Radio Waves of the Macabre [On Hiatus]

Chapter 9 - Over the Fence (Part 1)

Tess grabbed the top rail and hauled herself the last foot up and over the fence, careful not to catch her legs on the metal Xs jutting out from the ends of the chain-link. She paused there straddling the fence. She couldn't understand why someone would have built it with no gate. Though she could climb it easily enough, she knew that fences were not meant to be scaled, so what did it say about this one that no entry pierced its entire length?

Allowing this thought to give her pause she considered her options. Following her momentum and moving down she'd be committing herself to the search of the mystery building, a dilapidated shack that at one moment was not and at the next moment was: a thing called to being from a magic that was beyond her and likely even beyond mommy and daddy, and whose gateless fence was the least of its oddities.

If she halted now and fled, running back up the hill and through the gooseberry brambles, she would be done, returning to the comfort and safety of her mother. Yet, her mind did not fathom her risk as it might have if she had been just a few years older. To her, home offered protection from scrapes and bruises, or perhaps from a few more thorn pricks or the horror of the unkindness still circling above. She perceived no real danger, but rather a risk of discomfort.

However, her cousin Ricky might just be hiding within those walls and somehow it did not seem right to leave him there alone. It would be dark in there wouldn't it? She saw no power lines, nor any signs of the civilized world leading to that building, and could not imagine anything within other than the dark gloom of abandonment: cobwebbed ceilings and dirt strewn floors caked in litter and glass. How could she leave him there like that, no matter how many times he had used that name on the playground? What would her parents think of her if she did that to him? Tessy Messy. The dirt-stained girl. Filthy and unclean. Would they still love her? The divorce had not been her fault, as she had been assured, but it had happened. Love could come to an end and she did not know what caused it to dissolve.

Tess made up her mind then, and descended ever so carefully down towards the inner sanctum within the fence's enclosure. With each cautious foothold, the bare dirt of the forgotten field rose up to greet her. At last she dropped the final feet onto a barren mound of baked earth. The soil cracked beneath her as she landed, cascading down along fissures cut by the morning rain and tumbling into the vague hints of valleys remaining from the field's previous life.

As the dirt broke apart under her, its crisp skin splintering, it freed the wetness beneath, which met with the humid heat of the afternoon air and with its thick musk ushered forth once more the memory of that day on the jetty. Tess stumbled then, remembering the guilt as she had pressed the worm onto the metal barb, and the shame as she had cried, both for having killed it and for having failed when her father had trusted her. Now something new mingled with that memory. The short, shrill calls of the raven sounded, crying out as it flapped its wings against the tangle of gooseberry branches. She could hear its feathers rustling against the thorns, that oil-slick wetness shining out. Its beak snapping as its movements slowed and its struggle ceased. Tess could bear it no more.

"Ricky!" she shouted. No answer came.

She hadn't expected him to appear or even to call back, but she had hoped that he would. The game's fun had ended. Somehow she still believed he was hiding, maybe even watching her as she looked for him, laughing at her. Why else would he have kept silent as she called for him unless it was to continue the game?

"Ricky, its not funny you butthead! Come on out!"

In answer a deep croak fell from the cloud-covered sky, a throaty rasp gurgling up from the black depths of a raven's maw. Another call sounded, liquid-like and bubbling out from its ill-omened master. One after another, more ravens joined in, the calls drowning out all other noises of the surrounding woods.

Tess froze mid-step, straining to hold her awkward pose. If she didn't move, then perhaps the ravens would go away and leave her to her search. A minute passed, the raspy calls growing in number. Her muscles began to ache from the stress. Her fingers twitched, unable to keep still, and sweat beaded down her forehead and dripped along her nose, until it hung, suspended just above her lip, so close that she could taste the salt and snot. A moment more and it dropped to the parched earth.

Finally, as Tess thought she could stand it no longer, the ravens silenced, though their dark forms still hung a secondary cloud beneath the grey cloud cover looming above them all. She eased forward, stretching out her strained muscles, but she did not call again for Ricky. She dared not speak. Instead she inched towards the building ever so slowly, until she bathed in its shadow.