Creaking Branches

Hugh’s thoughts trickled cold and slow, like the thin, melting sheet of ice that had formed on his windshield in the time he spent inside the store. His gaze wandered over the rear-view, showing piles of bags and boxes in the back of the sedan, and down to the passenger seat. Peeking out of another pile of bags was a carving of a squirrel. “What an ugly piece of work,” he thought.

On his way into the store he had noticed Chuck, a homeless man. Hugh didn’t personally know the man, but he used to see him around town before the quarantine had started. Four weeks ago, the last time Hugh had left the house for supplies, he had seen Chuck sitting under a streetlight just whittling away. Chuck always had an old red wagon he pulled around, chock full of wooden carvings he made and tried to sell. He also looked cold and miserable this time of year.

That day, Hugh happened to park near where Chuck had set up. On his way out of the store, Hugh paused and had a brief exchange with the man. He handed Chuck twenty dollars and in return grabbed the wooden squirrel out of the wagon, then made his way back to the car. Hugh hoped that Chuck might be able to afford new shoes, or at least some whiskey to Knock the Edge Off.

So there Hugh sat, staring at the squirrel and waiting for the car to warm back up. It was carved out of a single piece of pale yellow wood, and had the same basic shape of a squirrel. Kind of chubby, huge tail, big buck teeth and perched on something resembling a nut of some kind. Hugh couldn’t tell if it was an acorn, chestnut or just some random shape Chuck made so the thing would stand upright. I should roll down the window and eighty-six this thing, Hugh thought. He had felt bad for Chuck, but had no obligation to take the squirrel thing. He just wanted to help out, Chuck had insisted he take something in return.

Hugh pulled out of the parking lot and drove home. After rolling into the driveway, he went and unlocked the door to the house, then propped open the swinging door between the foyer and kitchen. Hugh figured his parents were in the depths of the house, so he started unloading all of the groceries and supplies by himself.

Hugh hated that he had been forced to move back in with his mom and Ted. He got along with Ted now that they had gotten used to each other over the years, but that was like being used to smelling a corpse because you worked in a morgue. Hugh didn’t have to like Ted, just tolerate him. He was sure Ted felt the same way. Normally, Hugh wouldn’t interact with Ted at all, but nothing had been normal this year. It had been downright miserable.

First the panic, then the quarantine. The bar Hugh had worked at was forced to close down, so he lost his job. Then he got evicted from his apartment building. He had no idea that it was zoned as commercial property, and it never occurred to him before. The city had purged half the residents to try to comply with the fifty percent occupancy mandates that had come down on them. Shit always rolls downhill, Hugh had viewed the situation. Now he was a thirty five year old man living at home with mom and Ted again. Even the woman he had been seeing ghosted him after the quarantine started.

Hugh had just set the last of the groceries down and was starting to unpack them when he heard a gasp behind him. “Good morning, mom,” Hugh turned and said.

“What are you doing!” She screeched.

“Unpacking,” Hugh said, his voice dropping to a dead monotone.

“Get your ass back to the foyer,” she made shooing gestures and pulled her nightgown up over her nose. “You’re going to kill Ted with that damn virus, coming into the house after being out there. You know how weak he is!” She stamped one of her little feet and yelled the last few words.

“I’m just trying to help,” Hugh started saying.

“What all did you touch?” She asked him, scrambling through the bags until she found disinfectant. Lickety-split, she removed the packaging and started dousing everything.

Hugh removed himself from the kitchen, and back to the foyer where he lived. He spent most of his time lounging in a gaudy old love-seat he had dragged from the depths of the house. Hugh also drug in a chest of drawers and propped an old flat screen television on it. His days were full of reading, gaming and streaming services.

The foyer had a swinging door to the kitchen, a glass paned door to the depths of the house and the door outside. Hugh left a baseball bat next to the door outside, which he thought of as a just in case measure. A spiral staircase led up to a lofty bridge hanging over the foyer. One side of the bridge extended over the house, creating a small room as a second floor. It was a bed-bath combination he used to only use when visiting for the holidays. This year, he had lived here until the holidays.

It wasn’t all bad, Hugh supposed. He had been growing tired of the bar lifestyle, after all. Sure, Hugh had become a decent bartender, after working his way up from serving tables. He had built up a laundry list of regulars who would invite him out to events while stuffing money in his tip jar. But, the hours sucked and he was always picking up his coworkers’ slack. Hugh wasn’t great handling money either, so he’d often be broke on slow weeks. At least now, the unemployment office gave him enough spending money to keep a stash of Knock the Edge Off in his room. Plus, his mom wasn’t making him pay rent, as long as he went out and got supplies for her and Ted.

When Hugh got lonely, which was at about ten every morning, he would fire up a video game and chat with the people in his clan. Hugh had been getting to know them better and had actually played with them instead of the usual lurking, drunk, at three in the morning. They made him feel old though. Even though he was halfway through his thirties, he still felt like a kid when he played games. He only got reminded of his age when his references would fly over his clanmates’ heads.

Hugh would confine himself to the foyer for the next two weeks, in order to keep his mom happy. She had been Ted’s sole caretaker since the dementia had started eating away at him. Ted’s health had been in decline before everything happened, and the pandemic had his mom wound up even tighter than usual. So, as per her motherly mandate, Hugh would be on double secret quarantine.

She’d leave food on the kitchen counter, wrapped up to-go with paper plates and plastic utensils. Every other day a bag of garbage would appear in the foyer, which Hugh would take out during his daily ten minutes of sunshine. If they needed to have a conversation they talked over the phone. If she noticed him gone for any extended period of time, it was back to day one of her double secret quarantine; and Lord forbid if he got caught in the house before those two weeks were up.

*

Three days into the double secret quarantine, Hugh caught himself flopped over the love seat with the television blaring at him. It was late at night and he was staring at a can of warm pop in his hand, thinking about the daily rationing of Knock the Edge Off he had put in it. Surely, another little dose wouldn’t hurt would it? What else was he going to do? Watch more crappy comedies and not drink? That’s how he always ran out early, and he knew it.

Hugh looked up and through the glass paned door that led to the rest of the house, and started. On the entryway table sat the carved squirrel, right between his high school graduation picture and a picture of his mom and Ted. Hugh had forgotten about it. He figured his mom must have placed it there as a joke. He had the urge to throw it away again.

Hugh blinked and shook his head a little to be rid of the stupor creeping on him. The longer he looked at the squirrel, the uglier it looked to him. The face was squashed almost flat, and the buck teeth were too pointed. The wooden eyes seemed to bulge out of the head, and there were pits where the pupils would have been. Was it carved like that before? The squirrel thing looked bigger and darker in the poor light pouring out of the foyer. It creeped him out. Hugh flopped the other direction so he didn’t have to look at it anymore, then fell asleep before he could get another dose of Knock the Edge Off.

*

The next day Hugh’s mom called him just before lunch.

“Hugh, how’re you feeling honey, are you okay?” She asked, worried.

“I’m alright mom, what’s up?”

“How was the chicken last night? What did it taste like?”

Of course, Hugh thought, she’s testing me. “It tasted mostly like cumin. Pretty good curry flavor, Spanish rice was an odd choice though.”

“It was Mexican food, not Indian.” She said, sounding a little relieved and irritated. “So, you’re not feeling bad?”

“No, I’m fine,” he replied, “is everything alright in there?”

“Well,” she gathered herself, “Ted’s been running a little fever, and I’ve been feeling a little weak myself.”

“Don’t work yourself up too much,” Hugh tried to sound reassuring, “take an extra long, hot bath if you can. I’ll make lunch today-”

“No! No, you just stay on that side. I can handle it.” Silence hung out for a while.

“You sure?” Hugh asked.

“Yeah... Yes, I’m sure. In case we don’t have the virus, I don’t want to risk it if we’re both feeling extra weak.”

“Alright,” Hugh replied, “But as soon as you need help, let me know. I’ll be right here, as always.”

*

Four more days of the double secret quarantine had passed before he got another worried phone call. This time it was early in the morning, waking Hugh up.

“Morning, mom,” Hugh said, answering the phone.

There was labored breathing on the other end of the line.

“Mom?” Hugh said. “Hello?” He asked again, as a sinking feeling started dropping towards a knot forming in his stomach.

“Hugh,” she replied at length.

Oh my god, he thought, Ted’s Dead.

“Ted’s not doing very well.”

The anchor plummeted in Hugh’s stomach, then held fast on something and settled.

“Ted says he can’t taste breakfast,” she blurted out.

“Oh,” Hugh said. Shit he thought. “Is he okay? Other than the taste thing, I mean?”

“Well, he could barely tell me anything this morning. He’s been having trouble talking the last few days, and it only got worse this morning. He doesn’t look good either. I mean, my eyes have been acting up lately, but even I can tell he looks worse. He’s been dehydrated and his nose has bled a few times.” She sounded a little hoarse like she had been crying.

“How are you feeling mom?” Hugh asked. His mind was tumbling over the thought that he brought the virus down on his parents. His stomach somersaulted the other direction and made him nauseous.

“I’m okay,” she sniffled. “I feel weak and tired, but I can still smell and taste everything. I lit one of those apple cinnamon candles earlier just to check-”

“You’re sure you’re okay?” He interrupted. “I’ll call the hospital and try to get Ted in.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Maybe... I don’t know Hugh,” she said. “I don’t know if he really has the virus, and I don’t think I do. Whatever you brought in with you, I’m hoping was just a cold or something.”

“Well I don’t feel any different, and I didn’t bring anything else in with me,” I hope, he thought.

“I was thinking about everything you could have touched when you brought the groceries in,” she said, “so I could make sure I disinfected everything. And, I remembered that ugly little squirrel thing.”

Hugh felt like he was under a ton of bricks that just kept pushing down.

“I didn’t see a price tag or anything on it, where did you get it?”

Hugh was silent for a long time, he knew what was coming. “A homeless man.”

She exploded into suppressed fury. Eventually the words became recognizable “I. Can’t. Believe. You. Do you realize the lengths I’ve been trying to go to, to prevent this exact thing from happening? And you bring some ugly wooden thing in here? That you got from some homeless man? I can’t even begin to imagine the numbers and kinds of germs that could have been on that thing. What is wrong with you?” She hung up on him.

Hugh stared at his phone for a while, then got out of bed to appease nature. Afterwards, Hugh spent a while pacing and worrying. He hadn’t gotten any more phone calls from his mom. If I accidentally wind her any tighter she’s liable to have a stroke, he thought while scratching at his scruff and chin. She hadn’t had any symptoms though, he reassured himself. Mom only said she was feeling weak and tired, which was par for the course. When Ted’s health declined, so did hers. It only made sense, he told himself. I’ll give it another day, maybe two. If Ted isn’t getting better, I’m calling a doctor.

The rest of the day passed by without incident. Hugh spent a large portion of the day gaming to keep his mind off of things. He made sure to keep his phone within reach and eyesight, just in case. Once it grew dark outside and Hugh was sure his parents were in bed, he gave himself a double dose of Knock the Edge Off.

He was lounging in the loveseat when his thoughts turned again to the phone call that morning. He looked over at the entryway table where the carving loomed. Somehow it looked fatter, squatter and meaner. Hugh rubbed an eye and blinked. Before, it had been a pale yellow color, but now it looked dark, almost maroon; and it glistened like it was wet.

He got up and walked over the the glass paned door, watching the carving. It looked much more bulbous, shiny and super-hydrated as if it had been soaked in oil. Now that he was closer he realized the face looked eerily human, though malformed and with giant fang-like incisors. Hugh’s heart stopped. A viscous substance oozed out from the pits in its bulging eyes, then he saw it take a breath. The squirrel thing made a hissing noise that sounded like a branch creaking on the other side of the glass. It hopped off its grotesque wooden perch and bounded into the depths of the house.

Hugh grabbed the baseball bat by the door, then hurried off after the carving. He was out of shape and out of breath by the time he sprinted down the hall and turned a corner into the living room. The light was on where it shouldn’t have been. A breath caught in his lungs at the sight of Ted, emaciated and withered. Ted was sitting upright, his head leaning all the way back against the couch’s top, which ended at his shoulders. As Hugh drew near, he got a good look at Ted’s face.

Ted’s mouth was opened wide, and his tongue looked like it had been chewed down to a nub. His nose was gone, replaced by two scabby openings in his lined, aged face. His eyes too, looked to have been eaten out of his skull. A couple places around his neck had pairs of what looked like small puncture wounds, but no blood was visible around them.

A ringing in Hugh’s ears brought him back to his senses. His face was going numb and his heart was pounding. “Mom,” he whispered before whipping around and sprinting off. He went room to room until he reached her bedroom. A light was still on, beyond the door. “Mom?” He called out, pushing the door open.

His mother was sprawled on her back on the bed, as if she had been sitting down and then slumped backwards. She was immobile, her face turned away from him. Hugh teared up as he walked toward her body. Her head moved, and he locked eyes on it. It moved again, and the squirrel thing appeared, freshly smeared blood on its face soaking into the wood. It’s eating her was his only thought as he raised the bat up and gripped it with both hands.

Hugh yelled as another creaking scream came from the squirrelstrocity. It darted towards the edge of the bed. Hugh swung the bat, hit the thing square, and heard a soft thud as he followed through. The squirrelstrocity exploded on impact, flinging blood and splinters of wood all over the room. Hugh stood there aghast, as he watched the splinters twitch and move all around him. They all seemed to rattle towards other nearby pieces of wood; floorboards, dressers, bed frames, night stands, lamp posts and cabinets. Then the splinters just melted into the other wooden surfaces and disappeared.

Hugh slumped down to his knees, still in shock. All around him he could hear the sounds of branches creaking in the wind.