Berry

She had been lost in the woods for six days, running out of food. Her face was swollen with mosquito bites, her arms sticks, her blond hair now grimy brown. Yet she was not alone. Sometimes she actually believed she could see her long-missed mother standing afar in the moonlight which fell through the trees, her shadow going behind a trunk--and the girl waited--but never emerging from the other end.

But now, Dora, as what she was called, suddenly noticed the cluster of strawberry bushes near a stand of beech trees, not daring to believe even when she saw the bright red fruits. Hadn’t she just told herself that she could see things or hear them if she wanted bad enough? She stopped to wait for her heart to slow its fearful pounding, closed her eyes and counted to twenty. Her thoughts abruptly ceased, and the first to come back was "I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing. It’s another make-believe, another hallucination". When she re-opened eyes, however, another four steps convinced her that the bushes were real, the lush freight of strawberries hanging all over them like tiny apples of temptation.

"Berries ho!" Dora cried in a cracked, hoarse voice, and any last doubts were removed when two black ravens which had been feasting on dropped fruit a little further into the tangles took wing, cawing at her reprovingly. She meant to walk, but found herself running instead. When she reached the bushes she stopped on her heels, breathing hard, her cheeks flushed in thin lines of colour. She reached out with her filthy finger for the tangles of brown brambles, which were scarlet with a silver sheen, as if ready to drink as much of her blood as they could while it was still warm and flowing. But the berries felt soft under her fingertips. She raised the finger to her mouth and put it between her lips, hardly chewing, and the tangy-sweet taste urged her to reach for more.

The girl stripped a second from the leaves in sticky bunches, but squashed it. Droplets of red juice were spurted onto her skin. She was about to lick her palm when she noticed something going wrong, fatally wrong. The little scrap of deflated berry-skin stuck onto the palm was turning dark and then black before crumbling into ashes, while a drop of that sticky liquid, now smelling as stench as it used to be sweet, dripped on the ground. It all at once became bloody red and hot. Dora heard the leaves under her feet sizzled as smoke rose, spreading among creepers that festooned the dying trees.

Her face twisted into an expression of surprise, agony and subsequently horror. A flash of fire appeared at the foot of one wisp, small flames stirred at the trunk of a tree and crawled away through leaves and brushwood, dividing and increasing. The smoke sifted, rolled outwards. One patch scrambled up like a bright serpent, which leapt on the wings of the wind and clung to another tree, eating downwards.

At the sight of the flames and the irresistible course of the fire, Dora stumbled her way towards nowhere, never more than a few metres ahead of the blistering heat. A tree behind her exploded like a bomb, tall swathes of creepers rose for a moment into view, agonised, and went down again. She didn’t scream, that would cost her too much energy. She merely ran and ran in this trackless forest, with the hoof-beats of some great monsters behind her, a fearful insane creature revived in flame which drew ever closer and would have taken her eventually, no matter how she twisted or darted or doubled back.

The exhausted gal almost slid down the hillock before a house came into her view. It was a mansion in incredibly good form looking no less like an altar in the pale glow of red fire. Four Roman columns were shining, the eight sash windows closed up underneath a shallow slate roof, secured against the outside world. She banged on the huge metal door, which however slid open, and she staggered inside without hesitation.

To Dora’s great horror, she immediately bumped into something in the doorway, something literally bulging forward. Looking up timidly, she saw a woman of enormous girth with a stressful grimace on her lips, pulled back in something like a smile’only it appeared to be a friendly smile. She was probably still in her forties, with a pale moon-face and a little thin reddish hair. A floral tent enveloped her, reaching to her heavily bandaged knees and shins.

Dora wanted to utter something but found her throat struck. Instead the woman broke the silence. "You are the lost girl, dear. We’ve been expecting you. We had a call from the police." Her smile was as broad and caring as ever. "Come in please."

The little girl was stunned for a moment before something urgent called upon her mind and shouted out, "There is a fire outside, we must leave here right now!"

"Really? I’ve never heard of any fire hazard in this area for years."

Without wasting a word, Dora sped to the other end of the room and pushed open the window, hooding her eyes in expectation of feeling the scorching power of that huge fire. However, she only found hundreds of tiny black bugs hammering in a shivering crowd outside, giving off that maddening warble whine. She slammed it shut before they could swarm into this snug shelter from the starkness and grimness outside. No fire, she thought but could not understand, how bizarre. "I must have seen some more hallucination just now."

It was then that she smelled the food inside this house. Quite a nice smell, especially if you happened to be hungry. And she was indeed starving. She could sense a compound of vanilla and burnt sugar and something fruity. Yes, strawberries. The generous lady who named herself Lisa led Dora to an enormous kitchen where there was a heady amalgam of the lot, hot, rich, almost succulent.

"Get yourself something to eat." She offered. "Some of these strawberry jam puns with the jelly in. You must be very hungry."

"No, thanks," said her, still half doubted the conviction of all these. "Very kind of you but, no thanks all the same. I’d like to go home. I’ve been lost for a week."

"No problem, the road to town is just outside this house, but do take some berries with you. It’s a must-try." Without waiting for Dora’s reaction, the lady picked up a tray of mounted scarlet fruits and helped her putting some into her pockets. Its smell was irresistible. Forgetting all about the burning sensation just now, the skinny girl gulped down a handful. They were really delicious.

A few moments later she was no longer in the candle-lit parlor but in some dark open space, the light behind her fading, but she paid no notice of that. Her nose, her entire head, was still filled with smells of spring so sweet and so strong that they were overwhelming. Chief among them was the smell of strawberry, drifts of it. She could hear crickets, and when she looked up she saw the polished bone face of the moon, riding high overhead. It rose into spaces between the thin clouds into a sea of darkness, its white glow was everywhere, turning the mist rising from the tangled grasses around her bare legs like smoke, only with a green iridescence.

Dora saw a steep, demure suburban road, looking simultaneously too real and not real at all in the moonlight. She was wondering why she had not noticed its presence until now. That’s when she sensed a dozing savagery in this place, as her heart first swelled with happiness and then contracted with fright. She felt her stomach tightening and cramping, trying hard to balance her petite body but a sudden spasm of shiver took her, hurting with a deep itching sting. She attempted to grab hold of a nearby tree, but its hollow branch cracked and she gave way to panic gradually. Time passes and the knowledge of a rational world slipped away in sleep.

When she woke up, she saw a small man in old flapping T-shirt and patched green pants, carrying a rifle high over his head. Clearly, he was a hunter who just happened to pass by.

"Why are you here?" he asked. "This area has been deserted for years. A fire rage through the whole place almost ten years ago, and nobody has been living here ever since."

Startled, Dora looked back into the direction of where the kind lady’s house would have stood. It was the scene close to a kind of ghost-woods, the site of some old fore. The ruins of a mansion’or what used to be a mansion’was buried almost to the roof in underbrush. Vines were growing up the three columns in front, a fourth lay in segments. How could that be?

"It used to be a strawberry farm," the man added on observing the baffled look on her face, "and the hostess, she was a forty-something portly woman by then, used to be a good friend of mine. But how fate strikes, she died in that fire as well."

Ahead, and already around them was a broken maze of long-dead trees. The ground which they stood was swampy and wet. Rising from the flat pools of standing water were turtleback hummocks covered with grass and swathes of weed. Looking through the lacing of dry jutting branches, Dora thought she could see green beyond them. A rising green. Maybe a hill, the one from which she fell over yesterday and where those bloodthirsty strawberries lurked.

"Only in my dreams, possibly." So she tried to convince herself.

But she was not all right. Now a resurgence of that nausea and cramps set in, and she voided a huge quantity of something red. "It was blood." She had the terrifying thought of having been poisoned. But it wasn’t blood.

The rugged man bent down and helped her up, "Where did you get to eat so much strawberry? You almost killed yourself. Look at all that leftover!"

"It was Lisa who had given all this to me. Look!" She fished in her pocket in an attempt to show some more berries to him, now face gaunt and mouth open on the hearing of the hostess’ name. That was when she found out something strange. No, she corrected her herself, something had been seriously deceptive.

Dora emptied her pockets, but she only took out a handful of ashes.