Ours Is a Vengeful Land

THE HOUSE

“Mom, we’ve been over this. You said what you needed to say, can you please drop it now?” Adam sighs as he steps out of the plane and descends down the ramshackle stairs.

“Adam-” she tries again.

“I’m already here. We landed. I need this and I’m not going back.” he stomps across the sunny tarmac towards the car waiting for him.

“Sweetheart, you don’t need their money. Please, just come home.”

“Ok, that’s enough. I’ll talk to you once I’m on my way home.” Adam hangs up abruptly, guilt biting at him as the line goes dead.

He can’t feel guilty about this. She’s being ridiculous. And a hypocrite. ‘You don’t need this money’ she tells him, but he really does because he has to support them and his salary in the city barely covers his basic needs. He needs- they need- every penny he can get and this could be his lucky break. Impressing the family that hired him for this gig could mean that he finally gets to leave his miserable job. When he first got hired at one of the best restaurants in the city, working as a line cook for a venerated chef, he thought that he had made it. But two years of clocking in at 7am and working for a minimum wage in a stressful kitchen had him looking for a way out. Becoming a private chef for an obscenely wealthy family sounded like a good plan.

That’s how he finds himself going back home for the first time in years and walking down a tarmac where a tall man in a pristine, white polo shirt greets him and offers to load his bags into a shiny, new car. Adam stops for a second before he climbs into the luxury car and looks around, feeling like this moment is a metaphor for his life. He looks at the small plane with the musty cabin, uncomfortable seats and chipped paint that he has flown on countless times before and then looks at the sleek, black car with the driver holding the door open for him. The man urges him to get in with a polite nod and respectful 'Chef' and Adam feels good about his decision. This is where he is supposed to be. He’s doing the right thing.

It’s only once they’re driving down the bumpy road towards the newly built house, and he’s comfortably sunk into the cool leather seats, that he realizes something and jolts: it’s hot outside. There’s sweat dripping down his back, the jacket he chose to wear too thick for the heat. His family warned him that temperatures have changed drastically, that it will be hotter than he’s ever experienced on these mountains, but he just didn’t believe them. As he watches the driver in the thin shirt turn up the A/C, he understands how badly he miscalculated. Adam knew that things had changed and that temperatures have been climbing, melting the permafrost that kept this land together for centuries.

Businesses in the town he grew up in, not far from where he landed, used the surrounding caves as natural freezers for generations. That practice abruptly ended with the ice melting at a rapid pace. It streamed in rivers out of surrounding hills and soil, flooding whole villages, causing the land to collapse in on itself.

When Adam left it was still impossible to live on the mountain for longer than a month in the summer because it was so frigid and frozen that digging into the ground and trying to build anything was a costly and useless feat. The house he is being driven to could only be built because the millenia old ice and snow on the mountain melted, making the area easier to access, mold and live on. He heard the stories and read about how the climate has shifted but couldn’t fully comprehend the scale in that uniquely self-centered way you don’t understand something until you experience it.

As they make their way down the new, bumpy road that’s nothing more than flat soil, the driver tries to make small talk and asks about all the celebrities Adam has met at his restaurant in the city. The conversation doesn’t last long because Adam doesn’t have much to add since he never interacts with customers. His famous boss, the Chef, gets to go out and shake hands and soak in all the praise while Adam stays behind and keeps preparing for the next meal or the next day.

The only reason he’s here is because the extremely wealthy family that owns the development company building a resort in Adam’s backyard wanted to have a local Chef prepare the menu for their new house on their new land. His name got passed through the grapevine and they only cared that he was raised where he was raised and now worked where he worked and he kept his mouth shut about his place in the kitchen hierarchy.

The longer they drive, the more Adam struggles to reconcile all the brown soil with images from his childhood. There are no trees in sight, not even in the distance. Snow used to cover everything and now he can’t even see ice and snow on the tallest of mountain tops. As he’s squinting and trying to spot anything that reminds him of the landscape he grew up with, a row of thick trees slashes into Adam’s view unexpectedly and whips past the car window. It’s the only warning he gets before they transition from the rough, bumpy road to a smooth driveway lined by thin, perfectly shaped trees he’s never seen before in this area.

The winding road opens up into a wide driveway and a house unlike anything Adam has seen before. A huge log house curves around the circular driveway with tree trunks the width of small cars lining the entrance and holding up the covered porch. The driver announces their arrival and grabs his bags out of the trunk while Adam can’t tear his eyes away from the mansion masquerading as a log cabin.

When he walks up the wide stairs leading to the entrance, another person in an identically pristine polo shirt opens the door and introduces herself as the Butler who will take care of him during his stay. She tells him to follow her, offering a tour of the house and Adam feels like he’ll need a map to find his way back to the entrance. She leads him through a dining room large enough to seat an army and points out the Chef’s kitchen with double islands, range gas stove, and walls made out of huge logs. He does his best to hide his awe when he sees all the expensive appliances and luxury kitchen that he gets to run because, after all, he’s supposed to be used to this.

There are rooms with names such as powder room, wet bar and a whole guest wing. Thick trunks support the entire house and long beams criss-cross every ceiling. It’s a house built to completely shield you from the outside world and elements, isolate you in its warmth and luxury. Make you untouchable.

What he doesn’t entirely understand is why they made this house into the perfect winter cabin when all the snow and ice have melted and there hasn’t been a proper winter in years. When he asks, the Butler tells him it’s because they expect the snow and ice to come back and the family that owns the house does not believe climate change is permanent- it all ebbs and flows. Adam processes that for a second, thinks about how the landscape has been changed irrevocably and considers voicing his disagreement, but quickly decides to stay quiet.

He shrugs. The house has already been built, it would have been someone else if not me.

IVAN

They laid out a brand new chef’s coat for him, one that has a logo of the new resort embroidered on the chest and Adam looks at it, thinking that it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if he stayed at the resort and got a job there. His mother would have another fit over it, but she would get over it quickly because he’d be returning home.

He checks his phone, knowing there are messages from her waiting. One is particularly ominous: ‘Ours is a vengeful land. Don’t forget that.’. His mind flashes to the brown soil with no trees in sight and the heat, but then he also remembers the money he needs to send his family every month and angrily throws the phone into the pillows on his bed.

The Butler knocks on his door and offers to walk him back to the kitchen where he is to greet all of his staff and give them a rundown of the menus for the next few days. As they’re walking she tells him that the family will be arriving tomorrow, together with some friends, so he should aim to have lunch prepared before they land. He’s about to ask a question when he feels a gush of cold air on his neck that makes him look around for the source, but what he spots makes him stop dead in his tracks. Protruding between the pieces of river rock that cover the hallway wall, are small barn owl skulls, staring at him with their dead hollow eyes, the ivory of the bones clashing with the dark gray of the flat stone. Stuck in there as a macabre decoration that makes his skin crawl. The Butler notices he stopped following and retraces her steps.

“Is there something wrong?” she asks, her hands behind her back.

“Why… what are those doing here?” Adam points, the unease growing as he realizes that the skulls line the entire length of the hallway.

“Barn owls were nesting in the house. We had to bring in hunters to clear the structure.”

Adam balks at that. “Local hunters agreed to hunt owls?!”

“Oh no, of course they didn’t. We had to fly out hunters from other parts of the country because the locals refused to cooperate. They kept mentioning some pagan belief that it’s terrible luck to harm an owl.”

“It is terrible luck to harm an owl! Harming an owl means inviting death into your house. Not to mention this many!”

The Butler opens her mouth to say something, but then stops and looks him up and down. “Well, I guess your local knowledge is exactly why we hired you.” she smirks before stalking off.

Adam looks back at the skulls, notices the difference in size between some of them, and reaches out to touch the two closest to him, caressing the small beaks in what feels like an apology. The longer he stares at them the stronger the shame and regret become and he scurries away, following the path he saw the Butler take.

In the kitchen, all his staff are decked out in pristine uniforms, waiting for him. They greet him with a loud chorus of “Good afternoon, Chef!” and that causes a sufficient rush of adrenaline and joy to sedate the dread that reared its head briefly. Adam feels in his element, inspired and elated, as he walks everyone through the general rules of his kitchen. He lets them go to their stations with clear instructions and hangs back, busy coordinating. He forgets about the skulls.

As the day progresses, he ends up spending a big chunk of time helping the youngest member of his staff, a blonde kid named Ivan, who Adam learns is from his town and they strike up an immediate friendship. Ivan is unsure with a knife and his blue eyes keep shuffling around the room insecurely, almost as if he expects the others to be judging him.

Later in the evening, once they’re done for the day, Ivan and him gravitate toward each other and decide to grab a drink on the porch overlooking a large lake. Ivan tells him about their town and how the weather turned on them, making it impossible to live the way they were used to, leaving people to scramble and consent to a development company buying up their land and building luxury homes and a resort for the rich right next door. Ivan reminds him that this same lake was frozen solid until a year ago and now it’s warm enough to swim in. They drink more and Adam’s thoughts loosen, the memory of the morbid wall seeping in and he asks, trying to sound nonchalant: “Did you see the owl skulls lining the hallway?”

To his surprise, Ivan chuckles. “I sure did. That will come back to haunt them.”

“You think so?”

“They didn’t have to kill them, you know.” Ivan sighs.

“Yeah… I was thinking the same thing.” Adam admits in a whisper.

There’s a solemn beat of silence, then Ivan whispers: “I hear them at night”. and the hair on the back of Adam’s neck stands up.

“Who do you hear?”

“You know how barn owls have that terrible screeching scream?” Adam nods in response. He grew up in a house in the woods.

”I’ve heard it three nights in a row now.” Ivan continues. ”They’re probably mourning their dead… the forest.”

“Right, right…” Adam trails off, the conversation reopening that pit of dread in his stomach. It’s just a dumb superstition, he tells himself. The house has already been built. It would have been someone else.

That night he falls quickly into a deep sleep helped by a long day and a few drinks. He doesn’t hear the deafening bang the trees make as their trunks crack down the middle or the shrill scream. The slew of panicked text messages from his mother doesn’t wake him up either, the phone lighting up the dark and empty room in short bursts. He never gets a chance to read them because they then get deleted… one… by… one…as if an invisible hand was there.

—

The next day there is a buzz in the air, because the family is expected to arrive. Everyone in the house is moving with more urgency, there are people doing something in every corner: scrubbing the floors, freshening up the linens, adjusting decorations. He never realized there are so many things that would need to be polished and adjusted. A part of him questions whether these people will even notice all the effort that went into preparing the house for them.

It’s another scorching hot day and the air conditioning is on full blast forcing everyone to wear long sleeves. Adam orchestrates his staff;s work for the day and hangs back, helping when needed. They settle into their rhythm quickly, sounds of chopping, pots and pans clanging, stove being fired up, water running filling up the kitchen. He looks around trying to spot Ivan but can’t find him in the crowd. Adam puts his knife down and does another pass around the kitchen, but nothing.

“Ivan’s not in his room.” one of the staffer’s tells him after Adam asked him to check. “It looked like he slept in the bed but he’s not there. He left his phone and all his stuff.”

Adam scans the room again, expecting to see him walking into the kitchen. But Ivan doesn’t show up.

He turns to the staffer. “Can you grab one more person and look for him, please? He could be anywhere. Maybe someone asked him for help with something else.”

Adam watches them walk off and does his best not to let his thoughts wander to certain places.

He spends the rest of the morning glancing around, waiting for some sort of news or Ivan in the flesh.The two staffers return and confirm his worst fear- Ivan is nowhere to be found. No one has seen him or heard from him. Adam closes his eyes and takes a steadying breath. This isn’t a bad omen, he repeats to himself.

If anything it’s an omen that he has to talk to the Butler and finding her proves difficult since it’s close to arrival time and she’s checking every last detail in the house. When he finds her, she doesn’t stop moving but tells him to walk with her if he needs anything. She leads him onto the back porch where he spent the evening with Ivan and the heat hits Adam like a truck. The air feels sticky and humid, like he can’t take a full breath and she stares at him impatiently.

“A guy from my kitchen is missing.”

“Did he quit?” she asks as she starts fluffing up pillows absentmindedly.

“Not that I’m aware of. Last time we spoke he was happy to be working here.”

“Maybe he changed his mind.”

“You’re not listening, all his stuff is here. His phone and everything.” he presses, shocked that she doesn’t think this is concerning.

“Is he one of the local guys?”

Adam freezes on the spot. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“If he’s a local he could have just walked home, never said anything. People from here aren’t exactly the epitome of professionalism.” the Butler states with such an air of finality that Adam needs to take a calming breath. He’s about to argue, when he catches a glimpse of something behind her.

“The lake froze.” Adam whispers.

She blinks at him slowly. “What?”

“The goddamn lake froze!” he yells and hops down from the porch, running towards the water. He can hear the Butler yelling for him to come back, but he can’t. He needs to feel it with his own hands, confirm that his eyes aren’t tricking him.

They’re not.

The ice is cold and smooth against his palms, the waves frozen in place. “This can’t be possible…” he breathes.

“What are you doing?!” she comes running after him.

“It’s a 105 degrees outside and the lake is frozen. There is something very wrong going on. There’s a guy missing and-”

“He left!”

“You don’t know that! You’re refusing to look for him because he’s a local and regardless-” Adam holds out his hand, more to calm himself than anything. “A large lake froze during a heatwave, overnight. This isn’t good.”

“It’s some sort of natural phenomenon. They happen all the time.”

“No, they don’t. I assure you they don’t. This is a big problem.”

She stares at him, biting the inside of her lip nervously, her arms crossed. He can see she’s deciding whether she should believe him and he knows the exact second he loses her. Her phone rings and her eyes go wide. “They’re here.” she breathes. “They’re here and I’m not ready.” The Butler turns and marches back towards the house, not sparing Adam or the frozen lake another thought. Adam stands there, lost and terrified, images of barn owl skulls and fields of lifeless brown soil flitting through his mind.

The house has already been built. Maybe it should have been someone else.

THE COLD

The owners and their guests arrive in a helicopter that kicks up all the dust into the air and makes so much noise, he can feel the ground rumble. Together with his staff and everyone else working in the house, Adam has to stand in the large foyer to welcome them as if they are royals. The short, balding man who he knows is the patriarch of the family doesn’t even stop to acknowledge anyone and walks past the Butler as she tries to tell them everything they’ve done to prepare for their stay. The two middle-aged children and their spouses loudly demand to be led to their rooms because they’re exhausted from the helicopter ride.

Adam doesn’t stay to greet the rest of them.

—

If they decide to enjoy the large house they paid for, Adam can’t tell. He doesn’t see them walking around, doesn’t notice them in any of the common, lavish rooms. They all eat lunch separately.

The longer he stares at the frozen lake as he works, the stronger is his urge to get out of there. He doesn’t want to be around these people any longer, money be damned. All of it is quite anti-climatic. There was an expectation, or maybe more of a hope, that he would get introduced and paraded around. The Butler would walk him out to a dining room filled with people, eager to meet the man who made their food and he would get to shake hands, someone would give him a pat on the back, thank him for what he came up with.

None of that happens.

Dinner gets served, the family and guests gather in the large dining room, and Adam and his staff get dismissed for the night. He realizes he doesn’t mind. They all appear so miserable and like they’re forced to be with each other- he expected them to be radiating joy. Look at all the money you have! Look at the house you get to vacation in! But no. Adam decides he’s leaving tomorrow.

The heat had subsided, leaving only chill humidity in the air so instead of going to his bedroom, Adam decides to drink on the same porch. All his effort, wasted. All those fights with his mother, for nothing really, since he didn’t get to impress anyone, didn’t get a new job. He sits on the stairs so he’s hidden in the darkness, and dials his mother. He’ll tell her he’s coming home. She’ll forgive him, just like she always does.

The first phone call fails. So does the second. And third. Adam taps at his phone to check the reception and the screen dies. No matter what he does the phone doesn’t respond.

Multiple things happen one after the other.

In the distance, somewhere in the dark, multiple loud bangs go off and startle Adam as they echo across the lake, amplified by the empty land. He leans in the direction of the sound out of some primal instinct that tells us we need to lean closer to the danger we’re inspecting. He knows that sound. He grew up with that sound- tree trunks cracking from the-

A large bird comes flying out of nowhere, barely missing his face, caressing his nose with its large wings and thick feathers in the gentlest of touches. Adam realizes what it is immediately because there is only one bird that can fly that silently… A barn owl.

As soon as the understanding sinks in, he’s up on his feet, the bottle forgotten and he has all the intentions to run away from that house as fast as he can. The lake. The owls. The phone. Ivan. None of it is a coincidence. Running back over the large porch he reaches for the glass door leading back inside, but they swing open violently and one of the owner’s daughters comes out, bellowing “Where is my husband?!” Adam manages to dodge the door and get out of her way, almost tripping over all the outdoor furniture.

“Where is my husband?!” she yells, the rest of her family spilling out after her, a stream of people coming out into the open area.

“No one is hiding him from you, are you crazy?” the father growls, silent rage and disdain evident in every word.

Adam’s heart starts hammering in his chest. ‘It’s not a superstition’ is the last clear thought he has before his phone vibrates back to life in his hand, multiple text messages coming at once, the phone buzzing and lighting up and pinging, making everyone notice him for the first time.

Ours is a vengeful land.

Ours is a vengeful land.

Ours is a vengeful land, arrives over and over again.

Another series of loud bangs, only this time a lot closer, echo through the night, diverting the attention of the group from Adam and onto the darkness the porch lights are keeping at bay. “What is that sound?” the father asks and steps ahead, getting closer to the stairs where Adam’s bottle still sits.

“Sir, you need to step back. All of us need to get out of here.” Adam pleads, his voice shaky.

The father turns around slowly, as if he has all the time in the world. “And who are you, again?” he asks, his words coming out in a cloud of mist as the temperature swiftly drops around them.

Adam never gets to answer him.

A fog rolls out of the darkness and spills over the porch railing, sneaking between the pickets and crawls towards them across the floor. Any wood it touches: all the floorboards, every trunk and post holding up the porch crack down the middle, the cold breaking them from the inside, splinters flying in every direction. The sound makes everyone scream and cover their ears. The lights flicker and the entire house is submerged in darkness, room by room.

“Everyone inside!!” Adam yells, pushing his way in and managing to grab the shirts of a few people to drag them back into the large house. “Shut the door! Shut all the windows!”

“Where is my father?” the daughter asks and they all look around and at each other. Adam can’t tell where anyone is. He doesn’t know who was left outside and he can’t care because none of these people would care about him. The daughter repeats the question, but no one answers. They’re all frozen in place, in shock, unable to understand what is happening.

The house is quiet and dark. With all the devices and lights off, it’s ominous and cavernous. It doesn’t feel like it can protect anyone from the outside elements any more. The fog surrounds the house and presses against every window, thick as smoke.

“Just keep the windows and doors closed.” Adam instructs. “We should be safe in here.”

“I need to look for my father.” the daughter says and moves towards the door they came through.

Before he can reach for her to stop her, multiple pairs of ghostly hands slam against the glass door. Adam jolts and retreats quickly, tripping over his feet. More hands join, slapping the glass. On the large kitchen windows. Windows in the dining room; the great room. All of them quake from the hands slapping, hitting, trying to get in as if there are hundreds of people outside, begging to be let in. People inside the house, the staff and the owners and the guests scream and clutch at each other, some run in different directions, wanting to hide. Adam recognizes the shrill screech of the barn owl over the rumbling of the glass and screams. The temperature drops even lower inside the house and he can see his breath turning into a misty cloud in front of him. The hands are growing more insistent, hitting harder, getting desperate.

“What is that?” the Butler whispers and he follows her finger to something at his feet. The cold fog is making its way through the floorboards in ghostly shapes, coming up through the cracks and dancing around their ankles in the dark. It’s rising up, reaching for them, seeping into the house through the walls and floors. The delicate sound of glass cracking under pressure starts somewhere above them and the hands remain still, pressed against the glass unmoving, as the sound moves towards the main floor of the house one delicate crack after the other.

All the windows and doors shatter at once in a loud explosion and a waterfall of glass shards rains on all the people gathered together. Adam hears human screams, more things breaking and the fog pouring in from all directions, crackling. In it are ghostly shapes he’s not brave enough to examine. In a desperate moment of horror, Adam acts on an instinct he didn’t even know he had.

He runs to his bedroom, slipping on glass, pushing things out of the way and paws at the door that he locks with trembling fingers. Then, like a child, dives under the covers. His entire body disappears completely under the sheets and he curls up like a little boy, clutching the blankets in his hands. For a few moments everything is silent and still and peaceful. He doesn’t feel the cold and does not sense anything moving around him.

Summoning the last bit of courage, Adam rolls around and makes a small hole in the sheets so he can look at the one window in his room. The glass is gone and a few shards are still stuck in the frame jutting out like knives. Everything stands still.

A white hand reaches over the frame, the palm smashing one of the shards and leaving blood stains but that doesn’t stop the creature. Adam’s whole body trembles, terror paralyzing him so that he can’t move or make a sound. Another hand shows up and the human-shaped apparition lifts itself over the window sill and into Adam’s bedroom, crawling over the floor towards the bed with it’s disjointed limbs. Adam can’t control his voice or mouth enough to scream, but he manages to pull away and sit, some voice in the back of his head telling him not to die laying down. The creature pulls itself to Adam’s bed, crawls into it inch by inch and slips under the covers until it is sitting next to him, touching shoulders. The moment Adam screams is when he recognizes the creature.

Ivan.

His mouth gone, the flesh ripped away exposing bare teeth and bone underneath, his eyes empty and hollow like those of the barn owls on the wall.

“What would you do to keep the cold away?” Ivan asks with a twisted smile, in a voice that sounds like glass cracking. That is the last thing Adam hears.

The house has already been built. It wouldn’t have been someone else.