Chapter 12 – My Haunted History

“I know you said he didn’t say anything, but is there a reason why he might try to come after you?” the Huntsville police officer asked me. “A reason he might want to stab you?”

Sure, officer. My best friend was being controlled by some lunatic ancestors of mine, through a forest of weird trees. “No, sir. I can’t think of any reason why he might come after any of us. We’ve all been under a lot of stress lately.”

“Your licenses all say you’re from Blackwoods Bend,” the officer said. “Is it true what they say ’bout that town?”

I raised my eyes to meet the officers curious gaze, thinking about the different ways to deny what I knew to be all too true, and then I decided, fuck it. “Yes. Every word of it’s true.”

The corners of the officer’s mouth turned up for just a moment, as if he thought I was pulling his leg, but then something shifted in his eyes, like a well-informed dread had settled there. “I see. Might be best if y’all just headed back home. We don’t want any more trouble than we have to have. You understand, son?”

I couldn’t help the mirthless laugh that escaped my throat. “Trouble…Yeah. I understand what you mean. I’ll just pack up all the demons we brought with us so they don’t overrun your town, and I’ll take ’em back to the place we were tryin’ to escape from. Consider these ghosts busted. We’ll be back up in a couple of days to pick up our friend, who just got carted off to the hospital because there are ghosts after us, or some shit. Is there anything else we need to discuss, officer? Because I’d like to find a room that’s not been covered in my buddy’s blood to catch a nap in.”

Maybe it was the annoyance in my tone, where there should have been fear, or maybe there was something in my eyes that told him I’d been spread too thin, and I needed a break. Whatever it was the officer began backing away from me, almost looking as though I might eat him. “Hope your day gets better,” he said, continuing to eyeball me nervously as he and his partner climbed into their cruiser, pulling out of the parking lot quickly.

“Welp, I just got off the phone with work. They’re sorry I’ve got the flu, and they hate to hear that James is in the hospital, but they want us to rest up real good to get back as soon as we can,” Will said to Amy, putting his arm around her shoulders before turning to look at me. “It’s all about the dollar bills for Wheatems.”

“I’ve still got a few days off from the market,” Amy said. “Good thing about workin’ for people who know you. I’ll have to call them about James. Tell them Tiffany is stayin’ with him. They’ll be worried.”

Tiffany had seemed shell-shocked, but she’d insisted that they let her stay with James, despite the situation. She was right—he would need her there to help him recover. “Just tell them James was in an accident. We don’t want the whole town thinking that James went crazy,” I said, feeling weary. “We need a new place to stay. We can’t stay here. Not after all of this.”

“I took care of that,” Marianne said, coming out of the motel room we were supposed to share with Will and Amy. “Inga’s got a guest house. It’s early enough now that she was awake, and I could call her. She’s makin’ tea for all of us, as we speak.”

“And then there were four,” Will said ominously. “Remember that old poem about the thing that came out of the sea, and it ate all the others—”

“’But it didn’t eat me,’” I quoted, my eyes fixed on the front bumper of James’ SUV. “Until it did.”

“Well, before we go turnin’ Shel Silverstein into a prophet of a kind, let’s get to Inga’s,” Marianne said, gently tugging on my arm.

Marianne was right. We couldn’t stand out in the parking lot all night long. We were cold, worn down, and we needed help. If this Inga person could offer that, then I was all for it. I took a turn driving the SUV, and I followed along with Marianne’s directions, heading out of the more populated area of the city, into an area of the suburbs that almost looked rural.

I turned the SUV onto the gravel driveway Marianne had indicated, rolling slowly towards the house. The trees in the vast yard were nearly bare, and the cold light of day was barely creeping into the sky over our heads, but the warm, yellow glow from the windows of the house, and the smoke from the chimney made the place look picturesque and peaceful.

I parked the car next to another vehicle near the sidewalk, cutting the engine. Marianne and I got out of the car, shutting our doors as quietly as we could, and I walked around to take Marianne’s hand. Will and Amy wearily climbed out of the backseat, following us up the front porch steps at a trudge. Marianne rang the doorbell as I fought back a yawn, not wanting to be in mid-gasp when this distant relative opened the door.

What I was expecting Inga to look like, I couldn’t tell you now, all that’s certain is that she didn’t fit what I’d imagined. “Hello! Come in, children. Come in,” Inga said in an old-fashioned, southern accent, as she pulled open the door, stepping aside for us to enter. She was a tiny woman, with perfectly pinned, gray, curly hair, and a kind smile. Her irises looked somewhere between gray and hazel, and there were strong laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. “You all have had a bad night.”

“I thought she was German,” I said under my breath, leaning down towards Marianne’s ear.

“Oh, nearly everybody from Cullman on up is German, or partly that, Danny,” Inga said walking to the doorway across the room. “You see, the Blue Ridge Mountain system called to the blood in our ancestors’ veins like a siren. They saw the home they’d left behind, with a warmer climate, and more freedom. So here we are, aren’t we? Children of viking wanderers who finally stayed put somewhere. Well…All save you and me. Our people didn’t come here by choice.”

I was still processing the fact that she’d been able to hear me whisper to Marianne from halfway across the room. Cut me some slack; I was exhausted, haunted, and had just punched my knife-wielding friend in the face an hour earlier. My brain was fried.

Inga seemed aware of that, and she turned her eyes to Will and Amy. “There’s a room at the top of the stairs set up for y’all two. As for you,” she said, turning her eyes to Marianne, “well, you know where to go. I’ll be over at the main house when you’re ready to talk.”

“Wait…This is the guest house?” Amy asked, looking around in realization.

Inga nodded, moving towards a set of French doors at the back of what appeared to be the dine-in kitchen. “It surely is. Tea’s on the table, and if you’d like anything in the fridge, help yourself. Get some rest, children,” she drawled, before making her way out into the early morning glow.

“This is the guest house. Can you imagine what the house-house looks like?” Amy asked Will as he led her upstairs.

“Goodnight, Daniel. Goodnight, Marianne,” Will called down to us.

“It’s mornin’,” Amy grumbled as their voices faded.

Marianne pulled on my hand. “You should sleep, but there’s tea if you want it.”

“No, all I can think about right now is layin’ down.” That was the truth, I could barely keep my eyes open, almost falling asleep where I stood. The fear of having the nightmare again settled in, and I wondered if I would get any rest until this was all over—if it ever did end. I followed Marianne into a dark room, and she switched on a lamp that sat on a large, oak dresser, illuminating the space around us. There was a queen-size bed just in front of me, and a television mounted on a wall across from that.

Most interesting to me were the pictures in frames, arranged neatly on the wall, with one large photo in the center of all of them. My breath caught in my throat as I took them all in. Every single one of them was a photo of me and Marianne. “Are these real?” I asked stupidly.

Of course they were real, and they were right here in front of me. Some were candid photos of us laughing or smiling at each other, some were slightly posed with us both looking at the camera, and some we’d taken ourselves, holding the camera aloft. The one in the center, though, was of us on what appeared to be a crisp fall day, the sun shining through the changing leaves as we kissed. “Who took this picture?”

“It was a self-timer. You set the camera up without me knowing, and you kissed me. That was the first time. You wanted it captured forever, and it’s my favorite photo of us. Back when it was all beginning, and there wasn’t any fear,” Marianne said softly from behind me.

The gesture had been so romantic, and it had taken guts. My younger self was braver than I was now. If she’d have rejected me then it would surely have been mortifying, but instead there was this picture. She’d loved it so much that she’d blown it up, and it was hanging here as a kind of in memoriam of our relationship. My question was, though, what was it doing there, of all places?

I turned to meet Marianne’s gaze, and I didn’t have to utter a word before she was explaining. “This is my room. I stay here often. It’s peaceful here. Blackwoods Bend feels like Hell, and here? It just feels safe.”

I turned my head to look over the pictures again, realizing something about her then. “This is where you’re sad instead of strong.”

She was quiet for a moment, but then she let out a soft breath. “That’s right. Here I don’t have to be anything but the girl who lost the love of her life to—” Marianne stopped talking abruptly, pausing for a beat as she reached for a remote to switch on the television. “I know you like to sleep with the light from the TV. Helps with the night-terrors when there’s some kind of light in the room.”

I sat down hard on the edge of the bed, hanging my head. “Marianne,” I said wearily, toeing off my shoes. “Tomorrow will Inga tell me everything that happened to me?”

She switched the channels over to a national news station—one that I’d watched since I was younger for the hilarity of politicians thinking they’re fooling anyone. Marianne still didn’t answer me as she walked into the en suite bathroom, reemerging with a glass of water she put on the night-stand next to the side of the bed I was sitting on.

It struck me that this was a routine. More specifically, it was my own bedtime routine that Marianne was going through on auto-pilot, even as she actively avoided my questions. She knew what I did before bed every night, and she could go through the motions as well as I could. I watched as she walked over to the dresser taking off all of her rings, save one silver band, with a small stone that sparkled blue in the light of the lamp. Some buried part of me remembered that ring, and my attention turned back to the pictures on the wall as I narrowed my eyes.

The photo in the middle we were clearly very young; sixteen at most. Others, though, I realized that we were a little older, I most certainly looked visibly tired, and there was a hard set to my eyes. I couldn’t have been younger than twenty, but I looked much older. In those more recent photos Marianne was always wearing the ring. “I gave you that ring,” I said quietly.

“You’re my birthday present, for the rest of my life,” I said to her, holding her left hand in mine as I held up the box with the ring in it. She smiled even as tears raced down to her chin.

“I never take this ring off. It’s part of all that I have left,” she said quietly.

My mind raced, trying to remember anything from the year I turned nineteen, or even actually turning nineteen at all. I couldn’t remember being twenty. As it always was, I had the same frustration, being unable to remember before my twenty-first birthday. I remember celebrating that I could purchase my own alcohol by buying a bottle of scotch, then getting entirely too intoxicated. I’d thrown up in the sink in my kitchen, vowing off scotch forever. Of course that didn’t last, and I was buying another bottle the next weekend. “How old was I when I forgot everything?”

She shook her head as she reached into the drawer in front of her. “Daniel—”

“Marianne, it’s time.” No sooner had those words left my mouth than my head felt like it would split open. I pressed my palms to my temples, bending towards my knees. “Mari!” I reached a hand back across the bed towards her. Something was wrong, I knew that much. I just couldn’t figure out what that was. I felt Marianne grab my hand in hers tightly, and then images swam in my vision.

Blood splattered my clothes and skin, and my hair clumped together in a matted mess as I climbed up to the road. I knew they were dead. My parents were gone. Once again, Andrew had gotten what he wanted.

“What is happenin’?” I whimpered. Despite the pain, my eyes were wide, as things continued to come back to me.

“I love you,” I said, my tone full of disappointment as I laughed, holding up a handful of shirts, underwear, and socks that had once been white, but were now a sort of tie-dye pink.

Marianne gasped, her hands flying up to cover her mouth. “Baby! I’m so sorry!”

I shook my head, taking her hand to pull her to me. “I like pink. ‘S fine.”

My heart felt like it was turning inside out. All of the years—all of the joy and pain—flooded through me at once. Marianne tightened her grip on my hand as the first sob tore from my throat. The memories were coming out of order; jumping around in time, back and forth. It was almost as if they were taunting me—showing me joy, then dropping me into a free-fall of sorrow.

It rained the day of their funeral. Everything was washed in droplets that caught the light from the winter sky. Marianne held my hand tightly as I watched my parents’ caskets lowered into the red-clay mud, so much like the Road. “He won, Mari.”

“No, Danny. He hasn’t won yet,” she said softly, running her thumb over the back of my hand. “He hasn’t gotten you. I won’t let him.”

I laid over on my right side, letting go of Marianne’s hand to curl in on myself. She climbed up onto the bed to sit behind me, one of her hands on my shoulder, as she ran the fingers of her other hand through my hair gently. “I’m right here, Danny,” she said softly, almost as if she knew what was coming.

Marianne tucked her long, light-brown hair behind her ears before she reached out her hands towards me. Weakly I stumbled backwards, digging the heels of my boots into the dirt. Red, clay-dirt. We were on the Road. Again.

We’d been here so many times before, but this was the weakest I’d ever felt after a night in the woods, and I didn’t know if I’d have the strength to keep her safe. I groaned in despair as I turned towards her a little, longing for comfort I couldn’t have. “Mari, you have to go. You have to get away from here. Keep away from me. It’s not safe,” I called to her as something close by drew in growling gasps, getting closer and closer.

“I am not leaving you here this time,” Marianne insisted. “Not again, Danny.”

“Mari, I’m not strong enough.” Tears escaped my eyes as I reached up to brush my fingertips over her cheek. “You have to promise me…When I come back, you have to make sure that I don’t remember until I say so.”

“What do you mean? When you come back?” Marianne asked, tears streaming from her eyes.

“When I come back, you don’t tell me anything. Do you understand? It’s me or the town, Mari. It’s…It’s me or them.” I held her gaze, both of us trying to catch our breath. “Promise me, Marianne! Don’t let me know the truth. Not until I tell you that it’s time.”

She shook her head, looking as if I’d startled her. “I promise,” she said, bending down to rest her forehead against mine. “Danny, I love you.”

Hundreds of times that she’d said those words to me ran through my mind, then faded. I shook my head, slowly, squeezing my eyes shut. “I love you, Marianne. Run. Run, now.”

She hesitated, as I worried that she would. “Daniel—”

“Run now!” I cried, standing shakily to my feet. I watched as she stood slowly, then took off running for the paved part of the road. “Good…Good! You can’t have her! Take me!”

“I’ve already got you,” Andrew’s voice said from behind me, and I spun around on my heel in the loose dirt, feeling my head swim. “And I’ll have her soon.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “You failed. The line of Harsons ends with me. There will never be another Harson child born on this Earth. Not another one that you can use and manipulate.”

Andrew stepped forward until he was inches from my face, giving me a sneering smile. “I know your weaknesses, boy. Never say never.”

I sat bolt upright, holding my hands out because I felt some need to brace myself. “Victorvina wants me to destroy the forest.”

“I know,” Marianne said softly.

“Harson…He wants nothing more than for our family line to keep goin’. Generations and generations of nightmares and dealin’ death. All of those manifestations of evil I’ve killed over the years…Monster hunting. Andrew says that we protect the forest, and that’s all that keeps Victorvina’s evil trapped there. I’m in the middle of a fuckin’ family feud that never ends!” I said, bracing my elbows on my knees as I ran my hands into my hair. “She wants to be free to walk the Earth, and he says that she can’t be allowed to do that. He says that it’s always been her that caused everything.”

Marianne wrapped one of her arms around me, leaning her cheek against my shoulder. “You have to decide which one of them to believe.”

“How the hell am I supposed to decide that, Mari? They counter each other. One says that the forest needs to stand, the other says she has to be set free. I don’t know what’s up or down anymore, Mari,” I said, turning to meet her eyes, instantly locked there. For so long I’d been separated from her, not remembering our lives together, but now we were here, and everything had come back to me like a dammed up river had finally broken down the wall. Every emotion that I felt for Marianne twisted in my chest, and I reached out a hand to trace my thumb along her collarbone. Horrors were raging around us again, but we were in a safe place, with a moment to pause. “Are you afraid of me now, Marianne?”

She shook her head instantly, frowning as she moved closer to me. “Danny, I would never be afraid of you. I’ve seen you covered in soot. I’ve seen you covered in blood. You only do what you have to do.”

I looked down into her slate-gray eyes, brushing her hair back from her temple. “And what if—one day—that means that you’ll become a victim of this vicious cycle of birth, death, and damnation? What then?”

Marianne hummed softly, smiling sadly before leaning forward to kiss me softly. “Daniel Frame…I would go to Hell with you. Just say the word.”