Falling Leaves — A Horror Story
Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash
I am waiting for you.
I crouch by the leaden hulk of the dying tree at the end of your garden. When you spoke to the man with the beard, in overalls, I saw you. I remembered the inflection in your voice, with strangers.
He will offer to take the tree away, to dig the roots from the ground, and make the soil good. He will offer a good price, and you will shake hands. Like men do.
I stood by the railway line that passes by the back of your new house, watching as you stepped under the branches sagging with the weight of the dead leaves. I felt you shiver as the wind surrounded you, the leaves rustling and falling about your shoulders.
I saw you step back to where the man stood writing something in a notebook. He handed you a slip, which you glanced at, the thundering traction of the passing train covering my screams.
I watched you the week before when you stood with her. You were by the tree for the first time. I gazed into her face, from just far enough away. I could feel her soul was poor as you gestured outwards towards the knotted roots and ivy gathering around the base of the tree. You spoke to her without need to listen.
You are within her now.
I saw your muddied fingers reach round her waist, hooking a finger through her belt, drawing her towards you to take her lips with your greed. I closed my eyes, and sank into the leaves to wait for the rains from the bleak skies resting above me. A creature howled from the fields beyond the house then fell silent.
There is no memory of how long I have been here. You are young with her, but she grows ever older. I see the darkness coming, as you call for an end to the winter, kicking at the dead plants, scratching for life in the soil. She watches you, the anger you once shielded amok again. She falls distant, as you rage war with what is hopeless.
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The house sits where you first found it together. A distance from the town, enmeshed in staggered fields. There is nothing.
I am waiting for you.
I watch you each night, lighting the candle in the window. A present from her. I can read the engraving, even as it slowly melts away, the light of the flame flickering across the room where you sit together, sinking into the evening.
I can feel your touch as you reach for her, your calloused palms stroking the hair that knots towards the turned up collar of her shirt. I can sense your desire, roused with whiskey, as you pull her towards you, your fingers curling together against the slight of her resistance. I close my eyes as she presses her hands into your chest, and remember.
I remember.
I am waiting for you.
The wind is high, moving through your house, down the chimney, rustling the papers you keep on the desk under the window. The candle flame almost goes out, dimming sharply, then swirling. I see you look across. I see the pause in your eyes.
I was there then. The light across my face. An instant. You had nothing in your eyes. I saw you slump back, and pour whiskey with a shaken hand.
I am waiting for you.
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The darkness rises and falls as day passes day. The light flashes across the sky, heralding the rain that will come. The rain that will never leave until all is drowned.
Not yet.
I have a shelter, a place to wait, hidden from you until the time comes. The sticks bound with creeping foliage arc above my head as the leaves bed beneath me.
Before.
Before was a far away place. It is a far away place. Will it be forever? I mark the time. In my head. A metronome, tick then tock then tick then tock and on and on over and over and over again.
Before. When it was you and I.
Now.
I went into your house. For the first time. I felt her in everything, in the angles of the paintings she lifted onto the walls of each room, the scent in the air of fresh flowers, a dream. Before everything began to fade and bleach into her desperation. Your despair.
You have moved so far away. So far away from where it happened. You came to this place with her. To this house. You called out, ‘a fresh start!’ as she held you close. I sensed the brooding pain behind your eyes as you met her kiss. The churning despondency run roughshod though your cascading thoughts.
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I climb higher, the branches bending as I push my hands forwards then to one side. A bird rises with others from nearby, swooping in panic over your roof and across the now barren fields. There are no stars in the sky. There is no warmth in this place. I have made it that way.
Do you lie awake in the fearful hours so I cannot take your dreams?
I watch as she undresses, hurried, alone.
I see you.
The morning. I am sheltered from a rising storm. The ground is quiet as the creatures hide. The sky empties of birds, and fills with bulbous clouds. It is silent.
You have been out. Before she woke. A pretext of milk from the small shop a mile down the lane. On foot, you crossed the fields, over the rotting stiles, under the trees with fear overwhelming your heart.
I know when you think of me.
I watch you hang your coat through the frosted window of the door into the kitchen, your boots marking the flagstones with the dirt gathered in the village. I hear you call out to her, because that’s what’s expected, and you do not wait for a reply before you tell her the shop was closed, the board fresh across the windows, something scrawled in red across the door.
I mouth the words as you say then to her as she comes down the stairs, her gown drawn around her against the biting cold and her fear of you.
I
AM
WAITING
FOR
YOU
You say the words. The words that were written.
I say the words as I wrote them.
I know you think of me.
I know you think of me when you lie with her.
My breath frosts the window as she offers to make tea, the stove rumbling for need of repair. I can feel your breath coming faster, I see you sit quickly before she turns. You had seen the words before.
I am waiting for you.
The clatter of the dead bird comes down the chimney, spilling out onto the hearth, the puff of soot around it’s gaping beak makes you shout and stumble beyond the table. The bird screams back at you in it’s death mask.
She screams.
I tap at the window, and watch your eyes lift from the embrace. your tears washing what you see away, but I know you are thinking of me.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
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A week to go. I wait for the time, and mark the days until your birthday.
My face is gone now, but I can still see. I look in the reflection of the pond by the shed where you keep all the tools to make this place better. My face is gone, but still I bleed from the wound in my neck. I wear a mask to cover myself. Something I fashioned from a sheet I took from your washing line. A sheet I slashed into strips one morning while she lay in the bath, the door locked against you.
The dead bird lies tossed into the undergrowth where I lie, my laughter lost in the rain. I use the soot from the birds wings to decorate my mask. A smile of course, to compliment the eye holes.
My eyes have gone too, but still I see.
It’s almost your birthday now. Almost. I feel myself humming the song, Happy Birthday to You! Happy Birthday to You! I am almost in tune. Almost. The gale takes my words and throws then towards the house where you struggle to get the windows closed and drag the curtains across this new world you have taken.
Will you take her this night? It has been so long for you, and you have waited. Will you demand of her what you demanded of me?
I can see. I can hear.
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I am in the house now, listening for you.
I know you will come down in the cold dead hours, when you can’t sleep and she lies cold across the communal bed. I know you will come to flee the nightmares that I bring each night. I know that you will come to me.
It will be your birthday after all.
You’re thinking of me. Have you done to her what you did to me? When you take her, does it happen all over again? Do you have the knife by the bed, under the pillow, ready? The same knife?
I have become all. I am everything that ever lived and will die. All is dead now. Nothing that ever kept you warm and safe is left. I have become all.
I can hear your dead footsteps scraping the floorboards above. The clock on the landing offers the ticks and the tocks that fill my head. A booming as it calls out the darkest hour. Twelve times, louder each time, until it is as silent as I become all.
It’s your birthday now! Happy Birthday to You! Happy Birthday to You!
Happy
Birthday
to
you
I am waiting for you. I am waiting for you now as you come from that room where you lay with her, and you come from that place of death and come to me. I have become all.
My face is gone, so I wear the mask as you come into this place. I see your eyes fall on the gaping wound in my neck that is all that is left of me now, and it is time. You scream.
I waited for you.
I
waited
for
you
