Fortified

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Its disconsolate glow mirrored the glint in the eyes of the lone figure standing behind its low flame, darkness shifting and folding around him. As the moon ascended the starless sky, the irises behind his wire-rimmed spectacles turned aurulent in the light. Arms folded behind his back, the lifeless child a human crescent at his feet, he kept watch of the dark. Waiting.

The voices rang closer than ever now. In the corpus of blackness, they sounded disembodied but in his mind’s eye, he saw the sheriff conducting the search party, his powerful beam cutting through the darkness. Following in his shadow came the town’s people, picking their way through the nervous system of the woods, spreading out like a virus, determined as a storm to recover the one they had lost.

Puppet.

The name echoed high above the birds’ nests.

He had practically been summoned there. As soon as dusk had gained knowledge of itself, the darkness had brought the body to him, slowly reeling it in on a thin tendril. The first in many cycles.

The child, it seemed, had tripped on a root and broken her head open against a rock. A trail of blood disappeared into the forest of hair as thick red tears shed from her scalp.

A darling thing otherwise. Wild bush for hair, dry scabs like patchwork on her knee, stubs for fingernails, and a button for a nose.

He stretched his brown palms over the light. Once more, it seemed the town required his courtesies.

Any moment now.

A ripping noise began slowly in the foundation of the cabin. The wooden structure began to creak, groaning with its grief. The shadows that hung on the lumber-lined walls flattened, morphed into one embodiment then disappeared altogether as the quality of air in the room changed into something eternally dank. Underneath his palm, the candle flame turned pale green, the same as the fresh light filtering into the cabin.

The world outside the window was a weak ghost of its parallel, stark but for the swarming fog, shifting and bending together. The sky smoldered with a permanent indigo hue. The moon hung forlorn and alone like a cherry pit dug from the heart of its blood-red fruit.

Any sign at all of the woods was gone.

Slowly, the door swung open. Steps unfurled from the bottom of the cabin.

He followed them.

The body was warm and heavy in his arms as he descended, the mass of its organic material quadrupled.

The steps halted on a bank where a still river shone like obsidian. Four cycles and the boat still waited, forever a loyal accomplice to a forbidden practice.

It bobbed with its new burden.

Dutifully, it carried them down the water in a whisper, cutting through the wispy fog with precision.

They were deposited at the river’s tail, where a small clearing opened unto a stone bridge like carved bone. A rusted red wagon lay on its side in the wasted grass like a child’s toy abandoned, a rare spark of color in his otherwise dreary world.

He deposited the body in the miniature carriage and wheeled it the rest of the way, the wheels creak, creak, creaking from lack of recent use.

***

His first act was to drain the blood through the little feet. Small punctures, no bigger than a snake’s fangs sinking into the firmness of her deadened soles. This stole countless seconds but allowed the child’s features to remain untampered.

Drip, drip, drip, the blood coagulated like stale jam, like burnt pudding.

Gradually, her skin brightened, rid of its poisonous fluid.

***

He carved open her chest.

In his long fingers went in like white spiders, retrieving bulge after bulge of scarlet biotic material, purging her of any living matter that would return to haunt her.

***

He worked, sweat running down his face in rivulets, mingling with the blood at his feet.

***

He worked until her body was hollow, capable of absorbing an echo.

***

At the bank of that same river, he placed the reformed corpse. Unbidden, the dark glass water came for her in a rush, fighting its own self, swallowing her body whole.

The lonely moon turned its face ever so slightly.

Its papery light bounced on the inky surface of the stream.

Seconds later, her head broke through, breath and murky water rushing through her body.

***

Puppet.

Puppet.

Their voices echoed in the unyielding bleakness of the dark woods.

***

They heard the rustle of the dry leaves underneath her sandals first before they saw her. Tiny hesitant steps, like a toy, wound up. The sheriff lifted his beam, catching the little girl in the core of its brightness.

There was a collective sigh of relief.

Her mother broke through the crowd, rushed forward, and folded the child into her arms. Her flashlight clattered to the forest floor.

Woodenly, the little girl stood, her arms dangling at her sides, eyes staring back at them curiously.

In the heart of the cabin, the candle went out, leaving a shapely trail of smoke in its absence.