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Date Posted: 14:35:01 11/28/12 Wed
Author: cg
Subject: Snippet inside>>>
In reply to: cg 's message, "It's been a time since I shared anything here in the Cottage so I thought I would post one of my snippets that's in its raw state- not entirely sure what it will grow up to be." on 14:28:11 11/28/12 Wed

copyright 2012 Cindy Brandner



There were tales of a dark man who lived, some said, in the tops of the mountains, in the high passes that were fog-shrouded much of the autumn and winter. There was an ancient shepherd’s cottage there, long abandoned, but no one knew where to find it anymore, the path leading into it having long succumbed to the rigors of Mother Nature. That particular forest was one of those places—the sort that made a person shiver in their roots, knowing that something other walked there of nights, slipping between the trees, hissing over root and moss and stone. Something far older than man, and not inclined to treat him kindly.

But the dark man was said to walk the old forest trails by night, under the full of the moon and in the dark of it too. It was said that he feared neither man nor beast, though he carried a big stick in his right hand at all times. Only men who had been through hell and come out the other side did not fear night, nor other men.

The dark man—they say while whispering tales on cold October nights—the dark man can hear a girl walk through the forest, that the very roots of the trees, the moss on the bark speaks to him of passage and movement in his domain. He can feel your breath speed up, your heart begin to pound in your chest, he can smell your blood through your skin, he can taste your fear.

But people shrug and brush off such tales for there are always stories that are so- the hermit on the mountaintop, the half beast hidden in the depths of the forest, the hunted man who lives to himself on an island of stone. Such tales are often more appealing to those who come from away, and don’t have to walk the forest’s boundary of a night looking for a lost lamb. Such tales hold a charm when you haven’t known people, loved people who have seemingly vanished into thin air. In this country though, no one remains untouched by violence, by a dark man of one stripe or another.

Some men are born knowing how to hurt, others learn it through the circumstances of their lives. The dark man was of the latter. He had known violence for a long time, he did not care for it, but he understood it to be part of the human animal. And animals they were and he was, despite tea and civility and manners.

Only sometimes, as we all know and this is what frightens us most, those tales are true. For the dark man emerges from the hissing roots, and takes someone to himself, and they never return to those who love them, to those who wait and wait and wait…

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