His Rose

“Well, that’s all of it.”

Rose came out of the little cabin, smiling widely. “Thanks, uncle,” she said, wrapping her arms around the portly, balding man in a hug. “It was really nice of you to help me move.”

The man chuckled, slamming the tailgate of his hatchback sedan closed. “Of course, my pleasure.”

There was silence for a few moments as both of them looked around the large clearing where the cabin stood. It was covered in short grass, and the trees surrounding it cast enough shade to cool off the otherwise steamy June day. There was a small footpath leading toward the lake, opposite the opening in the trees that was the only road to and from the cabin.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” the man asked.

Rose chuckled. “You’ve been asking that since day one. It’s the last summer I’ll have before I have to go out into the world and get a real job. I want to spend it out here.”

Her uncle looked around again. “But all alone, hours from help, with no car, in the middle of the woods?”

“I’ll be fine, uncle,” she replied, smiling up at him. “Plus that guy from the grocery store will be out here every other week to check on me and bring me food.”

“Alright. But please be careful, Rose,” her uncle warned, giving her a final hug before climbing in the car. “There’s a lot of crazy people who like to live in the woods.”

Rose said nothing, just smiled as her uncle drove off down the road.


-----


In the cellar that was his home, under the cabin where he once lived, Jason slept. As always when he slept, he did not dream - there was nothing for him to dream about.

A string laden with bells and pieces of rusted metal jangled, and Jason leapt to his feet, as awake and alert as if he had never been asleep. He looked up at the ceiling, catching the sight of the bells still swinging from the string - one of many laced across his ceiling.

This particular string, he knew, led to a wire stretched across an old bridge not too far away. It wasn’t technically in what he considered his ‘territory’, but it was near enough that he kept an eye on it.

A voice rose in his mind - one he knew well. It was his mother’s voice, as real to him as if she whispered in his ear.

“Jason, there are bad people in the forest. Kill them, Jason. Do it for mommy.”

He grabbed his machete from where it lay on the table, shoving it into a sheath strapped to his thigh. He adjusted the hockey mask over his face minutely, making sure it covered his entire face. Before the bells had stopped swinging, he was gone.

It took him only twenty minutes to reach the old road from his cellar, moving at a fast trot through the woods. Despite the coating of old leaves on the forest floor, he moved quietly.

He paused a few yards back from the tree line, where the foliage still hid him from view. Narrowing his eyes, he observed the packed dirt of the road. There were fresh tire tracks there, two sets. Edging closer silently, he examined the tracks a moment more. In his mind, his mother’s whispers began to fade, as he realized that whoever had come into his forest to make these tracks had already left.

His gaze traced the tire marks up the road. Whoever it was, they had to have been there for a reason. Jason gripped the handle of his machete and pulled it out of the sheath in one smooth motion.

Sticking to the trees, he moved parallel to the road, following it back towards the lake. The walk was short. Ten minutes later, he reached the edge of a clearing in the trees. There was a small, single-story cabin in the middle, with Jason facing the back wall. This area of the forest wasn’t part of the area he thought of as his, but it was very close. He crouched next to a large tree to watch.

A door slammed on the opposite side, and he heard the sound of someone walking around on old, squeaky boards - probably some sort of porch. The door slammed again, and Jason walked around the edge of the clearing, shifting his position for a better look.

He stopped once he could see the front of the building. There was a porch, and there were a few boxes stacked up next to the door, with more on the ground nearby. They all had writing on the side.

The door swung open, and Jason tightened his grip on the machete, bracing himself for the whispers of his mother’s voice inside his head.

There was silence. He watched the girl that walked out of the cabin carefully, as if by closer inspection he could force his mother’s voice to come, but there was nothing. He was left to watch the girl in stunned silence. Never, never before had his mother failed to speak when there was someone near or in his forest. What was wrong?

The girl was smiling. She shaded her eyes and looked up at the sky for a moment, the light catching in her bright yellow hair. She was smaller than some girls Jason had killed before, he could tell that even from a distance. But her clothes were more modest - none of the small scraps of cloth that made his mother’s voice wild with anger. Was that the difference?

The girl bent over, lifting a box of the ground with a little grunt. Balancing it on one hip, she opened the door and maneuvered inside.

When she was out of sight, Jason’s gaze fell to the ground. He was confused, unsure what to do without his mother’s voice in his head. He stabbed his machete into the ground violently. If his mother would not tell him what to do now, perhaps he ought to wait. Surely, if he watched the yellow-haired girl long enough, his mother’s voice would come back and tell him what to do.

It had to.