Rebirth

A Top in Fiction Spring Fever short story

“Isn’t this supposed to be spring?”

Craig Halketh glared at the ceaseless rain pounding on the windscreen of his Royal Mail van and shook his head.

The year had spawned under a pregnant cloud of dank, heavy grey. Even now, as the calendar ticked into March, it didn’t show any signs of improving.

Fields flooded. Rivers bursting their banks. Road surfaces washed away, leaving massive pot holes that could wreck your suspension never mind your tyres. Taking all that into account, it was no surprise the whole country seemed to be in a truculent and irritable mood. Or maybe it was always that way.

As a nation, the British were often accused of talking about the weather too much but this year, Craig reckoned, they had due cause.

He sighed, breaking away from his gloomy reverie. None of this was helping to get the last of these parcels delivered.

Looking from the back of the van and its mound of boxes and padded envelopes, to the pandemonium of precipitation outside, he flipped up the collar of his waterproof jacket and pulled the black woollen beanie over his thinning hair. With a final look in the rear view mirror at the weary and worn face staring back at him, he climbed out and got started.

It would be Craig’s thirty fifth work anniversary next week and he had spent all that time delivering the mail around Grangemouth. Some people might look at the fact he had lived and worked in his home town all these years as being a small life, but he hadn’t thought of it that way. Not everyone could be like that famous writer who grew up around here. What was his name? Connor Lambert. Yeah, that was it. Lost his brother a few years back didn’t he? So, even famous folks had the same problems as everyone else. Craig wasn’t much of a reader, but the guy seemed like a nice enough chap. Anyway, he had never wanted to be famous, and had been pretty happy where he was.

The mortgage for his little house on Lime Street was paid off, he had savings in the bank and a good pension to retire on. Plus, with all the walking he did, his health was pretty good and that was the most important thing.

“If you have your health, you have everything,” his mum used to say and right she was.

A sad smile tugged at the corner of his mouth at the memory. His mum had passed away ten years ago and he missed her every day. He was an only child, had never got married or had kids, so his parents were everything to him and their losses had hit him hard.

That reminded him. It would soon be Mother’s Day and he would have to take flowers up to the graveside later this week. Making a mental note, Craig hunkered his shoulders against the continuing onslaught and went on with his deliveries.

Just recently, however, he had felt an unwelcome moroseness settle on his bones. It was nothing he could put his finger on exactly, more as if his soul was tired. Of what, he wasn’t sure, but all his usual activities of going to movies and concerts, hill walking every other weekend and playing in the bowls league, were coming to seem a bit banal and worthless.

Of course, it could just be the mid life crisis that everyone went on about, but he wasn’t so sure. Maybe something really did need to change.

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted as he looked at the address on the last package he had in his bag. The rain had finally began to fizzle out and a timid ray of sunshine peeked through the lurking granite clouds.

At the edge of Zetland Park sat a house from the nightmares of his youth.

There had been so many stories told about this place that he had forgotten when its infamy had become so intrinsically ingrained in his psyche.

As far back as he could remember it had always been abandoned.

A looming, two storey Victorian mansion that squatted behind overgrown, marshy lawns in which ancient gnarled oak trees, their twisted branches brittle and bare, stood guard with ominous menace. Its vast tiled roof, pock marked with crumbling, gangrenous holes through which skeletal, guano smeared support beams could be seen and from where scrawny birds and bats would occasionally burst forth, squawking and screeching, slumped, sunken and haggard by time. Heavy wooden planks boarded up once grand bay windows, their frames blackened with scorch marks making them appear like bandaged, yet eerily watchful eyes. When the wind blew through its dilapidated shell, despairing wails and moans would rise like ghouls from a unsanctified tomb.

Rumours swirled of children going missing within its grim walls and when the police investigated, pentagrams and dead animals had been found within, proving, to the gossiping townsfolk at least, that it had been the base for witches and devil worship. They never found any of the missing kids though.

As Craig got older he realised that most of this was probably made up nonsense, and yet it never stopped the house looming large in his imagination particularly as even adults seemed wary to talk of it. They would just shake their heads and mutter what an eye sore it had become, sitting right next to their pretty park with its new band stand, flower gardens and play parks. Like a pile of old dog shit left to fester on their freshly polished floor.

Had there been murmurings that someone had bought it recently? He wasn’t sure, but his delivery route had never taken him down the end of this street where the overgrown path led to its gawping façade.

And now here he was. Standing on the rain soaked pavement, with a small square box in his hand, feeling like a frightened five year old again.

Trying to shrug away his unease, he licked his lips, that had gone suddenly dry, and chastised himself for this foolishness. It was just an old house. That was all. There were no monsters here. He had a job to do and he better get on with it.

The sun tried to give him courage. Its bright, watery light seemed to finally be winning the battle with this last scourge of winter, and a whisper of warmth gently caressed his face as he lifted it to the sky.

“Let’s go,” he muttered and stepped through two stone pillars. One had a lion head carved on top. The other an eagle. Both were ensnared and suffocated with spiralling roots and branches.

The path crunched under his heavy boots. Small stones, chuckies his dad would have called them, were scattered haphazardly along the way. Bare patches of scrubbed earth marked where time and storms had disrupted their previous symmetry.

Everything looked just as overgrown and wild as he had expected, with a tall, dishevelled hedge running around the property, but now, as Craig stepped in further, it seemed oddly comforting rather than oppressive.

It was the quiet.

No cars or trucks from the nearby Abbots Road could be heard. All the clattering noises of civilisation were muffled. Pushed to the periphery of hearing so they just became a minor distraction, nothing more. His footfalls seemed loud as thunder, making him lighten his step so as not to disturb the peace. Even the wind was calmed with the afternoon light dappling through tall trees bringing peace and serenity to the barren surroundings.

A strange feeling of being at one with nature swept over him. The smell of loamed earth came to his nostrils and he took a deep breath of the pure, fresh air. After living under the shadow of a vast petrochemical plant for so long, this was a rare gift.

On the far side of the lawn a cherry blossom was beginning to bloom. Its pink buds a small vibrant explosion of colour amongst the murk. A sure sign towards the changing of the seasons.

Gentle scuffling through the undergrowth and in the branches above spoke of wildlife at play. An undisturbed place to enjoy their curious meanderings.

Waiting for him, at the end of the path, was the house.

It still looked decrepit and worn, with peeling black paint unevenly covering a sagging wooden porch and swollen door, but the windows were clear of any barricades and whilst still grimy, a faint orange luminescence seemed to burn within.

“Hello,” Craig said, but it came out as a croak that no one would have heard. He was about to speak again, when he noticed the front door was lying slightly ajar, a thick reddish coloured vine protruding through the gap, snaking across the doorstep and into the deep garden foliage. As he watched it began to pulse and grow in a strange hitching rhythm. Each throbbing undulation stretched it wider, the epidermis creaking like knuckles continually being cracked, opening the entrance ever further, so he could see inside the shadowy confines of the old house.

Stepping over the threshold, he looked down at the box he was still carrying and saw that it had turned into a bunch of flowers. His feet were no longer on wooden flooring but instead walked across soft earth under a turbulent sky.

All around were silent, sentinel gravestones. Their polished surfaces glittered with rain drops from a morning shower.

In front of him was the final resting place of his parents. A small simple marker expressing his love and loss for what had been and gone. The vases at the side were still full of roses he had only brought up a week prior for his fathers birthday.

He understood then that these trips to the cemetery weren’t really for his mum and dad. They were for him. A way of clinging onto their essence. He wasn’t a religious man, but maybe coming up here was an act of desperate hope to feel the comfort their spirits could bring to him in times of need. An emotional bulwark against encroaching loneliness. He shrugged and tears came to his eyes.

“I’m so tired,” he muttered, wiping his cheeks.

He was back in the old house. Standing in a long, high ceilinged hallway with bare floorboards, along which the vines continued to spread. Every six feet or so was something that looked like a giant seed pod, its outside skin veined with spidery tendrils through which viscous liquid slithered and flowed. On the front of each pod was a golden padlock that seemed to hold the two halves together. The mechanical device alien against the organic matter. As Craig continued to stare in horrified wonder, he could see there were humanoid shapes moving within these cocoons.

A rustling of leaves caused him to turn sharply.

Standing just behind him, framed in the entrance of the house, was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.

It resembled a human female form, but instead of skin it had thin, light brown bark across its body. Long, delicate branches covered in pink blossoms spilled from the top of its head and tumbled down both sides of its torso in cascading tresses. White eyes, of polished marble, stared out from an angular and curious face. When it opened its mouth to speak, Craig could see small, sharp pointed teeth but the words were kind and harmonious.

“We have been waiting for you.”

The speech was ancient. Of the earth. Not from the corrupted modern age. And yet he understood it with every fibre of his being. It made his heart ache with desire to be part of this creature’s world.

“Come. Join us. Everything is ready.”

Craig followed them through the house, noticing that within each pod they passed was something both human and not.

A bare chested man lay breathing heavily as his furred and hooved legs kicked out in his sleep. In another, a woman with four large butterfly wings protruding from her back seemed to watch the two of them as they walked by. Craig looked away and then back in amazement.

A smaller pod contained a boy of no more than ten years old, with the snout and paws of a wolf.

“What is happening to them?” he asked softly.

“They are changing,” his companion said. “Preparing for their rebirth.”

In every room and corridor where the roots reached there were dozens of pods. Each one containing a magical creation.

Finally they came to the back of a large living room where a single cocoon remain unoccupied. The golden padlock snapped in place.

“Your key. It is time.”

That was when Craig looked down at the small box in his hand and finally understood what it contained.

Carefully opening the package, he found an intricate key lying on a small, purple cushion. It fit perfectly into the mechanism and with a gentle click his pod opened.

“I am honoured to stand guard. Be comforted. I will be here when you awaken.”

Without a second thought, Craig stripped off his clothes and climbed into the pod. As soon as he lay down, roots and branches began to entwine his body. He knew now that this was what he had been searching for. The thing he always wanted. He was at peace. Even as a vine crawled up his body and pushed its way down into his his throat, there was no fear. Just grateful acceptance. He was finally home.

As the sun sank behind the hills, the gnarled, looming hedge began to grow back around the old house at Zetland Park, blocking off the entrance way and returning it to the abandoned and overgrown look that kept it safe. Nothing else was needed now. The summoning was complete.

The guardian watched as the man was subsumed into the womb of the forest and then turned away. There was much work to be done. They didn’t know what all these changelings would become, but their power was already growing. After such a long winter, the true magic of spring was approaching. It was in the air and water. The beasts and birds. All would flock to their side.

The time to fight had come.

They would finally take back what was theirs.

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This story is part of another wonderful Top In Fiction event called Spring Fever hosted by Garen Marie. Make sure and check out all the other stories from so many amazing authors.

My inspiration for this tale was a little bit of Nightbreed (Cabal) by Clive Barker and also stories like Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock and Faerie Tale by Raymond E Feist. The idea of an unknown world within ours has always fascinated me, so I hope you enjoyed it.

Thanks for reading. Until next time.

Photo by Jon Butterworth on Unsplash