Orlin Wood

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Mr. Orlin

As long as I can remember, Grandma would tell me about Orlin Wood. I can recall hundreds of stories about strange visitors appearing out of the woods on dark nights, only to disappear back into the morning fog; or over-confident adventurers setting off on hunting trips under a blood moon, running afoul of things unknowable and unspeakable. Mostly, though, Grandma’s stories were about family. Our family had lived on the edge of Orlin Wood for over 275 years, and we’ve had more adventures, mishaps, disasters, and just plain weird things happen than any other family in the county. Not really surprising, since the woods were named after my family.

My great-great-great-great grandfather, Zechariah, was the first Orlin. At least, he’s the first Orlin any of us know about. The way my grandmother tells the story, it was back in 1788, when he came stumbling out of the woods on the dreariest day of the year, right about dusk, and collapsed in front of a group of hunters. Since no one recognized him, and he was far too incoherent to make any sense, there was a bit of an argument as to what to do with him. But the eldest member of the party, a Mr Tennison, was a devout Christian who had lived a very severe and uncompromising life of service, and insisted that they make a litter and carry the man to his farmhouse.

For three days, the mystery man drifted in and out of sleep, muttering a single word, Orlin, over and over again. They could only assume that he was trying to communicate his name, so the family took to referring to him as Mr. Orlin. The man had a strange effect on people, even in his delirium. He seemed to extract a feeling of compassion and good will from those who lingered by his bedside—particularly, Elizabeth, the farmer’s youngest daughter. Since her older brothers and sisters all had work to do around the farm, Mr. Orlin’s care fell mainly into her gentle hands.

She watched over him as a mother watches over her firstborn child, and when, on that fourth day, he finally opened his eyes and the light of intelligence held firm, she burst into tears of joy. As my grandmother says, and she knows an awful lot about this sort of thing, you can’t take care of someone and not love them, at least a little bit. Sure enough, by the time Mr. Orlin woke, Elizabeth had fallen in love, and nothing—not even his personality—would sway her from it.

The odd thing was, upon waking, Mr. Orlin was no more well informed about who he was than the rest of them. He seemed to know a good deal about carpentry, farming, hunting, and even tracking; and what’s more, he seemed to have had, at one point, a fairly thorough Christian upbringing, since he was able to discuss the Bible in depth with Mr. Tennison. But he could not, for the life of him, remember where he had learned any of it.

It was Mr. Tennison that gave him the name Zechariah. He thought it was a fitting name for a good Christian man. The two of them spent a great deal of time together, hunting, fishing, talking about the Bible. And, when they would sit at table in the cool of the evening, Elizabeth was always certain to place herself as close to Zechariah as possible, asking about their day, listening with rapt fascination, regardless how mundane the answer was.

As I said before, Mr. Tennison was a stern man, and very pious, but he dearly loved his daughter, and he was very fond of Zechariah, so when the subject of their courting came up, he consented. And when the issue of their marriage was brought up, he couldn’t be happier. Mr. Tennison went as far as to help the two newlyweds build a small farm of their own, at the edge of the woods, not far from the spot where Zechariah first appeared. So far, it sounds like a real sweet love story—except that, as Grandma puts it, there was something a little off about Zechariah Orlin, something that only Elizabeth saw. He seemed a likeable sort to everyone, and was often invited to go hunting with the other farmers in the area, but whenever he would go, he would always come home angry and in a foul temper. Often, Elizabeth would wake to find him standing on their porch, his gaze fixed on the woods, with an expression on his face that terrified her. Worst of all, though, was the way he would disappear for hours at a time, out in those woods, only to come tromping home, refusing to talk about where he had been, or what he had been doing.

Elizabeth continuously worried. Her greatest fear was that he would someday remember the life he had before he emerged from the woods, and want to return to it. Certainly, his actions seemed to give her fears some credit. But, for the most part, he remained devoted, even affectionate, in a way.

They had four children together, through years of plenty and years of struggle. They saw a run of diphtheria that claimed many lives in the nearby town, and the life of their second born daughter. They fought the weather when a hurricane threatened to destroy their home. They defended themselves against an Indian raid, and Zechariah even helped to save a neighbor’s farm from fire one hot summer night. They lived their lives. They were a part of a community. But people couldn’t help but notice something…unsettling, about Mr. Orlin.

When things happened, Zechariah seemed to know ahead of time. He had mysteriously delayed his regular stop into town for supplies the very week when people started to fall prey to diphtheria. In fact, the only reason his daughter was taken was that she had been on a church picnic with several of the girls from town. And, they all remembered the night that several Comanche raiders, driven from their own lands by drought, had come to steal horses and cattle. It was Zechariah who had raised the alarm and gotten a group together to face them down. The funny thing was, he had gotten the men together before the raiding party was anywhere near the homesteads. And, when a neighbor’s farm had caught on fire one night, Zechariah was there, in the middle of the night, as if he had known that his help would be needed. This, in and of itself, might cause people to be suspicious. When you threw in Zechariah’s strange past—or lack of one—it’s no surprise that some people started to whisper whenever he walked past.

But it was a cold winter morning, a few hours before dawn, that would change everything. That morning, Elizabeth awoke from a nightmare, to find her husband away from their bed. She searched, but could not find him anywhere in the house, nor could she find him on the porch. Throwing on a heavy coat, she ventured out into the night air to search the farm. She found him by their barn, and he was not alone. She stopped at a distance, as he was obviously in the midst of a heated argument with the mysterious man before him. The stranger was in a curious frock, similar to the sort worn by the pastor of their church. His face seemed to be draped in shadow, regardless of which way he was standing, and most curious of all, Elizabeth would later be unable to recall a single clear descriptive fact about the man’s face, height, build, or any other indicator about him, despite the fact that she had stood there for over an hour, watching, before returning to the house.

She desperately wanted to confront her husband about the incident, but a sort of dread would creep up on her whenever she thought of broaching the subject, so she kept silent. But over the next few weeks, she would awaken in the night to find him away from bed, again, and again, by the barn, and again, arguing with the dark stranger. In town, people spoke of a strange presence. A sense of dark foreboding, a hint of the netherworld. There were plenty of ways of describing it, but the one phrase everyone seemed to agree on, was evil. The younger folks laughed it off as the superstition of old folks, but even they had a certain nervousness about them when they did.

Even church became a place of darkness. The pastor’s sermons, once filled with light and hope, were now focusing on the bent nature of man, the realities of suffering, and the call to all Christians to persevere in the evil times. Elizabeth tried to talk to her father about it, but he waved her off, saying that the pastor was just trying to reassure people that their fears were just a reflection of their own conscience, and that their need for repentance was all that was required to expel the demons that faced them.

It was meant to reassure her. It did not. Unlike the others in town, she could identify the evil presence in her life. It was not guilt; it was not superstition; it was not an apprehension over changing times. It had form. It had dimension…and it had her husband.

Elizabeth had been raised to be a dutiful and obedient woman. But she had also been taught to be assertive, to know her own mind. She knew she could never face down her husband, but in her heart, she was certain that he was not the one she must confront, anyway. She had lived a very nightmare for months now, and had withered within herself as she watched her husband drift inward as the shadowy figure drew him back to the woods he had emerged from. And then, one night, something inside her snapped.

It was the night before Easter. Zechariah had been in a foul mood all night, and had barely spoken through dinner. It was a relief when he turned in directly after. Elizabeth busied herself with the preparations for the next day’s holiday feast, set about the last minute cleaning, then began the task of hiding two dozen boiled eggs for the children to hunt in the morning. It was nearly midnight when she was finally finished. With a sense of relief, she walked upstairs to the bedroom and saw the steady, rhythmic breaths of her sleeping husband. She was clear to do what she instinctually knew she had to do tonight.

She left her house under the silvery glow of a full moon and boldly walked to the side of the barn facing Orlin Wood. She had watched her husband in secret on many nights at this clandestine meeting place. She had no way of knowing that her being there would bring about the stranger’s appearance, but something inside her knew that if she went out there, she would find him. She stood at that spot and stared out into the wood and willed that man, that specter, that being to come.

You can’t have him. she called out. Her voice was weak, almost brittle, as she called out. But it worked. As if the darkness were delivering up a part of itself, the form of her opponent coalesced fifteen feet in front of her. He was in plain sight, under no concealment, but somehow, the details of his face were still faded and obscured. He made no move to come nearer, but his stare seemed to draw him ever closer, until the closeness between them seemed stifling.

You can’t have him. she repeated, more determined this time, He left that place a long time ago. I don’t know why, and I don’t care. But he came to me, I cared for him, I loved him, and I gave him a part of myself, a part that I can’t take back. You can’t take him without taking a part of me…and that’s not yours to take.

Elizabeth felt the coldness of an inhuman stare bearing down on her as she waited for a reply. It was a hot night, but she felt a coldness that defied temperature wrap itself around her as this thing began to speak. Elizabeth had tried to prepare her for what kind of unearthly voice could come from this monster, but the sweet, calm, and utterly ageless quality of his tone and speech took her breath away for a brief moment. "I have been called to this place by him many times. I never came unbidden. I never offered