Chapter 30 - The Man of Wind and Moss

In the middle of the night, something burned. It started as a discomfort, and Marco tossed and turned, but it kept coming like a sort of static shock or like a hot piece of metal tapping on his chest.

The amulet.

Marco pulled off the blankets and sat up straight. Sasha was groggy. He could see her in the pink-yellow light from the vegvísir. The amulet was working again or trying to. It felt like it was short-circuiting. It flickered and died and came back bright and died again. It looked like it was struggling. Struggling to warn him about something.

Sasha finally sat up. The pink-yellow throb stuttered and started until it shined and burned so hot that Marco pulled it off his chest. He held it away and clutched the red part of his skin. The vegvísir swung in the dark like a bright pendulum and on its far swing it revealed the cause for alarm.

Dean was in the room.

Sasha screamed.

Marco’s stomach dropped. It was happening faster than he was ready for. Dean was impossible to make out, but the vegvísir illuminated just enough. Yes, he had omissions. His eyes were gone, his lips were gone, and his left arm was hacked off at the elbow. What was happening on Marco’s inside, was taking place on Dean’s outside. He was half forest. The pieces he lacked were either cut off or replaced with flora. Because Erether’s plan got chopped and screwed, the Grafting divided for both of them. Until one or the other fell.

The amulet swung towards Dean again, and the light illuminated the weapon in his hand. Marco recognized the gun immediately. How funny. Dean raised the black revolver and fired and both Marco and Sasha scrambled to either side and the bullet hit the vegvísir, and it was like shooting out a spotlight only this one exploded in a bright blue strobe.

“Run!” Marco yelled. He jolted forward out of bed and was able to tackle Dean to the ground. His ears were ringing and the room smelled like smoke, and it felt like they were wrestling in hell, all black with rancid air and the writhing body of his mutilated friend. But his friend could see and hear in a way Marco couldn’t, and Marco knew he’d be beat if he didn’t change scenery, so when Sasha bolted out of the bedroom, Marco was quick to follow her.

The two spun out into the second-floor corridor. The cabin was dimly lit. Full moonlight came from the large windows that overlooked the living room. Marco’s vision had floaters from the amulet and the flash of the gun barrel and his ears were still ringing.

“What do we do?” Sasha cried. “I’m not ready. I’m not ready!” She had been able to grab the knife from the nightstand when she scampered out of bed. Now she held it, trembling.

Dean emerged from the bedroom and entered the hallway. Marco pulled Sasha behind him. From the rustic sconces of the cabin, all turned to a low amber, Marco was able to see Dean a little clearer. The stump of Dean’s left arm hung down in fleshy vines and bloody thorns. He tasted the air with his tongue. His lips were carved off, revealing his gums and what teeth were left. His nose was cut off too, showing black apple seeds in the middle of his face.

“I know how it looks,” he growled. He sounded congested, and without his lips, the annunciation of his words pooled at his mouth and garbled out and fell over his chin with drool. “But once I get you, this will go back to normal.”

Normal.

Let your spit collect in your mouth and try to say it without using your lips.

Norl . . . Norl . . .

“There’s no going back, man. Look at you. It’s impossible,” Marco said. And what a stupid thing to say really. Impossible? Impossible??

“It happened before,” Dean corrected. “Leafy greens keeps me leans.”

Dean raised the gun again and in a split moment Marco realized that while Dean could technically see, he could hardly aim. He was using all of his senses to paint a picture of where, approximately, to shoot at. In the second before he fired, Marco pushed Sasha to the floor and pivoted to the side, butting against the banister. The bullet hit the far wall and the mirror at the end shattered. Before he could re-aim, Marco lunged forward and gripped Dean’s wrist, holding it low, but even now, in his condition, he was stronger than Marco. Below them was a drop to the hard floor of the living room. It was about twelve feet down.

“You two left me out there,” Dean hissed, struggling to raise the gun. His breath smelled like rot and spittle sprayed over his naked teeth. “You left me high and dry.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Marco said, straining. “We got lost, man. He tricked us! He messed us up on purpose!”

“Really? Is that right?” Dean pressed his dirty forehead into Marco’s. His viny arm started to move and feel for the cut on Marco’s wrist. It was trying to get under the bandage. But Marco couldn’t pull his hands off the gun. “From what can I see, you two aren’t lost at all. You’re up here playing house.”

Marco knew he was too close to Dean’s face, but he never thought of Dean as a biter. That said, Marco had come to learn a lot of things about his friends since all this started, and when Dean sunk his dirty teeth into Marco’s cheek, he couldn’t help but remember that time they played spin the bottle. Same stubbly beard. Same cheesy breath. Only this time way more painful and with a lot more blood.

Marco screamed in agony and another scream joined him. Sasha’s. She charged them with the knife and plunged it into Dean’s back. Dean jerked backwards in pain, but his teeth were still firmly clamped on Marco’s face and when he did so, Marco could see out of the side of his eyes his own cheek depart from the rest of him.

Blood splattered.

Reflexively, Marco released Dean’s wrist and brought his hands to his face.

Then Dean raised the gun.

And fired it at Sasha.

At this point, since their first cabin excursion a year ago, Marco had heard a variety of different screams. There was the initial one, the scream of surprise, when that arrow first went through Doll’s leg. There was the scream of agony when they pulled that same arrow out of Doll’s leg. There was the scream of a near-miss when Erether tried to yank Sasha through the woods. Then there was the scream of struggle, the scream of scramble, the scream of loss, anger, frustration, heartache, etc. And then finally, a new one came through. The scream of ventilation. Because Dean had blown a hole through Sasha’s stomach.

“No!!!”

Sasha fell back against a side table and the blood was immediate. The knife still stuck out of Dean’s back and with Dean facing Sasha, the handle of the knife presented itself clearly. Marco grabbed the knife, grabbed Dean, and pulled him up and over the balcony to the living room below.

They fell twelve feet.

Marco landed on his back and his head clapped against the wood. Bells rang. His vision swam. Up to this point, Marco was starting to worry that Dean was unkillable, but the grunt he made when he landed on the floor was unmistakable. Something broke. Then it occurred to Marco, they both had to be killable. Erether was counting on it.

For one or two seconds, Marco and Dean were next to each other on the hardwood floor. The knife in his back was now on the ground. Within reach. The gun had spun away. Dean grunted, taking deep breaths. If there was a time to stab Dean, this was it. Marco grabbed the kitchen knife and brought his arm back. More memories of him and Dean flashed before his eyes. He hated it. It wasn’t fair. He hadn’t liked Dean for the last years of them knowing each other, hell, he probably stopped liking Dean the week after they met when the glitz and glamour of a new friendship was shaken off and a toxic, weekly hangout reared its head. Friendship through obligation. Through proximity. A friendship of spite and macho one-upmanship. It wasn’t fair that his brain was pulling up all the stock images of their past: a keg stand at Doll’s twentieth, a speeding ticket on the way to Gainesville, the morning after Dean’s first fight with Pansy when Dean put his hand on Marco’s shoulder and squeezed it, not saying anything, just looking at him, feeling bad for him. And what about what Sasha said? They could’ve been happy if it wasn’t for his petty feud with Dean. They could’ve been happy if he didn’t devote his twenties to just trying to beat him. And now here they were, years passing by in milli­seconds, the span of their history extending from the point of Marco’s blade to the side of Dean’s ribs, closing quickly as Marco plunged the knife forward.

The knife went down to the handle and Dean screamed. It was the scream of hate. With his one hand, he gripped Marco’s wrist and turned to face him. The pits where his eyes should be pinched at Marco’s brain. Dean bared his lipless teeth, and his gums looked swollen and dry. His teeth, the ones left, looked like crusty tombstones, now caked red with Marco’s own blood and skin. Dean pressed his thumb into Marco’s wrist and cranked it. Marco yelped and released the blade now sticking out of Dean’s side.

“And to think, we used to be boys,” Dean grinned. He pulled the knife out of his own side and a spray of blood shot out like he was uncorked. “I know we had a bit of a love triangle going on, but I didn’t think it was all that bad.”

He dropped the knife onto the wood floor, and he raised his hand into his own pouring blood and he flexed his palm in it, like he was divining some truth, learning the secrets of his own life force. “Guess everyone was right about me,” he mumbled. “Pansy was the only one that thought I could be better. But everyone else was right.”

He was trying to talk without lips. He couldn’t even say her name. It came out like Ansy.

Marco stood up and backed away. Dean stayed on the ground, kneeling. He looked up at Marco. His skull was shrink-wrapped in dirt. On top of it was shaggy, musty hair full of fleas and lice. The stump of his arm gestured when he spoke. The knob of his humerus, no longer white, but dusty and chipped, shifted in and out of the Virgina creeper that wrapped his bone and mopped his blood. “You got nothing, man,” Dean said. He was pleading now. “We can’t be crabs in a bucket. You got nothing and I got something. It’s only right if you help a guy out.”

“I have a life too,” Marco stammered. The pain in his cheek was all-consuming. He touched at it but quickly flinched and pulled his fingers away, red and wet. Excited by the forest growing out of his friend, Marco’s stomach and intestines roiled, like they were trying to commune with kin. “I want my life back too.”

Marco backed away further. With the knife still on the floor, inches from Dean, he wasn’t sure how to move. He stepped back again, and his foot touched the gun. He remembered when Dean first showed it to him in the backpack. He remembered joking about trick shots. He remembered when Dean ruined the hot tub. But, mostly, he remembered how he was so sure he was never going to use it. Welp.

“You’re not going to make a move on her, right?” Dean asked.

Marco scoffed.

“Because I told you already,” Dean said, picking up the kitchen knife. “You need to know your place.”

Dean stood up and raced at Marco, and Marco dropped to the ground and grabbed the gun.

BANG!

The bullet knocked Dean off his feet. The knife dropped out of his hand and clattered along the floor. Quickly, Marco stood over Dean and raised the gun again. “It was never about her you stupid asshole!” Marco yelled. It was never about her. It was never about her! He’s always wanted to defeat Dean. It’s always been about this macho masculine rivalry. This bizarre, psychosexual cuckhold game. Maybe Marco was killing his dad, killing Monchito, killing some sort of intimidating authority, some sort of alpha-male presence, maybe he was killing a white guy who fucked white girls, but NO—NO—that was too easy. He was killing his friend. That’s what he was doing. He couldn’t deny it. He couldn’t analyze it away. He hated his friend. He hated spending time with this guy, losing years next to this guy, comparing himself, navigating his moods, his feelings, swimming in the wake of whatever he spat out, it was his friend! It was his friend who was flawed yet everyone stayed with! Flawed! Yet loved! Must be nice! And Marco was finally trouncing him! Yes! Now finish him off right here!! Point it at his head! The coup de grâce!!!

“Wait!”

It was Sasha. “Stop!” she groaned. She was coming down the stairs. One hand was clutching her stomach, and the other was holding Zaäper, now red with her own blood, dripping with it. She was pale and sweaty and trembling. “We have to do it outside.”

Dean twitched on the ground. His chest was lunch meat but he was still alive. His tongue was out licking mindlessly at the air around him.

Marco looked back at Sasha, bleeding bad. The banister of the stairs was bright red from her descent down.

“We need to get you help,” Marco said.

“I’m good,” she growled. “Let’s just finish this.”

Marco wasn’t convinced but there was no use in arguing. Not at this frenzied moment where “getting help” was an abstract. Sasha wanted action. Marco too. He looked down at Dean, still twitching on the floor, and grabbed him by the collar and dragged him outside.

It was a full moon, and the night was clear, but everything looked threatening. For a year now, Marco had the ever-present paranoia that he was being watched, but now he was certain of it. Yellow eyes. A dark, black figure in the negative space of the forest. He could almost hear long arms gather trees. Come one, come all. Come see Dean turn to mulch.

A patch of moonlight set the stage, and Marco threw his friend onto the ground.

Sasha shambled down the steps to Marco and fell to her knees. “Can you do this?” Marco cried. “Are you okay?”

“Let’s just hurry,” she groaned. She placed Zaäper on the ground before her and flipped through bloody, soaked pages. She was turning gray on the spot.

“You can do this!” Marco shouted. His eyes bounced to the woods and to Dean, still twitching, still lapping, maybe getting his strength back.

When she found the page, she traced her finger along some text. The sigil was an illustration, zigzags and complex shapes, and the page wrinkled with blood. “Unto Kays and Zaiden, come forth, Erether the second council, Erether the prince of Nowhere, the son of Zuan, the pariah pioneer. Black stars, black arms, and the planet away. The price is paid, and we are found, this is the place of transaction!” she finally yelled.

Something roared in the woods. Something old and awful.

Marco pointed the gun at Dean’s face and ran through the outcomes. If Dean wins, then what? His eyeballs come back? His arm comes back? He goes back to Pansy and helps her grieve their baby? And then he has another kid and they have a happy family and they become rich and get a big house and they never need anything ever again? And he wins and wins and keeps winning, yeah, fuck that and fuck him. Marco has spent way too long trying to prove that his company, that his love, was worth a damn. It was time for him to win.

“Please,” Dean stammered. “I just miss her.”

“Come on! Come and get him!”

“This is the place of transaction!”

“Come on! Do it!”

“Can I do it? Is he here?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know.”

“Just fucking do it! Let’s fucking GOOOOOOOO!”

That last one was Dean. And Marco shot him through the head.

The night went silent.

“Holy shit.”

Then there was a clap of thunder.

“Holy shit.”

Then, inexplicably, Dean’s eyes came back.

“What the fuck?”

The dirt pushed out of his empty sockets and the juice and putty of his eyeballs filled the void. It happened in seconds. He blinked, just as dumbfounded as Marco.

“What’s happening?” Marco asked. He shot a quick look at Sasha, hoping for reassurance, but she was laying on the dirt. She was losing too much blood. She tried to flip through pages but was weak, dragging her hands over red paper.

No, no, no, this is all wrong.

Then Dean’s arm came back. Like tendrils extending from his stump, the vines wrapped and pulsed, and the bones and meat and capillaries reached forward and rebuilt themselves. Dean flexed his wrist and moved his hands. The skin on his face returned, and he grinned.

“I knew he wouldn’t let me down,” Dean said.

“No, no, no, I got you!” Marco yelled. He stumbled back.

This magnificent, hellish magic was happening so fast. A gust of wind came. The woods straightened and then bent down to watch. More thunder. Lightning shot across the sky and in the flash of it, Marco saw Erether approach.

With arms out and head wobbling, He was coming for Dean from behind. He was toying with him. He was making him whole again just to rip him apart. Marco’s face blanched. He suddenly felt bad. The Grafting was happening. This was going to be way worse than the goats. But it made sense. Dean was a fit, healthy man. Erether wanted to repair him in all his glory, to display him to the rest of the woods, like showing off a prize.

Dean grinned wide. He took another step, but something snagged him.

“And just so you know,” Marco said, bracing himself, “it was always fuck Dean.”

From Dean’s cuticle, a ribbon of skin pulled backwards up his arm and stretched itself to a branch. Dean gasped. It left behind a perfect, bloody racing stripe. Dean tried to reach his other hand across, but something grabbed that too. From the center of that palm, a hole formed, and a series of twigs and leaves pushed through, widening his hand until his fingers spread and the whole thing bisected downwards, shoots of twigs and roots coming out, reaching for the woods.

“No, no, no,” Dean stammered. Then he choked and gagged, and a wet field mouse crawled out of his mouth. Then another. He struggled forward but a sharp branch shot upward through his foot. Vines and flowers and roots reached from the darkest corners of the night and grabbed their fill of Dean and something from inside of Dean reached out to accommodate them.

Lightning flashed again and Erether stood behind Dean, orchestrating it all. His bright yellow eyes. His old, saggy skin. He looked like an old man covered in mud. An old, short man with a long, pointy head and with long arms covered in thick black mud. He was beckoning something to emerge.

Dean screamed. Blood rushed out of his nose and his eyes. Something bulged from the crown of his head. It was a tree. Christ on a crutch. It was a tree. Dean’s face grew swollen and round. His big smile, freshly repaired, stretched outwards. The tree was pushing his teeth out. His face started to compress at the surface like his skull was getting too big for the skin around it. His jawbone broke and shifted awkwardly, pulling the flesh around his smile. His beautiful brown eyes, fresh eyes, new eyes, oh absolute hell, a branch shot out of the left one. He screamed more and started convulsing. His head cracked open more and dark, bloody wood reached up faster and faster.

Dean started to lift from the ground, but his right foot was still fastened. The tree started from the core of him. It was growing up and out but also had to extend down to place roots. The crotch of his jeans darkened red with blood. Something started to bulge and build up behind the denim. When the fabric finally ripped, a series of roots and vines shot from his asshole to the dirt. His rectum prolapsed and his intestines shot out pink and shiny and taut like the ropes of a circus tent.

The tree was coming out.

From his distorted face, he somehow leveled a gaze at Marco. And with a crooked, mangled hand, he was able to reach forward just enough to grab Marco’s throat.

Marco screamed something strangled. The tree grew taller, and Marco’s feet left the ground. He was choking. Dean’s grip was crushing. It didn’t have that soft soil give that Doll’s arm had back in the greenhouse. Dean was trying to break bone. Marco tried to leverage himself on the arm—try to pull himself up and take the weight off his neck—but he was flailing. Leaves and vines reached from Dean’s arm into Marco’s wrist and into the open wound on Marco’s cheek, invading, so frenzied for blood it didn’t know where Dean stopped and Marco began. It could sense he was part of the debt. Erether was pissed, wanted both of them, Fuck you boys for making me wait.

Marco was high in the air now, kicking.

“I can see from the trees,” Dean said, almost euphoric. His skin was shredded along the length of the tree. His capillary system, his arteries, his organs, all spread out like a galaxy along branches. “I can see from the wind and the grass and water of Tethet. Praise Azoth. Praise Zaah. I can see your big brother. What a fucking bum.”

“Just die already,” Marco choked out. He was high in the air. The wind was howling.

“Take a look for yourself,” Dean said.

The vines from Dean’s hand reached into Marco’s cheek, digging for his eyes. He felt that familiar ice pick of horror again and knew that if he let the Dean Tree show him sights, he’d never move on from this. He pulled away, fighting like hell to break from the branch that held him in the air. Green sprouts invaded the cut on his wrist and hot static raced along his nerve endings. Little roots pulled at his face and snipped at the skin of eyes. As he struggled, he saw below. Erether was approaching Sasha. He was getting closer. He was coming for them all—the cheater!

“Sasha!!” Marco choked out, before vines climbed into his mouth. “Leave her alone!!” He gagged.

On the ground, Sasha wasn’t moving. She was hunched in such a way that she was covering the book, curled around it like a cat. Erether was getting closer.

“Leave her alone,” Marco said again, now a plea. He punched at Dean’s wooden arm and clawed at the roots getting under his skin. He could feel them latching onto his bones, displacing his muscle. The old Earth’s perspective stabbed into his vision. The ancient evil of it all, eons and eons, seen from all over the planet, overwhelming, black void, displacing memories, gobbling up all mental capacities, a planet banished to isolation in the vast stars, growing weeds for company, its own hell in its bowels, now Marco’s memory too—AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

“If I can’t have Pansy, you can’t have her,” Dean cackled. The tree was still growing, and its ascent disrupted the symmetry of Dean’s face so much that his mouth shot up at a diagonal. The crown of his head resembled the crown of a pineapple. The torn edges of his scalp flapped wildly around the perimeter of the growing tree.

Marco looked down one more time, hoping for a miracle. His vision was double exposure, soon to eclipse. Let there be something else. They can’t lose to Erether. To Dean. It was too unfair. And yes, nothing had been fair from the very start, but this was just cruel. “Sasha.”

Erether was feet away. He licked his lips and reached for her.

And then a miracle happened. Sasha, with her last bit of strength, turned onto her back. She had Zaäper opened to a new page. A page still white. A page where she drew a brand-new sigil with her own bright blood. “You ask for too much!!”

Dean and Erether laughed in unison. It was the same laugh with the same voice. Dean’s eyes shot down to the scene below. Marco’s too.

“You’re taking too much! And Azoth rebukes you!!”

Thunder clapped loudly, and the white page of Zaäper grew bright.

“I know the rules, you greedy bitch. I’ve read them top to bottom. Azoth rebukes you! The Fossil King rebukes you! The Countess of Calamity rebukes you!! And I, Sasha Heckler, Witch of Tethet, spill my blood to seal this deal—our business is done!”

And with that, the page blew out in a static of white, and a bolt of lightning struck the Dean Tree. There was a series of screams all at once. Erether’s was the loudest. And Marco fell all the way down to the dirt floor and landed on his head.

* * *

He woke with blood in his eyes, and he sat up fast and pulled at his cheek and neck but there weren’t any roots. The blood was coming from his forehead. He had cracked it something bad. Above him the Dean Tree stood like a crooked monstrosity. It was taller than the trees around it and Marco squinted through his bloody eyes and thought he could see Dean’s clothing billowing at the very top like an evil flag. He swiveled around. Erether was gone. The trees were no longer watching. And Sasha wasn’t moving.

When he crawled over to her, the scene was dire. Zaäper was next to her, soggy with blood. He touched at her neck and found a pulse, but only barely, and her eyes fluttered in and out. The wound in her stomach had collected dirt and leaves, and when Marco first looked at it, he panicked, thinking that it was happening to her too, but when he realized it was just dirt, he smiled.

Briefly, though.

“Everything went white,” she mumbled. “What happened?”

He didn’t know what to say other than the obvious. “You saved me. You did it.”

She gave a weak thumbs-up. She was fading right before his eyes. She had lost too much blood. And the energy she spent for that spell was impossible. She was dying, and he was crumbling.

“Hey, look at me. Don’t go. Sasha. Please.”

“We did good . . .” she said, closing her eyes.

“Hey, hey. We can make another deal. It’s not too late. There might be something else.” He reached to open Zaäper, but she stopped him with a weak grip. Her hand was pale and clammy.

She shook her head. “No more deals.”

“But I need you,” Marco said. “I need you. I love you. Come on. We can do this.” Tears stung his eyes, and he wiped at them. “Jesus Christ, I can’t lose you, Sasha. You’re it. You’re the only one. There will be nobody left.”

“I told you I’m a good witch,” Sasha said.

Marco’s soul broke into pieces. “That’s not funny, come on. Sasha. Please.”

She tried to say something, but he couldn’t hear it. He grabbed her skinny shoulders and pulled her up and hugged her close. She was cold. Even the blood pouring out of her seemed chilled.

“I wasted my whole life not knowing it was you. But now I know. Baby. Sasha. Look at me. I can’t lose that. I can’t lose that. It was never the Man of Wind and Moss. It was you. You found me. You understand? You found me. C’mon. Sasha. Baby.”

He kissed her head and her cheek and her face and he started crying harder.

“Please, God. Someone help.”

When she closed her eyes, Marco knew that was it. He held her close and stifled a scream, but when she finally exhaled, and sagged, yes, sagged in his grip, he let his scream blossom.

* * *

He ended up burying her in the front yard right where it happened. He didn’t use any magic but instead picked wildflowers from the nearby area. All of his brushing up on Adirondack flora finally paid off as he replanted them in her grave the best he could. Starflower, shinleaf, yellow trout lily (unavoidable and gorgeous). Wild sarsaparilla was one of Marco’s favorites. It was not particularly striking, but he liked how it resembled frozen fireworks or tiny pom-poms, a shy celebration just for her. And when he finally put them in the soil, the flowers moved quickly and the roots dug deep, eager to greet her corpse like they had already heard so much.