Smoke in the Trees

The smell of forest fire hangs heavy on the night air. Visibility is a few steps in front of you and the hazy lights from street-lamps overhead. Max is walking beside his mom, Betty, both of them have their faces covered. Max scratches his chest, the continuous inhalation of smoke is starting to hurt. “Mom, do you know where this is coming from?” They don’t have a TV at their house and they don’t receive daily newspapers. Max is stuck at home during the summer, mostly helping his grandpa with household chores, but most days he’s out in his backfield throwing a baseball through a tire-swing that was hung up in his mom’s childhood. The last two days he’s been stuck inside, there’s no AC and the smoke has caused the temperatures outside to stay relatively hot even on the Canadian border where most summers rarely reach the 80’s.

Betty looks over at her son, an almost spitting image of her late husband, besides the soft blue eyes and light blonde hair, which has been apart of her family for generations. “One of my customers today,” which would make only one of about five or six, “Says there’s a large forest fire in the Cascades somewhere.” Betty spends her days waiting tables for $1.25 an hour plus roughly $20 in tips. It’s really good money for her, she doesn’t have any debts, lives with her dad in the summer and her mom in the winter. Her mom lives down in Arizona, so during the summer she would make decent money waiting tables, but her son wouldn’t be able to go outside and get practice pitching.

Max returns her look, barely able to make eye contact. “Probably some hoodlums having a party, smoking cigs and not worrying about the consequences of their actions.” He made to spit on the ground but stopped himself. He didn’t want his mom to slap his neck for it. As a 16 year old he’s on the slightly taller side, not a big surprise since both his parents are tall, or were tall. Everyone always told him to pick up basketball, which he did for a summer AAU club in Arizona, but he didn’t care for it. He prefers throwing, whether it's a baseball or a football, he’s also really good at it, throwing several no-hitters and setting a couple JV records in both sports. He stoops down a picks up a couple of rocks and starts to throw them at trees the line the other side of the road.

He made sure his grandpa would be fine on his own before he walked the 5 miles to his mom’s restaurant, he knew the buses wouldn’t be out at this time and doesn’t like his mom to walk alone in the dark, even though this town is quiet and safe. He just likes spending the few hours walking with his only living parent. His dad died in a mining accident when he was 8 years old, the company fought against my mom for several years, not wanting to admit any wrong doing, going as far to say my dad was at fault because he had opioids in his system. She told the lawyer he had a script for it due to his IBS and lung problems. She eventually gave up the pursuit and had to sell the house to pay the lawyer. She was never openly bitter about what had happened but he woke up in the night many times to the sound of her crying.

The moon shone bright red in the haze, or it could be an eclipse neither of them knew, only that the moon looked haunting that night. It gave Betty the chills, going as far as to think she hears branches off is the distance of the woods, which given the silence and amount of wildlife isn’t far fetched, but the creepy feeling of being watched is also crawling up her skin. She grabs Max by the arm, his muscles seem to tense up as she does it. “How close are we to the house?” She whispers nervously. Max puts his arm around his mom, his eyes glued to the foggy forest.

“I think it’s still a ways off, we can stop by the Johnson’s and ask them for a ride. I know they’d be more than happy to help.” His mom furiously nods, they can’t run, their lungs can’t handle that kind of strain, so they quicken the pace, long legs make excellent tools for closing distance.

The Johnson’s farm is a mile from their house, the family is made up of an adult son, Lloyd, matriarch Mary-Beth and patriarch Paul. They are a mostly friendly family to those who don’t work their fields, but the Mexicans they hire are overworked and grossly underpaid. Max knows this because his grandpa used to play poker with Paul, until they almost came to blows after his grandpa heard about the exploitation. Paul also made a few racist comments according to his grandpa, but at this moment Max didn’t care if the man was a wifebeater as long as he would get him and his mom off this road. He felt what his mom was feeling, a creeping fear of being hunted.

They turned down the driveway that has a mailbox out front that read, Johnson, the light from their house is faint but they are still able to see the way, the gravel under their feet crunches, the sidewalk they were on made no sound, Max felt his mom jump when the feet first stepped off the sidewalk. The driveway isn’t long, on a normal night, but tonight it feels like a mile long stretch. Max has his ears fixed on any odd noise, besides the crunches that were and still are from the woods behind them. He heard the sound of a closing door ahead, he almost jumped at that, “Who’s there?” The sound of an old man rang through the night along with the faint click of a safety turning off.

Betty spoke up, “Mr. Johnson? It’s me Betty Moss, there’s no need to shoot us,” she coughs a little, and so does Paul.

The click comes again, along with footsteps coming toward them, from the front and… “Come inside you two, this smoke is killing me, and I’m mighty freaked up by that moon.” Max sees Paul running up to grab them, almost looking past them as well, but his eyes meet Betty’s and the three of them hurry into the house almost running. Max turns around as he crosses the threshold of the house, before he closes the door he thinks he sees bright red orbs floating in the smoke, 12 orbs all together. He goes toward the window, Mary-Beth is sitting in front of the TV, a tray of food in front of her, Lloyd sitting on a couch adjacent to the two Lazy-Boys. Outside Max sees the orbs coming closer and quickly backs away. He turns to look at the four other people in the room, Lloyd and Mary-Beth look confused, Paul turns the safety off on the rifle he’s holding, Betty has a look of terror on her face. Max crosses the room to grab his mom.

Paul pulls the rifle to his shoulder and points it at the front door, Max tries to get his mom to go out the back with him, she’s frozen in place. He grabs her in a hug, and as he heads toward the backdoor the front door and window all shatter. He drops his mom in panic. Paul fires the gun, one shot… two shots… then is quickly overtaken by, men? ‘That can’t be right,’ Max thinks, he almost loses his grasp on reality, but the screams drag him back. He looks at Lloyd, one of the men comes up behind him in a flash and tears his throat out, instant death. Another man reaches his hand out to Mary-Beth, the fingernails long and sharp, like claws, tear a large chunk of flesh off her face. Max can’t make out any of the faces, all the men seem to be wearing some kind of mask, he takes one of the rocks out of his pocket, a tall slender figure strolls through the door, the red eyes fixed on him. Max throws the rock at one of the eyes, hits his mark, and the tall man screams in pain. The others in the room, all having killed the Johnson family, effortlessly, fix their gazes to Max. He no longer has time to run out the back and has to get his mom to go with him up the stairs to possibly hide, she yells at Max, “Go and run I’ll try to give you a head start, but I don’t know how good of one it’ll be.” Max sees the men don’t make a move only waiting for the tall man to stop screaming. “I love you Max, and if I see your dad I’ll tell him you love him too.” Max fights a tear, the moment doesn’t call for tears only speed. Betty gives Max a kiss on the cheek and runs over to where Paul lays bleeding from the back of the head and picks up his rifle, the man that stands over Paul makes no move to stop her. ‘Why?’ The thought floods Max’s brain, the other thought that floods his brain is, ‘Why aren’t any of them doing anything?’ He doesn’t think about it any longer than a second. He makes for the backdoor in a dead sprint and throws it open.

The air outside is thick, and not having his face covered any more he instantly coughs. The sound of gunshots behind him remind him to not let his mom lose her son. So he grabs another rock and throws it at the flood light that barely illuminates the ground in front of it, shattering the housing but leaving the light intact. ‘So much for that idea.’ He runs for the field of trees, perfectly lined up in rows of 100, apples lay about around them. The house behind him and the trees in front, the only thing he can see as he runs is apples on the ground and as long as he runs straight he shouldn’t run into an apple tree, in theory at least. He looks up at the moon, the surface dyed red, eerily the only thing poking through the smoke.

His eyes start to haze, and he falls to the ground. His heart pounds fast and hard in his chest, he turns to face the ground, slamming his fist into the grass, he can hear rustling leaves behind him and the crunch of apples smashing against feet. He feels the ground beneath him vibrate, and he spins and throws the other rock that was cutting into his hand, a hand grabs his before he can throw, instantly pain shoots down his arm like electricity, the rock digs into the bones of his hand, his fingers dig into the palms, dig deep, not a surface wound. The sound of branches snapping reverberates in his skull, he doesn’t believe it’s really branches though, in fact he knows it’s not. He opens his eyes and his mouth lets out a scream quickly muffled by a hand. He sees in front of him one single red eye, and an evil voice from behind the mask says, “I lost an eye, you lost a mom and some awful neighbors,” pure evil Max thinks, like the voice of hell. “That’s not even close to being fair.” A laugh almost punctures his eardrums. “This hand of yours is only the beginning of the parts I’m taking.”

The air around him becomes a wave, the smoke enters his lungs with force, when he hits the ground that air is expelled in equal force, along with any good air that might have been there. He gasps for air, poison or not, his lungs cry for any oxygen. They don’t get what they want before he’s thrown into the house. His vision turns black.

The man behind the mask strolls to the house, the smoke not having any affect on his vision or breathing, the pain from where the rock hit starts to dull, the pleasure of watching a weak human go through that much pain and strain eases the pain in his swollen eye socket. He’s sure the right orbital bone is broken, and his retina is torn, all that will be fixed though, after this town’s desolation. Why this town? That was the question his followers had asked him, his answer is always the same. “It’s not for me to decide, only for me to destroy.” It’s been like that for centuries, a small town, families sleeping soundly, no longer exist. ‘The great Vampires try to stop us, but they never will.’ A smile stretches along his broken face. That thought always brings a smile to his face. As he crosses the threshold of the house, where that broken boy was supposed to sit, was the broken woman, his eye widens at the picture and panic overtakes him. He spins around and instead of 5 loyal followers, there was a pair of dark blue eyes. In a second those eyes were in front of his own. “No, no!” Those were the last words he spoke.