Doom and gloom

Look. Don't look.

For a while there was only the hum and the sun’s panicked eye blinking through a thin screen of woods in the distance. It happened sometimes, listening to the sounds of the highway. The slow-beating heart of tires on tarmac squeezing at the sluggish drone smoothing out into a flat-line of unfolding miles. Conducive, not just to a sort of self-hypnosis, but a pressure that nestled against the eardrums, spinning a cocoon she didn’t even notice until some intrusion made her aware of its existence. The world rumbling through its delicate paper sides in a roar, yammering at her in harsh, crumpled-can voices. She knew it was coming when the somnolent drone fell apart in the ka-thump, ka-thump, heard the thin, too-close voices lurking behind it and she reached for its thrown-off blanket with desperation.

Then Travis nudged her again.

“Are you getting this?” he said with the eardrum-scratching voice.

She rolled away from the window to face him, but he wasn’t looking at her. Leaning forward, one hand on the driver seat, he stared up into the rearview with an expression of disbelief. Liz began to turn back to the trees outside. But then he said:

“You need to hear this, Liz.” He slapped the seat in front. “Go on, tell her.”

She wanted to save Ryan the trouble. But one glance at the twinkle in her husband’s eye told her she should save herself the trouble.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” Ryan said, his voice suppressed by the drone. “I’m just pointing out that there’s a difference.”

“Children are children, man.”

Liz sank against the seat, closed her eyes.

“So, what you’re saying— Liz, you need to hear this— is that bombing hospitals and schools in one war is different from doing it in another?”

“No. I’m saying there’s a fundamental difference in the—“

“No, man. Uh-uh. No way. Liz, what do you think?”

He looked at her, her husband with the short blonde hair whose wire-rim glasses made him look a bit like a nerd— if he’d been played by a Hollywood actor, say. There was a feverish quality to his broad smile, a fire in his eyes. And she knew that whatever answer she might give wouldn’t do much to alter the outcome.

“It’s awful,” she said at length.

Kara shifted in her seat, peered back between the seats. Beautiful, blonde Kara. Even at seven AM.

“Isn’t it just?” The smile that only lifted at the corners, the knitted brows seeming to suggest that she could do better.

She was thankful when Travis started up again and Kara withdrew, leaving Liz to turn back to the landscape sliding by. Staring out, she tried to find it again. But she was part of it now. Travis kept pulling her back in, whether she wanted to or not.

***

The purple blanket of night is still pulled up to the fuzzy head of dawn when they turned onto the dirt lot. Soles gritted as they got out and did a quick turn, gazing at the rolling green sea lapping at the hill in three directions.

“Man, it’s worth it for this view alone.” He took in a lungful of pine-scented air. “That’s the stuff, dude. We should’ve done this earlier.”

“Yeah, enjoy it now.” Travis pointed to a wave in the canopy, perhaps five miles to the west, where the trees reared before dipping into a trough. “That’s where they’ll start. Won’t be long before all this is just one big hole in the ground.”

“We should do something,” Kara said, hands on hips.

“They’ve tried everything,” Travis said. “In a little over a month all this will be gone, sacrificed in the name of fossil fuels.” He walked to the back of the SUV.

“So—this is like a real-life Deliverance, huh?”

“I think that would require canoes,” Travis said, shrugging on his backpack. “But yeah, basically.”

“Just so you know: if somebody’s getting raped in the woods, I’m voting you.”

“I’d be long gone before you started squealing, man.”

“Please,” Kara said. Her ponytail finished, she reached between the two of them for her own pack. “Far as I’m concerned, it’s a toss-up.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Ryan said, incredulous. “You know how much I bench, right?”

“Of course I do,” Kara cooed, grabbing his chin between thumb and forefinger. “But they always go for the pretty boys. And aren’t you just so pretty? Yes, you are. You are.”

Travis and Kara laughed. Even Ryan, pushing the hand away, couldn’t suppress a smile. Only Liz stood by, unmoved by the merriment. Chuckling, Kara gave a puzzled shake of her head.

“Deliverance,” she said, trying to jog her memory. “The movie? Burt Reynolds?”

Before Liz had a chance to answer, Travis flapped a hand. “Don’t bother. Lizzie doesn’t watch those kinds of movies.”

“What kind? Good ones?” Ryan said, earning an elbow to the ribs from Kara. He shrugged, all innocent. “What?”

Liz shrugged on her own pack. Again, she felt like the odd man out, the few feet of rocky dirt between them an insurmountable distance. She assumed the movie they were discussing was a thriller or—even worse—a horror movie. If so, Travis was right. The world was horrible enough already. After a long day at the office, the last thing she wanted was to invite it into her house. She much preferred to curl up on the couch in her sweats to watch something sappy or silly—or both, if possible. She was sure Ryan and Kara would make fun of her if they knew she spent some nights binging reality TV shows. Travis did.

“Let me guess,” she said, an edge of annoyance to her voice. “They all get killed in the woods.”

There was a bit of silence. Travis was still adjusting the straps on his pack. Ryan gazed off into the distance. Kara was watching her with an unfocused smile.

“No,” Travis said without looking up. “One guy dies. But that’s not the point of the movie. It’s about man versus nature.” He swung the pack on one shoulder. “About raw, animal instinct held back by the bounds of civilized society.”

Liz studied their faces. “If you’re thinking about turning this into some survival trip, you can count me out right now.”

Ryan snickered. Travis looked back over his shoulder at him. When he faced her again, he was grinning. “No, Lizzie. In the movie, these guys take one last canoe trip before the government dams up the river. We—” he made a gesture to include all of them. “—are taking one last hiking trip before this place gets fracked to kingdom come.”

“Oh,” Liz said, feeling stupid.

“I told you about it,” he said, shrugging. “But you never listen.”

A thought flashed, sharp and quick. When she pushed it down into the darkness, the world pulsed along with it.

***

In between the trees, the night’s cool touch lingered. The trail sloped down, bordered by the pines, the ferns crowding in between. Liz was grateful for the narrow path, which made casual talk a chore. She was also grateful that they’d entered the trailhead in eastern direction. From the moment Travis broached the topic, she had expected him to lead them west, towards the future drill site. A brief but vivid image had come to her: Travis standing on a hill covered with tree stumps, preaching fire and brimstone, while dormant machinery stood waiting below. No. No thanks.

The trail bottomed out and began to widen. There was some conversation but most of it was low and sporadic. Despite his big talk, Travis was not a big hiker, preferred to spend his free time in museums or reading. It was clear that Ryan and Kara hit the gym on a regular basis. But Ryan was Travis’ best friend and she had never heard of the two of them doing anything remotely adventurous. It would explain the uncharacteristic quiet that had settled over their little group. Liz felt it, too. The heavy atmosphere that hung between the trees reminiscent of places of worship, the rush of the leaves overhead the sound of rain on a cathedral roof. Liz watched the copper shafts of sunlight slant through the morning air, and she could feel it bloom and spread beneath the surface. Her eyes went soft as she began to pluck at the petals of her thoughts.

She was jerked from her reverie by Ryan’s cry. At first, she thought he’d fallen over something. But when she heard Travis’ words, Liz sighed. Who cared about November? She looked at the woods that were coming alive all around them. This had been their idea and it was all passing by them unnoticed while they yammered on about the election and the future. Staring into the woods, she reached out for the deep well of quiet it held.

Her shoulders shot up when Kara’s surprised laughter rang out. Liz stared at the lashing ponytail in front of her. Almost as if she felt the weight of her gaze, Kara turned and Liz froze dead in her tracks.

What looked back over Kara’s tanned shoulder was a grey thing. The right side of its face was rucked up at the jawline, knotted ridges pressing close beneath the skin as they reached past the ruin of her left eye. There was a wet, black glint in the depth of the socket. Chapped lips moved, pushed out a cloud of vapor.

It only lasted an instant. Then it was Kara looking back, her smile thawing, growing puzzled.

“You okay?”

Liz nodded, almost as fast as her heart was beating. Kara gave her another narrow look, faced front again in a slow, hesitant manner. Liz told herself it was just the woods, that was all. Just the woods. Following up the trail, she comforted herself with the knowledge that at least she had put an end to the conversation.

***

The trail began to climb again, clinging to the side of a steep hill. The sun had climbed with them. So had the heat. Not yet noon, the air grew thick and heavy beneath the sighing canopy. Liz had tied her jacket around her waist, hoping the breeze would cool her skin. But the breeze never found them, despite the rising path. Then she became aware that what she was listening to was the sound of running water.

It came into view a few minutes later. A thin snake with golden scales, teasing between the trees down the steep slope to the right. It followed them for the better part of an hour, darting in and out along its own path, shrinking while they continued to climb the narrow path leading up between the rocks. Still, the sound of rushing water kept growing closer, until there was another curve in the path and they came up on it.

One moment the trees were there, the next they were gone, jumped across the shelf of glistening rock that stretched between. To the left, the stream threw itself from the next rise in a short waterfall, after which it sped across the plateau in shallow channels and rippling sheets, washing over worn shelves and around slick stones-- a mass of contradicting motions that were part of a complex whole. To the right, the water tumbled down a series of rapids, before spilling over the jutting jaw of the cliff. Her eyes traced the rainbow that curved in the mist above it, cut away when she heard the sound of snapping branches. Across the way, a doe crashed through the underbrush, rose its head just long enough to offer her a slow blink, before turning and plunging back between the trees with a push of its hind legs.

“So, what do you think?” Travis said.

Liz shook her head. “It’s beautiful.”

“Just wait,” Travis said. “We’re going to follow the stream down on the other side. See it?” He pointed across, to where a log fence buckled and kinked as it hemmed in the steep path curving out of sight in the distance. “There’s a pool down there that supposed to be gorgeous. Should make for some great pictures. Maybe we could even go for a swim.”

Shading her eyes, Liz followed the length of the trail, and felt her shoulders sag. It would take them hours to get back into the woods. It was all of nine-thirty; the sun hadn’t even cleared the trees yet. But the last of the night’s coolness had evaporated, the air beneath the canopy growing thick and heavy. During the climb, she’d stopped long enough to take off the dry-fit jacket and tie it around her waist. She wasn’t sweating yet. But the prospect of descending down the unshaded trail while the sun rose to its peak, made her temperature rise to an uncomfortable level.

Her face must’ve betrayed some of these thoughts, because Travis said: “We’ll make good time, you’ll see. We won’t come back this way. The trail loops around, we’ll make it back up to the lookout from the other side. Come on.”

He started picking his way across the stream. Kara and Ryan stood on the other side, waiting. Kara resting her weight on one leg, the other one leaning out at an angle so her hip stuck out—a show of impatience. Liz began to follow after, stepping on the smoothed stone slabs Travis chose, the soles of her feet splashing through the shallow water. She could see fish floating in the channels snaking between the rocks, frozen in confused clumps before they darted off to safer places. She almost joined them when she tried to make the last jump. As she stood pinwheeling on the edge of balance, Travis caught her by the arm and pulled her close.

Kara and Ryan had started down, a handful of yards along the trail. They fell in after them. Listening to the stream and the birdsong, a silence began to unspool between them, smooth and comfortable in a way only longtime couples can manage. Liz felt herself growing light, afloat on its delicate surface. A feeling of pure contentment is within reach. Then a rabbit hopped from the tall grass bordering the path, and Travis sighed.

“Such a shame, isn’t it?”

Liz looked off across the stream, to where the pine trees rose from the ragged carpet of ferns. She saw the shadows in between the slender trunks, found herself reaching for it with desperate fingers. But Travis was steamed up now, her quiet a perceived obstacle he needed to vault to drive his principled point home. It’s there, in the way he kept talking despite the trail’s steep angle, forcing his words out in panting breaths.

“Don’t you care about what they’re going to do to this place?” he asked.

Liz squeezed the straps of her pack. Thoughts fluttered through her mind, handfuls of jagged puzzle pieces that made no sense by themselves, just screamed and pulsed. She shrank away from them but they kept coming, great falls that ate up the dark inside. She shook her head. It was an almost physical sensation and she gritted her teeth, not sure what would happen next, when he said: “Please.”

It wasn’t so much the word as the tone of voice that made her head turn, the hairs on her arms reaching up before her brain had time to process what was off. Then she sucked in a breath as she took in his bone-white face, streaked with dirt. His hair was white, the lips blue. The glasses were gone, his clouded eye staring through her. Just the right one. The left was gone, along with the other half of his face. It ended in a jagged line that ran right down the center, the inside as hollow as a porcelain doll.

She fell back, eyes fluttering in surprise.

Then it was just Travis looking at her with a look of confusion.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

Liz shook her head, unable to speak. His eyes kept hers for a handful of frantic beats, then cut away with hesitation, glancing down the path.

“Come on,” he mumbled. “Before we lose sight of those two.”

As he moved away, her hand came up to stop him. The close, stifling feeling that had clung to her for most of the day had curdled inside. She’d lost all interest for what the day might bring. Perhaps it had never been there in the first place. All she knew is that they had to go back, right now.

Her mouth moved, the ghosts of the words stirring behind her teeth. It sent the scree of thoughts moving again, a clattering avalanche of colors and emotions. Her fingers twitched away from its blistering surface. Fell away.

It took her another minute before she began to trail after the others.

***

It was almost two when they first heard it.

They were in the woods again, the stream spilling down steep steps on the right. The trail had undergone a similar transformation. Wedged in between a ridge on the left and the moss-covered rocks that bordered the stream, it descended at a sharp angle which was difficult to navigate. Loose stones, dips and holes waited to twist ankles. Roots from the encroaching birches pushed up from the earth, tripping Liz up several times. On the third one she almost went headlong down the hill. What stopped her was Ryan. She almost took him with her, hands splayed out to stay her fall as she crashed into him. For once, there was no trace of her usual awkward, apologetic grin. She was hot and tired, sweat running down her sides, pooling in the small of her back. Clouds of mosquitoes seemed to linger, as insistent as the cold fingers that stirred in her bowels.

When the path levelled out, they took a break. There was a hollow eaten into the ridge, a boulder pushing its way from the leaf-covered ground. A rotten tree trunk lay nearby. As they sat down, Liz saw she was not the only one feeling the strain of the hike. Eyes were drawn inward as they ate and drank in silence.

As her gaze went from face to face, Liz felt the tight knot in her stomach loosening. So often a powerful current seemed to go out from them, pulling at her. Trying to send her out toward a place she knew she’d drown. But now, rendered speechless by the trail’s challenge, they partook of her communion, allowed it to bloom and spread.

It was so difficult for people to let the quiet in. She could never understand the impulse to rush in and disturb its delicate surface. There was beauty in it. A magnificence that defied description. So often when she was home alone, she would shut off everything in the room and let a noiseless blanket float down over the world. The air would grow solid with it, a pressure that pulled at her eyelids, behind which she traced her thoughts as they led down. A stream of a different kind, one she felt she could follow as far as was willing to go. Her mind gurgling into a crack that led into a cave that trickled down a cavern, deeper and deeper, until it spilled into a vast, subterranean lake she could not see but perceived, a depthless breath held without end. Beneath the floating fingertips of space between her thoughts she felt it, far, far below. All she needed was to sink towards it. Her heart would beat with the prospect, make her tremble.

The trees pulsed, became smeared shapes as they pulled forward. It would be so easy. So easy to let go.

Let go.

She started when the distant screech sliced through the silence. It was followed by a low, hollow boom that rolled across the forest, made birds take startled flight. Confused looks crossed each other when it came again: the tortured scream of metal on metal in the distance. The thud that followed stuttered through the air.

“What the fuck is that?” Ryan said, gaping up.

“It almost sounds like—” Kara paused when the squeal sounded again “—almost sounds like a machine.”

Ryan glanced around the group, stopped at Travis. “Have they started already?”

Travis shook his head, his eyes faraway, listening to the sound. “They aren’t supposed to start for another month, at least. And it sounds…” he trailed off, waiting for another metal cry to go up. Then he shook his head. “This isn’t right. The drill site is on the other side of the park. This—this sounds like it’s coming from due east.”

Before Liz knew what was happening, he was on his feet, brushing his hands. “Come on.”

Liz looked up at them, confused. “What are you doing?”

“We’re going to see what’s going on,” he said, offering her his hand.

Liz’s fingers shrank away from his, her mind shrinking away from his proposal. She stared up into his eyes. “Please. No.”

“I want to know what they’re doing. Don’t you?”

She shook her head. No, she didn’t want to know what was happening. A shudder went through her at the sound of that metallic scream and for a split second, it was almost as if her trembling breath clouded in the air before her. Liz lowered her gaze, out from under his eager stare, the extended hand. She wanted to scrabble away from it, back to the quiet, bottomless place within. But he was pulling her, up and out, forcing her to face the world as he had done so many time before.

***

It wasn’t long before the smell hit them. A deep, bitter stench that reminded her of gasoline. It hung heavy between the trees, made their eyes water. The machine—if it was a machine—kept up its dreadful call in the distance. They didn’t seem to get any closer to it. But then Travis spoke up, pointed to where the stream curved to the left. They hurried down the trail ahead of her. Liz wasn’t sure what the big deal was. All she saw was rocks covered with thin roots. But when she got closer, it became clear that the dark webbing clinging to the rocks was not part of the local flora. It was slick and viscous, pulled away in taffy strands when Travis touched his fingers to it. A whiff of what it left behind on his fingertips was enough to make him recoil in disgust. As he held it to them, it was acrid, something that had been burned but seemed to be burning still, a poisonous cloud of melting plastic that billowed through her nose and throat.

The forest heaved in and out with her as she struggled not to retch. “Please,” Liz told him in a thick voice. “Please.” She doesn’t want this. She doesn’t.

But Travis pulled her along, into the noxious fumes that mingled with the heat. Eyes betrayed her by picking up to the black tendrils moving on the surface of the water, resisting the stream’s current. Her eyes cut away like trapped animals as they went. But everywhere she looked, something horrible awaited her attention. Branches began to thin, drooping over the trail. Bark split and peeled. The air between the trees darkened, roiling with a stained white smoke that crept low above the ground. The world had gone quiet. The birds had stopped singing. The clouds of mosquitoes had dissipated. The stream running beside them turned sluggish, its surface a patchwork of black stains which rippled with a dirty rainbow sheen. She flinched away from what floated in it, began to claw at the hand he had clamped around her wrist. Oblivious, Travis kept dragging her along the trail, saying “Holy shit, holy fucking shit” in a breathless voice between bouts of coughing.

Up ahead, the clogged vein of the stream expelled its contents over the jutting rocks in spurts and clots and now whatever was squirming inside rose, clawing its panicked way up to her throat. But it was too late. He was at the edge of the ridge looking down now and even though she doesn’t want to, her eyes lower down into the pit.

It only lasted for a second. It was long enough. It always was. Like the articles he was forever sending her, the videos and photos he flashed her with while she watched the TV shows he called mindless and stupid, it only took a glance for the horror to burn itself into her mind.

Liz has no idea if this is the pool Travis mentioned, but it’s clear nobody would be swimming in it. The shallow, stagnant liquid below was almost black, its littered surface shining with a tarnished rainbow sheen that reminded her again of oil. It was a nightmare lagoon, ringed with the peeling bones of the dead trees. Bad enough, even without the dead birds and small animals that floated around in it. And something else, something more horrifying than the deer and foxes that were scattered on the side of the slope, emaciated shapes caught in the black hole’s gravity. She reeled from it; the world stretching. The toxic swamp beneath yawning.

She took a step back. This time, her wrist slid from Travis’ grip without resistance. He wasn’t paying attention to her. He was staring down the slope, the eye she could see wide with shock. His voice was a whisper. Pictures. He was saying something about pictures. About proof.

When he started down, her hand came up. This time she reached out, caught his arm. But it was too late. Had always been too late. There was a scream ringing in her ears. Hers or his she couldn’t say. There was the sound of leaves rustling, of her own breath huffing out as she tumbled down the slope. The broken spires of the trees whirling and whirling around the blind eye of the August sun.

Let go.

Her breath caught. Eyelids trembled, inched open with great difficulty. Blinking her eyes into focus, she found him lying on his side just past her splayed feet, his face half submerged in the black sludge. He had lost his glasses. One eye stared into nothingness as his blue lips moved in the thick liquid. Snow had drifted on what remained of his clothes. Great flakes of it were falling from above, melted away atop the thick, iridescent surface.

Liz removed herself from Travis’ empty gaze, across the snow-covered humps studding the pool to find what remained of Kara, sitting up against one of the dead trees ten yards away. Her eyes traced the shrivelled husk, the gnarled fingers that wormed in under the skin of her jaw, where the meat beneath teased a dull grey. They stretched across the right side of her face in ridges and knots before diving out of sight in the middle her forehead.

Her eyes sliced down, found her own legs, little more than twisted branches now. A mass of twisted roots ran past the bony knobs of her knees and halfway up her thighs where her snow-covered shorts began. Beneath the surface, cold black fingers pushed and pulled, sluiced away whatever it was they needed. She could see them, worming their way inside in a half a dozen places along her calf, a depthless black against the snow she was sitting in. When they fell down the slope, only her feet had come down in the sludge. Her shoes were gone, chewed away by whatever was consuming them. The skin of some of her toes had split, the bone beneath teasing up from meat grey as ash.

The distant scream of metal came, followed by a resounding boom that shook loose snow from dead branches, yet did not manage to send a ripple across the surface of the shallow onyx pool.

Travis spoke again. She heard the sound twice. A paper-thin whisper clouding in the air. The second voice was in her head. Louder, but not by much.

“Let go.”

Neck muscles squealed like rusted hinges. There were others now. New mounds dusted with snow. Some animals. Some not. Caught in the web the pool had spun. Or was this her doing?

The thought was frightening, so she turned from it, from their ruined faces and the world itself, to the clouded mirror surface of the liquid and the dark it held. Maybe they were one and the same, within and without. Because it wanted what she wanted: the stillness, the breathless quiet blanketing everything. As Liz reached for it, she felt the others, their thoughts batting at her as they always did.

--let us go—

They could have made her. But the ease with which she put down what they picked up hinted at a different, half-suspected truth. As she began to shred down their voices and their thoughts, her chin lowered back onto her chest. It was better this way. Easier.

She took them with her, beyond the fears and the anger, where black tunnels became wider and wider, opened into nothing. Oblivion radiated outward, along the viscous tendrils holding fast, until all was darkness and there was nothing, nothing but the low, distant hum of untold miles.

---

Author’s note: I’m not sure if this is up to snuff. But it was rattling around for a while so I wrote it!