#Spookyshowcase: Guardian of Shale Creek by Madelyn Knecht

Welcome to the 9th annual #SpookyShowcase, a Halloween artist and author showcase. A full schedule of submissions can be found here so you don’t miss a single entry for THESE DEADLY CURSES. Now, on to today’s submission!

GUARDIAN OF SHALE CREEK BY MADELYN KNECHT

There is a crossroads in Shale Creek that only the lost pass through.

No one can find it if they’re looking for it. They have to be completely, utterly lost in the misty moors and dare to leave behind the town covered in fog. The town itself winds in an unending clump of identical wooden houses, gray from the clouds endlessly hanging overhead. Porch lights barely pierce the darkness, and no one goes out at night. But sometimes, people peer out their windows—especially travelers who are brave enough to stay a night—and see red lighting the south side, toward the crossroads. There, four lanes converge just before the woods. A single bridge leads into the forest that has no name. Some call it the Forest of the Lost. Others call it the Cursed Forest. No one knows who built the bridge in the first place. All they know is that there is a Watcher who sets it aflame after a person crosses over it. Once they’re gone, they can never come back. They disappear into the woods, and the bridge grows back. Some say the Watcher brings it back. Most believe the ground pushes it out, warps to create a new path into the mysterious woods. As if the earth itself around Shale Creek lives and breathes. Sometimes it feels that way, in the sticky touch of the mist. like a hand grasping for control. In the way dewy grass grows wild and climbs up the sides of wooden porches, forcing its way through damp slats. If anyone bothered to cut it, they’d walk out an hour later to find it twice as long. No one in the little town of Shale Creek bothers to trim the dandelions across their square yards or peel off the moss clinging to the roads.

Shale Creek grows as it likes.

To the townspeople, the Watcher, the bridge, and the forest all appeared at the same time. This isn’t the case. The forest is the oldest, a towering range of gnarled branches and aging gray bark. The Watcher came next, to watch who came in and out of the forest. The bridge came with the Watcher. Each bridge set aflame grows back different, so the bridge is always new, always unique depending on who crosses it.

No one knows where the Watcher came from. Those who drift far enough toward the crossroads claim that the being wears a black cloak, its face hidden from light. Others say it’s a skeleton with a gaunt face stretched in a deathly smile. A curse upon the people of Shale Creek.

All of these are right. And they’re all wrong.

People see what they want to see when they look at the Watcher. The Watcher is not meant to be gawked at, but to see, and to guide.

People of Shale Creek also think the Watcher is an emotionless being born of darkness, or perhaps born from the woods. They’re wrong.

The Watcher can’t remember its past, except that it has one. It doesn’t know its name, except it was once called by one. One besides the Watcher. It once spoke, thought, believed, hoped, laughed, hated, loved. It once lived as people do. But that was long ago. Now, the Watcher lives at the crossroads, waiting for travelers to pass over the bridge.

Now, the Watcher stares down at a young girl with snot crusted to her pink nose and tears running down her pale, freckled cheeks. The girl’s overalls hang off her tiny frame. A bear peeks out from beneath them on the front of her pink shirt. She’s chubby, with round cheeks and wheat-colored hair and watery blue eyes. The Watcher stands in silence as the girl sniffles.

To her, the Watcher looks like an older girl with silver hair running rivulets down her back. Dark, unearthly eyes watch her—odd in a comforting way. The Watcher this girl sees wears a red parka and jeans. It carries a pink lighter in one hand.

The girl sniffles. Her bridge, which warped as she approached, is small and elegant white. Like a princess bridge.

“Do you want me to burn this bridge?” the Watcher asks. The only question the Watcher must ask. The only one it can remember.

The little girl wipes a hand across her eyes. “If I do, can I come back?” Her voice is hoarse from crying. She’s run away, the Watcher thinks. From what, it doesn’t know.

“No,” it answers.

The girl’s mouth trembles and she looks over her shoulder. For a moment, the Watcher feels something. An urge. Fleeting, it urges the girl to turn. To go back.

But the girl looks at them and reaches out a hand, and the feeling vanishes.

The Watcher takes the little girl’s hand and helps her across the bridge. With one swift movement, the Watcher flicks open the lighter and tosses it. The princess bridge catches aflame in seconds, sending red light scouring through the milky fog. Flames dance and spark, soundless in the endless stretch of nothingness around it. Not even the water in the creek makes a sound as it glides beneath the burning bridge. The little girl looks back, but the Watcher places a hand on her shoulder and guides her into the forest. Both disappear into the gnarled woods.

Hours later, the Watcher emerges alone. Smoldering remains dot the rotted ground beneath its feet, the creek stretching out beneath what is left of the little girl’s bridge. Soon another bridge will take its place. And the Watcher will lead another Lost into the woods.

“Just burn it. Fucking burn it all.”

The young woman’s bridge is rickety and wooden, rotten from the bottom up. Moss crawls along its sides and the railing hangs off at an angle. She stands at the cusp, her bare toes pressed white against the splintering wood. Her blue shirt lies in tatters across her shoulders to reveal her beige bra, stark against her black skin. A bruise mottles her chin.

The Watcher hasn’t asked the question yet, but it doesn’t have to. To this young woman, the Watcher looks like an older black woman, her face withered and her eyes dark and narrow. She wears a loose floral dress, and carries an oil lamp. She reaches out a hand. The young woman tugs up her sleeve, attempting to cover some of her bare skin, and takes the hand. She darts over the bridge and the Watcher smashes the lamp against it. Fire bursts across the oil and leaps across the rotten wood. In seconds it’s engulfed in a cloud of black smoke, tongues of orange darting inside. The fire doesn’t spread to the rocky creek or the gnarled grass on either side, contained as if by the thick fog, its own bubble of destruction.

The old woman turns to go into the forest. A yank drags her back, and the girl slips from her grasp. The Watcher turns to find the lost traveler staring in horror at the burning bridge. Flames have devoured the ropes, the wood snapping and crackling beneath its heat. There is no going back now.

“No—no, no, no, no.” The girl starts back, her heels plunging into the swampy ground. It tugs at her shoes, threatening to suck her in. Clumps of mud cake her ankles.

“You cannot go back,” the Watcher says calmly. “The bridge has burned.”

“NO!” The screech barely breaks the thick air, but the Watcher feels it. It shakes and rattles in the old woman’s empty chest. “I had family over there! I can’t—I didn’t mean to. I need to go back. I need them. I need them!”

The girl rushes back. Before the Watcher can call to her again, the traveler vanishes in the cluster of smoke. The splintered wood cracks and hisses. A scream, muffled by the dense air, cries and stops short. Silence spreads. When the fog and ash finally clear, the girl and the bridge are gone. Not even charred pieces remain of either.