The Black Vine
By Dylan Munson
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An image called “Kudzu Graveyard”, uploaded to Wikimedia commons by Rhododendrites and used under a creative commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
You say that the Black Vine appeared after the big spill—and you won’t tell me what that means—but that you don’t know where it really came from. Yet I’ve also heard you say, when we’re gathered in the little hut we use for praying on Sundays, that all things come from God. I’m only a child, but isn’t it obvious? Didn’t God send it here?
Listen. I don’t want to tell this story again. I’ve already told it to May’s parents and had to hear them sob and scream and I won’t tell it again, I will not.
She wanted to visit the village because of the bell in the old steeple, which she’d heard other kids ringing before, heard all the way from her tent. You don’t tell us we can’t go to the village, only that we must not touch the Black Vine, which is everywhere there, in our old homes and shops, the ones I’ve never known because I was born here and not there. But I trust you when you tell me that they once belonged to us, I do.
No, we did not touch the Vine. Let me finish.
It was already dusk when we left, and maybe that was our mistake. We were walking down the street made of that flat dark stone, and everything around us was turning black too, if it was not already so with the Vine. Every time I go I gasp. It’s all over the place—creeping out of windows, covering the lawns, the burnt-out lampposts. Thick, slick, giving off that disgusting stench that makes you want to plug your nose. But you know I have a soft spot for May, and so I was willing to do this for her.
We walked, hand in hand, down the street, towards the steeple, which is one of the few places in the village where the Black Vine doesn’t grow. That’s how the children can get up there and ring the bell, the stairs to the top and the upper part—what’s it called? A belfry—that part is clear as well.
The stench always grows stronger as you approach the steeple. Is that where the spill, whatever that means, happened? Is that why all those rusty machines got left there, the heaps of metal just beyond the church in that line of cleared forest? You don’t know, or you won’t tell me?
We stopped at the graveyard outside for a rest.
“Why are there so many stones?” May asked, and did that thing we all love where she sticks her thumb in her mouth. I think it was her first time in the village.
“They’re all someone who died,” I said to her
“How did they die?” she asked.
“All in different ways,” I said, and that’s when I heard it. The sound in the belfry. It’s hard to describe, I guess it’s kind of like when you’re underwater and you try to talk. But if so many people were doing it at once, and if the water was thick and soupy and—I don’t know how I know this—black, like the Vine. And that stench in the air, a bit like when we let a lantern burn too long, grew heavier. It was hard to breathe, the air was full of it. My head hurt, my vision was blurry. I tried to speak but couldn’t.
I became so scared, so fast, I reached for May’s hand, I wanted to pull her along out of there and back home, but I grabbed air. I turned to where she’d been standing and she was gone. I was just in time to catch the hems of her little jeans disappearing into the door to the tower.
I really didn’t want to go up there, but I didn’t have time to think, so I followed. She must have been very quick—I don’t know how because I was out of breath when I reached the top, there were so many stairs. As I climbed those voices—they were voices, I am telling you—they grew louder, the air grew even thicker, so much that I could barely move, but I wanted to get to May, thought I could save her from whatever was doing this to us.
It didn’t matter. I’d wasted my energy. She was gone. There was nothing in the belfry. I called her name, looked in every corner, I even thought about going into the main part of the old church but I know the Vine grows there so I didn’t. I wouldn’t.
And when I was thinking about what I would do next, how I would tell her parents, which I already did, that’s when I saw it. The leaf, the color of the charcoal we use when we grill our venison, one leaf sprouting from the wood of the belfry floor. So I ran, and now I’m here.
Where do I think she went? Something took her, of course. Something that lives in the Vine. Something like it but different. It asked her to come and she did.
What was it? It was hungry. And I’ll bet if you go back there now—but please don’t—you’ll find the steeple, like the rest of the village, covered in it.
Which makes me wonder, Mom and Dad—what will you do when it comes for me?
“No Solace” by Don from Murfreesboro, TN, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“Dylan is an emerging author currently pursuing a graduate degree in the environmental social sciences. His interests include hiking, traveling, and reading or writing anything spooky. He has previously had a short story published in Hive Avenue literary journal.”
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