My father is dead.
The night he died, his body was brought to our house and thrown upon our doorstep. I heard the door opening, and then a strange, stunned silence. I did not need the soft weeping that followed to know what had happened.
I sit in the field at the end of the village, watching the birds flit about the tree branches. So free. So wretchedly free. I let tears blur my vision, let them trickle down my cheek. I open the letter that had come with my father's body, folded upon his chest, now crumpled and tear-stained. I read it once more:
Dear Residents of the Synder Household,
We are grieved to inform you that Henry Synder died last night along with two others in a fatal cave-in. He was found buried in a pile of rubble. We hope you will fare well in the days to come. His presence will be mourned.
Cordially yours,
Edgar Rudyard
Mayor
I fold the letter back up and place it in my pocket. I am drained of all emotion. Yesterday's events came as such a shock, such a traumatism, that even a day after I cannot fully comprehend what has happened. I follow a black bird as it flutters daintily through the lanky blades of grass, to come at a rest on the branch of a nearby tree. It seems to look at me, and I stare back, unblinking. It cocks its head, then soars off. It evaporates into the darkness of the far-off trees.
I start as I feel a hand on my shoulder. Then I relax. I glance up, locking eyes with her for an instant, before letting them fall to the ground.
"He liked to sing," I say. Why does it sound so empty, so alone? Blood trickles down from the words as they waver and soundlessly die in the air.
I hear the Sorina's slender shadow murmur to me. I listen. Cling to its voice.
"A few years ago, I was in this field." She bends down and takes my hands in hers. I feel my eyes gently pulled upward into her gaze. It is not the first time I truly notice her eyes. Such penetrating blue, so vivid a cerulean chroma. Her voice shakes with suppressed tears, but her willingness to finish the story is tangible. "I heard a voice. It was beautiful: so natural, and so pure, that at first I thought it was the birds. But words were interwoven with the melody, and soon I recognized this. I walked through the field, like I was being drawn to the music. Then I saw your father." I stare at Sorina, willing her forward. She has an adroitness with words that captivates me; her lips flow like the ocean her eyes remind me of. "He was sitting against a tree as he sang. I recognized the song. The Tree's Gift." I nod. I know it. I've heard it only once. It was a wet day. "When he saw me, he stopped. We stared at each other. At last I whispered, 'Keep going.'"
"Did he?" I need to know.
"He did. I wanted the song to go on forever, but all songs must come to an end. This is only another song, another beauty, at its end."
Her blue eyes shine with waves that threaten to splash out. I open my mouth to speak, but find that only a choked sob escapes it. I feel tears on my cheeks, and suddenly I am in Sorina's embrace, and I am squeezing her back, weeping. All of my emotion from the past two days comes down on me at that moment: the shock, the sadness, the resentment. I feel Sorina shaking, and I realize she is crying too. Somehow this consoles me; I close my eyes, letting the sobs slowly subside.
We are walking. A field. Trees. The sun is watching us.
Our mouths utter no word. The silence that fogs the air accumulates between us, forming a transparent wall that I somehow do not want to look through. Foreboding dances along the fragile breeze; I watch it disappear into the distance. Laughing. Jeering. What does it want to tell me?
"You need to...to know something." His words seem to drift slowly across the swaying grass, then echo into the forest far ahead of us. I find my feet come to a halt, and in unison he stops as well.
"I will be gone...three years...for...for work." His words seem halted, melancholy.
"Three years." I repeat. I say something, but my words are blurred as they reach my ears. It is a question. I realize it does not matter, does not make a difference.
"Deep, deep underground," I hear him answer in a choked whisper. I gaze up at him and find his image distorted, misshapen.
I wipe away the tears.
He murmurs something about loving me, and then I am in his embrace. Before I close my eyes, I catch a glimpse of a black bird gliding into the forest.
I remember the cave.
Father took me there once, before he had to leave. I can picture it vividly in my mind, the gaping hole of an entrance, the utter tenebrosity that lay within. I begged him not to go, and he laughed and, bending down, hugged me. I clung to him.
It is a long walk. The path is uneven and distorted by the overgrowth of shrubbery, and pampiniform tree roots rise sporadically out of the ground before my feet. Rows of the great botanical pillars of trees extend endlessly into the distance in all directions. A blanket of intertwined branches and leaves shield me from the pale glare of the sunless sky.
I feel compelled to visit the cave again. I had disguised my purpose from Myra and my mother, announcing instead that I would be going into town to buy some turkey, a rare treat that they in their despondence could not refuse. I even started off in the direction of town to circumvent suspicion, but quickly looped back around via a route invisible to the windows of my home.
As I walk I am aware of the path becoming ever more dilapidated. Fallen trees, some recent, some, coated with moss and grasses, hardly recognizable in their degenerated state, obstruct my passage, and the unkempt entanglement of shrubbery that surrounds me gradually causes the path to become thinner and thinner. Soon my arms are brushing against it. Thinner. I am walking briskly now, the bushes whipping against my sides.
Then I feel stone.
At first all I can do is stagger backwards, dazed. I wonder dimly if I have reached the cave already, all logic eluding my subconscious mind. I shake my head. Look up. The gasp that escapes my lips is one of pure shock. Or is it horror? Somehow I cannot decide which.
It is a statue. Of my father.
And perched upon his shoulder, head cocked quizzically, sits a black bird.
Night. Screaming.
Bed empty.
Gone.
Felix.
The cave stares at me.
It is an ominous stare, one of foreboding. The same stare that destroyed my father. Devoured him. Spit him out.
Something pulls me to the cave. Despite its atmosphere of uneasiness, despite its isolated location. I cannot explain it. Half an hour ago, it seemed the reason must certainly have been the statue, but I now know that that could not have been it, for as I walked on, the compulsion did not mitigate. It seems to be pulling me to the cave itself. Yet a difference force warns me to stay away.
I watch it. Wait. Its move.
The cave is dead. The craggy mouth that it is hangs open in lifeless inanimateness, its lips bordered with jagged teeth. It emanates decay: the earth around it is gray and putrescent, visibly becoming less so further and further away.
Inside it is black.
Such a black. The day is gray.
A bird chirps in the distance. One bird. I watched it fly off.
No sound escapes from the cave. Why would any? Yet somehow I regard it as something that is itself a being. Perhaps it is because of the tension that permeates the air between us.
Perhaps because it killed my father.
A being, yes, but inert nonetheless. Thus I view it with ponderousness, instead of anger, despite the fact that the rigidity of that which separates us is almost tangible.
The air smells of nothing here. Not the trees, not the grass. The nothingness of death.
Two others. That's what the letter said. Where are their kids? Shouldn't they be sitting next to me, sharing our mournful feelings? Who are they not to be here with me? I wonder if I know them. I wonder if I've seen them walking down the street, huddled in their jackets, hoping know one can distinguish the pelting rain from their tears. I wonder if anyone could.
Clouds roll in. I had best be leaving. But there is something I must do first.
The alluring force becomes ever more urgent as I near the cave. Then I touch it, and at its zenith, it disappears. I am left with a slight, nagging feeling of uneasiness.
I feel the stone, but my eyes stare into the tenebrosity within. It is almost hypnotic, to ponder its infinite depth, but to find that no external light could venture even just a short distance into the darkness, as if its mouth was but a black wall. It is a flawless, untainted black; it seeps into my head, fills my eyes, drowns me....
My mind unfocused, at first I simply wonder what it is. What it is that is slithering out of the cave. What it is that is coiling around my ankle. What it is that is squeezing....
Then I am on the ground, and my fingers grasp at the rocks, struggling to resist the thing that is pulling me unyieldingly into the abyss.
But of course I cannot.
Cannot.
The blackness consumes me. Twists me, stretches me, delves into my skull.
And yet, as I lie on the cave floor, an agonized hiss explodes above me. I smell smoke. Beneath my eyelids, the sudden flash of light is interpreted as a dull red.
The shadowy tendril, black as the ebony that surrounds it, releases me.
I lunge into the daylight. The cave vomits shadows behind me.
And I am running, blood rapping against my ears. Something follows me.
I do not look back.
