Through the Tulgey Wood by Jon Gauthier
The late-summer air was heavy and
wet, and it clutched a molasses-like quality that seemed to seep into her bones
and impede every move she made. The headache that had plagued her since noon
now thumped wildly at her skull. As she headed toward the stairs, a bright
yellow mop of hair appeared. Molly breached the top of the staircase and ran
toward Ava, her arms outstretched.
“Mom!” Molly cried. Her voice was high
and whiny. “Jemmyfroouffuggatme!”
Ava’s brain instantly decoded the
slurred babble and she shouted down the stairs, “Jeremy! Did you throw a frog
at your sister?”
The stairs creaked and a dirty,
freckle-streaked face appeared. Her son’s hands were cupped together, forming
an egg-shaped container that Ava knew held the aforementioned frog.
“Jeremy,” Ava huffed. “You better not have brought that frog into the house!”
His gaze and shoulders immediately dropped.
“You take it right back outside,”
Ava said, doing her best to keep the sternness to a minimum. “And make sure to
wash your hands. It’s almost lunch time.”
Jeremy’s lips formed a pout and he
spun around with a sigh. As he stomped down the stairs in defeat, Molly danced
behind him, gloating with singsong glee. Ava knew that they’d be screeching at
each other again in less than a minute, but she took the opportunity to take in
a deep breath and shift her mind back to the unpacking. There were still dozens
of boxes scattered throughout the house, and it was clear the kids weren’t
going to be much help.
She moved down the hallway that
separated the kids’ rooms and looked out the window. From this vantage point,
she could see the entire rear of the property: an acre of lush green grass
dotted with well-kept maple, apple and spruce trees. The expanse unrolled into
a pine forest that was so dense, Ava could only see a dozen feet into it. It
was a beautiful and tranquil setting—the perfect place for her and the kids to
start over.
The perfect place to keep Jeremy
from having another episode.
“Mommy!” The screech snapped Ava out
of her momentarily serene state of mind, and she let out a sigh.
“Molly!” she called wearily as she
trudged down the stairs. “Leave you brother alone.”
***
Sleep was impossible. The woodland
symphony of crickets, frogs and God-only-knew what else was constant stream flowing
through her open bedroom window. With the window closed, though, it would be
far too hot, even at the tail end of August. Ava switched on her bedside lamp,
opened the combination lock that was affixed to her nightstand drawer and
pulled out a tattered paperback copy of Stephen King’s It. She’d been reading the book for more than a year, chipping away
at it a dozen or so pages at a time.
She narrowed her eyes at the tiny
print and wished she could have an e-reader like every else on the damned
planet. It was too risky, though. If Jeremy ever got a hold of it, he’d have
access to any book he wanted—pictures and all. It was much safer this way, a
paper brick full only with words he could barely understand and the cover torn
off. (That creepy cover with that green hand coming out of the sewer. Imagine
if he’d seen that…)
After only a few pages, Ava felt
herself finally begin to drift off.
She turned onto her side and let her eyelids become heavy as the words began to
fuse together on the yellowed page like a swarm of black flies.
Then…
She’s back at the old house and
David is a mess of red and black pulp on the driveway, with a massive Siberian
tiger standing in his remains, slurping up pieces of him like he’s a bowl of
Purina Fancy Feast. The tiger looks at her—its coat is so perfectly orange and
black. It’s like a drawing. And its teeth are diamonds dripping with gore. Fire
in his eyes.
Fire!
She remembers. He’s afraid of fire.
She bolts into the house and hears
claws scraping the asphalt as it bounds after her. She flings the door closed and
its bulk slams into the heavy wood. There’s growling and scraping and she
leaves it behind as she clambers into the kitchen.
Mommy!
Stay
upstairs! Her voice is shrill—almost
incomprehensible.
She tears open the junk drawer and
rifles through the old pens and rubber bands until she finds a box of matches.
She runs back to the main room just as the tiger explodes through the front
door, the heavy oak splintering like balsa wood. With shaking hands, she
strikes a match against the box a moment before the beast pounces. She sees the
reflection of the flame in its jagged porcelain maw and hears it shriek in fear
before vanishing in a wisp of ghostly mist.
Mommy?
The children are on the stairs.
Molly is clutching one of her dolls and Jeremy is hugging a book to his chest.
It’s a large illustrated edition of The Jungle Book. They’d been reading it together just before the
tiger—before Shere Khan—appeared.
Mommy?
“Mommy?”
Ava’s eyes snapped open to see a
tiny face staring down at her. In a flurry of panic and muttered curses, she
sat up and tore away her blankets, frantically looking for the copy of It. She’d stupidly fallen asleep without
locking it back in her nightstand. Ava lay flat and let her head hang just
above the floor, her face pointed at the dark space beneath the bed. The book
was there. She snatched it, flipped back up into a sitting position and quickly
locked it back up in the nightstand where it would be safe from Jeremy and his…
his…
Condition.
That’s what it was, after all. A
condition. Just a condition that they would all have to learn to live with.
Like a peanut allergy or dyslexia, or ADHD… they all just had to adapt. Keep
moving forward.
She’d told everyone that it had been
a bear—a crazed black bear that had just wandered into the neighborhood and
attacked David while he was washing the minivan. Then it burst through the door
and she scared it away by banging some pots together. And everyone had believed
her. There had been no other possible explanation. And if she’d actually tried
to give one? If she’d actually attempted to explain what really happened… that
Jeremy had somehow—
“Mommy?” Ava’s looked at Molly who
was cowering against the wall, staring at her mother with wide blue eyes and
chewing anxiously on her fingers. Ava sighed and silently cursed at herself for
scaring the girl.
“What is it, sweetie?” She tried to
make her voice as soft as possible.
“Can I sleep with you?”
Ava looked at her bedside clock to
see it was just past three a.m. She flopped back down on the mattress with a
sigh and scooted over.
“Come on,” she said.
Molly immediately hopped into the
bed and nuzzled her face into her mother’s shoulder. Ava switched off the
bedside light and asked, “Did you have a nightmare?” She felt Molly’s head
shake out a no.
“Are you just scared of the new
house?”
Molly lifted her face and whispered,
“There’s a monster in the woods.”
“Sweetie, you know there’s no such
thing as monsters.” A lie, she
thought. Such a tremendous lie.
“I swear, Mommy. I heard it breaking
branches and I looked out my window and saw it running away.”
“What did it look like?”
“It was like a dragon,” Molly said,
his voice almost inaudibly quiet. “With a… with a fish head. And rabbit teeth.”
Ava kissed the top of Molly’s head
and ran her fingers through her hair, something that always put her to sleep.
Being two years older than Jeremy, Molly had seen plenty of books and movies
and pictures before the Jungle Book
incident. She would have been very familiar with dragons and any number of
strange creatures.
“That sounds like a pretty silly
monster to me,” Ava said. Her daughter just giggled nervously in response
before finally closing her eyes. Within minutes, they were both asleep.
***
The next morning, Molly seemed to be
in good spirits and she happily ate her cereal. She didn’t even put up much of
a fuss whenever Jeremy did something to annoy her. Ava figured she’d forgotten
all about her bad dream. Surely the monster—the dragon with the fish head and
rabbit teeth—had only been part of a dream.
After breakfast, Ava shooed the kids
outside and told them not to come back into the house until she called them for
lunch. Now able to focus her attention on finishing the unpacking, she trudged
up the stairs into Molly’s bedroom. The floor was littered with partially
unpacked boxes and the bed was awry with a pink and white tangle of sheets and
blankets spilled halfway to the floor. Next to it stood an empty dresser and
bookshelf.
Ava lifted one of the open boxes and
dropped it onto the bed. As she started removing the various clothes that had
been packed inside, she heard a single stinging scream come from the back yard.
She rushed to the window and looked down to see Jeremy chasing Molly with a
water gun. Ava rolled her eyes and turned back to the bed. Usually she could
discern the kids’ playful screams from the real ones. Maybe she was too
anxious. She turned the box over and let all the clothes tumble to the bed.
It had taken less than an hour to
finish with Molly’s room. Of course, it would have gone quicker if she hadn’t
had to shout at the kids every ten minutes. When she walked into Jeremy’s room,
she was pleasantly surprised to see most of the unpacking had been done. He’d
pretty much done everything expect hang up his button-up shirts.
Ava grabbed the shirts in a single
bunch and walked over to the tiny closet. As she hung each garment, she noticed
that a portion of the wood paneling seemed to stick out from the rest of the
wall. The protuberance sloped diagonally for about two feet before becoming
flush with the wall again. It took Ava a moment to realize what she was looking
at. It was a door. A tiny trap door was built into the back of the closet. A
sudden childlike sense of wonder and excitement took hold as she knelt in front
of it. She was sure she had looked through the whole house before letting the
kids inside yesterday, and she hadn’t noticed this. Jeremy must have found it
at some point and already looked inside. Ava reached for the door when another
scream erupted from the yard. She could tell this one was real.
She didn’t even bother going to the
window. Instead she raced out of the room and down the stairs just in time to
see the kids burst through the front door, both of them sweaty and red-faced.
They screamed in unison,
“Mommy!”
Ava knelt down and embraced them. They
were both hot and their hearts were pounding. She
released them and put a hand on Molly’s right shoulder and Jeremy’s left. “What’s
going on? What are you two getting up to out there?”
“We saw the monster,” Molly
exclaimed breathlessly.
“Molly,” Ava said. “Don’t scare your
brother. We talked about this last night. Monsters aren’t real.
A
lie. Such a lie, and you know it.
“No, Mommy,” Molly said, stamping
her foot. “We saw it in the woods.”
“I sawed it too,” Jeremy said. “It
was like a big snake with legs.”
“Jeremy!” She said it too loudly.
Too sharply. Ava took in a deep breath and pulled him in close.
“There’s no such thing as monsters,”
she said softly. “Your sister is just trying to scare you.” Ava looked over at
Molly with a piercing anger that only a mother is capable of conveying. “Now, I
want both of you to stay apart for the rest of the morning,” She said. “Molly,
you can go and play in your room. Jeremy, you go and practice.” She pointed to
the living room where she’d set up Jeremy’s electric keyboard.
“We’re not lying,” Molly said
quietly. And as she and Jeremy stalked away to separate corners of the house,
Ava realized that she believed her.
***
“Where in the Hell did I put you?”
Ava muttered as she dug through the large plastic tote that sat at the back of
the garage. She was looking for the desktop fan that she usually kept on her
nightstand, unwilling to spend another night with the window open and those
godforsaken critters keeping her awake. On her way back to the house, Ava
stopped to take a long, more detailed look at the backyard. It was gorgeous at
this time of day—just moments before sunset, the sky a watercolor painting
hanging overhead the silent forest.
Ava wandered over to one of the
apple trees and saw that it bore healthy-looking Mackintoshes that would be
perfect for baking. She reached out and plucked one. It was something she hadn’t
done since she’d visited her grandparent’s farm as a girl. She reveled in the
simplicity and wholesomeness of it.
Then she heard something snap. It
had come from the forest. It was followed by another snap. Then another. They
came in a steady rhythm, like something was moving through the trees.
Ava took a single step toward the
pines, surprised at how scared she’d suddenly become. At this time of day, it
was probably just a deer or a moose. Not much else could make that much noise
other than a bear, and the real estate agent had assured her that there hadn’t
been a bear spotted in this township for almost fifteen years.
She was about to take another step
forward when a guttural clicking noise emerged from the thicket. It was like
the sound of someone chocking and snapping their teeth together at the same
time. It wasn’t like anything Ava had ever heard before. It was so foreign—almost
otherworldly—and it filled her with a near paralyzing sense of dread. She
turned and dashed toward the house with a speed she didn’t even know she was
capable of.
Once inside, Ava set the fan on the
floor, pulled the phone from its base on the counter, and dialed the number for
the local police, thankful that she’d programmed into the phone’s speed dial on
their first night in the house.
“It’s just a deer,” she said. “It’s
just a deer.”
Is
it, though? What if it’s happening again?
“There are no pictures in this
house,” Ava said defiantly.
A woman answered, her voice deep and
weary: “Police.”
“Yes. Hi. Um… I’m sorry. I don’t
know if I should really be calling you…”
“Are you in danger, ma’am? Is this
an emergency?”
“No. No. Nothing like that. It’s
just… I live out on Tremblay Road, and I heard a strange noise in the woods
behind my house. Some kind of animal. I think it may be injured or… maybe rabid
or something.”
“Did you see the animal, ma’am?” The
woman’s sounded bored—almost annoyed.
“No, I just heard it. It made this
really strange sound. I’ve never heard anything—"
“You can contact the municipal
office in the morning,” the woman said. “They’ll send an animal control team to
investigate.” Ava could tell the woman had moved the phone away from her mouth
as she was speaking. She was getting ready to hang up.
“It’s just…” Ava said.
“It’s just what, ma’am?”
“Well, we just moved here. Me and my
children... and they… well, they thought they saw something in the woods this
morning.”
“Ma’am there’s all sorts of things
around here. Now, I’m not doubting you heard something. But unless you’ve
actually seen the animal and believe it’s a danger to you or someone else, you’ll
have to wait for animal control.”
“I understand,” Ava said, her face
now hot with embarrassment. “I’m sorry. Thank you.” She disconnected the call
and set the phone on the counter.
“Don’t do this,” Ava whispered.
“Keep it together.”
Suddenly, the sliding door exploded
into a shower of glass and a thick and scaly length of dark grey rubber shot
into the kitchen. Ava screamed and dropped to the floor. She scrambled
backward, staring at the intruding object as it thrashed about, snapping furiously
in every possible direction as if searching for something.
Then Ava realized it wasn’t rubber,
but flesh.
It was a tail.
She rolled onto her knees and
scrambled out of the kitchen just as a nightmarish shriek filled the entire
house.
Ava charged upstairs. Jeremy and
Molly were huddled next to one another on the landing.
“It’s the monster!” Molly cried.
“The monster, Mommy!”
“In my bedroom!” Ava screamed as she
reached the top of the stairs. She shoved the kids forward and the three of
them rushed into the master bedroom and slammed the door closed.
The shrieking continued, but Ava
could tell that it was coming from outside now. Luckily the thing—whatever it
was that the tail belonged to—didn’t actually come into the house.
That
means it’s too big to get through the door.
Ava pushed the thought away. She had to know what she was dealing with.
“You two get under the bed!”
The kids nodded and crawled beneath
the bed as Ava crept to the window. Unlike the kids, her bedroom didn’t
overlook the backyard, but the front. She couldn’t see anything but a lone oak
tree and the gravel lane way that led to the pitch-black road.
What
in the Hell is it?
“They said it was a dragon,” Ava
said quietly.
No,
they said it was like a dragon. It’s actually something different.
Ava turned toward the bed and
dropped to her knees. She grabbed her son’s hand.
“Jeremy, where is the picture?”
He didn’t answer.
“Jeremy, I know you saw a picture.
Where did you see it? Did Molly draw it?”
Jeremy shook his head.
“Was it a book?”
He nodded.
“Where? Where is it?”
“My closet,” he said quietly.
Ava suddenly remembered the small
door she had seen in the back of Jeremy’s closet.
“You two stay here,” she said. “You
do not move from this spot.”
The kids nodded and Ava darted out
of the bedroom and down the hall. She crashed through Jeremy’s bedroom door,
almost ripping it off the frame, and ran to the closet where she tore open the
small trap door.
She got on her knees and stuck her
head into a tiny room that was only about two feet high, wide, and deep. Inside
were an old couch cushion and a small assortment of dolls and stuffed animals.
None of the items belonged to her or the kids. It must have all been left
behind by the previous owners. Ava moved the objects around until she finally
found what she was looking for: a thin and tattered hardback book without a
dust jacket.
She grabbed the book and flipped it
over to see the title laid out in heavy black font: Through the Looking
Glass and What Alice Saw There.
Ava opened the book and flipped
madly through the pages. She stopped when she landed on a black and white
illustration of a small light-haired girl—Alice—kneeling on a mantle and
looking into a mirror. She continued flipping, passing by horses and chess
pieces before finally landing at her destination. The terrifying image stared
back at her. It was of a small human figure standing in a dark forest with a
massive sword raised above their head, facing down an almost indescribable
creature. The monster was a long and serpentine thing with leathery wings and
gnarled talons. Its face was an unearthly mishmash of buck teeth, blank eyes
and spindly whiskers.
Ava’s insides went to liquid when
she saw the thing’s tail. It was identical to the one that had smashed through
the sliding door. This was it. This was what Jeremy had…
…summoned.
She tore her eyes from the drawing
and looked at the text it accompanied. It seemed to a be a poem. The first
line, “Beware the Jabberwock, my son!”, was all she needed to read.
Ava ripped the page from the book
just as something heavy landed on the roof. The noise thundered through the
house, rattling the walls. There was another horrible shriek and the sound of a
claws dragging across the shingles.
The kids were still under the bed,
and Ava heard them cry out in fear as she tumbled back into her bedroom. Above
them, the unmistakable sound of splintering wood and falling debris was
intermixed with that guttural clicking that Ava had heard when she was outside.
The Jabberwock was tearing away the roof.
Ava looked down at the page and
scanned poem, squinting at its many nonsensical words. Finally, she saw the
ones she’d been looking for: vorpal blade, dead, and head.
She looked back at the person in the picture—at the sword in their hands. Then
Ava dropped to her stomach and held the page out to Jeremy, her hands shaking.
“The sword, Jeremy!” She had to
scream to be heard over the carnage above. “Bring the sword!”
Jeremy stared at her with wide
uncomprehending eyes. He had no idea what she meant. He didn’t even know what
he could do—what he had done.
“The sword!” Ava screamed again,
shaking the picture in front of his face. “Bring the sword just like you
brought the monster. You can do it, sweetie. You know you can.”
There was a crash as something
landed on the attic floor. It sounded like it was above Molly’s room. They didn’t
have much time left.
“Come on, Jeremy!” Ava cried. “I
need you to be really brave, now. I need to close your eyes and think really
hard about this sword, okay?”
Jeremy’s nodded and squeezed his
eyelids together.
“That’s it, sweetie,” Ava said.
“Just think of the sword. Bring the sword.”
The Jabberwock let out another
shriek as it pounded and slashed at the attic floor.
“Jeremy,” Ava moaned. “Jeremy,
hurry.”
Jeremy’s eyes suddenly snapped open
and he said, “It’s on the bed now, Mommy.”
Ava got to her feet and saw a
massive sword lying on her bed. It was at least twelve inches wide and took up
almost the entire six-foot length of the mattress. Ava’s heart fell. There was
no way she’d be able to lift it.
One of the Jabberwock’s front paws suddenly
burst through the ceiling and Ava had to duck away from the razor talons.
Without thinking, she grabbed the sword’s hilt and swung it upwards. It was
much lighter and the movement was much swifter than she had anticipated. She
managed to nick the paw just as the Jabberwock pulled it back up into the
attic. A thin spray of blood spattered Ava’s face. There was a furious cry of
pain and the clatter of claws on wood.
Sword at the ready, Ava stood firm,
staring up at the hole in the ceiling and poised for the next attack. The
Jabberwock’s face appeared, bringing with it a hideous moaning snarl. Teeth the
size of piano keys snapped at her and hot swamp-smelling saliva sprayed her
face. The creature’s eyes were beyond white but seemed to focus on her
regardless. Two antennae jutted from its head like giant spider legs. Ava swung
at the monstrous face, barely missing it each time. It snapped its jaws at her
in return, weaving forward and backward and side to side as it calculated the
best moment to attack. The cat and mouse game went on for only a few seconds,
but Ava’s arms screamed with exhaustion. Finally—mercifully—she tore a deep
gash into the Jabberwock’s cheek. It let out a screech and disappeared back
through the hole.
Adrenaline coursed through Ava like
an electric shock and she ran out of the bedroom, pulled open the hatch that
led to the attic, and clambered up the ladder. Her head entered the attic just
in time to see the Jabberwock’s tail flick up through the opening it had torn
into wall and roof.
Dragging the sword on the floor
behind her, Ava jogged to the massive fissure. Snapped pieces of lumber stuck
out like crooked teeth, making a crude ladder. She took hold of one of rungs
and hoisted herself up. The climb was short but precarious, the twenty-five-foot
drop to the outside ground only a single mistake or broken board away.
It was waiting for her on the roof. Its
hulking dragon-like form looked completely surreal against a backdrop of
star-streaked sky. Wasting no time, Ava drew up the sword and charged forward.
The Jabberwock, seemingly surprised by her boldness, jerked backwards, its
front paws clattering on the rooftop as it tried to re-position itself.
Ava thrust the sword forward. She
swung it in every conceivable direction, fending off the swiping paws and
snapping jaws as she ripped and tore at the monster’s flesh. Then, seeming to
gather all of its strength for a final attack, the Jabberwock lowered its head
and lunged forward, its hideous mouth wide and glistening. Ava stepped out of
the way at the last possible moment and, with a final desperate snicker-snack, she
chopped downward and sliced off the bottom half of the creature’s jaw. It
screeched and fell forward onto the roof, and Ava brought the massive vorpal
blade down on its neck. She struck it again and again, chopping away at the
thick flesh until she finally felt it go through straight into the roof
itself.
In the next moment, the Jabberwock’s
head was rolling away from her, vanishing just before it reached the edge of
the roof. Ava felt a tremendous weight leave her hands and she looked down; the
sword was gone, too. Next to her, the Jabberwock’s wings gave a final twitch
before the entire corpse disappeared.
Ava was suddenly alone, the late
August chill biting at her hot, blood-stained skin. She looked out over the
back yard and examined the deep dark woods where the thing had come from—where
Jeremy had brought it from. It will never
end, she thought. He’ll never be able
to stop. Dropping her head, Ava turned to the destroyed portion of
roof that led down into her home and went galumphing back.
***
“I’ve only got half an hour for my
lunch break,” Ava said.
The man took the picture from her.
“It’s just a sketch, right?”
Ava nodded. “But his whole body,”
she said. “And it needs to look as much like him as possible.”
He started thoughtfully at the picture
for a moment and said, “I don’t get it. I mean, I’m happy to take your money,
but I don’t get it. Why do you want a drawing of a photo?”
“It has to be a drawing,” Ava
responded. “It won’t work otherwise.”
“Okay,” the man said, pointing at a
sofa that sat at the other end of the studio. “Just take a seat over there. It
shouldn’t take long.”
Ava watched as he walked over to his
desk, the photograph of her dead husband clutched between his thumb and index
finger. Then she walked over to the couch and sat down.
And she waited.
---
Beware the Jabberwock, my son.
---
Copyright Jon Gauthier 2019
Jon Gauthier is a horror and science fiction author from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. His stories have appeared in multiple markets, including Mythic Magazine, Polar Borealis Magazine and the Tales to Terrify podcast. He can be found online at jgauthier.ca or twitter.com/@JAGauth.
Jon is a repeat author with Tell-Tale Press. His work is also available in the Fantasy Library and Horror Library.
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