by Dylan Harris

 

“I’m turning down the road now, 10-4.”

Officer Adkins puts the receiver back into its slot on the dashboard of his patrol car. He’s driving down a red dirt road with his windows down.

The air outside is arid. Desert dry. It’s sapping Officer Adkins’s sweat through his pores, causing it to pool in the crook between his nose and his glasses and around the bags under his eyes. Red dust clouds erupt in the wake of the patrol car, hanging in the air as long as possible. Some of the dust will blow over to the sides of the road, coating the otherwise hyper-green ditch weeds.

The heat plays tricks. Ahead of the car, Officer Adkins can see shimmering heat waves, making the dirt road ahead look like broken glass. In the rearview mirror, the reflection looks like the road’s closing in on itself like a tunnel, warped at the edges and pulling into itself.

Not paying attention, he hears a sickening thump under the front passenger side tire. From the side mirror, he can see that he ran over a rattlesnake, at least six feet long and a few feet round. A huge one. In a few minutes it’ll be sucked dry by thirsty crows, which don’t ever seem to far away these days.

Officer Adkins reckons the snake won’t even be there on his way back. He reaches across the car’s center console, taking special care not to touch the cracked hot leather with his bare skin, and flips the lid off his small styrofoam cooler. He plunges his hand into the ice and pulls out a cube, which he quickly brings to his forehead before it melts. He draws little circles across his face, making especially sure to cool the bags under his eyes.

“Let’s see… 18 miles down this road. Then turn left at the oak with the branches that touch the ground. Go a few more miles and look for the patch of cattails on the right.”

It’s a ways more, so he starts humming old hymns to himself to still his beating heart.

Lay aside the garments that are stained with sin,
And be washed in the blood of the Lamb;
There’s a fountain flowing for the soul unclean,
O be washed in the blood of the Lamb!

*

No one wants the job. No one likes kicking people out of their homes. But he’s the newest one on the force, and he has to do it. He wouldn’t be as worried if he were going after a murderer or kidnapper. But these are just old women. Two old sisters. They used to be a part of the community, years ago. So long ago that people can only tell tales, and even those tales feel older than they should. Like memories of memories. Or like looking at pictures of old ancestors you’ve never met.

The two sisters – Odetta and Odessa – used to play music in town before Prohibition. They also used to skin and process venison. Some people used to buy cane syrup from them. No one remembers when really, just that they did those things.

Their music was especially well remembered. They’d post up at a local whiskey joint and play for hours, sometimes days, without stopping. Their songs would make people do strange things.

They played the blues faster and louder than anyone had heard before. One played the guitar, and the other played the trumpet. They’d take turns singing. Their voices were harrowing and unforgettable. They never made eye contact and sang to the floor. People’d stay at the joint the whole time they played. Then, they’d stumble back to their homes in the early morning. After playing, the sisters would disappear for months; maybe years. They’d go back to their cabin in the woods and into the backs of everyone’s minds.

No one really remembers the last time they were seen. It’s like someone mentions their names, and then their names are carried off by the wind. Lost in the woods. Simultaneously remembered and forgotten. Their tax record, however, was another story.

Thumbing through the records a few weeks back, Ms. Olive found their file. She asked around the office, but no one knew the file existed. It’s like it had always been in the filing cabinet, nestled neatly between other tax records. Ms. Olive read over the paper multiple times, forgetting what she was reading until it finally registered that there were no payment records. The sisters had never paid land taxes for their property. Ms. Olive called the police, and they sent out Officer Adkins the next day to investigate. He had no choice but to tell them that they needed to pay their land tax or be kicked out of their home.

*

He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock
That shadows a dry, thirsty land;
He hideth my life with the depths of His love,
And covers me there with His hand,
And covers me there with His hand.

Officer Adkins misses the turn by the cattails the first time. Then, he misses it a second time after turning around. He stops in the middle of the road, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel for a few minutes to collect his thoughts.

With his car at a standstill in the middle of the road, Officer Adkins racks his brain. He thinks about his wife at home. He thinks about the sticky buns she made earlier. He thinks about the children they’re going to have. It brings a smile to his face. He adjusts himself in his seat and rubs the crown of his nose between his index finger and thumb. One more time. He backs the car up and finds the path through the cattails only a few yards down the road.

The path is nothing more than ruts cutting through a nearly impenetrable wall of cattails. Officer Adkins lines his tires up with the ruts the best he can before proceeding, taking special care not to drive off the path and into the feverish swamp on either side. The tips of the cattails are fraying, as they beat against one another in a sudden gust of wind. White cottony seedpods are fluttering around the car, twirling downwards in perfect circular patterns.

The air outside is getting inexplicably wetter. Not cooler but definitely wetter. It feels heavier. Wiping his forehead with his sleeve, Officer Adkins can’t tell if the dampness is his sweat or condensation. Before he had a hard time breathing because of the dry heat, now he feels like he is drowning in the air around him. The pressure of the humidity pushes down on his skull, giving him a headache. He takes a sip of water from the cooler only to find out that it’s just as hot as the air in his car.

Inch by inch, he makes his way along the path through the cattails. Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees bright flashes of color. He imagines them as brightly colored birds. He can’t quite focus on the colors, but he knows he sees something. It’s like the experience of the color is a memory, like something hiding just out of sight of his mind’s eye. He chalks up the colors to the heat. It’s just his mind playing tricks on him.

The path is getting more solid and a bit wider. Up ahead, he can see a clearing where the path ends. Officer Adkins pulls his car into the clearing and turns his car off, immediately pulling up his undershirt to wipe his face and eyes. He’s still having a hard time breathing and the headache is sinking further into his skull. Just up ahead, he can make out the warped outline of the sisters’ cabin.

He kicks open his door and slides his legs across the cracked leather bench seat of his patrol car. Heaving and out of breath, he adjusts himself again, pulling up his pants and patting down his sweat-stained shirt over his stomach.

The house is only a couple hundred feet ahead, but it feels impossibly far away. The sweet scent of blooming honeysuckles fills his nose, but it’s mixed with something sour. He looks around and sees rows of wild blackberries, burst open and rotting in the heat. The smell makes his stomach queasy and settles at the back of his throat. The grabby briars of the blackberry bushes wrap around his ankles as he makes his way towards the cabin.

Officer Adkins, after what might have been a few minutes or a few years, stops within yelling distance of the cabin’s front porch. The cabin itself is humble, made of graying pinewood. The roof is a little sunken and covered in brightly colored mosses and lichens. The vinyl lattice around the base of the home is slightly moldy at the bottom but bleach white at the top. One side of the home is blanketed in a honeysuckle blooms.

The front porch is screened in, making it impossible to see inside. He can hear the porch creaking under the weight of some movement. After a few minutes, he can make out that the sound is a pair of rocking chairs, rocking slightly off-kilter from one another. Realizing that they’re home, and right in front of him, Officer Adkins nearly vomits in his mouth. After taking a few minutes to steady himself, he yells to the sisters on the porch.

“Mornin’ ladies… Can I have a word?”

No response. Just rocking.

“I’ve been sent by Town Hall on account of y’all not payin’ your land taxes… Seems like y’all haven’t paid up.”

No response. Just rocking, steady and off-kilter.

“Town Hall says you can’t live here anymore… Not unless you pay your taxes. They’ll be needing some sort of deposit next week or the banks’ll come demanding it.”

He thinks he can hear quiet coughing, but still no response. Just rocking.

His words hang in the air like a fog. Maybe the sound never made it to their ears. It almost like the words are too saturated by the humidity to move past his lips. He wonders if he is even speaking, if anything is coming out of his mouth at all. After another indiscriminate amount of time, Officer Adkins kicks his boots on the ground, knocking away some of the blackberry briars that seem to have crept up his leg.

“M’ams… I… I’ll have to come back next Tuesday for that deposit.”

No response.

“I hate to do it… I really do… but I’ve got no choice in the matter. My job depends on it. G’day to both of you.”

Officer Adkins turns and walks back to his car. He gets in and backs down the cattail path without looking back, keeping his eyes on the clearing ahead. In a few minutes, he is near town without any recollection of the minutes that passed between the cattail path and now. The air’s hot again and he reaches for another ice cube. He smiles to himself, thinking about his wife and unborn children. Twins.

*

They can hear the car coming from miles away. It’s an unusual, mechanical sound that cuts through the otherwise undisturbed swamp noise. A man’s driving, smiling to himself and humming songs. A happy man; a nice man. The sisters can hear every pebble crushing beneath his car like tiny explosions. He can’t come here.

They should’ve listened harder. They should’ve kept him from even finding the old oak tree that touches the ground. They’re getting forgetful and complacent in the summer heat. It’s been so long.

So they send out a snake, one of their pets. She’s large enough to be a distraction. She’ll at least slow him down for a few minutes while the sisters stitch the entrance to the cattail path closed.

She dies, crushed beneath his car. She hissed her last breath into the sisters’ ears. It echoed across the swamp, crashing through the trees like a cold wind. The man didn’t even notice her until after she had been killed. The sisters send crows to make the death swift and meaningful.

He’s still coming. Still singing. Still smiling. A nice man. The sisters don’t want to hurt him, but he can’t find them.

They begin to stitch the cattail path closed. Odessa grabs a handful of chicken knuckles and rattles them in her palm. She blows into her closed fist, causing a stout wind to blow through the cattails. They’ll fray at the tips, sending their seedpods through the air. When the pods land in the mud, new stalks will sprout, cloaking the path.

While Odessa rattles the chicken knuckles, Odetta grabs her tarnished brass trumpet. When she blows, it doesn’t sound like a trumpet. Instead, a deep, guttural whisper spreads from the horn’s mouth. It sneaks along the ground and will eventually catch up to the man. It’ll sneak into his ear, causing him to miss his turn while the path grows closed.

The two sisters get wrapped up in their work – Odessa rattling chicken knuckles in her palm, stitching the path closed, and Odetta whispering illusions through her trumpet to blind the man to their path. They don’t realize that he notices he’s missed the path and is trying to clear his head. They only realize he’s found their path when they hear his car breaking through the cattails.

Odessa grabs another handful of chicken knuckles, trying to close the path. Odetta plucks out on her hairs and pulls it taut across her lips and hisses with her teeth closed. The sound she creates is something between a whistle and a hum. Immediately, she can hear them crashing through the branches, coming to her aid. Birds of paradise, thousands of them. Some are cerulean. Some are candy red. No two are alike. She’ll send them to distract the man, keeping him occupied. It’ll give her enough time to come up with another illusion.

They don’t want to harm the man. They just don’t want to be found.

Odetta’s birds don’t tie him up long enough, and Odessa failed to stitch the path closed before the man reached the clearing. She drops the chicken knuckles and grabs a bottle of whiskey. She takes a long draught and spews it through her lips, creating a fine mist. The mist will create a drowsy humidity, making the man move slowly and unsurely. It’ll give him a headache, at least.

Odetta digs through a basket beside her chair. The basket is made from hair and contains dried weeds, branches, flowers, and leaves. She puts a plume of honeysuckle in her mouth, chewing them to a pulp before spitting them on the walls of their cabin. This’ll cloak the home in honeysuckle, making their cabin look like an overgrown thicket.

Still chewing and spitting honeysuckle onto the walls, Odetta stuffs a tuft of blackberry bramble into her right house slipper. She slides her foot back in, scratching the ball of her foot and drawing blood. She doesn’t want to hurt the man, but this should slow him down. She takes a few steps, the briars sticking her in between her toes. She winces while she continues to spit honeysuckle on the walls. Outside, blackberry bramble creeps towards the car. As he steps out of his car, it begins crawling up the back of his ankles. Combined with the whiskey humidity, the briars will slow him down.

The man is still determined and making his way to their porch. Odessa sprays more whiskey into the air, and Odetta starts stomping on the bramble in her slipper. She’s still stuffing honeysuckle into her mouth and spitting it onto the walls. He’s moving slower, but he’s still coming.

Just before he’s within yelling distance of the front porch, the two sisters drop what they’re doing and move into their rocking chairs. They begin rocking at a pattern that will stop the man in his tracks.

The sisters understand time. The further off-kilter they are from another while they’re rocking, the slower time becomes. They can’t stop time entirely; that’s too dangerous. But they can slow it to a grinding halt, making the atmosphere too heavy for the man to get any closer.

He’s yelling something. His words don’t travel through undulating time. They fall right out of his mouth and are ancient by the time they make it to the sisters’ ears. He seems panicked; uncomfortable.

Odetta and Odessa can barely make out the words, “I’ll be back next Tuesday… G’day to both you.”

A nice man, but he can’t come back next Tuesday.

The sisters slow their rocking and let the man walk back to his car. When he closes the door, the sisters look into each other’s eyes, and grasp each other’s gnarled root hands. Sadly, they know what has to be done to keep the man away.

As soon as the man bends his head to put the car in reverse, the sisters get up from their chairs. By the time the man starts to edge his car backwards, the sisters are already off the porch and winding their way up a creek bed. The bed is coated in a layer of slick mud, pockmarked by worm and snake trails.

The sisters keep their heads low in reverence. The creek bed empties into a gully, and on the other side there’s a perfectly circular pond, surrounded on all sides by a dense thicket of cypress trees. Their knobby roots tangle around one another, making an impenetrable wall. The sisters both reach out their left hands and touch the nearest root, causing it to unfurl into an opening to the water’s edge.

The pond is covered in a blanket of lime green algae. It looks solid enough to walk across. Odetta and Odessa slide out of their house slippers and hike their dresses above their knees before wading into the water, cutting a triangular wake into the pond’s algae-covered surface. The sisters walk carefully, taking small steps to not disturb the sediment on the bottom. The water is painfully cold and black beneath the shade of the algae. Its pitch surface curls like tar around the sisters’ legs, roiling up and over their knees.

By the time their up to their waste in water, nearly a quarter of the way to the middle of the pond, they let their dresses go. The ruffles of their dresses sit on the water a few minutes before sinking below the surface, algae closing in around them. Deep breaths. Steady breaths. He’s a nice man.

Odetta holds out her boney right hand, and Odessa grips it firmly in her left. Standing side by side, they raise their free hands into the sky just above their shoulders. In a few moments, a mosquito lands on the top of Odetta’s hand, digging into her skin and filling with her blood. A few moments later, a couple more mosquitos land on Odessa’s hand. Then, swarms of mosquitos land on their hands. Thousands, millions. The mosquitos make their way down the sisters’ arms to their shoulders.

When they get light headed from blood loss, the sisters submerge their raised arms into the water, pulling them back up slowly. There’s a large, blood-filled mosquito in each of their palms, still sucking. They close their fists, crushing the mosquito. Blood seeps through the spaces in between their fingers. It trails down their wrists. They release their clasped hands and turn towards one another. With their clean hands, they start tracing the lines in their bloody palm, making sure to get blood in every crease and wrinkle.

After tracing the lines in their hands with blood, the sisters put their palms together. With their other hands, they scoop some of the algae from the pond’s surface and put it into their mouths. They fill their mouths until they can hardly breathe and begin chewing, drinking down their saliva mixed with the algae’s juice. When the algae is dehydrated in their mouths, they spit it into their free hands and crush it into a poultice with their fists. Then, they place their algae covered palms together.

Now, standing face to face with their hands together and stretched above their heads, the sisters put their foreheads together and begin to sing one of their old songs.

Their voices don’t resonate; there’s no timbre. Instead, it sounds like dried leaves being crushed underfoot. It sounds like mud bubbling from a spring. Like the sound animals make when they’re mating. It vibrates, reverberating across the pond, sending long ripples beneath the algae. The sisters breathe in each other’s air, singing into each other’s chest. Their bloody palms feel like they’re on fire. Their eyes roll back in their heads, and they lean into each other’s weight.

The woods are getting louder. Around the pond, the cypress trees rattle against one another. Life and death blending together. Tears roll down the sisters’ cheeks from the pain in their hands, but this is the price they pay to be forgotten.

Then, the sound stops. The song ends. Odessa and Odetta release their hands and let them fall into the water. They look at each other. They’re both older. Their skin is looser, hanging like shingles from their boney cheeks. Their eyes are rheumy. Their hair is longer, whiter. They never wanted to hurt anyone. He is a nice man. They just need to be left alone.

After taking a few minutes to collect their breath, the sisters wade out of the pond. They pass through the hole in the cypress roots and find their way back down the creek bed. Their cabin is the same. Their porch is the same. They settle back into their rocking chairs and listen to the tune of the swamp, tapping their feet.

*

Would you be free from your passion and pride?
There’s power in the blood, power in the blood;
Come for a cleansing to Calvary’s tide;
There’s wonderful power in the blood.

 Rubbing the cool ice on his head, Officer Adkins starts humming hymns again. He’s wondering what he’ll have for lunch. It’s a little late for lunch. Maybe he’ll just grab some pie and a coffee. The diner next to the station will be open. It’s always open.

When he pulls into the parking lot, he notices that no one turns to see his car. When he walks to the counter, he can’t seem to get the waitress’s attention. She smiles and looks at him but doesn’t acknowledge him. He touches her shoulder and she smiles and shrugs it off. He chalks it up to a misunderstanding and walks across the street to the station.

The station is running business as usual. No one seems to pay him any attention. He’s new here, so he doesn’t mind. There’s a fresh pot of coffee boiling. Officer Adkins pours a cup and walks across the hall to the deputy’s office. Eager to prove himself, he walks up to his and slams down his hands.

“I seen the sisters. Told ‘em they had to pay up.”

No response. The deputy stares down at his desk, rustling through reports.

“I seen the sisters…”

No response.

Officer Adkins leaves the station. He’s got a sick feeling churning in the pit of his stomach. The world doesn’t feel right. He trots to his car and immediately drives home.

When he pulls into his yard, bouncing over the curb, he honks his horn twice. The sprinkler’s spraying his new garden. He gathers his things, secures the lid on the cooler, and opens his car door in one quick motion. He unlocks the white vinyl fence beside his home and makes his way through the backyard. From behind a wall of gardenias, he can see his wife sitting on the back patio. She’s staring off in the distance with a cigarette hanging limply between her lips.

Officer Adkins didn’t know she smoked. She especially shouldn’t be smoking while she’s pregnant. In any case, he wants to sneak up behind her and kiss her on the neck. He quietly drops his things behind the bushes and makes his way to the wicker chair where she is sitting with her legs crossed.

He touches her shoulder lightly, running his fingers across the lower part of her neck just above her shirt collar. He leans in slow enough to hear his bones creaking. When he kisses her neck, she just shrugs it off like a mosquito. She shifts in her seat and sucks on her cigarette. He realized that he must’ve done something wrong. He decides he’ll go inside and make some coffee and a sandwich to bring out to her.

“Honey, I’ll be right back. You stay right there.”

No response.

He kicks off his shoes near the backdoor and notices that his other shoes have disappeared. His wife must have moved them earlier that day. He always was a little messy. Maybe that’s why she’s not talking to him. In the kitchen, he puts down his cooler and opens the refrigerator. There’s hardly anything to eat in there, so he puts on some coffee and makes his way back to the bedroom to change his clothes.

The bed’s unmade. The sheets are tangled in a rat’s nest, the blinds are drawn. Although the room’s dark, he notices that there are no photos of him around. There are no photos at all.

Unsettled, Officer Adkins walks across the hall to the nursery he and his wife spent so much painting and decorating. He carved the crib from the cedar tree out back. He spent so much time sanding and oiling the wood, delicately carving its corners often into the night. When pushing open the door, it got caught on something. He pushed harder, rustling paper and plastic and knocking over boxes. The room looked like it had not been touched in a decade. Cobwebs danced lazily in the air blown by the air conditioning vents. The walls were dingy white, not sunshine yellow. There was no crib.

His head began to pulse. The headache from earlier began to boil in the back of his skull. He walked back through the hallway and looked through the kitchen blinds onto the back patio. His wife had started a new cigarette. Her hair was limp, unwashed. She sat with her legs underneath her, staring across the backyard. He followed her gaze to the cedar tree he had cut for the crib. There it was, standing as tall as ever.

Head still pulsing, Officer Adkins grabs a cigarette from his wife’s box. No response. He walks into the yard and sits beneath the cedar tree. With his back against its gnarly bark, he leans his head back, watching as his cigarette smoke disappears in the dense canopy. He closes his eyes and listens. He can hear a tune and starts humming along.

 

Dylan M. Harris is a PhD candidate in the Graduate School of Geography at Clark University. He studies the stories we tell (and don’t tell) about climate change and comes up with his own stories from time to time.

This piece is part of Not afraid of the ruins, our series of science fiction and utopian imaginings.

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