When the Stars Disappeared: (Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy Fiction) by Henrijs Zandovskis - HTML preview

 

Seven

 

He awoke to the sound of rain and chatter; Nura sat on the couch in the middle of the room with Rocket sleeping next to her, talking to an ashen-haired girl with timid eyes in glasses.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Nura said to Sam.

“Hey, kid.”

“Hey,” Rob muttered, lifting his hand in greeting, then pulling his black hair away from his eyes.

“Jake, Maria, and Kate went to hunt,” said Nura.

“Mm-hmm. I’m gonna make some coffee,” he grunted, his eyes still sticky with sleep as he went to prepare his instant coffee. Nura continued her conversation with Jenny while Rob played with a ball-string toy which clacked as he tried to get the ball on the stick.

The air outside blew fresh, with hints of moss and rain; the argent clouds swam in the amber sky. Outside the front door sat a patio with a roof and some chairs and a small swing. He drank his coffee listening to the songs of robins and nightingales as raindrops trickled down into puddles and the autumn winds playfully sighed the fresh greenwood scent into his bearded face. The laughter of Nura through the log walls was a welcomed and missed sound—his favorite in the whole wide world.

Sammy opened the heavy wooden doors and trudged on the patio in his puffy slippers and stood there staring at Sam. He then lifted his hand in greeting and Sam did the same.

“Want to try my coffee?” asked Sam. The boy stood in silence for a moment and then approached slowly and took a sip of the steamy brown liquid and winced; Sam laughed heartily.

“Maybe tea?” he asked and the boy nodded with a smile. Sam then brewed a lemon tea and they both enjoyed the hot drinks in the calm nature.

“Have you seen the Nightwalkers?” asked Sam.

“No.”

“Has anybody?”

“Only Jake.”

Sam grunted and creaked in the olden rocking chair as he finished his coffee and the boy sat quietly next to him. The day went on calmly and without incident; the hunting trio returned with three dead cottontails in Jake’s right hand and a crossbow in his left.

 “We’re back,” Kate spoke upon entering the front door, her nose red from cold and sunspots littering her face like stars in the night sky from ages passed.

Jake said nothing, only stared at Sam for a moment and then continued to the kitchen with the cottontails.

“Hey,” Sam greeted them and went to the kitchen to check on Jake who struggled to skin the cottontails with his stubbed finger.

“Need help?” asked Sam as he reached for the cottontail.

“I’ll be fine, thanks,” he replied.

Sam had already skinned and gutted two cottontails afore Jake could finish his. The large kitchen fed countless explorers in its prime; now it sat lonely with a cracked window blowing a cold draft through the duct tape as the nearby tree branches grazed it ever so slightly.

They ate and made torches from rags and the animals’ fat and the dark came and they huddled together nigh the fireplace. The kids had fallen asleep except Jake, who sat in front of Sam in silence.

“Still upset about the finger, huh?”

“I probably deserve it.”

“Sorry about that.”

Jake kept silent.

“I hear nobody has seen the Nightwalkers except you. Is that right?”

“Yeah, I usually keep watch at night since I’m the oldest,” he reluctantly replied, stoking the flames.

“So what do they look like?”

“Black masks, black hoods, black cloaks.”

“Any guns?”

“I didn’t see.”

“How many?”

“Like three or four.”

“When did they come first?”

“Last autumn.”

“And what happened?”

“They knocked,” he replied reluctantly with a sigh, “you know, a real knock…it’s different. I peeked outside, saw some torches, and opened the door. They just whispered ‘The night demands an offering’ or some shit. I was pointing the rifle at them and said to fuck off and shut the door.”

“So why didn’t you wake anyone for help?”

“I dunno… I must have just been in shock…or tired.”

“Why did you open the door?”

“‘Cus I saw lights and thought someone needed help.”

“Yeah…” he grunted. “So what happened after that?”

“Nothing, man. They left. The next day we noticed a note on the door: ‘The night demands an offering’. Some nights later a girl disappeared. Sarah. We thought she sleepwalked into the dark or something. Everyone was shook.”

“Any idea how they got in?”

“No, man. All our windows are locked and fine. The doors too.”

“I see. Then what?”

“Then they knocked again some weeks later. I asked about Sarah but they ignored it. I was about to shoot…but they kinda…vanished. It was weird.”

“Vanished?”

“Yeah, like turned to shadow. I felt like I’m dreaming.”

“Hmm. And you didn’t wake anyone?”

“No.”

“And someone disappeared again?”

“Yeah, Lucy, the next night. Then we were panicking. Anne and Sammy were yelling about going away. Far away. We tried confronting them, you know, staying awake nights. But they never came those nights. The next one was Anne, and…now Sammy can’t ever be talked out of going anywhere.”

Sam grunted.

“So you’re staying, huh?”

“Yeah,” replied Sam with an odd stare toward the crackling flame; Jake took a few glims and went upstairs into the murk to sleep by himself. Sam grunted and stared into the fire, pondering. He awoke in the midst of the night by some thrawn whisper next to his ear afore dozing off again.

 

In the morning he pondered things while gazing at the amber sky. Soft piano melodies visited him now and again as he reminisced about times past. He felt a calm wash over, sipping his hot beverage to the sounds of nature while a maestro played fantastical serenades in his head.

After he was done with the drink he decided to check the house and surroundings for clues. As he walked around the house and inspected the sills and window frames, Sammy approached him.

“You have a cool bow!” Sammy spoke.

“Thanks, Sammy. Do you have one?”

“No…” he replied morosely. “I don’t have one.”

“Really? Why?”

“Everyone thinks I’m too young for a weapon.”

“Hmm. What do they know? Would you like one?”

“What do you mean?”

“I can show you how to make one. It’s pretty easy.”

“Really?” he said in awe.

“Really,” replied Sam with a smile. “C’mon.”

They took to the woods in search of a suitable tree. It had to be thin and flexible enough for the size of the boy. He found a fine tree and told the boy to cut it down nigh the bottom with a firewood hatchet. It was wide enough that Sam’s hand couldn’t grip it entire and was twice as tall as him.

The boy smashed off bits of the tree and the knocks echoed through the wood. When he was done Sam broke it off from the stump and showed where to split it in half: the boy did and it was now almost as tall as him and half as tall as Sam. He halved the wood into a half-circle using a knife and the dull end of the hatchet to hammer it and showed the boy how to chop away bits of wood to thin out the half-stick. He used his hunting knife to shape the stick to his will, grinding it, denting a place for the handle, smashing away bits from the edges to arch it the way he wanted, all the while narrating it for the boy. He then picked out a thinner tree, chopped it and stripped away the inner bark and threaded it like a rope. He then tied the rope around the nocked ends of the arched stave and smoothed away the remaining bark until it was ready.

“Now the arrow,” said Sam while inspecting the bow. He took an even thinner stick from the ground and scratched the bark off and nocked its butt with a knife and sharpened it to a point and fire-hardened the tip of it. Beside the brook lay black turkey feathers and he split them into small pieces and used thin strips of bark to tie them to the arrow as fletchings, then used a smoldering piece of coal to burn and shape them further.

“This is the best day of my life,” the boy spoke with wide eyes while admiring his new bow. “Finally I can hunt too!’”

“Didn’t the boys teach you?” Sam asked with a smile, looking into the boy’s blue eyes, as he was finishing the arrow.

“No. Jake always says, ‘Go away, brat,” and Rob thinks I’m too soft for it.”

“Hmm.”

“I was only three when my parents let me stay here. And only because of Anne. It was supposed to be a one-night thing for me. The owner was nice and allowed it.”

“I see.”

“Of course, they taught me what they could. Especially Anne. About plants and wildlife, snares, fishing, camping, even bee farming.”

Sam smiled.

“But I’m afraid of everything…and everyone thinks I’m weak. So…thank you, Sam!” The boy hugged him with an endearing smile.

“Hey, we can only be brave when we’re afraid,” he replied as he patted the boy’s back. “C’mon. Let’s go test it out.”

They retreated to a man-sized stump near the cabin.

“Watch my posture. Keep your elbow level. And don’t aim. Just let your eyes do their thing,” he said as he loosened an arrow into the dead stump; Sammy copied his stance to a mirror’s reflection and loosened the bowstring: the arrow almost hit Sam’s.

“But it looks like you don’t need my advice,” he said with a smile. The boy kept practicing and shot his one arrow over and over again, excitedly running to the stump and back, each time farther and farther from it; Sam went inside to look for clues.

The brood were reminiscing about the lost world—the stars and planets, the families and friends, the schools and kindergartens, the doctors and dentists, the video games and movies, the technology and history, the Internet and its culture, the weird electronic music and the strange television programs: the things that Nura never got to experience nor could ever remember.

He inspected the cabin’s windows and doors for signs of forced entry and opened drawers and cabinets and looked behind furniture. Wooden coat racks sat on both sides of the front door, tomes of humanity’s fading knowledge slept in drawers and on shelves, and in a wooden chest under the stairs hid various medals and gauds and comic books.

He inspected the cafeteria next to the kitchen: tall arched windowpanes, argent chandeliers, banners, support beams with wires and aged lampads, animal heads mounted on high walls, and stains on the floor as if all the tables and benches stolen a long time ago. Unbroken windows, no signs of forced entry, no blood.

He shone his flashlight around the cool concrete basement: a thick blanket of dust lay on nigh everything, the smell of it like mold and so of death. Sam inspected the aged oval jars and corked glass bottles, wooden and metal barrels, mops and brooms and steel buckets, narrow windows overgrown with creeper plants, bulky ridge and support beams, musty chairs with cobwebs and their makers, rusty pipes and tubes, old tins and paint cans, small ladders and tall water heaters, log splitters and mauls, screwdrivers and wrenches and bolts and screws and other tools of fathers, rubber tires and steel wheels, rope stacks, and a spidery breaker box. Unbroken windows, no signs of forced entry, no blood.

Upstairs lies a corridor that leads to other smaller bedrooms and bathrooms and toilets. Many narrow bunk beds sat in the rooms and cobwebbed ceiling fans hung stilly above. Wooden ridge beams and support beams shaped its angled roof while brazen ornaments decorated the walls above the beds like of Gothic architects. He creaked his way around the rooms and found old books and animal fells. Dying to carpet the soles of their killers, he thought. What an afterlife.

He inspected the windows and their locks: unbroken, no signs of forced entry, no cracks, no blood. In the rooms sat wooden tables and chairs, canoes and bicycles, tents and camping gear, eld Scout breeches and knickerbockers and ribbons, symbolic wooden signboards and placards, nature posters and paintings, countless blankets and pillows and bedsheets, taxidermied critters, and tall windows from ceiling to floor. In the middle of the hallway sat a stone chimney that stretched from the downstairs fireplace all the way to the roof and through. Cups and mugs sat on shelves while flags on poles protruded from walls. “This Ain’t Cub Scouts,” said a man on a poster.

Sam opened drawers and cupboards: old books collected dust alongside Rubik’s Cubes, cartoon cards, flint-and-steel necklaces, Scout handbooks, rubber balls, small ropes in knots, compasses, badges and pins, and medals of honor. He found undusted small brass bugles, wooden carvings of birds and wolves and the like, steel horseshoes and gas lanterns, bear bells, blacksmithing handbooks, books of stars and plants and animals, arrowheads and fishing poles and fishing lures: many spinnerbaits, crankbaits, buzzbaits, chatterbaits, jerkbaits, spoons, jigs, flies, plugs, poppers, trolling skirts, and umbrella rigs in plastic boxes.

Some bulbous plant heads lay in a drawer in the corner room; he picked one up and inspected it. Golden-brown bulb. Opium poppy. Not too old, but stale. Unripe seedpods used for inducing deep sleep. Hmm.

He placed them in his pocket and went downstairs where the kids played a game of Twister.

“Where’s Jake?” he asked.

“We haven’t seen him,” replied Nura.

“Probably in the garden,” Kate replied, chuckling, while twisting around Nura and the other brood on the game mat. “But don’t go alone,” she said with a laugh. “It's booby-trapped.”

“Show me the way. I need to talk to the boy.”

“Oh…okay.” Her smile faded as she stood up.

“Where are you going?” Sammy asked as they passed him by the tree stump.

“To the garden,” Kate replied. “Stay here.”

They waded through the knee-high grasses on a faint path that twisted and mazed through the wood over rills and mudded trails, stepping over fishing lines disguised as the forest floor.

“Careful. Not much farther,” she said looking back at Sam. “Why do you need to talk?”

“I found something in one of the drawers,” he replied as he cleaned off rogue spider webs stuck to his face. “What do you know about Jake?”

“He had a rough growing up. Ex-marine dad who loved to drink and all that. So...Jake is a little odd. Sometimes he makes weird looks at me, weird comments, but...nothing too crazy. He’s the oldest, so...we trust him to lead us.”

“And the girls?”

“They just...kept vanishing in the nights. We tried to stay awake but it never happened then. Only when we slept,” she said as she stepped over a sneaky fishing line. “But when Anne disappeared, that was the hardest part. Sammy cried for months. She was his everything.”

“Was?”

“Mm… Well… I don’t think she’s coming back…”

They came to a dell in the wood nigh a creek where rows of dug earth lay in lines next to a towering oak with a treehouse hidden amidst its lush autumn foliage and meaty branches. They avoided a few areas in the ground which looked like netting strewn with grass and leaves and approached the gilded oak.

“Jake, you there?” the girl yelled.

“What do you want?” he replied from the treehouse.

“Sam wants to talk.”

“Go away,” he replied as flickers of lights glistened through the planks.

“How can we get up there?” Sam asked Kate.

The base of the treehouse sat a good three Sam-lengths up the towering oak, and a staircase led from its first floor up the tree to a smaller eagle’s nest room whence the lights flickered. Faint murmurs already gathered in the murky first floor and shadowy underbrush nearby.

“There’s fishing line tied to a rock hidden in the grass,” she replied. “You pull the line and a rope ladder comes down. But I can’t find it now. He must have pulled it all up.”

“Clever,” he replied. “Go back to the cabin, it’s getting dark. I’ll find my way back.”

“Nah, I’m staying. I’m not gonna be responsible for you getting lost,” she replied. “Jake, stop being an idiot and throw the ladder down,” she yelled. “Or come down.”

The oak shed countless golden leaves in the fading sunlight like a puffball in summer; they fluttered in the cold wind. Lonely birds sang from the surrounding treetops of pine. The cold air transformed their warm breath into smoke as they stood alow the hatch of the treehouse with their heads up, waiting for a response.

“Fuck off,” yelled Jake.

“I found the seeds, kid. You wanna tell me about them?” said Sam loudly; a short quiet.

“What seeds? I don’t know what you’re talking about, old man.”

“What seeds, Sam?” asked Kate.

“Jake, let’s stop with the act.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about! Fuck off!”

“Sam?” Kate continued.

“You used opium seeds to drug everyone into a deep sleep. Then you did God-knows-what to the girls and made up a clever little story to cover it up.”

“Sam, what the hell are you talking about?” spoke Kate nervously with a trembling voice. “Sam?!” she asked, nudging him on the shoulder.

A faint click came through the planks; creaky footsteps neared the window and stopped in a nook.

“What did you do to them?!” Sam shouted; he grew angrier by the second as the thought of their fate hit him. What if he did the same to Nura?

“Sam?!” Kate continued.

“I only did what they told me to do…”

“Who?!”

“The voices... The voices…” he said shakingly.

“The voices…” said Sam.

“They told me to… They told me to…” he repeated and repeated until his voice quietened to a whisper and a whimper, then faded. In the silence, in the blink of an eye, a crossbow peeked from the side of the window and a bolt thunked toward Sam’s head; he dodged to his left with his upper body and it scraped his right shoulder and the bolt thudded quietly into the grass behind him; Kate gasped and cupped her mouth with dewy eyes.

“Don’t make me kill you, boy!” yelled Sam. “You will look your friends in the eye as you tell them what you did!”

“I can’t!” Jake replied, shaky and sobbing. “The voices did it… The voices…”

After a short pause, Jake’s sobbing stopped and he spoke in a calm manner: “When I saw your little girl, your precious Nura, I wanted to rape her too and then throw her into the dark like tr—”

Three sharp bangs echoed through the greenwood in quick succession, and three new holes decorated the plank wall behind which Jake hid; a smell of brimstone. Flocks of birds flew skyward as blood dripped from the floor-level hole; Kate stared upward stiffly and in shock. A quiet.

Sam turned on his head torch and took off his cloak and flipped it around the oak’s bole and grabbed it on both sides and trudged upwards. Within seconds he approached the first floor; a piece of rope ladder hung through the opened hatch. He bit into it and pulled it down and it fell all the way down in-between him and the oak and he gripped it with all his limbs and climbed up into the treehouse; Kate trembled and wept quietly as she looked up at Sam. In his rage he quickly marched up the oaknut-ridden steps and held onto the wooden railing and opened the door to the swaying and swinging eagle’s room. In flickering glims and flurries of leaves there he lay in a puddle of blood, dead.

I killed him. A boy. Just a stupid boy...

A monster.

Damn it…

As he went down the steps he saw flashlights approaching from the narrow path, stopping to step over the fishing lines; he made his way down the ladder.

“Sam?!” Nura’s shout echoed through the wood as the group ran toward him with Rocket beside them; the dog avoided the traps as if he had explored the area many times beforehand.

“Yeah?” he answered halfway down the rope ladder, calming down from the anger.

“What happened? Are you okay?” she yelled as they approached Sam and Kate.

He inhaled deeply and answered calmly as he looked at the fading sunlight.

“I killed him.”

“What?!” she exclaimed with wide eyes; Maria and Jenny gasped.

Sammy drew his bowstring with the nocked arrow and aimed it at Sam.

“Why!?” he asked angrily with tears in his eyes.

“Sammy, stop!” yelled Nura and took the arrow out from the bow.

“What the fuck is he talking about, Kate?!” asked Rob.

“It was Jake,” said Kate, sobbing. “It was Jake all along.”