Mary Gilstream’s house is the last upright structure in Joy’s End, but that’s ultimately fine, because Mary Gilstream is the last soul left alive in Joy’s End.
Her boots gave out a few years ago, and now she walks the paths through the village without them; unfortunate, given how the paths have been overgrown and reclaimed, weeds growing thick and wild, though unavoidable. Muscle memory keeps her on the same route she’s always traversed despite the road being thoroughly hidden, zig-zagging between the rest of the houses, buckled and bent and bowed down towards the ground, like pious subjects prostrating themselves at the feet of the gods.
And the forest is the only god here, an unstoppable and untameable force. Mary Gilstream heads out to the remnants of Joy’s End with her rusted water pail as she does every day, aiming for the well on the opposite side of the village. The overgrowth tickles at the bottom of her worn feet, slipping between her toes.
“Good morning, Artie,” she says as she passes Art’s general store, though Art hasn’t spoken in years since the vine-like branches curled up through his chest and burst from the front of his throat to wrap around him in a lethal cocoon, and his store walls have sagged beneath the weight of the roots piled atop, the support beams snapping like chicken bones with the meat torn free.
Mary Gilstream walks through a patch of brambles which bite at her soles, though it doesn’t stop her.
“Nice weather today, Beatrice,” she offers to Beatrice’s petrified corpse, twisted permanently into a silent scream and still clutching part of the long-rotted fence, half-replaced with the forest’s expanding hunger.
Once upon a time, Mary Gilstream had greeted the new growth as well, the trunks emerging out from the debris as the village’s buildings fell one by one because she’d believed, foolishly, the respect would help stem the tide of the onslaught. She’d stopped once three-year old Penny was consumed in one of the trunks, her tiny fingers protruding from the bark.
Penny’s final scream of terror still echoes through Mary Gilstream’s thoughts sometimes.
“I do miss your mince pies, Sandra,” she says, with a bit of a wistful sigh, as she passes Sandra’s legs—the only part of her still visible beneath the overgrown, vine-covered heap that had once been her seamstress shop.
The winding path has exploded with growth; now the feathery cat-tails and spindly goldenrods seem to burst from where the worn route had once lain. As Mary Gilstream approaches the last curve, the weeds reach up past her waist. She must swim through them with the bucket gripped tight in one hand, wincing when her feet come down on errant pebbles.
She is out of breath when she reaches the grey stones of the well, lungs burning. Her organs protest such exertion at her age. Mary Gilstream sets the pail atop the edge and presses two gnarled fingers to her sternum, noting the quick rhythm of her heart. Then, with a measured exhale, she begins to pull the rope to lift the bucket from the black depths.
The bucket comes up empty, not a drop of water to be found, not even on the bottom rim. Mary Gilstream drops her gaze to Henry, curled around the western base of the well’s ring. He can’t look back, of course, ever since the trees stole his eyes and tongue and replaced them with spindly white roots to feed off his flesh.
“I see,” she says, low. She doesn’t dare lift her tone for this—not here, not next to Henry’s skeletal remains. After all, he’d been a woodcutter. He’d wielded one of the axes that had ultimately led to Joy’s End’s destruction. Mary Gilstream picks her pail up once more, turns on one stinging heel, and returns to her home the way she came. She does not offer greetings to the dead she passes on the way back. As she pushes through the weeds and the brush and the tangles of razor-sharp weeds, she imagines she can hear their replies anyway, a whisper against her ears.
It’s been awhile, Mary. See you soon, Mary.
She had not realized, when envisioning her own end, as one does when the world around them is swallowed whole by the trees they’d once lived beside, how badly she would want it to ultimately happen in her home. Mary Gilstream lived her entire life in her house, from the moment she came screaming and mucus-covered into the world, and thus she will leave from the same place. But the forest has to allow her to return. She stumbles once, with her front door in sight, and drops the pail.
She doesn’t bother to fumble around in the stalks for it. With the well dried up, it serves her little purpose.
Mercifully, Mary Gilstream makes it back to her house. Her heart has taken up a too quick beat, a roll of thunder through her thoughts, while her feet find her familiar, well-worn boards. She takes one step in, and then another, before the first root bursts through the floor in a shower of splinters and dust.
Mary Gilstream would rather die in her bed, but a second root emerges near the first, barring her path across the room. At least she is in her house—the house her father built from the forest itself, an affront to the trees and their vengeful rage. She backs up until her shoulders hit the wall, then slides down. One aging knee pops out of the joint, a bright flash of pain, though it hardly matters now.
Finally, the forest has come to reclaim the last structure in Joy’s End, and once it’s consumed, only the bones of the village will remain, the decaying sinew that had once been a sign of their lives, their love, their legacy.
It’s time.
The walls of the house rattle with the ground, the epicenter of the forest’s final, ravenous strike. Briefly, she wonders if the vines will crack her ribs apart to feast on her organs, or if the spindly seedling roots will pierce her skin to replace her veins and run the length of her limbs.
She wonders if she was the last to be preyed upon for a reason, or if she had simply gotten the unluckiest roll of the dice.
No matter now—the forest is here, furious outside her windows. Joy’s End failed to respect the land they relied upon, and the land demanded its owed gratitude in blood. “I’m ready,” Mary Gilstream says, for she is, even if fear sets her chest afire. She closes her eyes, so at least she doesn’t have to see the forest rushing at her in her final moments.
Featured Image Credit: A Chosen Soul / Unsplash+
