The Shadow in the House

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It had once served as a storehouse in a time of blight, and it laid untouched until Daddy went searching for gold in the floorboards. Dry leaves and limp grass blanketed the fields below the splintering foundation, but the soil was spongey with fertility. The fruits rotting on the ground fed the earth, and yet, the crops continued to die. Little buds fought for life out of season, only to fade like the last and the last and the last. Wet planks buckled under the weight of viscous white slop. The white leaked out of it sometimes, and the scent burnt May’s nose when it wafted through on stormy nights. An unnatural rustle pounded through the sky, and Momma’s candles trembled on their shelves. A shadow trickled like a fat stream of rain over the ceiling beams.

“May, straighten your head, please.”

Momma twisted May’s neck painfully and gathered her brown curls up high in a ribbon. The scar on her forehead was healing nicely with all the splinters removed. Her mother grazed it with a dark finger and said nothing. May remembered crouching against the rough table leg while Daddy’s eyes slunk across the room with an unfamiliar slow power, face prickling as she tracked his silhouette shifting on the floor. Nights like those were more common before Daddy disappeared, and this was the first harvest May could spend without running from her father’s shadow. She strained for another glimpse at the storehouse out of the corners of her eyes.

“May, baby, listen to me,” said Momma, “keep to the paths tonight.”

“What if Daddy comes home?” May played with the lace hem of her new dirndl.

Momma stood and spun her gently by her shoulders. “It’s been six months now, sweetheart. If he was coming back, he would be home by now. Daddy gets bad around the harvest, but now he’s gone and you can have your fun.” She smoothed a fluffy curl by May’s ear. “Follow the window lights to the square. I know you’ve never been before, but you’ll see that you don’t have to be afraid.” Momma poked her nose and smiled. “Sometimes, it’s fun to be alone in the dark.”

“What about that one? It’s far.”

Momma’s face dropped like a stone in water. “Pretend there’s nothing there. Paths only, okay?”

May nodded. Momma placed a hand on her back and led her to the door. She bent down and wrapped May in her big, soft arms. “Be good tonight.”

May took measured steps to the door and picked up her empty basket, ready to fill it with fruits and walnut cakes from the festival. Once again, Daddy had spared nothing for her to contribute. His work in the corn fields was more than enough for their ungrateful neighbors, he told her, and she’d be smart to stay away from the hunters if she knew what was good for her. She did.

May took her first free steps since her father disappeared, soil springing under her leather boots. The unfamiliar, spongey dirt was soft and comforting. She had learned to stay clean walking overtop fallen brush back when Daddy’s hands waited to swallow her up, but for the first time in her short life, he wasn’t there. She hopped along, joyfully testing its spring. Her new bodice was a constant hug against the autumn air laced through with the sour scent of rotting apples. Even the baking crusts and pumpkin seeds weren’t strong enough to overpower it, but May heard soft laughter to the south and let it fade beyond her consciousness. Her excitement was a firefly, blinking hesitantly in and out of existence, not quite sure how to shine all the way.

The swaying branches creaked with wind above. Snaking shapes tessellated and expanded in the treetops, ready to fall and constrict. May found herself turning round and round, eyes following the spindly pillars of shadow. Her body pounded all over with sudden, paralyzing cold. She regarded the abandoned house in the distance long behind her and swore she saw a reaping arm sweep across the façade in striated, blurry shadows like husks in Daddy’s field, ready to sweep her up in its mangled maw.

She pressed her little hands against her chest and closed her eyes. Her hot breath heaved dew onto the air. She scrunched her forehead and peeled her lashes apart. Nothing in the trees or the shadows, nothing under the brush, and nothing inside the storehouse far away. She heard the rasping flutter of parchment boom over the sky. The deafening dry rattle engulfed her. May moved to step back but started at the root thickening over her shoe. It pulled until it dented the new leather and made her foot sparkle with pain. She yanked her leg with her hands, but the root wouldn’t budge, pulsing rapidly and leaking white jelly. Her firefly burned brighter, burning away the fear, and it pushed and pushed until her feet broke free.

May took a hopping start and dashed along thickening dirt, chunks knocking against her bare calves. Her hair flashed with fading light as the path and all its candles fell behind her before she bashed into a wet beam. The wind left her body as she hit the ground. Tears sprung from her eyes. Then, another rumble like whispering leaves threatened to deafen her from all sides. The imposing presence of the storehouse rose in front of her. It was so very far away before.

“Aww, is the baby going to cry?”

May turned onto her hands and knees, gravel grinding into her palms. A boy, tall and gangly, kicked dirt into her face. Soil gummed her eyes and teeth. She spat and fought for breath.

“Huskers like you belong on the outskirts,” he said.

“Nobody should have let you out, scavenger. I bet your daddy worked his good hands raw so you could wear those fine new clothes where you don’t belong.” A girl stepped into the moonlight. The scent of a bonfire clung to her frizzy blonde plaits. A smaller girl hid behind the folds of her skirt. The little one picked up a rock and threw it hard, knocking May onto her elbow.

“Good idea, Ellen,” said the braids as she picked up a jagged stone to do the same, but the boy held out his arm in caution.

“I have a better one. Pin her down.” The two girls lifted her easily. May felt the sharp bark of a tree pressing into her back. Decomposing earth abraded the insides of her eyelids.

“Bright and pretty, isn’t it? I think some fire would make a lovely festival souvenir.” The boy swung a lantern under May’s nose. She jerked backwards and bumped her head against the trunk. Her breaths came fast and shallow.

“What’s wrong, little cub? Afraid of the dark?” The girl’s braids pattered against May’s forehead.

May dug her heels against twisted roots. A hot spark fell on her sleeve, burning a hole in the cotton. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them as murky tears ran down her cheeks. The boy opened the top of the lantern and dipped a handful of May’s skirts into the flame, fire blooming up from the lace and eating into her overskirt. May dug her heels against twisted roots.

The girl let go and ripped at her bodice laces. May fell to the ground, extinguishing her skirt. Her dress drooped away from her blouse. “Now you look as small as you are, a baby in a big girl’s clothes.”

Then, the rustling started again, close in the low branches, and roots climbed over the older girl’s shoulders. She disappeared into the dirt with a faded scream. A blonde braid sunk slowly after her in a pool of bitter, white rot.

The boy shoved the littlest one against the ground to escape. A long, rustling arm darted down and sank him into the ground with sharp, papery claws. The scream entered his lungs and did not come back out. Ellen’s hard steps pounded, jagged shadows racing over her back, black curls in tangles over her eyes. May crawled behind a looming beam and into the rotting house. She heard the child’s raw voice rake over her vocal cords, not loud enough to drown out the brown rustle overhead. She sunk into the forest floor with a wet slap, her body lost to the roots below. May wiped her face. Her eyes were dry.

May heard the thing stomping, muffled thuds from four far corners in the woods converging too far overhead to be human. Her blouse clung to her chest as her bodice dragged the rotten floor.

“May…” the sky rumbled, “who are you not to defend the name of your father?”

The ugly thumping of uncoordinated limbs surrounded her, flimsy joints crackling like thunder in the sky. May pushed herself up using a windowsill and felt wax. She broke the melting candle off the windowsill and wrapped her fist around it. Dry dirt and tears cracked on her face and neck. The rustling closed in.

“I can hear you scraping the floorboards, little girl… Come out and face your Daddy.”

May stood up, power surging through her legs. “You killed them!” she screamed. “You swallowed them up like nothing!”

“They were nothing!” the beast hissed, its voice blanketing the night. “No one can take this power from me. I am finally strong enough. The people cower beneath me and starve by the plight I cause! Everything in my path is finally mine to consume, and you, my precious child, are in my way.”

May shifted on her feet. She watched a giant arm cantilever on its hinge out of the redwoods and plant itself down on gnarled roots. A smoky scent entered the air. The beast bellowed and lifted its limb, a smoldering bit of skirt embedded into the musty ball of leaves. Its husks smoked. May turned and lobbed the candle at her father. The beast’s long leaves smoldered and caught flame. He wailed and fled, tripping over his huge arms and crashing to the ground. His weight felled the trees as it sunk farther and farther into the earth, the sodden soil drying into cracks overtop the crater it created. The wind rustled in the hair-like leaves it left behind. The world was quiet.

May had caught the shadow in her house, and she and her mother lived peacefully in the coming years, but the foundation of their house soon began to crack. White fluid leaked from the walls. They moved from town to town, but the empty patch of dry earth shifted, following wherever they went. At each new home, they place candles in the doorway for protection, but the beast is still following, searching for a way in, feeding on unfortunate souls who wander too far into the dark.