The Green Man: The Reaper
Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow:
And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.
- Sonnet 60
William Shakespeare
“Well what the hell am I supposed to say to that, Tiff?”
“I don’t know…I’m sorry, I didn’t think you’d be this upset.”
“Are you serious? What have we been doing this whole time?”
Two years. Two whole years of Tiffany, and that’s all she’d had in her to give me.
“What do you want me to say?” She asks, tears in her eyes.
“That you love me. That I wasn’t just some prick you called when you were bored. Is that all this has been to you?”
“That’s not what I said, Wayne. I never said I didn’t love you. I said I can’t marry you.”
God, did she have to say it again? Once was plenty enough.
“What’s the damn difference, Tiffany?!” I hear the anger slipping into my voice. So much for playing it cool. The ring box is still in my hand. How long had I sat there kneeling like an idiot while she shook her head. I thought she was crying tears of joy. It never occurred to me that she would say no.
“We don’t need to get married, Wayne. We were havin’ fun!” She says, throwing her hands in the air. “You had to go and ruin it—tryin’ to—I’m not that girl!”
“People get married, Tiff. They settle down. They have kids—”
“Kids?! Do you even know me? I never said I wanted kids!”
The embarrassment and anger threatens to boil over. Everyone wants kids. She’s just trying to make me feel stupid now.
“I guess I don’t know you. I guess I never did!” I open the little velvet box and look at the ring. It isn’t massive, but it’s pretty enough. Gwen had helped me pick it out. I just want to smash it with a hammer right there in front of her. “You know what? You’re right, Tiff. It’s all just a big joke anyway.”
I hurl the ring down the dirt road, where it lands in a mound of wildflowers. Dramatic. Tiff’s face goes hard. Girls don’t like it when you throw stuff.
“That’s real nice, Wayne,” she says, and tries to move past me. “Guess I dodged a bullet.”
Shit.
I catch her by the shoulders. This isn’t what I wanted. None of it is, really. My head is swimming with anger and pain. I just messed up—can’t she see that? What, like she’s never made a mistake before?
“Aw, come on, Tiff. I didn’t mean it.” I grope for her hands but she wrenches them free. She won’t look at me. She gets around me and starts walking up the road.
“Stop! Tiff! Stop! Come back!” Saying the words causes my eyes to burn. “Damn it, I said—”
“That’s enough!” She yells over her shoulder, and takes a big breath to calm herself. She turns to level her eyes on me, and one side of her mouth curls into a reluctant smile. The kind that sneaks out when you know something the other person doesn’t. “Goodbye, Wayne Lucan. I’m real sorry I couldn’t be what you wanted. But I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Then she just walks away.
“How are you gonna get home?” I call after her.
“I’ll figure it out!” she yells back, not even turning to look.
I watch her go until she disappears behind a wall of trees down the road.
I clench and unclench my fists, pacing, trying to process what the hell just happened. I want to punch something. I want to break something. Who the hell does she think she is? She can’t just use me to keep her warm at night and never expect me to want anything back. Damn it, I want things too. I want a family. I want a wife. And she just took it all away in a couple words. Gone. She took every hope I’d had with her and just walked on down the road.
She’s probably calling Stéphan Blair now. He was always ready and willing to lick up my scraps. I’m sure he’ll let her string him along until the end of time. Good riddance.
I walk to where I threw the ring. Thinking I could maybe resell it and get some of my money back. Wish I could get all of it back, the money, my life, my girl…
No. Just want her back.
I look on down the long barbed wire fence to the old oak. The witch tree. The mound of flowers the ring had landed in was just past it.
Well, Filly, she didn’t kill me but she may as well have.
All alone on County Road 60. I look back at my old z71 Chevy. I’d parked it in the same place as I had the first time I brought Tiff here, and what a night that was.
I remember the thrill of having Tiffany Mercandry an arm’s length down my bench seat—remember wanting to kiss her so bad I couldn’t think straight. Looking down the road at the old oak, I remember how I’d finally rustled up the courage to ask her out.
We’d gone to the Red Dirt Road—one of the only dance halls in the area—and we’d both had a few too many. She was all smiles and tanned skin and frayed denim shorts that night. Gorgeous. I’d bagged the hottest girl in Dunsinane Hill and she was smiling at me across the bench seat. Me. Wayne freaking Lucan. And I don’t know what came over me that night, but I pulled over right here, by this tree. I guess I’d thought a good ghost story would loosen her up a little. I clicked the truck into park and she didn’t ask why, just looked over at me, quiet and waiting. She was always just down for whatever came next. Nothing riled up Tiff.
“Lance—you know he likes ta tell them stories and all…he’s got a real good one about—hiccup—this here tree.”
“What tree?” She’d asked, eyes sparkling in the moonlight. Glassy from the alcohol.
“That un right there—hiccup. It’s uh…it’s older than The Hill. Lance…says they buried some girl under it ‘cause she was a witch,” I laughed. “—cast some spell…on the local baseball star…got ‘im killed.”
“That so?”
“Lance says, there’s a curse on it. Hiccup. Says if you kiss yer girl under it…she’ll…hiccup…be the death of you.”
“I don’t believe in curses.”
“Me neither,” I gave her my most devilish smile. “Feeling adventurous?”
She laughed. Winner winner.
“Sure,” she said, trying to play it cool. But I saw the adrenaline flicker in her eyes. Girls love a ghost story, and Tiff had to prove she wasn’t scared. She’d always been that way. Tough girl. One-of-the-guys girl. No one got a rise outta Tiff Mecandry. Except Wayne freaking Lucan.
I had gotten out—well, more like fallen out—of the truck, and stumbled over to her door. I opened it and took her hand. She fell out more or less the same way I had and I caught her. She smelled like wild honeysuckle and leather. She was all pressed up against me and I forgot where I was a moment.
Get it together Lucan.
I took her hand in the dark and led her through the drooping old barbed wire to the oak tree just inside it. It was massive. Old. The branches looked like twisted old arms, some reaching up and others—the larger ones—swooping to the ground. The center trunk looked like the sternum of a massive rib cage. Like the whole tree was motioning you into it—like an old witch waiting to stuff you in an oven. It was creepy in the daylight. At night it was downright sinister.
I led Tiff to the center, gave her a little spin and dipped her to release some of the tension. How I managed to keep my balance can only be chalked up to dumb luck and muscle memory. That made her laugh. She wanted to look brave and I was happy to let her.
“Now what?” She asked, looking up at me.
I lifted her out of the dip and leaned against the massive trunk of the tree.
“Now, according to Lance, if I kiss you then nothing happens. But if you kiss me, then I’ll be cursed, and Filly Landry will possess you and give me hell for the rest of my life,” I said smiling.
“That don’t make a lick of sense,” she said, the spell unwinding.
“Don’t believe me? Take a look here,” I said, and rolled my back off the tree trunk. I stepped over two massive roots and pointed my phone light to a small defaced marble gravestone a few feet from the tree, twisted up in its roots.
Felicity Nicole Landry
1906-1931
Beloved daughter
“Safe in the arms of Jesus”
HELL
“Still think it’s a hoax?” I asked, my buzz wearing off. “People were scared to death of her. Accordin’ to Lance, they buried her with a stake through her heart.”
Tiff walked over to the little grave, crouched and traced the rudely carved “HELL” with her finger tip. She stayed down there a little longer than I had expected, and I almost broke the silence but something in me said wait. It was full dark and the moon was big and golden. Little blinking fireflies pulsed around Tiff as she read the gravestone. I could swear they were drawn to it, or drawn to Tiff…because frankly, who wasn’t?
Finally, she turned back to me. Something in her eyes had changed. The wild was back. She slithered up to me, hooked her fingers through my belt loops, and pushed me into the trunk of the old witch tree.
“You’d curse me just like that?” I ask her, teasing.
“Only if you believe I can.”
“Can you?”
“I guess there’s one way to find out,” she said, and kissed me.
That night withTiff, the whole world went blurry, shining and…green? That doesn’t make sense, but that’s what it was. I remember how the grass smelled and how the bark felt against my back. The way the fireflies danced around her all night and seemed to linger into the early hours. The moon shifted into the rising sun, and the dream was over. The tree roots we’d used as pillows seemed to sweat with us as the dew fell over the early world in a misty sheet. I ran my fingers through her hair and stirred up that honeysuckle scent again and let it wash over me as her breath became rhythmic on my chest.
We could do this forever. This must be what eternity is like.
It was the best night of my whole damn life.
Now here I am. Alone. Trying to find this stupid ring in a mess of leggy weeds. I start pushing them aside and the skin on my arms starts to itch. Hemlock. I see something glint down close to the ground and dive my face down into the white flower clusters.
Something rustles in the grass beyond.
I rip my face from the mound and scan the pasture and woods beyond the barbed wire.
“Tiff?” I say, forgetting the ring. “Look Tiff, I’m sorry. Let me drive you home at least…”
The grass rustles again. No answer.
I duck through the fence and searc behind the witch tree. It stands there watching, ominous as ever like the wooden headstone of time immemorial, watching all us petty humans killing each other—incomprehensibly eager to return to the ground we came from.
It had always scared me as a kid—this old oak. Lance was the first one I heard call it the witch tree, but I knew the name was older than any of us kids. Lance used to drag us out here and tell stories when we’d stay over. His family were Landry’s back on his mama’s side and Uncle Art inherited this track after she’d disappeared. Uncle Art used it for hunting mostly. There were a few small shanties that had lost their long battle against the elements, and there was the big Landry house that no one had lived in in decades. Uncle Art’s land backed up to this plot so it was accessible but not at all close. The witch tree was one of Lance’s favorite spots to bring us boys for a good scare, and it took so long to hike out here before we could drive that we usually camped out.
We’d tote out flashlights and stomp through the waist-high pasture grass just to sit on these roots and listen to Lance spin his yarns about the Slater Girls, Filly Landry, and the Blair Brothers. No one knew what was true or what he’d made up. None of that matters when the moon’s gone and the coyotes get to laughing. It’s all real then.
The little hairs on the back of my neck stand up as I move around the old tree. No one there.
“Come on, Tiff. Let’s just forget the whole thing…we’ll go back to how it was, no pressure—I swear—”
I trip over something and go sprawling.
“Son of a b—”
I land hard on my elbows. I look back at my feet and my good jeans are cut open. Whatever I’d tripped over was sharp. I feel the sting of pain on my ankle and then I see the massive scythe toppled beside me.
“Holy shit—” I say, scrambling away from it.
I don’t remember ever seeing one here before. Must be some kind of kid prank. I take a closer look at my leg where the jeans were cut. The top of my boot is nearly sliced all the way through, and there’s a thin line of blood where it cut my leg.
Then the grass rustles again.
“Tiff, hey! Wait a second!” I push up to my feet and run toward the sound. It's just beyond the witch tree in the pasture. The grass is tall, and I can see it moving. Maybe she’d fallen? I keep running, not thinking, only searching. She had to be here somewhere. I squint into the setting sun as it turned the sky purple and orange, then I hear the sound again, this time behind me.
I turn back to the oak, which was now a good way off, and I see her. She’s leaned against the trunk, but she’s not wearing the jeans she had on when I picked her up today. I told her we were going to dinner and a movie up in Slaterville.
“Get fancy,” I’d said, knowing she’d be in cutoffs and an old oil-covered shirt otherwise.
She had. She’d done up her hair and worn the good perfume. The one I liked.
“Tiff!”
She doesn’t move, doesn’t say anything.
“Hey! Stay there, ok?” I’m out of breath, but I jog back to the tree.
It’s Tiff, sure enough, but something was strange.
“What—where did you change?”
She doesn’t say anything. Just stares off past me.
“It doesn’t matter. Just…I’m glad you came back. We’ll just forget the stupid ring ok? I lost my mind thinkin’ you were gone for good and…”
I get to looking at her and realize she’s wearing the same outfit she’d worn our first night together. The green lace top I’d untied and thrown into the arms of the witch tree while I loved her that night, and the cutoffs she called her ‘dance hall dukes.’
Something ain’t right.
I take her hands and she lets me. They feel cold. I smell the honeysuckle and leather.
“Hey, Mercandry, would you look at me a sec? I said I was sorry, alright?”
She shifts her gaze toward me and we lock eyes. The hairs on my neck stand up. Tiff’s eyes were brown.
This girl…whoever she is…her eyes are green.
I pull my hands away and the girl smiles a wicked smile at me—a dead ringer for Tiff. It sends my mind whirling. I’m trying to piece it together but before I can get another word out, she loops her fingers through my belt loops and turns me like a dog on a leash, pressing my back into the trunk of the tree. Then she kisses me—just like Tiff.
The memories flood in, warped and molding. Every cheap wink and kiss on the neck, every text and call, every time she’d needed me—it was all rotting now in my head like old peaches, collapsing in their own syrup.
This moment, this memory—everything is the same. Tiff, the tree, her clothes, but the sun is still up and this chick has green eyes. I try to push her back but she holds firm, deepening the kiss. I try again, a little harder this time, when suddenly the sweet smell of honeysuckle is replaced with another, uncannily familiar one. One of rot and moss.
I open my eyes.
The…thing…kissing me was no longer pretending to be Tiff. It was a corpse, leathery and dry, with only the faintest remnants of skin and hair.
I scream through its rotten head.
I push with all my strength against the thing, which had moved the kiss to my neck, and goosebumps like a rash flush over my chest and neck. The corpse girl is deceptively strong, despite its lack of muscles. I kick and push and finally duck away from it, but not before the thing bites me on the shoulder. I howl again and run toward my truck.
I fumble with the handle and slam the door as I jump inside and look for the keys. Not in the ignition. Not in the console.
Come on, Lucan, where the hell are they?!
I look back at the tree, searching for the corpse thing. But from a distance, she looks like Tiff again. Like a desert mirage.
She saunters over to the fallen scythe and picks it up.
The bite on my shoulder shoots pain up my arm and I cry out. My hands begin to shake as the fear and the pain mix together until they are inextricable. Tiff—she’s still out there. That thing might go after her. I try to reach for the door handle but the pain is so intense I nearly pass out.
The world shimmers as I lose peripheral vision. More memories.
Lance on the tree roots. Uncle Art holding that giant green axe at his wedding. Tiff. Their faces are blurry, fading away. I look back at the tree and the corpse girl is walking toward me with the scythe. I can’t move. I try to scream but the sound catches in my throat.
I look down at my bitten shoulder and see toxic-looking green veins pressing up through the bruised and broken skin. The blood clotting in the teeth marks is a sludgy green-black. My mind reels trying to parse out what’s true and what’s in my head.
My shoulder pulses again with pain caused me to throw my head back against the seat as I clutch it with my unbitten arm.
The thing walks closer.
It’s Tiff, she’s gonna save me. She’s gonna wake me up and none of this will be real, just like last time.
She’s at the hood of the truck.
Wayne freaking Lucan.
My heart pumps furiously. She’s at the driver’s side door.
My mind begins to shut down my nerves against the continual waves of pain, starting with my fingers, then my arm, then my entire body. My eyes slowly begin to blink closed.
She clicks open the handle, smiling.
Bagged the hottest girl in the Hill. Winner winner.
She takes my hand, and the moment she touches me, the pain disappears completely. The smell of honeysuckle and leather floods my senses and everything in the world is right and good and shimmering again.
She came back. I knew she would.
Tiff takes my hand and I fall out of the truck into her arms. She smiles. I wink at her.
Still got it.
She picks up her scythe and leads me by the hand back to the tree.
Whatcha gonna do with that, gorgeous?
She turns and kisses me on the cheek.
We arrive back at the tree and she gently lays the scythe blade up against the trunk, then pushes me backward into it with a hand on my chest with a flirtatious smile. The blade is cold and gritty against the back of my neck. She’s got that same wild look in her eyes that always captivated me.
Tiff closes the gap and kisses me deeply, pressing my neck and back into the blade. I feel a trickle of blood between my shoulder blades, but no pain.
I love you, Tiffany Mecandry.
I open my eyes to take a peek at her beautiful face. I love the way she looks up close, her eyes shut in the throes of bliss.
I could do this forever.
Then I see him. Walking toward us. He’s not on a horse this time, but still green from head to toe. And this time he’s not smiling.
He wrenches Tiffany away from me, and the second her lips leave mine the pain returns, worse than ever. It sends me to my knees howling. It’s not just my shoulder, but everywhere, my head, my hands, my legs…I grit my teeth against it, but I feel consciousness slipping away.
The Green Man scoops my girl into his arms and walks over to the little marble headstone with Felicity’s name on it. It’s open.
He kneels and gently places her inside, kissing her on the cheek.
“N-NO!” I manage to shout through the pain. “Give her back!”
The Green Man says nothing, just looks back at me with pitiful disgust as the sun finally slips away and my world goes dark to a rising chorus of crickets and bullfrogs.