In the Forest of Light and Dark (22 page)

     “So, you’re a witch then?” Savannah then asked suddenly having perked up, and I wasn’t totally quite sure if she had asked a question or not. “I thought I recognized you. You’re the girl who used to hang around Lyanna’s house before she died.” She then said after suddenly having figured out who Katelyn was.
     “That’s right. I am a witch.” Katelyn boasted proudly. “And, it’s true… I had spent a lot of time with Lyanna Barrett before she passed away.”
     “Well, then it’s understandable of why your knowledge of Abellona Abbott and what happened to her is
so wrong—giving the fact that you got your information from Lyanna Barrett. You should also probably be worried that you’re most likely on Abellona’s shit list for having befriended her. I would assume that an understudy of Lyanna Barrett would have a significant target on her back from the witch of Mount Harrison.”
     “I’m not worried about Abellona Abbott.” Katelyn scoffed sounding cocky again. “I can protect myself from her.”
     “I’d be worried if I were you.” Savannah then told her as her brows narrowed like she was squinting into the sun. “Abellona Abbott is a very powerful witch, and this being her forest,
her
home, she’s not one you want to  mess with. You know that they buried her somewhere up on this mountain?”
     “Yeah, so legend has it, but
where
is anybody’s guess. She’s never been found.” Katelyn then said as she herself peered out over the forest and Mount Harrison’s peaks. “Nobody has ever found her gravesite yet, but they say she’s buried under a piece of obsidian pulled from the pits of Hell.”
     There was then a sudden smacking of wings, and we all looked out up over the pines to see the crows taking back to the sky. A few of them shedding thick black feathers as they ascended.
     “Looks like they got their kill,” Savannah said as she began to stand back up from the rock ledge that we were resting on. “I think that I better be getting back now.” She then told us as she smoothed out the wrinkles that had formed on her dress with her delicate hands.
     “Yeah, we should probably be heading back now too.” I said, getting up off the bedrock myself. “I wanna get back home before my parents do and they find that there’s a kitten in our garage.”
     “You’re not keeping these things as pets, are you, Cera?” Savannah asked sounding appalled.
     “I was thinking about it.” I answered her suddenly feeling as if, for some reason, I needed to ask her for permission to do so, but then I said after shrugging off her abrasive attitude. “It’s just a kitten, and I reckon it probably would’ve died if I didn’t take it in, so...”
     “You should’ve taken my advice about these things.” Savannah responded now sounding imperious. “These things are evil, and they can hurt you. You shouldn’t get too close to them.”
     “I’ll keep that in mind.” I told her if only perfunctory and as an effort to appease her. I then told her, “But I don’t think a kitten is all that much of a threat. Besides
,
you said it yourself—I have bigger things to worry about, don’t I? I’m the great, great, great, great, great, granddaughter of someone who had pissed off a witch, and now she’s out to get me.” I said that last part to Savannah jokingly and with bombastic theatrics just to be a wiseass, but I don’t think she got my sarcasm, or if she did she remained impassive.
     Katelyn and I then said our goodbyes to Savannah, and we headed back down river towards my house. We had stuck close to the river’s banks edging along the very cusp of the forest until we had come up to a road bridge that spanned the river. Not wanting to be seen by anyone that might have driven down the road, we elected to walk underneath the bridge hugging close along its substructure before hopping up onto a small, cement walkway that worked its way under the belly of the roadway.
    Swimming against the river’s current I could see small brook trout that jetted back and forth past us in the clear water like a bunch of eight-inch torpedoes. And above our heads, we heard the telltale sounds of traffic rumbling across the bridge, the vehicles wake echoing throughout the cavernous space under the bridge like a freight train. To our backs on the bridge’s underside wall was a message written in a watermelon-colored shade of green spray paint that read,
Lovienthal and Chuckles was here
, along with giant erect penis done up in red and white paint that spouted its payload into the air like a fountain.
   “What the hell
is
a Lovienthal?” Katelyn had asked me.
     I had no clue, so I just shrugged and said, “Beats the hell out of me. Probably just some fat slob with nothing better to do than vandalize public property.” We then moved on from the bridge continuing to head in my homes direction.
   A little further down river we had to climb back up the bank and escarpment as we made our way through uncut field grasses and prickly nettles because the slabs of bedrock that we had hiked on had abruptly ended. As we ascended back up the slopes and approached the outskirts of the pines that made their home in the lower part of the forest. We took notice once again of the crows circling high above us, as if they were seemingly following us, and I wondered just what they were tracking this time.
     The sun was starting to move off from its high point in the sky and the air was beginning to cool and start moving again as the breeze—which was much-needed, and a welcomed surprise as I felt the beginning onset of a hangover creeping in—began picking up.
     As we hung close to the leading edge of the pines I could hear the sounds of sun-dried and baked pine needles crunching under our feet. It wasn’t much further from that point that began to smell the faint whiffs of something rotting wafting up into the air. It was weak at first, but then grew robust as we pressed on through the colonnade of trees. A moment later the stench hit us like a punch to the face. And, I was about to ask Katelyn, “What the hell is that
?
” when I saw what it was lying before us on the forest floor. It was one of the rabbits that I had seen inhabit this part of the pines a few weeks earlier. It had been half eaten, the rest of it left to rot in the still warm September sun. Most of its hind legs were already picked clean to the bone, and its gray fur was left scattered about the area of the assault like discarded fast-food wrappers. One of its eyes had also been plucked clean out of its skull, but not eaten. It rested forlornly about four feet away from the rest of the carrion looking back on its body as if it had watched whatever liberated it like a camera lens. Thick maggots worked their way through the left over muscle and sinew gorging themselves on the spoiled flesh. Their white bodies wiggling to-and-fro through the putrefied black meat of the rabbit reminding me of static on a television.
     “
Uh, what-the-fuck…”
I said in a fading whisper as we leered over it.
     “It must have been one of those crows Savannah had said she’d seen stalking the rabbits earlier.” Katelyn said as she squatted down near the carcass. “Look, he was almost home too, the poor thing.” She then nodded her head towards a hole in the ground about three feet away. “Another half second and he would have made it.”
    
How could a bunch of crows do this?
I thought.
Aren’t crows scavengers? I’ve never seen a crow attack another animal.
     The winds then quickly picked up giving us another shot of Eau-de-la roadkill, and I then suggested that we should keep on moving. Katelyn had agreed but not before saying some more of her mumbo-jumbo while waving her hands around idiotically before finally having touched the slain rabbit on its head.
     After seeing her place her hand on it, I told her, “Come on, you’re gonna catch a disease.” and she then finally left the dead animal alone electing to catch back up with me after I had started to walk away.
     We hadn’t made it though about no more than two look-sees away from where we’d found the dead rabbit before we came across the carcass of another one, and then another. Soon we had found a bunch of them, torn up and bloody, each in different states of decay.
     I found myself looking around at the carnage in abhorrent amazement—it was a massacre. And, I was about to say something to Katelyn when I heard her gasp and say, “Oh, no…”  I then turned towards her and saw that her face was now sullen, so I asked, “What?” and she said to me pointing with an outstretched index finger, “It’s Popsicle.”
     There on the bedrock that anchored the river embankment was Popsicle. She lay there just like she had when we last saw her sunning herself. Only this time with her belly flayed open wider than a pig at a barbecue. Her guts and entrails spewed out across the bedrock like jam on toast, and she appeared to have had parts of her viscera stolen.
     “Son-of-a-bitch!” I spat out, speaking more to myself than to Katelyn. “Those miserable mother fuckers could have at least eaten the rabbits they’d killed since they
had
to kill all of them. But, NO! These mother fuckers had to kill everythin’ in the goddamn forest and just take a little bite out of each, like they were at a fuckin’ smorgasbord!” I screamed, and before I even knew it, I had found myself all wrought up and fixing to unleash hell.
     “Come on… She’ll be alright.” Katelyn then said to me as she tried taking me by my arm to pull me away from Popsicle. Like out of sight, out of mind was going to ease my anger somehow.
     I was plenty pissed off though, and I felt myself fixing to pop. So, I yanked my arm away from her yelling back at her scornfully, “What do you mean, she’ll be
alright
? Look at her. What are you fuckin’ blind? She’ll be alright? She’s fuckin’ dead! She’s ripped open from asshole to appetite and her guts are now splattered all over this goddamn rock.”
     “Okay, calm down, Cera. I’m sorry.” Katelyn said, motioning to me with a downward hand gesture. “What I meant to say was
it
will be alright.”
     I knew that she was trying to tiptoe her words around me softly. Her benign demeanor suggesting she wasn’t in the mood for another heated exchange with me for the second time today.
     “Come on. Let’s just get back to your house and check in on Casper. And on my way home I’ll take a shovel with me and bury Popsicle. I’ll even say a few nice words for her too.” Katelyn then suggested, but I was no longer listening.
     I knew that it wasn’t her that I was pissed off at, or even that we had just found Popsicle, a stray that I had just met several hours earlier, lying dead on the rocks next to the river. I really knew that, deep down, it was something else. It was all the bullshit and stress I’d been bottling up inside of me for the past six weeks. I missed my friends. I missed Saraland where there was nobody out to get me except maybe Ray Boone’s hands on my ass. I missed my old school where people actually liked me and I didn’t have to deal with three snotty, little Yankee cunts trying to make my life a living Hell on a daily basis. And I’d been tired of watching my mama be hurt by the things people had said to and about her. And completely tired of family’s secrets. And I was tired of…
     “FUCK!” I shouted at the top of my lungs. “THIS IS FUCKIN’ HORSESHIT!”
     “Whoa… Take it easy, Cera.” Katelyn said, stepping back away from me.
     “No! I won’t take it easy. I’m sick of this shit. You hear
me? I’m sick-of-all-this-SHIT!” I said screaming at the sky and the mountain, and the forest, and God, and as I spun around, the winds began picking up pushing my hair across my face.
     “Cera, you really need to calm down.” I thought I heard Katelyn say, but at the time I had paid her no mind as I was doing a damn good job at blocking everything out in my fit of rage.
     “Fuck You, Keri. And Fuck You, Laurie. And Fuck You, Hallie. And Fuck You, Meatheads.” I yelled out as I waved double middle fingers up towards the sky as if they could see and hear my gesture from wherever they were. Soon, I felt myself become dizzy and light-headed as I swirled around-and-around putting myself into an almost hyperventilating, delirious state. My vision weakened and my sight started becoming dark around the edges as a chill cut through me that sent waves of goose-flesh over my skin.
     “CERA… You really need to cut this shit out, now!” I distinctly recall hearing Katelyn say at the time, her voice having stepped up an octave or two, but I wasn’t finished yet.
     I fell to my knees with a sense of euphoria coursing through my veins, making my muscles spasm and twitch. I could feel the air pushing on me as if it were working its way underneath me and I was about to take flight. “And, FUCK YOU, ABELLONA… DON’T THINK I FORGOT ABOUT YOUR BITCH ASS!!!” I shouted until my lungs were empty.
     And,
with that,
there was a boom, and the skies opened up on us. Torrents of rain and wind began pelting me and Katelyn like we were dinghies lost in a hurricane.
     Another round of lightning struck a pine nearby, and I saw its flash’s intensity emphasized on the darkening background that was now the sky. Fire erupted from the mountainside as the tree that’d been struck burst into flames. Casting from it a warm, inviting glow that I just wanted to consume and have inside me, providing me with more fuel for my hatred.
     I began to laugh as my breath started to come back to me, and Katelyn asked, “Are you happy now?”
     “W-W-What?” I stammered out as I began to wind down and I then began wiping the rainwater from my eyes, making it possible for me to see the outline of her again.
     “Are you happy now?” she asked me again, this time sounding dour. “You did this.” She then said while looking up at the sky and shrugging her shoulders at me.