Gregg was an adventurer despite everything he had been through. He took to the
hill behind his home with firm footsteps, marching up the mile long road like
it was a path to great treasure. Even as his sister and I plodded
behind him, sweat pouring down us in the stifling August heat. He turned
and cried for us to keep up. How he was so animated, I
didn't know. Not even grasshoppers chirruped under the midday sun, and the tall
grass, usually so green, had turned to yellow straw as summer reached this
peak. Come on, he cried, as he reached a seemingly arbitrary spot
on the road. I saw it this way, he pointed into the grass,
a thin footpath barely visible between wavering fronts. What did you see?
Samantha shouted. She was usually so calm and responsible, but I could tell
she was close to blown that cool head of hers. Not long ago,
Gregg and Samantha had been a trio. The loss of their older brother,
gone two years by this point, had broken their parents in an unusual way.
It was not uncommon to lose children in my hometown. It felt like
every year the class register grew shorter by at least two names. But where
most parents became overprotective, Gregg's had gone the other way. They grew listless
and morose, withdrawing not only from the world but their remaining children. Three
times a week, Gregg and Samantha came to my house and ate food with
us. The rest of the time, Samantha cooked for a family, just
as you, packed at Greg's lunches, and washed his clothes, and did
anything else that a parent usually did. If she'd been older, she would
have probably forbidden Greg's expeditions entirely. But she was young and exhausted, and
every time Greg set out to explore the wilderness at the edge of town,
his face lit up so bright it must have been impossible to say no.
Today, he dragged us both to see something. He'd found, something that
he claimed was incredible. You have to see it for yourself, he said.
When we caught up with him. Samantha and I were breathless, but
Greg was practically jumping on the spot with excitement. I need a break.
I wind a good idea Stephen, Samantha replied, between heavy breaths. Let's
just enjoy the view. We turned to face home on our left was the
forest. On our right open space, and below us, built on the
sloping side of the mountain, was our hometown. Looking at it from so
far, it appeared plain and small and normal. But in the corner of
our eyes, drifting from the spaces between the trees of the forest, we
could see the red twine. Hundreds, maybe thousands of strands floated over open
air down the slope. We just climbed and entered the town miles below,
where it formed a complex, an ever changing web. Each string had small
golden bells attached at every meter, and you'd think that with a string strung
so far between such distant points that every gust of wind would create a chorus
of ringing. They were silent, and they would remain so unless someone was
careless enough to touch one of the snares. It's actually kind of beautiful,
some anthem mused quietly, and I found myself agreeing. You've checked for snare
on this route, she asked her brother. I checked yesterday, he cried,
turning to the path like a dog straining on a leash. It's not
far, it's right there. The twine could have moved since then, she
said, I don't like this. I don't think we should be doing this.
It's dangerous. Think about the golden rule. I know the golden rule.
Gregg suddenly screamed, don't touch the thread. Greg kept shouting the phrase
over and over until his face turned pink. Did it help Jonathan, he
finally shrieked as he lost energy. No, he was the most careful of
all, and it's still got him. So what's the point. Samantha's gasp
was so loud it stopped Greg's tantrum dead in his tracks for a second.
Her hand twitched, and I thought she was going to hit her younger brother.
But it was only the slightest of movements, right, she said,
as stern as any headmistress. That's it. Back we go, Stephen.
I'm sorry Greg had to ruin this by being a potty mouth. Greg's face
soured into regret and despair. No, no, no, no, no,
no, you have to believe me. You have to see it.
Samantha took a deep breath and knelt down to Greg's level. Do you know
what the most important rule really is? Don't touch the thread? Greg sobbed.
No, Samantha shook her head. The most important rule, the one
that your one day appreciate is the hardest of them all, is the one
that says you never ever help someone who's touched a snare. I know that
his words were choked out between heaving breaths. No you don't. I mean
you do, but you don't really know what it means. What it actually
means is leaving someone you love behind, even if they scream, even if
they cry, and when it comes to take them, you walk away,
run if you can, and you don't look back. Could you do that
for me? Greg? If I was lying there crying for you to help
me, could you just run away? I don't know. If I had
to do that, I think it would kill me. My heart would never
be whole again. Do you want to leave me for dead if something goes
wrong? Greg shook his head to signal no, that's why we should turn
back. Samantha continued. It's too risky, you're too excited. Do you
know what it would do to me if you run over one? Do you?
Samantha swallowed and wiped her teary eyes with a cardigan sleeve. We're going
home. That's final. She turned towards me and went to speak, but
in a few seconds where a back was to Greg, his face crunched up
and all his anger returned. I thought he was going to leap at her
and start kicking and punching, but he did something much worse. He ran
into the tall grass. Samantha didn't even have time to turn around and call
his name before he saw the crass disturbed and heard a loud thump, followed
by a twang and the ringing of a bell. The snare wherever it was
must have been perfectly placed to catch him. There were a few agonizing seconds
before Gregg started crying. I could tell from his voice that my friend had
seriously hurt himself, but neither Samantha nor I moved. The bell kept ringing.
It would not stop. It was an unnatural sound, and one by
one the red twine in the distance began to shiver sympathetically, and a thousand
other bells joined in. The haunting sound lit up not only the mountainside but
the town below us, and I knew that already my family would be terrified
to find me and know that I was safe. I wanted to run back
to them, to flee the rising alarm that ceased not only my thoughts,
for the very air around me, as miles and miles of webb thrummed with
anticipation. But before I could turn, Greg appeared out of the grass and
stared at us. He was, in spite of everything silent. He must
have been shocked. He certainly looked like he was surprised to find several meters
of ordinary looking twine used to the skin on his arms and face in coiling
bunches. No blood, just swollen flesh, slowly turning pink, as if
it too was shocked to find its own boundaries violated and was now having a
delayed reaction. Quick invader shut it down, But this was no microbe or
allergen. Several strands of the stuff had fused to his hair and face and
arms, and in places like his cheeks and ears. It had even punched
through the flesh entirely and emerged on the other side with a firm grip.
It was slowly but surely beginning to pull him back into the woods. That
force would only increase with every passing second until there was simply no resisting.
But Greg fought on. He pushed against them and staggered towards us, reaching
out a hand redded with twine. Samantha didn't move, which he did raise
a hand as if to embrace him. The sound of me crying out and
falling backwards made a look away from a brother who finally began to wail and
sob. She fixed me with teary eyes, and in that moment I watched
Samantha's heartbreak before she turned from a weeping brother, grabbed my hand and ran.
Greg followed. Neither of us knew in detail what happened when the snare
catches you, But as Greig continued to stumble after us, his cries and
please grew increasingly furious. I darkly found myself wishing it had just hurry up
and be over with. Looking back, I'm surprised at the ten year old
imaginative vocabulary. But he was faced death, and I think his mind dug
deep. God, he hated us in those moments. I'm sure of that.
He was scared and hurting, and the only people close to him were
abandoning him. He told us we'd go to hell. He told us we
deserve to die. He told us a lot, not stopping until halfway down
the hill when he finally fell. I turned, not meaning or wanting to
and saw him push himself up with his hands, gravel embedded in the puffy,
bleeding skin of his face, and he glared at me with burning hatred.
He tried to pull out the snares embedded in his forearms, but his
hands bonded to the twine immediately, and it only left him too tangled to
resist any further. The twine pulled harder and he fell backwards, and with
kicking feet, he was dragged slowly out of sight. I was so afraid
of what I'd seen. I swored myself and my vision blurred. My legs
grew faint, and Samantha, barely slowing, picked me up and carried me
the rest of the way. When we reached the town, my parents were
waiting for us. They held me so tight that it hurt my little ribs,
but I didn't care. I sobbed into my mother's arms and paid only
a moment's notice to the weak, hysterical Samantha, whose own parents were nowhere
to be seen. I can't believe you bought it. I can't believe they
sold it, I replied, as the helicopter banked over the town below.
From this high up, the snares resembled something blood red and fleshy, the
floating celia of a strange jellyfish tangled in an artificial reef. The town,
a litter of miniatures that grew from the mountainside like coral, was clearly abandoned.
It had never been well looked after, not even when we lived there,
but over the last few years it had begun to look apocalyptic. Did
the government tell you any more about what they found? Samantha rasked. I
looked across at the woman beside me. She looked older than her age,
but there still remained a ghost of the teenage girl who saved my life.
And if I looked further, still a hint of resemblance to her brother.
Does it hurt for her to look in the mirror? I wondered, does
that familiar resemblance sting? So many ghosts lingered around her, not just Gregg's
two brothers, two parents. No one was around to witness the latter's abduction,
but their disappearance was no mystery. How could it be? People did
not go missing in my hometown. Everyone knew what it meant if someone failed
to show up at breakfast or was a no show at work. Or church.
It meant they'd gotten careless. It meant they touched the snare, and
there was no coming back from that mistake, although in the case of Samantha's
parents it was unclear if they'd done so by accident. They didn't find anything,
I said, nothing concrete anyway. I think it frustrated them, this
unsolvable problem. Maybe they hoped he'll throw enough money at it to figure it
out. Let some billionaire spend his cash and leave their budgets alone. God
knows his what most people think when they find out I have money. An
awkward silence settled between us. Thank you, Samantha said, once it had
gotten on long enough. I know you must get a lot of people asking
for charity. Don't worry, I replied, cutting her off. I didn't
mean to. It's the least I could do. It was my friend who
it's just if that drone footage is real. She was referring to the one
bit of fruitful evidence the government had dug up, a short video taken by
an aerial drone racing through overgrown trees. It lasted no more than five seconds,
covering one hundred or so meters before the machine had failed, but for
the first time in mine or Samantha's life. We had finally had a glimpse
into the forbidden woods, which are the source of the red snares. Five
seconds of nothing, five deconds of blurry trees and autumnal leaves. And a
frame, a single frame, A frame that was emailed to Samantha by an
anonymous researcher, A frame that prompted her to call me and cash in all
that guilt. I could have been angry to find this ghost that my child
had returned demanding I spent millions on some whim but I wasn't. She had
sent me the image, and I immediately knew what she wanted and why.
Six months later, and I'd managed to bribe enough officials to let me purchase
the derelict and empty remains of my hometown, the image was of Greg,
a blurred shadow, recognizable only by the distinct make and coloring of his clothes.
Details burned into both mine and Samantha's memories, details neither of us could
forget. No, you could not see his face, but we didn't have
to. We knew it was him anyway. Samantha's expression grew sad as her
eyes fell to the window. With a town passed directly beneath us. We
were slowing. As the chopper approached the landing site. I briefed the pilot
that the situation was fluid and he would need to keep a keen eye out
for a place free of snares. A glance at the direction he was taking
told me he was heading straight for the church. Do you know what it
was like in the end, she asked, Eyes still on the town.
Even from this height, we could see thousands of snares, snaking from building
to building, window to window, through abandoned cars, and around tilting telephone
poles, a cat's cradle of shimmering red twine. My dad called a few
weeks before he disappeared. I answered. Every couple of months, he'd call
and go through the list every time it got smaller. In the end,
he was just one person. I asked if it had been a good month,
if people had been extra careful. He told me they just weren't enough
people to go missing anymore. In the end, he was the last,
too stubborn who refused to move down below the church raced into view. In
the months since the town had emptied, the once impeccable kept grass had been
left to grow wild and unkempt in the autumn heat. I wondered what it
might hide, so I leaned forward and got the pilot's attention. Radio the
guys on the ground and tell them not to step on the grass, I
shouted. They used to keep it short for a reason. The pilot gave
me a thumbs up before speaking into his mic. Standing sheepishly at the edge
of the old lawn, three small figures looked up at us and waved to
get our attention. When I first paid for the expedition to enter the town
and map its contents, there had been four two scientists and two former soldiers
hired a security. It didn't surprise me, looking down, that we were
missing one of the scientists. It's worse than before, Doctor Wagner, the
expedition scientist, looked at me with curiosity as we picked away carefully down main
Street. It wasn't unusual for one of the roads to have a few snares
across it, I added, But the air is practically red with the stuff.
Perhaps it has become frustrated with the lack of food, She replied,
You think it eats them and she nodded. Seems possible, I added,
as I studied a nearby shop window, a little boutique that sold dresses the
kind of women would wear to church. I remember waiting outside while my mother
bruised inside for what felt like hours on end. Sometimes I would grow impatient
and want to go inside too. But something about the mannequin in the window
scared me. Faceless, featureless, hard plastic glimpse. What was it about
the lack of eyes that left me convinced it was looking right at me?
It had only cotton, worse with age. It's head a raw shack of
peeling paint, beige and white, untarnished gun metal grays. It must be
intelligent, sentient, if not sapient, Wagner said, as they turned away
from the unsettling doll. The scientist was a small woman in a late forties,
usually quite brazen and funny. For twenty four hours in this town had
already worn her down. It knew to target the objects that Mike doctor mcnolah
touched regularly. I cringed at the reminder of the expedition's losses. It isn't
just intelligent, I said, it's vindictive. Did I tell you what happens
if you damage the thread. She shook her head. One man set fire
to a whole bunch of snares on his lawn, I told her used a
can of spray paint, and his lighter woke up the next day to find
a snare punched right through his belly and tied to a bedspring on the other
side. The scientist winced at the thought, but I left out the part
with A man had stayed in his bed for a full two days before he
was finally driven mad by the itch of the twine running through his guts.
I had heard from some older kids that in the end he tore at himself
like an animal in a trap, and in a red twist, the twine
did not take him. It left his body there, skewered on a piece
of string, and the doctor had to come round with a couple of farmers
and cut him out. But still the twine stayed fixed and taught, so
that his family could not get rid of anything it touched. Not the sheets,
not the mattress, not even the half inch or so of flesh the
twine had bonded too. The stink of infection infested the house. They said
and on hot summer days it even reached the street. It must have been
hell living here. Why would anyone stay? Most people didn't. Just about
everyone my age left as soon as they got old enough. Town went from
five thousand to a few hundred in just a couple decades, I replied.
When my dad was a kid, there were maybe two or three snares at
the time, few enough that if you got tangled, others would cut you
out without too much risk to themselves. Hurt like hell, mind, but
survivable by the time it got real bad. Some people were just too old
or stubborn. Plus I suspect some stayed in the hope that was taken would
come back. My father was definitely in that camp. At least you got
out, Wagner said. If you'd stayed, you would have either been taken
already or probably gone insane from the loneliness. I understood our words, but
I didn't feel them. People who were born into this were never really normal.
I couldn't go to the bathroom without checking the door five times each way.
Sleep was short, fitful at best, since there was always when you
were most vulnerable. From what I understood, most people who'd left the town
hadn't fared so well, I suppose. I shrugged, and we continued to
carefully step over strands of red twine. There thrummed with excitement as our feet
passed over. We got maybe halfway down main Street before Wagner tripped, fell
and set off the first of the snares drop it. She lowered her backpack
without taking her eyes off it. Lucky woman had fallen in such a way
her bag had taken the hit, but already other snares started to gum up
the fabric. They attracted each other somehow. You never saw them move.
It just appeared when you weren't looking, almost like they were always there.
But a quick person could beat them. Jesus, I cried. Step away.
Wagner ran over to me as dozens more appeared wrapped around a backpack.
Slowly they began to constrict, melding into and right through the material, looking
for the flesh of its owner, while still dragging it further into the web
so more snares could seize it. Slowly, but surely, the bag was
dragged into the darkness of a nearby alley. I was close, the scientist
said. Once the bag was out of sight, I didn't bother, chastising
her. No one could really get used to this kind of place. You
had to live with it for years before the lessons had taught you, sank
In, I merely offered to take a short break, sharing what little food
I had before the pair of us continued. At least she was a little
more watchful going forward. Nothing more I could ask for. The journey dragged
on for hours, with our pace so slow, we used the time to
document what we saw the state of the town. Crumbling buildings, twine punched
glass without shattering, it, blending perfectly with wood, rock, metal,
and plastic. Where one end met man made structures, while the other ran
off towards the horizon, inevitably disappearing into the darkness beneath the forest's canopy.
From there, no one knew where it led, only that disappearing into the
woods meant you never came back. Meanwhile, the silence bore down on us.
I wasn't used to it, certainly, not here of all places,
what was once a home to me. But aside from us moving and speaking,
there was nothing to break up the eerie silence. And even then our
words felt intrusive and dangerous, like we might catch the attention of something lurking
just out of sight, perhaps somewhere behind the windows that peered down on us,
old, gray and grimy, the rooms beyond hidden like islands in the
fog. The only splash of color the red twine that ensnared the spaces within
those decrepit rooms, hardware shops, florists, record stores, apartments once occupied
by people who had left no one behind to claim their things. So now
toasters and TVs and ovens and fridges and all manner of personal items lingered on,
gathering no dust because there was no one to shed skin and create some
I felt watched by those windows. Slowly but surely, my paranoia spiked,
like a child in a haunted house, convinced that something was waiting to jump
out. Wagner spoke to me in places, and I just ignored her,
willing her into silence out of fear of something coming along. At one point
she had to grab me to get my attention. Do you hear that?
She asked, her eyes wide with fear, and I realized for the first
time it wasn't just me who'd been feeling the pressure. I listened there.
It was a tinkle of a bell, But unlike the ones I'd heard when
a snare was touched, this was gentle, playful, singular, A lone
bell, a lone piece of twine somewhere being played with like a cat batting
a toy. What the hell? I muttered, clearly more baffled by this
than Wagner. The bells did not ring alone. I knew this. Everyone
in the town knew this. They always screamed in unison. As quickly as
it came, it stopped, but we investigated anyway. Pulled by the law
into the doorway of a shop, I went first, Wagner close behind.
When she saw the figure standing there, she gasped, but whatever noise I
wanted to make was caught in my throat. At first I assumed there was
another person for their stock. Still pose could not have been achieved by anyone
with a pulse. It was a mannequin. The mannequin, the one I'd
studded at at the other end of the street. It even wore the same
clothes. It had been punchured by snares in dozens of places, the head,
the neck, the elbow, and knees, so much so it resembled
marionette and even as the comparison popped into my head. It turned to face
us. Stiff rotate achieved by the tug of a twine. With more stilted
movement, it reached out and held up Wagner's bag, suddenly unharmed, albeit
a little scuffed should I Wagner almost reached out. Hell no, I cried,
while snatching a wrist. I've never seen anything like this, But geez
if it doesn't look like a trap, I don't know what does. No.
No, we need to move. We need to find the others and
get the hell on with his expedition. No more notes radio the others,
I added, while glaring at the empty street, watching for signs of further
movement. Behind all that dull and lifeless grass, It's time to move into
the woods. Samantha and I were standing on the crest of the same hill
where Gregg had fallen over twenty years ago. Only now the air was cooler
and the grass greener, and plenty of birds chirruped in the nearby trees.
It had seemed, through no gentle twist of fate, we'd been brought to
the trail he'd singled out years ago. This is definitely what a satellite picked
out, I asked, while Samantha chewed anxiously on a thumb. This is
the root, Wagner replied. Why is there something wrong with it? It's
just that the infrared and elevation scans made it clear. If we want to
enter the forest, this is our best bet. No, if you're sure,
you're sure, I said, or briefly, nudging a child shoe back
into the long grass. I could only hope Samantha hadn't noticed. Come on,
one of the soldiers said, will taking point, We need to get
moving, or as we'll risk getting stuck her in the dark. The woods
were surprisingly free of snares, but for the last century the townspeople had treated
it like cursed land, and it seemed so had the wild life. No
trails, no paths, no sign of intervention by humans or animals. Nothing
dared to encroach on these trees to weather down their grip on the earth.
They grew over one another like people in a jostling crowd. Roots left to
thicken and fight tooth and nail, crowding so tightly, they burst through the
soil and crawled over one another like something in a mangrove. Swamp. You
didn't hike through this forest. You crawled along on your hands and knees,
climbing steep inclines, one moment, gripping gnarled roots like the rungs of a
ladder, before descending the other side in reverse. Was this place always free
of snares? One of the soldiers asked. Honestly, I don't know,
I replied. Both Samantha and I had been shocked by the fact that neither
of us had talked since noticing it. No one went into the woods,
Samantha added, as the same man helped her over a particularly steep set of
roots. It wasn't even a matter of being forbidden. It was just that
if you entered, you never returned. High stakes for a hike, he
replied, I'm not sure I'm being paid enough to never see the sun again.
Well, we've walked thirty minutes and we're still alive, Wagner said.
Maybe people just got lost. Nothing, says Wagner. Was climbing beside sam
as she spoke, only her words came to a startling halt. Before she
could finish. She cried out, lost the footing and tumbled backwards. But
as she fell, her cries grew shrill and almost hysterical, and her rushed
over to help, unsure of what had happened. When I reached her,
she was on her back clutching an old piece of root. In a blur,
she threw it far away from herself and began to point at something inside
the roots. Oh no, no, no, no no, she muttered,
while hyperventilating. Oh my god, Samantha cried as her eyes picked out
what had upset Wagner. It took a second to see it. I crawled
over that exact spot just moments ago and noticed nothing. But there it was,
a moss covered bundle of leathery and muffled skin, the features below so
brutalized by decay that it was scarcely recognizable as anything that might have once skittered
or sculped around these woods. The deer dead, desiccated, taken years before,
poor Wagner had gripped one of his bony limbs, mistaking it for a
root. It was nearly identical due to the moss covering it, but only
the slimy gift of his skin beneath her fingers had clued her in. And
then once she saw those hollow eyes gazing back at her from the darkness.
Well, it's a wonder she hadn't screamed the whole place down. Looks like
it died and got caught up in the tree roots, one of the soldiers
said, as he took her closer. Look, do you think it touched
one of the snares, Wagner asked, as she rubbed her hands clean on
her trousers. Guys, does it even take animals? Wagner added, it
can, I replied. Guys weren't allowed pets because of it. Samantha added,
bird seemed to avoid the snares instinctively, but cats, dogs, anything
like that really didn't fare so well, guys. One of the soldiers shouted
from the nearest deadfall, where he peeked over the top. I found the
townspeople. They moved. Chasing them or walking towards them was a sure way
to get lost, and the soldiers let us know that empathetically. We were
to continue as is, penetrating deeper into the forest in the hope of finding
something, anything, that gave us answers. Meanwhile, all we could do
was ignore the strange figures that bobbed amongst the trees. Limp bodies, hanging
arms, drooping heads, hair full of twigs and leaves, mouths full of
soil, moss coated skin, pallid and soft. Dead bodies suspended like puppets
and twine. They didn't run if you approached them. They merely drifted away,
as if the hands that controlled them were taking them off stage. This
was the first time in my life seen the red thread used for something other
than snares. Somehow this felt worse, guys, I said, after we
march for another hour, I think we can safely say how that image of
Gregg was taken. I gestured to one of the bodies that floated amidst the
trees, its body swaying in unseen currents. Are we sure we need to
go further? He's right, one of the soldiers said, as he dropped
his bag and began to roll out his shoulders and back. I don't like
this one bit, and we now know the context of that screen grab.
I know I'm not paying for this whole thing, but I think it's time
to call it a day. He reached down and grabbed the bag, ready
to pull one strap over his shoulder. When we heard it, how had
we been so stupid. The woods had never been free of snares. It
was just another way of getting us to lower our guard. When the soldier
had reached for the bag, his hand, bare skin even, had brushed
against a snare that had appeared. When our eyes were turned, a dozen
brass bells rang out from the contact, and slowly joining in one by one,
A thousand, a million others joined a deafening, maddening, ear splitting
cry, the most unnatural thing I've ever heard in my life. Decades gone
without it, but here it was once more, powerful, enough to make
me feel like a weeping child waiting to be grabbed by Samantha's arms. The
soldier looked at me, terrified. You said there weren't any in the forest,
he cried, hail as a ghost. I began to stammer. I
wanted to say we'd made no promises, that I'd only agreed with others observations.
But what would that achieve? Calm down? I shouted instead, But
he tried to run towards us. Already new snares had appeared to tangle up
his feet, binding to his clothes, wrapping around his limbs from the ever
rising panic that made him thrash about the man was going to die, destined
to It was too late, maybe if we'd taken it slowly, reacted just
right, But that ship had sailed. Now he was bound in dozens of
them, and as he continued to panic, it only grew worse. They
melted into his scalp, his cheeks, his brow, his hands, and
where his top rode up in the mad struggle. They now began to weld
to his chest and back. No no, no, no no. He
muttered the words over and over. His friend took a step towards him,
but I held out a hand to stop him. What could you do?
The soldier continued to thrash in fear. Anyone who got near him would end
up touching a snare, and there was no coming back from that. His
panic made him as dangerous to us as he was to himself. We had
to watch as the snares ramped up their pressure, dragging him with increasing speed
up and over a cluster of roots. Oh no, Wagner was the first
to notice. The snares did not run over all the roots, They went
through them, under them. Their path was a complicated weave in and out
of ancient bows and roots, don't watch, was all I managed to say,
as his body hit the first of many split directions. As one we
turned away. Anther scrunched the face, trying as hard as she could to
shut out any and all light. Wagner clasped her hands over her ears to
block out the sound of breaking bone, but there was no escaping those screams.
She surely must have heard them, and the remaining soldier, for some
reason, he watched. When it was done, there was only blood slicked
tree, limbs, torn and shredded clothes, and a grown man on his
knees, throwing up and crying from what he had just seen. And behind
us. All around us, all except for a single route ahead, the
snares had returned so many the air thrummed like a dropped guitar, so many
it was hard to see further than a few meters in any direction, So
many that the message they sent was clear. After all, the timing of
the first snare could not have been an accident. Whatever lay them was telling
us as loud as it could, there's no turning back. We did not
hear the soldiers cries, but we heard the struggle. I'm still not sure
what happened, only that by the time we turned, he was one foot
off the ground, his mouth a mask of twine so thick it resembled a
writhing nest of earthworms, a faceless body floating, his limbs shivering from the
overwhelming agony. God, I hope that if he can die of pain,
it at least happens quickly, and his face a quivering, ever shifting bundle
of blood red. The sight was like a nightmare, and it was all
the worse that we hadn't even seen it happen. If it hadn't been for
one of his shoes falling off as he had a seizure, we might never
have even known he was gone. But that wasn't the worst of it.
No, the worst was that he came back. Wagner noticed first. She
was already at the rear when it became apparent to her that another person had
floated up behind and was now just a few meters away. She mewed a
desperate cry for help, and Samantha and I turned in unison. The man
who had been taken just an hour before had resumed his position at the back
of the group. He bobbed along the woodland floor, but his feet did
not touch the ground. If we approached, he moved away, just like
the others, but unlike them, he was being paraded in full view,
close behind, to make sure we stayed on track. If we took a
step, he took a step as well, bouncing along in mock imitation of
us. Whatever had happened to him in the canopy. He looked broken,
now, crunched, crumpled, lado squeezed in a fist of an angry child,
sunken eyes and a toothless mouth hung low, his dislocated jaw swinging freely
as saliva collected on a swollen tongue, just like the mannequin with a stiff
arm. The twine moved him and gestured for us to carry on. At
last, after the hours had gone on for so long, the sky turned
a dull gray, ready for nightfall. We found it a clearing in the
woods as large as any stadium. And there before us lay what I could
only describe as a congregation. And like many great gatherings held in secret and
silence, they knelt in supplication, heads pressed to the floor, skin and
hair withered away or released, marred by the filth around them, that they
were hard to tell apart. Individual identity meant little in this crowd. The
clothes, too, were close to falling apart. But all these people on
their knees. Somehow, the shoes still told the story. Leather boots,
rogues, moccasins, slippers, trainers, chucks, nikes, doc martins,
boomers to millennials, Three generations of a town brought to their knees, right
and colorful, stern and business like. The elderly and the younger like lay
before us, dead men and women praying to a woman bound in twine.
She was not another floating marionette. This was immediately apparent. Her features were
not hidden, her skin not marred by soil, Her hair, a rich
chestnut brown, was long and flowing. Her clothes, what little we could
see beneath a cocoon of red twine, was a pale white gown. But
time had not left her alone. Her head was a withered skull, her
mouth a livering gape, A corpse as surely as any other, but free
from the abuse of a life. On the forest floor where she floated high
amongst the trees, thousands of red snares emerging from her body to suspender in
the center of an explosion of red lines that radiated out from her core.
Beneath her lay the remnants of an ancient bonfire. Above her, the branches
and canopy had been scorched black, but the woman appeared to have been untouched
by the flame. A ghostly image of death. She was like something out
of a Renaissance painting, beautiful and haunting, other worldly and divine. The
sight of her made my heartbreak, even if I couldn't say, why,
Who is she? Wagner asked, her voice choked with tears. All at
once, the bodies turned to face us, moving from their bad position just
enough to fix us with vacant, cloudy eyes. Greg was one of those
many. I spotted him nearby, still a child. He glared at me
with empty sockets that seemed darker than any shadow, like a flicker of his
betrayal remained alive within him. Had he warned that furious expression For all these
years, I wanted to answer Wagner's question, but the answer froze in my
throat. I had no definitive proof, but couldn't see the betrayal, and
the woman's face couldn't see the hatred in a hollow eyes God. Being stood
there, it felt wrong, felt dangerous. It felt like I just wondered
into chernobyl. I was making direct contact with the elephant's foot. Whoever that
woman was, she radiated hate the same way the sun radiates heat. Whatever
the details of her, there was no mistaking the intensity of her contempt for
us. I'd spent decades wondering what force or creature could hate my town so
much they would torture us. For nearly three decades, looking at her,
I understood easily where that cruelty came from. A witch burned? Perhaps I
never heard of that in our history, and who burns a witch in the
nineties? But who knows what happens in the deep woods? Who knows what
atrocities are committed in the dark? And so far from watching eyes? Then
again, did she need justification to hate us? A part of me felt
like I was standing before a god of some kind, and who knows what
they do or do not take offense to? After all, do you explain
to an aunt why you crush it? As if hearing my thoughts, she
turned to face me, dead but alive, rotting bud whole, and for
a brief passing instant I saw enough to render the world white, for blood
to come bubbling out of my ears in a warm stream. I wouldn't notice
for hours more. And then, after that silence darkness, my final thought
was the realization that I'd been right. I had just heard a God speak.
From the town came church bells. Even from where we sat on the
hood of a car miles away awaiting extraction, I could see the glow in
the tower. The town had come alive at last. Our journey from the
woods had not been alone. Her congregation easily, her thousand rotting bodies floated
down behind us, and she came in tow, looming overall like some nightmarish
puppeteer. Only when we reached the bottom of the hill and passed the first
building did the woman in red move into the lead, where she slowly took
a congregation to the center of the town. There she remains even now,
still floating, still bound in a million threads, but her congregation moved on.
Gregg returned home. My father too, hand in hand with the mother,
the woman he'd loved so much. There wasn't much room for me.
Others had worked to do. Shopkeepers flipped close signs to open, switches were
flicked, barber's poles came to life, Neon signs began to throng, and
glow. Light flooded the nighttime streets as ancient bulbs flickered once twice, and
then finally fell into a steady hum. All of them lifeless bodies, manipulated
by the twine, cloudy eyes, brains as inert as lumps of insulation.
And yet they were animated with just enough hints of a former life as to
make me wonder what exactly the woman in Red had been doing with them up
there for all those years. Either way, for simile was shocking. If
you could ignore all the snares and the strange way its citizens floated and bobbed
along, the town almost appeared normal as life began to slowly flood back in.
It had been a miracle to get electricity back on so quickly, But
the woman in Red brooked no argument. Her demands were many, and if
I hadn't accepted them, she would have boiled my brains right there in that
clearing. What happens when we die? One day, Samantha asked, as
we watched houses light up one by one, what happens if there's a power
cut. She can move the cars on her own butt electricity. I don't
know, I replied, or shaking my head. But already I was thinking
of ways to install a generator, something that Twine could maybe move in emergencies
enough to keep the town going while I took care of the rest. But
I'd really rather not find out what happens if she doesn't get her own way.