"The Pinewaiter" by Kellan Standley

The Pinewaiter

by Kellan Standley

“The woods must feed.

“My family has known that for over a hundred years. There are things here, spirits, demons, entities, whatever you want to call them, that hunger. They require blood. They require sacrifice. Feeding them is the only way to get them to stay away, the only way to keep them off our backs, because if they go too long without a meal, they hunt. They take vengeance. They kill. And if we leave it in their hands, we are the ones that pay.

“I can’t show you the graves; they don’t exist. When these woods take a life, it’s not our place to interfere. We don’t dare try to claim the carcass, though it pains us to lose a loved one without being able to say a proper goodbye. But we’ve learned that over the years, a proper burial brings retribution, swift and severe.

“They died in a variety of ways- stillbirth, heart attacks, drowning, accidents. The worst was when the well came up contaminated. Nearly wiped out the entire clan before we figured out the problem. That’s what we get for trying to deny the forest what it’s rightfully owed. Hubris, they call it, thinking we were capable of fighting back against the woods, against nature itself. We had the idea one day when we were trying to come up with ways to deny it its dinner, that fire was the answer. Fire burns, but it also cleanses, right? It sterilizes. Nothing survives a righteous fire. We decided that the answer to all of our worries had been right there next to the stove this entire time. If we burned down the forest, the fire would have to kill it too. As you can tell, we couldn’t get more than three or four deadfall logs to ignite no matter what we tried. We deserved what we got after that. We should have known that the woods would punish us.

“Then, we got wiser. We figured out that if the woods had to feed, the only way we could protect ourselves was to choose. Whatever lives in these woods, I don’t think it’s evil. It only seems that way to us. I think it’s something worse. It’s indifferent. It’s just hungry. It really doesn’t care who it feeds on, it just needs to eat. So we learned that if we don’t want to be on the menu, then we need to prepare the meal, see? We can provide the food, or we can be the food. That’s an easy choice.”

I look down at the bloodied face of the girl whose ponytail I held in my left hand. “So with all due respect, ma’am, you’re wrong. I do have to do this.”

She looked up at me, her mascara-streaked eyes pleading as her chest heaved. “No! Please! That’s crazy!” she sobbed.

“You know,” I said, “My family’s taken care of these woods ever since my great-great-grandaddy killed the man who lived here before. Some of ‘em say that it was that that brought this on, his sin cursed this place and our family tying our fate to the trees here. Others claim that this land’s been this way since long before that, that there’s trees that have been out here since before the first people came to this continent. They say that when my great-great-grandaddy killed that man, he was doing him a favor, releasing him and taking his place. I don’t know. But I do know if I’m crazy, it means I’m still alive.”

Still gripping her hair in my fist, I tilted her head. A fresh trickle of dark blood split off of the line on the girl’s forehead and ran down around the side of her face toward her cheek. The wound on her scalp that had soaked into her blond hair was still running strong. I looked at her. She was a pretty young thing. But it didn’t matter. This was simply business.

“Let me help you!” she pleaded. “Please! I’m begging you! Just don’t kill me! I’ll do anything! I’m sure together we can figure something out! We can find a way to defeat it!”

“Ma’am,” I said, “I used to think that too. But over time, I’ve learned to accept that this is just how things are. There’s no fighting it. We all have our part. I know that none of this makes sense to you right now. But I’ve been out here a lot longer than you have.” I raised my right hand high over my head. “And I’ll be out here a lot longer than you.”

With one powerful, practiced stroke, I brought the hammer down. The face of the tool made contact with the girl’s temple, shattering her skull as I swung. My left hand immediately felt her weight as the ponytail was now the only thing preventing her body from collapsing in a heap.

Taking a breath, I released my hold and let her drop. Removing the painstakingly-sharpened knife from my belt, I bent down and ran the blade across her throat, feeling it press through the flesh and into the meat.

Though I think the blow had killed her, I couldn’t take the chance- another lesson learned the hard way. Severing the veins in her neck would definitely do the trick.

On the way out of the woods, I washed my hands, along with my knife, in the creek, before turning to walk up the trail to the modest cabin I call home. Inside, I knew I would find my wife, my two young sons, and my own daughter, probably around the same age as the woman whose throat I had slit less than a mile away. My remaining family will still be alive because I’m willing to pay the steep price to keep them that way. The woods will feed on the girl, as they must. So to make sure it’s not my daughter, I am the one who feeds it.