Page 4 of In This Iron Ground
It’s weird, waiting for your parents. You feel bad. Your friend doesn’t understand about the rock.
When the doorbell rings, you race to the door. Everything is heaviness and then you see your mom and it turns to electricity and relief.
You hug her. She doesn’t say sorry to your friend’s parents. She just says thank you.
Your mom takes you home. You love the smell of your car. It’s so familiar.
Mom laughs when you ask about the dog. “Let’s see what Santa thinks when it’s Christmas,” she says. You think Santa will agree with you a hundred percent.
When you get home, Dad greets you with a, “Hey, kiddo. Have fun?”
You feel embarrassed. You shouldn’t have been such a baby. You shouldn’t have asked for Mom to pick you up.
Dad hugs you. “Proud of you for calling us, son. You should always ask for help when you need it,” he says. The relief you feel is like clean water washing everything away.
They tuck you into bed. It’s like any other night.
You don’t know the wordunconditionalyet. But you feel it.
***
Sometimes, late at night, when Damien was trapped in his bed, trying not to make a single sound, trying to dissolve into the silence and the dark, that memory would crack across the frozen lake of his mind. It would whistle across the icy tundra of his chest, a howling, mournful sound. It would split his lips and leave his eyes burning.
He’d imagine his door opening and his parents being there, haloed in light. They would untie him, baptize him from his worthlessness, cradle him in warmth.
The desperation with which he would wish this true could not reconcile with reality. It would seem ridiculous; they were goneforever. There was nothing he could say, or do, or bargain with—they were dead. The hopeless finality of it was absolute.
He’d stare at the shadow of his bedroom door, letting the solitude of it seep, pore by pore, into his soul.
**********
They said the moon had a call that even people could feel. In the wash of their blood and tide of their soul, they could hear it calling.
The full moon cast the forest in an underwater light. Everything that wasn’t darkness was green and silver. Damien was running through its depths, not chased but fleeing nonetheless. Away from the silence of the night, its ropes and creatures, the feel of the darkness swallowing him whole. He was running mindlessly. It didn’t matter where he ended up as long as it wasn’t there.
The forest seemed to be holding itself still for Damien to rip through. There were no birds calling, no wind rippling the leaves, no animals scuttling through the underbrush. All Damien could hear was his own ragged breaths and the noise of his clumsy feet on leaves and fallen branches, as if he were carrying his solitude with him.
He kept running past the burning of his lungs, the trembling of his knees. Not even being knocked down by darkened logs and branches, bloodying hands and knees, could stop him. There wasn’t even any fear; he was consumed by his escape. Until.
From the depths of the moonlight and the darkness, the air started howling. At first, he thought it was his own head, his blood shrieking inside him, but more calls answered the first. As if the sound had broken the spell keeping Damien going, he jerked to a halt. Disoriented and gasping for breath, he looked around. It was all silver and green and black. There wasn’t anything there…until there was.
Like the scene of a horror movie, two small figures appeared from the shadows. Damien stumbled back, reflexive fear electrocuting him into overdrive as the moonlight revealed the shapes. Two small children, dirty with mud and blood, their eyes glowing from faces that were twisted and monstrous. Damien struggled to breathe, swallowing a scream.Run, he thought.Run. But the sight had rooted him to the spot.
As suddenly as he had been alone, he was surrounded. Without the slightest sound, wolves seemed to coagulate from the very air around him, their eyes glowing preternaturally. Damien shied away, but they were everywhere, silent and still like the night itself. His legs gave out from under him, his hands scraping through the decay of leaves and dirt. Damien closed his eyes and breathed.
This was it.
The cold air of winter, the feel of the wolves’ presence, the hard ground beneath him, it all overwhelmed his senses and then faded away. He filled his lungs with the smell of the forest and looked up to see the largest wolf approach him. Its yellow eyes seemed to splice Damien open, revealing every exhausted inch of him.
The fear drained from him. He had meant to run away and succeeded. He wouldn’t have to go back. Instead, he’d be killed by a full moon night. Damien wondered if he would get to see his parents again or if this was his judgment, his punishment and execution, for the dark and the wrongness inside him.
Even if heaven existed, it was clear that wasn’t where these creatures were taking him.
“I’m sorry,” Damien whispered. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t. I tried but I…I’m sorry.”
He was so tired. He was sure that the wolf’s eyes could see every shadow inside him, stark in the glow of the moonlight. There was nothing that Damien could do now. He hunched forwards, head buried in his lap as he knelt before the wolf. His hands pressed against his ears, shutting the world out, making himself so small he was nothing at all.
A moment passed. Two. Damien jerked in surprise as a human hand touched his head, fingers stroking gently through his hair. Damien looked up, eyes widening in surprise as he saw a woman before him. Her naked body was hidden behind her legs as she crouched in front of him, long, dark hair spilling around her. Her skin was the colour of the red earth, her eyes black in the shadows.
