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thelindenpapers · 1 month ago

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Excerpt from a horror short story/novella I keep toying with, called "The Mountain".

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When we measure all the things that went into making your being on this world, you can know very well that how you have been shaped and how you have been made to live is not your fault.

Yet, it is embarrassing.

And any assignation of fault, whether yours or others, never changes the effects of you on those around you.

You want to go. So badly. You just want to go.

Still, you know.

It is not your intention to die on the Mountain. You must reach that one particular spot.

…And you are hungry. Energy flagging, movements slowing, having run all day.

In your search for food, your sense of smell discovers even more hunger.

In a battered tent lit by a dim electric lantern, you find a dirty child: bruised, sleeping, and smelling of weakness.

Well...

Now, whatever you find, you will share.

You force as much quickness as you can from your limbs, looking for sustenance.

You try to at least seek it out where the faces will be fresh and full-fleshed: the insides of the houses decorated, comfortable, and quiet.

To take from those who can spare.

It isn’t too hard to find.

The proverbial pie on the window-sill stands literal: steaming in the cool night breeze; smelling profusely of nuts, berries, butter, spices, and honey.

You are nothing, and have nothing to offer, but you try anyway.

On the sill, you place a woven round of grass, feathers, and seed beads about the size of your palm, with a pretty seashell at center… handmade last Summer, which was the last time you saw The Sea.

You quietly chant at the corners and seams of the house: wishing it well and whole and loved – though, you are no witch, and understand that wishes do nothing, and that bothers you and makes you feel silly for even bothering....

…But you do not matter. The child, to which you return, does.

You put a nearby cloth over her mouth, and wake the child.

“Shhhhh.”, Your finger over your bizarre lips.

She is frightened, but nods.

You step back, and break the pie in half, pushing one half towards her.

“This was stolen.”, you tell her quietly. “After you eat it, you must leave. Or else they will think you did this.”

…She thinks you a fever dream.

But she eats with desperation as you quickly leave; and you know that, once she has gained strength from this food, lucidity will find her, and she will know you were real.

She will move onwards, for sure. To a new life, you hope. A safe one.

But you choose a path through the dark, and make messy tracks along it: heading well away from her, in the direction of nothing; hoping that it will help divert any searches away from her…

You push yourself until you find a deep little nook within the rocks where you can dine.

...The eating is sweet.

Still oven-warm, the golden-browned textures are flaky and crunchy and juicy and soft.

The ingredients so fresh that your senses taste the grains in the pie crust, the rain and the minerals of this mountain in the berries, the flowers of the mountain in the honey, the woody resin of the trees of this mountain in the nuts, the grass of the mountain in the milk in the butter….

The sweetness of the honey and raw sugars perfectly balanced by some subtle undercurrent of savory herb you never knew, and the acidity of lemon and citrus juices.

A king could not have demanded a better feast.

The hot meal awakens your thirst.

You remember the cream in the jug on the counter just beyond the sill, next to a cooled pitcher of fresh-brewed tea, but are embarrassed at the idea of going back to take from either without absolute necessity.

You instead follow your senses, and quench your thirst in a nearby fresh-water stream; stopping to watch it flow, and to clean your hands and nails, and to splash the clear mountain water over your face and neck…

Walking a little further, you find a little corner to rest in: a clearing, a ledge, on a level apart from and above the mountain pathways.

You sit, and lean your back against a large, aged walnut tree…

As you rest, you sing.

It isn't a lovely voice.

It's a lot like the places on the mountain where the humans do not go.

There is only the vaguest sense of time, though the rhythm is sure as it waxes and wanes; chaotic with shifting bright and shadow.

Vibrant where it is abundant. Hopeless where it droughts.

Something in it is keening: but because you are the one singing it -- you who are not human, and yet, who do not belong wholly to nature -- the keening is not wild nor freed enough to make it Live.

Your loneliness and frustration give it a sadness that nature does not know, and half-ruins the sounds…

It is a song not meant to be heard, so you don't care.

Pouring yourself heedlessly into it, knowing well that these are some of the last sounds you will make.

…Yet, ears find it.

The ears, set beneath smooth waves of curled dark-brown hair, belong to the full house to which they were walking home: carrying tired hands that smell of fire and coal and clay.

The sound of his approach makes you to stop immediately.

You get to your feet, and crane your neck to see, cautiously observing his search…comfortable that you are adequately hidden in the night….

But, in fact, you remain curious too long, forgetting both who you are and your aim and your need to stay unseen -- so, when he finds the vague pathway up towards the sounds he heard, you are taken completely aback, and panic.

The chipped off facing of stone from which this ledge split long ago is ten feet taller than the twenty that you can jump: too sheer and smooth to climb.

You try and force your way through brambles on the other side of the ledge, thinking to jump down…but further in, the tangles and the thorns make a wall far too dense to pass.

With a quiet curse, you scramble back out: your rough, sparsely-furred hide covered in welts, scratches, and cuts.

You could climb the huge nearby tree, but there are no leaves to conceal you: its branches gone early to Autumn's sleep.

…You can see him clearly now, but he has not yet rounded the turn past the boulders leading up, that he can see you.

"Hello? Anyone there?", he calls, searching the shadows in an already dark night.

"Hello!", you manage in your best phone voice, making one last attempt to avoid an encounter, "I am just here resting for a moment. I am fine, only a woman traveling. It's okay. I am leaving now, so you should go."

The click of his phone light is almost comical.

Like a spotlight turned on a housemate who has snuck downstairs for 4am ice cream…

He is utterly frozen.

…

You stand there awkwardly.

It occurs to you to try to assume a casual posture that you saw in a magazine once, but you're pretty sure you don't nail it.

Your large dark eyes might soothe, were one of them not ringed and threaded through by wires.

"What. The. Fuck!!"

"I mean no harm.", you raise your arms with huge open hands straight above you. You tilt your head – forgetting that it adds to your strangeness, rather than softens it, as it might in another human being.

“What the fuck are you!!!?”

…

The temper climbs in your throat.

You are so so tired of this reaction…but…with quick, cold calculation of who he is, who you are, what this world is, what he is used to…

Can you blame him?

You are not normal.

So, as usual, you carefully catch the tail of your temper, yanking it back like an aggressive pet dog in front of new neighbors: with a sheepish smile.

You blurt out something meant to be funny, attempting to allay his concerns; adding, “It would take a while to explain, but if you really want to know—”,

As usual, nothing you can say helps.

Stumbling backwards in fear, his feet tangling in the brush, he falls, head landing on stone.

…You kind of want to cry.

But, with sharp self-reminstration, you force yourself back to task.

You know, from experience, that no help comes, when you cry.

You must manage this yourself.

Blinking your eyes clear, with cold calculation, you take a deep breath and try to focus on the man's current status:

Alive? Or dead?

And to what degree?…

You carefully crouch over him, leaning slightly forward; watching carefully, sifting the air with your nostrils, ears twitching and listening closely.

He's breathing.

Unconscious; and, you note with relief, that the wound looks not too bad.

Thus reassured, your eyes cannot help but gaze: sliding along their freckled skin, as it clings comfortably and sure to their human hands, their human arms, their human neck.

Such luxury.

Just for a moment, you dream.

Your hand reaches out, towards theirs, so slowly.

Delicate and careful as you can.

Yet, the closer you get, the more heat pulses in your veins, your arteries, your capillaries, emitting that yellow-orange glow: beginning to smoke even before the touch.

You bite your lip, like a prayer. Desperate to ignore your realities.

But even passed out, their skin twitches, sensing the danger of fire.

A small, strangled sound escapes your throat: the horrific, intrusive thought of their hand blistering and burning beneath yours makes you STOP…

…You know better.

Yanking back your hand, you stretch smoothly from your crouch, standing straight, staring down, face a mask. A switch flipped.

…You can't even touch him to help him.

You settle for what you can do.

You pile leaves upon him, to insulate him from the gathering autumn mist and cold; and lope back to the house where the pie-maker's voice is raised, seeking.

You bang on the side of the house, rattle the nearby shed, and run before they can see -- but not quick enough that they can't glimpse the movement of branches in your wake, and note the direction in which you sprint -- towards the fallen one, with their fallen phone light still shining -- and so the woman grabs her garden rake and follows.

From a tree beyond the path, thick with stubborn red leaves, you watch the matron find and attend to their younger cousin.

…You watch knowing that they will be helped, and that that is good.

Watching, with a warm feeling, the tender care that the matron provides...

Understanding, also, that these humans will always help in ways that you cannot.

Because, to do that, you have to have hands that do not burn.

And you have to know how to help.

To know what it is to be human.

And you know that you don't know…

This is the third knowing that you won't need anymore; and the letting go of it lightens you so much, you suddenly feel you might float into the sky.

And you want to…

But this isn't the place to float away.

You don't intend to die on the Mountain.