My family doesn’t let things go.

Not traditions, not people.

“Is a curse Damie, is not your fault.” Nana said, grinding the herb into the mortar.

“Is the way of this family. New life does not come easy for us.”She didn’t look at me, her eyes scanned a dozen piles of powder, a myriad of colors spread across the kitchen table.

“I don’t really think of it as a curse Nana. Lots of couples have trouble getting pregnant their first time. It’ll happen when it’s supposed to.”

I sat at the kitchen counter. Perched on the stool like I was a boy again, watching her go through the same routine. She moved through the process with the muscle memory of someone who’d done it countless times. A pinch of ground chives, a dash of ground lovage, she’d done it all her life

“Couple doesn’t get pregnant Damie, woman gets pregnant. But the man, he must have strong seed. Our family has strong will, no strong seed.”

The crowded apartment smelled like sauerkraut and mothballs, even with the herbs laid out. It’s a smell I didn’t notice growing up. But coming home to visit after living on my own for ten years, I was baffled at how it eluded me being crowded into the small space with my family.

Mom and dad were grocery shopping, and I hadn’t seen Theresa in months.  Great grandma sat in her rocker and stared at the tv, she didn’t understand much English, but it passed the time.

“Yes Nana.” I said. I could argue the virtue of the modern perspective but agreeing with her allowed me to move on. “How is Papa?”

It was a pedestrian question. Something obligatory you ask, even though oh know the answer. Great grandpa, my Papa, was the reason for my visit. He was dying. It was clear to me. Everyone else in my family seemed to be in denial. He and my great grandma had both bounced back many times from illness. Still, he was very old, and very sick, it seemed this would be his final round in the ring.  My grandma truly believed she could cure him, so I thought it best to be casual about it.

“He is not so good, but I make him healthy again.” She said, still measuring and grinding.

I got up, walked to great grandma and knelt at her chair.

“cześć babciu,” I said loudly, smiling at her.

“Damian.” She smiled back and laid her hand on my cheek. “jego dobro tu jesteście.”

“Speak English Babcia.” I said. I’d expended my Polish with my greeting.

“Is good you are here. We go dancing.”

I smiled “Sure Babcia. But first I want to see great grandpa.”

“He is out, drinking wit his gang. Ugh, dey drink so much!” She threw her hands in air, exasperated.

“Ok, Babcia,” I said. “I’ll wait.”

I got up and walked back to the kitchen.

“Where’s Theresa?” I asked, “At school, studying I hope.”

Theresa, my little sister, ten years my junior, lived in the apartment as well. She was not a family member I talked to often, I’d imagined her waiting and excited to see me. Bad call. Eighteen, self-absorbed, pretty, what was I thinking?

“I doan know Damie. Maybe out wit friends.” Nana said. “Eat good. I make  zaradzic, ok?” She whirled around and across the kitchen floor to the cupboards. She reached up into the far corner of the farthest shelf and grabbed a nondescript black book. Her “recipe” book. I decided it was time to visit the bedroom.

It was cold and dark. The smell of the room, the odor, was far different than the rest of the apartment. It smelled like death. The window was open and the chill October air spilled in. I could hear great grandpa’s shallow breathing, but only faint trace of his breathe showed itself in the shadows. I stared at the bed for a long moment, then reluctantly stepped forward. His breathing halted momentarily and my skin pricked with goosebumps. I stood motionless and waited for his breathing to begin again. I couldn’t see his face in the darkness, only his nearly lifeless body on the bed.

I considered saying nothing, but the thought of turning and leaving the room without saying goodbye felt shameful. I opened my mouth several times, no words came. I relaxed and said simply, “Until we meet again,” and kissed his cheek. He was cold. His breathing never resumed.

I left the bedroom, it was like a tomb in contrast to the clamor of the rest of the small apartment. Nana was finishing her recipe and as I prepared to announce that Papa had passed, mom and dad walked in. My mom’s arms were filled with grocery bags and I rushed to take them from her. Anxiety swelled in my stomach as I pondered how to say what I needed to say.

“Hi honey, no, just take one.” She said and kissed me. She sniffed the air and grimaced, rolling her eyes toward Nana. “Has the freak show started yet?” my dad said, piling it n the door behind her, not really asking as much commenting.

Nana scampered to the table and scooped the piles back into their jars.

“Ok, everyone come and sit, is time for ceremony.” She announced. “Come now, sit, sit. Damien, Corka you sit this side. Joey and Mama, you on dat side! Come, come.”

“Ceremony?” I mouthed at mom. She smiled crookedly and nodded toward the table, my dad groaned, “yah, ok ma.” Nana helped great grandma out of her rocker and over to a chair. We all sat while she turned the lamp and lit candles. The streetlights fighting through the dusty windows were brighter than the light in the room. I squinted to watch her.

“We wait for Papa!” Great grandma’s voice scolded through the darkness. “He be home soon. Drinking wit his gang now.”

“We start NOW mama.” Nana said and propped up the large book in front of her. How she could read anything in the darkness I didn’t understand. “Papa join us soon.”

She began to recite the incantations I reluctantly remember from childhood. Words that were no language I’ve ever heard. Certainly not Polish or English. Many, not words at all but more guttural sounds from the back of her throat. Those sounds always scared me. I never got used to this ritual at all really.

“Sarbdoot ewabuswabu dictool,” She recited slowly into the dark. She waved her fingers in the air like jazz hands and I heard my dad belch under his breath.

More words and sounds and then her voice pitched high like a child and she began to yell loudly, “YaYa YaYa YaYa goont! Yayayayayayayaya goont!” She repeated this for several minutes. A noise at the front door startled all of us. The door opened slowly. The light from the hallway spilled into the darkness, violating my pupils. A silhouette in the doorway stood motionless. When my eyes finally adjusted, and I could see Theresa, earbuds stuffed into her ears and picking at her phone. The five of us sat silently and stared at her. She looked up from the screen and her mouthed formed an O. Her eyes widened, and she took two steps forward. She finished her yawn and kicked the door shut.

“Ugh!” She said in disgust, “isn’t anyone allowed to die in this family?” She walked into her bedroom and slammed the door. Nana began the noises again. Several minutes passed and I began to get restless. I was ready to break the circle, when a prominent creak of floorboards toward the bedroom made me turn my head in that direction. Slow, shambling footsteps echoed off the stucco walls of the short hallway, then, a moan. My heart began to pound in my ears. “Here we go.” My father mumbled.

The silhouette in the doorway of the short hall was hunched and quivering, but recognizable. Papa took another step forward after a short pause. As he staggered forward he straightened himself and stopped his shaking. His pallid and tired face emerged in the candlelight. He looked at all of us seated at the table. We waited. Great grandma looked up at him.

“Papa is back from drinking! We start dinner now.”

“I miss you Dad”

“I miss you too buddy. I wasn’t expecting you for a while.“

“I know,“ I said, “they lost me.”

He smiled that goofy, cock-eyed grin I miss so much. “Not for long, you’ll be headed back. You’re not supposed to be here yet.”

“How do you know?”

”You won’t understand how I know. Just trust that I know.”

I did Trust him. I always have.

“I wish you could’ve known my kids.“ I said “They’re adults now, but they missed having a grandpa. Or I just missed you for them.“ He said nothing, he just listened, he was a good listener. “I was such a screw up as a kid, I just want you to know, I made some pretty great people. I accomplished that at least. You would be proud.”

His eyes softened like they always did when he was speaking from the heart. You could tell when he was touched by something you said. He was never hammy about his emotions. But his eyes would lose their hard, scrutinizing edge and his voice would soften to a velvet tone.

“I was always proud of you. You didn’t have to accomplish anything for that.”

We both waited for each other to talk.

“Can you tell me when we’ll meet again?” I asked.

“No.”

“You can’t tell, or you won’t?”

“I don’t know and if I did, would you really want to know?”

He had a way of saying things that me actually think about them, not just respond.

“I don’t know.” I replied.

He was starting to pull back - or I was.

“That’s it? That’s all the time I get with you?” I was moving away from him, back down the tunnel.

Yes.” He said with a comforting tone. “But we’ll meet again buddy, you can count on that.” He smiled.

I had wished then, and not for the first time, that I’d spent more time with him when he was around. That’s the way it always went with me. I take time for granted until it runs out. Then I wish I had more.

“I wish I would have told you this you were around, but if I could have chosen my father, I would have chosen you.”

His eyes got that look again. Velvet.

“For the record, I would have chosen you to son.”

I was pulled rapidly through the passage and I heard distant voices become louder. The tunnel faded to black and I opened my eyes.

Behind the mask, I could see the doctors eyes fill with triumph . He looked down at me with smiling eyes.

“We got him back.” He said.

Some people carry a secret forever. Some carry it as long as it suits them. I carried Tony Martinez’s secret for twenty-five years before he decided to unburden me. I met Tony in the most unlikely of places. The shallow woods of Sawyer County, Wisconsin in the 1970’s were a well traveled destination. But the deep woods were obscure and not easily traversed. It was place reserved for Rangers and wildlife and even the Rangers didn’t go DEEP in. Even now, in most of the acreage, there are no roads to drive and no trails to hike. You don’t go in those woods for recreation, you go in to disappear.

I met Tony because we had one thing in common. We both wanted to disappear.

I grew up in the town of Hayward, the seat of Sawyer County. I lived with my mom and Stepdad and neither one of them paid much attention to me.

Until I found the key to my stepdads safe. I had nothing against my Stepdad, but I felt no guilt in grabbing a $100 bill and having a great time with my friends in Duluth for a weekend. It’s when I took off with the whole $10,000 that I got his attention. I didn’t think twice about taking it and he didn’t think twice about calling the cops. It probably won’t surprise you if I said I was certain I could outsmart the entire Sawyer County sheriffs department. I took off to the vast expanse of Wisconsin woodlands to wait it out. Scared and totally unprepared, I ran into Tony after my first horrible night in that wilderness. I wandered into a small clearing hidden deep in the woods. I took my backpack off and lay down in the clearing exhausted, scratched and marred from my trek through the trees and brush. As silent as the insects that crawled in soil around me, he came out of his hiding spot and stood over me. I almost pissed myself when opened my eyes to see him towering over me.

An hour of interrogation and intimidation followed. I finally convinced him that I was who I said I was and he invited me to stay in his “camp” with him.

Tony was an ex-cop. He wouldn’t tell me what department he’d worked for. I found out years later it was the New Orleans Police Dept.. It was pretty corrupt in those days and he crossed the wrong people, effectively exposing himself to both the department and the crime syndicate. He was as good as dead if he was sentenced to any prison. He was as good as dead if he stayed and the criminals found him. So he fled. He went way north, ditched his car on the streets of Chicago and hitchhiked into the northern woods of Wisconsin where he’d been for 10 years. 10 years! I’d been there overnight and I was ready to cry and crawl back home. He’d learned, out of necessity and pure will, what he’d needed to know about living out there. He kept warm without a fire. He hunted without a gun. Fashioned clothes from animals and built makeshift shelters. The only things he really missed were Hershey bars and comic books. This large, muscle bound, ex-cop, who’d lived on the edge of death for many years, missed Hershey bars and comic books!

It was pretty clear to him that I wasn’t going to make it out there, based on the look of tortured confusion on my face, the defeated slump of my shoulders and obvious fear in my every movement. He talked me into going back and turning myself in, which I did. But, he also made me promise not to tell of my encounter with him. I promised to keep this secret forever, but I also wanted to help him. He said he didn’t need my help. I asked him to let me bring him Hershey bars and comic books. He said he never wanted to see me back in those woods again. I told him I would leave them in an old firewood box on the side of county road HH on the outskirts of Hayward. It was an old milling road that no one traveled anymore. He agreed. Our arrangement was every twenty days, I would leave him the chocolate, whatever comic he liked and a letter from me telling him about what was going on in the world. He agreed.

For fifteen years I dropped candy, comics and a letter in that wooden box. It was always gone when I came with a new batch and there was always a return letter on the extra blank paper I included in the envelope. Tony wrote about his days and nights in the wilderness and what he remembered about life outside the woods. He never wrote about the specifics of his former life as a cop, only that he regretted his failure to uphold the law and his duty to protect and serve. He felt like he had served a sentence and I agreed. I’m certain it was a harder life than he, I or anyone could have imagined living out there with no comfort or human contact of any kind. Many nights I contemplated telling someone about him, but I never did. I’ve never spoken of it until I wrote this piece.

One day Tony simply decided he’d had enough. He came out of the woods, walked to the nearest town (which was a little unincorporated called Taylor) and called the sheriff. After coming and picking him up, taking him down to Madison and contacting the NOPD from there, they released him. They had no criminal record of a Tony Martinez. They didn’t even have a record of him being on the police force. He was free to go. Go he did. He move to St. Louis and worked as a die cutter for a few years. The problem was, just because the law had forgotten, didn’t mean everyone else had. The very dangerous people Tony had crossed in his former life didn’t forget and they figured out not only that he’d rejoined civilization, but where he was. Luckily, Tony knew that they knew and stayed a step ahead.

Once again, he headed north. One step ahead was however, just that, one step. They pursued him northward, determined to finally settle the score.

The cops found Tony’s car on the side of a road on Highway 61 on the edge of Superior National Forest in Ontario, Canada.

I have no clue what happened; if they caught up to him, or he simply found a spot that looked good and just walked into the woods. There’s no romantic or poetic ending to this story, no trail of Hershey bar wrappers letting me know that he made it. My instincts tell me he did, but that could be wishful thinking. I do know that it feels good to finally be able to tell this story. I have wanted to for a long time, but I felt like it would have been a betrayal to Tony. I’m only telling it now because I’m certain he won’t be back.

Inward lies inspiration dark and divine.

Visions that cannot scale the inner-wall

thus are never quite defined at all.

Like a sea painted on a tapestry,

dry and idle rendered by the hand...

see how much the same I am.

These pieces of my joy and pain are all I have to give you.

Sharing them may be their greatest purpose.

I bear my soul in vein, though my words may touch you.

I know I’m only scratching at the surface.

Its a verve too elusive for these words.

Words, even now I’m finding hard to write.

An esoteric surge.

Like phantom pains,

or the rhythm of the falling rain.

Ideas

As intangible as time...

I try to catch them just the same.

The consequences were not obvious to me. Certainly, had I known that the act of procuring the diary of horror writer Thomas Ligotti would bring such wretchedness, I would have resisted. It’s nondescript black cover beckoned in its very mundanity. Being an intruder to his unoccupied residence, I was left with the choice of a multitude of costly treasures from which to choose. The scourge of my choice will haunt me for eternity. My eyes scanned the desk and shelves of his study. An expensive computer, printer and accompanying devices, spread ripe for the plucking before me. But, my hand was drawn to the leather bound tome and I placed it alone into my bag and left. There can be no explanation for this petty act other than the wicked Fates guidance of my hand and mind. A conspiracy between the cosmos and the author himself to pass the burden to another. Thus, rendering him free to write respectable prose and leaving me to compose nightmares and chimeric visions of which I have no control.

As I left his home under veil of blackness, I immediately gained a pursuer. I twisted through tenuous city streets to finally lose the follower and once inside my dark apartment, felt my way to the kitchen drawer. I resisted the inclination to turn on a light, for fear that I would be discovered by the Watchers who surely dwelt outside. I fished out a flashlight, crouched in the corner of my bedroom and opened the journal. Oh the folly! Pages filled with swirling maelstrom, writhed and reached out for me. Serpentine hands in grotesque movements stretched to caress my face. I trembled but could not close the book. Instead I stared deeper and fell into the vortex, spiraling to blackness. I awoke in my ransacked apartment and staggered to my feet. In a day or so I felt able to leave my premises but not before I destroyed the damned diary. In the subsequent days my attempts to read other books, magazines-even the newspaper were thwarted by the dizzying effect of the Ligottian whirlpool. Whatever I set my eyes to brought me back to the Eldritch netherworld within the book.

I have not read a book in years. Nor, can I even venture a glance at a product label lest the haunting begin a new. Doomed to a wordless existence, I watch only the television, but look away as the credits roll.