The human body is agonizingly frail – a unified collective of different parts, both physical and psychical, that cannot help but share pain that ought to, in all reason, be isolated to a single area. A jab in the thigh, and the whole frame shudders. A slight prick of the finger, and the entire frame files a joint complaint. A punch in the jaw, and the being falls senseless. One limb is unable to take injury without dragging all its connections down with it.
Young Bruno Husson mused on this idea, though in more disjointed, less coherent thoughts, as he lay defeated on a patch of grass mottled with fresh blood. His blood, beaten senselessly from him by their own neighbors. It took great effort reconnecting the synapses under a bruised skull to think as deeply as that, and not for very long once the chill in the air crept into his open cuts and reminded him that it was natural to cry.
“You all right, Bruno?”
Emile pushed himself shakily to his knees not so far away and wiped his nose, dried with snot from the autumn gusts and blood from beating fists, on his torn sleeve. He tried to put on a strong front for his little brother, who was clearly having the rougher time between the two, though Emile looked worse for wear. Bruno rejected his offer to help him up for as long as he could, finding little comfort in the dirt but knowing it would be better there than the walk home. It was too cold not to move, though, so he finally stopped delaying those first steps of discomfort and grabbed Emile’s hand.
The two limped along, supporting each other, across sticky terrain as thick as the snot in their throats and the saliva in their noses. The Ulster hills they usually scaled with ease were vast in numbers but diminished in size, draped in a thin bed sheet of peat tucking them in for the frigid winter ahead. The pearlwort and ladies’ tresses were not so fortunate, already withering under the pressure of light frost. Not a tree rose in sight but a lone Birch, with blackened knots and ashen skin, its once proud mantle adorned with the greenest leaves in all the coastline now reduced to a bare tentpole of rotting wood.
The boys leaned against that tree, aching for rest after the ups and downs of the land. They once played on it when they were younger, when there was not so much to worry about, when cruelty had not yet developed in the minds of young girls and boys, when their muscles were unused to strain, their flesh new to irritation – and their mother still around to make it all better. But now those days were gone, and even the great Birch tree, their old friend, who held them high in its branches to survey the land, had lost the splendor it cultivated in their youth. Or, perhaps, it didn’t have all that much splendor to begin with. But at least they believed it once did.
“Why did you do it, Emile?”
“Do what?” Emile feigned ignorance. It always annoyed Bruno how his older brother lied to him under the pretense of protection.
“Why did you steal from those assholes?”
“Why do you think?” exploded Emile. “Exactly because they’re assholes. Them. Our father. Every single person living within a fifty mile radius is just that: an asshole. And I’m sick and tired of nothing but assholes staring at me from every side.”
“It’s not Da’s fault the crop didn’t grow much this year.”
“Oh, don’t go defending him again. I’m not blaming him for that. No, whose fault is it that he blames his frustration on us when that happens?”
Bruno frowned, uncomfortably scratching his matted curly hair.
“Just how it is, I guess.”
Emile scowled at his younger brother, but said nothing. The point was never worth arguing, their father being the one thing the brothers disagreed consistently on. It was much more important for them to stay united in a divided world than to openly contest on that matter with no concession. Emile would call his father a coward, Bruno would paint him abstractly as a tragic soul, and their debate would always end at the tip of a circle – nowhere.
As they approached the farm in all its decayed humiliation, Emile began to slow down. Bruno noticed the tension in his brother’s muscles and tried to lead him forward, but they stopped anyways under an old Birch tree they once climbed Summer afternoons when they were younger.
“I reckon Da’s already found out about it, yeah?” murmured Emile.
“Yeah,” sighed Bruno, “so we might as well get in there now and get it over with.”
“Get what over with? He doesn’t get angry like he used to. He just holds his disappointment over our heads, a branch about to break our skulls once it gets too heavy to hover over them. Like this one.”
Emile reached straight up and grasped one of the withered branches above his head, then gave it a firm jerk; but the branch refused to yield. Bruno smiled as if this was proof not all was as doom and gloom as Emile insisted, but the strength of the branch, rather than dissuade Emile’s outlook, only proved that it was still sturdy enough to hold his weight. So he heaved himself up and threw his torso midway over the creaking bough.
Bruno quietly huffed over being forced to stay longer out there in the bitter Autumn air, but he wasn’t about to leave his brother behind and face their father alone. He followed Emile, hugging the trunk and shimmying his way up twenty feet until he could find a branch that appeared secure enough. The Birch shook and groaned under their weight, no longer the firm, thick-rooted tower it once was; but still it held, able to support the boys despite their own maturity. A small grin cracked Emile’s lips as he recovered the thrill of being in those branches, a thrill that had been lost to him for seven years. The chilling breeze returned with a stronger arm, bending the wood and encouraging Bruno to hold on even tighter. Finally, he made his way to the branch where his brother perched, waiting, basking contemplative in the foggy grey horizon of Ulster.
“You know what? Let’s run away.”
Bruno’s heart skipped a beat. He always knew his brother, deep down, would have no problem disappearing into the night with just a bag of food and the clothes on his back. The only thing that held him back was Bruno, who was just too worried about the rumored dangers of the outside world. As bleak as their world was now, he knew it, and was content enough to live in it so long as ideas and hopes for a better one weren’t persistently thrust upon him by his brother’s premature fantasies of flight. Emile was not blind to it – he was convinced that constant pestering would finally weigh his brother down, or at least convince him to trust him a little.
“Let’s try it, just once,” coaxed Emile, “so we can both see what it’s like. Tonight, we’ll run away, and be back in the morning in time to work the farm. What do you say? It’ll be an adventure, get us away from here for one night only!”
“Oh, yeah? Wouldn’t that just make Da angrier? And where would we stay?”
Emile rubbed his peach fuzz and scanned all over the highland, looking for someplace that wouldn’t make Bruno too nervous, but get him open to the prospect of their independence. His eyes widened in surprise, and he directed Bruno’s gaze with a finger in response.
“Haha, baby bro! Wait til you see it!”
Far out there, squinting into the wind, past the murky, low clouds, through his own dried tears and swollen eye, across the stream and erected on the edge of a rocky, unforgiving cliff near the coast, lower than this valley that would be the Birch’s grave, Bruno saw where his brother had decided would be their escape:
An old windmill.
“I didn’t know there was one of those around here.”
“Exactly! I doubt Da does, either.”
The windmill was shrouded by dusk and almost impossible to make out against the murky horizon, but there it leaned, and Emile saw it as clearly as his plans for the future. Bruno was not wholly against it, though he always played the part. To explore again, with his big brother, like they used to when things weren’t so difficult and friends weren’t so reserved – reliving the innocence of childhood might also satisfy Emile’s urge to run away for a time. But he still wasn’t one-hundred percent convinced.
Emile excitedly scrambled down a few branches, to ease his brother into the plan a little more. A screech pierced his excitement and a furious flurry of the stench of death and flesh muffled his breathing in a rank cloak. Its claws raked his cheek, and he batted at the attacker in vain, slipping little by little from his branch. The creature was hell-bent on tossing Emile from the tree. Its eyes flashed with dull moonlight, its triangular mouth screamed, and Emile finally lost his grip on the branch, tumbling through several more onto his younger sibling below.
Its work done, the Tawny Owl flapped ragged wings towards the windmill, hooting like a sobbing mother all the way, the only sound for miles around.
“Get off me! Maybe you’ll think twice before acting like a spaz!”
Bruno violently struggled to shove the bruised Emile away, but Emile was too jittery to hear. He immediately clawed to his feet and took off in the direction of the windmill.
“Where the hell are you going now? Let’s talk about this!”
“You ain’t gonna let some ratty old owl get away with that, are you?”
The conversation shifting from running away to some good old-fashioned young-spirited revenge, Bruno laughed in relief and ran after his brother. He was stressed – the beating, the tension at home, fear his brother might up and leave – and knew terrorizing the mean old bird was as much a distraction as exploring the windmill. Whatever to put off dealing with their father’s inevitable discipline.
Even so, as Emile disappeared into the shadows and Bruno followed close behind, half his mind told him to just go home and leave his brother reap the punishment of his recklessness. He stifled the voice – What kind of brother would he be to heed it?
The ground was laden with heather and thistles, glinting like candles from light on their dewy coats as the moon swam through thunderclouds. Bruno could see Emile whenever the moon passed into open water, but would lose sight every time the clouds rolled over its face. The path was flat and easy, twisting its way downhill to the cliff, simple as a swim in the afternoon compared to the trek up to the Birch. When Bruno caught up to Emile, he was still and silent.
Looming before them, the windmill. Old as time itself, canvas ripped to shreds and hanging limp and damp from the static, spear-like pinwheel. It had been clearly abandoned for a a little under a century, yet the structure was still in novel shape. No holes, no crumbling walls, no broken windows – only the pinwheel had taken any punishment. The stone frame was completely intact, like the spire of a crumbling Celtic castle, though mold flourished in every cranny and crack along that towering body, algae living upon a decayed whale. A singular window loomed three stories up. It revealed nothing but pitch-blackness. A low hooting echoed behind the walls, as if the windmill itself was calling, and one of the double-doors was creaking open-shut-open-shut at the base, beckoning Emile with a magnetic presence.
“I don’t like this,” murmured Bruno, finally heeding his repressed second thoughts, “Let’s go home before it gets too dark.”
“Don’t you want to see what’s inside?”
“It’s a windmill, what’s to see?”
“Finding out is the whole fun.”
Emile began to walk forward, but Bruno held him back. Emile turned to protest, but Bruno was paralyzed with fear, eyes past him towards towards the windmill.
A candle had appeared high up in the singular window. The light was fire, no doubt, but the flame did not even seem to flicker; it stood upright, unyielding. Bruno wished it wasn’t so dark, he might be able to make it out better.
“The storm’s picking up,” observed Emile, unfazed by the presence announcing itself within.
“Let’s go inside and ask for shelter.”
“In there? Are you stupid? We can still make it home before the rain comes! Besides, we don’t know the kind of person who…And Da will…”
Emile gently yanked his arm free of his blubbering brother and strode towards the doors with all the manufactured courage he could muster. As he drew closer, he became aware that Bruno was no longer protesting. Turning around with a shiver in his spine, he was relieved to find him on all fours, picking at the ground. He found something shiny in the grass and mud, and had drawn inside his head while inspecting it.
Emile snatched it away and knew instantly what the ruddy coin was.
“It’s a bloody gold pistole!”
“Why would that be lying around here?”
“I mean, we are near the coast. Might’ve fallen out of some naval explorer’s pocket while they stopped for a breather.”
Emile turned lustfully, hungrily to the windmill. Bruno immediately regretted his find.
“You think there’s more in there?”
Bruno opened his mouth to reply in the negative, but Emile already knew what he would say and stamped past his nervous brother. The rain was just beginning to fall in heavy droplets.
“It probably belongs to the person in there!” Bruno finally found his voice. “Do you really think they won’t be guarding the rest of their treasure with a gun or a sword or-”
“You’re right, good thinking,” whispered Emile has he flipped out his Sheffield Bowie knife. He approached the door with the caution of an adult prepared to make a very adult choice, and willing to face adult consequences for the sake of hoping. Bruno was no longer afraid, just exasperated with his brother’s stubbornness.
“Oh, wow, yeah, cause a knife is really going to be helpful against some hermit with a shotgun. We should tell Da first!”
“Cause Da will solve all our problems, won’t he? Grow up.”
“You’re the one who needs to grow up! We wouldn’t be in trouble if not for you!”
“Shut up!” Emile violently set a finger to his lips. “You’re going to alert whoever’s inside!”
“Oi, mateys!” shouted Bruno at the top of his lungs. “We’re coming to steal all yer gold, argh! Better batten down the hatches!”
Emile whirled around and punched Bruno in the gut. Bruno doubled down, not so shocked that his joking manner of tattling was met with violence, but that Emile turned back around to leave him there. A flash of fury flew through his mind, and, before he consciously what he was doing, he shoved Emile hard through the creaky front door of the windmill.
Realizing immediately what he had done, all the terrible things that could befall his brother replaced his anger – he half expected to hear a gunshot ring out inside. Instead, all he heard was Emile’s relieved voice.
“Come on in, you little bugger. Coast’s clear, no one’s home.”
The creaking echoed inside the windmill as Bruno inched his way inside. He was shocked to see how bright it was in there, though the warm light was still relatively dim, seeping through the cracks from the candle upstairs. Or, he guessed there was an upstairs; it was impossible to see the inside of the window, so there must be a second floor, but the ceiling was shrouded in a shadow that gave the impression it could extend into eternity. That did not stop the candlelight from filtering down.
Emile shoved Bruno half-heartedly, taking out his embarrassment at having nudged his brother to a breaking point, and looked around the inside of the windmill with disappointment. The place was totally empty, not a single thing worth noting except a tartan rug in the center on the floor. Well, nothing, if all you were looking for was gold. But five things were worth noting, which Bruno noticed almost all at once but under the blanket impression that something was wrong. As usual, he had no words to explain what he felt.
This was a windmill, but there was no gear system to turn the pinwheel. Given how beaten to Hell the pinwheel was, he wasn’t expecting it to turn at all; that still did not explain where the internal mechanism had gone. Or, if one had even been built here, considering the unseen ceiling did not seem to have a hole to accommodate a connection to the pinwheel, much less provide a way upstairs. The walls were intact, like the outside, but appeared to be scrubbed clean and coated in some sort of reflective lacquer that was also used on the floors. The lacquer stunk, a mix of fungus, eggs, and fish, but not so overwhelming as to prompt immediate exit. Speaking of the floor, the boards were a site to behold – circular, like the inner rings of a tree, shrinking in size as they drew towards the center. Lastly, the combination of the candle and the rug proved that the place was not abandoned. The rug was almost brand new, and leaving a candle unattended with a storm blowing its way in was just asking to burn the place down. But where could the inhabitants be?
While Bruno wondered mutely on these curiosities, Emile scoured the walls for the rest of the pistoles. He came to similar conclusions as Bruno, but the possibility of gold, the hope for a future away from his hopeless father, made all those peculiar details inconsequential. The gold would be his and his brother’s, theirs alone, and no one would be able to stop them afterwards.
Nothing. At least, no secret crevices in the smooth, tempered walls. The only possibilities were in the ceiling with the candle, or…
Emile put an ear to the rug. There had to be a basement. That’s where the treasure would be stashed – as well as the person who lit the candle. He could hear something, faint…A thumping, like someone digging underground at a steady, measured pace. Something else, too, but…Too muffled to even guess what that was.
Emile grabbed one end of the rug and looked up at his brother. Bruno had his fingers to his mouth, nervously watching his brother take all the risks, just there to reap whatever reward or consequence awaited them in the basement. Sweating as though it had become humid as a jungle inside the windmill – Bruno actually wondered if the candle caught something on fire upstairs – Emile slowly slid the rug off its designated spot.
It hooked on something, tickling a meek gasp from Bruno. Emile grunted, gave it a sharp tug. No effect. He softly trod across the rug to pull it up from the other side; maybe it would shield him from any traps underneath. Bruno took the hint and shuffled over to stand behind his brother. Bruno put his hand on the wall of the windmill to guide him under the dim candlelight, and make sure he steered clear of whatever lay under the rug.
That’s when whatever lay dormant in the windmill came alive. At Bruno’s touch, the stones on the wall recoiled and rippled outwards, like a sheet of scales. Bruno shrieked at the surprise, but he was drowned out by the inexplicable sound that Emile heard in the basement.
It was the sound of wailing. Otherworldly, like a hive of banshees whose own little pocket of Hell was built directly under the floorboards. Bruno still contested with them, screaming his confused little head off as the walls rumbled and rippled and the banshees wailed beneath.
Emile, always active regardless of pressure or fear, stepped forward to grab his brother and get the heck out of there. But something pushed into his chest, gentle-like with powerful force, and he was separated from his brother. It was unclear what he was facing, for it had risen from the floor and was now draped completely in the rug, like a ghost draped in tartan instead of a white sheet. It swayed side-to-side, like a serpent on the hunt, and Emile knew there would be know way to get around it without it striking him. He would have to trust Bruno to make it out.
Bruno’s heart felt like it was pinched in a vice when he saw the back of his brother disappear out the door and leave him alone with the ghost under the rug. He could barely see its intimidating movements behind his tears as it weaved its way towards him. It lashed out, but Bruno had preemptively stumbled back onto his butt, saving him from being skewered by whatever malevolent force was under there.
His hand landed on Emile’s knife, which must have slipped from his grip after the initial surprise from below. Bruno waved it about wildly and scrambled to his feet, hoping he would keep the ghost at bay with threatening movements since it was unlikely a knife could do much damage. But the ghost did lunge again, thrusting Bruno out the door, and giving him one opportunity to sink the knife into the rug. He had enough presence of sanity to do so, and felt himself fly through the air and all the wind knocked out of him as he landed on his back.
Emile reappeared out of nowhere and frantically helped him up. They saw the ghost floating in the doorway of the old windmill, light still in the window, before it faded into the darkness and the doors slammed shut.
The boys ran all the way back to the farm just as the thunderstorm finally reared its electric fangs. Neither spoke about what they witnessed; Emile was too sore about the gold, and Bruno was too sore about his brother leaving him behind. Whatever discipline awaited them at home, it could be braved if it meant finally putting a rest to this miserable day.
Their house, a ragged cottage with one room, one table, and a fire, was as filthy as the muddy, fruitless, famine-plagued farm outside. Garrett Husson, tragically grey for someone still in the recent afterglow of youth, was slumped over his thatch chair at the fireplace. He was absorbed in studying a crusty and molded old leatherback, the kind of archaic text that he and his wife, the Emile and Bruno’s mother, had a passion for. Now it was only him.
When he heard about the minor thievery his boys had attempted up in the village, Garrett was filled with disappointment. For so long he had hoped that Emile’s clear resentment for his father’s depression would be to build himself up, make himself remarkable, and escape this bleak countryside where warmth goes to evaporate. That’s what Garrett’s wife would have done, and Emile was much more like her than his father. But he was proving instead to be his own worst enemy; Emile’s response was not to make himself strong enough to break away, rather to twist and struggle until he was finally dropped. This delinquency was not the first offense, and would certainly not be the last. It was, however, the last time that Garrett would hope his son might become something more.
As for Bruno, there was no use worrying over him. He was hopeless, helpless, and surely someone would let him latch on for a suckling. That’s how his father did it, and Bruno was every bit his Da’s boy – as much as his Da wished he were better than that.
When the boys burst through the front door in their soggy clothes and tangled hair, Garrett didn’t even look up. He didn’t even flinch. At first they moved to go upstairs and avoid a confrontation with their father, which they had worried over the entire evening even after they had escaped the haunted windmill. But something about his father’s sad silence pricked a nerve in Emile’s cheeks, and he backtracked to the living area and shouted with the quiver of leftover fear in his voice:
“Well? What’s gonna be our punishment? Might as well get it over with.”
Garrett peered up at his son with tired eyes. They seemed to look right past him.
“Why?”
“Why…what?”
“Why should I punish you?”
“Because isn’t that what-“
Mr. Husson stood up. He was a tall man, with no anger or feeling in his expression – but perhaps it was that numb seriousness a childlike mind couldn’t yet comprehend the emotions behind that was so intimidating, and startled Emile into silence. There was silence but for the clicking of flame and the patter of rain and the howl of gale. Mr. Husson calmly stirred the fire with his poker.
“Don’t act like you know,” Garrett sighed, “what punishment is. You have no idea. If our neighbors didn’t pity us for your mother’s sake, you and your brother would be in a heap of trouble with the constable. But what good would punishment be then, either? If it comes from me, you hate me, and call me a terrible father. If it comes from your neighbors, you call them stupid, that they just lash out at you to vent their own frustrations. And if it’s from the law, you saw it’s unfair, that they treated you wrong, not because of what you did, but because you don’t deserve it. Whichever way it comes from, you never learn. You never change.”
Bruno didn’t understand what his father was saying; he just nodded along with tears in his eyes, treating it like any other reprimanding. For Emile, it was different. He didn’t really understand what his dad was saying either, but the exasperated tone of his voice, the distant look of his eyes, how smoothly the lecture flowed, and the few choice phrases like “never change” hurt Emile more than any lash from a belt.
He could tell, by his father’s mannerisms alone, that he was being dismissed.
“I know that to you, son, punishment is the reaction of a bunch of idiots to whatever they don’t approve of. Did you ever think, in your anger, that punishment should be the beginning of becoming a man? Did that ever cross your mind?”
Garrett sat back down next to the fireplace without waiting for a reply. From then on, his focus was on his book.
“Stew’s on the stove. If you want some, heat it up again, I don’t care. But it’s to bed with both of you after that. You’re both working the farm tomorrow.”
They decided not to eat, and went upstairs. Bruno still wanted to talk about the poltergeist, but Emile’s mind was elsewhere. His eyes were glazed over in the haze of deep thought, and he seemed to be making an effort to distance himself from his younger brother completely. No encouragement, joke, or consolation could get him to engage, and Bruno was worried about what thoughts he was so painstakingly trying to conceal. He was worried, partly for what those thoughts entailed, but moreso because Emile seemed dead-set on keeping his back to him – ever since he first turned it at the windmill.
That night, Bruno dreamt Emile knelt by his bedside and apologized for being so weak, telling him he was going to get stronger, richer, and give the brothers the life they never would have if they remained in the Ulster Hills. He apologized for leaving Bruno behind when they were at the windmill, and promised to be brave for both of them. Bruno just smiled, only half-conscious, and told his brother what they both already knew – he would follow Emile anywhere.
Bruno awoke with that promise on his lips. Dawn had arrived, a pale light warming the spattered windows and Emile’s bed. The storm had gone with the night. So had his brother.
Over the next few hours, Bruno came down with a moderate illness. Moderate in medical diagnoses, perhaps, but serious enough to completely debilitate a young man. His father wrapped him in all the itchy woolen blankets they could find, and laid him to rest on the dirt floor near the toasty hearth where he read. He turned his head, saw his parent’s forced smile and was comforted.
“How are you feeling, boy?”
“Has Emile come home yet, Da?”
“No. Only a matter of time.”
Mr. Husson then picked up a bowl of potato soup, soiled with leek, and proceeded to feed his son. Bruno gagged.
“Eat. You should have eaten last night, maybe you wouldn’t be so lightheaded.”
“He might have gone to the windmill.”
“Windmill? There are no windmills around here.”
“Yeah…it was haunted…”
“Haunted? Like, by a banshee? A poltergeist? A spook?”
Bruno wanted to say yes, but he could remember something that up to this point he had ignored. A ghost? Maybe, but that didn’t feel quite right…there was something physical to the spirit under the rug when it struck at him, and he thought he saw what looked like a tail spiraling out beneath. But it was hazy and every drip of water from the roof outside was a stone tossed in his memory pool, rippling and obscuring the reflected image. Spirit or beast, it was horrifying no matter what it was – and, as usual, Bruno said nothing, being at a loss for words to describe his observations.
“You boys shouldn’t be snooping around in other people’s property.”
“But, Da, there might be gold in there.”
“Ah. So that explains why my shovel is missing.”
Mr. Husson paused, relaxing his frowning cheeks and running his fingers through his son’s matted hair.
“I know we need the money, and I know you want to help. I recognize that. But the poor must always be rich of heart themselves, and not drag others better off down to their level. I bet that man would be very unhappy to find all his money stolen, no matter how good a cause you think it is, yeah? We must be the ones to rise above our own suffering, and not hoist ourselves up on others’ shoulders, pushing them further into their own mire. At least tell me you listen to the pastor, if not your own Da.”
“I listen to you, Da,” whispered Bruno, staring into the flames.
“Then listen to this. Family is nothing if not together. If Emile has grand plan for his life, I won’t stand in his way. Heck, I pray he finds all the success in the world. But if he makes the choice to move forward, and not look back…” Mr. Husson choked a little, swallowed, then told his son the words he believed but avoided and ignored with all his hearten matter how many tears they filled his eyes with: “It’s better if we don’t look back, either.”
Garrett Husson’s teaching moment seemed to have more of an impact on himself than Bruno. Over the course of the next two weeks, he found a buyer for the farm, and was preparing to relocate what remained of the small family to Londonderry. The loss of his wife had softened him to a breaking point, and the abandonment of his son had hardened him again. These things were beyond him, people were beyond him. And so, being beyond, why should he let them affect him so? Garrett’s resilience grew exponentially, and he started putting the pieces of his life back together by first cutting free the dead limbs – first one being the family farm, which bore nothing but malnourished vegetation. The second severed limb was Emile, his eldest son, who, out of fatherly obligation, he continued to search for leads as to his whereabouts, but refused to allow grief to overtake him for what he could have done better as a parent.
Bruno also continued to gradually recover from his mysterious illness, now looking a bit better than the potatoes outside. He was not yet old enough to know his father’s resilience, but he was old enough to know that hoping for the return of his older brother would not bring him back on its own. And so, while his father was sleeping in the wee hours of a dewy Sunday morning, passed out across his leatherback from the exhaustion of change, Bruno crept outside. Taking his father’s hoe, which the former farmer would have no use for, he headed confidently for the forest. The cold nipped at the inside of his nostrils and stung his throat, and, the further he journeyed into the hills, the hollower his sinus felt, as the lingering heat of fever was stoked in his brain’s belfry. Still, he would not bend. Emile was out there, at the windmill, maybe even a prisoner of the cloaked spirit, and Bruno would bring the prodigal son home. Or, at the very least, show him he was strong enough to make the journey with him. He was going to find that windmill, no matter what. Emile would not leave him behind this time.
Finding his way through the mid-morning mists was a trying task, paved with muck and briars and the faint light of the moon. Bruno almost stopped to wait for the sun when he heard the hooting of a Tawny Owl. The Tawny Owl, which had attacked him in the Birch the day he and Emile first spotted the windmill. He wasn’t sure how he knew it was the same bird, but an uneasy churning in his gut convinced him that it was. Sure enough, pushing through the muck and briars without regard to how dirty or scraped he became, Bruno stumbled past the edge of the wood. And there was the windmill, waiting with the moon in its spires. The moonlight bathed the hills and coast in a pale blue light, making them much more bright and alarming than the dreading blindness of the woods.
Now Bruno could see clearly that he was on the right track, for, stretching out before him, embedded in the peat, were his brother’s footprints leading straight to the windmill.
Bruno approached with caution. If there were spirits inside, he had a hunch they would only awaken when that mysterious candle in the unreachable upstairs was lit. Thankfully, it was dim in that singular window. Bruno still wielded his father’s hoe with the intent to strike at anything that moved in the darkness, for he noticed that Emile’s faded trail led to the windmill, but it did not lead back out. To be captured by the same trap that snagged his brother – if that was indeed the case – would eliminate all confidence Emile might place in him. With a gentle push on the less worn of two doors, muffling the creak as best he could, Bruno entered the windmill.
The interior of the windmill was hollow and foreboding as a month ago. This time, however, the stench was overwhelming, like mold or a sulfur pit, and Bruno was forced to pinch his nose shut. He carefully shifted one foot in front of the other to minimize the creaking of floorboards that craved desperately to echo through the musty funnel and alert whatever was sleeping here of this naïve intruder.
“Emile? Are you in here?” he gulped. The only reply was the hooting of the Tawny Owl, its figure silhouetted by moonlight as it perched safely on one of the spires, an echo of Bruno’s inquiry.
Bruno peered around, unable to make anything out because of the poor supply of light outside and the lack of the candle inside. Of course, he would rather slow his search then take a chance at calling the malevolent entity to light his path.
Then he remembered, staring down at his muddy feet soiling the tartan beneath him: the rug. If Emile was anywhere, he would be in the basement. Where else was there to hide, or be hidden? Delicately, hoe raised in defense, Bruno slid it aside with his foot. This time, it didn’t snag. In fact, there was nothing for it to snag on – there was nothing there. No basement, no door, not even a speck of dust. Just the smallest circular floorboard, no bigger than a can of beans. A dead end.
Bruno was starting to grow worried now, really worried. Where could his brother be? Did he miss his footprints leaving, or maybe they got washed away? Maybe he was up there in the shadows of the ceiling, and there was a ladder that could be pulled up there? Maybe he should go get Da, come back in the morning; he and Ma used to have a knack for this stuff, he’ll know what to do. Heck, any adult would know what to do. This was beyond Bruno.
Just as he was about to return to the cottage and lead Garrett to the windmill, something across the room, something abnormal sticking out of the wall, caught Bruno’s eye. He covered the fifteen-or-so meters to the other side at the height of caution, always on the lookout for something that he might need to sink the hoe into. He reached out and touched the object – a wooden shaft of some sort, lodged between the stones. Definitely not here when the boys first found this place. A lever, perhaps? Bruno pushed up and down; it jiggled but was clearly foreign to the wall, and so he tugged with all his might. The object slipped out with much difficulty, squelching all the way, shaft fracturing but not breaking under the pressure. Bruno stumbled backwards onto the bunched rug with his prize, the wood crumbling in his hands and leaving him with a diamond-shaped metal object.
It was the spade of Mr. Husson’s shovel, the one Emile took, covered in a sticky, bloody slime. Bruno yelped and dropped the shovel with a clatter. Was it ectoplasm? The stench around him was thickening, swelling and filling with dread, and the one thought in his head was clearer than any observation he ever had before. That observation was that he needed to run. And he did, straight for the windmill’s doors, without a moment’s hesitation.
The doors slammed shut just as Bruno passed the center of the room, and the candlelight above bathed the interior in its amber glow. The windmill was awake.
Bruno only took this in for a second, telling his legs to keep moving. But they wouldn’t run, or hardly walk. Not out of fear, no – they were bogged down by the lacquer that coated the walls and floor. But it was a new coat, as though the slime were seeping naturally from behind the wood and stones. In fact, that’s exactly what it was doing, bubbling up from between the circular planks and perfectly placed stones. Bruno’s hands began to burn where he had gripped the shovel, which had deteriorated under the burden of the slime, and the smell in the room increased steadily all the while. So did the heat, and Bruno felt as though he were almost boiling alive within seconds. The smell got in his eyes and in his throat, he coughed and covered his face to try and shield himself from its effects. Bruno stumbled forward, dizzy and nauseous, landing on the wood with an unexpected splat. It startled him, feeling the wood to find it reduced to a squishy, slick, throbbing surface. He looked dumb up at the walls, now pulsating with life as their stony crust crumbled away and left behind a bumpy, fleshy musculature of orange-pinkish hue, red veins intertwining and pumping amber blood across their surfaces. The shadows in the ceiling had cleared, and what might have been disguised ad cedar planks stretching up to the heavens were now beating membranes producing the lacquer, a clear, acidic slime that dripped down all around Bruno. Some of the lacquer landed in his hair and oozed down to invade his right eye. He screamed in pain, eyelid searing hot, eyeball at the risk of becoming blind in a matter of seconds as the cornea sizzled where the goop touched it. He flailed about on his knees in rabid panic, the panic of one who knows they could die in a matter of moments and has never even breached that thought before, and fought bravely through the terror for a chance at opening the doors.
A massive gurgle shook the cavernous foundations beneath him. At once, every ring of the floorboards caved in towards the center, like the expansion of some kind of sphincter, and the boy retched in reaction to the nauseating, sulfuric gas that erupted from deep below – the true source of the lacquer. Bruno was totally convinced this was the work of tormented spirits, and that this must be some portal to Hell. He screamed in vain protest as he was drained with the slime down towards the hole, the surface too slick and unyielding for his fingers to cling to. He picked up speed, barely able to see anymore through his one good eye because of the heat seizing the inside of his head and flushing his cheeks until every vessel came to the brink of popping. On his way down, though, as if a blessing from Heaven, the hoe he had brought slid past him, and he sped after it, grabbed the handle, and pierced the side of the cavernous hole just before plunging over its edge.
The walls trembled and rippled calmly with a steady thumping, like a heartbeat or a throat suddenly accosted by an uncomfortable inflammation. Bruno looked down, his one decent eye adjusting to the heat and expecting to see the tormented souls of Hell further down. His heart jammed in his chest as the windmill revealed its true nature for the first time.
Hell was not far off from the truth, but deceased these souls were unfortunately not. Hundreds of writhing human shapes, some more figureless than others, raised up a collective moaning, crying, wailing through mouths and eyes long sealed by cavernous walls of tissue that formed the tunnel below Bruno as he clung to the shovel for dear life. The former humans were skinless, like the raw insides of a throat, veins crisscrossing their defiled bodies that bound them to each other by otherworldly flesh. Elbows melted into thighs, faces merged with groins, legs became one with chests – all of these humans, or what once were humans, now made up the windmill as ligaments in a muscle or tissue in an organ, stretching and contracting and grinding and throbbing, working together, against their collective will, as a singular organism. The windmill was no mere stomach digesting them, or abusing them as a parasite might suck nutrients from still-living hosts. No, the invertebrate occupying the windmill had assimilated them into its very body, liquefying their bones and molding them into various sacs and organs. Fifty or so bodies had even been constructed into multiple hearts, their orifices sprouting tubes as bodies that once were theirs swelled and contracted to pump blood across the massive creature and keep their living Hell alive. The heat and the slime was tormenting to their vulnerable, exposed bodies, rubbed raw until converted to pure tissue, strained to breaking with every movement like a pulled muscle.
All around, empty sockets sought Bruno, sensing his presence through the instincts of the ethereal worm as they begged as one:
“Kill us!”
And one plea above all others caught Bruno’s ear. Slowly, fearfully, sweat choking his lungs with every movement, Bruno’s neck strained upwards, afraid to even look but knowing he must. There, just below him on the other side of the cavern, was Emile.
“Bruno, is that you? Bruno! Help me! I’m hurting, God, I’m hurting all over!”
Bruno could only identify him by his voice. After a few weeks bathed by the lacquer that was clearly the windmill’s digestive enzymes, Emile no longer resembled his brother. His facial features had melted beyond disfiguration, eyes shriveling to nothing and his skull exposed, body bright pink and hairless, legs and arms disappearing into its flesh. His jaw moved with no bone left to define it, and holes bore into his cheeks, small strips of meat still holding the mouth together – he had not yet been fully absorbed by the windmill. Emile’s pitiful plea was the closest he could come to crying, for no longer had he eyes from which tears could fall. Their father had warned him, and Bruno had warned him, but Emile didn’t listen. And now he was no longer human, dissolved into some disgusting lump of tissue and unable to help his brother or even himself.
A sob escaped Bruno upon seeing what remained of Emile. He wanted with all his heart to help him. But he knew it was hopeless. Justifying that this thing was no longer his brother, he took to heart his father’s advice, something he never dreamed he would ever do. He turned his back on Emile and began to climb.
“No…No! Don’t leave me here! Bruno, it burns! Help, me, please! Brother, don’t leave me!”
Bruno clamped his eyes shut and ignored his brother’s screams for help, though to do so nearly killed him inside. He used the hoe to gradually pull himself out of that disgusting yawning hole, and onto the floor sloping into it. In the name of terror, Bruno called on every bit of energy left in his body to pull himself across the windmill’s floor like a mountain climber scaling a horizontal peak until he was able to grab one of the door’s handles. It burned his hand, only recently covered by the windmill’s saliva, but had not yet begun to harden. Bruno stuck the blade of the hoe between the doors, prying them open as the adherent juices tried their best to hold them shut. Struggling to keep a foothold, Bruno made just enough room for him to fit through, and pushed between the doors and the saliva like it was the thick web of an enormous spider. The hoe slipped from his hand and slid into the hole, but it had played its part. Bruno heaved himself out of the door and onto the muddy grass in the cool, misty dawn.
Safe from the windmill. Safe from Emile’s curdling screams.
For a couple meters Bruno tripped along before he fell headlong into dirt. Bleeding, blind, burning, scared near the temptation of madness by what he witnessed, the boy just laid there covering his ruined eye. Then his senses returned, and his brother’s damnation, and he cried like a child.
After a few minutes of unrestrained sobbing, Bruno unsteadily rose to his feet in the pale light of a sleepy and tempest-drenched sun as it reluctantly rose over the Ulster Hills. His clothes were nearly gone, dissolved nearly to rags in just a few minutes, and his body was still on fire from the thick substance that tainted his skin and bleached it. Every step was a dagger in his tenderized feet, his head was still swimming on the edge of that vast pit. He lost control of bodily functions a few times, but never seemed to notice as he mindlessly wandered away from the windmill. It loomed not far behind all the while, still and silent.
“Brunoooo!”
“…Da?”
Bruno’s heart leapt with joy: it was his father’s voice. Now he understood what his father meant, and what he had been pained with for all these years. Bruno needed to be there to support him, and his father needed someone to support as well – that was family, and he regretted going out with the thought of leaving with his brother, of even thinking of abandoning that promise. Shuffling forward, zombielike, Bruno opened his mouth, now managing a faint smile, to call out to Garrett, to ask his forgiveness, to promise to move forward with him and become a stronger man like he always wanted for Emile.
The low, hollow creaking of the windmill’s doors echoed nearby. Bruno turned slowly around, petrified in place, heart breaking through his ribs in terror. He knew the sound was for him.
There, in the windmill’s doorway, floated the rug-cloaked ghost, the spirit with a tail. Now Bruno knew what that tail was, but he had no time to run before he felt the burning impact to his side as the ghost soared through the air to soggily embrace him. Its rug slipped further down, and under the sick churning of bile in his stomach Bruno saw in its naked horror that it was no ghost, nor a man, nor a beast at all. It was a disgusting, fleshy appendage, bumpy and rough, veined and throbbing, faces pressing out from within like taste buds, that stretched all the way back into the steaming insides of the windmill. Looking down from the window was that everlasting candle that did not flicker – the windmill’s devilish eye – staring down at its victim with the lack of feeling characteristic of a predator towards its prey.
The tongue snapped back, yanking the boy, who could protest with little more than a pitiful, muffled gag, back into the windmill. The creaking door slammed shut, and away flapped the Tawny Owl from its perch, its disturbed hooting resounding over the hills and down into the valleys.
A low, hollow creaking echoed across the countryside as the windmill’s blades shuddered, rotating ever so slowly for the first time in a hundred years – another cog in that insatiable machine. Ireland for miles around quaked in response, that windmill’s pinwheel a corkscrew in Gaia’s side as it rotated four times, before aching to a halt.
At the end of the final rotation, whatever hellspawn occupying the windmill – if it could even think or consider or make a decision – understanding that this malnourished land had supplied it to its limits, closed its fiery eye and vacated the windmill. The pinwheel crumbled to dust, and the empty structure of stone and wood collapsed into a heap, nothing left to support it. That is how Garrett Husson found the windmill, in a complete ruin, crumbled into a hole that seemed to stretch deep into the Earth – but the bodies of his children were never recovered. True to his word, Mr. Husson turned his back on the Ulster Hills, settling in Londonderry and giving his second try at a family – No use waiting around and hoping on the ruins of the past. To him, his first family was dead, gone to where he could not find him.
Sometimes it’s better to think that way.
Morning's Early Dark 