NaNoWriMo
The sun tossed fleeting shadows across the ground as the wind rattled the bare branches of a spreading oak. It was Camilla’s favorite tree and dominated a segment of a disused field. In better times horses had grazed on the dozen acres of springy grasses, the lush green speckled with occasional splashes of yellow, white and orange wildflowers. Now the grasses were brown and dry and no horse had touched hoof here for several years. Even the tree had seen better times as a lightning strike had blasted away the top of its trunk, allowing infection to slowly creep its way down. The oak was dying by inches, the top a crown of blackened, brittle branches with more supple limbs seeming to pull away from its own dead parts.
A fringe of brown leaves still clung to the bottommost branches. To Camilla they didn’t seem so much to hang on for dear life but with an actual death grip, still hanging even after the battle had been lost. She wished for a moment that she’d come home earlier in the year so she could have seen the tree when it was still green. This way it looked as though it had finally succumbed and that struck her with a pang of sadness.
Grass and leaves crunched faintly as she stepped up to the trunk and ran a hand over the rough bark. It was simple for her fingers to trace the letters she’d carved into it so many years earlier as a girl. “C J E,” her initials, above a plus sign, and below that, in angular, blocky lines, “Jesus.” It was all surrounded by a heart, of course, to complete it. It still made her grin even now, thinking about why she’d done it. It had made perfect sense, after all, to a six-year-old girl with her dark curls restrained in matched pigtails and still wearing her pretty flowered dress from Easter service. If Jesus had loved everyone so much, and she loved Jesus, why should she put anyone else’s name in the heart?
Her smile faded and Camilla let her hand drop as she tilted her head back to gaze up into the higher branches. Sometimes she wished she could see things as simply as she’d seen them, wished for the simple acceptance that came so easily to her then, but those wishes were always wistful and burned away like morning fog in the light of a new day. Sighing softly she caught the lowest branch and hoisted herself onto it, climbing a few of the sturdier branches as she let her mind take in all the similarities and differences in the experience. She was bigger and the branches were easier to reach, but she couldn’t claim any of the perches she’d employed so often, either. The branches were either too weak or were too crowded to permit her.
Her favorite seat had been lost when the tree was struck. She’d wasted hours of her summers simply sitting at the crown of the tree and surveying the fields, watching horses wander grazing, studying how the wind rippled the grasses, or sometimes simply leaning back against the trunk and letting the clouds drift by in processions of alien landscapes populated by animals and people and things only she could name.
A cold wind brought her back from her reverie, and in a brief moment of panic Camilla feared she was about to fall. She caught her balance and gripped a limb with both hands, waiting until her heart rate and breathing returned to normal. The wind picked up again, gusts continuing in longer and longer bouts until they were nearly constant. The branches were swaying enough that she feared they’d either dump her out of the tree or that they’d simply break under her added weight.
Pushing lashing strands of hair away from her eyes, she was trying to steel herself for the climb down when something caught her eye. It was dark, like a shadow, but it was situated in a way where there wasn’t anything around that could be casting it. She frowned faintly, pursing thin lips even as the wind continued rushing past her, dragging on her long coat. It shadow didn’t have a distinctive shape, seeming to be more a blob than anything else, and was situated perhaps a dozen feet from the base of the tree on the opposite side of the trunk than where she’d been standing.
As she continued to watch it the wind stopped abruptly and Camilla again had to catch herself from falling. She didn’t wait this time, though, and scrambled down, now more curious about this strange dark thing than worried about making it down in one piece. Once on the ground, though, apprehension slipped inside and clenched itself into a ball in the center of her chest. She pushed it down with a flash of irritation. She was a grown woman, after all, and it was broad daylight. She was not going to run from strange shadows. There was always a logical explanation, after all.
Slowly she walked towards it, and with the first step the grasses hissed as a breeze sighed through them, swirling scattered oak leaves around her ankles. The chill slipped under the hem of her coat and snaked up her legs to cast shivers and goose bumps over her body. She hesitated for a moment then closed the distance decisively, the wind picking up with each step until it streamed her hair and jacket behind her like the banners of an insufficient army.
The shadow--though it couldn’t be one she couldn’t think of what else to call it--had dimension. She couldn’t see it from the angle she’d had in the tree, but here… it was nearly as high as her shoulder and was vaguely round, like a giant dew drop, and seemed to bulge irregularly along the edges, mirroring dips and swells in the ground. Camilla stared at it, and as the cold slipped further into her body she slowly reached out a bare hand towards the darkness. The wind changed direction, then again, assaulting her from all sides, making her coat flutter and her hair flail at her face.
Her fingers touched the shadow then slipped into it without resistance. In that moment the wind stopped dead and Camilla screamed, her hair still flying around her head. With a convulsive shudder she jerked her hand free and stared at the thing for only the barest of moments before she turned and fled back the way she’d come, scrambling over the boundary fence and pelting back along the path until the field was blocked from sight by hills and trees.
Inside the field the sun dusted skeletal shadows over the dying grasses and a faint breeze skittered fallen leaves here and there. Occasionally some would blow into the shadow, but none ever blew back out.
Randolph
“What do you mean she hasn’t said anything all day?” Randy stomped his feet on the gravel driveway, eyes narrowed as he regarded his father from beneath the brim of his favorite ball cap. He’d just returned from clearing away brush from the verge of one of the only fields that was still in use, and this was what he got to come back to.
“Just that. Wouldn’t get out of bed, either. Your mother’s worried.” And by that faint whine in his voice, Randy could tell it was starting to worry his father, too. That was enough to bother Randy since if there was one word he would use to describe his father, it would be “stoic.”
“This started this morning?” Randy’s tone was still skeptical, but it had softened enough to cue his father that he was starting to acknowledge the issue.
“Well, that’s the thing.” The older man pulled off his own hat and smoothed his hair back before tugging it back into place. It was an anxious gesture Randy was used to seeing. “She didn’t come down for dinner last night. We figured the fresh air had worn her out, yeah?” Randy waved his hand to hurry his dad along, already having heard his mother discuss exactly that point over the chili she’d made especially for Camilla’s visit. “Well, anyways she come down about an hour after you went out. She was still in the things she wore yesterday, hair all messed up. Wouldn’t even look at us.” He pulled at his brim, another sign of anxiety.
As much as he hated to admit it, his sister’s actions really didn’t sound like her. She was a clean freak, after all, sometimes taking two or three showers a day if she felt dirty, and she was especially careful with her hair, maintaining the impressive fall of dark curls with practiced ease. Randy shifted his weight and rocked back on his heels as he adjusted his own hat. Finally he pulled his work gloves off his hands and slapped them against his thigh.
“I’ll go talk to her.”
His father simply nodded, his jowls jiggling slightly with the action. He wasn’t a fat man, but age had made his skin slip a bit and it hung loose along his jaw. He also wasn’t a big man, the top of his head only coming to the center of Randy’s chest. How he’d managed to father children so much taller than him was a topic of many jokes among family and friends, but they both carried strong familial traits so that was all they were: jokes.
Randy crossed the yard and took the steps up to the side deck with a heavy tread, his work boots thudding with unnecessary volume. He was tired, he was aggravated, and beneath that he was worried. The back door lead into a mud room off the back of the kitchen, and as he stood there stripping off his fleece vest and unbuttoning his flannel, his mother appeared in the hallway.
“Your father talked to you?” There was worry in her blue eyes and she held her hands folded at her waist. She wasn’t even wearing her apron, and it was well past the time she usually started the evening meal.
“Yeah, Mom, he did. I’ll go talk to Camie.” He shrugged his over shirt off and tugged a white tee back into place before sitting on a bench to work his boots off.
“Well, she’s in her room now. She’d been standing in the living room staring out at the fields. Not even moving, yeah? I told her she didn’t look well and that she should go lay down.” She looked over her shoulder, and Randy was sure she was trying to see if Camilla’s bedroom door was closed. “I don’t know if she really heard me or not, but she walked on down the hall and shut herself in.” When she returned her attention to him there was pleading in her eyes. He and his sister had always understood each other, even when they didn’t want to, but then most people assumed that was just how twins were.
Sitting up straight, Randy sighed and met his mother’s eyes. “I said I’d talk to her. I’m gonna go do it now.” He held back another sigh when his mother nodded.
“I know you two ain’t as close as you were…”
“Leave it be, Mom, okay?” Glaring, Randy climbed back to his feed and walked around her into the kitchen. He shouldn’t have snapped at her, he knew. He’d never seen a woman nurse a wrong so well, and he’d be sure to be hearing about it for the next week, but he wasn’t about to have her bring up that topic, not when Camie was being so strange.
As he crossed the room, passing a counter with a cutting board and an assortment of vegetables on it, he could hear his mother opening cupboards. That was a good sign. Maybe she’d actually get around to cooking some time tonight. He crossed the hallway that connected the living room and the dining room and continued down the cross hall. His room and Camilla’s had doors opposite each other, but that was before he took to staying in the guest house, before she’d moved away. They bedrooms were really only guest rooms now, but their mother kept them clean and with fresh sheets like they might actually be used at any moment.
Randy took a breath and lifted his hand to knock, but hesitated. He muttered at himself for delaying the moment, then forced himself to rap three times on the wood, compensating with extra volume. There was no response from inside, but then he didn’t really expect Camie to just answer him, not after how worried their parents were acting. He waited more, time stretching out further and there was still no response. Fine, she could sit in there and sulk if she wanted to. It wasn’t going to bother him what she did.
He was already several paces down the hallway, away from the kitchen, when he thought he heard something. Stopping, he looked over his shoulder, and there was Camilla. He could only see one shoulder and a slice of her face, her chin ducked and her hair in her face making her expression unreadable. When she saw that he’d noticed her, she slipped back into her room. The door didn’t close. With a sigh Randy went back and stood in the doorway to stare at his sister’s back. She was staring out her window, arms folded around her chest, hands gripping her upper arms. As expected, she didn’t speak.
“You’re worrying Mom and Dad.” There, that was a tactful approach. No judgment, no condemnation, none of his opinion, just simple fact. Camie didn’t move. He clenched his jaw for a moment then made himself take a breath. “What’s with this whole not talking thing, eh? You were a regular chatter box when you got in. What’s so different now?”
Camilla shifted slightly, twisted at the waist just enough to regard him with one eye. Then she returned her gaze to the window.
“So you won’t even talk to me? You always do this shit. You’re just fishing for attention again, getting Mom and Dad all worked up so when you get back to normal they’re so happy they dote on you for a week.” There was irritation in his voice, but it was an old gripe, one he’d accused his sister of on more than one occasion. “So what the hell is it this time? You quit your job? You get dumped? Your cat die?”
As he spoke she again turned, this time squaring her shoulders to face him, though her head was still ducked forward so she regarded him through tangles of hair. When he stopped she simply unfolded her arms and held up her right hand, back towards him. The fingers were missing to the second joint.
“Holy fuck, Camie! How the hell did that happen?” Without thinking he stepped into her room and caught up her hand to inspect what remained of her fingers. She’d had them all when she’d got here the first day, he was sure of it, but now this... At the point her fingers stopped the cut was clean, the flesh smooth, but it was perfectly black as though Camilla were filled with paint or maybe made out of obsidian and painted over to look like a person.
She let him inspect her hand and slowly lifted her face to watch him straight on. “Randolph.”
Hearing his name cut through his shock and he snapped his attention back to her face. Even in the dim room with the bright window behind her, Randy could make out her eyes, could see that they were no longer the soft, warm brown she had shared with him. Now they were a solid, matte black without interruption, like holes into empty space. He released her hand and cupped her cheek before pulling her against his chest to hug her. “What the hell happened to you?”