The Woodshed

The Woodshed

She stuck her head outside the back door. The outside light flickered on. Raw light shone through a collection of cobwebs weaved between the brick wall and uncovered bulb. Droplets of rain hung onto the fine lines of web as if waiting for a safe place to land.

She stepped carefully out into the cold drizzly night, a wood basket under her arm and gumboots three sizes too big on her feet. Five minutes ago, she had been cozy and warm tucked into the corner of the couch with a biscuit for each hand before losing a game of Eeny Meeny Miny Moe against her brothers. They always won. The loser had to replenish the pile of wood that fed the water heater fire. Smoke and heat from the greedy fire ran up the chimney, into the ceiling, heating the water to scalding in pipes that then delivered it down to the kitchen, bathroom and laundry. Day and night the unrelenting appetite of the small fire had to be fed. Fire in its belly garnered more attention than almost anything else in the house. Apart from the woodshed.

The arc of the outside light was dimmest beyond the house at the mouth of the woodshed. The path beyond the woodshed, the clothesline, the nectarine tree by the back fence, the broken swing and the vast vegetable garden were all obscured, all black. She thought they were gone, just gone and nothing was left beyond the end of the light. If she stepped out from the light, she too would become black and nothing, until the morning sun returned the colour.

Head down, basket held tight, she took quick steps of courage away from the back door towards the woodshed, past the chalk hopscotch squares. Drawn just before lunch, the now wet multi-coloured chalk lines looked like a crashed rainbow with its guts smeared across the concrete.

The woodshed was made of brick and tin, sweat and tears and devotion with meticulously chopped wood hugging the walls and down two precise straight lines in the middle. Not a stick out of place. Not a bark piece displaying an unruly husky hair as if the Brylcream Bruce greased through his hair to hold it in a perfect arrangement had bled through to the rigid rows of wood. Small windows on each side of a gapping entrance were nailed shut, each one dark, like dead eyes, deep, pupil-less. In her nightmares, such as now, the woodshed looked like a monster with a grim smile, just watching and waiting. Watching and waiting. From the shelter of the back porch, she heard Bruce’s deep angry voice urging her to hurry, bloody fire will go out. She shivered; her skin and bones not cold but remembering.

The rain was coming down faster now. Tiny daggers of icy water hit her head. The hundreds of droplets in front of her seemed to hang suspended in the air for a moment longer than necessary, longer than seemed real before falling onto the concrete and rolling into the puddle near the corner of the house. Each suspended droplet for that moment was soaked in light, a moment to sparkle before becoming a dark mass spread out between her and the woodshed. She thought of her two biscuits, gone now probably.

The thought stopped her. She stared into the face of the shed. The woodshed glowered back. The left window shimmered. Did that window just wink at her?

The basket under her arm grew heavier. She closed her eyes and tried to be somewhere else, on a rock by the river in the sun, climbing up into the walnut tree on her friend’s farm, two biscuits on a cozy chair, China. The images like a kaleidoscope in front of her, reaching out to her with long fingers, drawing her in, but the rain dripping down her boots and pooling by her toes, the wall of noise from the water beating on the tin, the yelling from the backdoor, the sound of blood rushing through her chest and past her ears cracked the pictures, creating small fissures from where colours ran. They ran down, down into the pool of gathering water, leaving black and broken shards.

She opened her eyes. Six, maybe seven more steps towards the woodshed and she would be able to touch the closest wood pile. What would Wonder Women do? What would the Six-Million-Dollar Man do? What would Mum do? From somewhere deep inside alien and hidden, a secret power curled up, up through her veins to her muscles, to her brain. She counted herself down to go. 3, you can do it. 2, it’s ok. 1, hold your breath. GO!

She launched forward, her body moving fast, eyes on the murky wood shapes. Her mind sprinted, but her feet in the gumboots three sizes too big dragged. They fought to find the same speed as her resolve but four steps in one boot tripped over the other. The swing of the basket, heavy with rain unbalanced her. She landed side-on, her head just missing the end of the woodpile. Rolling onto her back, her head so close to a pile of wood she could smell the gum, the pine needles and the faint musk of animals.

Beside her right ear, she thought she heard a scratching noise. A faint, hardly there sound, as if it was almost not there. She directed her eyes towards where it seemed to come from as if that would help her hear it more clearly. The scratching halted. She stopped believing it was real. Then it started again, further back near the wall, low to the ground. She rolled onto her stomach, eyes glued to the pile in front of her, focusing between the stacked wood where the pieces did not quite join. She stared into the thin slits of black. The scratching was almost rhythmic. Like a tiny tune played on a miniature record player in a tin can, a thin, reedy melody from another world.

She stretched closer to the slit between the wood. The ink black changed to a dark blue, then a grainy grey the more she stared, like a mood ring she had seen at the A&P show last summer. The ring had changed to a royal blue when she tried it on and she wanted it so badly, but all the coins in her pocket were not enough. She handed it back to the seller as slow as she could hoping he would pity her sad face. As she turned away ring-less she noticed it had turned almost black in the seller’s hand.

The hole widened as her eyes adjusted to the space. From the edge of her eyesight a light, a shadow, a movement. Her eyes tried to follow the movement, but it was gone. She drew closer and pressed her face hard up against the woodpile and with her right eye, her good eye stared hard into the gap. Another flick and in the space between the slabs of wood an almost translucent foot revealed itself. She blinked. It was gone.

She adjusted her view, trying her left eye. Was that a hedgehog? Her eye tried to adjust to the darkness but couldn’t focus. Outside the rain came heavier, it sounded like fists were trying to break through the tin roof. She stuck her right eye into the gap again. In the back of the gap, close to the wall a faint light approaching slow from the left flickered. An ant, scouting its way along a log into the approaching light stopped, turned sharply and scuttled away.

A nose appeared shiny and twitching, illuminated by a tiny headlight strapped to the head of a hedgehog. The hedgehog turned slowly towards her, the lamp light dipping and lifting, it’s coat of spikes appeared luminous and majestic, like armour made of silk. Two tiny, shiny eyes looking at her, into her, through her to way past her. It’s left eye closed, slowly so very slowly. Her breath held, neither going in nor out. A hedgehog with a headlamp? She felt another blink coming. She put her fingers around her eye, one up, one down to keep it open but her eye betrayed her, and in that tiny fraction of a second, it was gone. Just a gap in the woodpile. She scrambled left and right, checking gaps nearby but only saw deep black recesses. Gone.

She gathered the wood basket and shoved the nearest bits of wood into it. Her thoughts pitched from one to another, trying to be heard but she wanted them to wait. To wait until she was inside, warm, alone. Hours, days, years later, in the dark of night when the noises of the house had receded to sighs of the sleeping and the fire crackled behind its glass door, she could close her eyes, open her right eye and see the soft shadowy light of a hedgehog with a headlamp.