The Pram (Creature Feature collection) by Joe Hill

Author:Joe Hill [Hill, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: 2023-09-25T16:00:00+00:00

seven

He held his bags and stared into the basket of the pram. Black mold blotched the striped mattress. Maybe that was why the girl had told him to leave it. Possibly she thought it was unhygienic. Very likely she was right. And never mind the mold. Did he really want to put his groceries in that thing, after a raccoon had been nesting in it? A better question was: Did he want to carry twelve pounds of shopping back, midges landing on his face, feasting on his sweat, while his hands were full and he couldn’t swat them away? The food, unlike him, had some protection. The groceries went into the pram.

Goodkind’s talk about ley lines and feeding the yews on sinful blood had not made him skittish about the bridle path. Quite the opposite. He liked the idea that there was force here and the old folks had known it. He liked the idea that they had created an avenue sheltered from the awfulness of the everyday, a green burrow that ran outside reality, a place where it was juuuuust about possible to visit the life that had been stolen from him. To vacation in an alternate, better timeline. The sky was bright, but the sun was down behind the hills, and it was dark and solemn in the tunnel of yews. His headache was gone. His walk to the store had funneled it away . . . a thought that pleased him intensely. It seemed to him now he had spent months quaking with fury. He liked the idea that all his undirected hate could be funneled away, leaving him drained, refreshed, and restored.

Here on the bridle path, with no one to watch or judge, no one to find him foolish, he could push the pram along, taking a walk with the baby that never was. He could sing to it if he liked, and he liked. He sang “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home,” and this time he sang the chorus, and it didn’t even seem strange.

Baby won’t you please come home?

Because your daddy’s so alone.

He saw a white flash at the corner of his eye and looked around, thought he had glimpsed a barred owl. It was only a circle of peeled wood on the trunk of a yew, the bare wood the brightest thing in the dimness. It was about the size of a human face, and when he went closer, he saw an inscription carved into the soft wood:

EPHRAIM ASHER, REPENTANT, BLED FOR HIMSELF,

ANNE, GRACE, MIRIAM, DOLORES, HARMONY, JUBILATION

AND OUR SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST

BROUGHT INTO THIS ETERNAL COVENANT FEB 13 1943

He looked back the way he had come and saw another circle of peeled bark on the next yew. It was easier to spot them in the eerie half-light. The peeled wood caught the fading sunshine and glimmered. The trees were all marked in the same way. He was taking this in when the baby gave a ratcheting cry from the pram, as babies will, when Father stops pushing the stroller.

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