Taken Away
She defiantly rubbed the fist of dirt she was holding into her mother’s nose and mouth— punctuated a moment later with a hard slap across the face. Ten year old Marie Meehanan had always been the most loving and respectful daughter— until now.
It was the end of a summer day, right before dusk. Both the setting sun and a full rising moon shared the sky above a precipitous rock ledge. This was a special place, which her father, James, took the three of them fairly often. From their vantage, one had a clear view both west and south, revealing the expanse of land for a hundred miles. On especially clear nights some claimed they were able to see the lights of New York City, away southeast. Mother and daughter now gaped at each another in disbelief— Marie for having dealt the blow, her mother, Anna, for having received it.
It had begun only minutes before with Marie fitfully fidgeting in her mother’s arms, clearly not wanting to be there. James sat next to them as his daughter began to groan and whine.“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” asked Anna Meehanan. “We have a wonderful sun and moon to watch tonight.”“I’m sick of this place,” answered Marie, “I want to go.” She continued struggling against her mother’s embrace.
“You love this place,” said her mother.
She did. Upon this ledge as a child, Marie would gaze into the heavens at day’s end, asking them endless questions about the moon and the stars. Her father explained the science of astronomy, her mother, the myth and romance of the night sky.
Anna glanced at her husband. He hunched his shoulders.
“It’s no big deal for her tonight, I guess.”
“That’s right,” Marie shot back, as her mother let go of her. Marie abruptly stepped away, stooping to pick up a stone. “I want to go home.”
“Let daddy and I watch the sunset,” answered her mother. “Then we’ll go.” James and Anna huddled together as the sun shone upon their faces.
With a sharp scowl, Marie threw the stone from the ledge. For some reason she could not understand, she was feeling very angry and even more anxious. She picked up a fallen tree branch and began banging it against a large rock along a wall of the ledge. Harder and harder she slammed the branch, grunting as she continued.
“Stop that, Emily,” said Anna. “What are you doing?” Her first name was Emily, but she was known to almost everyone by Marie, her middle name. Everyone, that is, except her mother.
“I want to go home now,” Marie bellowed.
She halted a moment, grabbed some dirt from the ground and spitefully rubbed it all over her own face and neck. She then picked up another branch, wielding one in each hand and began wildly smashing both against the rock. Her parents sprang to their feet.Anna grabbed Marie as her father took the branches from her hands.
“What’s wrong, Emily!” said her mother as she tried to calm her daughter by embracing her. That’s when Marie bent again, scooped up some more dirt and shoved it straight into her mother’s face.
Anna spluttered on the soil in her mouth. Before she could wipe it away, Marie lashed out and slapped her mother, leaving a red blotch on her jaw.
“Take me home now, right now!” shouted Marie.
And then, on this clear night, something else began happening. An unexpected fog rolled in. It quickly expanded and grew thick all around them. Within hardly a minute it became so dense they could not see more than a few feet in front of them.
James made them huddle close, not daring to trust moving blind among the sharp fall-off of the ledge’s boundaries. A harsh, terrible odor overcame them, followed by a distinct sound, as if something—an animal perhaps— were choking. Marie’s eyes darted all around, seeing the sudden panic in her mother’s eyes. Anna seemed to somehow understand what was happening. In response, she quickly reached for something from around her neck. Marie began crying out loud. This fog, in some unexplainable way was horribly familiar to her.
“I told you I wanted to go home, why didn’t you listen!”
“We’ll be fine, Marie, just calm down,” assured her father, standing over them in protection, his eyes trying to penetrate the fog. The strange noise came closer, now discernible not as choking sounds, but that of something with a horribly strained breathing pattern.
Anna drew out in front of her a small round globe on a necklace. She held it up, where a hint of the rising full moon through the fog somehow caught it, producing within the charm a faint glow. Marie had never seen it before. As the fog tightened around them and the odor and bestial sounds came very close, Anna ripped the necklace off. She placed it in Marie’s hand, clasping her fingers tightly around it.
“Emily, take this. Keep it on you and never let it go! It will keep you safe. Please, remember the moonlight!” The globe gleamed brighter in Marie’s hand. But in her confusion and hysteria, with the ghastly breathing and disgusting smell overwhelming them, Marie threw the charm far out into the fog.
“No!” cried Anna, watching it disappear. With a heavy sigh of resignation, she wrapped her arms around her daughter, preparing for the worst.
In the next instant as James circled to protect them, a sharp, angered roar pierced their ears. Anna was suddenly, viciously, lurched away from Marie into the fog. But her mother’s clutching hands would not let go and Marie was dragged along. With a scream, Marie saw her mother dangling on the ledge brink, seized by something in the hazy mist— something with terrible, red dripping eyes staring back. Ten year old Marie was struck with a pang of recognition: she vaguely knew what stared at her, from perhaps a dream or imagining a story once told to her, or something. She also knew she hated it and being near it made her hate everything as well. It motioned for her to follow. Even as her mother’s desperate outstretched grasp was slipping from her, Marie suddenly felt her father grip her shoulders from behind.
“Don’t let go of her, Marie!” he shouted, “hold on!”
But instead, intense rage and disgust swelled within Marie. With a feral growl, she wrenched her hands away and kicked her legs downward, smashing into Anna’s head. She fully saw the disbelief and betrayal in her mother’s eyes, before falling away and disappearing into the fog. James threw himself after his wife, but she was gone. He recovered and stared astonished at Marie.
“What did you do?” he pleaded.
Before she could answer, he took her in his arms and held her from any further harm. A moment later, Anna appeared again, farther away, but somehow still visible through the fog. Marie struggled to get free, but James held her tightly while calling out to his wife again and again. The odor and disgusting sounds then faded and the fog cleared as quickly as it appeared. When they were able to see again, Marie gasped. The spot where they last saw her mother was in mid-air past the brink of the ledge. Had they run out to her, they would have fallen into the ravine below, over sharp, jutting rocks and most likely been killed. Below them, there was no sign of Anna Meehanan anywhere.
James bitterly tried to understand Marie’s confusion when she woke the next morning. She listened to the sheriff and his men conduct their investigation, clueless as to why her father was so devastated. When her father thoroughly questioned her, it was plain that Marie had blocked the prior night’s horrible incident from her conscious mind. It made some sense, James thought: she had not been herself at all yesterday and now she had no recall of what happened. What she had cold heartedly, savagely done to her mother firmly convinced him that Marie was ill. Throughout the next several weeks, she was sent to three doctors to help regain her memory. Nothing worked, with Marie only growing angry and frustrated. During her evaluations, there came strange moments when she adamantly referred to herself as Charlotte, but this would quickly pass. To her father’s horror, Marie soon lost all memory of her mother, as if she had never existed. With a stiff upper-lip and never shedding a tear, James had no choice but to mourn to himself the loss of his wife.
Months went by with nothing further discovered. Sheriff Dan Radich, one of Gulliver County’s most ardent believers in the local legends, knew what had most likely happened, but nonetheless kept his investigation open until the summer’s end. James convinced himself that his wife must have fallen victim to a wild bear attack, though the black bears of the New York State region were seldom so aggressive. Afterwards, he often visited her gravesite, but this was out of respect and for his own peace of mind. James knew she wasn’t really there because no trace of her was ever found.
The following year had been a trial for both father and daughter. They often argued and Marie at times caught him drinking scotch. She became more temperamental and disrespectful, and had fallen in with a troublesome group of friends. Twice that year there was a knock at the door with Sheriff Dan handing Marie over, explaining what mischief she had found. James’s attempts at discipline did not work well, for Marie possessed a headstrong, iron-willed personality, determined to do things her way. Continued examinations by doctors still provided no clues as to what she suffered from, though James was thankful his daughter showed no more violent behavior.
There were however, things Marie and her father did enjoy together: games, specifically chess, which brought out both their competitive natures. Their games were also excellent outlets for Marie’s talents of quick thinking and methodical strategy, skills which James saw blossom in his daughter from an early age. Marie didn’t just become a good chess opponent; she became a deftly skilled player. As she approached her teens, she began to capture her father’s king considerably more than the reverse, much to his frustration. In somewhat less engaging moments, they also enjoyed watching a weekly teevee show that took place in outer space, with someone who had pointed ears.
Otherwise her father kept to himself, returning home from work and planting himself in front of that same television set, where the evening news chronicled a long, sad war being fought somewhere far away— along with how angry people were in contention over it. Much like the folk in their hometown of Highland Pointe, who also argued endlessly, not about the war on the tube, but a war that had been brewing there for many years.
Plainly put, the woods they lived near were downright strange and positively dangerous. By that time, the spring of 1968, thirteen-year-old Marie knew all about the fantastic stories of those woods, as it was impossible to prevent the fervent tale spinning from anyone, young or old. The adults of Highland Pointe feverishly discussed each bizarre event (including Anna’s disappearance), whether at the market, the beauty salon or church, along with the children, both at school and play.
Yet Marie was a rare child who did not believe what her father referred to as the “fool lipdribble” of Spellhollow Wood. James was a firm skeptic and he was not alone, being part of the ugly and ever-contested division among the county folk— a division whose only agenda was which side could proclaim the loudest whether or not there were any such thing as ghosts and goblins. It only followed that James’ practical sentiments were a direct influence on Marie’s thinking. Apart from what she was taught in catechism, Marie only trusted in what she could see and touch, especially if it was outdoors. She adored animals and nature— trees, rocks and creepy-crawly bugs of all kinds— except for worms. Marie was genuinely scared of and hated the slimy, wriggling things. Still, she had spent far more time as a growing toddler collecting endless sticks and leaves, along with generous helpings of dirt— without the worms—while her new toys were left alone and mostly untouched.
From her early childhood, Marie developed an odd foible, less so for what it was, then for what it progressed into. She became deeply entranced by anything of gold, cherishing the very color and shimmer of it. She was often found adorned with her mothers’ (who also quite fancied) gold jewelry: rings, bracelets, and other trinkets that Marie would stare and marvel at for hours at a time. While not so strange at first, her fixation significantly deepened as she got older. The grandeur of pure gold set ablaze such a passion and fire in her eyes that at times her parents, and afterwards her father by himself, could have sworn it genuinely hypnotized her.
In the last year, she started painting her finger and toenails gold, which rankled her father considerably. She then demanded to have her ears pierced, so she could wear a pair of gold earrings, unknowingly belonging to her forgotten mother. After James’ repeated refusals, Marie at last had them secretly pierced with her friends by a hippiesh pawnshop owner. Soon after, she was caught stealing a gold ankle bracelet from a jewelry store. Both incidents led Marie to another heated argument with her father, resulting in a month’s grounding.
However— a breakthrough occurred that spring of her thirteenth year. It was late afternoon and they were in the midst of another hard fought chess game. Just as James was cornering Marie’s king with his rook and bishop, she started talking as carefree as one would about the weather.
“I had a dream about mommy last night,” she said, munching on a handful of peanuts from a bowl set between them.
“You did?” answered her father, his strategic concentration broken, trying his best to remain calm while swallowing the lump in his throat.
Marie maneuvered her knight. “She spoke to me.”
“Did she? What did she say?”
“She told me she was so proud of me and how fast her little Charlotte had grown up … because it’s been so long since she last held me when I was two years old. Your move, dad.”
The name Charlotte again gave James cause for alarm, but he squelched any immediate reaction. “Two years old?” he instead asked, confused.
“Wasn’t I only two when she got sick and died? Fidleedee, move, dad.”
James moved his bishop ahead inattentively, hardly taking his eyes off his daughter. “Is that what mom told you?”
She quickly exploited his mistake. “No, it’s just what I remember. Checkmate.”