The Creeping

“Make sure we get the roots,” I say. The silhouette before us shudders like an animal preening its fur. A squirrel squirming in its nest or the wind, I’m sure. Instinctually, I move to a crouch. Something primal runs from the cold, wet soil into my hot fingertips, like I’m hunting prey, like I can feel the earth’s memories of people in this exact spot and position creeping up on a predator eons ago. I can practically hear the wind singing in a silken whisper, Do it. Do it.

During the day there are tourists hovering around the strawberries. They snap pictures and nudge the glossy green leaves with their shoes and pretend to prick their fingers on the thorny bramble. No one’s ever brave enough to eat a berry. I’d eat every single one if it would get rid of the tourists for good. You know how when some super-religious person spots Jesus’s face in a grilled cheese sandwich? And all the other religious people from miles around come and stare at it? That’s what these strawberries have become—that but opposite. The strawberries are proof that evil exists. An entire spectral tale’s spun around them. I’ve come here a few times, wearing sunglasses that mask half my face, to listen to the awed whispers. Why couldn’t Kent Talcott kill them? Are they possessed? Does the monster feed on them? Did nature send the bramble to protect the berries or snuff their life force out? I swing the hatchet and swipe it left to right, its blade slashing through the web of vines with the precision of a guillotine. Branches snap as necks would.

The strawberries are innocent, as much a victim to the aftermath as we are. But there’s no other way. Sam hammers the earth with the sickle; with each strike its curved blades puncture the hidden root systems of the vines and bramble. Zoey uses the shovel to uproot the thickest stalks from the dirt. We go on like this for ten or fifteen minutes. Berries red and round as inflamed eyeballs tremble on their stems. One after another they fall, popping, splattering their blood. We stomp them out. I drag my sleeve over my mouth. Sam’s chest heaves; his eyes are as wild as a rabid dog’s. I’m sure I’m foaming at the mouth too.

I watch Zoey’s fervor. Her hair sticks to her slick forehead. Her lip gloss drifts to the corner of her mouth. She curses under her breath with the effort. I know Michaela thinks she’s pursuing the glory that lasts and that Zoey’s kind—the popularity, the social chairs, the prom crowns—is transient. Zoey has something else, though. It’s not that Zoey is as fierce as warriors used to be or as beautiful as an unscarred forest or as complex and wending as a tunnel that burrows to the center of the earth. She’s all those things. Zoey is loyal, and there’s no glory that outlasts that.

Ten days ago Caleb tore a piece from his T-shirt and stuffed it down his own throat. He suffocated on it as orderlies tried breaking down his door, where he’d wedged a chair under the knob. He left no suicide note, but I don’t need a note to know that Caleb couldn’t live with what he’d done to Zoey. Yesterday Zoey’s mom had a memorial for Caleb. Dad, Sam, Mrs. Worth, Zoey, and I were the only ones who went.

I swing the hatchet faster, elbow straining, a pain shooting into my shoulder. Not surprising. The scar tissue throbs when I brush my teeth. There’s wet earth rot in my mouth and nose. I tug a pair of black knit mittens from my pocket and jam my hands into them. I drive my fingers into the dirt where the stalks disappear, and their fat stems turn to colorless roots like obese earthworms. I claw deeper as Zoey does the same. We’re up to our wrists in dirt. Finally, I feel where the roots turn from snakes to spindly veins. We pull every last one of them out.

I survey the pile of butchered vines. Only now am I aware of the pinprick stinging. Some of the thorns from the bramble embedded themselves in the fabric of my sweatshirt, their points sticking into my flesh. Rather than grimace, I smile down at the massacred shrub. It had to be done. I had to prove that there’s nothing preternatural about this pile of sticks.

“I dare you to grow back now, you hose-beast,” Zoey pants to the ground.

I jam my muddy mittens into my back pocket and pull the Polaroid from my hoodie. We leave the garden sickle and hatchet on the heap. Let people see what finished off their supernatural berries. Next we move into the woods. The sun’s just breaking over the horizon, giving everything a scrubbed-clean look. Jeanie’s abandoned house fades from view as we hike deeper. Sam’s arm is around my waist. The brittle grasses crunch under our feet; it hasn’t rained for weeks. Moss like tinsel garlands frost tree branches sucked dry of green. Oak leaves scatter the ground with the look of dead cockroaches curled in on themselves. Prehistoric crane flies hover in the shade, their droopy legs twitching.