A Place Called Nowhere
Chapter 1: The Calling of the Crow
The path took Lucy and her brother to an old abandoned farm. Lucy had seen many such relics of the old world on her travels, but something about the rolling fields of dead crops stretching out into the foggy horizon caught her eye. She stopped by the old wooden fence, eaten away with rot and moss, and took in the sight. The crops had grown wild with neglect, and other plants had begun to overtake them. She saw off in the distance an impressive farmhouse. At one point, it must have been a beautiful home for the owners of this land, but now it stood derelict and abandoned. The landscape was as drab and grey as everything else in the world had become. Even the living plants had taken on a sickly dark color, even though she could remember them once being green. Lucy wondered if she had ever been to this place before, when things still made sense. It was impossible to know for sure, now. Nothing was where it once was. She would have given anything for the chance to go investigate that old house, find some traces of the old world, but it was dangerous to stray from the path, and Lucy knew this perfectly well.
Lucy’s younger brother, Matt, stopped beside her with an air of impatience. He hated when she got caught up in her imaginings.
“Hey,” he said, “what’s the matter with you? Why are you stopping all of a sudden?”
Lucy continued to stare out wistfully for a moment, then said, “am I not allowed to catch my breath?”
“Don’t get mad at me, this whole adventure was your idea, remember.” Matt leaned against the fence, taking caution when he heard it creek and strain against his weight. “If I had my way, we would’ve stayed at that settlement we found yesterday. I’d take a warm bed and a nice meal over sleeping outside with one eye open any day.”
“No one said you had to come with. I know what I’m doing is dangerous.”
“Oh stop it. I’ll follow you wherever you go. I just wish I knew where that was, and why.”
“Me too,” said Lucy, and then started walking again.
Matt sighed and followed along.
As they moved the rolling flat plains gave way to a forest. The forest overtook fields once used for agriculture. Old houses sat covered in weeds, trees growing around and enveloping their frames. The trunks were twisted and black, the branches stretched out in unnatural, weblike patterns that interlocked and blocked out all vision of the sky. Lucy took care to be mindful of her surroundings. There were many places in the growing darkness and dense foliage for something to hide. Hostile creatures abounded in the space between settlements, those pockets of sanity and civilization that probably house most of the people that remained. There weren’t many people crazy enough to do what Lucy and Matt were doing, traveling through these no man’s lands of reality.
They came upon a massive tree root that blocked their path and towered overhead. If they wanted to stay on the path, they needed to climb it. The wood was cold to the touch, smooth yet hard like alligator skin. The two children slipped their nimble fingers into the deep grooves in the wood and made their way up. As she climbed, Lucy heard a noise. It was quiet and far away, yet persistent in the back of her perception. A song. Sung in a voice as youthful an innocent as her own. It was too distant for Lucy to make out any words but the melody was simple, short, yet haunting. A melancholy tune that seemed to beckon Lucy. She longed to hear more, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It was so quiet, in the suffocating silence of the forest, that Lucy seemed to hear it inside her own head.
“Matt!” Lucy called, tightening her hold on the tree trunk.
“What?” Matt called back from below her. Lucy didn’t want to look down but she could tell he was close.
“Do you hear singing?”
“Singing? In these woods? No I don’t. Seems like a bad idea to me. Why, do you?”
Lucy said nothing. Perhaps the song was simply in her head. She didn’t like it. Hearing things was a bad sign anywhere, but it could be deadly out here. A breeze blew through the branches and the song seemed to dissipate beneath the noises of the woods.
They climbed further up the tree, above the branches where they could see the landscape fully. The black forest stretched out as far as they could see in every direction. There was no sign of the flat plains of the farm lands they had walked through earlier today. The land had shifted and the forest had overtaken everything around. Thick grey clouds spiraled endlessly above them. A few merciful breaks brought patches of pale sunlight to the dreary landscape.
Matt sat upon a branch and rummaged through his bag. “Well, I’m hungry,” he said, “If you’re gonna stop to admire the view, I’m gonna grab something from our supplies.”
It had been a while since they’d eaten that morning, and Lucy was starting to feel the groans of hunger in her belly. Together, they sat and ate some biscuits they’d received from a kind old lady, who had given them shelter back at the last settlement. Lucy liked that old woman. Her presence brought to mind a pleasant nostalgia for Lucy. Fragments of memories. Feelings and sensations, and only the faintest glimmer of the sights and sounds. A warm house. A sky, bright and blue. A world that was rich and colorful and alive. Lucy could almost remember home, and she had even started to wonder if she’d found the place she was looking for.
A gasp from Matt snapped Lucy out of her trance.
“What is that?” he said, pointing to a distant patch of white in the forest below.
Lucy leaned in and squinted to see what he was talking about. It appeared to be a spider’s web. At this distance, it had to be massive, spanning the entire surface of a clearing in the trees. There were a series of dark spots that Lucy realized with horror were bodies in the web, wriggling and writhing in desperation. Other travelers, like them. More people appeared in the clearing, dozens of them. They marched single mindedly to the web and each fell in one by one. A spider appeared at the edge of the web and started wrapping the struggling bodies in its web and leaving them to suffocate.
Matt blew a curious whistle and said, “well would you look at that.” He took another bite from his biscuit. “What do you make of it?”
Lucy forced down a nauseous feeling in her stomach. “Some form of mind control, I think. They seem to be in a trance or something. The spider is luring them in somehow.”
“Poor suckers.”
“We must have seen this for a reason. Nothing is accidental. It’s an omen.” Lucy stood up and looked to the black branches reaching up to the sky like a thousand sickly hands in prayer. “We should be careful going forward. I don’t feel good about being here at all.”
They climbed down the tree and resumed their journey. There was an impenetrable stillness that hung over everything around them. Lucy couldn’t get the spiderweb out of her head as she walked. Could it really be so easy to lure travelers off their paths? What had the spider done to the heads of those travelers to make them march so blissfully to their doom? It was harrowing to think that at any moment, they could be led astray by some unknowable force.
Then Lucy heard the singing again.
She froze where she stood, letting Matt overtake her before he looked curiously back at her. The song was louder in Lucy’s head this time, now she could make out the voice singing it. It sounded like a child, repeating a simple melody that echoed through the empty woods. A sinking dread took hold of Lucy as the song aroused something in her. A deep longing was ignited. It built and built as the tone played out.
Lucy fought against the feeling the song dredged up inside her. Visions coalesced in her mind and formed memories of her home that she thought had been long buried. Nostalgia. It was baked into the melody of the tune itself. It was like she had heard it somewhere before, as if it carried a deep significance to her past. Perhaps the song carried the answers she'd been seeking on her journey. What she'd wanted all this time was a way to return to her home.
Lucy's body shook all over with the effort to fight off the growing influence the song had over her. It was an illusion. It was bait. That's all it was. It was rewriting her memories to insert itself into her thoughts of home. Yet could she really be sure? She saw it so clearly, how her mother had sang the song to her. She could see her mother's angelic face so clearly now.
"Lucy?" Matt walked over, placing his hands on his sister's shoulders. She was struggling against something, doubled over and grabbing her head. "Lucy, you're scaring me. What's wrong?"
An avalanche of memories crashed into Lucy's mind. Things she'd forgotten long ago sprung forth with full clearity as though they had happened yesterday. Tears ran down Lucy's cheeks. The song in her head embedded itself so deep in her memories that they became inseparable. On her mind, the song was synonymous with a time when she felt loved and wanted. When she had a place in the world, and a future to look forward to.
Lucy took a step off the path, trying to find the source of the song, to hear more of its infectious melody. If she could do that, she could return to her life as it was meant to be. She felt like she could almost reach out and grab it, that vision of the past. If she could just get a little closer.
Matt's hand shot out and grabbed Lucy's wrist. He was shocked and confused that she would ever try to step off the path. She was in some kind of trance. He pulled her in and hugged her tight from behind. She kept pulling towards that spot somewhere off the path but Matt wouldn't let her go.
In the thick of the woods ahead of them, in the darkness amongst the trees that surrounded them on either side of the path, something stirred. A rustling in the gray leaves. The glint of an eye hiding between the branches. Something watched the two children from the shadows, wondering what was holding up its next meal. A song was echoing around them. The thing in the woods ruffled its black feathers in anticipation.
Matt froze with terror. He stared into the darkness ahead of him, still clutching onto Lucy. His hands were shaking, his legs went numb. In his fear, he lost his grip and Lucy slipped through. She ran into the woods, leaving Matt alone.
"Lucy!" he screamed, chasing her into the dark.
They were gone. The woods stood empty.
-
Lucy played out in the fields, running between the towers of wheat that rose high above her head and hid her from the wide, open world around. Despite the bright, clear sky, the space between the wheat cast shadows that were deceptively dark. Her mom called out to her to come inside, but Lucy stayed hidden in the crops. She loved to make the adults look around for her, knowing they couldn't find her. It made her feel cozy, even as she sat in the dirt surrounded by the scratchy plant.
Lucy’s mom walked out to the fields, smiling to herself. She began to sing Lucy’s favorite song, the one they sang together at nights when Lucy couldn’t get to sleep. From her hiding spot amongst the wheat, Lucy began to sing along. She couldn’t help herself. Her mom quickly found her and picked her up onto her shoulders.
Lucy often had trouble sleeping. She had terrible dreams of a dying world. A world that was cruel and lonely and colorless. She mentioned these dreams a lot to her mother, who would smile and tell her that it was just a bad nightmare. Lucy's mom carried her all the way to the farm house where her grandmother was sitting by the window. Lucy's mom set her down and she ran over to her grandmother to give her a hug. When she asked her grandma what she was doing by the window, her grandma responded that she was bird watching. She picked Lucy up onto her lap and pointed out the window. A pair of crows sat on a tree branch outside, peering back at them. Watching.
The crows had an aura about them that unsettled Lucy, and she quickly climbed off of her grandmother’s lap to get away. The three of them shared some biscuits together and spent the day chatting away and playing. When night had fallen at last, and it was time for Lucy to go to bed, her mom tucked her in and sang that sweet song one last time. The melody was sweet and hopeful, but carried a tinge of melancholy to it. It soothed Lucy. That song was present in all of Lucy’s most pleasant memories. Her mom bent over to kiss her goodnight. Her mother departed from the room, extinguishing the lights on her way out. Lucy was alone, in the darkness.
Lucy tried to get some sleep, but found that she couldn't. The darkness in her room came with an oppressive sense of disquiet. She lay in the bed with her eyes wide open, feeling like she was floating in a void. Her room was intangible, a distant memory that she couldn't picture, it felt as alien to her as the distant lands in her picture books. The night sky outside her window had no stars and no moon. She sat up, pressed her face to the cold glass, and tried to see the world outside. Tried to picture it in her mind, and found that she could not. She found herself unable to picture anything of her life. The faces of her mother and grandmother. The world outside this farm. All of it was blank in her mind's eye. A powerful fear gripped her as she sat alone in her bed, surrounded by nothing. The cold glass on her face was the only sense that kept her grounded. Slowly, that too began to fade, as did the feeling of her soft sheets, and suddenly, Lucy was falling.
Lucy had no sense of the direction of her fall. There was no up or down, only the feeling of tumbling violently through the void. In the chaos, Lucy saw the only light visible. Two pin pricks, the glint of a pair of black eyes looking up at her, watching her fall towards it. Lucy felt a gaping maw open before her. She felt a hot, moist breath envelop her as she fell. She felt the change that had been made in her. How her memories had been reshaped by this thing, all to bring her here. Helpless, she realized her doom. She flailed desperately for something to hold onto. She felt a hand grab her's. She held onto it as it pulled her up and away from that thing. Loud angry fluttering filled her ears, like a thousand bird taking off and swarming around her. Up and up she was pulled, until, at last, light returned to her eyes.
Lucy and Matt emerged into a large, open field. There were no trees in sight. The forest was gone, replaced now with a flat, wet, grassy plain beneath a yellow sky, black clouds swarming around them. There was a stillness in the air as they sat, breathing heavily. Lucy felt the wet, muddy ground beneath her. This world was real. Tangible, in the way the other world couldn't be. There was a weight to this world. Something She didn't notice when it wasn't there, but could feel its presence now that it was. This world was dying, but it was real.
Matt gathered himself, panting heavily. He said, "are you okay, Lucy?"
Lucy turned over onto her back. She watched the dark clouds swirl above her. "I don't know," she said. "I thought I saw home."
"Home?"
"Yeah, a farm. Mom was there. At least I think it was her. Now I don't know anymore. I can't remember anything but that dream."
"It was just a hallucination. Whatever that thing was, it just wanted to lure you in and eat you. It's lucky I was able to get to you in time."
Matt, got to his feet and scanned the field around them. Only now did it occur to Lucy how weird it was that Matt hadn't featured in her dream at all. She watched him as he searched for a path forward, sweat building on his face. Who was this boy anyway? Were they siblings after all? Lucy had no memory of how they met in the first place, he had just always been there.
Matt found a winding dirt path in the grass and they shambled to it and pressed on. No use lingering. It was dangerous to stay off the path for long. What was it they were moving toward, Lucy wondered. She began to think it was a mistake to venture out into the wilderness.
"Matt?"
"Yeah, what is it?"
"Why are you following me? It's not like I have a plan or anything."
"Because you're my sister. I'll follow you to wherever it is you're headed. There's nothing else for me otherwise."
That simple, huh, Lucy thought. She suddenly felt very cold. The openness of the field was oppressively lonely. Perhaps there would be a settlement nearby if they just pressed up ahead. Lucy began to think of staying at the next settlement permanently. What life would that be? A safer life, perhaps, for a time anyway. Tucked away in a little corner of reality, living in ignorance and waiting. Waiting for the end. They all fall eventually.
No. Better to press on. There was something out there somewhere. Calling to her. A promise of answers, of purpose and meaning in the void. She was sure she would find that thing eventually, if she just pressed on a little longer. Reached out a little further. She would find it.
Or they both would be swallowed by the void.