by Bennette Harding
Mom wanted to spend one last Christmas with Pawpaw on the mountain. His age and health worried her and we didn’t make it out to his home often. The mountain and the forest he lived in better suited Halloween ghost stories than Christmas dinners. But we packed up and headed west to the old family farm.
We sat around his cramped kitchen table. Scraps of dinner remained: cornbread chunks, a cold pot of pinto beans, a bowl still full of turnip greens, and one last slice of apple pie. My younger brother and I shared the “head” position. Dad was pinned between the table and the kitchen sink. Mom was trapped between me and the oven. She blocked in Pawpaw. He sat by the window and in front of the pantry.
“I can’t believe you didn’t decorate, dad,” said my mom.
Pawpaw set his coffee thermos down with a trembling hand.
“At my age, decorating is too difficult. And who’s here to give me a reason to?”
“Couldn’t a church member come help you put up a Christmas tree? What’s the point of living on a tree farm if you don’t even have a tree for Christmas?” my dad asked.
Pawpaw lived on thirty acres of rural mountain land a few miles from US Highway 74 Alternate in Western North Carolina. Great Uncle Callum, and his children, and his grandchildren, lived on the mountain too. Mom was the only family member to move away.
“Not a tree farm, James, a tree sanctuary.”
Pawpaw, unlike anyone else, used my dad’s normal name. My dad’s parents called him Jimmy. Our friends and family called him Jim. Pawpaw would tack Dad’s name at the end of statements to turn them into a reprimand.
“Eve, you never learned this. When we moved back to the states, you couldn’t wait to go off to college. This land will be yours after I’m gone, you and the youngins.”
He gestured to my brother and me. Pawpaw tended to grow morbid during the holiday season. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas he monologued about our inheritance. Now, in his late eighties, Pawpaw showed his age. Bruises covered his body. Spots of blood crusted on his skin because he bled all the time. While mild, his fight with leukemia took a toll. Not to mention the miscellany of other ailments he brought back from Vietnam.
“I came back and had to buy the land off your Uncle Callum. He couldn’t afford the property tax payments. I talked to a lawyer and reclassified the land as a tree farm, you’re correct James.”
“So, what did—”
“Don’t you talk enough on Sundays preacher? Listen, if Eve and you are ever going to live here, if the boys are ever going to live here, you need to know this and I’m running out of time.”
Everywhere, the house displayed decay. The browning linoleum flooring curled up at the base of the walls. Years of smoke and grease splatters stained the wallpaper. Above us, the ceiling sagged, threatening to collapse. The wood stove was the newest thing in the kitchen. After he’s gone, no one will live in this house.
Outside of the house, the land still offered a few lots where Mom and Dad might build a house or set a trailer.
“So yes, legally the land is organized as a tree farm for tax purposes. Keeps the payments low.
“Callum might still outlive me, and he could tell you. Well, I would rather you heard the story from me. This tree farm is really a tree sanctuary. You cannot cut down any tree growing on this mountain.”
Pawpaw paused, giving the news time to sink in.
“Why?” my brother asked.
“Seventy years ago, when your Uncle Callum and I were kids. Callum might have been fifteen and I would have been twelve or so.
“Growing up, we were poor. We would make an extra buck anyway we could figure, including trapping and selling opossums to the folks poorer than us for food. Never eat an opossum, boys. You open them up and they’re full of worms.
“Christmas had become a tourist attraction over in Asheville. The rich folks needed to decorate their hotels and resorts with Christmas trees and they paid top dollar for them. Y’all have hiked the mountain, taken the four-wheeler up past Camp Callum, walked to the barn and across the fields. The mountain abounds with trees.
“The fields used to grow with green beans, and tomatoes, and potatoes. Now the field’s packed earth and deer tracks. Not too long ago, you could walk in the barn without fearing she might topple down on you. Callum and I figured we had plenty of trees. If we could cut down a couple, we could hitch the mule to the wagon, head into town, make a dollar, buy Emmy Lou a ribbon for Christmas and backer for ourselves.”
A few hours earlier, while it was still daylight, I walked along the property. Every hundred feet in any direction showed seventy years of withering. My Great-Grandparents’ house, a shotgun shack, stood grey and weathered and collapsing. The barn presented a similar picture. I couldn’t remember the last time the field by the barn grew anything. “Camp Callum’s” outdoor dining room now brimmed with dirt, debris, and scat. An abandoned truck camper rotted near Camp Callum with shattered glass and a rat infestation. The mountain did not lack for trees though.
“Now we knew better, or we should have. Being boys, we didn’t know shit. We were much too poor, even back then, to buy this much land. Great-Pawpaw had got this lot cheap. He didn’t tell us how or why he got the land so cheap, all he told us was to never, ever, cut down a tree on our land.
“As kids, we heeded what Great-Pawpaw told us to do, but obedience got harder and harder as we grew up. We had to go to neighbors or into town to buy wood. Everyone thought the Hollifield boys strange for driving the mule and wagon into town to buy wood. We lived in the woods. In my day, kids respected our elders, at least until we didn’t.
“So, this one Christmas, Callum and I decided to break the rule and cut down trees. Kind of like George Washington. We would go up the mountain, cut down a wagonload of trees, and get paid for wood instead of paying for it. We did it, and we got paid, and we paid for it still.
“So, Callum and me left the house early one morning and walked around the trail to the barn. We kept the farm equipment out there: the scythe for cutting grass, the posthole diggers, the axes, and the saws.
“We got what we needed and we headed up the mountain with the mule and the wagon to a spot at the edge of the property. Great-Pawpaw wouldn’t find the spot, or so we thought. More animals used to live around here. I remember passing a couple deer and cursing ourselves for not bringing a rifle with us.
“We started chopping the pines, firs, and spruces suitable for Christmas trees. With every stroke came a shrieking like a murdered woman, or a child in the dark.
‘You hear a bobcat?’ I asked Callum.
‘Most likely. Sun rises soon. Pay it no mind.’ he said.
“We kept hacking along until our family wagon couldn’t carry anymore. I counted four or five decent sized trees. We buggied to town and sold them all. Last, we stopped by the general store. Emmy Lou giggled when we gave her the ribbon and she ran off with it in her hair. Callum stashed the backer beneath layers of folded clothes in a trunk under the bed.
“Later in the afternoon Great-Pawpaw called to us. He hollered from the barn. We figured he needed help choring. After turning the corner at the barn, we found him standing with our ax in hand, the blade still sticky with sap.”
Growing up, you didn’t want Pawpaw to be the one to catch you misbehaving. He took the old-fashioned “spare the rod, spoil the child” approach to parenting like a good Southern Baptist. I assumed Pawpaw inherited his approach of discipline from his father.
“Great-Pawpaw made us lead him up the trail to where we had felled those trees. Callum walked in front, with me behind him, and Great-Pawpaw behind me. We walked up the mountain in silence.
“We came to the holler. The spot where we had cut down the trees stood out like a bald patch. We left nothing in the holler except the stumps. So, where did that thing come from?”
We kept silent, lingering on his words. I didn’t know what to believe. I wanted to interject, question.
“What thing?” I asked.
“In the center of the grove a monstrous white ash tree appeared. Thicker in girth than any ash growing on this mountain or any other. A path, as wide as the tree, wound up from the roots to the top of the mountain. The ash cleared ground like a bulldozer and the other trees parted like the Red Sea.
This story confirmed Pawpaw’s senility. We needed to humor him until he started snoring.
“Great-Pawpaw considered the ash tree and he turned to us. He still held the resinous ax in his hand. His fingers loosened around the handle and the ax fell to the ground. Thornbushes and ivy crawled up through the fallen leaves from the dirt. They constricted around the ax and pulled it along the forest floor towards the devilish ash until it disappeared beneath the brush and into the ground.
“Two knots stared out of the bark like big, bulbous eyes. Between them, a nose of a branch jutted out of the tree. Below the nose, the bark made a forlorn frown. Sap oozed out of the bulbous looking eyes. Great-Pawpaw used to say, “slow as molasses,” but the sap ran down the bark like streams of water, like tears.
“Wind whipped across the mountain and through the pines. The howling sound still haunts me to this day. A voice formed as the wind blew through the trees. Words pushed up through the ground, they rose from below, and echoed in our minds at the same time. The Ash tree said three words: ‘Blood for Sap.’
“We came back down the mountain. Great-Pawpaw wouldn’t speak to us. We came into the house and found Great-Mawmaw in the kitchen cooking up the same meal we had tonight, cornbread and beans.
“During wintertime up on the mountain, the sun disappears over the ridge fast. We didn’t have any electric lighting.
“Four of us sat down at the table to eat. Great-Mawmaw asked if Callum or me had seen Emmy Lou. Not looking to dig ourselves into a deeper ditch, we told her we gave the ribbon to Emmy Lou earlier. She hadn’t been around since. Great-Pawpaw stood from the table in a hurry and his chair fell to the ground. He snatched the oil lamp from the center of the table and the old double-barrel hanging over the doorway.
“We followed him up the mountain. He headed straight for the clearing we had made, for the evil ash tree.
“We were too late. The ash tree had disappeared. Only the trail to the ridge of the mountain remained. It was the trail the ash came from.
“I found Emmy Lou’s ribbon on the ground rustling in the slight breeze. I tied it around a branch of a sapling nearby.”
Pawpaw took the glasses off his face with a shaky, arthritic hand, and wiped away the only tear he ever cried in my life. He put the glasses back on. The rest of the family stayed silent. He never talked this much.
“Well, I’m done for, I’m afraid. I’m too old to stay up late blabbering tales. Promise me. Promise you won’t cut down any trees growing on this mountain. No one else can cut down anything on this mountain either. If builders were to try and buy this land and put a housing development here…I’m scared to think what might happen.”
We slid and scooched out of the way and mumbled our goodnights. He disappeared through the dining hall and slid between boxes of junk in the living room. A door closed in the back corner of the house.
My brother and I made eye contact. Holding his gaze, I tried hard not to laugh at the sheer incredulity in his eyes. The corners of our mouths turned up. Mom and Dad wore more serious expressions.
“Honey, did you ever know your Aunt Emmy Lou?” my dad asked.
“No. She died when Dad and Callum were still children. She’s buried beside Great-Pawpaw and Great-Mawmaw up at the church.” she said.
“Mom, you haven’t heard this story before?” my brother asked.
“Not in my life, I swanny.”
“We’ve never cut anything down here? There’s no way he’s serious. The porch, the storehouse, they’re stocked full of chopped wood.” I said.
“Where does he get the wood? We move wheelbarrow loads from one pile to the porch. Who’s stocking the storehouse?” my brother asked.
“Wait, Mom, you don’t think–”
“I don’t know boys, he’s gotten old. He lives up here alone. He reads a lot. And you have to remember folks tended to be more superstitious. Losing family is hard, and losing someone young is harder still. We tell ourselves stories to make sense of life and death. The stories become more important than the facts. Besides, we won’t have any cause to cut down any trees here anyway.”
“You’re saying Pawpaw and Uncle Callum disobeyed. Later, their younger sister disappeared into the forest, and they blamed themselves, right?” I said.
“What about the housing developments. You mean we won’t be able to sell the land?” my brother asked.
“I’m not sure if we could. The Tree Farm tax classification…I think prohibits selling, the only thing we can do is pass the land down.” Mom said.
Everyone helped clean up the kitchen, put away the food, and wash the dishes. We sat in the living room for a couple of hours watching television, reading, idling away. Later the grandfather clock rang ten times and we packed up and prepared for bed. My parents retired to the one other bedroom. I took the cot in the back. My brother slept on the couch.
I woke before sunrise. Darkness lingered in the house. A rustling came from the kitchen. I figured Mom got up to use the bathroom. I rolled towards the wall and buried my face under a pillow. A hand shook my shoulder.
“Come on Honey, you need to wake up.”
I rolled towards my mom’s voice and pulled the pillow from my face.
“Mom? What’s wrong?”
“Your Pawpaw and brother are in the living room. Pawpaw says we have to go up the mountain.”
“What about Dad?”
“The land is not his. This land is our land. He’s not one of us. He’s not blood.”
My mom didn’t talk about blood or possessions. She sounded like she was repeating one of Pawpaw’s phrases by rote. I got up, layered as much as I could against the impending mountain cold. I pulled on my boots and met them in the living room. No one spoke. Pawpaw grunted and gestured for us to follow him and he headed outside. A little frost glittered in his beard.
The dark mountain was cold and the same path he and Callum trod those seventy years ago unfurled before us. The mountain stayed the same, never changed, at least not in human years.
We came to the spot. For the first time, the five younger trees stood out to me. These appeared much younger and thinner than the ancient barrel-wide trees around them. A worn, frayed, girl’s ribbon tied around one of the branches rustled in the wind. From the grove of younger trees, a path still shot up the mountain, but now growths dotted the way.
“You didn’t believe me did you’ns?”
“Of course, we did, Dad.”
The wind whistled through the pines. I turned my gaze up the path and I swore the earth tremored under my feet. The voice came up through the ground and into our minds: “Blood for sap.”
A felled fir lay at Pawpaw’s feet. I pointed to it, mute. My brother and mom turned to follow my finger to the fallen tree.
“Dad, what did you do?”
“You don’t need to believe me now. It’ll be your story to tell.”
The sticky ax lay nearby. I ran and picked it up. As I stood with the ax in my hands, I turned and the great white ash tree from the story towered before us.
The ash tree bent down. Limbs groaned and scooped up my Pawpaw with an alien sound. The tree moved like the dull version of a fork scratching against a porcelain plate. I raised the ax to cut him down. I stared down the tree and the tree stared back with a face made up of two knots, a crooked branch for a nose, and a hideous frown of bark. The eyes cried tears of sap.
I threw the ax down. Ivy and thorns sprung up around the handle and drew it into the earth. The great white Ash enveloped Pawpaw in an arboreal crucifixion and started to slink back up the trail. My mom cried and stretched out with her hand and Pawpaw extended his towards her. Their fingers made contact for a second before the tree took him away.
We tried to follow, but each of us tripped over thickets of roots and branches. I fell and landed prone, my face in the dirt. A stray beam of moonlight glimmered from Pawpaw’s glasses. I picked them and myself up. I hung them on the tree, next to Emmy Lou’s ribbon.
End.
Bennette Harding is a writer of short fiction, currently living in Durham, North Carolina. He is a lover of both classic and modern weird fiction. This story is his first in Cosmic Horror Monthly as well as his publishing debut.
