“These apples are riper thana fifty-year-old in a fifth grade classroom. Let’s go.”
“Wait – wait, go? Let’s go? But what about the pie?”
“I said let’s go!”
Grandma grabbed up my hand in hers and gripped it tightly as she led me away from the offensively ripe apples. Never mind that our sole purpose in coming to the supermarket was to buy apples. Never mind that without them there’d be no delicious pie – hot, steaming pie, melted fruit with a scoop of ice cream on top, drippy on the outside and frozen in the middle – there’d be none of that. But there was no arguing with Grandma.
“Let’s go,” she said once more, though I put up no fight as she led me away from the most vital ingredient of our dessert. I put up no fight because as I looked up to protest I saw in her eye a determined glint that could only mean one thing. She was not abandoning our pie; she had a better plan. We were gonna get some good apples.
“I know a farm, little place called Tougas Farm. Best apples in the state, nowhere better in all of Massachusetts. You remember those donuts?”
“The apple cider donuts?”
“Yes, those. Oh, they were good. Those came from Tougas. We’re gonna go get some of those apples and make the best goshdarn pie you’ve ever tasted.”
When did it get so dark? It had been late afternoon when we went to the supermarket but surely it couldn’t have been that late? The brilliant, dying bursts of ginger, amber, and ruby that crowned northeastern trees throughout the autumn months had faded in the gathering gloom to monochromatic blobs against a slate grey sky. A few wispy white clouds had been scraped mercilessly across the lower third of the sky, barely visible above the tree line.
The road we were driving along grew narrower as we went along at a barely perceptible rate, and the asphalt beneath my Grandma’s car faded slowly to dirt as we progressed – although I hesitated to call it progressing. Grandma had fallen silent a few miles back and the landscape seemed to stand still around us, as if the road were moving beneath us at the same speed as the spinning tires. For all I knew, we could have been frozen in time. Only the gentle hum of the engine and the crunch of gravel beneath us gave any indication of movement.
It seemed to be getting dark much at a much faster rate than we were moving forward at. Very soon there was no light at all except for the headlights that Grandma switched on without a word. The beams bounce timidly off the silhouettes of the trees that stand sentinel all along the side of the never-ending road. We approach and pass through an unmarked gate without a word. I see nestled in the shadowy recesses of the trees, now, clusters of fruit.
The apples!
Suddenly, we were among them. The road seemed to vanish completely, and the trees drew close around us. The tops of the trees were barely visible, but I squinted up into the darkness and noticed something… odd. They seemed interconnected, beyond just an intermingling of the branches that could be attributed to proximity. The tops of the branches, rather than ending at the narrowest part, from there stretched out, and widened, and seemed to descend into the branches of the next tree over. Apples hung temptingly low, bright red even in the darkness. We drove through this web of trees, slowly, and I rolled down the window to pluck some of the fruit. The branches seem to lower themselves benevolently, dropping the apples into my waiting hands.
And then one of them hit me.
Hard.
It took me by surprise, after the gentle harvest of the past few minutes. I jerked my hand back into the car and put the window up. I glanced up into the front seat at Grandma, to see if she noticed what had just happened, but she sat facing forward, still silent. Then I looked past her, into the wedges of visible world created by the headlights.
And the trees ahead of us were dancing.
It was not beautiful; it was jerky and sharp and ugly. And terrifying.
“Grandma! Grandma!” I stammered her name, unable to formulate any words or thoughts in my sudden state of all-consuming terror. “Grandma!”
Still, still she did not answer.
“Please, Grandma, go back! Grandma!”
Wild, blind, and trembling with fear, I jerked open the car door and slid out. The ground yanked my feet out from under me and I went down hard in a cloud of dust. The car kept going; Grandma drove away, going until even the beams of light were no longer visible.
At least the trees had stilled.
I walked. Alone, disoriented, scared. I walked.
The farmhouse rose forcefully, out of an empty space that appeared quite suddenly before me. There had been trees, and then there was the farmhouse and a barn. I stumbled into the openness.
Out of the trees around me, other children walked. Wordlessly, we clustered together at the tree line, wide eyes and quick breaths, the seven or eight of us.
“Should we…”
“Maybe there’s people inside?”
“Have you ever been here before?”
“Should we go look?”
“I’ve never been here before.”
“There must be someone working here.”
“But it’s night, they probably went home.”
“Let’s…”
Once the whispers started, they went on for a while without any conclusive ideas being put forth. After a few minutes the whispers died, and we moved forward as a unit, apparently having decided to investigate. The lights in the farmhouse were all off, but there was alight flickering somewhere in the barn, so we made our way there. The door was slightly open, squealing on rusty hinges. Inside there was stretched a long row of stalls that faded in the dark and dust to an invisible point somewhere ahead of us. The air was musty; it smelled of damp hay and wet fur. Pecking around in the dirt just inside the door was a group of chickens.
“Are those chickens?”
They had four legs each, including a rooster who stood to the height of my thighs. We walked slowly by, so as not to antagonize them. Beyond them, stepping out of the shadows of one of the stalls, was a dog. It barked madly, but stood still in the middle of the path. We parted on either side of it and walked by. It’s barking continued for half a minute or so, then abruptly ceased.
At the other end of the barn there was another door, and I stepped forward to open it, already readying my lungs for a breath of fresh air from outside.
“No people here.”
“Let’s go try the house.”
“But it was dark.”
“Probably they’re just sleeping.”
“We can try anyway.”
I pulled the door open. But I didn’t get a breath of fresh air. Instead, the air seemed filthy and dark. The door opened onto more stalls – a semicircle of stalls, each with a single horse standing inside. They did not move, but I could hear them breathing. Outside the stalls, standing not quite in the center of the semicircle, was another horse. It was a sickly cream color, and its eyes were pure white, with no pupils.
“We have to get out of here,” came a harsh whisper from one of the kids.
And a voice sounded from all around us. “You are one scream away from utter annihilation.”
We turned and fled. The dog stepped aside to let us through, this time without challenge. The chickens and the rooster tailed us closely, squawking angrily and pecking at our heels as we ran.
Instead of the door we had entered by, we found a hole in a wall about three feet tall. With the screaming birds still right behind us, we flung ourselves one by one into the narrow opening. I went last, kicking mightily behind me until they gave up.
There was not enough oxygen, with so many of us breathing in the cramped confines of the passage. So we pushed quickly forward, hunched low as we walked. Through cracks in the walls, some faint light seeped in and made barely legible a sign of some kind that was stuck loosely to the wall on my left. I read it out slowly, squinting at the dirty letters.
“Ta lodorik, Caretker of t Horse De Liv ere; Enter at y r n risk!”
Another door. This one hung loose on its hinges and from behind it spewed a foul smell. Inside is a tiny room, covered in layer upon layer of refuse and garbage. Most seemed to be rotting fruit and peels, but a large portion was of unimaginable origin. There were bowls scattered here and there with some kind of devilish liquid.
I gagged and tried not to look as we made our way through the room to the other side.
But there was no door there. I turned back and saw that the door we had entered by had vanished, as well. We stood staring at an oddly beautiful wall, amongst all the filth – it had a very tasteful floral wallpaper. I had never seen anything quite so terrifying.
“Where’s the door?”
“Where is it?”
“How do we get out of here?”
“I want to get out!”
“Help!”
The cry for help – was that me? – inspired us to action. We swept in and began to claw at the wall, ripping, tearing, peeling back the wretched wallpaper.
There was a door behind it.
There was my grandma, behind the door.
“I’ve been waiting for you, you know? Where have you been all this time? I got our apples, sweetie, it’s time to go make pie.”
