What You Brought With You

“I should’ve known better…” thought Sellen.

“Where are we going?”

The old hag didn’t answer. They kept walking along the tree line in silence.

“It’s so dark out…”

The hag stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Sellen asked.

The hag turned to face her. What came from its mouth was less a voice than an abyssal moan dragged through sludge.

“We’re going to bring it back.”

“Bring what back?” Sellen asked.

The hag had already turned away, moving deeper into the trees.

There was no sound. Not even the hag’s steps made a rustle against the dead earth. The further they went, the more the trees began to lean, their trunks crooked and reaching inward toward an unseen center, as if bowing to whatever lay ahead.

Sellen couldn’t be sure if this was still her doing, if this nightmare was just the continuation of what she’d started back in her room. When the thing had stepped through her doorway, turned, and walked back out into the night, Sellen hadn’t chosen to follow. Her feet had moved on their own.

“I’m sorry,” Sellen cried, falling to her knees.

Nothing happened.

Then, slowly, the hag stopped. It turned back to her. A length of black cloth draped over the entity, obscuring any body beneath. Under the dark fabric, only the shadow of a sharp nose stood out.

Sellen kept her face near the cold soil, waiting for a voice, a strike, or a movement.

None came.

When she finally dared to look up, the sharp silhouette of the hag’s face was still facing her, completely motionless. It was not waiting for her to get up. It was waiting for her to finish.

The apology had been for her own comfort, a desperate plea to remain human in a place that had no use for it.

Sellen stood up and wiped the leaves and dirt off her knees.

“I know,” she whispered into the dark. “I know I wanted them back. How has it come to this?”

She stood in silence.

Then the hag spoke, its voice carrying that same muffled, dragging tone as before.

“Why?”

She couldn’t remember saying the words aloud. A faint expression of worry crossed her face as the hag turned back toward the trees with an agonizingly smooth slowness.

Sellen suddenly felt what seemed like a hammer strike her chest. She clutched at her coat, her teeth clenched tight against the pain, temporarily frozen as the black cloth pressed on into the dark.

Her grip gave out, her hands falling heavy to her sides. There was no respite. Her legs moved anyway, dragged through the dark in the hag’s wake. Sweat broke across her scalp, pouring through her hair and down her face.

“Where are you taking me?” she managed to gasp, the words scraped raw against her throat.

The hag didn’t pause.

“We are already there,” the muffled voice dragged from beneath the dark fabric. “You are just slow to arrive.”

Sellen raised both palms, pounding them in a slow, desperate rhythm against the sides of her head. She could barely form a thought.

The pressure in her chest vanished.

The trees were gone.

She stood at the edge of a wide, circular clearing. The crooked oak trunks all pointed toward the center. Overhead, the moon cast its shallow light across the opening.

Across the clearing stood the hag.

“Why?”

Only then did Sellen realize the question had never been hers.

Her attention was forced toward the center now.

“Why…” she began, addressing what lay waiting in the glow.

In the middle of the light stood a second hag.

Exact in shape. Exact in black fabric.

It did not move. It did not speak. It stood facing the first.

Sellen looked from one black outline to the other.

Neither hag turned to look at her.

They remained fixed in the center, separated by only a few paces of pale dirt, bound in a silent, perfect mirror.

Sellen took a half-step back, her heel catching on an exposed oak root. Dry bark snapped beneath her boot, but the black shapes didn’t flinch.

Then, the first hag reached out.

Slowly, beneath the draped wool, a hand emerged toward the second figure, palm upturned, empty.

The second hag matched the gesture, its own hand rising in unison until their fingertips hovered a breath apart over the center of the clearing.

Between their palms, there was nothing.

“Pick it up,” the voice dragged from beneath the first hood.

The sound didn’t travel across the clearing; it hit the back of Sellen’s teeth, cold and metallic.

Sellen looked down at her own hands. They hung heavy at her sides, palms open, trembling in the freezing air.

“Pick what up?” Sellen whispered.

The second hag spoke.

It was the same voice.

“What you brought with you.”

Sellen looked up, staring at the empty space between their hands.

“I can’t…” she whispered, unaware she had even spoken.

She began to walk toward them, her gaze dropping to her boots, wondering how her feet were moving forward at all. When she looked back up, the hags hadn’t shifted an inch.

Sellen reached the center. The air inside the shallow moonlight was so thick she couldn’t draw a breath.

As she stood beside them, her hands hung heavy as though the blood in her veins had turned to wet sand.

Slowly, she raised her hands and slid her open palms into the space between theirs.

She felt it instantly. A suffocating silence. She had carried it here herself.

The two hags pressed their knuckles tight against the backs of her hands, clamping her palms flat, trapping her in the middle.

The second hag leaned in, its black cloth brushed against her cheek.

“Now,” the voice dragged against her skin. “Hold it.”

She tried to pull her hands back, but the knuckles clamped tighter against the backs of her wrists.

The void between her palms waited for a moment. It grew heavier, dense and cold, pressing down on her forearms until her elbows trembled under the strain. It felt like holding a boulder made of iron, except there was nothing to see. Only the pale dirt below and the black cloth on either side.

Suddenly her chest hitched, pulling in a sharp and jagged gasp that caught in her throat.

“I can’t,” Sellen choked out.

The hags didn’t move. They didn’t push down. They refused to let her drop it.

Then, the quiet rigidity in her spine snapped. Her throat closed up, and a ragged, ugly sob burst out of her, echoing hollowly against the surrounding oak trees.

Sellen fell to the pale earth, wrapping her knees into her chest.

The two hags turned and vanished back into the dark between the trees.

Only Sellen and the empty clearing remained.

She lay on her side in the pale dirt, staring at the tangled oak roots a few inches from her eyes. The cold soil sat still against her cheek.

Sellen couldn’t remember the passing of time, or if it even passed at all. She lay unmoved for a span that felt as though it had no beginning.

Sellen blinked a few times, her vision clearing.

She was in the center of the clearing now, laying in the same pale, cold dirt, her cheek still pressed against the ground. A few feet in front of her sat a small, impish girl.

A moment passed.

Nothing moved.

The girl finally spoke.

There was something about her voice that reached backward through Sellen’s memory.

“Will you lie there?”

Another moment passed following her question.

Sellen slowly unraveled herself.

Then recognition struck. She dragged herself upright, bracing on her trembling hands. Sellen looked down at the scar on the small girl’s knee, instinctively running her thumb across her own.

Her eyes lifted back up to meet the girl’s.