Why The Willow Weeps (III) (455 hits)
Category: GeneralRating: 1.8 on 6 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by r0fl (View user info) at 2006-08-14 18:59:32 EDT
Part I: http://www.ubersite.com/m/91274
Part II: http://www.ubersite.com/m/91715
April 2nd, 1999
Mid-Afternoon
"So, you just... chew 'em?" asked Brandon (again, will he ever shut up?), a sense of puzzlement, anxiety, and excitement leaping through his corneas into and filling their wooded sanctuary.
"Yeah, dude, just slop some Skippy on 'em, chew, and let it roll."
The voice of Carter O'Connell was smooth, deep, trusting. He had been Adam's best friend since their freshman year, and was as educated as someone could be on these mushrooms they were about to ingest.
"It's all organic man," he continued. "What's the worst that can 'appen?"
Adam nodded in agreement (convinced - it didn't take much), simultaneously tossing the Skippy towards him with his left hand. Him, his brother, and father, were all left-handed. He learned the odds of that once in some science class, but it escaped him now.
Carter's younger brother, a sophomore, Aden poked their makeshift fire. There wasn't a real purpose to the fire itself - more than a self-esteem booster that they indeed could muster one up in the evening when they needed it. With the wooded canopy above them, it did get quite cool at night.
Adam was almost done chewing his dose, bits still stuck to the roof of his mouth. The primitive fire crackled with Aden's prodding, the kindling submitting to flames one by one.
"How long did'ju say these would take?" Brandon asked (obviously).
"Depends on what you ate earlier and everything else, it's not an exact science or anything," Carter replied. "You'll know it when it happens."
They had been on these trips before (no pun intended), usually once a month during the summer without school, but this had been the first year of experimental drug use. Aden and Carter had brought a tiny Ziplock bag filled with marijuana one time, LSD another. Brandon had declined that one, and everyone was acting really silly, but they all had a good time and so did he.
Behind him, twigs and branches cracked under pressure from something, and he and his brother looked toward the general direction.
"Probably a squirrel or something," Aden replied. "There as big as cats 'round here, ya know." He seemed to know everything, or at least thought he did.
"Of course I know, you tell me every time you can bring it up." Brandon shot back.
The sun shone down on them from high in the sky, through the meshwork of leaves and branches, and on direct hits, was quite warm and refreshing. The dirt floor of the woods quickly conducted their body heat, and they had been cold since they sat near the fire.
"Shit," Carter said, almost yelling as he picked up his phone. He sounded irritated, like knowing you left your school ID on your dresser at home when you walked to class.
He reached in his pocket, picking up his cell phone and flipped it open. "Anybody got service?"
"I do," Aden responded, tossing his phone to his brother. It rotated in the air before it was snatched up, clutched from its trajectory, by his brother. Carter began dialing Shelly's number, and walked away, his Nike Shox leaving four circular prints where his heals stepped on the dirt path.
Shelly, Adam thought, taking a deep breath without him realizing it. They had been in the same orientation seminar. They had organized it alphabetically, his last name being Szetela, hers Swotinski. He looked above, to their ceiling of foliage, and noticed it opening up. It wasn't due to a brief breeze, but the trees, they were moving. A deep, visceral growl bellowed from the few trees near them, and the hair on his arms and neck stood up. He looked at Aden.
"Yeah dude, I saw that shit too. Put out the fire, let's go to the clearing."
They had agreed on this earlier, as soon as the trip started, to extinguish the fire - as they could probably get hurt - and move to the clearing about 50 yards from their site, and stare at the sky and the rolling hills.
They laid down on the thick grass, dandelions sprouting in no particular semblance of a pattern, heads to the grass and eyes to the sky. The overcast sky gave them numerous meteorological shapes to hallucinogenically observe. Carter returned, muttering "women..." (he always did that), and placed his head near the others, forming a plus-sign of adolescent men, tripping in a deserted field, staring at the clouds and taking in nature.
The clouds began to take shapes. They always did, Adam thought, if you looked long and hard enough. He could remember when he was a lifeguard at the state pool; he practically was paid to stare at clouds all day. They took all sorts of shapes. These shapes were different; they moved; they interacted, they entertained. The sun dropped a few notches in the sky, the young men dozed, and the fair skinned brothers, the O'Connells, if you couldn't figure that out, took a little sunburn to their cheeks and noses, their Irish blood towards the top of their skin today.
"I know this stuff is reserved for campfires and whatnot, but do you guys wanna hear a story? I know it sounds lame, but, like, a ghost story? It's kinda local." Adam asked.
"What do you mean, kinda local?" Carter answered, as Optimus Prime and Megatron, both in cloud-form, battled it out above their altered minds.
"I mean... it centers around this house... which is kind of close by. About an half-hour drive, if I'm not mistaken."
"Just tell the fuckin' story," Brandon hissed, and wiped his nose. It had been running all week, worse since they started camping. His allergy pills hadn't been doing the trick, but these mushrooms probably didn't help much either.
Adam stubbed his thumbs in his pockets, his other four fingers waving outside, tapping each leg alternatively, exhaling deeply, and wondering where to begin.
"There's this old Victorian house..." he began.
Owned and built by Thomas Parker after World War Two, it sits up two hills over, about a few miles East. He was an experienced woodsman before the war, but followed in his father's footsteps (who fought in the Great War, the War-To-End-All-Wars, that one was called) and enlisted. He had scored high on the placement exams and physical fitness, but opted for infantry, like his pops.
He actually landed in Normandy on D-Day, survived and thrived, the story goes. He was part of the offensive that pushed the Germans back, and he was one of the infantry who helped liberate the concentration camps. He was one of the first soldiers in Auschwitz.
After the sites he saw, the bodies and live men who by all other scientific knowledge should be dead, their teeth rotten and displaced, skin clinging to bones, and in end-stage mental psychosis, he never re-enlisted, disgusted at what humans are capable of. He saved up a significant amount of money, cleared out a stretch of land in these woods - much like the one we're lying in now, and built a cabin for his family and live off the land. It was teeming with wild life then, rabbits and deer and such, but something went wrong. He and his family moved up here, and suffered through some of the worst winters on New England record. They were never heard from again.
Ole Parker was too proud to crawl back to civilization for supplies, and went mad. He locked his family in the house - his wife and younger daughter - and they supposedly starved to death.
"Total fuckin' buzzkill," Aden whined, getting up and brushing the thighs of his blue-jeans clean - clean enough for a young man at least.
"Hey man, I asked if you wanted to hear a story, and no-one objected." Adam shot back. "An' you never let me finish, asshole."
He went on to finish, talking of the myths that seeped from Parker's cabin and accompanying garden. More twigs broke towards Aden and Carter's side this time, almost immediately dismissed.
They say as his family died, his younger daughter first of natural causes, then his wife by his own hands later on, that he buried them and planted large Weepin' Willow trees beneath them. The roots would feast on the bodies, and sink them even deeper into the earth, and they were never found. Willow trees encircle his cabin to this day, but nobody has the balls to go digging. Some of them are quite large.
"I gotta spade in my Jeep," Carter shouted, the mushrooms wearing off. "Let's go fucking exhume some bodies!" He emphasized the 'zoom' in exhume.
"It's not that simple," Adam stated, eyes now as cold as the dirt floor they sat in earlier. "It's said that those who go looking for bodies, they don't come back. It's been said that people have seen him - his ghost I mean - walking around with a large shovel, methodically replicating his movements, burying his family over and over."
But it was too late, and the boys, both O'Connells and Brandon Szetela, were stumbling through the path like drunkards attempting to walk the line in a sobriety test - towards the Jeep - and towards what would end up being a defining point in all their lives. Lives that would be changed forever.
Two would never come back.
User Reviews
Submitted by r0fl (user info) at 2006-08-15 08:40:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by laika (user info) at 2006-08-15 04:32:58 (#)
Ranking: 1
unless of course you come up with a twist that explains why a
seemingly straighforward sentence doesnt mean what it seems to.
--
Well, I fully expect you to readjust that rating after the next one.
Submitted by laika (user info) at 2006-08-15 04:32:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
you should have left out the last line.
it crosses the line from foreshadowing, which improves a story,
to just telling us what will happen- which diminishes suspense.
unless of course you come up with a twist that explains why a
seemingly straighforward sentence doesnt mean what it seems to.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-08-15 01:53:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You improve constantly. And you were pretty good to start with.
Submitted by JMG114 (user info) at 2006-08-15 01:04:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Swank.
Submitted by HighVoltage900 (user info) at 2006-08-14 22:29:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm exhausted dude but I will read this.
Submitted by shitfuck (user info) at 2006-08-14 20:55:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Enjoyed.