Crystal scrambles down the side of Snake Den Ridge, playfully skipping through a mountain laurel tunnel. The harvest moon splashes the sky with swirls of orange and purple twilight, and composes a symphony of weird and wonderful shadows, which flutter throughout the forest. The little girl stops at a small outcropping of bald rock the locals call Grim Knob. She admires the spectacular view. Her gaze darts across the valley below. The dim streetlamps from the tiny village of Emmett’s Cove twinkle in the distance, and an icy breeze whistles through the Eastern hemlocks at her back.
Carefully, she gets down on her hands and knees and crawls over to the edge. She peers over the craggy ledge hesitantly, gazing down the side of the steep cliff. She lays flat on her stomach, rests her chin upon her folded arms. It is a long way down to the boulder-strewn banks of Cold Spring Branch. She can barely hear the distant voice of the talkative creek drifting up into the chilly night.
In a minute, she is racing down the trail again, smiling.
Crystal immediately recognizes the vestiges of old Otis Greely’s pioneer cabin with its three courses of saddle-notched chestnut logs. She traces the stone wall that encircled the farmstead, now overgrown with thick vegetation and inhabited by graceful shadows. She has roosted upon that wall dozens of times, her little legs dangling, while admiring the patches of Dutchman’s pipe and bellwort skirting the trail. Many afternoons she has spent simply watching Yellow-bellied sap-suckers flirting with a nearby tuliptree.
Very few things about this place frighten her anymore. Over the years, she has fostered a deep intimacy with the quiet forest.
Continuing down the side of the ridge, the night grows colder. Stars shiver above the treetops as arctic winds rove across the Appalachian highlands. Too early for snow, but the promise of a cold winter is more than a whisper on the icy breath of October. As Crystal draws closer to Emmett’s Cove, she notices the familiar scent of pine-smoke. The thought of huddling beneath a blanket in front of a stone fireplace conjures up a comforting sensation of warmth in her soul.
The forest grows darker around Dwain Bryson’s place, where sinister pools of uncanny gloom rally to blot out the moonglow.
Crystal approaches the cottage discreetly, focusing on the splinters of sterile fluorescent light seeping through a crack in the drapery. The air here is still and stale, the ground beneath her bare feet sodden and cold. Shielded by an ancient stretch of hardwoods untouched by the logging industry, tucked neatly between two sheer bluffs in an eerie grotto, the secluded plot engenders a sense of unnatural dread in its few visitors. Regional folklore claims the native Americans avoided the place in centuries past, fearful of malignant spirits rumored to haunt it.
Dwain Bryson always shrugged off such superstitious nonsense.
She peeks through the crack in the drapery, studying the small kitchen. A mountain of cookware and plates sits upon the countertop, leaning precariously over the washbasin. Flies hover over a wastebasket overflowing with scraps of raw meat. Crimson droplets speckle the floor.
A stewpot bubbles incessantly on the woodburning stove.
It is just as she remembers it.
Crystal slips inside the cottage unnoticed, creeping through the pools of darkness betrayed by lantern light. Carefully, she creeps from room to room, anxiously trying to find the owner of the place.
The stench billowing from the kitchen makes her gag and choke.
She finds Dwain in the Secret Chamber below the cottage. She glides down the steps stealthily, desperately trying not to disturb him until the time is right. He works frantically, his back to the wooden staircase, his bulky arms in constant motion. Dwain has put on weight. Too much stew.
A steady stream of blood dribbles off the side of the cutting table and onto the floor. Crystal notices the crimson-tinged mop propped against the stone wall in the corner, the carton of discarded bones draped by cobwebs.
She sees the little bleached skulls of twenty children lined up methodically along a shelf on the far side of the room.
“Hello daddy,” Crystal says.
Dwain whirls about, bloodied butcher knife still firm in his hand.
“I’ve come home,” she says.
For an instant, a spark of recognition glimmers in the man’s eyes at the sound of her voice. He squints, trying to identify the little girl cowering in the darkness, but shadows zealously cloak her face. His eyebrows twitch and his brow wrinkles. His lips part as if he might speak, but the words elude him.
“Don’t be afraid, daddy,” Crystal says, an innocent smile blossoming on her face. “I know you won’t hurt me. You promised.”
Dwain Bryson grunts and slowly raises the knife into the dead air of the Secret Chamber. His left hand stretches out menacingly across the darkness, fingers writhing like baby copperheads. The dim glow of recollection quickly gives way to a rush of rage and bloodlust.
Crystal bolts back up the steps screaming, and Dwain takes off after her.
Outside, clouds have eclipsed the harvest moon temporarily and the malevolent murk enveloping Dwain Bryson’s cottage spread gravely through the forest. As Crystal clambers back along the trail, she can hear his heavy breath close behind; his ponderous footfalls sound like angry summer thunder rolling through the mountains. She bounds over rotting logs, fords a slender creek on moss-covered stones. Retracing her steps, she climbs up the steep ridge.
Dwain coughs and sputters a curse under his breath.
She dashes by the stone wall of Otis Greely’s place as the moon casts aside the wispy veil of clouds. Moonglow bathes the forest, and Dwain hesitates, his heart pounding in his chest. He staggers alongside a tuliptree, hands gripping his knees. His butcher knife falls to the forest floor. His health is poor, but he knows he must not allow this girl to slip through his fingers. Only one child escaped him in all his years, and she did not run very far.
Crystal catches her breath as she ascends through a rosebay rhododendron tunnel. Dwain trails her, lingering in some shady tangle farther down the slope. She misses playing hide-and-seek with her brothers and sisters in the Appalachian backwoods; misses hearing her mother’s stories told beside the campfire. She misses wandering through the woods collecting wildflowers to place on her grandmother’s grave.
Dwain bursts out of the darkness and lunges at her, and Crystal yelps. She dodges him narrowly and sprints off down the trail.
“I’ll catch you yet, girl!” Dwain barks, shambling after her as quickly as his legs will carry him.
Finally, Dwain emerges from a snarl of mountain laurel and looks down upon the little girl. Crystal backs reluctantly toward the edge of Grim Knob, eyes fixed firmly to the ground. The wind tosses her blond hair delicately.
“Thought you could get away from me, did you?” Dwain growls. “Ain’t no one can hide from me in these woods. They’re my woods.”
“But daddy,” Crystal whimpers.
“Don’t call me that, girl! I ain’t got no children, not no more.”
“Don’t you recognize me, daddy?” Crystal lifts her head, and the moon paints it full of life and innocence. “It’s me, Crystal.”
Dwain sees the face of his daughter and he shudders. He shambles forward waveringly, staring at the little girl. He wants to run his fingers through her hair, hold her tiny hand, kiss her forehead. He wants to tell her he is sorry for what happened ten years ago.
But he cannot do any of those things, because she knows.
She knows what he did to her mother during the harsh winter a decade ago. Knows how much he had savored the taste, how he had grown addicted to it. She knows what became of her brothers and sisters over the years, what atrocities he had committed to feed his obsession.
Dwain charges Crystal, his eyes pulsing orbs of scarlet rage; his arms outstretched and fingers clasping as they had been ten years ago. Crystal stands patiently as he approaches, shivers as his feet slip on the cold rock. He sails straight through her and plunges over the ledge.
Crystal sheds a tear and glances up toward the star-speckled sky. As the echo of Dwain’s dying cries fade in the distance, she, too, fades and joins the weird and wonderful shadows set aflutter throughout the forest by the harvest moon.
