When I was younger, I helped my Uncle Reggie harvest maple sap and boil it down to sell as syrup in Dad’s shop.  I remember the thick amber color of fresh sap, the stiffness in my hands after a day of lugging full buckets, and the warm, sweet odor of the sugar shack.

I can still see the dark gleam in Reggie’s eyes when he was busy in the grove. He loved those trees, singing lullabies to them when we’d leave at night.

 
I was ten when the big storm hit at the start of harvest season.  The weather has to be just right to produce the most sap—freezing during the night and warm during the day.  It often snows during harvest season, but this storm rolled in and erased the whole valley. Reggie, full of concern for his trees, ignored the warnings and went out that morning, quickly vanishing into the blank world. 

 
Mom filled with concern for her kid brother and called the county sheriff in Middlebury.  They couldn’t do anything until the snows stopped.  Days passed.  Deputies eventually came around on snowmobiles, but there were parts of the woods too choked with snow to search.  Reggie had melted away like a ghost.

 
We had no sign of my uncle until our neighbors, Susie VanNuyck’s folks, found him a few days after the deputies abandoned search.  He was raw and frostbitten, raving and frothing about “bleeding the trees.”  Fresh scars in little staccato dashes covered both arms.

 
Reggie wasn’t right when we brought him home.  He woke at the usual time, dressed, ate his breakfast, and made like he would go manage the trees.  But on most days he didn’t—not like he used to anyway.  Sometimes I saw him after school, walking through the village with blank eyes.  Sometimes I saw him meandering in the grove, not really tending the maples, but wandering—lost. 

Then I read snippets in the village paper about missing pets.

 
I didn’t connect any of the stories with Reggie; when he would disappear all day, I figured he was just babying those maple trees again.  I wanted my uncle to be okay.  One Saturday morning, I followed Uncle Reggie, curious as to why he hadn’t invited me to harvest with him since the storm.  He jerked through the woods carrying a stuffed burlap sack.  After every fifty feet or so, Reggie would stop and flick a glance over one shoulder. 

Maybe he knew I was following him; maybe he wanted me to see.

 
I drifted behind, feeling some fear swell where there shouldn’t be fear.  My stomach tightened, squeezed by a giant’s hands.  This was Uncle Reggie, right?  The guy who taught me all the secrets of the maple trees and how to tap the best sap?

 
Deep in the woods, Reggie dropped the sack, reached inside, and yanked out a dog, a little black terrier with a wide red collar.  That’s about all I could see.  Reggie took the dog over to a tree—the mutt was squealing like mad, kicking its little puppy feet.  A knife flicked out of Reggie’s sleeve, and he flayed that dog alive; his hands ran red as he shook its body over the tree, rubbing the blood all over.

 
When I close my eyes, I still see that awful, red-black blood pulsing between Reggie’s fingers. 

 
I ran away, headed for the house, but tripped on a downed maple branch that let out a loud pop.  My ankle throbbed; the blood in my veins hammered against my skull.  Reggie had me by the collar before I could scramble to my feet.  I smelled the awful, warm, dog odor.  He spun me around—I swear he had no irises, just pure oil-slick in his eyes, dancing around loose in his skin-tight skull.  The gleam was gone—replaced by nothingness.

 
“Blood will have blood, won’t it boy?  We bleed the trees…what do they get?”

I shook.  Tears came.

 
“They’re real thirsty.”  He smiled, and his teeth jutted out, brown and awful.  “I’m going to need something bigger.”

 
I pushed him away—he must have let me go; I quaked like the last autumn leaf to fall in a gale, bumbling my way back to the house.  When I got home, I stripped off my stained jacket—marred with Reggie’s bloody hands—and threw it in the furnace, too frightened to tell anyone.

 
Susie VanNuyck vanished the next week.  Rumors blew through the valley.  News vans parked in the village square and laid siege to the VanNuyck house for a while.  She was my age, and Mom started escorting me everywhere.  Reggie kept eyeing me, daring me to say something until I finally cracked, and sobbed to my folks who, in turn, called the sheriff. 

Reggie went quietly, except just before they shoved him in the back of a cruiser, he lurched free and lunged at me. 

“They were thirsty, boy.  Crying to me in the cold night.  I had to feed them something warm…”  The officers wrapped his arms in their rough fists and tossed him in the waiting car.

 
I thought about the scars criss-crossing his arms and the time he wandered during the snowstorm.  I saw the little terrier bleeding in Reggie’s hands.  I tried to remember Susie’s face—we’d gone to school together—but I lost the memory in a wash of black.

 
The Addison County Sheriff found carcasses of some two dozen small animals out in the reduction shed, but no Susie.  Without any evidence, the kidnapping charges wouldn’t stick.  Reggie served a good deal of time for his other crimes, but Mom says he is out of prison now.  He never came home.  I imagine he’s probably out there, somewhere, babying those trees again.

©2009 Aaron Polson

Two shapes move behind the beam of a single flashlight: a man and a boy.  The man sets the light on a counter and begins to search the cabinets.  He moves slowly, opening each door and peering inside.  The boy’s head tilts to the boarded windows.  His eyes flash back and forth in the yellow light. 
“I can still hear them.”

 
The man nods.  He finds a box of wafers and a glass jug with a few swallows of wine remaining. 

 
“Do they…know…” The boy’s voice shakes and fades.

 
“We’re okay for now.”  The man pulls a pistol from his waist band and lays it next to the flashlight. 

 “We need some rest.”

 
Both eat in silence, chewing the stale wafers slowly, savoring each bite even though it tastes like glue.  They share the wine from the bottle, not bothering with the gold chalices under the counter.  After their meal, the boy’s eyes grow heavy.

 
“Go ahead.  Try to get some sleep,” the man whispers. 

 
The man leans against the counter and guides the boy’s head to his lap.  Outside, distant moans echo.  The boy shifts a few times and settles.  His eyes lost to memories, the man strokes the boy’s hair.  The flashlight magnifies the shadow of a cross on the opposite wall.

 
“Some of the others…back where we were…said God was dead,” the boy says.  He is almost asleep, exhausted.

 
Glass breaks somewhere down the street. 

 
“Nonsense,” the man whispers.  “If God were dead, we wouldn’t be here together.”  The man’s voice wavers, but does not break. 

 
They sit in silence for a few, long minutes.  The noises outside grow faint.  The man thinks of the grey things shambling in the street.  He closes his eyes and sees their black mouths, smells the reek of rot and decay, the stench of urine and blood.  He imagines their relentless, blind stares.  They will not rest.

 
When he is sure the boy is asleep, he reaches back onto the counter and collects the pistol.  He snaps open the chamber and counts two cartridges.
“If God were dead, little one, there wouldn’t be a bullet left for both of us.” 

©2009 Aaron Polson

When Aaron Polson isn’t arguing about the definition of irony with his English students, he can be found chipping away at a twisted tale in his basement dungeon.  He currently lives in Lawrence, Kansas with his wife, two sons, and a tattooed rabbit, enjoying every mood swing in the Midwest weather.  His stories have appeared in Necrotic Tissue, Northern Haunts (Shroud), Monstrous (Permuted Press), and other publications.  You can visit him on the web at www.aaronpolson.com.