Return to Zero Ground

Holly Hornecastle pulled into the driveway of her childhood home, wishing she didn’t have to be there. The car went silent as she pulled the key out of the ignition. Holly sat there, feeling a familiar sense creep over her skin.

She remembered her mom spending a lot of time in the living room, trying to figure out her next big escape. Holly instinctively looked up to her old bedroom window. The house had seen better days. After sitting empty for decades, she was back here to hear her father’s will, and it still felt as if she had never left.

This place had its own memories. Holly could practically see herself back as a little girl playing with her toys in the barn. Holly shivered. The barn. She steeled herself and looked over to the decrepit barn, feeling the pit of her stomach drop down to her toes.

“I don’t think I can do this,” she murmured to herself, pulling her jacket around herself in a false sense of security.

She started to head up the steps of the house, but froze mid stride. She looked back at the barn again. Heaving a big sigh, she turned around. Holly slowly made her way to the barn that sat alone, a few hundred feet off from the main house. The closer she got, the more she was reminded of things she spent decades trying to forget.

Holly pulled her long black braid over her shoulder as a way of increasing her mental armor. Her hand shook as she reached out to flip the weathered latch handle out of its metal cradle. With a good tug, the door slid open. It groaned and creaked from rust and years of weathering.

The barn was dark. Only bits of light streamed through a hole in the back section of the barn’s roof. The silence inside the barn was echoed in her bones, her blood pounding in her ears.

Another step. Her boots made no sound as the strewn straw cushioned each step forward. It looked exactly the same as it was the last time she was here. Stopping just in the doorway, fearing to go too far into the darkness of the barn. Holly feared that the blanket of darkness would consume her again.

Closing her deep brown eyes, Holly took a large calming breath. Opening her eyes again, she turned to the right and walked up to the first stall. The horse bridle still hung in its spot on the stall wall, keeping the reins company. The familiar scent of sweet hay filled the air.

She steeled herself and opened the stall. Cobwebs hung in the corners and across the beams and spiders carved their own niche. Holly could feel her heart pound as she crept to the back of the stall. In the corner, laying innocently on a ledge, was a well-worn horse brush.

Holly reached out and in a quick movement, grabbed the brush tightly in her hands. A long-buried memory bubbled to the surface.

***

“What did I TELL you about lying!?!” her father yelled, spewing spittle everywhere like a rabid dog.

Holly’s large, burly father loomed over the small 8 year old Holly as she tried to make herself as tiny as possible in the back corner of the stall. She was supposed to come home right after school to do her chores but instead went to her friend's house next door. Her mom had caught her, but Mamma had lost her independance long ago. They both knew what would happen next.

There was an order to things and Holly’s father liked order. Control. Sitting in the corner, young Holly grabbed the horse brush and gave it to her father with a shaky outstretched hand.

“Turn around.” Her father boomed. She looked up at him, without moving her head, fearing his wrath lest he catch her misbehaving again. Her father’s eyes, once filled with a cool darkness, were consumed with feral abandon.

Holly slowly nodded and turned around, pulling her shirt up to her shoulders and baring her back for him.

“We’re gonna need ta clean these lies from your sinful mouth, girl.” Her father’s words echoed inside the hollowness of her soul.

Holly knew the routine and she hated every minute of it. She turned and kneeled down and buried her head in her knees. Holly could hear the brush dip into the bucket of water she had previously fetched from the river. The feeling of the brush on the delicate skin of her back had Holly crying out in pain. Back and forth, her father ‘washed’ the lies off of her until her back was red and raw. Rivulets of blood dripped down her skin. She lay there, head on her knees and waited for him to leave.

“Get up.” Holly’s father stepped back, breathing heaving from the rush of power he felt.

Holly moaned and stood on shaky legs. She pulled her shirt back down and leaned heavily against the wall.

“Don’t let me catch you spewing those lies again, ya hear?” he said, glaring down at her in cruelty.

“Y-yes Sir.” Holly murmured between chokes of sobs. Her hands wrapped around her, pulling her arms tightly against her body in an attempt at protection.

***

Pulling herself out of the memory, Holly backed quickly out of the front stall and unconsciously wrapped her arms tightly around herself. She eyed the door, thinking of making a run for it.

“No. I need to get this done.” Holly steeled herself. “I’m tired of running from my past.”

Filled with determination, Holly made her way to the back of the barn. There in the right hand corner, was a ladder that went up to the hay loft. On the left, was the storage where her father had kept the big farming tools. Ignoring the ladder, she went towards the shed and pulled open the half-rotted door. A layer of dust came loose, making Holly cough.

Holly stepped inside the storage shed, looking for a particular memory. Rakes, hoes, shovels, an old rifle locker, a butcher block for the chickens, and wrapped in cloth resting against the rifle locker, was the branding iron. A memory flooded her mind as Holly grabbed the branding iron tightly.

***

A ten year old holly was running through the wheat fields, her short messily-chopped hair flew around her face. She had just committed a grave sin. She had hid in the pear orchard to cut her hair, and not too well at that. Her dad found her with the scissors in her hands and flew into another rage.

Holly still had the bruises from his last fit of rage. She ran out to the barn that sat across the wheatfield from the grove. The barn was her prison and her refuge. She had many hiding places up in the rafters and in the hayloft where her tall father couldn’t fit.

The moment she made it to the barn door, she ripped it open as fast as she could, startling the cows and pigs inside. Leaving the door swinging wide open, Holly ran over to the hay loft. There were a few missing boards in there so there was a small recess to the support beams of the first floor. She got to the loft stairs and could hear her father’s voice get louder.

“You’re gonna get it girl!” his voice echoed over and over in her head as the fear kicked in.

Holly started to scramble up the steps of the ladder and slipped on the first step. Her chin came down on one of the steps, leaving a new pain searing through her head.

She stood up again and began to climb the ladder. She got to the top step and felt her father’s large bear-like hands wrap around her ankle. He pulled her back down to the first floor. Holly kicked and screamed like a wild animal.

“You want to cut your hair? You want to let boys see your skin?!! I’ll give you something for them to look at,” he growled.

Taking hold of the back of her neck, he steered her towards the shed. Grabbing the cattle’s branding iron, He hauled her out the back door of the barn. The furnace stood off in the distance and Holly looked on with pure fear in her eyes. Her father placed the branding iron in the fire until it was nice and hot.

He pulled the iron out of the fire and Holly’s eyes zeroed in on the red colour of the brand in the shape of bull’s horns.

Holly tried to pull away, but her father had too tight of a grip on her. She screamed as he lifted her shirt off her back. The long thin lines from the horse brush marred her flesh, leaving scars that looked like cartoon hair. Always under her shirt or on her legs, where no one can see - that’s where he left the bruises and the punishments for her sins.

Holly’s father gripped the brand in one hand, and with his other hand on the back of her neck, he pushed her into a kneeling position.

“You know I don’t want to do this. This is all your own doin’ and it’s goin’ ta hurt me more than it’ll hurt you,” he whispered with false remorse. He lifted the brand and pressed it in one fell swoop, onto the flesh of her right shoulder blade.

Holly instantly screamed as the heat seared her flesh. The smell of burgers filled the air as the brand cooked her skin.

***

Tears streamed down her face. She dropped the branding iron as if she could still feel its burn. She reached a hand over her shoulder, knowing that the horns were still there. Holly dropped her hand and angrily wiped her tears away. She picked up the iron brand again and carried it with her as she walked out the back door.

She went around to the far side of the barn. In the back was her mother’s rose bush, grown half as high as the barn after being left to the ages.

She stopped in front of the rose bush, and sat cross legged in the grass beneath it. She took her coat off, leaving a simple tank in its place. A massive sprawling sleeping beauty tattoo covered her scars with thorns and roses, protecting a delicate heart inside.

She took the branding iron and sat it down against the barn wall, beside the rose bush. Holly looked to the base of the bush and saw a gleam of white poking through the dirt. She reached out to grab it and pulled it free from the soil. It was a jawbone, complete with teeth.

“Hi dad. Long time, no holler?” Holly whispered, laughing at her own joke. She dug a little hole and reburied the bone.

Reaching into the pocket of her jeans, she pulled out a small plastic bag a piece of leathered flesh. She traced the large indentation of the family's brand of bull horns as it lay delicately on the palm of her hand. She thought the horns curved nicely around her father's dimple.

“Here, you can have this back. I don’t need it anymore.”

Holly dug another hole and tossed the flesh inside. She grabbed some dried grass and made a pile of it near the bush. Removing her zippo, she lit the dried grass. With it being a dry summer, it didn’t take long for the fire to catch. She sat there for a minute, watching it burn.

Slowly, she stood up and put her coat back on. Turning her back to the burning bush, she headed back for the main house.

A dark shadow suddenly erupted from the rose bush and zipped its way through the air and straight into Holly.

An evil chuckle could be heard from her lips as she met with the solicitor about her father’s will.