No Laughter in the Garden

“And the rain is brain-colored.
And the thunder sounds like something remembering something.” – Stan Rice

“There is no laughter in the garden.” – P.J. Harvey

_____________________

“Daniel!”

The moon was still out, casting its preternatural glow over the garden as Erika rushed out of her house.

“Daniel! Where are you?”

She could hear him breathing. She could hear him giggle. His cooing in the night came to her in her sleep. Sh-sh-sh; the footfall sounded on grass, dark emerald and wet from the midnight dew. How many times had he come to her in the dark? How many times had he drew her from her sleep and led her through the night?

I’m coming, she thought, I’m right behind you.

She fled through the garden, not taking time to look at the nocturnal flowers. She had raised them herself, from seeds to long stemmed bushels. They were easier to raise, she thought to herself, they don’t run off. She liked to watch them grow throughout the day when they were young, watching the wind hiss through them, watching them fight each other for sunlight, for water. Some died, but the stronger survived. Like children, she thought, only the strongest make it out.

Erika heard it again. The soft pat, pat of Daniel’s feet. She couldn’t remember how many times she’d heard it. Once, twice, three times. It didn’t matter; he was here now wasn’t he?

There was something said in the wind. Her name, only a faint sound carried, barely a whisper. She couldn’t decipher. Decode it like a series of numbers on a computer screen, like the web a spider weaves, or the many complexities of God. Understanding anything these days caused an effort of thought, an effort of picking at the brain that was left after the psychotropic drugs dissolved it away turning it to a mush of numb gray matter.

It called again, Erika. He was hiding, she knew it.

“I’m coming to get you!”

Her panicked tone shifted to crazed excitement. Anyone witnessing her actions would have thought her a bit off. She seemed to dance through the hedge that marked the end of the garden the beginning of the wide empty yard. She knew he was there, just beyond the phalanx of tall oaks and pines, waiting for her to seek him out, to catch him.

Her husband used to call it their own personal army, before her downfall, holding off the many townsfolk that wished to come and see the house and the faded woman of the silver screen’s past. They never entered. Most were belligerently cast away by her husband’s harsh words. They rumored the many on goings of the house. They’d gasp to each other how he trapped her there locking her up in her room, using her money to drink himself to incoherency late at night.

Erika dashed across the wet grass, feeling the imprints she thought were his, Daniel’s.

Her feet caked with mud, squishing between her toes, a sensation as nostalgic as it was repulsive to her. Her white gown became heavy as mud encrusted the bottom and a mist seemed to haze over it. It clung to her naked body like a child to a mother’s leg, hoping she’ll protect it from the elements. The haze became a drizzle, wetting her blonde hair black in the dusk.

Every muscle in her body warned her of the trees. Do not enter, do not enter. A crack of lightning cut the sky in half seeming to split the fabric of space, of time, as she neared the impending greenery. The trees lived themselves, their branches reaching out to her, beckoning her to enter their arms, but no warm embrace awaited her.

She took one last look at the house. Its white was luminous in the moonlight behind the shade of rain. A light turned on in the second story window, her bedroom. No doubt her husband found her missing from the bed she had been laying in for the past three months. No doubt he would rush out of the house looking for her.

She crossed into the woods.

Inside, under the canopy of thin pine needles and leaves of fall, the rain was nothing more than a miasma. The trees seemed to breathe in and out, looming above her, shifting from side to side drunkenly.

He was here somewhere. She could feel it. Just a few more steps and I’ll find you, she thought. He would wait, she knew he would. He had waited three years for her to come.

Deeper into the forest she roamed and already could hear her husband calling her name through the dense trees. They cut through his words dispersing them from many directions, disorienting her.

Show me the way, she called to Daniel, please, show me.

Everything looked the same to her. The same trees, the same pathways, the rain fell the same around all the trees, hugging them with its thin fog. But there was opening, in the trees before her, as if they parted and welcomed her. The rain didn’t fall here.

She entered the opening. Something about it stirred memories of childhood. Playing in the woods with siblings she’d long been out of touch with. She longed for them now, longed for her dead mother, her dying father. She longed for the husband she married, not the one following her. She longed for Daniel, her only son; the child who disappeared into the woods three years ago, leaving no trace of his existence.

“I’m here! I’m here!” She called to no one, but the forest listened. It heard her call and heralded sympathy on her behalf, the trees bowing all around her.

“Erika.” It came from no where and everywhere.

She turned searching for it. She knew it was Daniel, his sweat little voice.

“Where are you, baby? Mama’s here!”

There was something in the mud, under a thick patch of grass, something hidden to anyone who didn’t know to look. She clawed at it, digging the mud, the green, the worms from their slumber and throwing them aside.

“I’m here, baby. I’m here, Daniel.”

She dug deeper and deeper, until her nails split from her fingertips and bled into the soil. She dug until she scraped at stone with her bare, bleeding fingertips. The indention in the stone catching the nub of her tips, scouring them open, turning them purple and blue and red. She dug and dug until the polished stone became clear enough to see.

She turned away. It wasn’t true, it was a lie.

This wasn’t him. This couldn’t be her Daniel. She traced the name with her sore fingers, tears welling up like a dam about to burst. She read it again:

DANIEL ROBICHEAUX

The tears fell like led pellets from her eyes, pressing deep in her skin. What’s happened, she thought to herself.

Still his voice called to her.

“Erika!” It came from all around her. She fell to the ground, crouching to a fetal position, crying to herself.

“Erika, what are you doing out here?” The voice came from behind her, where her husband pulled his coat off and wrapped her in it, crouching next to her, cradling her in his arms. “What do you think you are doing? You could catch your death out here!”

“He was here, Peter. He called to me!”

He just held her, rocking her back and forth as sobbed into his chest.

“It’s alright,” he whispered to her. “It’s alright.”

Peter glanced at the polished stone they had placed in the forest where Daniel used to play. He could feel her fear, her sadness. He knew what had happened, but couldn’t understand the depth of it.

They sat there together in the rain, holding each other. The only things they had left of their lives. The reason they both struggled through their days. There was no laughter in their garden anymore. It had overgrown, like the misery deep inside of each them. Where there once was life, melancholy had taken over. Only the nocturnal were left, they were the only ones which dared to grow.