Scratch. Steve Himmer
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PRAISE FOR SCRATCH
“Scratch is not only a ripping tale—of dreams and darkness, humans and houses, and the creatures those houses are meant to keep out—but a contemplation of the beautiful dark mysteries of nature. Like a strange old story you overheard when you thought you were alone in the woods, Scratch is beguiling, haunting, and wild.”
—KATE RACCULIA, author of Bellweather Rhapsody
“Scratch finds Steve Himmer doing what he does best—putting a magnifier to the fine line between human and beast, between what is tame and what is red in tooth and claw. Then he sets fire to any old platitudes about nature and man, creating a new mythology out of the ashes and shadows.”
—AMBER SPARKS, author of The Unfinished World And Other Stories
“Steve Himmer’s particular genius involves giving the minds of his characters room to roam. His take on literary horror might usefully be compared to that of Benjamin Percy or William Gay, but its roots reach back much further, through Shirley Jackson to Hawthorne and Poe. This book, this gift to us, is an absolutely essential reminder that every story starts at the edge of the forest.”
—ROY KESEY, author of Any Deadly Thing
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. NO PART OF THIS BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY ELECTRONIC OR MECHANICAL MEANS, INCLUDING INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS, WITHOUT PERMISSION IN WRITING FROM THE PUBLISHER, EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF SHORT PASSAGES QUOTED IN REVIEWS.
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. ALL INCIDENTS, SITUATIONS, INSTITUTIONS, GOVERNMENTS, AND PEOPLE ARE FICTIONAL AND ANY SIMILARITY TO CHARACTERS OR PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS STRICTLY COINCIDENTAL.
PUBLISHED BY DARK HOUSE PRESS,
AN IMPRINT OF CURBSIDE SPLENDOR PUBLISHING, INC.,
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS IN 2016.
FIRST EDITION
COPYRIGHT © 2016 BY STEVE HIMMER
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CONTROL NUMBER:
ISBN: 978-1940430904
EDITED BY RICHARD THOMAS
DESIGNED BY ALBAN FISCHER
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.
—ROBERT FROST, “The Oven Bird”
The true border is always a tangle, always difficult to cross.
—C.L. NOLAN
WE’LL WEAR THE SHAPES OF COYOTES, TO SLIDE UNDER THE scrub and travel close to the ground. You’ll keep up more easily on faster legs than your own, with a coat that blends into the bushes and sharper senses attuned to all you might otherwise miss.
Why should we look like coyotes? Why not something else?
These bodies are fast. They’re strong for their size, but small enough to avoid being noticed. And if your kind should see us, so what? What are two scrawny coyotes to be alarmed by, slinking along at the edge of the woods? We could wear rabbits, or butterflies, but neither of those would command your attention. You’ll listen to a storyteller with teeth and a growl, so long as it’s something you think is less fierce than a wolf. Coyote’s shape has worked for me many times, has worked so well he’s been blamed for my mischief, so there’s no reason his body won’t suit us for this story, too.
Follow me now. Get down on all fours. Use your forehead to push the low branches aside as we move toward the border between the town and these trees. This story begins on the edge of the forest as all stories do.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgments
THE DOOR OF THE TRAILER SWINGS OPEN WITH A CLATTER against the exterior wall, and its echo stirs starlings into the air. Martin Blaskett, the man responsible for this clearing in the forest and for the houses to be built upon it, descends a folding staircase to muddy ground and leaves the door open. He steps into his story as easily, as suddenly, as those blue-black speckled birds invaded this forest from elsewhere, generations of theirs ago. I watched them arrive as I’ve watched others and now watch this man, this Martin, descend. Already he’s in the habit of leaving doors open, years of city noise rising to his locked windows wiped away by a few quiet nights, but if he knew all that winds through these woods—if he only knew how nearby we are, watching—he’d close it and lock it, or he might go back inside and stay home. As close to home as he comes.
His arms swing like windblown branches, and his body stands straight as a trunk, but uprooted and always in motion—a constant impression of stillness and movement at once, of being both where he is and somewhere else all the time. Martin moves like a man who knows where he’s going and knows he’ll arrive, a man who has no idea—and would never believe—that in a few hours’ time he’ll be pinned to the ground with the claws of a bear in his chest.
This morning he arose with an urge to go walking. He dreamt all night of a life not his own—two cars, two children, two well-worn dents in a couch—and emerged with a real sense of loss. I’ve heard in talk around campfires and through open windows that dreams have no place in the world and no place in your tales, that they’re cheap and confused and a residue stuck to the ends of a day. But dreams bounce through this forest, no more abstract than your radio waves. They crackle and hum almost as loudly as your black power lines and the great metal masts that carry your voices from one part of the world to another.
Dreams are true stories told in the only moments you’re willing to listen. And because he did listen, because he did dream and because that dream hurt—or if not the dream, his waking from it—Martin is setting off for the woods near his trailer at the insistence of his restless legs, despite mizzling rain and a gauze of clouds over the sun. He’s walking it off the way he’s been taught.
His gaze slides across this space cut from the wild, space he will refill with acres of bright green backyards. He doesn’t see the hills