Logolepsy

Psithurism

(n.) The sound of the wind through the trees

There are rules for living in Cableton. No one's ever spoken them. They aren't written anywhere. They're simply known by all the residents. Unchallenged, broken only in desperation, with a resigned understanding that there will be dire consequences. Fiona has never broken those rules. She prays to the Lord Jesus and to The Watchers that she'll never have to.

It's safe in Cableton, mostly. About as safe as any town but she likes to think that there's a safety in the lack of numbers. Less people means they all tend to know each other. Crimes are hard to commit when everyone in town can guess who it was. There're town troublemakers, young ones that think they can get away with just about anything. But the rules get broken when people get caught up in a crime. And then there's consequences that come, usually before the sheriff can get to them. It's safer to just obey the laws and the rules, just stay home at night rather than creeping around town looking for trouble.

Fiona's dad had always been grateful for her when it came to that. She doesn't venture far and never for long. A homebody through and through, like her father was, she's not one anyone ever worries about - not as far as the rules anyway. She's quiet and keeps to herself and she may not challenge any rules but she's asked questioned a few might smile at. They tend to talk about her but it's a small farming town. Not much to do but talk, really.

It's a quiet town. Little people, little minds. They tend the fields in the heat, venturing out when the fog dissipates and hurrying home when it rolls back in with the night. The summer sun means longer days and some people take road trips to the beach, leaving early and risking the foggy roads to make it before dark. Fiona's one of them but she doesn't like the foggy road.

It's strange here, driving in those low-lying clouds. As the city fades out of sight, the road seems to disappear. It's as if she'll fall off the edge of the world at any moment. She watches the signs with silent determination because she's never missed her exit and she doesn't know what happens if she does. Does the world drop off after the exit? Or does the road continue, endlessly into the fog where the sun won't rise any higher and the white-grey expanse will call her forward, further into the welcoming jowls of the unknown?

She doesn't risk it, the aimless wandering some take up, driving without the map. They follow the road and the signs and say they'll know their destination when they see it. But she's not sure if anyone can know a destination on an endless road with no destinations in sight.

Leaving after the fog means she won't make it to the beach before dark. It's not so much a problem as a nuisance. Car lights are blinding once darkness falls and the road starts to blur with the fog, as do the shadows on either side of her. She can keep the window open to stay awake but when there are no cars to dash by, the highway sounds...wrong.

It starts raining, to make it worse. She slows and remembers what her dad always used to tell her. The road is always slicker when the rain starts. It has to wash away the oil and grease. It washes away something dark and red that comes from the sides of the roads where cars are left and forgotten. She's asked people about that, about the crimson something being washed away with the oil and grease, coming from the patches of trees where shadows linger. They always smile, asking what she's talking about. They don't say anything about what they know lives in the trees on the sides of the road. Everyone prays to The Watchers but no one will ever say a word about them. Fiona's been shushed since the moment she could talk.

The Watchers came during the fog, descending in rays of light and spinning spheres of humming machinery. They brought their rules to Cableton and Fiona remembers then, when the... creatures they brought with them came out. The Watchers' "pets" came from their home and are left to roam the roads, unattended, fearfully ignored, luring and disappearing anyone foolish enough to veer too close to the edge of the road.

So as twilight dwindles and the fog hides the things they don't talk about, she comes to a rest stop she's used to staying in. It's a small, rundown inn tucked behind a similarly sad gas station where the cashier seems rooted to a worn path in the tile floors. Doleful eyes stare back at her in a sallow face and she never likes to meet them. The innkeeper is rooted to her own path. She's washed clean of color, drained of all expression save the welcoming smile that shakes with her palsy.

Fiona frowns at the gas station, finding it empty except for an abandoned car sitting in the small parking lot that's riddled with potholes. She drives past it and onto the gravel drive behind, following it to the inn she's always found to be a welcoming, sunny yellow color. There's a sign on the broken gate: closed for renovations.

The house is empty, with no signs of improvements or the intentions of any. It's dark by now and she's eager to be inside. She knocks on the door, hoping the old innkeeper is inside and will let her stay the night anyway. She doesn't want to stay in the car and taking to the road for the stretch to the next rest stop will take too long. The door creaks open, with no one behind it. She glances behind her and then quickly turns away, dutifully ignoring the shadows creeping up on her.

She closes the door and calls out for anyone but the only answer is the wind in the trees and the scrape of branches against the back of the house. The inside is a faded red, dull and almost brown and for the first time it makes her think of the smell of iron, a smell that lingers on the hands after counting out change, a smell that lingers from the redness that washes away in the rain. She locks the door and finds her usual room, settling down for a quiet night. Halfway between dreams and waking, the rumble of a car engine and the crackle of tires on gravel make her sit up. She pads barefoot to the door but there's no car in sight. Shaking her head, she turns to go back up.

The red is a warning now, a stop sign she obeys at the top of the stairs, realizing that there's a window there, overlooking the backyard. There's only fields there, like the other three sides of the house. She peeks out, finding no trees. She's grown up around corn fields. She knows the sound of the breeze in wheat and corn and soy and weeds. She knows the sound of the breeze in trees and that is what she's heard. But there are no trees. There's no branches to tap malevolently against the back of the house. There's only that abandoned car to growl down the gravel path and it hasn't moved.

She's halfway back to her room when the sound of the wind returns, closer now, wrapping around her, as if a window were open. She checks it over her shoulder, a mistake. The other side of the hall is darker and the red is violent, masking splashes of that same crimson that washes from the road. As she turns back around, she tries to tell herself that she didn't see anything. She walks slowly back to her room and closes the door. She returns to the bed, trying to tell herself that what she heard was wind and not breathing, it was a car and not growling, a tapping branch and not claws. And what she saw was darkness and not a shape emerging.

She returns home the next day, leaving behind the sunny yellow inn, frozen like the inkeeper's wide smile that becomes more unsettling as the seconds tick by. She returns to her home a little outside the town, surrounded on all sides by low fields of weeds, no trees, not even flowers, and the nearest house two miles away. It can be a good thing; she can see far and wide. It's a bad thing. She can see too far, too wide, and there are too many shapes that flit in the corner of her eyes at night. She settles into her own bed, tired from the journey, telling herself that what followed her home is her own fear and not the sound of wind in the trees.

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This is just one of those projects I'll probably return to in between stories or when I need a break. I don't know that all of them will be like this...

Anyway, thoughts?