THE BRAMBLE-CROWNED CHILD

WRITTEN AND OWNED BY KRISTEN REID

TRIGGER WARNINGS: DEATH, VIOLENCE, MILD GORE, FRIGHTENING IMAGERY

Religion likes its metaphors of flesh and blood. We eat of Christ’s flesh and drink of his blood for eternal peace and life. I have now found myself indoctrinated into a new religion that borrows those assurances from a savior I once knew as my own but who surely no longer knows me.

This new religion was kind of like the old. They were both forced into my being from birth in a shoddy cabin to rebirth in a new land of wild, uncharted freedom. I like to think that crossing the border of Black Rock into the West was a sort of rebirth. Perhaps what awaited us Americans there was heaven, a promised land. I guess one would have to be reborn in some way to reap gifts from a holy place that holds promises described in newspapers and spoken from the mouths of strangers who claim to one day venture out there but never do. I always wondered why they never do, and we did.

What sent us packing a wagon and learning to shoot cans off the split rail fence? What made us think that we would make it when so many others became corpses lost to the yellow grass of the prairie, littered with soiled arrows, or feeding the fish of an angry river, their wagon and supplies eternally crushing them to the slippery rocks—like waypoints of warning for future travelers to mark as an unfortunate mistake and correct it for themselves.

We were not without mistakes. But we never corrected them. Were we like those fleshless bodies baking in the sun as we sat there at the table, already dead in some way, ghosts more than people? Or were we reborn into this new land, alive and allowed to live as we saw fit? After all, how do we know heaven isn’t out West, and we’re all fools for following stories telling us how to spend our counted days? It’s not like any of us have seen it any more than we have seen heaven.

Though I am a pessimist in thought, always attempting to sound educated like scholarly men in cities, I am a woman of no means, no money, no husband, and no education aside from the alphabet and the Bible, traveling with my uncle whom I feel might have been the cause for the small circular burn marks on my arms I’ve had since an early age after Daddy died, but I can’t quite conjure up the memories to prove it, and my young, blind cousin, Daniel... at least I think he’s blind on account of how he looks in odd directions when people speak to him. I stopped living with my uncle by the time Daniel was born and hadn’t seen or heard from him since until I had received a letter from him a couple of months ago imploring me to settle with them out West since the land was free and Daniel needed a caretaker now that the elderly lady who had been his teacher and aid was dead. Having no purpose or hope for my life in its current state, I immediately fancied finding a new one, a new purpose, a new family, just anything new—a fresh start like so many of us in the East clamored for. So, I did what little I could in the months leading up to our departure to pack a portion of my life onto a wagon and prepare myself for a journey that might not be as easy for us as we hoped it would be.

Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I found myself sitting in a cabin outpost along the Oregon Trail leading out of Black Rock, finding myself as a devout follower of the word from some unseen force again just because I had no choice but to do so... and because we were all out of food.

“We thank you, oh Providers, for this bountiful offering you have brought to our doors.”

I stared at the elderly woman before us, noting the odd crown of brambles adoring her thinning, grey head. My uncle spoke with her about our plight, having traveled so far along the trail already in need of rest and supplies. He had torn through the provisions within a few days on his own, despite the knowledge that it was all we had on us. As they spoke, I watched the woman’s thin lips peel back in a smile that revealed yellowed teeth, some missing. She had slashes across her cheek as if some animal had scratched her withered face with its claws, and her nails were caked with what looked like clay. My gaze slid from her to the large man at her side, his dark, emotionless eyes holding mine as we dared the other to look away, but neither of us consented. He was built as if he fell trees all day, a bald head to reflect the scalding sun above, and what was left of the hair on his body was a thin mustache the color of un-churned buttermilk.

“Hello,” a little voice cracked its way out of the doorframe, and my eyes jumped from the man to the small person at his thigh. The boy stepped out around the man and gave a too-large grin to my cousin, who looked like he had heard the voice of a ghost the way he snapped to attention. “Aren’t you gonna say it back?”

“Hi,” Daniel offered quietly, clutching my hand in his. I disregarded the boy and looked back over at the woman and her strange crown.

“Well, no need to worry anymore. We welcome you to our place of feeding.”

Odd lady. Odd man. Odd boy.

“Come in, please,” she said with a smile as she held out her hands toward the cabin door. The man had to move aside to let us in, but he didn’t miss the opportunity to focus those dark eyes at each of our heads as we entered.

It was a small cabin, only containing a wood stove, a sheet to separate the beds from the front of the cabin, and a large table with dozens of chairs scattered around it. A lone candle surrounded by brambles like the old woman’s crown was atop the table. As I turned my eyes to the window, looking out across the barren landscape, I caught sight of a shadow dancing along with the laundry drying on a wire, but as the wind took hold of a sheet, I realized it was a trick of the eye.

“Sit down, sit down,” the woman said, dancing around us to hold out each of our chairs for us. My uncle smiled at the woman and even attempted to smile at the man, but the man only kept his eyes forward as if we didn’t exist all of a sudden. “I’m cooking up that rabbit Eli caught for us yesterday, isn’t that right, child?”

Eli shifted his cold eyes to the woman and stared at her like he had a secret worth sharing with her, but then he slid them to us and nodded enthusiastically.

It was like a new world inside the cabin. It was bitterly cold inside despite the scorching hot weather beating against the wooden walls as if the cabin itself had an agenda to shut us all in together. My cousin touched the table in front of us, running his hands all along the wood to get a feel for the atmosphere surrounding him.

“We have guests?” someone asked on the other side of the sheet that separated the cabin. A few heads popped out on the other side to examine us. It was three women and two men, one more a young boy than a man. They were all ornately dressed, some donning fancy hats with feathers. I thought it strange for people living in a flimsy outpost in the middle of nowhere.

“Before we begin our feast, I need to ask our arrivals some questions.”

The rest of the cabin inhabitants took their seats with us at the table, and I realized that there were at least four chairs that were empty at the table, as if awaiting someone or forgetting someone who had once sat on them. The old woman sat at the head of the table and joined hands with the people sitting next to her. Everyone took each other’s hands around the table then as if we were about to give communion for our meal, even though no plates had been placed in front of us.

“Oh, Providers, see these before you and see their innards. Feast upon their beings or let them, too, feast upon the world.”

Then the rest of the cabin joined in and repeated the woman’s words, pounding their fists on the table and shaking it as they spoke. “Oh, Providers, see these before you and see their innards. Feast upon their beings or let them, too, feast upon the world.”

Daniel immediately pulled his hands away from the table and stared ahead. My uncle had a raised brow, looking around at everything and then at me, but I didn’t meet his eyes. I was too busy staring at the sheet separating the room as I thought I saw dozens of bodies reflecting their shadows onto it from the other side.

Without any warning, the old woman climbed on top of the table and crawled to the middle of it. When she reached the candle at the center of the table, she blew it out. Then the candle on the other side of the sheet went out without any means of being blown out, leaving us all in pitch black.

I heard my uncle suck in a breath, and my heart began racing. Complete silence filled the area, and I couldn't tell if the old woman was still on the table or not—complete silence that sucked everyone’s lungs out of their bodies to not allow one of us to breathe.

“We ask of you three,” the old woman shouted in a way that sounded as if she was all around the cabin. “Do you eat for survival, or do you eat for powerful gain?”

I couldn’t take the dark anymore, and I struck a match from my pocket to light the candle. The old woman’s crinkly face with sagging eyes like runny eggs were inches from mine, staring vacuously ahead at me without blinking.

“Don’t light the candle,” she said flatly. And a gust of air blew the light out. I sat completely still, fearful that I would be touching the old woman if I moved an inch. I jumped in my chair as a loud shuffle of hundreds of bodies filled the cabin in the dark. Hundreds of boots creaked on the ground, and hundreds of breaths swirled around us.

“Seek those that will be amongst you or seek those that shall be amongst us!” the old woman croaked with a laugh.

I felt a sharp slash across my cheek, and I covered it with my hand, feeling wetness and knowing that it was my blood. I heard my uncle scream in pain—a kind of scream that sounded as if his soul was being ripped into two. And the scream kept going on and on and on until eternity felt like it would continue in only howls of horror. Then, my little cousin joined him in this choir of carrion, and I still sat stock-still, hands gripping the table before me to ground me to reality as those hundred heavy boots and breaths continued around us, as if supplying the acoustics to my family’s horrifying cries.

And then it was silent—a kind of silence that made you feel as if time and space no longer existed, and life floated on in a black vacuum of blank darkness.

Then the pounding of fists on the table followed like before, jarring my hands from it. “And now, oh Providers, you have given us a child. You have given us flesh to take into our own flesh. Let them join those before. Let her join us for eternity. Feast, child! Feast, child!”

The entire table joined in with the old woman. “Feast, child! Feast, child! Feast, child!” The chanting turned from yells to banshee-like cries—haunting cries that nearly ripped my eardrums. “Feast, child!”

The two candles in the cabin flickered to life again without a match. And I was staring into the eight pairs of eyes of the people at the table as they all leaned over me. Their eyes were blank without emotion, and their mouths hung down in a silent scream. Before me, on a pristine white plate, was a large hock of some butchered animal. It was uncooked and bloody—so much blood that it ran and pooled to the edge of the plate. The entire cabin smelled of rancid rot.

I tried to glance over to where my uncle and cousin had been before the candles went out, but as soon as my eyes shifted toward them, the old woman grabbed me by the face and forced me to stare into her gray, melting eyes lit up by the candle before us. The shadows on her face made her look like a demonic hound, and I flinched as she gave me a toothy grin of yellow, missing teeth.

“Feast, child!”

Full of horror and panic for my own life, I nodded and took hold of the slab of meat with my fingers. I watched as dark blood ran down my hand as I held up the meat. With hesitation but fear driving my actions to keep going in the hopes of appeasing these people enough to have a chance to escape, I took a bite of the meat. I reeled at the fleshy squishing of the meat between my teeth and nearly vomited at the rush of blood from my chewing, but I kept eating it as the people kept chanting, “Feast, child!”

I gagged on a piece of the meat but kept forcing myself to chew and swallow. As I finished the last piece, the people fell silent. They scattered back away from me and went back to their seats, where other similar pieces of meat rested on their plates. They dug into their meals as I sat there, stone-cold, staring at the empty chairs where my uncle and cousin had been—the wooden seats puddled with blood.

As I stared at the chairs, eyes blown wide and body as still as a rock, someone donned my head with a bramble crown, and they pushed it down onto me so harshly that the brambles cut into my forehead. The symbolism wasn’t lost on me. Was I now a sacrifice? Was I now a savior for these monsters? Was I a stuck pig awaiting future slaughter?

Once nighttime had called these lost souls away to slumber, and I had been given a place on the floor of the cabin as my own place of habitation within this group, I quietly stepped out the front door, hope in my heart that I could mount my uncle’s wagon and leave unscathed before anyone noticed. But as my eyes scanned the desolate area that only contained dead grass and flat land, the wagon and the horses were gone, as if they had vanished into thin air. It was too dangerous and too far to foot it back to where we had come from and far too suicidal to try to continue on the trail toward the West like this, so I hesitantly glanced back at the cabin, knowing that it was my only chance of survival to stay until someone else passed through and I could catch a ride with them. After all, I hadn’t been one of the unfortunate visitors to end up in these people’s bellies. I squeezed my eyes tightly at the memory of the dinner, my uncle and nephew’s screams, the blood, the meat. I heaved over and vomited up my soul onto the dirt. What hell had found me? Had I actually been killed on the journey and was now in the realm of Satan? Were these to be the days of the gnashing of teeth and hellfire on the plains?

As I stared blankly ahead at the cabin wishing to reclaim my soul, my eyes caught sight of something moving at the side of the house. I stepped lightly over to examine it, my eyes immediately searing into white holes of what might have once been eye sockets. The thing was little more than a shadow but that of the form of a man in a tailcoat and top hat. The only thing that cut through the shadow was the missing eyes, holes as white as the linens hanging on the laundry wire. The two of us just stared at one another, perhaps out of fear or that we had revealed ourselves in some way that was not meant to be revealed. And then I saw a small child join the shadow man, his eyes white orbs as well as he clung to the man’s leg, but he wasn’t looking at me like the shadow man was, as if he didn’t see me.

“D–Daniel?” I breathed out like a cursed whisper upon the moment.

Both specters made horrifying screeches then, like that of an elk call if an elk call had come from hell itself, and then they quickly evaporated into nothing before my eyes, sealing me to the spot, unable to move. After a moment of collecting myself and pure traumatizing shock driving me out of my sanity to walk back into the cabin, I allowed myself to fall asleep on the ripped linens and sad little pillow filled with hay.

Over the course of a few months, I quickly became an assimilated member of the lost souls and these Protectors of the cabin, though I still had no idea who or what they were, let alone see them. This new life was a choice out of my hands. It was eat or be eaten in this new world beyond the safe borders of life. And hadn’t the news of this new world to be settled been one of death and warnings? If anything, I was securing that image for the Oregon Trail. I was weeding out those that were foolish enough to stop and unworthy of wearing a crown. Perhaps it would keep the foolish ones in their safe homes up north and dash away their dreams of western homes on the plains. Where once I was starving with my uncle and nephew as we rode through the blistering heat, now I was sated with the influx of constant weary travelers’ hearts and lungs and flesh with the added prize of clothes, jewelry, and other personal items in their wagons. When the first traveler came through to stay since my arrival, I had the fleeting thought of begging him to take me with him so the two of us could flee the cabin, but my stomach had turned to the thought of human flesh at that point. I didn’t see safety and freedom in his presence... I saw a beating heart, smooth skin, and places that would be cut to offer us the most tender meat.

Did I despise myself for my actions, my hunger? At times, yes. But now, I was a queen among these disillusioned followers. The Protectors’ child of blood. We drank and ate and lived as kings among dead grass, broken wagons, and corpses buried in shallow graves and under the floorboards. And I was beginning to see the Protectors as my savior because, with them, I would not starve. With them, I was a ruler in a land of death.

Every night, we partook in the offerings the Oregon Trail had given us from the Protectors, and every day we awaited new offerings. I had my fair share of wielding the sacrificial blade that would slice through necks if all the specters of the cabin decided against participating and dragging the living down with them. Had I ever seen them? No, not aside from that first night when I thought it might have been the souls of my family, but during every ceremonial dinner, I sat in complete pitch darkness as those hundreds, now almost thousands, of boots and breaths filled the cabin as the wails and screams of horror joined the sounds in a chorus of death and hunger. And the only thing that remained of the trail travelers was a puddle of blood on the chairs where they had once sat.

I was little more than those specters sitting at the head of the table with my bramble crown and sash of leathered flesh. My wrists were donned with smooth, white bones that had been joined together to make bracelets of spent existences, and my face was painted with dried blood. I felt like an ancient being of power, as if by attempting to start a new life in the West, I had risen to godhood. I was the god of the trail, the god of the dead desert, and the god of those worthy to feast. And I never even uttered a word.

The last word I had ever spoken was to my cousin on the wagon so many months ago, then to invoke his name when I was face to face with the shadow people of the cabin. Perhaps it was because I had been made mute by the horror of undertaking my new reality. But I didn’t need words. Our little congregation bowed to me anyway, much with the old woman’s jealous glare when they did so. But though I had this power, this never-ending taste for blood and flesh and safety in the knowledge that I would never starve nor be lost to the West’s dangers that took out so many voyagers, I grew weary of the congregation. I grew weary of them and their hunger. Perhaps it was God speaking to me in a last attempt to save my soul. Perhaps it was the building need for ultimate power. Perhaps I wanted to sit on my throne alone and let death find me in the form of deserved starvation. I planned to shed this skin. I planned to make new the life I had first sought. I planned to undertake the killing of the congregation under the Protectors’ noses.

And so, when we all sat together for another ceremonial dinner, as the specters raced and breathed through the cabin in the darkness, slicing the travelers to ribbons for us, I, too, raced with them, slashing and cutting and biting and ripping those who wore the bramble jewelry. Their screams were sweet, and I could almost swear that I heard the breathing of the specters twist into vicious laughter like hyenas. Looming above us as if on the ceiling, I felt the overwhelming dread of the Protectors watching me cut down our people. Daring a glance at the unseen gods of our practices, once the cabin was silent of life, I lit the candle that sat in the middle of the table. The light showcased the slaughter—bones and guts and blood decorating it all like a macabre welcome party for the visitors of old who finally revealed themselves after all these months.

I gazed up at the three black-hooded figures. Their faces were missing with cascading dark red liquid flowing like a never-ending waterfall from within their hoods and ending at their crossed hands. Were they here to condemn me for my actions? Were they here to exalt me for my slaughter? They all made a deep humming sound together that came from the pit of their stomachs, which made me grasp my ears tightly in my hands to stop the bone-chilling sound.

“What do you want?” I asked them, eyes wet with tears as the sound seemed to tear my soul in half. “Are you here for this feast? I offer you your black-souled converts! I offer you false followers! I am the bramble-crowned child! Hear me!”

Their humming intensified until I was on my knees, moaning in pain from the sound. Though they had no faces, I could feel their stares, judgment, and evil raining upon me.

“Oh, Protectors! Free me from this fate! Free me from the blood! Free me from the crown upon my head because I am not like them. I was not born evil... I was made evil. This new world has made me the devil of the earth, and no longer do I wish to feast! PLEASE! PLEASE, free me from death!” I cried and wailed as they hummed, the specters racing around the room and screeching like elk. “I no longer wish to be your bramble-crowned child!” I shouted as I took off the crown and tossed it at them.

But all was cut through like time and space were ripped in two. I was still on my knees in the now supernaturally clean cabin, but the Protectors were gone, and the specters were now hiding below the floorboards with the rotting bodies of travelers stored for future meals. I wiped my face, pulling my hands away to see that my tears had been of blood. I stood from the floor on shaky legs, unsure of how to do anything after what I had just encountered. I sat down at the head of the table, the candle still flickering like a taunting mirage of something warm in the cabin where so much death existed. When I smoothed my hair back away from my face, my fingers stilled at the touch of a bramble poking my hand.

The bramble crown remained on my head, only now it was seared into my forehead, biting into it like teeth, and blood trickled down my face from its deep cutting. As much as I tried to pull it free, my hands being ripped to shreds in my efforts, the crown would not budge. The flesh sash on my body would not be torn off me, and the bone jewelry could not be taken off.

A knock at the door jarred me from my empty thoughts. “Come in,” I said absentmindedly, staring at the burning candle. It blew out as the door swung open, but the sunlight shining in from the door revealed a man and a child about my nephew’s age standing in the doorway.

“Hello, ma’am,” the man said, and I could tell he had spoken with a smile on his lips. “I am ever so sorry to bother you. May we refill our canteens and feed our horses at your outpost?”

I slowly twisted my head to them, knowing I was concealed in the dark. I muttered as if out of my control, “Of course.”

The two came in and sat at the table with me, offering their names and reasons for their journey on the trail, all of which I barely heard with the ringing in my ears and my soul gone from my body altogether. The candle flamed to life before the three of us, and the newcomers jumped in place at the sudden odd spectacle. They shifted their hesitant eyes to me, their stares going wild as they took in my appearance.

It was done. I wore the crown, and the crown wore me. I was the Protectors’ bramble-crowned child, and I would forever feel their wrathful presence in the cabin until I would die.

“I ask of you two,” I nearly whispered as I leaned on the table and eyed them with my blood-tracked face. “Do you eat for survival, or do you eat for powerful gain?”