The Forest for the Trees

Southwoods Cemetery was quiet tonight. Alan Grayman, flashlight in one hand and bucket in another, knew that didn’t mean a thing; vandals were the least of anyone's worry if they found themselves out here on a new moon.

Normally he whistled to keep himself company. Tonight, like all such nights, he was quiet. Whistling was for digging nights, and digging nights were often merry nights.

Tonight, he was on the path up the hill in the far east corner where the graves were too old to have living visitors. At the top was a well, and he'd selected it to hide his secrets for just that reason. When he reached it he sent his items down, pressed an ear against the faded wooden cover, and listened.

Tremulously, a voice reached him.

"Daddy? Why won't you let me out of here? Please let me out..." Small but somehow terrifying, and made only more so by the distortion as it traveled up from the depths.

Grayman shuddered, but didn't answer. He heaved off the cover, reached a gloved hand into the bucket, and pulled out a chunk of raw meat which he held out over the hole. A clattering sounded within the well, like a thousand dry bones.

"Here," he said hoarsely. He dropped it.

Again, he heard a voice. "Daddy? Why won't you let me out of here?"

Over the sounds of chewing, a third began to sob. "Daddy..."

"Quiet," Grayman hissed.

That was how it had started the very first night, and that was how it started since.

Tying the rope around the handle, he lowered the bucket to them. The rope shook violently, hungry hands like claws descending on the meat and jaws gnashing.

Now, it was...

Us.

"Daddy, please let us out." A weeping. A hollow clattering of wooden joints. Even as they ate, they spoke to him. "We miss you. We miss mommy."

They didn't always say that last part. When they did, Grayman thought it was just to spite him for creating them and keeping them in there. They knew it hurt him.

"We miss mommy..."

Tonight would have been their 30th anniversary. It would have been the happiest day of their lives. Instead, Grayman felt like his heart was breaking. He sank down against the well and looked up at the sky. "I miss her too."

They giggled and gnashed their teeth while they chewed. The sound sickened him.

***

Home had not been a home for six months now, but it was a house—that was all Grayman needed. It stood at the west end of Southwoods Cemetery and was painted with inappropriately bright yellow paint. He flicked on the lights and was met with more reminders of his failure.

Even the entryway was a mess, with boots strewn haphazardly while boxes piled behind the door. In the kitchen there were half-finished wooden limbs abandoned on the counter, left there on some afternoon when he hadn't quite made it to his workshop. Stray screws in baggies on the kitchen table. Diagrams and pages surreptitiously torn from library books littered every clean surface.

What was most important, though, was the book. In the bedroom, Grayman paused at his dresser just to skim his fingers across the leathery cover. So much happiness promised. So much lost. So much still to do.

He lay down, but he did not sleep. Something had to be done about the creatures in the well.

The first he'd created had, perhaps, been the best. As wooden as any boy made out of wood could be, but still a child. The doctors had said they'd never have their own. At the time, Alan and Marie had been married for 28 years. When Marie saw the little boy on their anniversary, she'd laughed. Then he'd told her he was not pulling the strings not once, not twice, but five times, and she began to scream.

Could he blame her? Perhaps not.

Could she blame him? She certainly had. Before he'd ever perfected his craft she was out the door.

That hadn't stopped him. The first time had been a failure like the feverish fifteen attempts since, but he'd get it right someday if he had to pilfer coffin wood from cemeteries all across the state.

Soon, he slept.

He dreamed of Marie in her wedding dress, the white flowing around her in a wind he could not feel nor hear. Around them, only the darkness of sleep.

Grayman whispered to her and reached out. She turned to him and smiled while he pleaded, promised, and told her of everything he'd done—they were in the well now, not the house. Everything would be fine. She would see. He would even make her a perfect one, human enough to love and be loved by them.

Marie began to move towards him, and her joints rattled like old, dry bones.

Grayman's eyes snapped open. In his mind there was one thought, insane in its ferocity and its suddenness.

Did I pull up the bucket tonight?

From the darkness, he heard a tremulous whisper. "Daddy? We got out, and then we got lost. We're scared. And we're still hungry... so hungry..."

Voices like the autumn wind whispering through dead trees surrounded him in his bed.

"Daddy..."

Grayman wept.

They giggled, and began to gnash their teeth.