We took my grandma to the western part of the gorge forests because it’s quiet. If you know anything about Bridal Veil Lake, you’ll know there are places for tourists and the spots residents try to keep for themselves.
My grandmother has or had bad dementia. She used to love to play in the woods as a girl. We thought it’d be a good thing to bring her for the afternoon, and it was going well. Even before we left, she picked out a fresh tracksuit and put on all her jewelry, including multiple rings on the same fingers.
Most days she spent watching TV and never saying a word. That morning she sang. I wasn’t about to tell her how weird she looked with all her old world bling.
She perked up more when I pulled into the lot. “Cindy, we’re here!” she said to my mom, her daughter. Cindy, one of her best friends from childhood, died twenty years ago. My mom’s name is not Cindy.
Before we could unpack the trunk for a St.Patrick’s Day picnic by the river, Grandma took off. She’s eighty-eight and frail. To see her jog into the trees defied reasoning, and was kind of hilarious, at first.
Figuring she couldn’t get far - I’ve seen her fail to negotiate the step up from the sunken living room - we resumed packing up and then followed her.
The gorge forest is split down the middle from west to east by the Black River, which empties out into the basin lake, where the town’s namesake comes from: A bridal veil waterfall.
I worried a little about Grandma falling in and being swept away. The mild winter hadn’t brought the spring floods but the river took lives every year. This spring, I had no doubt, would be no different.
Beneath the shade of the canopy, we could see Grandma had already disappeared.
“Oh god,” my mom said as she clutched her fists against her cheeks and looked toward the river. It was still far off though. No way she made it all that way over the short hills and roots and rocks. More than likely, she was sprawled in one of the lows or resting against a tree.
“Grandma!”
“Mom!”
So the search began. We walked right to the loose gravel shore and found no trace of her. My mom started to panic and so did I, which led to a bad choice. I went west. She went east. The direction I chose got more wild, and harder to traverse. It didn’t occur to me that Grandma probably wouldn’t plough through thickets and dead branches.
I was more worried about my mom. East along the river would eventually bring her to the paths beneath the overpasses. Below those bridges were these weird alcoves some genius designed without criminals in mind.
Joggers and hikers had been ambushed there and mugged. It was pretty far. I kept telling myself I’d turn around after the next tree, the next hill, etcetera.
My oblivious ignorance of the difficulty moving forward turned out to be fortunate, or so I thought. It would have been better if I never found my grandmother.
I pushed through a clutch of purple creeper thorns (don’t know their proper name), and found a muddy deer track with human footprints and a familiar pair of teal slip-ons.
“Grandma!” I called.
I heard a giggle that turned out to be her. At the mouth of a creek feeding the river, my grandmother crouched on a wide, flat slab of limestone.
Her face covered in red, she held a tiny, struggling thing, which ceased to resist when her bony hands ripped it in half.
“Grandma!” I figured she’d managed to snag a small animal. “Stop!”
She did, long enough for me to get closer and see the tiny limbs twitching. They were human but impossibly small. Fingers and fingernails no bigger than a dime were amidst the gore. Grandma pinched the pieces like horderves and popped them into her mouth.
I think I said something like, “What the hell?”
Grandma grinned, and her teeth were all red. “Try some, Aaron.” She dug into her track pants pocket and pulled out a very tiny person. I felt my skin prickle with a chill despite the warmth of the breeze.
I don’t know how to write this next part in a way that’s believable. It was a tiny woman, smaller than my hand, a Tinkerbell without wings (because Grandma had already torn them off). Caught in the old woman’s fist, she chirped like a mouse as her head was severed by dentures.
“Oh, it’s good, it’s good,” Grandma remarked as she swallowed and drank from the stump as if it were one of those liquor bottles found in hotel room fridges.
All around her on the stone were the body parts of the little people. Blood ran over the side of a hollow tree. Clouds raced across the sky and blotted the sun. Whatever fucked up thing had just happened, it was time to go.
Beyond panic, I entered a yet unexperienced level of shock. I didn’t notice how bad my hands were shaking until I tried to use them to brush the limbs from her hair. I should have left them for evidence, so I could explain what really happened that St.Patrick’s Day.
Instead, when I caught up with my mom, she quite reasonably lost her shit and figured what I had: A delusional lady caught a rat or something and thought it was dinner. I didn’t even try to explain. I stayed quiet and let her escort Grandma to the car and drive us all to the hospital.
The nurse on duty saw the excessive blood and got us to the doc fast. I’ve never not had to wait in the ER before. Another nurse assessed while cleaning, discovering quickly no injuries on Grandma. Questions followed, obviously. Where had so much blood come from?
I had to answer, and I lied. How could I tell them what really happened?
“A raccoon, I think.”
Combined with her advanced dementia, the nurse seemed to accept the explanation, and ordered a bunch of needles to ensure Grandma didn’t get rabies amongst other infections. That’s when her clarity returned, I’m sure of it. She didn’t want the shots and objected.
“I don’t need them,” she said to the nurse, who only smiled patiently before explaining that she did because of what she’d possibly eaten or been exposed to. “Those little shits? I’ve done it before. How do you think I’ve lived so long? Not from exercise or avoiding vices, I tell you.” Her laughter sounded crazier than ever. They forced her to get the shots. We went home.
It started that very night. I couldn’t find anything. My toothbrush, pajamas, the remote, some melatonin pills, and all the accessories of my routine had been moved around. For my mom, it was the same.
“It’s like we were robbed,” she said, “but nothing was taken. Only hidden.” There wasn’t much time to think about it because Grandma went straight to the vodka in the freezer and started pouring shots.
“Mom! Stop! You can’t mix thatvwith your meds!”
Grandma chuckled and raced around the kitchen island with her shot and didn’t spill a drop, except down her gullet. “That burns so good.”
“Mom!”
They argued some more. Grandma winked at me and went to bed. Mom poured us some shots, though I’m not of age to drink, and we sat quietly before going upstairs too. I couldn’t sleep. The wifi was out and my data was slow. The King novel I’d been reading wasn’t where I left it, but I was too tired to search.
The tiny bodies had been ripped to shreds. She drank their blood. It couldn’t have happened. Another surge in panic kept the air trapped behind my firmly clenched teeth. I marched downstairs, intending to hit the bottle.
But Grandma had beat me to it.
“Hey,” she said, lounging in her recliner with the vodka on her knee. None of the lights were on, and I jumped when she spoke.
I wanted to call her out for taking off earlier, and all the headache that followed. My mother and I, however, had become accustomed to not speaking to her about anything seriously. The tone we often took was similar to when one speaks to a dog. We didn’t think she understood.
And that was wrong. It partially explains her resentment toward us and what followed next.
She glided to the front door and flicked on the living room lights. A stranger put on my grandmother’s coat. The woman looked like my mom but younger. She still had on the rings and necklaces from earlier in the day, coagulated blood and all.
“More will be coming. You should go. They’ll take revenge on loved ones. They don’t remember me or what a bad bitch I am. See, I don’t love anyone more than myself. Sorry.” She shrugged as if relaying an immutable fact of life. “Bye kid.” The vodka went too.
That was the last time I saw her, whatever she was or had become. Mom was hysterical in the morning and pretty pissed off that I could be so detached. She became more angry when she couldn’t find her phone or her keys. We don’t have a landline, so she couldn’t call the police.
My phone was also missing.
“What the hell is happening?” she asked me, and I told her to sit down. She did and that’s when the power went out. “Great.” A heavy knocking came from upstairs. It sounded like the table in the hallway had fallen over. The kitchen window began to splinter, glass grinding under an invisible pressure. We stared at it and then at one another.
“Oh god, they’re coming,” I said without really knowing who I meant. Mom gave little shakes of her head as something else fragile turned over and smashed in the living room.
Complete darkness washed over the window like a plague. If I hadn’t seen them before, I might have thought they were locusts. They could have stayed invisible. They wanted us to see. A bit of glass plinked into the sink below as the first put its head inside.
Mom started to scream and I along with her. She raced to the utensils drawer and got out a knife. I saw our phones in there and scooped them up, thinking we could call for help.
The one that poked its head in flew like a dart at my mom’s face, piercing her cheek with a black thorn. She snatched it off and threw it against the wall. The tiny body fell onto our steel serving tray, the one we always brought Grandma’s food and meds on.
That’s where it started to scream as the flesh melted off its tiny skeleton, steam rising from the boiling blood leftover.
Outside, the creatures’ shrieks of fury sounded the same as a flock of angry birds. They pulled back for a final assault against the window.
Mom grabbed the serving tray and held it over the bleeding glass. “Forks! Spoons! Knives!” she yelled as her body braced the impromptu shield.
I ripped the drawers out of the cabinet, scattering half the utensils onto the floor. The big bottom drawer had our colanders and mixing bowls for pancakes and stomach flus.
“Mom!”
More creatures zipped in from the living room carrying sharpened sticks and stones.
Swinging the drawers did no real damage. I think the clatter of steel on steel made them hesitate.
“Run!” Mom yelled. Her whole arm was covered with them, gouging, tearing, scratching, biting. She screamed and intentionally fell onto the tray, crushing and searing the majority.
I pulled her up and we pushed through the clusters with frantic strikes, causing burns and leaving a trail of crushed bodies.
Our exit strategy changed swiftly when the front door burst off its hinges. A huge, bearded man with thick arms and an oily scalp bellowed out a warcry, charging straight for us. Mom belted him with the tray, bending it over his head. The deep throated growl turned to a high pitched wail of pain. He was one of them.
They can be different things, apparently. A number of these other forms swarmed in after the big man had been dropped to the hardwood by my mom.
Some were more or less human. Others retained the cutesy Tinkerbell form even while raging to kill us. Many others had bodies too strange to really describe. Some were like mists and shadows. Another moved like a ray of light.
“Upstairs!” Mom pushed me before despair and terror allowed an acceptance of our deaths. We raced through the upstairs hallways and into the bathroom. She locked the door and put her back to it.
“Into the tub!”
“What?! The window. It’s not that far down.”
More were pouring into the house. It would only be a matter of seconds before they figured out where we were.
Even if we hit the ground without injury, they’d be on us fast. Death was coming. Grandma had fucked us over so bad.
Mom pushed me into the bathtub. I fell on my face and felt the contents of the utensils against my back before I could turn over. She placed the colander on my head like a helmet, and dropped the rest into my lap.
The door cracked in half after that.
“I love you,” she said, turning and charging toward the bulge of those tiny fuckers, leaping over the remaining half of door, and leading them away.
She didn’t get too far. I heard a thump and the furious chirping ceased, replaced by thousands of prickling noises. They butchered the recognition from her body while I shivered and pissed myself in the tub.
I called 911 but didn’t say anything.
The big guy with the beard and now badly burned head came in alone and saw me hiding beneath the scant layer of steel. I was shaking so hard. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being afraid. He touched his forehead and thought better of going near me, I guess. He stared for a long time. I closed my eyes.
“Kid,” a woman that turned out to be a cop said, shining a flashlight in my face. It’d gotten dark outside and the power hadn’t been restored.
I won’t tell you every detail of what came next because I bet anyone can guess. The truth did nothing but convince them I’d lost my sanity and horrifically murdered and mutilated my mother.
I went through a trial. You won’t find any mention of it in the news. Under the Youth Criminal Justice Act, the judge issued a complete publication ban.
Bridal Veil Lake is visited by hundreds of thousands of people a year. Those that actually live here are few. Media coverage would supposedly make it impossible to reintegrate into my community. I didn’t bother telling the justice it wouldn’t be possible anywhere.
Once I found out the institution I was going to had several layers of old, thick steel around it, I vowed to never leave again. In fact, I haven’t willingly left my barred cell in years. I don’t have to go unless the experts agree I can take care of myself.
Of that, they will never be convinced because I never stop talking about the faeries my grandma ate and how their flesh and bones and blood made her young again.
More significantly, I will not say I killed my mom like the doctor wants me to. He asks what happens and I tell this story from the beginning. He doesn’t mind. He earns by the hour.
I’m writing to you, years now since it happened because another St.Patrick’s Day has come and gone and in the midst of my endless mourning, I got a letter from someone containing a gold ring.
Some don’t like gold was written on a napkin stuffed inside the envelope.
“Grandma,” I said out loud as I studied the ring.
“No,” the guard that delivered the mail said. “It was a young woman that dropped it off. I remember because who drops mail off personally to a place like this?”
I didn’t tell him who.
I just gave him the ring.
And threw away the message.