The Orchard

Tuesday October 31st. 2017

I know now that what I am seeing is not real.  It can't be real.  Weeks of sleeplessness have fogged reality and I am seeing nothing clearly anymore.  Shapes are flickering in and out of existence and I have a choice to acknowledge them or ignore.  I am choosing to ignore.  My soul is telling me to flee, to run and hide.  But where?  The Orchard?  No, I will just remain calm, take my medication and this will all blur into a daydream.  I am the one in control.  I have the power here.  There are rational explanations for all I have seen this month.  There must be rational explanations!  

Tonight is Halloween and there will be knocks on the door, not knocks from the cellar.  I will open the door and there will be no demons trying to enter.  Not anymore.  Just children in costumes and masks.  They will seek candy and leave my soul be.  I used to love Halloween.  The pageantry and pretending.  The letting go of rationality for the sake of a little darkness.  I need not create anything more than this.  The darkness is a game we play.  Just to get a little more out of ordinary life.  Without it we are trapped in a world lacking flourish.  Without magic.  

I will give this one more night and go back to the real world with a story in my heart to scare the writer's group.  It will all be worth it and sleep will return in its practical way.  Dreams will become mundane and the visions will take their places as forgotten trauma.  I can abide this wickedness for one more night.  I do not have to give in to the fear that is pressed so hard into the back of my neck. 

The room has not become cold, I have.

Sunday October 1st. 2017

The writer's group met yesterday around 11 a.m.  The progress is amazing to watch and experience, but the community is really the part I love.  We are a team and we are creating a reality of our own.  Paul is the most experienced writer of the group and that is such a nice thing to have.  A guide for creation.  His knack for detail and grittiness comes easily.  I want his stories to be already written so I can binge on them.  Sarah has such great group skills as well.  Her writing is confident and clear and has that naturalness of someone who does not need to pretend that there is magic in everything.  Brigitte just joined the group yesterday.  She did not come from a writing background but launched bravely into this new adventure.  She experienced an 11th hour stroke of brilliance and has already begun the story which will likely make her famous.

I leave the group every Saturday feeling like someone you should know.  Important.  Going somewhere with purpose.  It is our reality and I place it in substitution to any other.  We are a team now.  Complete and fearless!  And from this position of trust I have decided to take a risk.  I will let go, for one month, the practical nature of my life and delve into a dark openness.  I will actively search for the hidden haunted.  I will take my imagination to its limit and see all things as frightening, sinister, malevolent and haunting.  I will go to a place where no certainty exists and these three companions will be my net should I fall.

I am looking out my window right now and I see sun-soaked trees swaying gently.  But there is no warmth and the leaves are filled with plague and will fall very soon.  The trees are now swaying.  They are trying to uproot themselves and walk away from this cursed ground.  They are driven by a knowledge that this month is of the devil, who's influence increases day by day in this skeletal month of October. They aren't even trees!  They are terrified souls who know that houses are not haunted.  It is the trees that are haunted, possessed by spirits that tie them to the ground and force them to watch the madness if men.  No, houses are not haunted.  They are just made of wood.  The wood from trees.  The houses are stacks and stacks of murder built into cozy rooms and decks and window frames looking back out onto the killing field.  Trees want in.  They want in because the wood is dead and at peace.  Demons cannot possess a table.  It has already escaped its misery, victim of the ax.  The trees welcome death and the cutting of the curse.  Inside and dead is much preferable to their captive terror.

In preparation, I have dug a small apple sapling from the yard, potted it and placed it on my oak table, its deceased kin.  This one will live safe from the graveyard orchard.  I will be its protector while the rest fling their leprous leaves and sway in dark trances baring their skeletons.  I will pass by those trees every day.  I must to go about my life.  But I will see them differently now, for this month of defenselessness.  They will do their best to infect my soul and I will do my best to allow it.  I am not truly afraid but I am open to the prospect.  I will allow the evil and when 31 days have passed, I will have written this story.

I have my plot, I have my pen and I have my companions.  Great things await!

Monday October 2nd, 2017

I walked through the Orchard and to the gap in the fence.  I saw squirrels running from the trees and onto power line.  They know!  They are safer away from the trees!  Apples are ripe and I picked one but did not eat it.  I imagined its insides filled with worms, wriggling in competition for the last of the flesh.  I threw it hard against the fence and it broke open.  No worms, but I ran through the gap and into the street pretending I had seen blood and gristle.  It was not hard.  I just let my fear take me.  

I was going to the junction to buy whiskey and weed.  I will be drinking again.  A lot, I suspect.

I left the store and walked by the businesses watching people and pretending I could hear their thoughts.  One particularly fit and beautiful woman was leaving a restaurant and waving her goodbyes to friends.  She would go home and throw up the meal she just enjoyed and go running for twice as long as yesterday.  She felt fat and ugly.  She did not believe the others to be real friends.  She felt alone.  She had drank too much last night and slept with a stranger.  Her mind was a clattering of adventure and shame about the experience.

A middle aged man walked by and could smell her insecurity.  His thoughts were primal and violent.  He adjusted his course and followed her.  He was playing a game in which he would pursue her with bad intent until she got nervous.  Then he would break off and go home to his family.  His timid wife would allow him to make love to her knowing that his mind was elsewhere.  He did not love her.  He did not love his children.  He was incapable of love but he was also a coward and would not leave them.  In a sole moment of clarity he wished he did have the courage.  For their sake.  They would be much better without him.

All about me were flawed, dark souls wearing masks and costumes.  They were the opposite of Halloween.  Their goodness dressed on the outside while worms ate their cores.  The air around me seemed to fill with unspoken words.  F****t, N****r, B***h, Freeloader, Terrorist, Snowflake!  I turned down the alley, out of sight and pressed my hands to my ears as if to stop the cacophony that I was imagining.  I wanted to allow the experience to take me but I did not want to seem like a lunatic in front of the whole town.  I bent over at the waist and breathed loudly and whispered, stop, stop.

The moment gave me chills.  To let myself go, even a little, was a rush in itself!  That's when I saw him.  A ghost silhouette peering out from a glass door of the alleyway entrance to the restaurant.  His face was half reflection of the alley.  His eyes stared briefly at me and then retreated from sight.  I heard his thought, 'Crazy F****r!'

Enough for one day!  I carried my booze and weed back to my house.  I would start drinking immediately.  Drinking and writing.  That was the plan.  I decided that it was ok that someone had witnessed my display.  It added to the story I was creating.  Yeah, actually, it really made it better.  Just a little craziness to let me know I was not like the others.  I might try it again tomorrow, or the next day.

When I returned to the gap in the fence, I looked up at the apple trees listened for their unprotected thoughts but creaking was the only sound I heard.  Maybe tomorrow, or the next day, I thought.  I passed into the Orchard and looked back to where I had thrown the rotted apple.  I saw no sign of it anywhere.  Curious!  

I am currently at my table with the little apple tree safely in his pot.  He is happy to be with me.  He is singing some little song that saplings learn.  The tune is sweet and melodic but the words are dark.

counting rings, counting rings

you won't grow up 'til 2 or 3

they'll feed you well 'til 9 or 10

then snap your branch and count again

I am drunk and high and in absolute LOVE with myself and the story!  I want to share what I have so far with the group.  But no.  I should wait.  At least until next Saturday.  I should have a lot written by then.  Sarah will lean in intensely and listen to every word, ooh-ing and awe-ing at just the right moments.  They will listen and applaud when I finish speaking.  Then they will ask how I came up with the idea and I will tell them the truth: it came to me and I just let go!

It is time for sleep now.  Goodnight to the sad woman and the evil man!  Goodnight to the ghost behind the glass door!  Goodnight to the happy little sapling, and his estranged family with their rotting fruit and ancient curses.

The sapling says goodnight to me too.

Tuesday October 3rd, 2017

I have to go to work but I needed to share this.  I had the most fevered dreams all night.  It hardly felt like sleep.  I can't express how raw and tired I am right now.  This will be a long day.  My dreams followed my day but in much stranger ways.  The Orchard was a forest, long since dead.  Spiders had entombed it in silk and left candy scattered about.  I was not part of the dream.  I only witnessed, but still I felt a sense of personal dread.  Children in costumes wandered into the Orchard in pursuit of sweet things.  Their laughter was genuine and tinny in the autumn fog.  They played hide-and-seek.  Some climbed branches, pushing aside the webs as they ascended.  Others hid in hollows in the tree trunks.  The evil man from yesterday paced silently.  In my dream I knew him perfectly.  His intention was singular.  The game was for the young.  The evil man was staunch seriousness.  His face was red as madness and he heard thin laughter as a beacon to be chased down.  

The dream turned to the street, me whispering stop, and the ghost-face witnessing it.  But this time I was truly hearing the chorus of thought.  The words were the same as before but I felt naked in my hearing.  This time it felt real.  I tried to escape but the alley quickly led to the Orchard and what I saw were the costumes strewn and bloodied about the tree trunks.  The fog was lifting and a bright red apple fell softly to the earth.  It landed with a plop and its worms were expelled.

Saturday October 7th, 2017

I did not write this week.  Not since Monday or Tuesday.  I think I worked one day this week but am not sure which.  What I have done is sleep.  Sleep like I was preparing to stay awake forever.  I slept 15 or more hours per day.  I would find myself going about my day, shopping or meeting friends for coffee and then I would notice some small thing.  Something strange and telling.  And I would know that I was dreaming.  Next, I would wake up in my bed, roll over and fall right back into dreams.  Often they were of the Orchard.  I had been taking fallen, dead branches and weaving them as bridges between the trees.  It took time and steadiness but I was able to connect two trees, then three and so on.  Then the dream would change and I would be going about my imaginary life again.  This cycle continued and I do not know if I ever left the house this week.

A spider took up residence on the little sapling and I have left it there.

Today I will go to the writers' group and share my story.  I had hoped to get more done but the few pages I have should be fine.

Last night I went to a bar and listened to some music.  The players were young, very young.  Two men easily in their early twenties.  They were channeling the spirits of gold-rusher trubadors in need of whiskey and female companionship.  I could feel their pretending just as my own.  They sought a different era and I sought a crack in normalcy.  I wondered if they walked the streets imagining that every hipster was the reincarnation of a love-lorn coal miner lamenting the time he found a diamond for his sweet Sadie, only to have it pick-pocketed by a red haired bar queen always on the lookout for a sucker.  I wondered if the coal miner returned to the mine, late night, to search again with his headlamp and cheater's heart, trying to make it right, only to have his lungs poisoned in the inevidable collapse.  No one ever finds redemption in such an era.  Such is the nature of the music.  Perhaps the redhead used the sale of the diamond to fund her own brothel.  That would be the proper final verse.  

After the set I went out back for a smoke and came across the band.  Turns out they were 24, about to be 25.  The designation of people young enough to speak of their next birthday.  They reminded me of confidence and they were told by a drunk man that if they did not hit soon it was because the world was a fucked up place.  I added that they could Hit and the world would always be a fucked up place.  No need to worry.  Everyone looked at me for a moment and decided that I was intruding on their world.  I quickly packed up my belongings and walked home, the whole time wondering about the fates of the miners and the w****s.  

I tried to find a way to add their saga to my horror story, but it did not jibe.

Wednesday October 18th, 2017

I woke up at 5 this morning and decided to start my day early.  My dreams last night reminded me of ransom notes written in cut-out magazine letters.  They were scattered and impossible to trace.  Also, like ransom notes, they demanded something of me, some payment for the return of... of what?  

I have been writing in a separate notebook which I take with me everywhere but last night, as I ran drunk through the orchard, I must have dropped it.  I will go find it today.  It is filled with many eerie thoughts that I would like to add to my story.  

The sapling has grown only a little on the table but the spider has spun quite a web in his small branches.  There is a tiny silken ball in which she has laid her eggs as well and I am reminded of one of my ransom-note dreams.

Once again in the Orchard, I am sitting in the crook of a branch.  Out before me lay the dead branches I have erected from tree to tree.  It is almost complete and very much resembles a spider's web, with me in the middle.  I feel vibrations from one direction through my leg and scramble across the stick-bridge to find a sparrow trapped in the thicket.  Ivy has grown up into the branches and encircled the poor bird, it flits its wings as I stare curiously.  Its eyes are wide and panicked and I see my reflection in one.  I am the spider, come to feed on the helpless.  My domain is endless.  I lay my traps and wait in patient calm.  When I am done there will be nothing alive in this orchard except me.

The sparrow, in its desperation, breaks free of the ivy and falls, broken winged to the earth below.  I do not follow.  There is so much more than chasing down a wounded bird.  So much more indeed.

I stare at the sapling and the spider now as the dream, once remembered, begins again to fade.  I don't think I went to writers' group this week.  Or, if I did, I don't think anyone else showed up.  It's fine.  We are all busy people and can't be expected to carve out more time than is possible.

Saturday October 21st, 2017

Today the writers' club came to me.  I heard a knock on the door and realized I had fell asleep in a chair at the table.  Drowsily, I swept the bottles and ashtray from the table and disposed of them.  I opened the door and there they stood, Sarah holding a bag of to-go food, Paul and Brigitte right beside her.  They asked if I was feeling better.  I answered that I did feel a little bit better, although I did not know what they were talking about.  I felt fine and had for a while.  But I played along and made an excuse to take the food and close the door before they could come in.

I am very curious as to why they thought I may be sick.  It dawns on me that I intended to go find my notebook a few days ago and never did.  My plan is to wait until sunset and go find it in the freight of late evening.  Maybe even see something unnerving in the orchard.

I will write about it all when I return from my search.

Monday October 23rd, 2017

I woke up in the orchard!  I woke up in a tree with the dead sparrow in my hand!  I woke up and my clothes were torn and dirty and my fingernails had blood beneath them!  I have been out of the house for 36 hours looking for my notebook!

Well, to be more specific, I have been out of the house for 36 hours but found my notebook pretty quickly.  The rest took 36 hours.

I left the house ad dusk and made my way to the orchard....

It seemed the trees were significantly closer to the house than I recalled, but I may have been rushing.  I reached the edge of the orchard and noticed a ripe apple dangling off a low branch.  A worm was squirming out of its blood-red skin.  I paused as I watched the struggle of the worm, bit by bit working its way out, seemingly in a hurry.  It fell to the soft ground and lay dead.  Instinctively, I bent and prodded it with a small twig.  Its skin gave easily and poison seeds, cracked and protruding tubers as if to germinate, moved and grew in front of me.  

I felt dread and panic well up in me.  I stood and was about to run back to the house when I spotted my notebook midway between me and the gap in the fence, the center of the orchard. 

The center of the orchard possessed a stone bench and small stone wishing well with its own little roof.  There had once been a bucket on a rope but only the rope remained, dangling menacingly in its unspoken threat. I approached slowly, keeping my eye on the many pregnant apples that hung, trying not to walk directly beneath them.

My notebook sat on the bench with the cover open and something scribbled largely on the first page.  As I approached, the word became readable and stopped me in my tracks.

LISTEN!

I sat on the bench and picked up the book, my finger traced the scribbled word.  It made a soft scratching sound as it caressed the page.  Then there was another sound and I knew right away what it was.  Soft, internal, devouring.  It was the sound of the worms hollowing the apples.  It was soft but all around me, a sound that is faint but constant, like living near the ocean. 

Then the wind rose into the trees and a sandpapery noise scraped the air.  The trees swayed easily and creaked in their old bones.  Deep cracks sounded from within the trees, as if twigs were snapping.  Then the wind lifted and calm returned.  Even the sound of the devouring had ceased.  

The next sound was a crinkle as I turned to the next page.  It was a drawing of the well, but the orchard was gone.  In its place was a graveyard, full of headstones and barren earth.  Some faint figure was rising from the well, dreadful and menacing.  About the headstones rose tiny tree saplings.

I understood!  The curse was real and the trees were dying.  There was no saving them.  Their time had come and gone and now they prepared for death.  The next generation now lay in the bellies of the worms.  

The wind rose and fell again quickly and a few branches fell along with their apples.  Fat worms crawled free, apple seeds splitting them from within and quickly burrowing into the ground.  I grasped a seed and yanked it from the earth.  It was more struggle than I would have thought as it yearned for its home only to be pulled away.  I held it in my hand and stared down at it in the dim light of the evening.  The root wriggled around as if in pain, or searching for something.  Then, suddenly, it found my skin and dug into it!  I let out a scream as my hand clenched instructively!  When I opened it the seed was halfway into my palm, edged by blood!  I tried but could get no grip on it!  I brought my hand to my mouth and bit the seed in half.

*** I decided to run after it and then escape.  As soon as I moved toward it a hail of apples began to expel their worms, thousands at a time.  Some apples fell and exploded while others remained on the branch.  The worms all died as they fell, hitting my skin and clothing, leaving their guts and growing seeds upon me. 

In the center of the orchard, directly above my notebook hung one very large over-ripe apple.  Its skin was intact but churning with internal life.