Granny Birch
It should have been a happy time of year for Tina Dawson. The temperatures were dropping, leaves were changing, yards had bloomed with jack-o-lanterns, and she was taking her annual autumn backpacking trip.
Only this time she entered the yellow woods alone.
She took in the earthy smells of the forest as she navigated the trail’s expected muddy spots in her new L. L. Bean hiking boots. A breeze occasionally stirred the dry leaves into sandpapery applause.
Even when Tina had made this hike in the past with her best friend, Miranda, she said very little. Now she said nothing. She tried to let her mind go slack so she would neither think nor feel. She failed.
Hiking past the lake as usual, she glanced down at where the water swayed deep green close to shore and brilliant blue out in the middle. She almost did not hear three hikers coming the opposite direction down the trail. They greeted her, but it took her a moment to register it. She barely managed to mumble a reply.
The memory of her friend’s blue eyes arose in her mind. She hurried to push them out. She did not want to think about Miranda.
Finally, she arrived at the usual destination and went to work setting up her campsite. She erected the small tent and laid out the Therm-a-rest to inflate itself. Then she spread her sleeping bag and a lightweight blanket over that. Finally, she put her small pillow in place and checked her electric lantern.
When she crawled out of the tent, she thought she heard someone laughing.
Only not just someone.
Miranda?
Her heart clinching, Tina snatched her head around trying to locate the source. She saw no one.
For the first time in her life the forest looked different to her. The air in between the trees seemed thick somehow.
Calming herself, she built a small fire while her mind fought her, trying to make her replay events, prodding her conscience.
She was so deep in her mind she hardly knew what was going on around her. Like when she drove a route she knew well and could not remember what she saw along the way. She did not attribute her sense of uneasiness to anything but the deep strife in her heart. If anyone was close by, she took no conscious notice of it.
But as night fell there was someone. Two dimly gleaming eyes peered at Tina Dawson as she sat at the fire wrestling with realities of what she had done. Those eyes watched her go into her tent and zip it shut.
* * *
Four hours later, Tina awoke to something pressing against the side of the tent. Her breath caught, and her heart pounded as she sat listening. As minutes passed, she calmed down. Maybe she dreamed it.
It happened again. Unmistakable. A body of some kind leaned into her tent as it passed by.
She jolted up. Could it be somebody feeling for her, planning to stab her through the tent?
What a thought! She was being such a girl. So much for girl-power.
Get yourself together.
With a lurch of energy, she grabbed her flashlight and can of mace, unzipped the tent, and looked out. Pointing the flashlight all around, she let out a breath and relaxed.
Two pairs of eyes gleamed at her. A raccoon.
She smiled at the mischievous-looking little guy. Just out doing his thing and happened to brush by her tent. Funny how even after terrible things, the regular doings of the world kept on and brought you peace of mind.
She turned off her flashlight and got back into the tent. Drowsiness returned immediately as she snuggled back into the sleeping bag.
A scream pierced the silence.
Tina jerked right back up, holding her breath and listening again. The scream sounded just like a woman’s. A voice Tina thought she recognized. Just like . . .
But silence fell again, and Tina’s mind reasserted itself and reminded her that screech owls sounded like humans. There was no reason to worry. Everything was fine. The forest was still running in its usual greased grooves.
This time when she nestled back down into her sleeping bag, she fell into deep sleep.
* * *
When she woke up the next morning, her mind was clear and quiet. She knew it would not last, so she was grateful for it while it did. She had not slept so well in months.
As sunny as yesterday had been, this morning was dark. The forecast predicted cloudy skies through the day and rain at night.
The cold sat on her, giving her a pleasant feeling. She opened a package of Mountain House Breakfast Skillet freeze-dried food and poured it into the pot. The smell of sausage, potatoes, and eggs filled the air.
Anticipating the tastes, Tina’s head tingled with pleasure. Her troubles were finally far away.
Then she realized somebody was with her.
Her eyes cut to the form standing about fifteen feet away, and she went rigid. She had no idea if the person had been standing there the entire time or had just walked up. She never heard any footsteps approaching.
The person appeared to be a woman wearing a ragged robe with a hood from which protruded the face of an old woman. Tina thought of the crone who tempted Snow White with an apple. It was almost unbelievable to see a cartoon come to life.
Then Tina realized it was not a real face but a latex mask. She could see the dark cut-out eyeholes.
She convulsed with fear. All appetite fled. Other than a single involuntary jolt of her body, she could not move.
Paralyzed as she was, she thought she might learn something about this person by looking at the hands. Tearing her eyes away from the mask’s eyeholes, she looked down.
The right hand she could not see because it was hidden away in the folds of the robe. The left held a stick spiraled where a wild grape vine had twisted around it. Tina could tell very little from the hand except that the skin was a grayish color. It could have been a man’s or woman’s of any age.
Her fear-befogged brain finally kicked in and told Tina to speak.
“Hey, I didn’t see you,” her voice trembled with her body.
The person neither replied nor moved.
“Can I help you? I . . . I have breakfast here. I can share.”
No reply. No movement.
A strange feeling came over Tina that she had seen this person before, but she could not think where or when.
Her chill reached all the way to her bones when the gray index finger of the hand holding the stick beckoned.
Run, Tina, she told herself. But then another idea occurred to her.
“Ok,” she said. “I will go. I just need to get something.”
The person said nothing and made no movement. Tina dropped to her knees, ducked into her tent, grabbed the mace, and backed out swinging the can toward the person.
But no one stood there. The woods were empty and still.
She cut her eyes to the left and scanned back right. Where had the person gone?
She stood up still looking where the person had stood. Her heart raced; her breaths were shallow.
Then she turned around to find the person standing right behind her. Tina jumped, screamed, and backed away, spraying the mace into those eyeholes. She kept spraying and screaming until the can ran dry.
Through it all, the person made no reaction or movement. When Tina realized the can was empty, she dropped it but kept screaming. Tears streamed down her face as if the mace was in her eyes.
Finally, she stopped screaming. Peering into those eyeholes she saw two blue eyes staring out at her, the whites flaming red from the mace. But those eyes showed no pain. And still the person made no movement.
Terror flooded Tina. She ran, sprinting on her strong legs through the woods. She did not care where she went—just as far away as she could. She ran fast and sure-footed out of the woods and into a meadow.
There she stopped.
She knew this meadow. This is where she had come hiking back at the end of June. The field was abloom then with the blue flowers of aconitum.
In her mind, Tina saw herself here those months ago in the summer kneeling among the vivid plants, picking them, roots and all, and putting them into a Ziplock bag. Like some kind of fiend out of an old movie. Like some ill-intentioned witch talking to her mirror on the wall.
The image of the witch-turned-old woman zoomed back into her mind. Then she sensed she was not alone here either.
She looked with dread across the meadow.
There on the opposite side, stood the person in the old woman’s mask staring in her direction. No heavy breathing, nothing to suggest that the person had chased Tina here.
This time when the gray finger beckoned, terrified as she was, Tina knew she could not avoid following. There was no escaping. She must face what she must.
* * *
Tina and the person in the old woman mask arrived at a run-down shack covered in moss and creeper vine.
The person in the mask walked with a steady and sure gait. Not that of an old woman, but not necessarily a young person’s either.
Tina watched as the person opened the front door and went in.
I should run. I can still get away.
But Tina knew that was a lie. There was no getting away now. Her payday had come.
She went inside, and what she saw shocked her. It was a perfect copy of her own apartment back in the city. Done up brightly in the gray colors she loved, it smelled exactly of her place.
And a familiar voice sounded.
Miranda walked in alive and well, saying exactly what she said just a week after Tina’s visit to the field of blue flowers.
“I’m so glad we’re getting together like this, Tina,” she said. “I love your Bolognese sauce. It’s been so long.”
Tina was shocked when she felt herself compelled to say now exactly what she said then. She even started doing the same things—at this moment sitting down at her dinner table to spaghetti for the two of them.
“It’s nothing. I wanted to start planning our fall backpacking trip.”
Miranda’s eyes teared up, “I didn’t think you wanted to go. You haven’t said anything.”
Again, Tina felt herself guided puppet-like to replay the scene, “Well, I’m saying something now. Here.”
She forked spaghetti onto Miranda’s plate.
“Give it a try.”
As Tina watched Miranda take a bite, she felt now the same feelings she did that night. Her teeth clenched, and hate surged through her.
That hate had built for nearly a year. That was when she and her inseparable BFF Miranda met Brian. All the years since kindergarten, Tina had never once been jealous of Miranda. Actually, she had always been proud to be best friends with the prettiest, smartest, most talented, and most outgoing girl in school. She always took it in stride that boys would go for Miranda instead of her.
But Brian was different. There was something about his dark eyes, his curly hair, the muscles of his chest showing through his shirt. This one Tina wanted for herself.
Was that so much to ask? Did Miranda have to get every guy? Did she have to better in every way?
After several bites, Miranda could not get her breath. She fell out of the chair, dead of asphyxiation caused by the aconitum—commonly called wolfsbane—laced in the sauce.
Tina moved quickly to pour the spaghetti down the garbage disposal and replace it with non-poisoned spaghetti on the table. She washed the plates and laid out fresh ones for herself and Miranda and took a few bites from each. Then she called 911.
“Please help me,” her voice suitably distraught. “I think my friend’s had an allergic reaction.”
The paramedics examined the body and agreed.
Now, months later, sitting with Miranda’s corpse again, regret filled Tina that she had ended her best friend’s life.
And for what? Brian showed no more interest in Tina now than he had before. He mourned Miranda’s death, his hopes for the future destroyed. Tina tried to comfort him, hoping he would come to love her. Maybe he still could. But the situation did not look promising.
Meanwhile, every day she faced the question, who had she become?
Several minutes passed before Tina remembered she was not actually at home, that this was just a replay.
And that this time she was not alone with Miranda’s corpse.
She looked at the person standing in the corner and felt something was different. What was it? Tina searched the mask. Then she realized—the eyes were no longer blue. They were dark brown.
A fresh shock of horror seized Tina. She realized she had not been alone in that blue meadow in the summer. Someone else had stood there on its edge watching her: this person.
Terror exploded through her.
“What do you want?!” Tina screamed. “What?!”
At first, the person in the mask did not move. Then, as though waiting for an appointed moment, the gray hand not holding the stick slowly lifted. The fingers grasped the mask and pulled it up.
Tina saw not one face but ten, fifty, a hundred. They were faces she had never seen but knew. Faces of murderers and the murdered. They were her own face.
Before her eyes the face of faces resolved into the same features of the mask the person wore, distilling into a composite of treacherous matriarchy.
A sound came to Tina’s ears—a chant far away saying over and over again the single syllable, “Birch! Birch! Birch!”
Looking into the old woman’s eyes that now burned orange, Tina felt her soul slipping away.
