Dark Verses

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. Thomas did not intend to be here. No one intends to be in the woods in the dark of night, alone, bleeding from their forehead, he thought to himself. Yet here he was, thoughts muddled from the blow received to his head, shaking from the autumn chill, and leaning his weight on an old tree, transfixed by this unusually placed source of human light. There was a woman he could see through the window…and he felt certain he knew her.

Just hours before, Thomas had left the family farm after dawn to venture into the nearby woods and check the snares he had set the day before, hopeful for an inattentive rabbit or squirrel to be awaiting him to be carried home and cooked for supper.

He never looked at the forest the same after his brother John disappeared. One day John walked into the forest to visit his fiancée, and never returned. Never a sign of him, or his body found. Of course, any forest can feel dark and mysterious, that much is true, but there was nothing quite like the feeling one received upon setting foot in Perdid Forest.

Thomas didn’t much favor the feeling. There was always a change in the air upon his first step into the tree line, as if he had stepped onstage in a theatre and a thousand eyes were upon him, shadowed from sight, but boring holes into the back of his head. Eyes very aware of his every move. Chills rippling up his flesh as he would always instinctually look around, trying to physically place some presence within sight and failing to do so, every time.

Urged on nonetheless by the hope of future rabbit stew and the rapid completion of this uncomfortable chore, he began to follow his usual path through the trees and hope to find small game awaiting him. He was just approaching his first snare, placed in the brush at the top of a ridge, when he heard a snap. The familiar sharp crack of a person’s step on dry twigs…but Thomas wasn’t expecting company.

He turned, startled, seeing nothing. Nothing at all. The usual trees, voiding themselves of their dying red and yellow leaves, the light grey of the early morning outlining the small foot path he had trod. Too loud a crack to have been an animal, he thought to himself, and yet no sight of anything bigger. Growing more wary by the instant, Thomas turned, continuing on his way. Then another snap of twigs.

Thomas turned back and this time, it wasn’t nothing – he saw nothingness. Some paces behind him, he saw absolute emptiness. A dark, smoky void growing wider, and taller, vaguely the size of a man, yet shapeless. It began moving towards him. A second, and a third, beginning to materialize behind the first.

Stumbling several paces backwards in shock, Thomas tripped and fell hurtling backwards down a sharp slope towards the river. He was sliding down the slope entirely too fast. He tried to right himself – in any way – grabbing at passing branches and exposed roots – to no avail. Then suddenly he was stopped – his journey impeded by his head’s collision with a rock. The world was fading from his eyes, growing blurry. He saw a dark, amorphous cloud for a moment – lingering over his eyes – that then drifted onward to the north. Then all thoughts were gone.

Thomas woke in darkness. Blinking, rubbing his eyes, he tried to wipe the injury from his vision. Was he blinded? No, it would seem, he could begin to see at first the vague outline of his fingers before his face, then his legs, and feet. His left eye couldn’t open as wide as the right, sticky and swollen with what he assumed must be blood.

His memories began returning…the fall, and the emptiness. The black roving clouds he saw. That dense, encompassing dust and smoke. What on the Godly earth could that have been?

Thomas had never been alone in Perdid Forest at night before. It was deathly quiet. The type of quiet with a pregnant pause hanging in the air. As if the trees and the stream and the animals of the woods must be holding their collective breath, knowing something is about to happen.

The dark and the stress of the silence seized Thomas, struggling to regain faculty of his senses. Suddenly “I need light” became his next certainty, his next necessity. There are likely no settlers out in this part of the woods…at least, not anymore…he thought. Thomas reasoned that following the flow of the river downstream should lead him back towards the edge of the forest and the town. He stumbled as close to the river as he dared in the dark so he could follow its sound, but not fall in. Having no idea of its depth, he dared not try to wade in its waters in the dark.

Bitterly cold and more or less blind in the darkness, time began to lack reason. Thomas felt his way along the river bank, listening to the sound of the river as a guide, feeling what seemed like years pass as he crept along.

After groping around a sudden bend in the river, he was surprised to see the outline of a structure. A rather crude looking cabin, as far as he could tell, decrepit and lonely amongst the trees – but there was a light! Precious light! Thomas hoped this meant people. People who would help him. The river was no longer flanked by sloped land on either side, and so he easily climbed over the short ridge of the river bank and into the trees until he was several yards from the cabin.

On sight of the woman in the window, his instinct was to rush immediately to the door of the cabin. The cold radiated absolutely through both muscle and tendon, and combined with the flush of adrenaline his body compelled him to move. But he stopped in his tracks…perhaps a woman by herself in the woods would not want to be ambushed by a strange man. So he resolved to catch his breath, and wait for the capability for words to return so he could address this woman.

In the all-absorbing darkness, there was nowhere to look but the candle lit inside in the cabin. The woman at the table was hunched forward in a pose of utter exhaustion. Part of the windowpane was broken, he realized. Strange. How could she live in this cabin with the cold seeping in? Perhaps she doesn’t live here? But if not, then what is she doing here…

The woman abruptly looked up from the table and spoke. What at first, he couldn’t hear, but she was angry. It sounded like she was addressing another person.

Curiosity taking over, Thomas began to edge out of the tree line. Taking careful steps, he stole closer to the cabin, straining to hear what was happening. Who was with her? Crouching behind a shrub, he began to hear words from the cabin.

“Why hadn’t I been more careful!” The woman exclaimed. She stood up rapidly, throwing the chair back from the table. Looking down at the table again, she thrust a careless arm against a collection of objects: books and what sounded like loose papers were disturbed and hit the floor.

The candle flame on the table dimmed and shook as if caught in a draft of wind – but Thomas felt no wind, not even a breeze. The woman glared at the candle, as if willing it to return to normal. It did not. She looked around the cabin: up at the ceiling, in the corners, the floor, expecting to see something.

“I know you’re here,” she said. “I know you’re following me. How you haunt me...”

Turning her back on the candle, Thomas swore he saw a shadow cross the window. The flame then returned to normal.

“Why hadn’t I been more careful.” She said again and sighed. She walked to a side table a few feet away and gazed emptily at a framed object. A tintype? She traced her finger over it.

“Oh sister. My virtuous, charming sister. And your fiancé…” she noted, with almost a trace of lust in her voice. She slammed the metallic photograph on the ground.

“Curse this forest. What a fool I was to meddle with their magic. How could I think there’d be no consequences?” She paced a rapid circle over the floor, clutching at the roots of her hair.

Thomas unwillingly found himself drawing closer and closer to the window.

“All these years I have paid for this,” the woman continued. “I had nothing in my life. I just wanted John. Just John. Why did she have to take the only thing I wanted?” John? His brother John? Who was this woman?

“And now I have nothing. Nothing but you!” She shrieked to the walls of the empty cabin.

A twig snapped in the tree line behind Thomas. He drew in a deep breath and whirled around – just darkness. Turning back to the window – the woman’s eyes suddenly were staring at Thomas from the other side of the pane, furrowed with silent rage.

Thomas couldn’t hold in his scream. Now seeing the woman head on, she was not right. She was gaunt, and had grey skin, nearly translucent. Long black tresses of hair hung heavily on the side of her face. Her eyes were unnaturally half white above, half blue below, as if the color was sliding off her irises.

“Who are you?!” She bellowed through the window. In a flash, the woman walked the few paces from the window to the door of the cabin and came out to face Thomas, brandishing a knife. Her eyes were illuminated with a sickening glow in the light of the lantern she held in her right hand.

“T-Thomas! Thomas Harvey!” He exclaimed, hands raised. Too startled to tell anything but the truth.

“Thomas…Harvey you say?” She said, staring. She lowered the knife and laughed most bitterly. “A Harvey?!” She screamed to the forest. “You’ve come looking for me then, I suppose?” She then demanded of Thomas.

“No Ma’am, please, I haven’t an idea where I am – please, please, have mercy!”

“They have sent you to me, another torture, another way to slowly send me to hell!” The woman rode a thin line between rage and anguish. “The Dark Verses, they only took my sister.”

“…The Dark Verses?”

“I never meant to harm your brother!” Her voice suddenly earnest and her eyes pleading.

Like a lightning crack, his memory of this woman struck him. Margaret Wheaton. “Poor lonely Margaret Wheaton,” the village used to say. Not particularly beautiful, nor charming, nor sweet, always a girl living in the shadows. Thomas was only a boy of 8 the last time he saw her. He could now remember the sweet and good-natured soul that was Margaret’s sister, Clara, who was his brother John’s sweetheart and eventual fiancée. Margaret was a person who was just somehow, always oddly nearby. Always lurking like some kind of ghostly presence near Clara and John.

“Margaret…? Is it truly you? You have been gone so long…we’ve all thought you were dead.” Thomas questioned.

“I’ve been running.” She explained. “Or trying to run…it seems one can’t run from the Old Magic…” she then lamented.

Thomas was astounded. No one ever knew what truly happened to John and Clara. Clara had been taken ill for months, cared for by Margaret, at Margaret’s own insistence. Clara was later found dead in the Wheaton family cabin – this cabin, it occurred to Thomas – John’s body missing, Margaret nowhere to be found.

“It was only for Clara. The Verses were for her alone, I swear to you…”

Suddenly a rush of air felt like it passed completely through Thomas’ body. His body thrummed and his eyes were pushed violently shut. What felt like the most vivid dream he had ever had now played out against the backs of his eyelids:

He saw Margaret reading a book in an unrecognizable language – then Clara laying in her sick bed – Margaret, with apparent furious impatience in her eyes, smothering Clara to death – John discovering her doing so – trying to revive his fiancée and failing. John screaming in agony – a struggle – Margaret plunging a knife into John’s ribs –

Thomas’ eyes were forced back open and he dropped to all fours, exhausted.

He looked up at Margaret, unknowing what this was – a dream, or a vision – but he somehow knew what he saw was absolutely true.

“…Your own sister?”

Margaret screamed like a banshee in fury and frustration. Tears began to pool in her eyes.

“I would have killed anyone to be his bride. I spoke the Dark Verses for them to take Clara, so he could be mine. They made her sick, but then she hung on so long, I was desperate to be rid of her –”

“And you killed my brother!”

“I never meant to hurt him! He threatened he’d tell what I did – he was going to go back to the village. And I was so angry he saw what I did – he wasn’t supposed to have seen – so angry our love would be poisoned by this. Something just came over me, I had a knife, and I hurt him – how could I hurt him – I would need to work so hard now to win his heart. And then he was just gone…I have been in the forest – I’ve been trying to find him – but where could he be – have they taken him to punish me further for my crime?”

“They’re always there,” she continued, “toying with me – coming to collect their debt it seems – and yet never taking me – I don’t know why I live – I made the bargain with my life – they made my sister sick and then they should have come to collect. And I’ve been trying to find my Love, and I never have. I have searched the village, surrounding villages, and the forest for these 10 years. But where is John? And I feel them drawing nearer and nearer to me – I feel my soul empty, the life drip from my body – I see the threat of shadows all around me – I am alive, but why?”

She paused and took a breath. She exhaled and said “So I came back to where it happened – I came back for the Old Folks’ Book. I came back to look for a way to reverse what I’ve done – or call my Love back to me – and I can’t find it –”

The forest seemed to shudder, and the wind rustling the trees all around at once. A voice somewhere near began to speak:

“With these verses I beg favor,

For the forces of old, to be on my side.

Bring my desire, of which I shall savor

By only your means, you shall be my guide.”

The forest then stirred terribly. The trees groaning through a ferocious wind – as if they might be able to stand up and move. Above the din the voice continued:

The covenant stands, till the Old Folk arrive,

And bring me my wish as I do request.

When complete they shall derive

The giving of my body, at their behest.”

“That voice…” Margaret said, with a note of recognition.

Thomas stared, dumbfounded. He watched as Margaret became increasingly agitated, looking wildly around to every side, trying to place what caused the change in the forest.

Then, as if with the drop of a heavy weight, the wind ceased. Margaret stared just over Thomas’ shoulder in confusion, and then in horror. Her limbs began to shake and then ultimately they failed her. She clumsily dropped the lantern and scrambled backwards away from this new terror.

Thomas whirled around, not sure what he’d find – and saw the void. The same dark, smoky, shapeless void…except it seemed to be growing arms and legs. It began to walk toward him. There again was the same pregnant silence he felt earlier in the woods, when he felt something of import was going to happen. This, whatever this is, this must be what the forest was waiting for.

Margaret saw the void, this shadow, grow near, and her sanity snapped completely in half. She laid on the ground miserable, eyes clamped shut, and clutched her palms together as if in prayer.

“Please shadows, take me quickly! I made my bargain, I asked you to take my sister so I could claim her lover for my own – and I cheated – I know I cheated! She was ill but she hung on so long, so feverish and weak, and I couldn’t stand it any longer and I had to end it – I rushed the bargain and I forced her death – I was supposed to wait for the Old Folk to do it on their terms!”

Tears burst and flowed. The void had approached her and towered over her. If it had eyes, it would have been staring at her.

“And that must be why you haven’t taken me yet – I promised my life and you haven’t taken me – you must be punishing me for not upholding the end of this unholy bargain! This terrible book the forest gifted me – stuck in the crook of a tree – and I have cursed my whole life for reading it!”

The shadowy figure lurking over her then seemed to bend at the waist, and picked her up. Margaret lifted in the air, feet dangling wildly.

Margaret’s eyes, half white and strange as they had been before, began to fade further into complete whiteness. Not being able to fully believe his own eyes, Thomas grasped wildly for the lantern on the ground, desperate for enough light to comprehend what was happening. Her skin blanched, and her raven hair began to grow out pure white…aging before Thomas’ eyes.

She began to scream miserably. Furious as he felt toward this distant figure from his past, he was overtaken with the need to help, in any way possible. Not at all knowing how, he began to walk towards her, maybe he could pull her down.

Now close enough to reach for her foot above him – time had slowed down to a snail’s pace – he felt the thrum through his body from earlier, and he found he couldn’t reach Margaret to save her. A second tall and obscure figure had appeared and towered above him – it had no mouth to speak, but he could hear its words absolutely clear in his mind: “This punishment is not meant for you.”

His whole body shuddered and his head ached terribly. The wound on his head began to bleed again. He felt himself being carried backwards and away towards the tree line, and eventually he was set down.

Margaret, still dangling in the air, now from a distance to Thomas, sobbed with eyes shut. There were now several of these lurking beings encircling her. So tall, maybe 7 feet, amorphous and always vibrating, always slightly moving and yet completely still.

Surrounding her now in a tight circle, another figure reached for her and covered her mouth, and somehow this shadowed limb muffled her scream. Then the longer it held, it began to smother her, and she desperately reached out to fight the shadowed hand, to find the task was hopeless.

A man – a human – approached her now from behind the cabin. Margaret caught sight of him, and then simply stopped fighting the creature holding her. Before he could see anymore, the terrible thrum through Thomas’ body finally put him to sleep.

Awaking sometime later with a gasp – the woods were silent, and somehow calmer. Thomas looked for Margaret. She was the same distance from him as before, but on the ground now, in a pile of disheveled clothes and long whitened hair. The stillness of death.

Thomas began to weep in absolute confusion, and weariness, and fear. Why was he the one who had to be here to witness this horror? He crumpled his body and clung his knees to his chest.

He suddenly became aware of the sound of his sobs strangely echoing across the clearing. He looked up, and was grateful that somehow the lantern stood upright and still burned. He realized his sobs were not echoing – someone else was crying.

Turning back towards the tree line, he saw a man on his knees clutching a book, chest also heaving. Thomas froze.

“…John?”

The figure looked up at him in recognition – eyes shining briefly in the lantern light. His expression pained, but his mouth didn’t open to speak. Instead, Thomas heard John’s voice in his head.

“I asked them to show you the truth before the deed was done. Someone had to know.” John’s voice said. “The Old Folk will always be here, and they will always look to collect souls. Never read the book, Thomas.” John burst into a cloud of darkness. The book dropped with heavy finality to the ground. The black cloud hanging heavily in the air, before seeming to rise, and move back towards the depths of Perdid Forest.