The dogs range through shrubs and brush with noses full of child scent. Men and boys in pairs spread equidistant along the perimeter trample wildflowers underfoot. Sour faces set in grim determination. Both the hopeful and the disheartened chewing tongues to swallow words that could only cause pain. With a business like this silence and willed neutrality make for august companions. She watches as they turn from humans to shadow-shapes silhouetted by the torchlight and finally just pinpricks of illumination. Far too many hours had passed since…
Ernestine wiped the sweat from her brow as she looked up from her foraging to watch Baby Arthur giggle. The child ran through the tall grass along the edge of the forest, looping around a tree to come barreling towards his mother with arms out-stretched. Ernestine barely had time to set her basket down before he bound into her arms.
“Careful, Arthur,” her laugh dispelled any sense of danger the warning may have held. He was gone just as quickly as he had come, disappearing back into the grass to become nothing more than a faint darkened rustle through the foliage.
She sighed, a slight frown pulling at the corners of her mouth. As much as it pained her to do so she had to admit that Arthur was baby no longer though this time yesteryear he had been clinging to her breast still. Or was that the year before? How she could forget such details was beyond her and she felt betrayed — her memories failing her, depriving her of a part of her son gone never to return.
Tonight she would spoil him. Yes, a tart berry-pie was just the thing. She could already picture his face smiling ear to ear with berry juices trickling down his chin. A premonition within her power to enact.
With future clear in her second sight Ernestine lost herself in her task. She filled her basket with raspberries and blackberries, consigning those under-ripe to be pluck by another hand another afternoon. She fought the urge to stick an especially large blackberry in her mouth and sat it aside for Arthur instead.
“Arthur,” she called in a summertime melody, “Arthur, I’ve a treat for you.”
She paused her work and waited, eyes keenly focused on the grass where last she spotted his shadow and where now there was none, though that was hardly surprising — he liked to surprise his mother whenever she called out to him, bursting forth from hiding spots unseen and unimagined — it wouldn’t be strange to find him coming down from above, dropping down on her like a bird of prey — though it was odd for him to be taking so long, the eagerness of his little stomach proving much more impulsive than the sneaky child would like — she could hear it rumbling now or imagined that she could as he lay on his stomach in the grass waiting to spring up and scare the loving lord out of her.
“Fine then, Arthur. If you don’t want it, I’ll have to eat it.”
She held the berry above her mouth with head tilted back like the giant dangling Jack over its gaping maw and she was suddenly terrified because if that didn’t bring Arthur then nothing would and yet there was no materialization of her adored child before her and — oh god — oh god, where is he — where was her Baby Arthur?
The basket bounced off the ground by her feet, spilling berries across the grass, but she noticed not — not the berries, nor the snake that watched the scene unfold through reptilian eyes.
She’s held onto the blackberry. Screaming and clawing through the woods as thorns and bark tore at her skin, her fingernails pulling breaking — and, somehow, through it all, the berry gripped tight but not squished. Her connection to a spiritual plane upon which rests not god but Arthur.
She shakes her head and begs to be absolved of this blasphemous thought. If anything would bring her Baby Arthur back it was the Lord. She need not upset His beneficence. Strange and obscure though his lessons may be. There must be a lesson in this. A lesson or a punishment. A punishment for the weakness of her thoughts.
And yes, she was weak.
She was weak and all she wanted was her child back.
If hellfire and eternal damnation were the cost then so be it.
She’d pay.
She doesn’t hear the first shout.
Nor the second.
But the third is the start of a wave of noise that spreads from the center of the woods out to the perimeter. The words collide into one another but the tone of discovery is inescapably clear.
She’s pulled from her thoughts and into her body with a startling force. She can’t move, lingering immaterial like the smoke from a musket. Then all at once she’s rushing forward. A farmer’s boy takes her by the elbow and leads her along a natural track. Ahead of them she can see dozens of torches nestled in and amongst each other, more still pouring in from all sides towards this central gathering.
Her heart drops when she sees what started the cry:
A torn and bloodied tunic.
She moves slower the next time the men call. Slower yet the third and forth. By the fifth, she no longer responds. Let us not blame this poor creature for her lack of faith. The foibles of man are plenty, hope but fleeting. As the days pass, so too does the urgency of the searchers and their numbers dwindle as life makes its demands. Let us not blame them for their apathy, believing in their hearts the boy to be dead.
Two weeks missing.
See her there along the treeline, watching the whispering of the wind. She hears a sound almost unrecognizable to her now with how accustomed she has become of her own sobs. She’s drawn moth to flame. Mindlessly following the stimulation of her senses. Detached from her body she feels not the scratching of the thorns, a trail of blood drops behind her like bread crumbs, copper-iron petals chasing her deep, deep, deeper into the woods where the crying grows louder and now running with recognition at that voice, yelling again with a vigor she thought lost, “Arthur. Arthur, I’m here.”
There he is.
See his eyes, not seeing her, sunken deep into his skull. Flesh hanging loose about his neck and stomach. Ribs poised to tumble before him like the wise woman reading sticks, so thin has he grown.
Three steps separate her from her son. Why does the distance feel so much greater? Why is she motionless with a quiver akin to fear? Two weeks of hopelessness and here before her the unimagined positive outcome yet she stands frozen in place with her eyes riveted to those in front of her that seem to blaze with accusation.
She pinches her leg. The sting wakes her.
She strides forward and wraps her son into a bear hug. He lifts from the ground with ease and she fails to choke back a sob at the insubstantial weight in her arms.
A fresh log gives new life to the fire beside the wooden tub while Baby Arthur splashes listlessly in the water. “Come now, Arthur,” Ernestine gently whispers. “You’ve got to work the dirt out.”
Cupping her hands she scoops water over his head and watches the tendrils of dirt that run out. She repeats the process until the water runs clear. Then she works her way down, stopping first to wash behind his ears, followed by his armpits, crotch, knees, and toes.
She wants to go deeper, working her hands into his skin to really cleanse it but she can’t. It hurts too much to feel his startling thinness, the bones pushing against skin where once had been baby fat. She can’t watch when he stands and steps out.
At first it gladdens her heart to see her Arthur eating. A meager fortune spent on bread and butter, savory pies and fresh juice. The money meant nothing to her, tight though life was, so long as it meant her Arthur would regain those lost pounds.
His hunger is endless. She wouldn’t be put off by this if it weren’t for the advice of the town doctor. With his words echoing in her head, she can’t shake the feeling that there is something unnatural about Arthur’s hunger.
“You’re going to want to spoil him. It’s perfectly natural,” the doctor reassured her with a gentle arm on her shoulder. “But you mustn’t. He’s frightfully thin and it’s the most natural thing for a mother to want to shovel food down their baby’s throat. But he’s not going to have the same appetite he had before. His stomach will have shrunk due to the lack of regular meals. The best thing to do is to start with small meals and slowly build them back up to their regular size.”
She tried to do as the doctor instructed but how was she to ignore her son when he cried out for more? His little hands banging on the table, knocking cutlery to the ground.
The doctor was right about one thing though.
His appetite is growing.
Arthur walks with a limp.
Ernestine hadn’t noticed it at first or had been too overwhelmed with joy and relief at Arthur’s return to have consciously registered it. Two weeks in the forest without food would leave anyone sluggish, Ernestine imagines.
But even as Arthur seems to recover, to come back into himself, the limp refuses to leave. Around the house it doesn’t make any difference but it almost doubles the time it takes to walk into town.
She takes him to see the doctor again. He pokes and prods and comes away without any answers. She asks about his never-ending appetite but the doctor just shakes his head.
“There’s an exception to every rule.”
“But shouldn’t he be getting bigger? All day he eats and eats.”
“He should. In time. But right now he’s working from a deficit that must first be filled. The excessive eating should slow and you should start seeing him fill out.”
The walk home feels interminable. Ernestine keeps having to stop and wait for Arthur to catch up. Not that she means to keep pulling away from him.
Is she wrong to wish for things to go back the way they were before Arthur’s absence?
“There’s something wrong with that boy.”
“Certainly is a pale thing, isn’t he?”
“It sure is.”
“Oh come now, it? That’s a little harsh, don’t you think? With everything that boy went through and all.”
“How’s a boy that size supposed to survive out there?”
“I don-“
“That ain’t no boy.”
“Shh, quiet. I think she heard you.”
The women’s words linger in Ernestine’s mind. She can’t shake the fact that there is something not just different about Arthur but wrong. He isn’t the same kid that went into the woods. It’s not just that the experience affected him — though of that there could be no doubt — but something deeper. An uncanny sense that this was not her son. She can’t say exactly when this thought occurred to her. It wasn’t a sudden realization coming on like a punch to the innards. No, it was a gradual dawning arrived at through the accumulation of little details like his never-ending hunger and sickly pallor. But Ernestine had to believe — for the sake of her sanity — that Arthur was just sick. Diseased from something in the woods perhaps. She repeats this to herself like a mantra and it helps.
But there were also the changes in his personality and these she can’t reckon with. How did a boy who was so outgoing and playful become so silent and sullen? A boy who stared with uncomprehending eyes when his friends came to visit upon his return. “Arthur,” Ernestine had nudged him gently. “Aren’t you happy to see your friends?” The boy snarled at her, actually snarled, and said, “I don’t see any friends here, Mother.”
The air left Ernestine’s chest like a kick from a horse. It was her son’s voice but not his words. Arthur loved spending time with his friends and playing in the fields. But what was truly wrong, more so than the content of his speech, was his tone. Flat and abject. Much too old sounding for her Arthur.
Shaken from her shock by the sniffling of one of the children, in a glance Ernestine could see how his words had affected them — those poor innocents that suffered through the death and resurrection of their friend.
“Arthur, you apologize right this minute,” she’d said in her strictest voice.
But Arthur just smiled and Ernestine could swear it grew larger with every tear his friends spilled.
“We can refuse our body its rest,” the doctor looks down upon her, the back of his hand taking her temperature. “But the body has ways to make us listen.”
Ernestine writhes and moans — the fever a forge burning away her insides and each breath a bellows of diseased air to inflate her lungs with pestilential aethers. She clings desperately to consciousness but in the end exhaustion carries her to that other-worldly domain in which her fears run untamed and unbroken like some feral beast from out a remote past.
Replication through division and now two where once but one. Without the rib there is but Adam. The nature of duality revealing itself in starts and stops. Light and dark. Day and night. Man and woman.
Arthur and the thing wearing his face.
She writhes and moans, the fever twisting her insides and revealing to her the fundament of her suffering. In sweat-soaked sheets she gibbers uncontrollably through days and nights. Gnosis requires a sacrifice and she has paid in pounds of flesh and fat, years sheared off and tossed to the pit. As the knowledge of what must be pierces her heart she cannot help but scream a siren song of pain and misery that none who hear can mistake.
She is underground. Everything black but for a single beam of light from somewhere above that reveals nothing. No way to ascertain the dimensions of her prison — nor how she knows it a prison to be. When she cries her voice bounces off walls unseen to double back and assault her with hopelessness.
Somewhere ahead in the distant dark come the cries of a child. Ernestine wades into the caliginous cave to find the source of the sobs. She does not question how she has gotten here. There is a logic of its own at play and it never occurs to her to fight against it. She finds it easy to walk despite the darkness. Never stumbles or loses her footing. Each step bringing her closer to the source of the sobs. As she nears the quality of the air seems to change in turn. Where at first it was entirely earthy, now there is a sulfuric burning in her nostrils. Her own sweat mixes with the scents and she realizes the air is growing warmer.
Then all at once she is in a wide open cavern. Stalagmites and stalactites bound forth out of floor and ceiling. From where she stands the floor curves down to a lower plateau upon which fire consumed everything except for a circle in which sat Arthur. The boy holds his head in his hands as his body wracks in great convulsions to the rhythm of his sobs.
“Arthur!” Ernestine yells as she runs forward tripping over herself to tumble down the incline.
The boy looks up with a start.
“Mom!” A look of relief crosses his face so strong that Ernestine’s heart breaks to behold it. She gets to her feet, arms outstretched for her baby. Arthur seems unsure of how to act, whether or not to move from his spot and so Ernestine comes to him and snatches him up in her arms.
“Arthur, oh my baby Arthur.”
“I didn’t think you were coming mom.”
She holds him tight in her arms, squeezing until her muscles ache. She sets him down on his feet and crouches to be eye to eye with him.
And screams.
Where Arthur’s eyes should be are two dark holes of such milky blackness that they seem to suck the light out of the room. His mouth is pulled into an impossible grin and she sees how the corners of his lips are ripping and she screams anew.
“What’s wrong, Mother?” The Arthur-thing says in a rasping giggle. “Didn’t you miss me?” Ernestine pushes at the Arthur-thing but neither move for they are but dolls being held in place by an unruly child.
“No no no no no.”
“Don’t worry, Mother,” the Arthur-thing says. “You’ll never see your son again.” She feels the fires closing in around her. Feels her flesh start to bubble and pop.
Her fever breaks in the morning.
As the days get shorter the weather outside grows colder to match the atmosphere within their abode. The distance between mother and son has never been greater as Ernestine loses herself in town-work as they hasten to finish the harvest before the deathly touch of frost can settle upon the land.
Arthur has became a distant point in her mind — a concept utterly unconceivable only months before and yet now this distance is necessary for the sanity of that poor woman we call mother. With distance comes separation, a separation not just of mother and son but from his return. The further she is from the primacy of the boy, the easier it is to convince herself that the symptoms she’d noticed were but the changes age wrought to every prodigal son and virginal daughter.
In the mornings she brings Arthur to the school. He is still too young for the classes but during the harvest the teacher served more as caretaker for rather than educator of the town’s children. At dusk she returns to gather him, whereupon they walk home in silence. They speak little in the evening though it may be more accurate to say that Arthur spoke little. Ernestine speaks freely to the child as she stirs boiling pots and chops vegetables. Arthur only puts voice to action when he can correct his mother. She wonders where the boy has learned to cook for he has an intimate knowledge of the craft. She has spoken to the school teacher who swore ignorance and Ernestine has no reason to doubt her. Yet here was her Arthur voicing not just opinions but learned knowledge.
It unnerves her deeply. What else to do but relegate it to that distant corner of her cognizance where lived such questions as a mother shan’t ask?
She sings the hymns with the rest of the congregation and while the words are a familiar comfort their meaning escapes her. Where she once felt the burning hand of God upon her soul she now feels but a faint ember growing ever dimmer. The singing ends and the priest commences his prepared sermon. Ernestine struggles to listen, catching only snatches of speech as her mind wanders. She struggles to hear an echo of the Lord while the priest congratulates the congregation for raising the funds necessary to purchase a large mirror to go behind the altar — such trivial matters of community-building serving as the background noise of a thousand desperate pleas across the centuries.
If God speaks to her, she doesn’t hear.
He stands alone and cries.
Arthur is outside playing when she discovers the bones. Neatly cleaned of gristle and polished smooth, they range in size. These clearly from a small rodent. Those larger ones a mystery. Arranged in concentric patterns that unnerve her more than the bones themselves.
Heavy is the weight upon her shoulders and in her gut.
She sits at the table — an involuntary movement, really, this unconscious giving up.
She weeps and prays, prays and weeps and just when she feels she can be reduced no lower than this — only then does her hand start to shake. But then it is throughout her arm and climbing up her chest until it is all of her that is shaking and twitching — until the chair is falling back behind her to clatter on the floor while she is held nearly in place, her muscles in such rigid spasms that she doesn’t fall but rather seemed to sit there upon a seat of empty air — at which point light from outside pours through the windows of the room, more light than ever the sun could produce — a light that could only be the light of the Lord with an answer at last — growing to such brilliant illumination that she feels her eyes will be burnt from her skull and yet there in the middle of that radiance is Arthur looking in at her, his mother — she wants to reach out, wants to bridge the gap between them but she is held in place and can only watch in growing terror as Arthur splits down the middle, separating into two distinct forms like an amoeba reproducing through cell division — can only watch as both Arthurs look in at her: one a being of pure light; the other now a shadow to dim the illumination of the Lord our Christ.
Then just as quickly as it came on, it was over.
Ernestine falls to the ground and lays there, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Thank you,” she rasps. “Thank you.”
At last, she understands what must be done.
She watches from across the table as the Arthur-thing scoffs down yet another breakfast, devouring its food by practically inhaling each bite and then licking the bowl clean. It stands and heads for the door, back out to its wanderings among the town and the corruption it is to spread. But no longer for Ernestine stands too and steps in behind the Arthur-thing. The creature pauses in the doorway and starts to turn towards Ernestine but she’s already swinging her right arm down and the Arthur-thing has time enough to see it’s gripping a wooden rolling pin before there’s an explosion of pain in its skull and it crumples to the floor stunned but still conscious.
“Mommy?” the Arthur-thing whimpers in its best imitation of fear but Ernestine’s prepared her heart against such manipulations. Blood pours from a wound obscured by hair. “Mommy?”
The second swing dislocates its jaw so that it hangs loosely swinging back and forth as the Arthur-thing tries to beg for mercy and forgiveness but it lacks articulation and thus all the syllables slur together into a pathetic whining sound. With sinking realization the Arthur-thing abandons hope of reasoning with Ernestine’s anger and instead scrambles over itself in a desperate attempt to crawl away. It grabs handfuls of grass and pulls itself out of the doorway and into the light of the early morning, dragging itself down the walkway leading out to the main thoroughfare into town.
Ernestine watches for a moment, caught in an emotion not quite regret not quite sadness yet distinctly morose for reasons beyond her comprehension. The Arthur-thing keeps looking back at her and its expression holds such fear that for a moment her will wavers and she can feel a scream building in her soul — but then just as quickly as it came upon her it’s gone and the fire of righteous indignation is stoked afresh.
She walks after it, in no rush because even the most leisurely of strolls would outpace its pathetic crawl. It doubles its efforts when it sees her approach but to no avail. She hears bones break as rolling pin strikes legs, almost drowned out by its screams echoing across the countryside. Murmurs arise from the distance though Ernestine hardly notices — too focused is she on rolling the Arthur-thing over onto its back and bringing the rolling pin down upon its face. The first strike knocks the Arthur-thing’s nose crooked. The second raises a great swelling on its temple, an egg-sized lump that obscures its right eye. Each swing brings forth a similar transformation until Ernestine’s arm is too sore to swing again and she drops the rolling pin into the dirt and looks up towards the heavens for an affirmation — that her offering of Isaac was accepted, not denied as had been Abraham’’s.
And there sees her Arthur.
He stands there before her — one arm reaching out as if asking for her hand and he is beautiful and whole — looking as fit and full of life as when she saw him last among the high grass and berry bushes and her heart rejoices for the end of this hardship, this reign of the changeling — the Arthur-thing — a devil’s wickedness given perverted flesh.
But then the men holding the church’s new mirror hurry on their way with faces twisted into expressions of fear concern disgust and where her son stood whole only a moment previous is now but empty air and at her feet Arthur’s outstretched arm falls lifelessly to the ground as a final sound like a devil’s laughter sneaks out of his throat.
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