Leaving the cabin to get the mail might’ve been the worst part of living there, in Isaac’s opinion.
From the first step off the porch, to every proceeding one all the way out to the mailbox; it was a grueling slog that always ended with him caked in blood and grime. Isaac would sink into the mud up to his ankles and it took all the willpower he could muster to yank one foot free, only to step forward and sink further down in. Shlork. Schluk. Schlock. Shlech. One gross sound after the other. Still, he had to keep moving because if he stopped, he would continually sink further and further into the mud until it swallowed him whole. Isaac had nightmares sometimes about being trapped under the earth, slowly suffocating and unable to move…
It wasn’t all that bad, he supposed. He had green vinyl pants and a rain jacket that he wore whenever retrieving the mail, plus knee-high leather boots, goggles and a surgical mask to cover his mouth. Thanks to these precautions, he almost never actually got any of the blood on his own skin. Doing the laundry afterwards usually sucked, but the gross, dark sludge almost always washed off the vinyl and leather clothing quite easily under warm water. The first few days Isaac lived in the Cabin, before he’d learned how to order products through the mail, he only had his own clothes to go outside in… He could smell the stinking scent of boiling pennies on his skin and in his hair for days. Never again, he promised himself.
Isaac leaned against the mailbox, plastic waterproof bag under-arm. He had two packages that had arrived. The first was a small brown rectangle he bagged, the other was a larger one that was sitting in the downpour, nearly soaked through. He had to carry that one in his arms.
Before heading back, Isaac noticed something else in the mailbox: a letter. Assuming it was probably his publisher asking for updates on his current project, he tossed it in the bag as well. On his way back to the house, something deep in the woods screamed and he picked up the pace to a jog that almost saw him trip in the sludge.
Back inside the cabin, Isaac stripped down to nothing the very second the door was locked behind him. He checked himself over in the mirror and was pleased to find he had no blood on himself. He stepped into the shower for a few seconds, just to be safe, then pulled on some warm clothes for the evening. Poured himself a glass of bourbon he immediately drank, poured himself another, and sat down on the couch in front of the fire with his two packages and one letter.
He opened the big box first; canned vegetables, fruits, soups, etc. It was never a guarantee how long any food would be outside before he could get to it, so Isaac had long ago learned not to order any perishable items. There was also a handle of his best friend, Jim Beam.
Before opening the second, smaller package, Isaac was taken aback to notice it had no name, nor address. Opening it, he was further surprised to find it contained only a single dog tag, shaped like a bone. It read:
Dozer
If lost, please bring home
1890, Chokecherry Street,
Hamilton, Montana.
Isaac didn’t know what to do with the dog tag, so he placed it on the nightstand beside his bed.
Finally, there was the letter. It was addressed to him, but he didn’t recognize the return address.
Sir Ashley Glossum,
10, Jimsonweed Ct.
Exeter, RI, 31792
USA
Isaac Underwater
213, Forgotten Hickory
Clay County, West Virginia,30479
USA
‘SIR Ashley Glossum…’ Isaac couldn’t help but think the sender must’ve held themselves in very high regard. He took his time opening the envelope, pulling from within a letter written in some of the most beautiful calligraphy he had ever laid eyes on. Red ink on white paper, reading as such:
To the writer, Isaac Underwater:
I hope this finds you well. You are a surprisingly difficult person to reach, but I respect a kindred spirit that recognizes the value of privacy. I intend not to take up too much of your time.
Recently, I have read your book, “Nights Warm, Damp and Tender” and found it quickly taking the spot of my favorite thing I’ve read this decade. It was unique, and you write characters so real, I quite easily envisioned them in my head. I hope you some day consider writing a sequel; I would love to know if Austin survived or not.
-Appreciator of all things unique,
-Ashley
Isaac hung the letter on the wall, next to his desk. He promised himself he’d write the return address back, thanking them for the kind words. Eventually. For now, he had other work to attend to. The sky outside the cabin was darkening rapidly, but Isaac wasn’t quite sure if it was later in the day than he had thought, or if the storm was getting worse. Maybe the wound in the sky was starting to fester. He looked up at the clock on the wall: 9:34. That didn’t seem right… It occurred to him that if the battery in his clock was dying, he had no way of setting it back to the correct time when he put a new one in; a revelation that made him curse aggressively under his breath. He tried to put it out of his mind and just focus on his work.
More and more often it seemed, Isaac found it increasingly difficult to squeeze any writing out of himself. Hunched over his typewriter, drink on the desk beside his left hand and bottle on the floor by his right foot, he kept tapping away at the keys; pounding his scattered thoughts into the paper as both the alcohol and sound of the blood falling gently on the roof and windowpanes played their sirens song on his nervous system. It became harder and harder for him to keep his eyes open. Every time he made a concerted effort to snap back awake, his eyelids would fall heavier than they did before. Eventually he was almost completely asleep, when a knock on the cabin door jolted him awake.
Isaac grumbled, considered ignoring the knocking and crawling into bed, but only for a second. With a sigh, he drug himself to his feet, emptied his glass down his throat, and shuffled over to the door. ‘Best I not keep whoever the hell waiting.’
As he was about to open it, something caught his ear and made him take pause. On the other side of the door, someone was singing to themselves; though, their voice was too low and muffled for him to decipher any of the lyrics. He swallowed back his hesitation and swung the door open inward.
Standing on the other side, was an old woman wearing a tattered dress and and soaked from head to toe with blood. “Oh! Hello, sir! I’m sorry to bother you when I’m sure you were settling down for the evening!”
“Nah, it’s okay, miss.” Isaac said, trying to sound reassuring. “How can I help you?”
“Well… If it’s not too much trouble, I would like a place to sit down for just a few minutes to rest my knees. They’re not as sturdy as they once were!”
“I’m sure you wouldn’t mind a warm fire and a hot meal, either? Maybe a strong drink?”
“Oh, I don’t drink, kind stranger. I gave that up years ago, just after I met my first husband! But if I may take you up on that hot meal…?”
“Of course!” Isaac said stepping aside and gesturing inward. “Come right on in!”
Naturally, the first thing Isaac offered the mysterious woman was an opportunity to get herself cleaned up and dried off. “There’s a shower in the bathroom.” He told her. “There’s also a washbasin right in there, so you can scrub your clothes clean. There should still be more than plenty of soap in there.” She was in there for almost forty minutes. Maybe longer, if his clock really was dying. In that duration, he had enough time to enjoy another drink and put two cans of soup and a can of black beans in a pot hanging above fire. By the time she was done, it had warmed to a steaming perfection.
“I hope you’re not allergic to anything. I guess I should’ve asked before I started.”
“Just garlic, sweetie.” She said through a toothy smile. Isaac could now see her more clearly as she sat in front of the fire, warming up and drying off. Her dress, still wet but quickly drying, was a patchwork of colorful fabrics that looked as though it had been sewn together by hand. Her hair was thin and gray, almost fully white with a light silver gleam to it. Her face had soft features that should’ve felt inviting, but something about them seemed wrong. Her skin was like a mask that didn’t quite fit the shape of her head; like she was wearing the façade of another person over her face. Dangling from the sleeves of her arms were brown tassels of varying lengths, longest towards the centers and getting shorter as they got nearer the wrists and torso. When her arms were raised, the flow of the strands beneath them resembled the wings of a great bird.
Isaac checked the ingredients list on one of the soup cans. “Well, there’s no garlic in this.” He assured her, before using the can to ladle some of the soup into a bowl. “So what’s your deal? What brings you out here so late?”
“Oh, I don’t want to bore you with my life story!”
“Stories are my stock and trade.” Isaac handed the soup off to the lady, before scooping himself a bowl. “Do you have a name?”
“The one my very mother gave me. Rest her soul… Consumption took her from me years ago. The very consumption that took my sister, Jayden. Passed me over though, wasn’t permitted to touch me. No illness is. I haven’t had so much as a cold since I was seven years old…” The old lady looked off into the distance wistfully, deep in memory. “Time takes from all of you. Not me, though. To me, time, and the Mother of Rot, have only given.”
Isaac stirred his soup with his spoon. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but your name? What should I call you?”
“Hmm? Ahh yes! My name! I’m sorry, I’m a bit hard of remembering as of late! I get sidetracked quite easily!” The old lady let out a cackle that sounded like something between a squawk, and tree branches grinding against each other in the wind. “My name is Casey Crow, but you can call me Ms. Crow, sweetie.”
“Alright, Ms. Crow. Well… may I ask what brings you to my neck of the woods?”
“Oh! Young man! You’ve no claim to these woods. Even it, has no claim.” She said, pointing down, causing Isaac to shift uncomfortably.
“I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“I think you do.” Ms. Crow said sternly. “But, if you must know, I am a working woman, traveling for business.”
“Oh wow… Well, I hope wherever you’re going, you make it there in a timely manner.”
“I always do, sweetie. I pride myself on my punctuality. Not like many of the youths today.” She pulled her eyelids apart with her thumb and index finger, opening her right eye as wide as it could go as she leaned forward. Isaac got the sense he was being studied in much the same manner a child would closely examine an insect they’d never seen before. “How old are you, young man?”
“I’m 27.” This was neither a truth, nor a lie. Isaac didn’t really have a way of keeping track of days that had passed, but by his own estimate he was roughly 27. No. Actually, that wasn’t quite right either. By his own estimate, Isaac’s body and mind were roughly comparable with the stages of development he would expect an average 27-year-old to have experienced. The number of years he’d actually been alive was significantly shorter than that.
Isaac pushed the memories of his life before the cabin out of mind. For all intents and purposes, calling himself 27 was basically correct. It was the easiest answer he knew how to give.
“What’s a handsome young man such as yourself is couped up here in the middle of the woods, instead of out enjoying your life?”
“Someone has to keep the fire going.”
“But you can’t do this forever though. Surely this isn’t what you’d like to be doing?”
There was no easy answer to that question. “I guess what I’d like to be doing doesn’t really matter. Wherever I was in the world, I’d still be writing.”
“Then why do it here? Why not somewhere else?”
“Ehh… Because there is nowhere else. Where would I even go from here? Besides, I’m not traveling these woods.”
“You must’ve traversed them before. You got here somehow, did you not?”
“Yep, and I’m not traversing them again. You must’ve seen what’s out there, right?”
“No. Though, I will admit, I didn’t travel this far by foot. That would be far too untimely for my business.”
“No kidding? You have a horse or something out there?”
“Birds!”
Isaac blinked, very confused and not quite sure he’d heard her correctly. “I’m- I’m sorry. You traveled here on-”
“Birds!” She said a little more enthusiastically, flapping her tasseled wings beside her. “I travel the country by way of birds!”
Isaac didn’t follow. “Are they- Are they big birds?”
“I sense you don’t believe me.” Ms. Casey said smugly.
“I never said you’re lying.”
“I never accused you of calling me a liar! I said: ‘I sense you don’t believe me’!”
Isaac tried his hardest to imagine what she might’ve meant. “Do you mean like, ostriches, or something?”
“Small birds! Hundreds of them, in a cloud of feathers!”
“So, you flew here… on a cloud of birds?”
“In a cloud of birds. No more comfortable a way to travel!”
“Okay. That makes sense.” None of this made sense to Isaac. “Wait, if you could fly anywhere, why did you land here, in the middle of the woods, and come to my door?”
A smile stretched across Ms. Crow’s face from ear to ear. “You’ve been such a generous host, young man. May I perform a reading for you?”
“A reading? A reading of what?”
Ms. Crow reached into a hidden pouch, sewn into the side of her dress. Out of it, she pulled a small rectangular object that fit in the palm of her hand, wrapped in black cloth. “What do you know about divination?”
“I can’t say I know much.” Isaac could sense this was going in a direction he didn’t like. “That’s like, communing with the dead, right?”
“If you choose to.” She said, unwrapping the cloth from the item in her hand. “Divination is merely the process of seeking knowledge or insight through the arcane.”
“I don’t know if I believe in that.”
“Then surely there’s no harm in trying?” Ms. Crow knelt down on the floor, placing the object beside her. Isaac could now see it was a solid black deck of cards.
“Tarot?” He asked.
“No. Tarot is a but merely one system of cartomancy. Each of these cards I made by hand; there is no other deck like it.”
Isaac eyed the cards suspiciously. Curiosity got the better of him, and he sat down on the floor in front of her. “All right. Fine. What am I supposed to do?”
“Allow your mind to wander. I will be performing a five-card spread for you. My thank you, as a sign of gratitude for you being so gracious with your food and company.” She flipped the first card over on the floor and chuckled. “Ah! One of my favorites!”
On the card was a painted illustration of a woman, sewing the button eyes onto a scarecrow. Printed at the bottom of the card was the word Seamstress. “What does it mean?” Isaac asked.
“You must find the meaning for yourself. What does it draw to mind? Creation? Repairing that which was broken, perhaps?”
Isaac’s gaze was drawn to the door at the back of the cabin. Not the one that led to the bathroom, but the other one. The one with UNDER carved deep into its wood and had the chair propped up under the handle. “Can we move on? I don’t think I like this card.”
“You are only at the start of this journey, not the final destination.” She flipped over another card, placing it on the floor. An illustration of a man laying over a casket with tears running down his face. In the background, a tree stood desolate and without leaves, a lone noose hanging from one of its barren branches. The text at the bottom, read Lovelorn.
“You made these yourself?” Isaac asked, feeling increasingly uncomfortable.
“All of them, dreams captured in paint on cardstock.” Ms. Crow tapped the most recent card she’d placed down. “Heartbreak. Abandonment? But who abandoned who? Unrequited? Maybe something desired that was lost and can be saved? Maybe something beyond saving?”
“I don’t like this.”
“You mustn’t stop now!” Her voice was almost a pleading warning. “You are too far along. The journey must be completed.” She flipped over another card. A large, hairy, winged beast with yellow eyes was pulling the head off what looked to be young girl. Bat.
“You dreamed these?”
“I have collected these dreams from the minds of those I visit.” She traced her finger around the edges of the card, tapping her nail on the hardwood floor. “Death? Hunger? Something primal, starving, needing to be fed. Fear? Predation, perhaps?”
“Let’s just get the last two out of the way.”
The penultimate card drawn was a four-armed man in a suit, playing both a violin and a guitar simultaneously. Musician. “Artistry. Joviality. Something that brings people together? A message heard? But the musician appears alone… maybe his message is unheard? Maybe he hasn’t found his audience?”
“Maybe they’re standing out of frame on the card?” Isaac suggested.
“Maybe. Only the musician would know what he sees.” Ms. Crow rubbed her chin. “The final card is important. No less so than the ones that came before, but it, like the end to all journeys, has added significance to the traveler who embarked upon it.” She slid the deck towards Isaac expectantly. “You must draw the final card.”
Isaac reached towards the deck, then paused. “Does it need to be one from the top?”
“Not at all. With all journeys, you are free to forge your own path… but the outcomes and consequences if you stray might not be what you were hoping for.”
“They could be better.” Isaac said, trying to think optimistically. It wasn’t lost on him that in hoping for positive change, he was implicitly acknowledging the possibility of something much worse. Picking a random card from the center of the pile, he flipped it over.
Black lines. Scribbles, seemingly without form or shape. The card Isaac chose wasn’t like any of the other ones that had been laid out for him. The longer he stared into the mess of lines though, the more he started to identify images in them. A screaming face with the eyes too far apart to be natural. A figure with the limbs stretched out to disgusting proportions. A toothy mouth being torn wide open. A hand with six fingers, grasping at something unseen. Isaac even had to look hard through the hell of lines to find the word hidden beneath: Torture.
Ms. Crow rubbed her chin thoughtfully, looking up at Isaac. “What do you see, in this one?”
“You’re not going to give me some suggestions?”
“You chose this card; you must find the interpretation as well. Try to read the story within.”
Isaac stared down into the two-dimensional black abyss, trying to make sense of it. “Well… Torture… Hardship? Suffering?”
“If it was just suffering, why wouldn’t it just say that?”
He thought for a second. “Suffering brought about deliberately by someone else. Suffering caused with intent.”
“Caused by who?”
“By me. The people I’ve hurt. My potential to hurt many more in the future if I act carelessly.” He looked up at her. “It’s all distorted, unlike the other ones, because it’s not my perspective. It’s a warning: Not about what someone could do to me, but about what I could do to them.”
Ms. Crow clacked her nails on the floorboards. “That is quite the unique interpretation, young man. Take what you’ve seen here and save it within you. Reflect on it. Let it plant the seeds of introspection in you.”
Isaac watched as she flipped the five cards back over and shuffled them back into her deck, before wrapping it back up in the cloth and tucking it back into her dress pouch.
“Well, my work here is done.” She said, standing up. “I am summoned elsewhere?”
“Summoned?” Isaac inquired.
“Oh yes! My services are commissioned on request of song.” She cleared her throat and began to sing. “Oh little lady, Casey Crow! Come to me, when no one will know! Fly to me on backs of birds! Speak to me in ancient words!”
“Wait-” Isaac stood up now, hand white-knuckling his whiskey glass. “You go to wherever someone sings your tune?”
“Yes. I’ve become quite the legend at my job. Mostly I’m called on by children who hear about me from their friends on the playground. But more and more people in positions of power seek my services and my influence is growing. I can even visit as many people as I want now.” The intonation in how she pronounced the last sentence indicated she took a deeply sinister delight in it.
“But I didn’t summon you!” Isaac protested.
“No. You didn’t. You just had to let me in.”
The look on Isaac’s face betrayed that he still didn’t quite understand. Ms. Crow smiled, raised her fist in the air, and shook it a few times. Several loud knocks banged on the other side of the door to the UNDER. Isaac jumped, looking back and forth between it and his visitor.
“Don’t worry.” She cooed. “I’ve already consorted with my conjurer. I’ll be leaving both of you now.”
“Hang on, you don’t want to stay until morning?” He asked. “You never even touched your soup.” Truthfully, Isaac didn’t want the stranger to stay any longer, but he still felt like she had more he wanted to hear.
“No. My attention is paid for in one form or another.” The Lights in the cabin from the fire and the lamps started to dim, as if the illumination from them was being stolen by some unseen force. “Unless… You wish to pay my fee?”
Ms. Crow’s face looked like it was sagging off now; like the mask was falling off her face. There was movement under her skin, like something inside her was trying to escape. From just beneath her lower eyelid, a beak came poking up, opening and closing, like a crow gasping for breath. Isaac watched as her hand came up to ‘scratch’ her face, dragging something beneath the surface down away from her eye. The beak was pulled back under her eyelid as she did so.
“Uhm… No thank you. I think I’m good.”
“Very well!” She approached Isaac now, a ragged hand with long nail reaching out towards him. “Before I go…” Her palm rested on his forehead, and he was instantly filled with emotions. Sadness? Yes. Terror. But at what? Memories? Reliving? Regrets that he pushed down again and again? Drowning? Numbness. Empty. Hopeless? Addiction. Denial? Remorse. Writer. Her new card.
She withdrew her hand from Isaac’s forehead, and he fell to the floor gasping; whiskey glass shattering as a panic attack overtook him.
“Alright sweetie, I’ll be going now! Just remember:” Ms. Crow stood nearly hunched over, tasseled wings folded into her sides. She spoke her final sentence without opening her lips. “You’ll always know how to summon me, if ever you need my services.”
Then she stepped out onto the porch and closed the door behind her. The lights in the room returned to normal and everything was quiet for just a second. There was a horrible wet sound, like meat being ripped apart, mixed with wings flapping wildly. Finally came silence, and stillness fell over the cabin once more.
Isaac spent a long time kneeling on the floor in front of the couch, staring into the fire, thinking about his experience with the cards and what he had been told. “Let it plant the seeds of introspection in you.” Introspection didn’t come cheap for Isaac. Thinking about the circumstances of his life was a price he was unwilling to pay. Reflection on the past brought only agony, and it didn’t seem to him that anything positive or constructive could come from that.
No. It was much easier to slam down two more drinks and pour himself a third to sip on. If there was one thing Isaac was absolutely sure of, it was that the pain of remembering was never worth it.
As he sat at his desk, sipping his bourbon and trying not to doze off again, Isaac looked up at the letter hanging on his wall next to his desk. ‘Might as well get a start on that now so it can go out next time I run the mail.’ He began typing.
Dear Sir Ashley:
Ry Dandel Stories 