The Dark Somnium - The thing in my yard has been telling the most horrifying stories | Scary Stories | Creepypasta

Episode Date: February 16, 2023

This Creepypasta scary story is from the nosleep subreddit, written by Dopabean, make sure to check out the original story and support the author "The thing in my yard has been telling the most horrifying stories" https://www.reddit.com/user/DopabeaneSpecial thanks to Romnex for joining me in this video, checkout her channel! https://www.youtube.com/@RomNex Thumbnail artwork by Stefan Koidl, checkout their work here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CTeQjWbjjQK/https://linktr.ee/stefankoidl--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/darksomnium/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My mother loved fairy tales. She taught me to love them too. I never outgrew them, if anything, the older I got, the more I needed them. In fairy tales, you find happy endings, lessons, morals, comfort, and triumph and magic, but you will find no sadness. That's why I needed them, because I was sad and angry. I was sad and angry because my mother was dying, and there was nothing I could do but watch. I watched as every part of her withered except her stomach.

It grew hard and distended, almost engorged as if she were pregnant. I guess she was, except the thing she carried wasn't life, but her death. I watched as she mastered the wide, glimmering smile she never wore whenever she went out in public, which was less and less as time wore on. I watched as she told a fairy tale of her own. I'll be better soon. I watched as she cried and held my brother Noah. He was only three years old, but already doomed, fragile and sick and slow, with no hope of a normal life or even a long one.

So I watched him too. With dad gone and mom rotting from the inside out, I was the only one who could. Over the years, I heard wonderful, inspirational stories, modern fairy tales, you could say, of siblings who come together in the face of tragedy. who forge unbreakable bonds and take care of each other no matter what. I was not that brother. Noah was the bane of my existence, frail, stubborn, and impossible to care for, yet in need of more care than anyone. I hated every minute I spent with him.

I hated that Mom loved him most. I hated doing everything for him and for her, only to be shunted into the background at every turn. As days grew into weeks, that hatred sank deep. Every time I scrubbed my mother's vomit or threw her soiled sheets into the washer, every time Noah threw a tantrum, every time I watched Mom gaze at him like he was the second coming of Christ, every time I had to give everything I had, only to find that it wasn't enough, the hatred grew.

I buried it under fresh layers of poison stoicism and molten resentment that hardened over time, cooling into core. I could practically see it. Aged mineral in the color of storm clouds, slowly but surely replacing me. Hate wasn't the only thing I felt, but it was the easiest thing to feel. So I hated everything. I hated being with my mother. I hated the side of my brother.

I hated being the oldest. I hated school. I hated the doctors. I hated my father for leaving after Noah was born. I hated myself for wishing I could too. The only thing I didn't hate was my home. It had a steep sloped roof. made it look like the house was brooding. Inside was dark, a cavern with large rooms,

few windows, and clusters of dusty shadows that always seemed to move. Spiders lived everywhere, a witch's house, or a cursed castle with occupants in desperate need of a hero. The land around it was a rural wonderland, golden hills that stretched as far as the eye could see. There were mountains on the horizon and the shadowy green smear of a forest in the distance. I'd never climbed those mountains, nor entered that forest, but it was enough that they were there. I could look out the window, see them, and believe that something wonderful, something magical was out there. To me, it was paradise. To my mom, it was hell, a monument to her misery. She'd moved in after dad left. She could barely afford the place and struggled to make ends meet.

The stresses of insolvency, abandonment, and a desperately sick child nearly killed her. She lost too much weight. Her skin faded into a papery, translucent coating that stretched dangerously thin over her skull. I used to have nightmares that the flesh would split apart, revealing the glistening bone beneath. She got home from work one night, looking particularly ill. She turned to me, probably to ask if I'd taken care of dinner, but as she opened her mouth, She threw up. Black, red, and foul yellow splashed across the floor like blood-streaked poison. She kept crying that it burned. I called 911, which made her cry harder because she didn't have the money for an ambulance. The very next morning, we learned that she was dying. She kept her

job as long as she could. When she quit, that was the end. She had no money for hospital stays or medicine. That was why the burden of her care, end of noah's, fell to me. I didn't mind at first. I loved my mom more than anything, and her illness, terrible as it was, made it easy to be close to her. But as she deteriorated, she required exponentially more care. Care I wasn't remotely capable of providing. But there was no room in the equation for capability.

I went to school less and less until I stopped altogether. No one even noticed. It was like they'd forgotten me already. Some didn't like it, but she didn't stop me. How could she? Some days she couldn't even go to the bathroom on her own. The effort it took to simply stay alive drained her. She usually fell asleep before nightfall, always with her TV on.

Noah did too, since he slept in her bed. That left me by myself every night, alone in a cavernous house with only the echo of their TV to keep me company. Just three sad, forgotten people, waiting for everything to finish falling in the house. apart. Three people in a cursed house, desperately waiting for a hero to rescue them. I was supposed to stay inside because the hills weren't safe after dark, but I spent most nights outside anyway. Oak trees dotted the hills, great tangles of mistletoe festering the branches. Raccoons and deer passed through constantly. Cros roosted everywhere, even on the car, and caught fiercely whenever I

tried to shoe them away. Woodpeckers buried acorns in the walls. of the house. Owls called out to each other, bats swooped like scraps of living enchantment against the night sky, and coyotes slinked through the golden grass, rafts of miners' lettuce exploding along our property line, so thick and soft you could sleep in it. Sometimes I did. On warm golden evenings, and sometimes on cold gray nights, I went to the miners' lettuce. Sometimes I read, usually I rested, drifting off to the song of the song of the night. night insects and the low oceanic rush of wind through the leaves. These nights were the closest thing I had to a fairy tale.

Although every last one of those days was awful in its own way, one unseasonably hot September afternoon was the worst. The day was rotten from this start. Mom insisted on making breakfast, which gave me a stirring of hope. Maybe this would be one of her good days. That hope was brutally crushed when it became apparent that she didn't have enough strength to hold the skillet. She dropped it, cracking several tiles and denting the skillet in the process. She cried while I scrambled eggs and wiped tears from my face. Noah decided it was my fault

that Mom was sad, which made him angry. That rage built up until he launched himself at me as I served breakfast. I lost my grip and spilled half the eggs on the floor. An hour later, Mom threw up everywhere, blood and bile and small curls of undigested eggs. It smelled foul and sticky, clinging inside my nose, leaking down and coating my throat as I scrubbed away. Mom started to cry again as I cleaned up, which infuriated Noah and knew. He didn't have the vocabulary to express himself, so he just kept screaming. Stop it, stop it, stop it. I pretended to ignore him, gritting my teeth so hard they ached. Suddenly he lunged for me,

I dodged, but he knocked over the bucket instead, sending a flood of bloody, sudsy water across the floor. I saw red, mom, Noah, the furniture, the foul cascade of blood, bile, soap, and egg, all of it red, lined in golden autumn sunlight. Noah stomped in front of me and screamed. Stop it! I struck him. The crack was cataclysmic.

The beginning of the end of the world. His eyes went wide as he fell down and began to cry. My mother shouted at me, or tried to. Her weak voice was barely a whisper, but I caught the gist anyway. She was trying to send me to my room. After everything I'd done, she was punishing me. I spun around and stormed outside, slamming the door with such force, the house quaked. I blinked momentarily, blinded by the bright sun.

The day was warm. The trees and the garden were lush. Birds sang. Crows called to each other in the distance. coyote's yip. I marched to the backyard, biting my lip as my face crumpled. I focused on the miners' lettuce out near the property line. I reached it right as the tears began to fall. I flopped down and curled up. The scent of greenness and cold, dark earth swept over me, inside me, cleansing my lungs out of the stench of my mother's slow death while the birds sang and the wind rushed through the leaves.

I dreamed of crows, coyotes, and a brooding castle in which a paper-skinned princess who looked like my mother leaned out the window, screaming words that transformed into ribbons of foamy, bile-laced blood. What are you doing? The princess evaporated. I opened my eyes and found myself with a Halloween mask half-hidden in the miner's lettuce. It's awfully late for an afternoon nap. The mask asked, what a weird nightmare, I thought, staggering to my face. feet. The crushed lettuce left wet, dewy streaks on my skin. It felt real, not like a dream at all. Who are you? The mask lurched forward, followed by a strange, horribly skinny body, clothed in a mud-caped

dress. It took a long, disorienting moment to realize the body was emerging from a burrow in the miner's lettuce. She drew herself up into a sitting position and crossed her arms. They looked wrong those arms, emaciated, draped in dry folds of wrinkled flesh the color of buttermilk. My name is Wendy. She smiled, and I realized her mask, a ravaged, moon-colored mess of scars, dark holes, and nets of wrinkles around bright, flat eyes like coins, was not a mask, but her face. When I spoke, my voice issued in a panicky rush. You can't be here.

You're trespassing. No, you're trespassing. She rose to her feet in a single, boneless movement and picked her way through the miners' lettuce in a wormy, twitchy march that made my skin crawl. She halted several feet away. This is your property line. Everything behind it is yours. Everything on this side is not. I watched helplessly.

This was no nightmare. This was real. And maybe it was a fairy tale, but not mine, because I was the oldest brother. In fairy tales, the oldest brother always fails, leaving the youngest behind to save him. the kingdom, and I, the stupid eldest, had just failed by trespassing in a monster's territory. I'm sorry, I whispered. She flounced towards me, dry hair ripping behind her, something on her neck bounced in time with her steps, broken and strained, an old animal bone strung upon dirty twine. Why are you sorry? My brothers like sleeping here too.

Brothers? This thing, this hideous, wintry monster with eyes like cloud. shrouded moons had brothers? Are your brothers here? Are they in your borough, too? Are they watching? Do you want to know where they are? Would this appease the monster? Would listening save my life? Yes. She looked up. The dying light reflected in her eyes. Her skin looked so sick, somehow thick and papery at once. I hid them in the trees. Then she stepped past me. I watched, frightened and confused as she drifted through the golden grass and faded into the night. Once darkness swallowed her entirely, my paralysis broke and I bolted. By the time I reached the house, Noah and Mom were asleep.

I ran to her room without thinking, jealousy and resentment forgotten. I just wanted my mom. She would keep me safe from the horrors in the hills. But how? Asked a mean, broken, and terribly small voice in the back of my mind. She can barely even stand. Why do you think she cries? Because she knows you can't protect her, and because she knows you know too.

I stopped inches from her door, struggling as fear, jealousy, guilt, anger and love fought for dominance. Anger won. I retreated to the living room and locked the doors. After a long time, I fell asleep, straight into another nightmare. The princess who looked like my mother lay bleeding in a field of miners' lettuce. A white mountain lion prowled, murky silver eyes cutting dim swath through the darkness. Nearby, a half-eaten coyote with golden eyes whimpered as it bled to death. Wind roared through the leaves, bats swooped overhead, nestling in pendulous clusters of mistletoe that pulsed like hearts.

The mountain lion came closer. Green juice from the crushed miners lettuce drained its snowy coat. I couldn't run. I tried to close my eyes, but I couldn't do that either. I watched, unable to move or even scream, until it crept past me, slinking toward the princess. My paralysis broke as tears dripped from the coyote's golden eyes. Please come back. It said in Wendy's voice. I woke up nauseous and drenched in sweat. It was morning, but barely.

For reasons I didn't dare fathom I went outside. It was windy and shockingly cold. The big patch of miners let us look dark. dark and deep in the thin light, like a half-hidden lake. I took a deep breath and began to walk. When I reached the miners' lettuce, I stopped and scanned the patch as my heart pounded. But, of course, there was no coyote, no blood, certainly no white mountain lion. Only the spot where I liked to nap.

Beside it was the half-hidden burrow, and inside, shining like yellow lens flares. What are you doing here? Looking for you. She blinked. Then crawled out of the burrow. Her bone necklace, caked with mud and stringy white roots, swung back and forth. She looked even worse in the morning light. Eyes, one of which was wider than the other and clouded, were murky yellow.

Her skin was the worst, fragile and dry, twisted with thick scars, and poked with deep holes like insect burrows. What are you? Why? Are you afraid? For a moment I couldn't breathe. What did the monster need to hear? Affirmation of her magnificent fearsomeness or something else. My mind worked fast. She was terrifying to behold, but she hadn't hurt me. If anything, she'd been a little bit silly. What kind of monster acted like a regular kid? No, I lied. She smiled.

Good. Then she took my hand and pulled me through the carpet of miners' lettuce and into the hills. I didn't resist, because even if she seemed kind, she was still a moment. monster and I was the oldest brother. The sun rose and the day brightened as we walked. After some time, the forest evolved from a shadowy green smear to a spectacular wall of trees. I eyed it with frightened excitement. I'd never ventured inside myself. The forest had always been too far away, but now I was here. Not only would I finally explore it, I would do so with a monster beside me, But to my disappointment, Wendy veered sharply, avoiding the trees entirely.

Why aren't we going in? Because I hate it. Oh, where are we going? Right over? There! She dropped my hand and sprinted off into the long grass. I followed, but I was cautious, scanning the ground for rattlesnakes and tarantulas before each step. When I caught up to her, she was standing at the base of a particularly grand valley oak. Do you like this tree?

I looked up at it. The huge canopy threw an impressive radius of dappled shadows. Crows roosted in the branches, peering down at me with bright eyes. Sure. So do I. It's the only tree I like. I used to climb it with my brothers, but only at night. Do your brothers come out at night?

No. She said. I watched her. Equal parts repulsed and captivated. No. They're dead. The monster got them a long time. I couldn't muster an answer.

I tell everyone who comes here about the monster, not just you. I have to. I'm the only one who knows it's here. Everyone else forgot. Despite my fear, I was fascinated, eager even, gripped by the dark, obsessive enchantment unique to childhood. This was it. It had happened.

Somehow, in the middle of tragedy and in my own backyard, I had stumbled on a fairy tale. What kind of monster? The worst kind. Do your brothers know about it? They didn't believe in it. She looked up at the branches. The web-like pattern reflected in her eyes. I don't want to talk about them anymore.

So we did not. Instead, we talked about worms and bats, bumblebees and bobcats, acorns and moths. Windy taught me that the wild camamil growing in my yard could be harvested for tea, that miners' lettuce could be eaten, and that raccoons washed their food. She said the crows had been in this valley since the world's first days, which was why they lived everywhere, settling trees, the way people settled neighborhoods, and that the reason the coyotes loved long yellow grass was because it camouflaged their fur. Mom would love to hear this, I thought. And just like that, Wendy's spell was broken again. Reality came crashing down. I jumped up as images of my mother filled my head. I have to go. Wendy stood eagerly, turning her bone.

pendant between her fingers. Where? Home. Her face fell. Oh. You can come? I offered, even as my heart sank. She gave me a smile that made her skin crinkle like a dry leaf.

Thank you, but I can't. Well, then I'll come see you tomorrow. Her smile slipped. Or tonight? She hitched it back up. Good. There's magic here. That thought buoyed me for the rest of the day.

When Noah screamed at me, I just smiled. When Mom gave me anxious looks, I kissed the top of her head, impervious for once to the scent of spoilage that clung to her like bad perfume. Once they'd gone to bed, I slipped out the back door, heading for the miners' lettuce. Insects drifted in the dying light like scraps of gold. I didn't see windy anywhere. When I looked in the burrow, there was only darkness. Disappointment settled over me, surprisingly bitter.

Then, two bony legs with cracked white skin fell in front of my face. I stumbled back, screaming overhead. Something burst out laughing. I looked up and saw Wendy dangling from a branch. She dropped to the ground, laughing so hard that her wrinkled face resembled a very happy and slightly rotten pumpkin. Before I knew it, I was laughing too. By the time we stopped, it was almost dark.

As I stood, a bat swooped in front of my face. I wheeled back and fell again. This sent us both into another hysterical fit of laughter. This time we laughed until long past dark. For the first time in years, I felt like a child, a hero on an adventure, a happy ending waiting on the horizon, joy, not fear, permeated reality, and it was all because of windy. As we ventured into the night-time hills, she continued the morning's lecture, instructing me on the habits of bats, how to calm a frightened deer, and how to handle rattlesnakes.

As we skirted the forest, she looked at it wistfully. There used to be a beautiful pond there, deep in the trees. Well, it would have been beautiful if it weren't covered in scum. The moon was high when we once reached the enormous oak, standing like an alien sentinel in the dark. Come on, let's climb. My heart plummeted. The oak loomed over me, impossibly tall.

branches cut the night sky into starry fractals. I can't. I have something to show you. She disappeared up the trunk like a squirrel. It was the last thing I wanted to do, but if a hero can't conquer his fear, then he's no hero at all. So I followed. Finding a grip on the tree was hard, shimmying up was even harder. The bark scraped my hands and knees, and I knocked my head against the branches.

Wendy? See? Far overhead, the leaves rustled. I'm here. What's taking you so long? I kept climbing. She was waiting near the top, balancing on a precariously thin branch. Hurry, by me. I eyed the branch nervously, but there was nothing to do. I hauled myself up, grimly ignoring my throbbing, bloody hands and settled beside her. She pointed to a branch thick with leaves and mistletoe.

Look! I squinted, wondering. what it was supposed to be. The leaves? They were thicker there. So thick they blocked the stars entirely. But so what? Did she really drag me all the way to the top to show me big leaves? I opened my mouth to ask her, but before I could speak, one of the leaves took flight. That's. Their small bodies hung from the branches, swaying and quivering. They were everywhere. The old tree was a roost. Panic overtook me. My heart slammed against my ribs. as I twisted and tried to climb down.

Wendy caught my shoulder. Look! She held out her other hand, which looked as thin and delicate as the bats themselves. I watched, astonished, as three bats shivered open and swung, latching onto her fingers. They crawled along her arm with quick, twitchy movements. More followed. One, two, three, six, ten, twelve. Wendy laughed merrily and tipped her hand against my shoulder.

It tickles. Here, you try. The bat surged across her in a jerky flood and crawled onto me. I covered my eyes as the first of many tiny claws tugged my shirt. Velvet bellies and warm wings inched across my skin, one after the other. It did tickle. After a long time, I opened my eyes. Bats covered me from waist to shoulder, clinging tightly as a gust of wind moaned through the canopy.

The branch swayed dangerously. I grasped the trunk in a panic. The bats took flight, rising in clouds. Moonlight shone through their membranous wings, throwing their bones into sharp relief. Something roiled in my chest and bubbled up my throat. I thought it was a scream, but when I opened my mouth, laughter exploded out. Windy joined me as the bats swooped around us. Wind moaned through the branches, leaves roared like the tide.

In the distance, coyote's howl. Windy threw her arms around me, and together we kept laughing. I visited Wendy every evening. Each night I discovered that I needed to sleep a little less. By November, I didn't need to sleep at all. And thank God, sleep would have forced me to miss out on our adventures. We climbed oak trees, crawled through the bracken with its tangles of thorns and late-season wildflowers, raised each other through the hills, and napped in the miners' lettuce.

Then there were the animals. Every animal in the hills obeyed Wendy's commands. Hawks alighted on our hands, talons, nicking, soft skin. Deer crept through the tall grass and touched their soft noses to ours. Large eyes so wide they reflected the entire landscape. We pet black bears, became roost for bats, ran with coyotes, rooted in the dark earth with wild hogs, and cuddled every feral cat that crossed our path. In my memory, those days are warm and golden, and the nights are cold and clear, with blasts of icy wind that woke me in a way nothing has before or since. Like everything to do with Windy, it made me feel alive. I was happy and utterly, completely myself, untethered to the quiet, bitter tragedy of

my mother and brother. I had a magical wildness that transcended freedom itself, a stay I could only enter when I was exploring hills, trees, and mountains with Windy. The only place we did not explore was the forest. It seems insane in hindsight, but everything was insane. Not just Wendy herself, although she was plenty insane on her own. The way wild animals came to us, tamer than dogs, or my metamorphosis into an odd lost boy who didn't need sleep.

My mother's illness was insane, too, that she had to be alive while rotting from the inside out wasn't just insane, it was monstrous. So was Noah's prognosis. The fact that I would be an orphan at 12, that my disabled brother and I would be placed into different foster homes, perhaps never to see each other again, was insane. And the reality that my mother would be dead before my 13th birthday, less than a year, less than half a year, was insane. The fact, the truth, that nobody cared, that no one would remember us, that my mother and my

The weather and I were already forgotten was the most insane thing of all. Compared to that, Wendy's forest didn't even register. On a frigid evening, when the sky was clear and bright and snow crowned the moonlight mountains, I prepared to go see Wendy as usual, but on my way out, I felt a tug on my coat. I looked down and saw Noah. Go back to bed. I told him. He shook his head.

Anger stirred, but quickly died. Noah would be an orphan too, at four, not twelve. He might not even remember Mom. What would be worse to remember and ache for her until he died or to forget her altogether? What if he forgot me? What if he ended up in a bad foster home? What if it ended up being hell? And what if he never remembered anything else?

For the first time in weeks, a lump formed in my throat as reality came to roost, and with it a bitter truth. If anyone needed a fairy tale, it wasn't me. It was Noah. Okay, I said, let's get your coat. We went out into the frosty night, dead bracken crunched under our feet. The moon shone, high and cold, drenching the darkness in a film of silver. Bats flew overhead, throwing thin, unsettling shadows.

I knelt down by the burrow. Noah looked at me curiously, then followed suit. Wendy? I whispered. Are you awake? Silence. Then two golden lens flares blink to life. Oh!

Noah whispered. The light reflected off his face as he reached out to touch them. Then long fingers, thin, cracked, bright as the moon, slid out of the burrow and took his hand. Who is this? My brother. Inside the burrow, something curved and pale glinted under her lens flare eyes. A crescent. A smile.

Noah froze as Wendy slid out and unfolded before him. His gaze tracked upward along her arm to her shoulder, finally settling on her face. His eyes widened, reflecting the nightcape. Then he spoke his first full sentence. What is that? Noah! I snapped. He shook his head and tried to pull back, but Wendy didn't let go.

Noah. No, no! He wrenched away. I caught him, but he recoiled and twisted. He dug his nails into my hand and screamed. It echoed through the night, so maddeningly shrill, the coyotes yipped in response. Then he bit me. His teeth felt sharp and electric, somehow rotten.

I let go, and he ran. I chased him for what felt like hours, screaming at him to come back. That just spurred him on, small legs carrying him faster than even I could hope to run. He moved farther and farther ahead, a dark shape glossed in silver, speeding towards the forest edge. I watched, helpless as he finally disappeared among the trees. The forest loomed before me, a monstrous tangle of shadow and starlight and thick, menacing darkness. I hesitated, craning my neck as I listened for Noah, but heard nothing. So I plunged in, because a hero who can't clean up his own messes is no hero at all.

As soon as I ducked under the canopy, the world changed. Stars bled through the dying leaves, pale mist curled. through the branches. A delicate sheen of silver covered the entire forest. I thought of my old nightmare, the pale cougar with silver eyes, eating the coyote that spoke in Wendy's voice. I shivered and kept walking. I wondered vaguely where I might find Wendy's scum-blanketed pond. On the heels of that came thoughts of Wendy's monster. I wondered whether it had silver eyes like the cougar. Fear suddenly took root and exploded upward. I was too old. to believe in monsters, but I was in a dark forest on an enchanted night.

How could I believe in anything else? Leaves and twigs crunched underfoot. Patterns of broken moonlight danced over my skin. I sidestepped roots and rocks, silently reassuring myself. There are no monsters. They aren't real. There are no monsters. They aren't real.

There are no monsters. I hopped over an upraised root, but instead of touching the ground, my foot went down and down and down, spilling me to the forest floor. Disintegrated leaves and fine silky dust exploded in a cold cloud. It tasted old and rich, a combination of oak, sage, filth, and dirty fur that melted into mud on my tongue. I sat up, gagging, and turned. Behind me, I saw an earthen ledge that formed a high, lopsided step snaked through with roots. I spat out the mud and stood up. There, in the trees behind the tree-root stair were eyes like milky starlight. There are no monsters.

Something shifted. They aren't real. Something bony, broken and long, long as a tree, a fallen, bug-infested tree exploding with rot. There are no monsters. They aren't real. But that thing was very real. I ran.

Behind me, leaves cracked and twigs snapped under rapid footwork. steps. There are no monsters, no monsters, no monsters, no monsters, no monsters. A low roar bored into my ribcage and thrummed, so shockingly powerful it paralyzed me, I was sure my bones would disintegrate. I would collapse, a puddle of flesh and clothes and powdered bone. Someday a tree would grow from my bone meal, and I would be part of the forest, part of the monster, forgotten by the world as I grew web-like branches and sprouted leaves that would host pendulums of mistletoe. Then the roar cut off, so did my transfiguration.

I was no longer a tree, just a boy, a frightened boy running from the monster in the deep, dark woods. I ran until I heard birdsong underscored by the hoarse commentary of crows. A cat darted across my path, fur shining in the sunlight. I sobbed and glanced over my shoulder before I locked. my nerve, a doe stared back, half hidden in the trees. What are you doing here? I spun around in a panic.

It was windy. Come on, we have to get out of the trees. I hate them. The sun shafted weakly through the forest canopy, throwing patterns of light and shadow but moved over our skin as we ran. I glanced uneasily at the trees. Branches like great drooping webs spread overhead, bleeding dusty beams of sunlight. In the distance, I spied the shaded patch of miners' lettuce.

On the hill beside it stood my house. When we crossed the tree line, reality crashed over the world, dismantling the dark spell of the forest and its silver-eyed monster. Before I could even draw breath, Wendy turned on me. How could you go in there? I had to. Dread exploded as I remembered why I'd gone into the woods in the first place. What kind of hero abandons a sick little boy to the mercy of a monster? No hero at all.

I turned back. As the shadows of the trees fell across me, I felt their pull, like fishing lines reeling me in. My brother! She grabbed me and spun around, slamming me to the ground with such force I could barely comprehend it. No! She screamed. I told you! I tried to stand, but my limbs wouldn't obey.

I can't let him. I told you there was a monster! But my brother's in there! I couldn't leave him! You didn't leave me! Her face crumpled. She looked uglier than ever, too ugly to be real. Yes, it's bad to abandon your brothers.

She wiped her eyes, pushing up folds of loose, dry skin. I need to show you something. But Noah... It's safe. I mean sure. I always take care of my brothers. Then she got down on all fours and crawled into her borough. I looked up at my house, then down at the borough, windy or home. Despite my fear and the merit of her, deep exhaustion weighing me down, the choice was surprisingly easy. I dropped to my belly and

slid in after her. The burrow was wet and cold, mud squished under my fingers, pale roots dangled like the legs of ghostly spiders. A large earthworm glistened briefly before diving into the earth. Then, darkness engulfed me, and I saw nothing at all. I crawled blindly. The hiss of Wendy's Bony form sliding ahead was the only thing that kept panic at bay. By the time I emerged into the sunlight, my bones ached with cold. Every inch of skin was numb. My clothes were muddy, and those thin, pale roots tangled around my fingers like water-logged hair. I closed my eyes against the light.

It felt painfully bright, but I knew it wasn't. I sensed the gloomy, muted quality of the sun and knew that we were back among the trees. I frowned. Why did Wendy, who hated the forest, have a home that spilled directly into its heart? Open your eyes. I did. Directly before me, perched an inch or two off the dark earth, was a discolored bulb shot through with cracks and two large dark holes like eyes. Only when I noticed the jaw beneath, small, malformed, with less than a dozen teeth, did I understand what I was seeing.

My head felt light, my chest pressurized as though a rapidly inflating balloon had replaced my heart. I looked around. There were so many. They carpeted the earth, sprouting from the dead leaves like obscene flowers. Small and large, pale and dark, some hole, some broken, some with smashed faces, some with little more than lopsided jaws or jagged skullcaps. These are my brothers. No one remembers them.

Or the monster who killed them. The balloon in my chest inflated sharply, pressing painfully against my ribs and throat. Eyes like dirty silver pools filled my head. Monsters aren't real. This one is. It lives in the trees. You have to listen, or you'll end up like them. I'm not your brother.

Her face was changing, fading, bleeding away like light bleeds from the evening sky. I couldn't look at her for long. When you forget a monster, you allow it to thrive, to take over. Why didn't you tell me you had a brother, too? I shrug defensively. Tell me about him. Of course she wanted to know about Noah. All anyone ever cared about was Noah.

Why should Wendy be any different? He's sick. With what? Something he was born with. He won't live very long because his organs aren't growing right. He can't form memories very well. When my mom dies, he might not remember. her. Tears stung my eyes. Suddenly it was hard to breathe. Or me. He'll have to go to a special

foster home, and I won't be able to come. He'll think we left him. Why does he have to go? Why can't he stay here with you and your mother? How amazing, I thought, how bitterly, selfishly amazing that I hadn't yet told Wendy of Noah who were my mother. Everything came out of me. I could almost see it flooding the forest floor, an infected pool rising around the garden of skulls. It's like Mom and Noah existed for nothing. No one cares that they're here. No one will care when they're gone. No one will even remember them.

They don't matter to anyone, and I can't change that. Nothing I do was enough. Wendy sat, motionless in my periphery. She looked terrifying in silhouette, absolutely gut-wrenchingly, incomprehensibly horrifying, but when she spoke, she sounded gentle, so very gentle. Why didn't you tell me? Because I didn't want to think about it. You didn't want to remember.

I shook my head and continued to cry. Silence followed, broken only by the wind and the steps of tiny animals picking through the dead leaves. Then, Windy spoke. I expected her to tell me about her brothers, but even though the skulls of a hundred dead The boy surrounded us, she told me about crows and red ants and condors, all of which ate dead things. Once the scavengers have their fill, the carcasses of dead animals rot into the soil, to be drawn up through the roots of jealous, hungry trees and eaten.

I remembered the dust in my mouth, how it had tasted of oak and rot. Living things are alive because they eat dead things. Wendy turned her bone pendant over and over in her hands. hands. That is the only way living things can live. She looked up at the sprawling web of branches. Especially the trees. They are more alive than any of us know. I finally looked to her. Her skin was thinner and older than I'd ever seen it. Her eyes looked flat yet endless, with dim, cloudy spots under the surface, like dead things drifting under murky water. If you could be like me, would you? Yes. A thousand years of cold.

Cold, clear nights filled with bats and deer and laughter would be a dream come true. No worries, no sickness, no future. Only magic. What if it meant you had to eat something that was alive? Would you still do it? This is wrong, whispered a small voice in the back of my head. All of it was wrong. Her way with animals, how she made them behave even when their bodies quivered and their eyes

rolled. Her cold burrow, her skeletal thinness, her waistful. her wormy movements, the broken desiccation of her skin and her eyes, her clouded dead eyes. I shot to my feet. I have to go. I know. I walked as fast as I could without running, shuddering when I passed her burrow. I didn't dare go through it again.

The thought of being trapped, of being chased by a skeletal girl monster whose dry body rasped against the walls, nearly sent me into a panic. The forest surrounded me, all dusty green. and golden gloom. I thought of monsters, warped in human bodies blending with the twisted branches, spidery hands stretching out of the shadows, multed skin camouflaged in the dappled light. I took a deep breath. There are no monsters. Wendy's cracked, dead face filled my mind's eye. They aren't real. The trees finally thinned. The bright sunlight grew brighter and green glimmered through the trees, the miners' lettuce, the boundary between my world and Wendy's, and behind it,

my house. I broke into a run and didn't stop until I burst through the door. Noah, who was napping on the love seat, didn't stir. What? She snarled. What were you thinking? Her words crushed me, so I crushed her. It would be good to get him out of here and away from you for a little while.

He doesn't have to die just because you are. The words hung in the air, echoing, reverberating until they broke what was left in my world, like magic words spoken by a monster instead of the hero. I regretted them instantly, but it didn't help. Nothing I did or could do or whatever do could help. I looked at Noah. His hands were scrapped raw. His little palms looked flayed, coated in papery scabs and raw flesh.

I thought of the forest. It's hungry roots and jagged rocks. and withered. Mom, go. She looked a hundred years old, papery skin stretched over a skull, eagerly anticipating the day it would escape her. Just go. I looked at my brother again, flopped bonelessly over the cushions.

Only the rise and fall of his chest gave any indication that he was alive. Wendy's voice echoed in my ear. An image exploded in my head. My mother arranging freshly butchered pieces of my little brother on the kitchen table. as she prepared to eat him while his eyes, flat and discovered, with cloudy, pale things flickering in their depths bored into me. I burst into tears. That night, for the first time in months, I slept. There's so much more to tell of Wendy, of what she was and what she did, but I'm so tired, far too tired to remember any more monsters tonight. After I left Wendy in the forest, I slept

for the first time in weeks. My dreams were filled of headless boys, crippled princesses with flesh so thin it split across their cheekbones, and a pale cougar eating a golden-eyed little girl whose blood flooded an entire field of miners' lettuce. The mountain lion snapped the child's bones in its blood-stained jaws with a rhythmic crack, crack, crack that jerked me out of the nightmare. The cracking sound followed me out of my dream, only it wasn't cracking of bones. or of anything else, it was tapping.

I shot up and faced my window. Sure enough, I saw a pale hand wrapping the glass, and behind it, a small, star-silvered silhouette. Anger overtook me. I stalked to the window and threw it open. What do you want? I hissed. The monster saw you. It's going to come for you and your brother.

Our brother. My heart fell down to my feet. Fear bloomed in its place. To hide it, I snarled at her. How do you know? Her eyes looked dim, yet terribly bright, like cloud-shrouted moons. I know everything the monster thinks. I know everything the monster thinks.

The flower in my chest continued to bloom, thick black petals unfurling one by one. No, you don't. I know because the monster is the forest, and I used to love the forest. More than anything, even more than I loved my brothers. That's how I know. She reached for my hand. Her skin was cracked and dry and so terribly thin. Moonlight filtered through it, revealing the mummified musculature and delicate bones beneath.

Come with me. I recoiled. No. Her eyes blazed for an instant, perillessent moon yellow flaring to gold. She then relaxed and folded her hands on the sill. All right. I'll stay with you instead. I don't want you to.

I almost spat. But what kind of hero would that make me? No hero at all, of course. Only a resentful brat who made his mother cry, who hated helping his family, who abandoned his baby brother to the beast in the deep dark woods. Would I also chase away my best friend, my only companion,

my fairy tale for the crime of simply trying to help me? How foolish would that make me? I knew she wasn't human, so that made her something else. Maybe an elf or a fairy or a creature no one had ever even heard of. And what if she needed my help? What if she was cursed? For all I knew, she was some kind of princess.

But no matter what she was, I loved her, didn't I? Yes. And I must have loved her for a reason. Surely my instincts weren't wrong. She was scary, but she was good. She had to be... Okay. What do you want?

To tell you about... my first brother. Curiosity surged. What about him? She smiled, frog-like mouth opening over small, fine teeth. The important things. She looked down, spidery lashes shaded her moon-yellow eyes. He was littler than me.

He loved cats. Petting cats and going fishing were his favorite things in the world. He got a fish hook stuck in his hand once, and it left a big, lumpy scar like an earthworm. but that didn't put him off fishing. He sure did love fishing. A single tear rolled down her cheek. I waited. He wanted to build a little house by a river,

a river that froze in wintertime and shone like glass. He'd fish in the river every day and cook the fish in his fireplace. The cats would eat first because he loved them so much. He was going to plant an apple tree so he could pick the apples and teach wild deer to eat them. out of his hand. What was his name? Wendy's eyes darkened. I don't remember.

The moon rose behind her, obscured by the twisted branches of the valley oaks. Crickets and night insects sang a peculiar orchestra that pulsed through the night. After a while, Wendy continued. My brother didn't believe in monsters. That's why it was so easy for the monster to catch him. Because he didn't believe in it. He loved the monster and didn't believe anything he loved. loved could be evil. Not when the monster hurt him. Not when it pulled his arms and legs off. Not even when

it tore his head away. The monster pulled so hard that part of my brother's spine came out. I saw it. It looked like a root. I don't want to hear anymore. A monster took my brother's arms and his legs and his body, but it left his head behind. So when the monster left, I took my brother's head out into the forest. The spine was sharp and slippery. It cut my hands. Stop. I got lost.

It was nighttime. My brother's little cat followed me. It cried and cried, like a kitten who lost its mother. I cried with it while the owls watched. I was so scared they would swoop down and carry it away and pull its head off and eat it, like the monster did to my brother. I got lost, but finally found a pond. It's dried up now, but it wasn't back then.

There was scum on it and no fish inside. But there was water. I dug a little hole on the shore and put my brother's head in it. I covered his spine root with dirt and leaves, but left his head above the ground. Then I scooped up the pond water and watered him. The scum got into it. his eyes. Stop! I stayed with him for days. So did his cat. I ate acorns and drink from the pond,

and I watered his head every morning and evening, but he didn't grow back. He just rotted. His eyes turned gray and sank into his head. His hair fell out. His skin turned bad colors, then swelled and split and slowed away. I didn't want to live without him. So I went home. and waited for the monster to kill me, but he didn't kill me. Instead, he gave me food, a delicious stew with thick brown gravy and corn and meat. I was so hungry I hated all, except the last bite. I didn't eat the last bite, because when I scooped it up in my spoon and the gravy drained off, I saw it was a soggy piece of skin with a big lumpy scar on it. just like an earthworm.

Shut up! I screamed. No, I have to tell you about the monster, because I can't fight him alone. She stepped away from the windowsill. Go to sleep now. She went away. I lay awake and thought of her brother's head

rotting away under the silver moon, dead eyes forever locked on his stagnant pond, while bugs crawled up his spine root and ate him from the inside out. The next morning, My mother asked me to spend the day with her and Noah. I wanted to, more than anything, but the idea of placing my head, filled as it was with Wendy's nightmares, beside her and Noah made me sick. What if the nightmares sloshed out of my head and into theirs?

What if I contaminated them and gave my dying mother bad dreams for the remainder of her painful life? Instead, I stayed in my room with the blind shut and the curtains drawn, emerging only to cook meals and clean when my mother vivor. vomited up her lunch. When night fell, I locked every door, turned on every light, and piled my bed with every blanket I could find. I lay awake, petrified and suffocating, until morning came. Only then did I drift into an exhausted sleep. Wendy didn't come the next night, or the one after that, or even the night after that. I'd just begun to convince myself that she was some kind of bizarre,

A delusion brought on by my inability to cope with my own grief and fear when a loud tap startled me from a twilight sleep. I curled up immediately and covered my ears. It did nothing to muffle the sound of Wendy's withered fingertips. I gripped my teeth. One tap. Two, three, four, five, six, ten, twenty, thirty-five, fifty-five. I finally shot up.

Go away! The tapping ceased. I sat there, breathing heavily and waiting for the glass to shatter, for windy to crawl in like a giant broken spider and pull my head off before I could even scream. I'd read that heads were conscious for up to five minutes following decapitation. Would I be conscious? What would it be like to scream without a body? Then her ragged voice emanated from the corner.

Why are you so mean to me now? I reared back up as her bony shadow unfolded from the shadows. It took several seconds to draw enough breath to speak. How did she get in here? Through the trees. She stayed in the corner as indistinct as the pale things floating in her eyes. There aren't trees in here. Trees grow under your house.

Little ones, sick and small and fighting with mushrooms. But they're there. There enough. Why are you here? To my immense shame, my voice thickened and broke. I am no hero. I thought miserably, no hero at all. You scare me.

The monster should scare you. She drifted out of the shadows and halted at the foot of my bed. I'll tell you about him soon. But first, I'm going to tell you about my second brother. I covered my ears and began to hum. She struck like a viper, smacking my hands away. Her skin was extraordinarily hot. I yelped and flinched.

She was older than me. How could your second brother be older than your first brother? I snapped, rubbing my hands as blisters began to rise. He was an orphan who lived in the forest by himself. He didn't believe in monsters either. He loved everything. No matter what happened to him, he saw the best in the world. He taught me to climb the oaks and cut the mistletoe away.

He loved to be in the trees, and I loved to be there with him. We would climb the oaks and stay in the branches all night, singing to the bats and watching the moon. He taught me about chamomile tea, and acorn paste, and bobcats and coyotes. He made friends with raccoons and gave them presents, shiny bits of metal that he sanded smooth,

so the raccoons wouldn't cut their hands. He made friends with the crows, too. He fed them, even when he was starving. Skin, meat, bones, They loved Bones the best. When he taught them to speak, the first word they learned was Bone. They knew how to count to nine. They knew hello.

And yes, and no, and please. They even knew his name. Her eyes flashed cold, dull yellow. But I don't. Not anymore. I don't remember it. I realized I wasn't breathing and took the deepest, quietest breath I could manage. My oldest brothers said monsters aren't.

Real. Monsters are evil, he told me. The timber of her voice became deep and fast and silly, the voice of a sweet fool. I could almost see him, tall and painfully thin, with dirty hair and an earnest, homely face. Nobody's really evil, windy. Sometimes they're scared or stupid or confused or hurt. Sometimes I guess they're bad, but no one is evil, so no one can be a monster. Her voice broke, she uttered a soft sob and angrily wiped her murky eyes. I thought of the forest, of the preternatural silence in those molten eyes burning in the gloom.

Monsters didn't exist. I knew that, but that thing did. And if it wasn't a monster, what was it? The monster didn't want to be called scared or stupid or confused or hurt. It wanted to be powerful. And it was. To prove it, a monster slaughtered all of my brother's friends, the crows, the raccoons, the woodpeckers, and the squirrels. It brought them to my brother, fur and feathers and all.

My brother screamed. I've never heard such a scream. It should have split the world apart. Then the monster broke my brother's arms and legs and threw him in the well and left him there for days. My poor brother begged for food. The monster ignored him. Until one morning, it grabbed one of my brother's dead friends. A little raccoon with maggots in its eyes.

It threw the raccoon down to my brother. My brother pounced on it like a starving rat. And he screamed again. The monster laughed and threw all the animals into the well. Some of them hit the stones and split in half. Others exploded when they hit the bottom. My brother lay there, broken and dying, screaming as the corpses of things he loved best buried him in fur and wet, stinking rot. I saw it all.

The smell is still in my mouth. It hides under my tongue and clings inside my nose and fills my lungs, reminding me, always reminding me. I waited. Both hands over my mouth because I was afraid of what would come out. Useless words, childish sobs, endless screams, or laughter. The monster left my brother to rot in the well. I went to him one night. It was the kind of night my brother liked most, clear and cold,

full of bats and bright with moonlight. The smell. Oh, the smell. I wanted to go down and see him and all his friends. They were my friends, too, and I loved them. But there was no way down into the well. So instead, I ran into the forest. Even though it was night and the petals were all furled.

I picked every flower I could find. An arm load. So many, they kept slipping away and left a trail behind me. I carried the flowers back to the well and dropped them in. And even though it was night, even though they were picked and dead, They blossomed as they fell. In the morning, that old, dry well was overgrown. Vines and wildflowers exploded out like a fountain, covering every last stone.

I loved those flowers so much. I sat by them often, especially on the cold, clear nights when bats swooped low. On those nights, I would look into the flowers and see eyes, the bright, curious eyes. eyes of raccoons and the small, dark star eyes of crows. But even though I searched, I never saw the eyes of my brother. Where's the well? Under this house. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe, couldn't even think. I went to the well every night. When they started to build this house, I got scared. I thought of my brother and his friends, trapped in an old well under a house. In the dark, forever forgotten. So I ate them. All the vines, all the flowers, all the thorns, all their eyes.

Then I crawled down into the well and pulled up the roots. There were so many. Some went deep, some were shallow, some were big, some were small. Every last one of them looked like backbones. I meant to eat them, but I couldn't, any more than I could have used. beaten my first brother's backbone. So I pulled them out of the well and carried them into the forest. The monster ruled the forest by then, so I could think of nothing else to do. I wandered the trees with the roots until I found a place I knew. The pond was dry, but the rest was the same. My first brother's head was there, attached to a stalk of polished bone. His eyes were few shut and his head had grown enormous. It was flat on one in just like a pumpkin that's grown

on its side. But he smiled when I knelt beside him. He smiled even wider as I dug a hundred holes for the roots of my second brother and all of his friends. My first brother didn't say anything. He couldn't because he was just ahead. But he smiled because he remembered me. She covered her eyes. I don't even remember his name. I watched her helplessly. Each sob sent a pulse of overwhelming sorrow through my own body, waves of grief on a shore of flesh and bone. You were a good sister.

I know it. She turned away, pale form melting into the shadows. Wendy, don't go. Don't! A single soft sob emanated from the corner. Then all was silent. I lay awake for a long time, thinking of the forgotten well filled with bones of the slaughtered animals, of the boy who screamed so loudly the world should have split apart.

As I finally drifted off to sleep, I heard the echo of a terrible, heart-rending whale echoing from under my bedroom floor. The next morning I ventured out and searched for Wendy. When I couldn't find her, I retreated to the patch of Miner's lettuce and waited for hours. In the distance, the forest drew my eyes like a magnet, a smear of gold and green, magical, monstrous. At some point, I thought I saw bright eyes burning through the trees. I swallowed the lump in my throat and went home. Eight nights later, I'd given up.

Reality had already swept windy half away. My mother was sicker, closer to death than ever. No one must have sensed it. He was so wild, his behavior barely qualified as human, and it took everything I had to handle him. It wasn't enough, though. Even hours past dark, he regularly burst into miserable, screeching wailing, though it kept me awake, I was happy that I didn't have to deal with it. That was one good thing about my mother's

lavishing of all her attention on him. At least I didn't have to soothe his night terrors. I stayed up, listening in case she needed help, but everything remained quiet. After a while, I drifted. A familiar tapping roused me. Before I was even awake, I rose and stumbled to the window. Frozen air gusted in, smelling of snow and dark earth. Windy stood there, looking dead, deader than she had the day I saw the skulls of her brother, a shambling monument to old, dry rot. Why are you here? I asked. She slung a withered, spidery leg over the sill and climbed into my room. Her bone pendants swung back and forth, dirty and jagged as ever. I've come to tell you about my third brother. Her sparse, dry hair caught the moonlight.

blazing warm silver that glanced off her crumbling flesh and threw her ruined features into sharp relief. I could see the dim suggestion of bones within her desiccated limbs. It reminded me of the bats how the moon had shone through their wings, making the bones look so beautiful and fine. He was the youngest of all, barely more than a baby, sick, frail and slow, just like your brother, very slow, but smart enough to live. Listen to me.

She lurched forward with a series of soft clicks, the exposed bones of her feet tapping the floor. He never went into the forest. He never tempted the monster. He did exactly what I told him. My heart ached for this tiny, slow boy. Of course he had listened to Wendy, this ancient, shambling horror whispering dire warnings of monsters and dead brothers and eyes and flowers grown from carnage. What could a tiny boy do but listen?

I saved him from the monster. She rasped, dull yellow eyes glinted in her face. From my monster. But my brother had his own monster. His monster tried to starve him. So I fed him. Berries, acorn paste. He didn't like it, but he was so hungry that he ate it anyway.

Camamile tea, roasted mice. But when my brother didn't die, his monster dashed his head against the wall. and hid him under the house. He was cold when I found him, cold and dead, brains leaking from his broken head. I couldn't leave him there, not by the well, not forgotten in the dark until the end of time. So I ate him. I opened my mouth, like this.

Her jaw clicked and stretched, stretched, stretched of contortion I could barely comprehend. I covered my eyes. I hate his arms, his legs, his guts, his bones. But I didn't eat his head or his spine. I took those into the forest. I found the dried-up pond. It was not a pond anymore, but a green pit filled with eyes and flowers. My first brother smiled at my approach.

He was enormous by then, the size of a cottage, with a mouth like a cave. His head was so smashed, so flat, that one of his eyes had bumped into the other. They bulged now, displaced and scarred with old infections. Looking at them made me cry. How stupid I'd been. How very stupid! Planting him with such a small root! I would not make that mistake again.

I planted my third brother in a deep hole with his entire spine so that he might grow properly, big and strong, with a healthy body and a mouth that could speak. Instead of filling the hole with earth, I vomited up his body, the skin, the muscle, the bones. I packed a layer of dirt over it and kissed his ruined head. Did he grow? Yes. Didn't you see him? I thought of the skulls.

So many boys, so many tragedies, all of them. forgotten. I began to cry. She came closer. I staled myself for a mummified horror, but no, it was only windy, dear, wrinkly, lovely windy. Do you want to meet them? My brothers? I felt like a deer trapped in the headlights of an onrushing monster truck. She took my hand. Her skin felt dry and scratchy and burning hot. Please, I know they'll love you. Real heroes do difficult things, terrifying things, and it's easy because in fairy tales everything turns out right in the end. So I climbed out the window and followed Wendy into the night. Owls watched as we trekked through the yard.

A bat dived and landed on my shoulder, squeaking affectionately before taking off again. Raccoons lumbered through the grass, dark eyes shining. Wendy and I reached the miners' lettuce, dropped to our bellies, and crawled through the burrow. It was even colder now. Delicate layers of ice covered the mud and crunched under my weight. The walls felt dangerously narrow around my shoulders. With a panicky pang, I realized I would soon be too big, too old for the burrow. Windy, stiff, wrinkled dress rasped against the walls until it grew sodden with mud and half-melted frost when it began to squelch.

I preferred it to the dry hiss, because the dry hiss reminded me of long, rotten limbs unfolded. in the winter forest. After a timeless span that could have been ten minutes or ten years, we emerged into the clearing of brothers. I crawled out with a relieved sigh. The night was cold, but warmer than the tunnel had been. I rubbed my eyes and looked around for windy. A great rumble sounded behind me. I spun around with a shriek, expecting you see silver eyes and the sleek white form of a cougar. It was a head, an incomprehensibly gigantic head squashed on one side. The eyes had merged into a great lumpy orb covered by thin flesh, an infection split the eyelid, revealing dim, murky light the color of lamplit pus.

Its mouth, thin, frog-like, ugly, tragic, split apart, widening until it was the size of a cave. A thin, moon-pale form slid down the side, whooping happily and hit the ground in a puff of dead leaves and dirt. Windy, of course. She stood up, dusting herself off and spread her arms. Meet my brothers! There were so many.

Heads mostly, but bodies too, in varying states of wholeness. Some were little more than face and throat. Some had their shoulders, some had entire torsos, and some had arms all sprouting from the leaf-strewn earth. Many looked rotten, a few fleshless, and one had a twisted spine, a strongly-muscled torso, a small head that had been smashed in. Nevertheless, his eyes shone with joy. Those that did not have eyes had wet sockets that glistened and cracked lips that opened in wide, happy smiles. Their heads twisted excitedly, jaws clicked. Behind them, in a great pit exploding with vines

and flowers, I saw something else, long and horrifically thin, covered in what looked like a thousand eyes. They're always happy to see me. Wendy said happily, I love them so much. Dread and whore were eating me alive. How are they living? Wendy's face fell. Because I feed them things that are alive.

I don't want to, but I have to. I feed them the mice, the squirrels, the birds, and the animals that live in the forest. It's all right, because those things are all part of the forest. And the forest is the monster. It isn't enough to grow them, especially not now since I have no more pond to water them with. But it keeps them alive.

And one day, when the monster is finally dead, I'll cut him up and feed a piece to each of them. And that will make them all whole again. Her brothers sent up what cheers they could from the rumbling roar of the great head to the chattering of baby teeth and fleshless tiny jaws. How many brothers did you have, Wendy? I don't remember.

But they're all here. I looked around the clearing, tears stinging my eyes. There were so many, so very, very many. Did the monster kill them all? Not all. I killed some, sometimes to feed my other brothers, but only if they weren't going to be alive for long anyway. And then I planted them here, so they wouldn't really die. Sometimes I killed them to keep them from being swallowed up into the hungry trees and becoming the monster. Their chatter grew louder, swelling into a deafening crescendo. Now sit down and listen, because I'm going to tell you about the monster now.

All at once, her brothers fell silent. I felt their eyes, the bright ones, the rotten ones, the gray, decayed, jellied ones, the empty sockets all fixed on me. I wanted to run, but if a hero is to succeed, he must learn everything he can, even from someone who might be a monster. Though I lowered myself to the ground, starlight streamed through the trees, bathing me in a net of shadow and dim silver. Wendy sat too, folding to the ground like a monstrous insect.

He was my father. I watched, paralyzed, as a single tear slid from the infected slit in the eye of the great head. Everyone knew what my father was, but they didn't care because he was powerful, too powerful for anything but awe and adoration. So they let him do what he was. he wanted, even to me and my brother. They did not care about us because we were not powerful. We were only tainted. Blood of the monster, but with none of the monster's power. But they were wrong. I was tainted, yes, but my brother wasn't. He was good. He was perfect. I did everything I could to

protect him. But it wasn't enough. It's never enough. You did everything you could. Good. My words sounded like dead leaves stirring. That was enough. While I was away at the pond, planting my brother's spine in the earth, my father cleaned his carcass and polished his bones. After I ate the stew, he grabbed my brother's rib and stabbed me. It slid all the way through me and came out the other end. It hurt, but I didn't feel like I was dying, even as my blood spilled over me and flooded my lungs. drowning me. I didn't feel weak. I felt strong. I hid my face as shudder after shutter crawled down my spine. I went to the pile of cleaned bones and found one of my brother's stripped fingers. It was smaller than I expected and sharper. I put it through my father's eye. Then I dragged him

into the forest, pulled the rib out of my chest, and put it in his other eye. Then I went home. I killed him. I said to everyone, I killed the monster. I told them of my brother how I'd saved his life by planting his head in the earth. But instead of welcoming me, they cut my stomach. All my guts slid out, hot and reeking. They steamed in the night, under the cold moon. Then the people drowned. Then the people dragged me to the forest, leaving me in the snow to die. I put my hands inside my stomach, where my guts had been, to keep them warm. But it didn't keep them warm. Not even a little.

I remember what it felt like when my fingers froze. When I tried to uncurl my hand, it cracked and broke. I lay there in the snow, frozen and gutted, staring at the stars. And I was angry. so very, very angry. Why did they do that to you? Because I was unclean, a desecrator of corpses, murderer of my own blood, a monster.

To them, the people who had known my father, who had known what he was, I was the monster. I lay there, rotting all through winter, until I became pale, broken, bloodless. Tears coursed down my face. My heart ached.

Even though they loved him enough to kill me for defeating him, they forgot him. Her murky eyes flared to blinding gold, and she began to cry. They forgot him and left him. His body stayed in the forest and fed the scavengers, building the bones and meat of their young. His hair lying burrows and filled nests. flies fed on his rot and spawned maggots hatched in guts and his eyes. I know. I saw. I stood right there and washed it all. Crows took flight. Their startled cries filled the night and their glossy wings blocked the cold stars.

I watched his bones crumble into soil. I was so very, very satisfied that he had rotted. But that was because I didn't understand. I didn't understand that he hadn't rotted away. He had only changed, changed into something else, into everything else. Now the trees grow out of him. He gets to be in the trees, my trees. He's dead and forgotten and beautiful, with more power than he ever had in life. I am dead and hated and ugly, weaker than I've ever been.

I'm forgotten, and so is he. Now I'm the only one who knows. I'm the only one who remembers. But I know now. He always kills my brothers. Soon I will have more heads to plant beside the pond. Tell someone. Make them burn the forest down.

Tell everyone. No one will listen. No one will care. No one ever has. I have. I can't even fight him because I'm trapped. She spread her desiccated arms as slender and delicate as the bones of bats. I'm cursed. He cursed me.

I was never strong. Never. But every year I grow weaker. Every season there is less of me. Soon I will crumble and fade and be drawn up through the roots of the trees. He will eat me. I will die and he will live on. He will win.

There it was, my redemption, my quest, my chance to be a hero. I won't let him. I'll fight him. Wendy's fingers spread, revealing a single eye, bright and deep and golden. We can fight him together. In that moment, it was the only thing I wanted to live for untold centuries, ageless and immortal, years of golden days and cold, clear nights in which to befriend bats and raccoons and crows.

No school, no sick mother, no Noah, no unbearable, soul-crushing fear of what would become of him. No more fear of days and nights and seasons and years of an entire lifetime without the people I loved most. Instead, I would have untold lifetimes with new people to love at every turn. People I could help, people I could save, people I could be a hero for. I could finally be enough. No. Haven't you been listening? To be with me, to be like me, you have to eat.

She told me miserably. You have to eat something alive. My stomach churned, but I gripped my teeth and resolved to do it because a hero always does what needs to be done. I would eat birds, bats, coyotes, mice, worms, owls, beetles, or anything else because I had to. And I didn't even have to be sad because all of those things were part of the forest, which meant they were part of the monster. I will. I'll eat anything. You don't have to eat anything. Just one thing. What? She wiped her eyes.

When the monster fed my brother to me, it cursed us both and bound us. No one can fight with me unless they're bound to me. How can I do that? I can't tell you. Not unless you promise to do it first. You have to promise no matter what. It's the only way I can tell you. It's the only way to break the curse.

The only way to help me. I promise. Whatever it takes to help you, I promise I'll do it. She finally lowered her hands. Her eyes were so bright, so golden, molten, and full of tears. Promise me. I promise. I repeated.

How do I do it? By feeding yourself to us. I frowned. Sure I'd misheard. What do you mean? Wendy grabbed my hand. and pulled me across the clearing to the tall, grass-choked pit that had been upon so long ago and pointed.

I looked carefully, frowning. Shadows thick and impenetrable, but some of the shadows looked thicker than others. Substantial somehow. As I watched, the darkness coalesced, solidifying into something I recognized. Some one. Noah was in the pit, sleeping fitfully. His breathing was irregular and wet as if he'd been crying. I felt like my heart stopped.

Why is he here, Wendy? I'm keeping him safe. I told you, I always keep my brothers safe. No, I won't. You promised. My father will kill you anyway. He kills everything my brother's love best. I wish it could be you, but you don't want to fight.

You want to run away. You want to forget your brother. My brothers don't forget each other. He won't forget you. Neither will I. I promise. Comprehension dawned. Tears flooded my eyes as all my jealousy, all my anger, all my resentment flooded my heart, scorching, all consuming, a flood of golden lava burning me alive.

I shook my head. She nodded all silver moonlight and rich darkness and eyes like suns. You are my brother, and you are his brother. You alone can bind us. My eternity of moon-silvered nights and velvety bats, of gloom golden mornings and chattering crows, of dark burrows and oaks with canopies like giant spiderwebs, of people who needed me, people I could help, people I'd be enough for, fell away. Noah would have that life, that eternity of animals and trees and magic.

Noah was my mother's favorite. Noah who got everything she could give, even though he did nothing. even though I did everything. Noah, who was enough, I wasn't enough. I was the oldest, paving the way for the youngest. You look so angry. Wendy said sadly. So very, very angry, just like me.

She reached out and stroked my face. Her finger was papery and hot like ashes. It has to be this way. You'll still be the hero. You'll die to make sure we can kill the monster. And then you'll rest. No sadness to drown you. No hate to eat you.

No future to frighten you. Only a long, dark wait. But it won't last forever. Because I'll follow one day. After I've taught our brother everything he needs to know. Then we'll be together. Maybe we'll come back here again. But for joy, not for anger.

They won't have to be angry, because Noah will remember. No, I stepped back. Wendy slid forward, an undulating nightmare of rot and night. My father will kill you anyway. And then where will your brother be? When your mother dies, he'll linger in the house for days, crying and cuddling her wet, rotting body, pulling her eyes open each morning until they sink like wet jelly into her sockets,

stuffing food into her yawing mouth until all the food is gone, then he'll die too, alone, starved, frightened, without even the brains to comprehend that she's dead, wondering why you've left him. Is that what you want? Or do you want him to live? To see the moon rise and the sunrise more times than he could ever count in years of snow and wind and sun?

Do you want him to climb the trees? and sing to the moon, to befriend the bats and speak the language of the crows? I want that! The words echoed, rolling back at me like dying waves. I want that. I want that. I, I, I, I. Wendy's golden eyes burned. I know. She looked down at Noah, sleeping peacefully in her dead arms. But there's only one way. Tears streamed down my face, the wind gusted, stinging my raw cheeks.

If you won't do it, then he has to, and he could. You're not wrong. He could bind us. Then you will have everything you want. I felt like I'd been hit by a train. I stared up at her, praying I'd misunderstood as her eyes blazed pits of golden fire. And his life will have meant something. You're the monster, Wendy.

The pain in her face. The grief and rage cut me to the core. The pain twisted her into something else. and her face split apart, bearing teeth, some broken, some perfect, all overgrown and sharp like the fangs of a mountain lion. Monsters eat for eating's sake. I eat to live. I live to remember so that one day I can kill the monster forever. What would you eat for? She shook her monstrous head, then spat. You would only eat to forget.

What was she, really? This withered, horrific nightmare before me. A ghost, Hed, Hedineenian. A trapped spirit, so hell-bent on vengeance, she drove herself insane? Was she a liar all along, or was she broken? Had her own hatred, her own misery, warped her into something beyond comprehension? Had her father, her monster, bled into her over untold centuries, corrupting her, possessing her? Was she old and lonely and sick and just too hurt, too angry, too sad to die? Or was she right? I was so weak.

A child, broken and hopeless. All I had was love. When that monster took that from me, all I had was anger, until I found love again. When he took that, my anger grew again and again, ten times, one hundred times, one thousand times.

No matter what I did for my brothers, no matter what I did to the monster, All my love and all my anger wasn't enough. It was never enough. I glanced at Noah, nestled in her arms. He was enough. He was always enough. I am trapped.

And my brothers, all of them are trapped. I am their keeper in more ways than one. I tend them. Yes, but I keep them here too. They're as trapped as me. Trapped by me, even. You will be trapped too, and you will have to trap yourself. But only until I'm free.

When I am free, I will rest. Rest until I am strong again. Then I will burn the forest. I will salt the earth. I will slaughter the animals. I will drown their burrows. I will crush their nests, and I will tear every root out of the earth. And at the end of it all,

I will find you and lead you into the hot summer sunlight. Together we will burn and everything that's him will die. But I can only do that if I'm free. I can only be free if there's someone left behind to remember. This is how you will remember. You promised. You promised me. I didn't promise to eat my baby brother.

Then he will eat you. One of you must eat with me. She screamed. I thought of bones, of cursed human heads grown to the size of houses, scarred and infected and unable to speak. I thought of broken babies, dashed to death by cruel parents. I thought of sad, sweet orphans, cast down dry wells to die and rot. I thought of rotting mothers and forgotten brothers, of monsters that could be fought and monsters

that always won. And I thought of flesh and hair and burrows and bones. in the wells, bones in the ground, bones and eyes. I met Wendy's gaze. I promised I'd do whatever it took to help you. Her golden eyes narrowed. Her face was white and warped, a mummified horror of human and lion. Yes, you did. Okay, I'll keep my promise. She held my brother out. He whimpered and curled. I looked at him. My heart ached for him, for her, for her brothers, for my mother and for me. My mind raised, everything ached, everything would always ache. This was not fair. Nothing was fair. Nothing was ever enough, and this would be no different. I looked up at Wendy

and raised my hands. Before she could tip my brother into my arms, I ripped the pendant from her dry, bony neck and plunged it into her eye. It bulged, then exploded, spewing boiling yellow Ica all over my face. The pain was exquisite, overwhelming, volcanic. The smell of burnt fat and drying meat filled my nostrils. Wendy's eyes darkened as golden blood slid down her crumbling face. Somewhere, far away from the pain and the terror and the now, my baby brother began to cry. Windy folded down to the earth.

Shadows exploded out of her, each one full of a thousand blinking eyes, round and bright, small and dark. wide and light, rich gold and bright hot silver. The darkness roiled, receded, then turned pale and snapped back into the form of a dead, wrinkled girl. Windy seized once, just once. A dim yellow glimmer flickered in her sockets like faraway stars. She said, Don't forget. Then her eyes went out.

I woke up in the morning, frost tacked to the ground, and it was so cold my bones ached. I tried to fall asleep again, but Noah was crying. Thin, screaming, wails that echoed as though from a distance. I grimaced, then sat up. I saw him wandering through the yellow grass. My heart jolted. I shot up and stumbled back, falling. Windy lay there, empty and pale, and so very, very dead.

Her bone pendant jutted from her socket. I touched her stiff, dry hair nervously. Gone. Forgotten, along with her brother. others and the monster who had destroyed them. I stared at her for a long time as the sun crept high and Noah continued to cry. Noah, facing a life without his family, left in a broken system and lost, forgotten. I wondered about myself, as the sun strengthened and filled Wendy's dry, empty eye sockets

with light again, I realized I didn't know myself. I knew about myself. I knew I was hurt, angry, prone to resent me. and drowned in fear. I knew I would become angrier and sadder and meaner as the years wore on. I would become less and less and less until I didn't even remember the meaning of enough, until the desire to be enough, to be a hero, was forgotten. I wondered about my mother, mom, who cried for hours each day because nothing she did

would be enough to protect Noah, and because she was too sick to be a mother, forced to exist as a living corpse rotting away her last days while her doomed toddler giggled beside her. One of millions. Just another poor, careworn, dying mother, forgotten by everyone but her child who would be forgotten too. I wondered about Wendy, what she was, what she'd want, if what she'd wanted was good or right, or if it mattered at all. And I wondered about her curse, her binding. If brother could bind sister and father, or sister and brother, could sister bind brother and brother? And could brother bind mother and son?

I spent the morning chasing Noah. It was hard. My burned, blistered face terrified him, but I managed to catch him and take him to the house. My mother wasn't awake yet, so I sang him to sleep and left him on the sofa. Then I returned to Windy in her patch of Miner's lettuce and pulled her limbs off. It was easy. They were dry and light, like termite-eaten planks left in the sun. I reched her head off and snapped her papery torso into pieces.

She smelled foul and rich and terribly old, like oak and sage and dirty fur and rot and bones left to dry in the sun. I made a stew of her. All our pots were small, so I could only use her. fingers. I'd broken her apart for nothing. My eyes stung, tears dripped into the pot before I could wipe them away. Windy stew was foul, a gray sludge that reeked of ash, bad meat, and roadkill. Noah screamed and flailed when he tasted it, but when I pretended it was good. "'Ah, so delicious, it's healthy. It'll make you big and strong, Noah. It'll make Mom happy.' He acquiesced. Though he gagged and choked, he drank it all and didn't throw it up.

Then, momentarily grateful the pot was so small, I took a cleaver, and, with an earth-shattering scream, chopped two of my fingers off. The pain was awful, almost too great for me to comprehend, but compared to the wildfire burning of Wendy's eyes, it was nothing. My head was clear as I bandaged the stumps, then proceeded to make a stew of myself. I made Noah drink half. He ate it gratefully, I suppose, because it was far less disgusting than Windy stew. then carried the remainder to my mother's room.

I had no idea how to make her eat it. I'd have to force her. She'd think I was insane. She'd think I hated her. But that was all right, because even though she didn't know it, this would save her. This would finally be enough. She would have her eternity of crows and bats, of battling monsters and befriending feral cats. She would protect my brother until the end of time.

I pushed open her door. odor erupted like a jack in the box, bile and blood, vomit and urine and feces. I set the bowl on the floor and tried to shake her awake. She was thin, a fresh-covered skeleton with bones as fine as batwings, and cold, as cold as windy was warm. The room tilted, sunlight bled through the curtains, murky and golden. I tried to pick her up. My fingers sank into cold, congealed vomit, and I let go. Her face was dark and purple where she'd lain on her side.

Her lips, nose, and eyes were flattened, just like a pumpkin that had grown on its side. I wrapped my arms around her and snuggled down beside her. Blood and shit smeared my clothes, my arms, my face, I didn't care. I only hurt. When Noah finally wandered in, wailing and crying so hard he was gagging, I came to my senses and forced him out. Then I picked up the bowl of finger stew and dribbled it into my mother's mouth. It came right back out again, so I propped her up and tilted her head back, shuddering when another cloud of stench burst out at me.

I poured the soup in carefully, watching as mouthful after mouthful drained as slowly as a clogged bathtub. The meat would not go down, so I reached in. The inside of her mouth was cold, slimy, and puffy. The sensation made me gag, but I pulled. pushed until every speck of meat and bone had disappeared down her throat. Then I closed her mouth and laid her back, pulling the soiled blankets to her chin. I leaned in and kissed her forehead.

A faint taste came away on my lips, something that reminded me of ashes, dirty fur, sage, and cold, clear nights. Then I left her room and closed the door behind me. I sang Noah to sleep in his own room, then went back to the miner's letters with a garbage bag. It was unceremonious, but I intended to gather Wendy's remains and drag them to the other end of her burrow. I wanted to lay her to rest with her brothers, and if she rotted, if her bones crumbled, if the hungry trees took her up through the roots, so be it.

If she became part of the forest, perhaps she could finally take her trees back from the monster. But when I got there, she was gone. Terror and joy writhed in my chest. I dropped to my knees and peered into her. burrow, praying to see her yellow lens flare eyes. But her burrow was empty. It was madness, but I crawled in anyway. The walls felt smaller than ever, and I knew in my heart that this was the last time I would ever pass through it. After an eternity in the dead, claustrophobic dark,

I found the clearing. I drew a sharp breath and dragged myself out. Something glistened on my periphery, a skull, of course, old, discolored, heartbreakingly small, supported by a single vertebrae protruding from the ground. Grass and wildflowers grew around it. Next to it was a jagged, gleaming stake, not a stake, a spinal column topped by a broken skull, fragile, shattered, leaving only a jaw in the right cheekbone. Beyond it, spreading through the glade were too many skulls to count, but no heads and certainly no bodies. Why have you come back? I shot up with a scream, expecting to see eyes, which would be worse, silver eyes or gold.

I saw neither. Before me was another monster I had already seen, tall and horrifically thin, with enormous, glossy wings like a crow. Feathers and fur coated his narrow body, black feathers, thick golden fur, and among them, glistening through the fur. the strands, eyes, too many eyes to count. Is windy here? I asked. Our sister is with you, isn't she? No.

Behind me, something rumbled. I spun around. It was the giant head, but it wasn't smiling anymore. Its mouth, thin, frog-like, ugly, tragic, split apart and began to cry silently. The world shuddered. When it became silent again, the spinal column had transformed. formed into the twisted torso of a man. Attached was the head of a baby.

The back was smashed in. Blood and brain glimmered at the edges. He looked at me dimly, distrustfully, fearfully. My lip trembled. She wanted to eat me. Did she? No, I ate her. We ate her.

The great lopsided head opened its mouth and another silent wail. All of her. I shook my head. Then our sister is in the trees. The feathered monstrosity said, Will the monster eat her? It looked at me with its countless eyes, the round, curious eyes of raccoons, the bright black orbs of ground squirrels, the dark star eyes of crows. Our sister will eat you if she finds you.

No, she won't. She loves me. Yes, but she is angry. Very. For an instant, I saw something out of the corner of my eye, elongated and twisted, with teeth exploding from a long, broken jaw and papery flesh the color of buttermilk. She knows you're here. Yet another multitude of eyes blinked open, gleaming among the fur and feathers.

Instead, I began to cry. I sat down, covered my eyes with my free hand, only dimly aware of the raw plisters under my fingers and waited. waited and waited. When I opened my eyes, her brothers were gone. All that remained were skulls, with the thicket of flowers in the center. I knew that Wendy was too angry to kill me, too angry to plant me in her field of brothers, too angry to keep me with her forever.

Though I waited the whole night, the skulls did not come alive again. I left as dawn filtered through the trees, bathing the clearing in dim, shadowed gold. I walked through the forest, making as much noise as I could, trying to attract the monster with silver eyes, but it didn't come for me. When I got home, Noah was gone. I understood, somehow, that he had been deemed suitable for the field of brothers. Of course he was. He was the youngest.

He was enough. He was always enough. I ran back to the borough, so sad and so very, very angry, angry enough to demand my place beside my brother, no matter the cost. If Windy killed me for it, that would be fine. My blood would water the ground and help our brothers grow. But the burrow was gone. I curled up in the miners let us and cried. I hoped that a bat or a crow or a raccoon or perhaps a sad little cat would join me. None did. No one ever did. I returned to the house, sobbing and screaming so loudly the earth should have broken apart because I was no hero. I was only the

the oldest brother, arrogant and selfish and unforgivably foolish. The door to my mother's bedroom was open. I thought of Noah, crawling into bed with her and trying to wake her and feed her just as I had and wept harder. I would crawl into bed with her, I decided. Crawl in and hug her, just as Wendy said Noah would do, and hold her until her eyes turned to jelly and her skin turned to foul liquid that drenched the bed. Maybe I would die too. When I entered, her bed. Her bed was bed was empty. I checked the floor again, with fear jumping in my guts. Under the bed and inside her closet, nothing but clothes that were far too big for her now and makeup she would never wear again. When I went to Noah's room, half expecting to see that Noah had dragged her there,

that he wasn't in Wendy's field of brothers, after all, just holding our mother in his room and crying, but neither of them were there either. Seized with an instinct I did not understand or analyze, I bolted through the house and out of the back door. I scanned the yard, its sparse trees, its familiar rocks, and its rolling slopes all the way down to the miners' lettuce. There, in the deep golden twilight, half hidden among the growing shadows, was my mother. Next to her was Noah, tiny as ever, and rubbing his eyes. Relief flooded me, so overwhelming I nearly sank to my knees, but I couldn't. If I did, I would never get up in time to catch them. So I kept going, dipping so low I almost fell and lumbered toward them.

It was like running in a dream, no matter how hard I tried, each step took an eternity. Then something long and thin unfolded in the miners' lettuce, rising in a single, boneless movement, a terribly skinny girl with buttermilk skin and dry, stiff hair. My mother and Noah looked at her, then up the slope at me. Their eyes had changed. They were bright and strange now, shining in the falling dark like golden, lens flares. I took another shambling step forward, but Windy turned to face me and shook her head. Then she took my mother by the hand and led her away, out of the miners' lettuce and into the

rolling hills beyond, to their first cold, clear night of eternity. I stayed behind because I was the oldest brother, because my purpose was to pave the way, and because this was not my fairy tale. Many years later, long after I'd grown, I returned, I returned. returned to the house. It had fallen into disrepair and was up for auction for the third time. My squat, brooding castle now had a ruined roof, haphazardly patched by cascades of dead leaves and abandoned birdness and holes in the walls large enough to accommodate small cars. Inside, cascades of dead leaves covered the floor. Crows lived in the kitchen, and a family of raccoons had taken up residence in my old room. The window in my mother's room was shattered, dirty glass,

glittered on the floor, shining dully like stars on a misty night. There was no furniture, only a faded spray of graffiti across one wall. Noah's room was empty and smelled like smoke. I wandered outside as twilight bled over the hills. The miners' lettuce was there, green and lush as always. The burrow was not, but I didn't expect it to be. I sat down in the place it had been. the touch of the cool, damp grass was so beautifully familiar that I cried. Even though it was windy and painfully cold, I fell asleep to the oceanic rush of the wind through the dying leaves. I woke long after nightfall on a cold, clear night with blasts of icy wind that shook the trees. When I opened my eyes, I found myself staring at a deep, dark hole, Windy's burrow.

My breath caught, and I pulled myself into a sitting position. There was no mistaking it. Rich darkness, broken only by the ghostly whiteness of pale roots. Its entrance half hidden in the miners' lettuce. It was smaller than I remembered. Half my size, maybe even less. A bat dived low, wings brushing my face as I darted past. I reeled back, heart pounding.

When I straightened up, something blinked to life in the burrow. Pale yellow lens flares the color of summer moonlight. Something pale and small. Drifted out. A tiny, delicate hand so thin the moonlight poured through it, illuminating the fine bones and dried tissue within. Smaller than Windies had ever been, so much smaller. I took it, though it looked cold and dead, it burned as though with fever. Underneath the lens flare eyes, something glimmered dimly, a crescent of small teeth exposed in a smile. The hand let go and withdrew into the burrow. The eyes blinked. Once, twice, and were gone. Aking deeply, wanting to laugh and scream and burst into tears all at the same time, I laid down again and slept. Once upon a time, I was a sad, angry boy who loved fairy tales. Now I'm a sad, tired man who can no longer bear to read them, but I remember them.

When I touch my face and feel my scarred cheeks, I remember. When I wake with the taste of boiled ashes on my tongue, I remember. When I think of my mother's cold, bird-thin body in my arms, I remember. When I see Noah's face in my mind's eye and recall the fear I had for him, fear so deep and crushing that I pretended it was hate, I remember. When I look in the mirror and catch a hint of murky gold in my eyes, I remember. When I dream of those trees and crows and raccoons and bats and a smile, little boy and his yellow-eyed mother on cold, clear nights, when bats swoop low, and the moon

bathes the hills in warm silver, I remember. And I smile.