Night Witch: Part III

A short story

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X

Photo by Jayden Yoon ZK on Unsplash

DAY 2

In her dream it was summer. Not the Indian summer of late fall that clung long onto early October air. She was in the pulp of it. The cricket songs of late June buzzed around her, their legs rubbing together in choral unison. It wasn’t just sound. The vibration of their chirping, thousands upon thousands of them, was pulsing beneath her. The ground moved.

She laid beneath a tree, the speckles of sun hot on her face. Green leaves above glittered in golden afternoon, the round of them shaking in a breeze, back and forth like a tambourine. She closed her eyes and felt the warm soak into her skin. Her vision filled with the glowing pink of her eye lids. 

She breathed in deeply. A hint of lavender moved down her throat and coated her tongue. She opened her eyes slowly. The world blurred in the lazy gaze of near sleep. She blinked away moisture, rubbed at her sockets with the bones of her knuckles, the squish around her eyes bubbling. She looked again. Curious. The leaves were not round after all, the coin shape lost between blinks. 

The air had gone quiet. Strangely still. Her mind pinged around for reference. She tried to orient the growing dark vignette of her thoughts around some frame of logic. A little ball of recognition illuminated on a memory. Tornado sirens blaring. Her child self tucked into the dark corner of a cellar, and next to her, on either side, her mother and father. 

But there were no storm clouds. Just a cessation of all breeze and wind, the four corners of the earth held at bay by some great Other. The leaves were still moving though. She pushed herself up onto elbows and watched them. They were twitching in unison. They weren’t leaves. Weren’t leaves at all now that she looked at them. 

They were insect legs, bent and large and green. Tiny prongs like spikes poked out the back or them. They rubbed together incessantly, repetitively. Each time they stroked against each other, like violin bows, a loud buzz echoed and shook the tree. It was getting louder. The buzzing bounced her brain against her skull. It vibrated her face, her lips tingling until she couldn’t take it anymore. Her hands flew to her cheeks. She rubbed violently to counteract the feeling of tiny legs crawling, flicking against the fine hairs on her face.

Then, the tickling turned to pain. Her consciousness came crashing into her body. She was slumped against the white siding, paint peeled and splintered. Her right foot was asleep, the circulation cut off by the jutting edge of a warped wooden plank beneath her. It was digging into her hamstring just above the back of her knee. 

She pushed herself up into a sitting position, evening out the C-Curve in her spine. When she lifted her head her neck ached. All the tendons felt as if they pulled against her spine. She brought her hand to the nape of her neck and massaged. A wasp stung her on the temple.

“Ow!” 

She jumped up, waving her arms to shoo the thing away. Her fingers felt along the swelling lump that was already there and growing. She looked at her fingertips expecting to see something. Maybe blood or clear liquid venom. But there was nothing. The sun was already high, well past sunrise. She looked around for something without knowing what it was, her mind still hazy and confused from the dream. The crickets.

“The dog.”

She said it quietly, to herself. Then louder.

“The dog!”

She started towards the railing, the same one she had dipped under when she found the black metal lock that anchored the poor creature to the porch. Her mug was tipped over, a stream of crusted milk down the side of it. There were scratches, deep and streaked in what looked like dried blood. She followed them back to where she had been sitting and bent to look. Stuck in the raised splintered wood was black hair, coarse and clumped from neglect.

She looked out into the field, scanned the green hills for some sign, but there was nothing. Her foot was hurting now. All the feeling was rushing back into it at once, and the slightest weight sent shock waves of pins and needles from the tips of her toes to her calf. She hobbled to the front door and saw that the screen was shut, but the door itself had been left wide open. Her hand reached for the handle then pulled back.

It was just like the time she had been running to the creek on the little black path behind her grandmother’s house. A dead tree had fallen the year before, and mushrooms had sprung up all over. The rot of it was pleasant, dirt and green moss mixed with leaves. That day, she decided to jump it, to see if she had really grown as big as everyone said. 

She was big enough, cleared the old thing without issue, but as she came over the other side, her feet pulled up. They spun like on a bicycle in mid-air, refusing to touch the ground. She somersaulted forward and then jumped to her feet. When she looked back, there was a tangle of baby water moccasins writhing just where her feet would have landed. Her body had known before her mind was consciously aware of danger.

Before she saw them, she heard them. A swarm of flies covered the screen. They buzzed and crawled over one another in a continuous circular motion, a tiny ferris wheel infinitum. She had never seen something like this before, but imagined that a carcass in a desert could have the same effect. When there was nothing else to eat for miles, hoards of flies would come. 

She reached carefully and pulled the door open. They didn’t seem to notice, hypnotized, crawling over one another, and then under, again and again. She stepped slowly around the door and over the threshold, then pulled it shut quickly. She stared at them from he inside, watched their legs flit and their wings shimmer as they moved without going anywhere. She took the flat of her hand and hit the screen. The flies lifted for a moment, then pulled back into a tight formation and landed again.

She sighed. Her head throbbed from the wasp sting. She walked into the kitchen and ran the faucet until it was cool. She let it run down the creases in her palm and drip off her fingertips, then cupped her hand and brought the water to the side of her face. The stinging heat was relieved, but only a little. The pins and needles in her foot had subsided too. 

The buzzing was incessant. She walked to the front door and closed it. She needed a hot shower and a change of clothes. That and some breakfast, which meant a trip to the store. Then she could explore the land a bit, and hopefully find the dog. She looked out the kitchen window and at the little groves of trees beyond. The poor thing was out there somewhere. She knew it.