, and always had been, adrift in a sea of discontent. How could I even say I had loved anything before? Had it not all been a facade, and attempt to make a home on this heaving arctic sea in my chest. I suddenly felt my chest crackle like flint ground underfoot, and I felt the stone creep further down my body and up my neck.

I let the papers fall from my stony hand and looked up into the blackening sky. I opened my mouth but had no words to say. In reality, I’m not sure if the stone had not already grown into my throat, and if I had spoken, I could not be sure if it would not come out like the sound of falling stones. I simply sat and stared, feeling less than a human being—less even than an animal—but a mere boulder in a forest, cold and lifeless. Thunder rolled like a booming surf overhead, and I closed my eyes.

Suddenly, I perceived a presence near me. It did not come with the same dread as the phantom, but mad itself known by the crunching of leaves. I opened my eyes and glanced to my right. Standing beside me, looking down on me with a gaze which must have reflected my own, was another man. I could tell by his stance and the unfathomably deep sorrow in his eyes that we were of a similar mind. I saw his arms and legs were already nearer stone than flesh, a jagged kind of obsidian stone which reflected the dim light like ice. I could not help but feel two things at once as I looked at the man before me. First, a pang of shame that two such wretched creatures could be permitted to remain in such a beautiful forest; and second, a deep warming in my bones to know that we two were of the same mind. I was not alone, even if it was for my final moments. There was love in the man’s sorrowful eyes and I could not help but let my own love exude from my own. 

The man lowered a square, stone hand to lift me up. I did not hesitate but let my own hand grasp his. Our palms met with a clack like two dry bones, sending a shiver down my spine. He lifted me to my feet and we stood together a moment. If there were any fear of this second death in my mind, it was drowned in a sea of my discontent. I would not run from the storm any longer, and this man appeared to share my resolve.

Without words, the man looked ahead in the direction I had previously been running. I followed his gaze and saw that the trees did not continue on forever, but terminated in a field almost a hundred yards forward. Beyond, I could just see the sharp orange flare of a sunny horizon under the fanning reach of the storm. He began to take laborious, trudging steps forward, like a man wearing a suit of granite. I followed him without a word or thought of protest. As we moved through the trees, my muscles burned and ached from my own growing weight, and my parched throat seemed to scream for water, though I knew I could utter no sound. The thunder neared, roaring like a beast of prey over our heads. The rain began to sprinkle the leaves over us, the cascade down from the higher boughs to the forest below. Though we were soaked, I felt nothing on my skin, if skin it could be called. The only thing I felt was the extreme cold within me mingled with the transcendent warmth I felt in the company of the other man.

As we reached the edge of the forest, we found ourselves in a large clearing on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea. Above us, the swirling and roaring black clouds moved in coiling ribbons like so many dragons soaring over their roost. The land in front of us inclined in an upward life before meeting the edge of the sheer cliff. Over the surface of the open expanse in front of us was not grass or stone, but wild roses in full bloom, their round, red faces all seeming to look expectantly at the two of us. At the far end of the cliff, almost overhanging it, was the imposing shape of an ancient tree. Although the tree itself was dead, it was covered with an abundance of fresh life. Like layers of twisting green ivy, the wild roses coiled up every square inch of the tree’s surface until the entire organism was bursting with fragrant, red blooms. At its feet, mingled among flowers, were white bones, bleached from years of sun and exposure. I’d never seen a sight more terrible and more lovely. 

After a moment of hesitation, the man beside me moved, beginning the arduous ascent up to the tree. Lightning flashed and lit the scene brightly for a moment. The roar of the thunder seemed to call me onward, and despite the fear clawing at my stomach, I could not go back. I ascended the incline at my comrade’s heels, determined with all my strength to reach the roots of that tree. The thunder exploded over my head in ferocious peels, mingled with the roar of the churning surf beneath the sea cliffs ahead of me. But for all this noise, my mind had never felt quieter. As my comrade reached the foot of the tree, I saw him collapse and roll onto his back, facing the sky. His eyes met mine again, as if to say, do as I do and you will die as you ought to. I clenched my jaw and summoned my courage, but even that seemed to contribute little to the drive which led me to die beside the stone man. I fell to the ground and lay on my back beside the man, prepared to embrace the end.

As I lay there, staring into the swirling expanse of the storm above me, I was aware that the roses were coiling around my body and limbs, assimilating me into the tree. They did so slowly, like someone methodically stitching two sheets of cloth together. I closed my eyes and committed myself to the process. I patiently waited for the storm to destroy me. As I waited, I heard something I did not expect. The man beside me spoke, his voice low and subdued, as if speaking at someone’s deathbed.

“Thomas, when I saw you on the hill when you first came, I was eager for you to know I was here.” My eyes opened and angled in his direction, though I could not turn my head. All I could see was the storm above me. I forced myself to try and speak, 

“Who are you?” The sound of my voice appalled me, like the sound of grinding and scraping stones.

“You have suffered so much…I know how you feel. Stay in it just a moment longer, Thomas. It will all be over soon…then you will see.”

“Claudius?” I asked suddenly, the thought clumsily forming in my bewildered mind that this man might be my uncle. “Is it you?” There was only silence in response to my answer. A moment passed, as my bewilderment grew. I asked again, “Who are you?” This time, a familiar voice answered me. It was the voice of the little girl, who now saw was standing over my body. I saw her smiling face come over me, her wet hair dripping over my stony chest, now adorned with living roses. 

“This is Cloudy, silly! He brought you to die-die, just like he did.” Her answer meant little to me, and my confusion only grew. So I cried out in my wretched and inhuman voice, “Who is he?” This time I was silenced by the answer I received—I was answered by the storm, in a voice of booming thunder. 

“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

 

Chapter VII

Epilogue

What remains of my adventures in Cloudy’s forest remains a bright fog on my mind. What is clear is that, after hearing the voice out of the storm, I died the second death—but very unlike the death I had become accustomed to assuming from the language of obituaries and the speculation of neurologists. It was like death inside out and backwards. Though I know its effects in my life even as I write this account in my father’s study, I am still waiting to witness the full shape of the life the final death has led me to. 

I remember waking up in a blue morning, drenched with dew, laying on my back on a grassy hill. Looking up and behind me, I saw the shape of the old chimney, standing over me like a watchtower. Although I lay there, knowing myself to be home again, my senses still lingered in Cloudy’s forest. I folded my fingers over my chest and lay awash in thought, musing with a peace I had not known since I was a boy. The sky, though unchanged, had never seemed so tranquil and benevolent. The grass, though inanimate and cold, had never felt more personable and so much like a good gift. Indeed, I felt as though I was witnessing the world through a new set of sensory lenses—or was it that I was seeing it free of any inhibiting lenses for the first time?

I fell to thinking about the last moments of my vision—it feels too crass even now to refer to it as a ‘dream’. I could not render in my mind what had transpired after the second death, but I knew this was not the first time I’d woken up since then. Flashes—only dim flashes of what I had seen passed through my mind as I lay on the cold turf. I remembered something like waking up—but not the kind of waking up I’d grown to know as an adult—it was the eager, wonder-filled, safe but never languid waking up of a child. Yes! I had been a child, just like the lovely little ones of the New-Born Grove! 

I remember looking down in spender as I woke and stood. There lay my stoney sarcophagus, a tomb of rubble wrapped and wreathed in roses. The tree looming above me sang with birds and burst with blooms—the whole atmosphere around me enveloped in the cheer of a bright dawn. I could not recall quite where I was, the whole place lay under a thick blanket of what looked at first to be snow—but as my new eyes adjusted I realized it to be a low-lying mist, curling and wisping around my feet and beyond the trees for miles. I knew immediately it was the storm that had sought me all those times in the wood—a time which seemed to me more a nightmare for who I had been than for how the storm had chased me. The children were right, I had never known Cloudy until this point, the man who brought up up to the tree and let me die the second death. But where was he now?

I looked, and sure as mine his stone prison had burst open, leaving only rocks and ruins around where he had laid and died. Then I heard his voice and I turned to face him. Only sweet flashes of that voice remain on my mind now, like distant correscations of lightning in a thunderhead long past. Even his face was of a sort that I cannot recall it to mind enough for a valid description—his whole physical presence, I recall, was of that sort—such that no verbal rendering would be adequate. Indeed, he was wholly a man, at once a man and at once more youthful than any child—the very visage of innocence and power. Ah, but there I go, straying into abstractions where no concrete form can be issued. Even his words to me, which I shall not forget for as long as I live, will go with me to my grave. Like the prophets of Yahweh, to whom was granted the beatific vision, even they were sometimes told not to write the words which God Almighty spoke to them—and for like manner I leave this portion of my narrative void. 

How long I lingered in His forest I cannot recall—whether it was an hour or a century I have no recollection. Perhaps I saw my friends in the grove again, perhaps I slept in the bird room again, maybe I returned to the carnival of death to entreat the skeletons there to find the second death and become like me. Perhaps I lived among the rock people and carried my roses to the farthest reaches of the forest. I cannot say, but for all the joy and life that might have happened in that span it all would have paled before the reverse eclipse of knowing Cloudy—to whom even now I cannot consider myself distant.

I lay in the thick, dark grass for the whole morning, until finally stirred by my hunger, I rose and descended back down the hill to my father’s house. Upon entering I forgot my hunger and the reminder that my uncle was still there, and he had known of all of this from the very beginning. When I approached the servants to inquire of my uncle it took some time before I had settled their frenzy of concern and questions about where I had gone off to over the night. When I finally managed to console them enough to ask for my uncle, they told me that he was already in the process of beginning his travels back to the university. I rushed with winged feet to the foyer in time to see my uncle tucking an umbrella under his arm and putting on his hat.

“Claudius!” I cried, rushing boyishly up to my uncle. My uncle turned with ruddy face and a wide grin. I saw at once there was a knowingness in his bright eyes. 

“Thomas, my boy. What can I do for you?” He asked, in a kind of mock formality. Now faced with him, I didn’t know quite how to ask what was burning on my mind. There was a tortuous silence in which my brain spun, searching for the words. Finally, my mouth blurted out, 

“Did you go to the rose tree?” I did not know what to expect, whether I would be met with a deeper silence or if I would, from then on, be considered mad. But to my wonder, my uncle’s grin metamorphosized into a smile of such brightness and purity that I knew at once he was still the least of little ones of the forest.